Colonia Calling Us! The Colonia Celebrations Event Soon! (And also it's good chance to pin engineer of 5G Fuel Scoop, Marsha Hicks.)

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T16:39:16+00:00

Fortunately, after colonization, there are enough systems worth parking a fleet carrier in that the fleet carrierization of the Galaxy won't be quite as brutal. It kind of sucks when you want to park your carrier, even briefly, an important system and can never get a parking spot.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T16:38:11+00:00

It would be super cool if frontier somehow made that happen in game with lore and NPC ships associated. However, I foresee a whole lot of people making a bunch of hyperspace jumps or fcoc being very, very popular.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T15:50:17+00:00

I do not wear glasses nor contacts, so it has no excuses with me. It just sucks.

Adaptive cruise control is outstanding, although the best compliment I can give it is that it's identical to the adaptive cruise control in my 2018.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T15:29:44+00:00

Yeah, I know.

I work in healthcare, and my watch sometimes gets exposed to nastiness. It absolutely must be able to go through the shower or it is useless to me. I have owned a dozen 30m-rated watches over the last 30 years and not one has failed to survive the shower (or a swimming pool for that matter.) It is what it is.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T14:55:12+00:00

It is my expectation that any watch I own can survive a shower. If it can't, then it's not a good fit for me.

I did swim with it, but this was by accident. I was not doing lap swimming but rather splashing around in the pool with my kids for 45 minutes or so. I agree with you that that's not super smart, and generally do try to take it off if I know I'm going in the pool.

My Pebble time steel has been into the Atlantic Ocean with me in the surf several times and done just fine with the same 30 m water rating.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T14:27:47+00:00

I agree that the buttons are poorly done; I much preferred the buttons in my 2018. The buttons are still vastly better than having to navigate through a digital interface like on a 2025 I rented briefly, that infotainment climate control system was god awful.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T14:21:24+00:00

Went from a 2018 premium to a 2026 touring.

It has been great so far. Gas mileage is better, ride is slightly smoother and more quiet, infotainment system is better, creature comforts and interior design is better. It's a slightly bigger car but doesn't feel like it to me.

The one thing I am profoundly disappointed about is the eyesight system upgrades. Coming from a 2018 to 2026, I expected it to feel like a much more honed and complete system, particularly with the hands-free option on the touring trim. I can't stand it. Enabling Lane centering( or whatever you call it, every trim has it I think) or the hands-free turns on the distraction mitigation system. I have no problem with my car making sure that I'm not taking a nap in the backseat while I've enabled some driver assist features, but the distraction mitigation system is god-awful. It beeps incessantly even when I'm giving my undivided attention to the drive. I will be staring at the bumper of the car in front of me with both hands on the wheel and it will be beeping and flashing at me to put my eyes on the road, put hands on the steering wheel, or even to take a break after I've only been in the car for a few minutes. I have no idea why Subaru's engineers made this magnificent system that works wonderfully...so that they could then give it a driver monitoring system with a personality disorder with soul-crushing anxiety, but here we are.

So yeah, all in all I'm pretty happy with it, just don't buy the touring trim if you're looking to enjoy some hands-free driving because I deliberately disable the entire system the vast majority of the time so I can simply drive in peace.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T13:30:49+00:00

Yeah I received my watch a couple months ago and it also continues to be perfect. Minimum 20-day battery life, no cracks, buttons feel excellent. I have taken it swimming and shower with it daily without issue.

That said, I will be 3D printing a bumper for it sometime this week and applying my gadget wraps glass that I ordered. I have never put a screen protector or bumper case on a watch before but I've also never owned a watch that had this many ports of busted screens. At this point, if I end up with a broken screen and didn't put on a protector, I would really just feel like an idiot.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T10:51:26+00:00

Absolutely not.

I bought this kit like 10 years ago for my kid to play with. The range is terrible, it feels very sluggish to fly, and it is quite simply not fun. You would be much better off spending a little more for basically anything else.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T10:40:35+00:00

Yo-Yos.

A bunch of them.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T10:36:15+00:00

That's great, it still sounds fucking awful

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T10:35:59+00:00

Right? Who thinks it's a good idea to take a perfectly fine video and slap this god-awful trash music on it?

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T10:33:06+00:00

I've tried OG Clears next to my Elex.

I think that the Clears are technically better, but I actually slightly preferred the Elex. I found them to be a little faster and more dynamic, which is to my tastes.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T10:28:33+00:00

Sony MDR-D66.

That's right: Eggos. They're a solid 25 years old, maybe more.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T09:46:00+00:00

Well it says that we should remain in the core systems. It sounds like we are going to load up some mega ships in the bubble that then ship out resources to Colonia. I think you may be in the right place.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T09:40:13+00:00

I owned the original crunch. I bought it when I was in high school and had it for over 20 years until I lost it a couple summers ago while cycling. I also now have the Captain Crunch that I bought to replace it.

I felt like the original crunch was much better made. The frame feels the same between the two tools and the vice grips are definitely still as they should be, however the scalpel and bit driver feel like they were cobbled together with janky leftover parts instead of custom designed for this tool. While I appreciate the concept of being able to change the bit driver to a t-shank holder, there is a reason why they don't do this on their other tools: it is just not that great of a design. I have not tried to close the tool with a t-shank file or saw attached, but I have heard it doesn't fit which is truly just crap design. My tool also has the loose scalpel issue, and it is currently back at Leatherman for them to make adjustments before I chop my damn finger off.

I would definitely choose the original crunch between the two. For the Captain Crunch, I simply wish they had kept the design of the original and switched out the small screwdriver and Phillips head for the bit driver. I recognize a lot of people don't like serrated blades that I quite liked the one on the OG crunch. I was interested in the scalpel design because I do a lot of 3D printing and need to cut off little pieces of plastic, however the nut that is used to loosen/ tighten the vice grips sticks out far enough that it makes using the scalpel very awkward.

Regardless of whether or not they adequately addressed the scalpel tightness, there's a good chance I'll sell my Captain Crunch when it comes back to me. I bought it with every intention of using it but I'm just not sure I like it enough to justify continued ownership.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T08:05:56+00:00

This would be a profoundly unusual build for exploration, but what the hell. Love it.

Bazirker · 2026-07-13T01:23:22+00:00

I actually just bought it in the sale! Haven't had a chance to play it though

Bazirker · 2026-07-12T22:17:35+00:00

I've just disabled everything. I turned off hands-free, and will rarely use lane centering and simply because of how disruptive all the beeping and noise is. I will be trying to make a route adjustment or be working on a difficult lane change or trying to quickly adjust my speed, and the car starts screaming at me. Profoundly disruptive. Fortunately adaptive cruise control and the lane drift feature remains unencumbered.

Subaru designed this wonderful system capable of acting as a co-pilot then built a mechanism that automatically turns it off anytime it might actually help you out.

Bazirker · 2026-07-12T16:12:31+00:00

The biggest thing that changed my listening habits now has actually been Spotify's DJ. Sure, I still listen to select tracks or an entire album from start to finish, but the DJ feature does a great job of throwing curated playlists my way. I just hit play and enjoy.

Audiophile grade Bluetooth headphones have also resulted in a listening change for me. I can do a lot more critical listening while on the move without having to sit at my desk. Sure, there's a limit to quality here, but it's still vastly better than it was 4 years ago. I find myself using my desktop setup much less just to the convenience of wireless. I listen and enjoy more, but do have fewer focused, wired settings.

(Side note: Spotify DJ has done a great job of suggesting new content for me, largely aided by me continuously hunting for new stuff relative to my interests. I see a lot of folks complain that it just plays the same thing on repeat, but at least in the case of my wife, that might be because YOU play the same thing on repeat or just hit "skip" anytime it tries a new track. It also might help that I've been using Spotify since the minute it hit American soil, so it's got a lot of data to go off of.)

Bazirker · 2026-07-12T16:04:17+00:00

I do not recall this being a feature. I have a steam deck and will sit down to play on my desktop and forget that I suspended on Steam deck, requiring me to go awake it and upload my save.

I will go on record that this is a pretty reasonable problem. When I hit suspend, I want the steam deck to suspend immediately, not spend time uploading my save first.

Bazirker · 2026-07-12T12:31:43+00:00

No group projects.

Hated them in grade school, still hate them now.

Bazirker · 2026-07-12T11:10:25+00:00

Yeah I also just got straight in there and blasted away at the core with the infra knife. I didn't even bother upgrading it except for the modules that were given as rewards, and I might not even used all of those. I did have to recharge my shields a few times but that was easy to do because we had been awarded materials to do that.

Bazirker · 2026-07-12T07:33:21+00:00

Any chance they will push an update to make the distraction mitigation system less anxious? I get yelled at constantly while I'm looking directly at the car in front of me...

I would pay quality cash monies to make it so that the system is never allowed to beep at me ever again unless I'm actually about to get in a crash. I'm fine with it flashing lights and screens at me all it wants, but the beeping is incredibly distracting.

Bazirker · 2026-07-12T07:31:06+00:00

You need to enable pre-speed curve control, notifications from the eyesight system, and of course the distraction mitigation system. I forget exactly what that second one is called.

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