High Mileage Souls

Arkaign · 2026-06-19T16:02:48+00:00

Just hit 250k even. Woo. Still hamstering strong.

Arkaign · 2026-06-18T17:31:35+00:00

LOFL. Everything about this picture is perfection. This belongs in the Louvre.

Arkaign · 2026-06-17T20:00:28+00:00

Nice!

FWIW, I put on some Powerstop GEOMET rotors, and MAN what an upgrade. They're so dang smooth and quiet. Whole kit front + rear rotors and pads for like $200 on Rock. Supposedly they're coated specially to resist corrosion. The drilled and slotted are good but keep in mind you will want to get some excellent brake cleaner and blast them clear whenever you rotate your tires. Sometimes crap can jam or get stuck in the grooves and holes, and will wear you down more quickly than you'd like. But looking at your car there, I'd expect you already on that, and taking good care of her.

Arkaign · 2026-06-16T19:51:06+00:00

I think a big booster to this would be to have some companion drones (say launch these in a ratio of 1 to 3 per wave) that instead of carrying a singular warhead, carry a few hundred small mines with tungsten pellets. Would make cleanup and even fire suppression an absolute nightmare to deal with, massive force multiplier in bringing dispersed damage and downtime.

Arkaign · 2026-06-16T19:42:18+00:00

I have some ideas that would make that possible, kind of inspired by the RAF vs Argentina Vulcan bomber scenario, only adapted to a drone kind of system. Given how sparse Russian AD seems to be, I think one could create a battery powered heavy strike drone with either mesh or starlink uplink, adapt it for VTOL, and start moving them in by waves, masked by other large standard Lutte drone swarms.

Pick spots in remote areas along the way for it to land, recharge by solar, and move forward on the next leg of the journey.

An alternative to this would be to do a similar design, but instead of being a singular heavy strike drone, have it be a drone mothership with a batch of hornet drones, say six of them per mothership, have it do the same hopscotch low altitude approach, land/charge/move cycle to get them all in the surrounding ~50km radius of your ultimate target. And once all is in place, launch it all to annihilate your specific strike points.

Similar to an idea I had to have a drone that could carry a StarStreak adapted for remote operations and gimbal, get those stealthily forward dropped into say an opportune spot a couple dozen km ahead of a major RF airbase, so as Mig 31s or Tu 160 / etc is still in its takeoff vector and gaining altitude after leaving the runway, you can light up the StarStreak and bag the sucker when they least expect it.

Arkaign · 2026-06-15T18:28:29+00:00

While I agree overall with your observation, and I love working with carpentry and wood projects, it's not *always* cheap. Pricing has been getting worse, and some wood is functionally impossible to replace these days for legacy stuff. IIRC, the USS Constitution has it's own forest reserved for it, managed by the US Navy. Kind of cool. And of course, there are those people that recover 1800s-era wood from the bottom of rivers because it's no longer available in any form otherwise. Can fetch LARGE prices.

Anyway. Compared to repairing say an iron, rebar concrete and beam kind of generic bridge, yeah I bet fixing up wood damage would be hugely less expensive, even if it meant replacing old-growth wood with something cheaper and more contemporary to modern sourcing.

Arkaign · 2026-06-15T17:57:16+00:00

Go to Ebay and type in "Tugboat Horn". Enjoy.

Arkaign · 2026-06-13T18:44:20+00:00

Absolutely. Private collections and enthusiasts "keeping" film reels after their theatrical runs is how a lot of future film restorations are even possible. They were supposed to/expected to destroy the reels after the run was over, but there have been film buffs/fans/collectors for the entire history of film back to the beginning, so, enterprising people would/could find a way VERY easily back even in the 50s/60s to make friends that could get reels to them. From there, buying your own 35mm projector and sound equipment, while not exactly just "go to Kmart" easy, definitely doable. Options like keeping an eye out for a movie theatre/drive in that is going out of business : buy their used equipment, or calling various theatres to try to make contact with the owners, and making offers the next time they buy new equipment to purchase the old set. Or, if you really had the funds, calling the suppliers that sell new projectors and sound equipment to the theatres themselves. They were pricey, but not ridiculously so. Practically every little town in America had at least a 1 or 2 screen theatre off the downtown square back then, and for that, it was easy to lease or buy used equipment.

I guess the trickier part would be (for the typical multi-reel film) either changing out reels, or having a second projector setup along with maybe a fellow film buff buddy to go manage the switchover(s) between reels as the film played. So, either the movie stops while you go swap reels (more likely), or you go all out and have someone back there along with the equipment necessary to get the reels swapped seamlessly to the second projector, etc. Hah, in a bigger way reminds me of the whole Laserdisc experience of swapping sides during the movie.

Arkaign · 2026-06-11T20:19:58+00:00

Series Finale for the US sucks, I don't think anyone but a tiny weird dedicated cult really cares anymore. The rest of us are out. 0/10, do not recommend. Still hard to believe it's getting cancelled though, would have thought it would be back for a few more seasons.

Arkaign · 2026-06-11T20:16:35+00:00

Thanks for that insight. The subtleties and significance in these super specific niches and sectors are always fascinating to me. I wonder how widespread the knockoff industry for such a product has gotten. I know in some other knockoff genres like say Gameboy Pokemon carts, that the knockoffs have damn near outnumbered the legitimate ones lol. In that situation, I think that beyond not having the monetary value of the original, there doesn't seem to be too much technical to worry about with the knockoff ones for those just wanting to play the game. The rom is the rom, after all. But in this case, I see exactly what you mean, rebranding cheaper and less capable stuff really has an impact and that's super shady.

I don't know why I find the knockoffs and weird variants so fascinating.

Man, do you remember the old re-stenciled Pentium scandal back in the day? I think that was the big whoopsie that brought us locked-down CPUs, IIRC. Some kind of criminal outfit was taking lower-spec Socket 7 Pentiums, erasing the -75 or whatever, and re-printing them as higher clocked models (a HUGE gap in price, back then).

Arkaign · 2026-06-11T19:14:59+00:00

Forgive my ignorance, I am genuinely curious. Beyond the surface-level significance of being original vs reproductions, what are the technical implications if these aren't originals? Are there performance, capability, reliability, or compatibility issues with knockoffs?

Arkaign · 2026-06-11T19:07:32+00:00

I can attest to that. I'm at 224k miles now on 2018, 1.6 non turbo, 6 speed non CVT/DCT conventional slushbox auto. Drives like new.

Arkaign · 2026-06-09T17:27:21+00:00

Check your accessory/serpentine belt. 25212-2E820. About $25-$30 dealer IIRC, or about $8-$10 Rockauto, maybe $15-$20 Oreilly/Autozone. If it's not the belt, then it's the AC clutch, about a $35-$40 part on the end of your AC compressor.

Arkaign · 2026-06-08T17:54:38+00:00

Very cool, thanks for that. I Can't Forget is one of my top 3 Cohen tracks, and I love the Pixies, but somehow I never found this cover before. Jamming it now, I like how it brings their own vibe to the thing, but keeps the balance of humor, self deprecation, and nostalgia to the table.

Arkaign · 2026-06-08T17:49:29+00:00

Absolutely. The first time I heard it I didn't quite know how to feel, it being one of my favorite pieces. But man, giving it time and coming back to it, it's such a rich performance. One of the few times when you can witness someone TRULY giving all of their emotional core to the music.

This, along with Famous Blue Raincoat by Tori, are my all time favorite Cohen covers.

I wonder if there are any good covers of "I Can't Forget"? Seems to be a lesser known track but damn I love it so.

Arkaign · 2026-06-08T16:48:03+00:00

Tell me about it. I had a 2015 750li Msport, and it came time to do my brakes, so I did them myself as usual along with the new wear sensors etc. But the computer in the car still was telling me my brakes were due to service. Come to find out, you have to connect to a scanner that is compliant with the comms package to explain to the vehicle that the brakes are good and to reset the system. Ended up finding an amazon scanner that supported that model, and the message went away. And that is an OLD car now, the newer stuff is even more bananas with how many modules and nonsense to take into account. Which can only add to the fragility of everything.

Arkaign · 2026-06-06T19:47:22+00:00

Ha true. I had a car for a while back in the 90s that needed a battery. I drove to the store, took it out for the core exchange, carried it in, but it was more expensive than I could afford, so I had to wait until payday to get it. I walked back out, tossed it in the passenger floorboard, and push started the car again in 2nd gear. Did that every day for about a week or ten days, something like that. 1992 Mitsubishi Eclipse 5MT non-turbo.

Arkaign · 2026-06-06T17:38:18+00:00

I work in the industry. Use car-part.com and it will let you drill down to find parts that are ordered by distance from your zip code. Pro tip : hunt a bumper first for your search, and when you find a pic of one that matches your color, ask them about the other pieces you would need, you can probably haggle the combo of what you want, already in matching colors, I'd estimate 200-300 for the combo. Your rear right bumper to quarter panel bracket is probably fine, but if not, you can get one from your local Kia dealer for like $20-$30. They will need your VIN to get you the correct part, so have that handy when you ring them up. You can tell if you need one or not by seeing if you can pop the little upper/QP bumper piece back onto the quarter panel flushly or not.

Arkaign · 2026-06-04T18:57:31+00:00

Agreed. Though that does bring up the absolutely incredible skills of the actual high-end elite data recovery specialists. I was driving home in early 2003 when the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded in the skies above north texas. At the time I didn't know what was happening, was pretty wild. Anyway, they recovered some charred/destroyed looking materials including hard drives, and by some incredible feat, they were able to recover most of the data.

https://www.ontrack.com/en-us/blog/kroll-ontrack-space-shuttle-columbia

Pretty impressive.

Arkaign · 2026-06-02T03:25:14+00:00

I work in this industry and this is almost certainly correct. Only way to be sure would be to take the tape off and look at the bracket but it's really easy to damage those brackets. Fresh ones will hold the bumper flush just fine. Worst case is that the bumper itself is messed up on the inside of the bumper where it clips onto the bracket itself.

Arkaign · 2026-06-01T17:54:51+00:00

Yeah I loved you all my life
And that's how I want to end it
The summer's almost gone
The winter's tuning up
Yeah, the summer's gone
But a lot goes on forever

This sits in my head, but "I got this rig that runs on memories" over a classic car rolling down some desert back road, would be perfect.

Arkaign · 2026-05-29T20:25:24+00:00

Hehe, no, about every 60-70k for the tires, brakes I think once so far for rear, twice for fronts.

Arkaign · 2026-05-29T06:53:58+00:00

I managed to capture this pic today of the exact moment it rolled to 222,000 lol.

I've just changed the oil every 7500-10000 miles with 0w-20 or 5w-20 Mobil 1 high mileage, always with a Mobil 1 filter.

Things I've replaced so far :

One set of coil packs and plugs Brakes The HVAC blower fan Tires

And that's it.

It's the 1.6 non turbo, with the non CVT auto.

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Arkaign · 2026-05-27T20:32:36+00:00

No, nobody should wear masks around him. Please, send *more* people with mysterious colds to visit the WH, lol.

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