4½ miles each way, five degrees. Snowing fairly hard by the time I got home. With the cold and because I had no reason to go to Walmart, I was going to go to Price Chopper in Slingerlands but my electric toothbrush stopped working and I wanted to get are replacement as I think it does a better job then a manual toothbrush.
Truth is Market32 aka Price Chopper in Slingerlands really annoys me, both the store itself and the rich people who shop there. It has a nice produce section but I really don’t need 394 different brands of Organic Woke Brand Choco Puffs with Added Protein for $15.99. One thing I like is how they have oatmeal packaged in a lightweight plastic bag rather then the big cardboard tube it comes in at Walmart. Easier to carry and less trash, which I’m so careful about these days without having a truck or regular fires.
My fingers were so numb when I got there but the way back didn’t seem that cold. I could barely move my fingers when I got to Walmart until they warmed up. And they hurt for a while. The roads were fine both ways, though on the way home they were starting to get a bit greasy and snow covered. Took Bender Lane to Walmart, and while you’re not supposed to make a left turn there with a car, I did sneak around the median with my bike. I do like the one stop shopping and low prices of Walmart, but I do always end up spending more then I should there because of the psychological tricks they use there. Price Chopper just seem really over priced so I normally are loathe to buy that “one extra” thing, you know how that goes.
Going shopping wasn’t essential today, but I mostly wanted carrots to use in my pancakes and other meals, like bread, soups,
That and they are promising a dire emergency winter snowstorm super homeland disaster emergency. Or whatever the colored television is calling it these days. Mom got another remote for her television, and I pushed more buttons and it changed the channel on her SmartyPaints television and got to the next channel about ICE burning immigrant babies in Minnesota and how to lard up your dinner menu with more fat, salt and sugar. Or whatever they’re trashing your mind and stomach with these days.
Even with the two plus feet of snow coming, ☃️ it’s actually a nice calm morning. Still cold and in the single digits, but without the breeze it feels much warmer. 🚲 I want to get some carrots 🥕, bananas 🍌 and oatmeal so I might ride out to Price Chopper this morning, mostly because I want the exercise. I doubt I’ll be doing much riding on Monday, and probably Tuesday will be difficult to ride to work. I was looking at my credit card bill, and noticing how much I’m saving not having a vehicle, as I tend to buy less groceries due to needing to haul on bike and not having an easy way to take trash to transfer station. 🗑️ It’s so much easier in the summer when you have a fire every few days or weeks. 🔥 I haven’t bought any Greek yogurt or fake sugar-free syrup since I retired Red, in part because of the problem of getting rid of containers, as we all know especially No 5 plastic doesn’t get recycled even if you toss it in the designated bin. ⛽ And while I don’t drive much in the winter, haven’t had any gas bills since I fueled Red up at the end of year. And got $275 back from my insurance, which brought my bank emergency savings account back up to balance. 💳
Yesterday, Dad picked me up and I went out to visit the folks. 👨👨👦 It was nice to visit for a while, they made up riggis and had a little party for my 43rd birthday. 🎂 It seems like only yesterday, I was doing some camping and skiing up at Rensselearville State Forest for my birthday. How fast time comes and goes. It feels good though at this point, being in much better shape, 🫃🏻 eating healthy food 🍏, riding my bike to work much of the year, 🚲 and watching as my savings and investment grow, as I inch closer – year by year – towards retirement and owning that off-grid homestead. Going past the house next door that I toured a few years ago, the people who moved in had a rip-roaring bonfire 🔥 going yesterday before the snow. It could have been mind, but it was a werid parcel with only 5 acres, no wood stove and limited wood lot, right on the main road with another residential in holding, so not only would I have been careful what I burnt, there would be the road noise, risk of livestock getting on the road, though it did have a nice barn for pigs and goats and outdoor sink for butchering. 🐐 🗡️ But it looks like the new owners are enjoying it, and I still have the cash that would have gone into it. And honestly, I like living in city, especially now without a vehicle. ☃️ No snow to shovel or cars to clean off for me.
This morning, I am heading out to Price Chopper in a bit. 🚴 Not because I have any essentials to pick up, but I want the ride for the exercise before the snow starts to pick up. It’s cold but I want the exercise as once snow comes, it’s going to be deep and likely stick around for a while based on the forecast. 🌨️ Going to be Corning Hill for the bike ride in, and probably delayed buses on Tuesday and maybe Wednesday until the snow emergency and they get Delaware Avenue cleaned to the point where the buses aren’t blocked by cars parked way out in the middle of the road. 📚 Then I need to get some books out of the Libby or Hoopla to read, and most studying up on car buying strageties and Ford SuperDuty trucks. I don’t want to call the truck I’m buying an F-250 or F-350, as for my purposes the difference doesn’t matter much as I’m not planning to buy such a heavy trailer that I need a one-ton truck axle but if that’s what’s available in the package and price I want over the 3/4-ton truck axle, there is no difference besides a stiffer ride, as all other equipment is generally the same.
One of the areas I’ve been watching a lot of is videos of real people negogating 📺 car buys with hidden recorders, and what makes an effective deal 🤝 literally saving thousands of dollars 💵 while getting the vehicle you want. And now I’ve started to study window stickers more, and under what the various trim and features packages really mean. With those HD trucks so you have so many different configurations as people use them for everything from hauling cattle to plowing and towing trailers to the oil fields. What do I really need and want? How much do I care about appearance? How do the various features work on the modern Fords? All questions I am trying to answer. 🙋 Like while I had heard the the hill descent feature is fantastic on extremely icy roads, I had no idea how it worked. The manual lockers and hubs are great, and while I had some idea how they worked on Ford I learned a lot more watching YouTube. What tires do I want? While they’re a consumable item and OEM tires are crap even if they are AT, it’s something to consider as they’ll likely be what I’m driving on for the first four or five years of the truck’s life.
We live in a society that embraces change, especially technological change and the consumeristic possibilities that it makes possible for corporations to dove tail on and sell us things. To be anything but one who embraces change, is often seen as backwards, a luddite of sorts.
Change can be good and bad. We often describe change as progress, but is it not always the case. Sometimes a step forward really is two steps backwards. We should weigh both sides, realize that change has costs but also benefits. Change often involves the unknown. That, can be scary and threatening to one’s position and way of doing things.
Life would be boring if nothing would ever change. There would no opportunity for growth or progress. But I often get caught up in loss aversion, fearing what change means. I often over emphasize the negatives of change while ignoring the benefits. I can be a perfectionist, and when change doesn’t bring only the best be solely down on change. I’ll complain about all change brings and is below my expectations.
I don’t mean to be an eeyore, always complaining about how things are going to hell as the world changes not always for the better. Yet still, I can’t bring myself to always be looking out the happy window, embracing only the good while being blissfully ignorant of all that is lost with the change. But I do need to try to find some more balance in life, overcome my loss aversion while accepting both the good and bad of change.
That is what is in the news today, citing the rising cost transformers, equipment and maintence of the grid. After decades of fairly stagnent electricity growth, it seems like the past few years since the pandemic, electricity demand has surged as the demand for ever growing computer power, electric cars, heat pumps and other technologies have increased the amount of demand on both local and regional grids.
At some point, we all knew electricity demand would increase. Efficency gains, often unpredicted offset the increase demand from servers and other technologies in the 1990s through the 2010s. And none of us can know for sure what brilliant energy saving solutions inventors supported by government investment will come up with. But suddenly in a world of electrification of automobiles, buses, and heat pumps, it seems like demand is only going to go up.
It doesn’t help that Washington is putting all of it’s chips in on fossil fuels. While I always thought the goals of 100% renewable energy by 2035 was laughable, we shouldn’t be moving away from renewables when demand is surging, and we need to diversify. At some point the fracking revolution is going to peter out and the impacts on climate change are only increasing. Too many renewables, too quickly can push up the price of electricity – but not adding enough and investing in innovation also will push up the price of electricity.
Truth is future demand is quite unpredictable. Is the AI Boom going to bust? How much more data processing capacity does the world need? Seriously, I can’t figure out much of a use for AI beyond cute parlor tricks like shitty canned text writing and meme generation. AI is pretty bad at what it does. Electric cars and heat pumps require more electricity, but they also will become more efficent over time, as will buildings as their upgraded and insulated better. Nobody knows how much industry there will be in in ten years from now, how many jobs, or how much growth will be. With all the baby boomers retiring, it’s possible energy demand will actually fall when they’re not consuming nearly as many services or products. We don’t know.
Another possibility is that more and more people will start generating and storing electricity on site. People make fun of solar, describing it as woke technology. But those modern hybrid inverters and solar panels are remarkably inexpensive now and simple to install and set up. Battery capacity with lithium ion phosphate technology gets cheaper, safer and simpler to use every year. Off-grid is no longer just for remote cabins and homesteads, and it’s quite possible that within a few years residential grid usage – and even commercial usage may fall if more facilities create and store their own energy on site. We just don’t know.
To be fair to those reacting to impending dire emergency severe snow storm extreme homeland disaster, I did ride my mountain bike to Hannaford last night and picked up some groceries, that is the few they had left on store shelves.
Not that I was concerned that much about the snow, ☃️ but it did sound like riding my mountain bike in negative 20 windchill on Saturday and Sunday didn’t sound like real fun. 🚲 Though, they didn’t have carrots so maybe I’ll be going to Price Chopper on Saturday. 🥕 After all, I am a poor desperate person without a vehicle this winter, even if I do spend too much time looking at Ford SuperDuty trucks with the Godzilla engine. Don’t you know, only very sad people like drug addicts, the colored and poor, are extremely isolated and don’t own a car in suburbs. But I want to study my options and consider them, I do have still a month before I test drive my first truck and two months before I want to close on a deal.
I was thinking though at least now I won’t have to clean the snow off my pickup truck after the snow storm. 🛻 As I am a poor, desperate person without a vehicle to snow on. I mean Red is stored at my parents house but I don’t have to clean him off because he ain’t going anywhere. Not sure if they are going to close the office on Monday, 🏢 I was going to bring my laptop home but I don’t want to do that on bike, so I probably won’t. I’ll make it into the office on Monday with the bus, it’s fine. 🚍 Visiting Mom and Dad on Saturday, so I won’t have to worry about getting down to Four Corners Laundry on Monday before work. 👖
I’ve actually never ridden all the way over to Hannaford after dark, 🛒 but it was fine last night, took the back streets and cut over the bike path and behind Hannaford, missing the trafficked roads. I have good lights on my bike, and I wear bright clothing. It was kind of pretty seeing all the suburban houses that still have their Christmas lights on, 🎄 and got a bit of exercise to boot. Actually, yesterday was Thursday, and they were doing the propane delivery at the train yard, blocking both exits from the office, and I ended up riding up to Menands, then taking South Pearl Street downtown, adding a few extra miles to my commute. I may actually fairly comfortable with riding after dark around town. But it’s so dangerous the colored television reminds us, imagine how much safer you would be if you drove your frugal 20-year old Honda Civic everywhere around town.
I did sleep pretty well last night, 🛏️ but I also was dog tired 😫 as I didn’t sleep well the previous night. 💊 Even took a sleeping pill, assuming I’d sleep soundly and not wake up listening to a podcast with the five minute intervals of those creepy voices singing, Better! Better! BETTER HELP! For all those sleepless nights!! Or Talk Therapy or whatever those marketers are pushing. 🤯I guess it’s better then ads for Active SCAM ETFs, used cars (we BLOW THEM OUT OF YOUR ANUS with out FINANCE DEALERS at JOE’S USED SUPER CENTER FOR THE COLORED AND POOR!), and lemon 🍋 law lawyers. Apparently I’m about a buy a lemon used car and I need an extended warranty because I’m legitimately concerned about reliability of various models in auto era ruined by EPA and inflation.
Actually, I am more annoyed that now my Facebook feed and blog advertising feeds are full of ads for extended car warranties, 🧑🔧 because I must have lingered my mouse of an ad, and probably because I’ve been doing a deep dive into vehicle reliability. Mostly as a form of mental masturbation, over buying a SuperDuty with he Godzilla engine. I mean, the 7.3L is not just a big ass engine that drinks fuel ⛽ it’s one of most reliable ones left these days since the EPA crapped all over the small displacement engines with their fuel economy standards forcing blown, I mean supercharged engines that use thin piston rings and very light oils. The 5.3L DoD in my old truck was fine, it never ticked much and quit it’s oil drinking habit but trucks are so damn expensive, so I want something real reliable. 🛠️ I know I am ignoring the wonders of how bad the Ford 10-speeds are, but I’ve been promised by the internet that they fixed the worse of problems in 2026 model year. And some 7.3L, especially older ones idled all day do develop lifter delamination which is very bad but better then a lot of common issues with engines using blowers. Honest, I’m aware half of the crap I watch on the Internet is from either Ford fan-boys or mechanics who are familiar the old technology, ⚙️ and have rose-colored glasses 👓 of the olden push-rod engines and other simpler or at least old ways of doing things.
I do keep falling back though on looking at Toyota Taco 🌮 trucksbut they are so tiny, and how I will ever get a week’s worth of gear on them. And despite their small size and blown engines, they don’t get that great gas mileage. ⛽ I mean they don’t drink fuel like a Godzilla, but the differences are less then you would think they would be. And even the latest generation of Mexican Tacos have engine and tranny problems, due to the EPA crap, and manufacturer economizing. They also use that pissy thin oil. From my perspective, it’s just a different bottle at the store, still mechanics seem to think 5w30 is still much more protective. Back in the day, though mechanics used to think 5w30 was disaster when most cars still used 10w40. Still, a 7.3 engine is a big one, as are those SuperDuty trucks. What happens if I’m forced to move out of city, ugh, drive to work? When my parents get old and need care or I take over their homestead? 🐐 I guess I could park outside of city and ride the last five or ten miles most days to save gas. And those SuperDuty trucks aren’t cheap. But I make good money, and gas ain’t that expensive, even if it does go up to $5 or $6 a gallon. Plus a SuperDuty will be bitch to park. 🅿️
Truth is I’m having a lot of fun learning about the automobile industry 🚗, and how to secure the best deal for a reliable, enjoyable truck for the next 10 or 15 years for a fair price. Navigating the spin is a lot of fun, but I would say that I’ve spend a lot of time working down at Capitol over the years. 🏛️ And I’m at that point in my career, where I want to make the right decisions and be responsible, while somehow slotting the big SuperDuty into all of that. It’s not like I won’t use it a lot for camping, and it will be a nice truck. 🏕️ All while continuing to grow my investments 📊 and saving for the homestead. 🚜 I don’t really see myself driving to work anytime soon unless there is no other alternative, or moving out of city. I really enjoy biking or busing it to work compared to the traffic and cops with their penises out looking for speeders. 🚲 It’s not like I have a lot of other luxuries in my life, it’s wilderness camping in my truck camper shell, no fancy resorts or trips. It’s just so much money, though if I want to believe those unrealized Capital Gains from last year are not just imaginary, then what is but a few months of time, 💰 that will give me a lot of joy over the decade and half between now and retirement. It’s not like I am making $15 an hour delivering pizzas 🍕 out of back of my 20-year old Honda Civic financed for 84-months at 13.2% interest these days.
On that note, 🥚 I had eggs for the first time in a while for breakfast 🐔 with lots of vegetables and a bit of cornmeal. Been a while, I think I generally prefer more whole wheat carbs in my breakfast but it’s good to change things up from time to time. I should shower, 🚿 get on my mountain bike and ride to work. 🚲 I think I’ll have meetings downtown, I’m hoping if it’s not too cold I’ll be able to ride home, and probably not be riding for a bit until it warms up again after the Dire Emergency snow storm comes to an end. More time to read, research and think about that fucking SuperDuty. 🗓️ Still a month until that test drive, and two months before I lock down the deal, so a lot could change between now and then, and maybe I’ll end up with a Mexican Taco 🌮 truck when I finally let my brain 🧠 override my small dick. Have a good day, it’s a Friday, smoke some grass and listen to old Karen Dalton records, like I remember riding trail last fall in the rain up at Horseshoe Lake.
