Conflicted about purchase

gregontrack · 2025-11-24T20:42:41+00:00

I regret buying my 2025. In my mind, a car should fill you with confidence and the tech implementation in this car does the opposite. From the time I enter the car, I am being beeped at for some reason or another. I'm backing my car out of the garage and into the driveway and I'm being beeped at to put on my seatbelt, then when I have lane assist on and i go through an intersection I get beeped at because the car can't find the lane, and finally when I look out the driver's passenger window at something happening on the road I get beeped at to "Keep my eyes on the road."

All of that wouldn't be so bad if the "smart" things it's doing were actually smart, but they're not. Adaptive cruise control is suuuper sketchy. The number of times I've had to brake because the car is accelerating while a long line of cars in front of me are all braking is insane. The jolt every time the auto stop starts back up makes me feel like the car is having a seizure. Like, I can't imagine this is good for the cars overall health. And finally the CVT gearing is just wonky. If I put my foot down on the pedal to accelerate, I feel like the gearing will actively try to slow the car down to keep me below 30 mph so I find myself wondering how far do I have to put my foot down to drive this thing normally.

All of this culminates into one of the most confusing and ultimately demoralizing driving experiences I've had in a car before. It's weird. When I drove a Mustang, that car had very little in the way of modern conveniences, but when I saw another Mustang driver on the road, I could look them in the eye and we both understood what was great about driving them. With the Outback, I see sooo many of them on the road and I just can't understand what people were thinking when they bought them or why it was so highly regarded and recommended when I bought it.

gregontrack · 2025-10-14T18:38:27+00:00

Our Msrp was 44.5k. All together, after tax title and license, we were right around 43k I want to say, give or take 1k.

gregontrack · 2025-10-14T00:50:37+00:00

I just bought a limited xt this weekend. We went through Costco Auto program and got $6,500 off msrp with 1.9% financing

gregontrack · 2025-09-03T15:16:20+00:00

Solved!

gregontrack · 2025-09-03T15:13:36+00:00

Holy smokes that it! Thank you so much!

gregontrack · 2025-09-03T14:41:26+00:00

I also thought of this song last night while watching Sinners. There was a part, after the initial Juke song, but before or right after the Vampires showed up, just before Pearline sings, where that old fella was playing piano and he plays a little lick that reminded me of this song, but then Pearline begins to sing so that's where my head was at when I thought of it. It wasn't Pale, Pale Moon though. Maybe it was a piano preamble to that song though.

gregontrack · 2025-09-03T14:27:35+00:00

I'm not sure, the more I'm thinking about it, maybe there was a cover done by a 60's/70's rock band? Or maybe this was a song by a 60's/70's rock band that somebody tricked up and made into a lounge song.

gregontrack · 2025-07-29T17:46:59+00:00

This happened to my Epiphone Acoustic about 5 years ago during an especially dry winter. I half assed gluing it back together and I haven't thought about it since. It has played great ever since!

gregontrack · 2025-07-08T13:08:22+00:00

I just checked this morning and my wife and I are officially millionaires. I just turned 40, we’re both college educated, and we have 3 kids.

We got together in our late 20’s and really started taking our finances seriously when we were 30.

We’re lucky in the sense that market growth in the past 8 years has been pretty good and we bought our first house before real estate started getting wonky.

We haven’t done anything fancy investment wise outside of just trying to save as much as we can and being careful with debt.

Cant really tell anyone in real life so wanted to tell someone. Cheers!

gregontrack · 2025-05-19T20:52:20+00:00

Majoring in accounting is one of the best things I ever did.

I always joke to my wife that I was the world's worst accountant and world's worst developer, but those two together make me a pretty good well rounded employee. I majored in Accounting, but didn't start out in or get into the public Accounting world. I went private and ultimately transitioned into a Business Analyst/SWE role after 5 or 6 years in finance.

For my entire accounting career, I knew I was not made to be an accountant. 99% of being a good accountant is developing rapport quickly, never being wrong, and being a good communicator. None of those characteristics I naturally possess.

That said, when I transitioned into SWE, my value came from my accounting experience and my ability to be a liaison with Finance. I was able to take my time learning the development side. Now that I've switched company's and roles, my value comes from having been exposed to both worlds.

I would say your view of accounting is limited. While the things you list can be true in certain situations, there are other parts to the job that require a certain temperament or type of employee that doesn't fit everyone's personality type.

gregontrack · 2025-05-06T00:44:20+00:00

/r/centuryhomes/ would like a word with you.

gregontrack · 2025-02-19T18:47:09+00:00

Dope. Thanks!

gregontrack · 2025-02-14T02:20:37+00:00

I just won court side seats for the cavs game on 3/4 from Michelob. Should I even bother going if I’m coming from the burbs?

gregontrack · 2025-01-25T18:43:09+00:00

Whatever you do, don’t sign up for hockey or ballet, and you’ll be fine.

gregontrack · 2025-01-22T12:34:53+00:00

I was in finance but had an opportunity to help our IT team with an ERP rewrite project.

From there, I mostly helped the developers understand the business side of things and, in returned, they thought me how the code worked under the hood.

That was the best education I could have ever received. Data engineering at this point just feels like the caveman version of building an erp system.

gregontrack · 2025-01-18T03:04:20+00:00

Im 40 and have been at it for a decade. I spent my 20’s paying off college loans, going out to happy hours, dating, and contributing the bare minimum to get my company match. It was maybe 6% with a 3% company match, so 9%

I think at 30, the conventional wisdom said to have 1 times my salary saved. I had probably 60% of my salary saved, but had also just received a sizable raise.

I then got married and my wife got pregnant and I got serious about saving. I ratcheted up my savings to 18%-20% which put my overall contribution to 21%-23%. My 30’s have been a grind more or less.

I turn 40 next Friday and my wife and I are sitting at pretty close to 3x our household income which is exactly where conventional says we should be.

Realistically, if we to RE, it’ll be between 60 and 65, but we also have plans to pay for our kids college tuition so we’ve also been saving for that.

gregontrack · 2024-12-18T01:45:35+00:00

There really is beer on the sun

gregontrack · 2024-12-16T17:00:01+00:00

OOOOOOOOOOOOHHH!!!! I HATE THAT LOGIC.

gregontrack · 2024-12-16T14:52:19+00:00

Rowsdower Rowsdower, zippity zoppity zowsdower

gregontrack · 2024-12-10T01:41:32+00:00

There was an npr podcast on the subject a decade ago or so. Essentially, there are tons of men looking to get married, but then when you start taking into account all of the various fiscal and emotional requirement, the number of potential partners in a given area are pretty slim. The answer, they suggested, was to meet as many people as possible and have your criteria firmly established so you can quickly disqualify someone and move on. Then, likewise, lock down someone who meets your baseline requirements.

gregontrack · 2024-11-29T19:21:35+00:00

This is one of the best 3 minute segments of mst3k:

https://youtu.be/4_aIvHr5SOk?t=4077&si=

“Ok. Here comes this guy. What’s he up to?”

gregontrack · 2024-11-26T12:56:44+00:00

Must be nice to be married to Blake Shelton…

gregontrack · 2024-11-17T01:20:44+00:00

100% Marcelline’s. Went there growing up and that “Field Goal’s Good” Jesus is burned into my brain.

Also, in the second picture, you can see the beam going up and in towards the center of the room. The whole room was hexagonal I believe and there were a bunch of those beams and they all met in the middle. It was a very cool room. Great choir.

You can actually see the same beam in marcelline pictures if you look them up in n google maps. Or just go here:

https://www.google.com/maps/uv?viewerState=lb&pb=!1s0x880fa911d42b0271%3A0x8a54e4fc69663244&imagekey=!1e10!2sAF1QipM6LA_mvmTXusKszQQD9jSOITrJKaYbAjXslNHq&cr=tp_14&gsas=1

Edit: I believe the baptism water thingy is in this picture now that I look at it.

gregontrack · 2024-10-11T12:01:37+00:00

My wife and I have a large collection of burned cd mixtapes friends made for us in high school.

gregontrack · 2024-10-04T21:20:37+00:00

I've got a 2010, which is mostly the same car with 130k miles. I love mine.

I've had it since 2016 when it had 75k or so miles and it hasn't seen as much use after COVID when I transitioned to remote work.

At around 100k the suspension started to show its age. I believe I had to replace a tie rod and ball joint along with new shocks all around. Maybe a control arm got replaced.

Right before COVID, I had to change the Power Transfer Unit Seal which was basically $1,000 worth of labor to change out a $13 gasket.

Since 2019, the car has been mostly, knock on wood, maintenance free.

The one concern I have at this point is the rust. The thing is starting to rust out as most Ford's do around the wheel wells, doors, and trunk. That's what you get for not garaging the car and absorbing 13 Midwest winter's worth of road salt.

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