I’m flabbergasted to learn that anywhere in Canada still has 3G at all. Next you’ll be telling me they still use smoke signals in sparsely populated regions.
I believe it has been completely shut down in the US by the end of 2022. I don’t think any of the mobile carriers here have maintained a 3G network since then. Heck, 4G is already very obsolete, and we’ve had a lot of problems at my work trying to support anything using 4G (like older hotspot devices and phones), and have pretty much eliminated them already.
I deal w 4G regularly. On small Caribbean islands. Tres inadequate.
Any US or Canadian corporate / government infrastructure depending on 4G is a WTF. I’m sorry you’re still battling last decade’s gremlins.
3G? What’s next, reintroducing wood-fired steam locomotives?
That would be kind of cool though.
Not quite but a lot of older GM vehicles that have had OnStar that ran on 3G; once they shut that down all of those services went away, including crash notification, stolen vehicle tracking / slowdown / disabling, & even remote unlock. This affected all 2014 & older, as well as some 2015 model year vehicles. Seven years is not that old for the life of a car.
Supposedly one could upgrade but only if one was already an OnStar customer as of a certain date; something like a year before they shut down 3G. That meant that people buying a used car never had a chance to get it even though it was still live for a period of time when they owned their vehicle.
Oh good, for that Canada trip this summer I guess I can actually activate the OnStar. 
I don’t know these answers, but I wonder when 4G was first widespread enough that GM could have been using it? When did 3G/4G cellular modems become a commonly available not-prototype component?
IOW, did the mobile providers pull the rug out from under GM too soon, or did GM continue building and selling new cars with trailing edge tech that they knew, or should have known, would be obsoleted and shut down well within the lifetime of their new vehicles? OTOH, car manufacturers are sorta famous for caring only about the initial purchaser and the initial purchase price; everything after that is Somebody Else’s Problem. Reliability, resale value, longevity? Bah, that’s not important to this quarters’ bottom line. But that’s a different rant.
Any computer / electronic tech is a very fast-moving treadmill and everything that depends on any part of it needs to be leaning forward, not backward. Annoying in some ways; miraculous in others. But a fact of life regardless.
My cat just barfed down my shoulder and back. She was sitting behind me on the back of the couch.
3G cellular modems first showed up for standard commercial use in 2009, the first major one came out that year. It was made by Novatel, it was the 2200 MiFi that both Sprint and Verizon used.
To this very day, we still use modern versions of that same device. Not for Sprint, of course, because that no longer exists, but we use Verizon and MiFi hotspots to connect computers to a 5G network for field use. I think it’s an evolution of the same design, still going strong nearly 20 years later.
Virgin Media are shutting their 3G network here as the proportion of calls still being made over it is miniscule and the costs of continuing to run it are deemed disproportionate.
Going down an unbusy highway, I smelled bad brakes, but the car in front of me was quite a ways a way and we were on a completely flat plain. My indicators were all fine and I didn’t feel anything wrong, and there were no paved pullouts, so I kept going. Smell got stronger. Then in several more miles I passed a completely burnt out minivan on the side of the road, so thoroughly destroyed that the inside was grey and hollowed out. So part of it may have been on fire for miles before it finally became out of control.
After passing it, the smell diminished but did not dissipate even though I had my air on recirculate. I could still catch whiffs of it occasionally, so I wasn’t 100% sure that it wasn’t something in my car and I had just gotten acclimated to the smell.
Made it to a Publix where I went in and used the restroom and got some Sugar Free Red Bull. While placing the soda in the back, I got a final whiff of the burning car from 25 miles ago, which had lingered in the back seats all that time.
If you leave your air on recirculate, of course it won’t dissipate; you’re just running the same stink-filled air around and around in your cabin.
If you want to evacuate a stink after you’ve passed the source, turn off recirculate and open your windows for a minute or 3. Get all the stinky air, and any stink that’s already started attaching to your interior, out of the car and replace with all fresh air that never had stink in it.
I recognize that “Is that my car making that smell?” feeling.
That’s what I meant to type. I had it on outside air but the stench remained. I even alternated it occasionally between outside and inside to see if I could get a fresh blast of air followed by recirculation to further test if I was just getting used to the smell. No matter which mode I had, the smell remained, only very gradually diminishing.
My cat did that from the top shelf of her cat tree… the splatter was epic… 
It really sucks when it’s a gasoline smell.
Or burnt oil. That’s the true paranoia inducing odor.
I had the same experience with my new (new to me) car. I had been running a bunch of errands with multiple stops and when I got home, there was a fairly strong smell vaguely like burning rubber. I was a little reassured that I had not smelled anything on any of my other stops, but still concerned. I sniffed around the wheel wells and there was nothing. I sniffed in the front grille, and nothing.
Long story short, it was the next-door neighbours cooking again. Not a barbecue, either, it was indoor cooking and some of their “creative” dishes are distinctly noticeable when vented to the outside. A smell vaguely like burning rubber is often associated with the early stages of cooking spicy foods. These folks are not Indian so I doubt they’re making curry, it’s more that they have periodic large extended-family get-togethers that involve large feasts and Lord only knows what they cook.
I eventually identified the source after poking my nose out the front door several times and observing that the smell was starting to mellow into a food smell, and recalling that it wasn’t the first time I had been the victim of their odiferous cuisine. And of course, on subsequent outings my beloved new car emitted no odours.
I was just out today and was stunned by the unseasonable heat wave. There is seasonable cooler weather coming in a few days so too soon to make the switchover from heating to A/C, and the interior of the house is still nice and cool. This is exactly the condition in which one doesn’t want to do much indoor cooking, especially in the oven. Great in the winter, and fine in the summer with the A/C blasting. Perfect for outdoor cooking, but alas, I have nothing for the grill and am not going out again after a Caesar under my belt. So all that remains is what can be microwaved, and thus, General Tao Chicken is in the offing.
I’m going to call my DVM tomorrow, because my cat has started urinating outside the litterbox.
Again.
She’s 18 years old.
I pit green peppers nowadays. Nearly all the flavor has been bred out of them.