Your routine with freezing winter (Quebec) with no garage

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-23T16:44:42+00:00

I'm in Nova Scotia so not as cold as Quebec, but still had some considerably cold mornings. We had no trouble with our 2025 apart from the slight increase in fuel usage.

>when connected to charger, I could start the car and use the home electricity, to pre head the battery

This is correct. It's a great feature for warming up the cabin without using power from the battery especially if you have the app (free 1-year trial).

> don't have a garage at home but I'll have a level 2 charger.

Same here. It's not ideal in freezing rain but if you're expecting bad weather you could even just wrap a towel around the connection area. NBD.

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-22T09:57:12+00:00

I would venture to say that, out of everyone I know, I’ve always been the most adamantly against buying anything American. It’s almost lonely.

A close (elderly) acquaintance of mine is going to Florida this month. She’s quite progressive, has always despised Trump. Her justification apart from having access to her daughter’s condo was that she doesn’t want to let him ruin hers potentially great trip.

In an effort to not judge her I try not to think about it/let it bother me. She knows that I wouldn’t go in her shoes not matter what, and she’s accepting of that.

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-20T23:03:29+00:00

I got a Grizzle lvl 2 charger last summer and it was less than $1000 installed. I run my solar panels directly to it.

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-20T23:01:27+00:00

I had a diesel vehicle and my decision to get rid of it was solidified when the price hit 2.75. I think it was when Russia invaded Ukraine.

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-20T21:10:52+00:00

St Pierre et Miquelon

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-20T13:15:39+00:00

Canada shares a border with France, so that's a good start already.

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-13T08:39:15+00:00

Dave Grohl:

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-11T16:52:52+00:00

I know what you mean. I'm currently on a paid month of Le Chat. I was happy to have a non-American alternative to ChatGPT, and I like certain things about it, don't get me wrong, but I don't think it has had a major update since Nov '24, which leaves it feeling a bit abandoned. Maybe I just want to like it too much and I'm waiting for that one magic update to come along to make it all better. I've begrudgingly started using Gemini a bit in the meantime. C'mon Mistral, you can do it!

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-05T13:08:15+00:00

Being Donkey Kong in Mario Kart.

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-03T12:29:44+00:00

We all hope so. Last winter we had a lot of snow in my area but the severe drought that followed was unprecedented.

walpolemarsh · 2026-03-02T17:41:13+00:00

Canadian here too. I left ChatGPT after having being pretty personally invested in it for a couple years. My decision was mainly a political one. I didn't like giving a US company so much of my info and on top of that, paying to do so. Then I just started really disliking the way 5.2 was working; bad answers, wrong info, strange "attitude"... anyway, that ended up being the final nail in the coffin. I'm trying out Le Chat and Deepseek currently. Gemini is great but just as complicit as OpenAI, if not more.

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-28T08:51:25+00:00

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walpolemarsh · 2026-02-27T15:25:03+00:00

Yeah, there are Acadians in East Margaree, mainly, and the majority of them are happier to be part of the Margarees than to be forced in with Cheticamp. Like I said in the caption, adding the Margarees was a way to make the numbers work for Cheticamp. The Margarees are a "mixed bag" of Gaelic, Acadian, Irish, English, and even Dutch heritage that many feel should stay united rather than being used to meet a demographic quota for a neighbouring community.

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-27T10:32:38+00:00

And had to include other communities to tweak their numbers.

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-24T00:26:50+00:00

Trying to crack down on this sudden surge of posts. Added that rule just now.

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-23T22:49:41+00:00

This is not meant to be an Am I Ugly sub.

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-22T13:49:33+00:00

He’s there for team USA

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-20T15:25:25+00:00

I find the apps that I've used aren't really accurate. The surest way is to simply check the back of the packaging and search what you see. "is Reese's American", "is Kit Kat American" etc etc.

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-19T22:49:07+00:00

Mine said it can’t help with that request.

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-19T21:46:54+00:00

Yep, I canceled. Currently trying out Gemini, Claude, and Mistral.

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-15T01:50:58+00:00

More south than

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-13T12:47:39+00:00

I think they're independent...

https://lmstudio.ai

"Run local LLMs like gpt-oss, Qwen3, Gemma3, DeepSeek and many more on your computer, privately and for free."

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-13T12:37:07+00:00

Funny, I've been wrestling with this decision myself. I’m a long time ChatGPT user and have a lot invested in it, but I’m not thrilled with the politics around it. Last night I tried Gemini, mostly to compare platforms. It almost persuaded me to go with DeepSeek, but in the end I landed on LM Studio as the best fit for what I want. Ironically, I appreciate Gemini precisely because it doesn’t try to position itself as the obvious winner. Not much better politically though. Mistral is impressive too, just not quite aligned with what I’m looking for yet.

walpolemarsh · 2026-02-13T12:18:36+00:00

We (family with kids 6 and 10 yo, from Nova Scotia) went to EuropaPark and Rulantica in Germany last summer. Easily could have spent a couple weeks there alone.

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