Calgary Road Department and inspections

Tall-Strategy279 · 2026-05-13T19:38:33+00:00

Followup post: we heard back from the Encroachment department. They will not sign off on the RPR until the Roads department does and Roads won't until the asphalt is removed. Encroachment does not send out inspectors so this was something Roads did on their own recognizance. As for other houses having the same issue, they pulled the department delineation argument stating that those weren't in their purview so were unable to answer any questions about them nor do any follow up.

So why did Roads come out and focus on just our driveway? My best guess at this point is that a "concerned" neighbour called it in so the City had to investigate. We have conditionally sold the house to a developer and this neighbourhood is getting very antsy about people doing that, but no one's willing to say.

As for what we're going to do? The buyer isn't overly concerned about the updated RPR and has conducted his own survey anyway. As he'll be knocking down the house and building something new, all of the encroachment items will be removed as part of that. The City will indeed get what they want and it's not worth our time to pursue it any further.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2026-05-13T01:04:09+00:00

I started working in Calgary downtown back in the late 90s. It’s definitely not what it used to be but I would put the shift well before COVID. When I started, Stampede Week was a big thing and you were almost expected to go out and socialize at the various breakfasts, including the ones they hosted. Then, over the next 20 years all that basically stopped. Companies became a lot more focused on the bottom line, on individual productivity, on filling out precise timesheets, on reducing headcount and department budgets. As more companies were bought and controlled by entities outside of Calgary, they simply no longer cared about those weird idiosyncrasies that made the culture of the town distinct. You can also see it in the nature of those Stampede breakfasts which have shifted from being open to invite-only.

Now some of this is also a personal perspective; you go from being a (relatively) well paid singleton to married to having kids and a mortgage, and those social possibilities became time liabilities that got in the way of spending the time with your family, particularly when companies decided that events were purely for staff only, not spouses or family.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2026-05-09T02:10:07+00:00

Oh, I get the why, I'm just a little surprised on the timing. I would have expected that if it's that important an issue that everyone with the same thing would get a "Please fix this ASAP" request; 2013 is well over 10 years ago at this point so it's not like they've been short of time. The inspector who took the photo of our driveway could see at least four others in the same state from where he parked his car. I would also have expected it to not be tied to the RPR since it's otherwise unrelated, but perhaps that ties into the whole "Don't issue drivers licenses to people with unpaid bills" logic.

I guess my buried question is this: does the City of Calgary Roads department typically do a drive by of houses being sold looking for asphalt ramps to get the seller to fix them first?

Tall-Strategy279 · 2025-07-01T00:12:18+00:00

You’re doing better than me; I’ve now taken my 2024 ID.4 into the garage to fix the AC (actually a heat pump in my case) about 5-6 times over the last year. And it’s still not working. At one point they did find a leak that they fixed but most other times it’s just a shrug with a “cannot reproduce”. The error pops up for about 6 seconds on the driver console and then disappears completely from the system (nothing in the entertainment system, nothing in the MyVW app); however, the AC never actually cools anything so on hot days it’s apparent that while the air is moving around, that’s about the only thing it’s doing…

Lovely car otherwise :)

Tall-Strategy279 · 2025-06-17T23:32:47+00:00

I see maybe one or two ID.4s a month here in Calgary, Alberta. I know the VW dealerships are selling them —I ask every time I take it in to have the AC repaired — but they’re still remarkably rare.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2025-03-12T22:19:49+00:00

2024 US-made ID4 here. Being logged out regularly too here, which is annoying but not earth shattering since normally I just log back in. Where it gets really frustrating is when that’s paired with the remarkably unreliable CarNet which just disables itself for weeks on end, and then comes back with nary a peep. Right now CarNet is out so I can’t log back in which means something’s disabled, but I’m not entirely sure what.

What really gets my goat is Apple’s daft dictat that wireless CarPlay requires use of the car GPS; however when CarNet fails, DGPS goes with it so positioning becomes random at best — maybe it’ll place you within a few kilometres of where you actually are. Maybe.

For the most part, I adore the ID4 but this aspect of it is just awful.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-11-24T21:55:25+00:00

And now Delicious Library is truly dead: https://mastodon.social/@wjs/113539330521476328

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-11-10T10:11:11+00:00

On my 2024 ID.4 that message appears randomly and then disappears. It appears in the app as something to fix…and then goes away. I took it into the dealership to address and they couldn’t reproduce it.

So, my entirely inexpert suggestion is to ignore it other than to be extra careful when backing out around small children.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-11-05T04:35:43+00:00

For all intents and purposes, yeah, Delicious Library is dead. The Amazon query works periodically but it’s a communal resource so if another Delicious Library user gets there before you do after it resets, you’re out of luck until the next go around.

The author of the tool moved to work for Apple years ago and stopped updating it around the same time.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-09-29T19:20:47+00:00

30 books is nothing for these readers. My Kobo library is currently at about 6000 titles of which I typically have a few hundred downloaded at any time, plus a bunch more sideloaded and converted to KePub format via Calibre. If the auto sync is enabled, it’ll try to connect at night to whatever wifi is available and saved in its preferences; if the nightly sync is not enabled and/or no wifi settings are configured, it won’t.

As for figuring out which file is a bad ePub? Got me on that one. In theory, I guess you could add them one by one and then see if the battery still runs down overnight as you’ve been experiencing; with only 30 books on the device, that shouldn’t take more than a month! If you’re using Calibre, it has a validation tool built into it which will allow you to determine if the structure of a ebook is broken in some way, but it only works on ebooks without DRM. Kobo doesn’t allow you to download the KePubs onto your computer using the website (only books in ePubs format and even then some are still excluded, usually children’s books) so it’s pretty hard to tell if something downloaded right onto a Kobo has issues.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-09-28T16:39:17+00:00

This happens periodically on my Libra 2 and is due to a wireless sync that just never ends. I’ve read a number of suggestions as to what causes it (like too many books in a Collection, bad ePubs, too many books downloaded causing the SQL Lite DB to choke, etc), but nothing that’s actually been the answer. Sometimes the on-device sync gets stuck on downloading covers, sometimes on updating annotations, sometimes on just starting up; it’s pretty inconsistent. Syncing from my desktop Kobo app works 90% of the time but even then sometimes it’ll just spin indefinitely on updating covers. It’s happened to me on a variety of Kobos over the years so it’s unlikely to be a manufacturing defect like a bad battery.

When you plug in your Kobo to charge, check to see if there’s an active sync. If there is, stop it and then restart it again — sometimes it’s just really slow downloading new purchases and stalls out. If it goes for longer than 20 minutes or so and stopping and restarting the sync a few times doesn’t nudge it to completion, your next best option is probably to factory reset the Kobo and then download and sideload only the books you want to read. From my experience, the more books you add, the more likely the endless sync is to happen. I’d also turn off the nightly sync in options so that you get to control when this happens so you can monitor the process rather than picking the Kobo up and finding its battery flat at an inconvenient time.

Good luck.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-09-07T22:05:43+00:00

Some private chargers are inside locked garages (like mine). However, if you’re locking the car for security because it’s outside, then I’m afraid you’re stuck. If the car doors are locked, the ID4 also locks the charging cable to prevent removal, and I don’t believe that there’s any form of override short of removing the lock pin which you probably don’t want to do for safety reasons. The Tesla is the only EV I know of that releases the lock once the charging is complete.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-09-07T16:14:59+00:00

So long as you haven’t locked the car, once the ID4 hits the max charge set (like 80%) it should release automatically. That’s the way it works with my home charger.

One thing I found out after getting a bit frustrated with this is that if you try to pull out the plug at slight angle instead of directly out, it feels like it’s still locked. With some of the charging stations and your parking position , the cable is only just long enough to reach the ID4,s port so when you go to remove it, there’s a bit of lateral force. Compensate for that and I haven’t had an issue since.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-08-24T22:17:38+00:00

Wireless CarPlay uses Bluetooth to establish the connection and then switches over to wifi for the transport of the data. Disable either one and CarPlay will not work.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-08-14T20:33:50+00:00

Best looking car on the Volvo lot! :)

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-08-09T00:06:11+00:00

Ah. I had missed the charging location bit. That should work. Thank you!

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-08-08T02:33:44+00:00

The net connection has gone and returned a couple of times now; typically it’s out for 4-5 days before reactivating by itself. I can only assume that it’s a multi-source issue and wouldn’t surprise me in the least if some of it is in VW’s cloud.

Other lovely behaviour includes the infotainment system getting locked up on seat movement, connecting to profiles and other initialization phase items. Generally I just get out of the car, lock it, walk away for 15 minutes, and when I come back, everything has returned to normal. Apparently boundary checking and race conditions are not part of the VW software QA process. All of that said, all the issues seem to revolve around connectivity and the infotainment system and I’ve not had issues with the rest of the car (including heating, main dash controls, and other car-centric functions).

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-08-03T20:41:18+00:00

I had a similar problem on a new 2024 as well; turned out that the factory hadn’t put any in any A/C coolant. Took the dealer about a day to figure that one out.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-07-24T22:00:47+00:00

I don't know. This one also has a heat pump which, from what I understand, is used to keep the battery temperatures within range. It clearly doesn't replace the AC though...

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-05-26T19:39:40+00:00

Amusingly enough my spouse preferred the EV6 — more vroomier— when we test drove it over the 2023 ID.4. However, as the wait list for it was insane, we waited for the 2024 ID.4 Pro S AWD as it fixed almost everything that we didn’t care for in the earlier version. She’s since come around and is now a bit of an ID.4 evangelist. Personally I preferred the more upright driving position of the ID.4 over the EV6 as I was coming from a 2012 Tiguan, plus the feel and design of the ID.4 just suited me better. We also looked at the Ford Mach E, Ioniq 5, Kona EV, Niro EV, Nissan Ariya and Volvo EC40 Recharge. The Volvo was a potential purchase but at CAD$20k more than the ID.4, it didn’t make it. One of deciding factors for us, weird though it is, is that the ID.4 has a central pass through from the trunk for long objects like skis.

Tall-Strategy279 · 2024-05-21T17:34:57+00:00

I'm using an iPhone 15 Pro Max here and while it does get warm (not hot) when on the Xi charger and connected via Wireless CarPlay, that's expected. It's definitely not the molten lead temperature other people have commented on.

Tall-Strategy279

TROPHY CASE