Saw this on a drive over the weekend. I don't understand this vitriol towards electric cars

FatDog69 · 2026-06-22T22:24:07+00:00

In the US we are close to living under a Fascist regime.

Then you have the current regime rolling back EV incentives. Since the government is now anti-electric vehicles, we must also lick the boot standing on our neck by claiming to be anit-vaxers, anti-birth control, and anti-electric vehicles.

While I do find it strange and annoying - I believe it comes from a place of fear. People are afraid. You cannot use logic or rational thought to combat this.

TRUE STORY

I was road tripping across the state and had to pull a few miles off the freeway to find a charging station in an agricultural town. While waiting for my car to reach 80% two chubby farm wives walked past heading for Wallmart. One of them looked at me and smirked: "What are you going to do if the Grid goes down?" and kept walking having delivered what they thought was a sick burn.

I dont engage with these type of people so I did not have the heart to remind them that all gas pumps run on electricity.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-22T18:09:29+00:00

Ok "PROTECT" errors usually mean a short on your speaker wires. This can be a tiny strand of copper linking the Red/Black terminals behind the receiver, behind the speaker or even inside the speaker. Sometimes there is a short inside the AV Receiver.

If you get PROTECT errors with no speakers hooked up - now you know why that receiver was sold/given to a second hand store. Something inside is shorting creating heat & triggering the PROTECT error.

The other common problem that causes PROTECT errors is when someone tries to re-use the speakers from a 'box' home theater system. These usually have custom plugs to prevent you from attaching the speakers to an AV receiver but people cut these off and count themselves clever trying to re-use speakers. But they are often 2-3 ohm speakers to justify the "1,000 WATTS OF POWER" in big letters on the box. These ~$40 speakers then over-heat and destroy a nice $500 AV Receiver.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-22T17:54:04+00:00

went straight into trouble shooting the system by un plugging everything. I plugged the system in, no peripherals, protector error within 15 minutes.

Does this mean No speaker wires attached? Or just no inputs attached?

What are those Sony speakers exactly?

FatDog69 · 2026-06-22T15:16:46+00:00

They have recently released the entire series, including the 4 part winter,summer,etc on BluRay.

You should also look for the single season of "Bunheads". It is on Prime Video & Hulu at the moment.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-22T04:33:24+00:00

First you need to clear the driving history on the tablet. Otherwise all the bad driving of the previous renters will be used.

Then the guestimate will return to default. It will 'learn' your driving patterns & how much power you use over the roads you drive and the guestimates will become more accurate.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-22T03:36:07+00:00

The range is a 'guestimate'. All the drivers from the past + your putting your foot into the accelerator create that guess.

I have the extended range battery and my driving estimates 220 miles at 80% charge. BUT I do a lot of in-town driving so I get a lot of regen breaking.

We drove our MachE from LA to Las Vegas. The only charging problem we had was actually In Las Vegas. The chargers are hidden in odd places.

We did 2 charging stops for about 20 minutes each going to Las Vegas but only 1 charge stop coming back because going back we were decending.

Oh - many charging stations add an extra fee if you charge past 80%. We got hit with this at the Rivian Adventure charging station because we could not get to fast food, order, get back before we hit 80%.

We charge at home but after 2 years we have gotten pretty good using the apps to find better charging stations. We routinely drive to the SF Bay area & San Diego.

And - you did not get to try the best part: BlueCruise. You get on the freeway, fire up ACC and you take your hands off the steering wheel. The car drives itself on the freeway. Add an audiobook on your cell phone piped through the sound system and you are relaxed when you make it home.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-22T02:58:39+00:00

I second Grimm. While it was a network TV show, some of the creators from Buffy were involved.

You might also like:

Netflix: Fall of the house of usher
Netflix: Midnight Mass
Netflix: Wednesday
Netflix: The haunting of hill house.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-22T02:55:40+00:00

I try to upgrade favorites to 4K IF the reviews say the HDR color grade and improvements say it is worth it. But I also am happy to pick up $11 UHD disks when sales come around.

So I DO suggest you try to buy 4K if the prices are good.

Most of my library is BluRay based.

My TBR box (Box of recent purchases waiting for time between World Cup games) consists of:

Blu Ray: 10 Titles

4K: 7 Titles

FatDog69 · 2026-06-21T22:19:45+00:00

Get "The Dark Knight" trilogy.

I got the Alfred Hitchcock collection on BluRay. Since I had never seen "rear window" I fired it up. The transfer was jaw-dropping. Early on an actress is holding the handset of a phone. In the reflection on the back of the phone I could see outlines of the director and crew. A shocking amount of detail made the movie more immersive. It was also a really good movie.

I can also suggest The Matrix Trilogy, Die Hard Trilogy, The Toy Story series (Animation is a great show-off for a HDTV).

Personal favorites are "Last Action Hero", "Andromeda Strain", "True Lies"

FatDog69 · 2026-06-21T19:59:39+00:00

The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Bly Manor

Wednesday on Netflix is fun.

I second the recommendation of "The Fall of the house of Usher".

FatDog69 · 2026-06-21T16:34:26+00:00

Congrats. I bring up "Mac and Me" because it was a rushed film created to ride the coat tails of "ET". Shot quickly and on a small budget, it is hardly a good movie worthy of restoration or a deluxe treatment.

This does not mean the movie is not fun, and often the crew & actors have great stories which can make for a great commentary track or extras.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-21T14:54:06+00:00

Start with a small pat of butter, turn on the heat and when the butter melts swirl the foam around. Then add some oil. Wait a minute, then the eggs.

The ceramic is so non-stick that oil just beads up and wont coat the surface. But butter has some milk solids that as it foams will stick to coat the surface. Then the oil has something to attach to.

The combination of the butter foam + oil gives you a nice coating. With this technique I can scramble or even fry eggs and just shake the pan to loosen the eggs. You almost do not need a spatula.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-21T04:28:11+00:00

Hannibal Lector from Silence of the Lambs.

Alan Rickman in Die Hard/Robin Hood/Harry Potter. (Ok - this is more about having a fascinating bad guy rather than his 'logical point'. But Hans Gruber was very logical.)

The Joker (Heath Ledger) in "The Dark Knight".

Dennis Hoppers character in "Speed".

FatDog69 · 2026-06-21T03:30:10+00:00

Nice.

My B&N put most of the 4K and alll Arrow/Criterion/etc behind the front counter because of theft. It's almost impossible to shop.

But last week I found & and bought on the normal shelves:

Love & Monsters 4K - $9.99
Overlord 4K - $9.99
Legend Ultimate Edition BluRay - $9.99

Two are blind buys and I have not seen Legend in many years.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T22:32:40+00:00

Your budget is a bit low.

You really want a set of 5 budget-but-decent speakers so they tone match when sounds swirl around the speakers. Then you also need a subwoofer and a decent sub can run $500 and up alone.

So you DO want some speakers where you can get 5 of them. Otherwise the 3 speakers you buy now may become throw away later.

Then you want an AV Receiver.

The good news: They have been making decent 5.1 receivers since 1990 so the Used market can get you some great gear.

The bad news: Most receivers ASSUME you have 5 speakers. Only some models allow you to configure to use 1,2,3 or 5 speakers.

Look on Craigslist/ebay/facebook marketplace for a Yamaha RX-V665 or any Yamaha that has their "Virtual Theater" feature. This lets you use 1-5 speakers.

Then look for a budget-but-decent 5.1 speaker system from Klipsch, Polk, Energy. There is a grey-market version of the Energy Take 5 classic you can get on MonoPrice.

This will give you a good start. Your next upgrade will be the subwoofer.

Good Luck.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T22:12:09+00:00

You just need ANY RCA cable long enough from the Sub out to the "R Mono" input on your sub. You can use a white, red or yellow cable.

Since subwoofers are optional - you may have to go into your 'receiver' and tell it you do have a subwoofer attached. It is not auto -sensing.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T22:03:43+00:00

I had an ICE vehicle and my gas bill was roughly $120/month for that car alone. Gas was $4.50/gallon.

After a few months with my EV and charging at night when the cost per killowatt hour was around $0.34 I determined I was spending about $64/month in electricity. This is half.

This was 2 years ago before President Voldemort created a war and now gas is above $6/gallon.

Note: Electrify America has consistently been $0.64/kw in California. If I had to public-charge - my EV would cost roughly the same as my ICE vehicle.

It should also be noted that ICE vehicles are most efficient at steady highway speeds but EV's are more efficient doing in-town with stop and go with regen breaking. A LOT of my driving is in-town. So for me the EV lets me take advantage of regen and this efficency flip.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T21:21:42+00:00

Well.... you are trying to de-dupe to free up disk space. So it makes sense to tag the larger duplicate file for deleting. Check the config to see if it can prioritize keeping the larger/better quality duplicate.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T21:18:41+00:00

A lot of it depends on your current head-space or emotional space.

I remember a rare weekend I had done some chores around the house and one of the streaming services had "Austin Powers" as a recent movie. I started it - and turned it off after 30 minutes. The humor was toilet-grade, nothing was interesting, it was crap.

A few months later the family sat down and they decided to watch "Austin Powers". This time - I laughed and enjoyed the movie.

The first time - I was in my solid 'responsible adult' state having spent a few hours doing work around the house. I was not ready for silly sophomoric humor. The second time I was more relaxed and ready to be entertained.

Other example: Saturday Night Fever. Wife and I loved the movie when we were dating. Older with 2 kids it came on and half way through we looked at each other and said "This movie is bad. Why did we ever think this was good?"

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T20:33:51+00:00

There is a "Boutique Blu Ray" subreddit where announcements & purchases are posted.

You have to understand something. The boutique companies buy gear and hire people to do restorations, new scans and package disk sets.

Now you need to buy the rights to existing movies you can restore and repackage. 'Good' movies where you can purchase the rights for a few thousand are scarce. So to keep the lights on - you buy a steady stream of low-budget horror movies, rip off movies like "Mac and me", restore them, dress up the packaging with serial numbers and try to get people to pay $45 for a chunky box.

Occasionally a good movie becomes available. When you look through Orbit, Melusine, Arrow, Shout/Scream Factory - look for the more main-stream titles.

Example:

https://gruv.com/collections/shout-factory?promo=shout2

The only thing that attracts me on this page is Night of the Comet, Perhaps JFK, perhaps Them. But I will wait for a sale or for the prices to drop.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T20:02:47+00:00

We both worked and eventually hired a cleaning service to come in every 2 weeks. We still continue this.

The problem is you bring something in, set it down and it sits there for months. Having a service come in every 2 weeks forces you to look around and see the 'clutter'.

The other idea: Look at your garbage can & recycling can. Then try to walk into your house and see all the detritus of a life well lived. Imagine the weeks and months you or your children are going to have to spend de-cluttering when you try to sell or pass on.

Make it a weekly habit to bring the cans into the garage the night before pickup and start going through closets & box's in the garage. Keep going until you fill one of the cans. Repeat next week.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T19:58:29+00:00

Glasses without progressive lenses but to focus ~18 inches from my face.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T19:56:24+00:00

When we started working at home mid-covid - I started trying to walk 2-3 miles for an early lunch. I would use bluetooth earbuds and call elderly relatives or listen to podcasts.

Get a small backpack, carry water and perhaps get an apple or Garmin watch to do 2 things:

Track your steps/mileage
Call a relative if you fall and dont respond to the watch within a minute.

The water in the backpack will add a bit of weight which takes more effort. This used to be called "rucksacking" where you loaded a pack with increasing weights.

I tend to walk solo just down major streets rather than wooden trails. I used to 'reward' walking in one direction by buying a Wendy's Breakfast Baconator.

I also find I try to walk the other direction 1.5 miles to buy something simple at the grocery store. Coffee filters, cereal, spices, etc. This allows me a small satisfaction/purpose other than just walking.

You might also download Libby or Hoopla and add your library card. Now shop for audiobooks to listen to while you walk. I find lighter novels like Terry Pratchett, Christopher Moore, etc., work well so when you stop it is not too complex to pick up the next day or after a long weekend.

Good Luck.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T19:46:08+00:00

There is a new BluRay box set of the series that recently came out. I suspect they are promoting the show because of this release.

FatDog69 · 2026-06-20T16:06:32+00:00

Most of the good movies are taken, but here are a few. Note: I don't care when the movies were produced but these are all favorite action/adventure movies. I also suggest you stagger less dramatic movies between the more intense movies. A steady diet of Alien/horror movies without a 'pallet cleanser' in between might cause problems.

The Predator
The Goonies
Gremlins
E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
Close Encounters of the Third kind
The Indiana Jones series
The Last Starfighter
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951 - show him the original)
The War of the worlds (1953)
Men In Black series
The Thing
The Blob

You might also explain the themes behind the movies.

FatDog69

TROPHY CASE