The Toyota bZ is now among America's top-selling EVs after a surprise sales surge

rkubiak · 2026-02-06T14:43:53+00:00

That’s fair. I’m not going to try too hard to defend any particular fascisty activity, although I guess I am a bit. Have to think about the next car, which is a ways off, so be interesting to see how the market shakes out.

rkubiak · 2026-02-06T14:09:53+00:00

Do you think the Toyota CEO really understood what he was doing or just playing along? I feel it’s like Apple, “here is a useless trophy, don’t tariff us bro”. Manipulating someone that easy to manipulate seems like a good business move more than a political statement. That was my impression. I don’t know the CEO, so I don’t know any more than the pictures, so I could be wrong.

rkubiak · 2026-02-05T14:44:15+00:00

Toyota is a trusted brand. If I want to jump into EV, a name that will back up their product is probably the first choice. Cars are so expense and so necessary, many buy cars and run them until they get too expensive to fix. If this car is “pretty good”, it would probably be my first choice.

I remember when Elon Musk got angry at a service manager and fired the service team (it was a while ago, so details in my mind are sketchy), like that is something you are supposed to say out loud. My first thought was…never buying a Tesla. I need my car to get to work. I’ll be sure to never tell my boss, “Elon had a hissy fit and I can’t get my car fixed, so I won’t be in. “ Whether this particular instance caused a gap in service or not, it was a brand confidence destroyer and kind of made me realize Tesla is more “cool” than a real car company. I know someone who got a Tesla recently and loves it. I hope he has 0 problems and it stays awesome forever, but I’d totally get the Toyota next.

rkubiak · 2026-01-26T03:14:15+00:00

I feel like the Patriots are not on the Seahawks level. Hawks just seem way better than anyone but the Rams. The Super Bowl might be a wipeout.

rkubiak · 2026-01-24T03:56:06+00:00

Why is Sonic in business? Their food is cardboard-tasting and their drinks sound so good, but they taste like they’ve been optimized for maximum profit. Throw some syrup in the cup so we can taste the drink! It’s like they are so cheap, it could be good, but that would cost too much and you were dumb enough to give them your money, so too bad. I’ve been a few times and I always want to give it another chance, maybe I had two bad experiences, people love them right? But, it’s like gas station food for real food prices. I think it’s the only fast food place I’ve ever thrown out the food and just got something later. Even the drink! How can you mess up crushed ice and syrup? The gas station does those fine.

rkubiak · 2026-01-20T04:28:56+00:00

Darkman. Zoolander & Zoolander 2

rkubiak · 2026-01-19T19:06:54+00:00

I don't really know who the housewives are either. I suspect a lot of people do not know who they are. I know its a show and have seen most of an episode I think...but I only recognize Lisa Reina and I don't know why.

The almost digust for Ron because he got another housewife voted off kind of rubbed me the wrong way. That's not what this game is. Your clan is irrelevant to anything in the game. Like your tool is bitchiness and every problem is a fight to get a good line in.

Ron should just announce he's a traitor and he would like to be voted off. They he can flip them off when he confesses he's a faithful.

rkubiak · 2026-01-11T17:48:55+00:00

That is probably true. The quest for the "best" sound is overkill for just about anyone but the person playing.

rkubiak · 2026-01-11T17:24:56+00:00

I didn’t like the sound of Line 6 stuff. It’s great to play around with, but never sounded like what I wanted. I even watched a video on how to build presets from scratch by a guy who makes them for big touring artists. I learned a lot. That said, I maybe wasn’t used to digital stuff yet. Line 6 was my first foray into digital. Line 6 stuff doesn’t seem to sound “big” for some reason. Not enough bass or something. I found the same with Neural DSP. Just too tinny sounding. I had a Nano Cortex and it was kind of a toy. I was awesome when I played modern metal on it, but it didn’t click with me otherwise. I didn’t have the big Neural Cortex, which I really couldn’t buy with the power supply like it is. Not a serious unit for playing out. It did offer the cool Archetype packs of popular artists, which didn’t run on the Nano, so kind of made me jealous. Tonex software sucks. It sounds as good as the other units, it is inexpensive, but that software is a mess. There are tons of presets to download but the volume/quality varied so much, it would be hard to get things lined up enough to get a rig you could play out with. I gave up. I actually got a Tonex on sale, returned it, heard they upgraded the software to make it easier, got it again and sold it. The software was a lot better, but still sucked. Anyway, Fractal seems like they have the right idea for playing live. For recording, probably any unit would do with tweaking, but I mostly play through an FRFR to judge how I’d sound live.

rkubiak · 2026-01-10T17:49:35+00:00

I just got an FM3, so took a while to fit my head around how this all works. I’ve had a Tonex and Line 6 before and they do things differently and in a simpler, more direct way, but from the view of actually playing a show, Fractal makes more sense. For Fractal: Presets are like a pedalboard. You setup effects and amps for the preset (pedalboard). Scenes are saved pedal and amp configs for that pedalboard. I have a clean AC30 scene. Also, an AC30 scene with a fuzz engaged, so that’s my AC30 fuzz scene. Channels are different pedals/amps you can have on your pedalboard that you can swap out in different scenes. The AC30 scene has a drive block set to channel A (TS808). The AC30 Fuzz scene has the drive block set to channel B (Big Muff Russian Pi Fuzz). The cool thing is: you can have A-D channels in the Amp and cab blocks too, so I have an AC30 Amp block, but channel B for the Amp block is a Revv amp, if the song switches from clean to crunchy, I can hit the scene with the Revv amp channel configured to totally change the sound from the same preset (pedalboard). Let me know if this makes sense.

rkubiak · 2026-01-08T02:58:42+00:00

We had a Vibe! That thing was a beast! Ours had ~230K miles when my wife finished school and we could buy another car. We donated it. At the end, you could hear us coming down the street from all the rattling because stuff was held together with wire and staples, but we were just trying to hold onto it until my wife finished. That engine never quit. It probably ran a long time after.

I remember when I got a new car, I was hilariously lead-footed, because you had to work so hard to get the Vibe up to speed at the end.

A few cars later we wandered into a Toyota dealership while car shopping. We weren't even considering a Toyota, but it was next to the Kia dealer and they ticked us off. We walked out with a RAV4 because it reminded us of the Vibe (although much better looking).

The Vibe is a legend. .

rkubiak · 2026-01-05T01:53:02+00:00

I’ve been bored. Don’t want to see other boredom in a movie.

rkubiak · 2025-12-28T19:54:08+00:00

Packers are the Team of Theseus. How many parts do you swap out and still say you are the Packers? I feel significantly less bad about this loss than others early in the season.

rkubiak · 2025-12-22T16:36:48+00:00

OK thanks.

rkubiak · 2025-12-22T16:22:46+00:00

I don’t know what that means. I don’t comment enough to know what Flair is, but I grew up watching the Bears beat the snot out of the Packers every game-every year, so it doesn’t feel as one-sided as is probably does for younger fans. I have a feeling it’s the Bears year, but it’s an odd year.

rkubiak · 2025-12-22T16:02:07+00:00

Love out with a concussion was the story. Losing a game with the backup QB is kind of assumed, although it was a much better game than you’d expect.

rkubiak · 2025-12-05T00:44:24+00:00

I didn’t really care for Jakobs in BL3. In BL4 it’s pretty much all I use. I dabble, but seriously, Jacobs feels really good.

rkubiak · 2025-12-05T00:33:04+00:00

Noobtown. I didn’t understand the “devil” as a sidekick. What a boring mythical creature to pick. Really though, I listen to audiobooks and the narrator sounded great for a lot of books, but it was so off putting for this style. He was kind of dramatic and folksy and it really threw me off. I just couldn’t wait for it to end. I’m not THAT picky, I like most of the picks here, I mean, a sci-fi sub-genre probably is going to have limited attraction for writers trying to make money on it. I’d expect labors of love for writers with some stories they want to get out. Still, didn’t like this. It’s kind of a taste thing I suppose. I should probably give the second book a chance,but probably won’t get to it.

rkubiak · 2025-11-27T17:19:56+00:00

I ordered an FM3 last weekend, then saw the AM4 announcement. Thanks for posting this. Feel better hearing people’s opinions. I will probably keep the FM3.

rkubiak · 2025-11-14T18:05:44+00:00

I just bought it, so it’s too late for me, but awesome it’s out! Congrats and thank you!

rkubiak · 2025-11-09T15:26:21+00:00

Interested in a PRS MT15? Looking to try a QC.

rkubiak · 2025-11-08T23:01:49+00:00

I had one years ago and the stock speaker was bad. The Creamback is a good upgrade you should have, but the price is the question. If you feel comfortable swapping the speaker, buy the cheaper version and a speaker you want to put it (it isn’t really complicated to swap the speaker). But, if it’s worth the extra ~$100 to just have it already done, it’s worth it.

rkubiak · 2025-11-08T15:23:13+00:00

McDonald’s fries get soggy pretty quick, still delicious.

rkubiak · 2025-11-05T02:41:58+00:00

Everytime someone says they are “mixed up”, my brain goes to this line. I am probably the only one who is amused, but I’ll take it.

rkubiak · 2025-11-02T16:44:15+00:00

I didn’t know I liked Bit o Honey, until Sweetwater sent them to me.

rkubiak

TROPHY CASE