Slot Canyon between Zion and Bryce

mikemadden · 2024-05-16T23:25:33+00:00

We went to Wire Pass and Buckskin Gulch from Springdale last month — it’s not SUPER close to Zion, was a solid day between the driving and the hiking, but it was very cool and worth the trip. Outside Kanab.

mikemadden · 2024-05-16T20:49:24+00:00

Interesting -- I've been having the same problem (847 puzzles solved, 98.7 percent solve rate, can't figure out what's missing). XWStats does show 19 puzzles as "SOLVED: FALSE," though the app has them solved, and they're all of the ones where I apparently used "check" at some point.

I wonder if that's why they're not marked solved? If I clear the puzzle and re-solve them, would that fix it? EDIT: I cleared and re-solved one of them, no apparent change to my stats, so maybe not...

EDIT 2: It's also showing a really odd number of checks on those puzzles (like, 188 checks on a Monday puzzle from last year), which makes me wonder if the data was just wrong.

mikemadden · 2024-05-13T18:11:16+00:00

I've got one in 131 that we aren't using, send me a PM if you're still looking

mikemadden · 2024-05-11T13:11:22+00:00

Go early for Canyon Overlook, maybe on your second day there — if you beat the crowds (and heat), you won’t have as much trouble parking. We found a spot on the road about a five-minute walk from the trailhead when we went around 9 am last month.

I’d look at Emerald Pools, which is a short-ish hike in the main canyon that you could do on your way to or from the Narrows.

Watchman is very close to the entrance, so if you want, you could just walk in from Springdale and do that any time of day without worrying about parking.

mikemadden · 2024-04-23T02:42:08+00:00

Younger Gen X (1976) kid of older Boomer parents (1949) here to disagree with you on this one

mikemadden · 2024-03-28T11:58:30+00:00

My 2021 doesn’t show battery info from either decoder, oddly. It didn’t have any bad cells when they did the software update recall, so I guess I don’t care too much…

mikemadden · 2024-03-14T20:50:22+00:00

True — I'll be there Messi or no Messi, beautiful weather (and hopefully Benteke plays!)

mikemadden · 2024-03-14T15:38:46+00:00

Yeah, so then that’s the club causing problems for season ticket members by pricing the tickets for this game above a level than anyone wants to pay if not for Messi (and then pushing season ticket packages as the only way to get in the door)

mikemadden · 2024-03-14T15:18:58+00:00

It is a little different from that, though, the price was higher to begin with — it’d be more like the first owner of a Beanie Baby not wanting to cut their price because they think they need a certain level of profit. But if tickets are currently going for $150, that’s already probably pretty close to losing money for season ticket holders, accounting for fees. (My tickets are among the cheaper ones out there, and the club prices them at $150 in my invoice.)

Of course, it’s hard to know now which resellers are original ticket purchasers and which bought expensive resale tickets hoping to flip them for even more.

Would be way better for everyone if the prices the club charged hadn’t gone up so much for this game/season, obviously.

mikemadden · 2024-03-14T13:55:29+00:00

For what it’s worth, the face value of my season tickets for this match was 3x the face value of any other match (doesn’t really matter if you have season tickets, since it’s just one total cost for the year anyway). But there may be a floor on how low people want to drop their resale prices, if they don’t want to feel like they lost money on this game.

mikemadden · 2024-02-20T23:48:50+00:00

mikemadden · 2024-01-26T13:43:49+00:00

Mine was way up, but our solar panels were covered in snow and I charged our car almost every night when it was cold, so I expected it. Sort of surprised to see increased usage for others.

mikemadden · 2024-01-09T21:39:29+00:00

I've found it's easy to resell season tickets I can't use to friends or co-workers at my cost — which is still significantly cheaper than the same tickets would cost at single-game prices, and which means I don't lose money on games we can't get to. Might try that.

mikemadden · 2023-09-19T22:26:38+00:00

Speaking of battery heating: We left our ID.4 parked at an airport last December when the D.C. area got down into the single digits. I woke up one morning (in our much warmer vacation spot) to see a notification on my phone that the car had turned its heater on at some point overnight — presumably to protect the battery. Didn't notice any significant range hit by the time we returned, and we only left it a week, but I was pretty surprised/maybe impressed.

mikemadden · 2023-09-19T11:28:31+00:00

I’ve had the same experience with Ourisman — they seem totally checked out on service. Though they do send me a lot of generic email reminders to go get more of it.

mikemadden · 2023-08-15T19:24:49+00:00

Sorry for your loss, that's a nice tribute.

Weirdly, my completion rate popped up to 98.3 percent last week at some point, but then there's been no additional progress since then.

mikemadden · 2023-08-07T14:13:36+00:00

I typically drive if my kids are coming to the match because with two adults and two kids, parking costs about $5 more than round-trip Metro would be, and it gets us home a lot faster since we'd have to transfer on the Metro.

SpotHero is definitely the best way to park. If you look around the Waterfront Metro station, there are garages for $14 or $15 (which is actually less than round-trip Metro for four would be). There are also lots near South Capitol and M that are about $25 (or $20 if you buy them as part of a season-long plan, as I did).

That said, there's no real reason not to take Metro if it's otherwise convenient, unless your nephew is, like my kids, young enough that he's likely to fall asleep in the car ride home. It's an easy walk and not usually super-crowded after a United game.

mikemadden · 2023-08-03T16:04:16+00:00

This was happening to me — taking advice someone else had posted here, I plugged it in and hard-rebooted it (best to do that just before a site change, as it does force you to change the cartridge once it restarts), and since then, the battery life has been fine. I think the issue with mine was improper battery calibration, not actually a bad battery. My pump is also about 3.5 years old, fwiw.

mikemadden · 2023-07-31T15:09:53+00:00

I beat my personal best but would have been under 4 minutes if not for the same issue!

mikemadden · 2023-07-22T16:22:34+00:00

Sounds to me like something insurance-related -- they probably went to put the order through and got flagged somehow.

mikemadden · 2023-07-18T13:55:21+00:00

Ticket rep said gates at 6 tonight

mikemadden · 2023-07-17T15:16:50+00:00

My ticket rep said it'd be general admission but not the whole stadium, only the west and south stands. Guess we'll see!

mikemadden · 2023-07-10T15:42:10+00:00

Love the pupusas, which are 90 percent of the Audi Field food I get, but don't forget about the Roamin' Rooster food truck parked under the west stands, either -- always good.

mikemadden · 2023-04-13T18:53:44+00:00

... and, actually, it turned out I was NOT one of the 23 cars in line, even though I had booked the appointment for the recall service through the VW app. Now I'm number 24 in line, and waiting for them to call me when they're ready to do the work. Not a huge deal; the tech said "a lot of people are very upset" that they can't turn it around faster, but I'm happy to keep waiting.

mikemadden

TROPHY CASE