Posting on a cool P.O.E.T.S. Day morning while waiting on the sun to rise.

Cheers.

Summertime, blue skies, fluffy white clouds.

Yet possibility of snow is forecast for soon...!

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Beautiful day here. Took a break and went out kayaking.

Winning after finally getting all my chores that had to be put aside until sunny weather returned done. :-)

Cheers.

Crappy day here. Took a walk and brought in the mail........

Meow

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Looking forward to a new bright day!

(The snow can go elsewhere!!)

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

3-25-2021 at 7:24 PM - PDT

Green Bean Battery got the job done today. :-) My 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid
now has its FOURTH battery pack since I bought her in 2009!!!! (That's A LOT
of FAILED batteries!!!)

I was quite surprised this time in seeing how SMALL the battery pack actually
is.... I always thought it took up the entire space behind the back seat. NO!!!
NOT the case, AT ALL.... My battery pack fits behind the driver's side rear
passenger's area of the seat, at the passenger's back. It's almost square in shape.
It weighs, (according to the installer), all of 50 Lbs. The rest of the back seat looks
like it holds some kind of computer/computerized modules, sealed, nothing is
identified.

The change out took all of 20 Minutes. The installer then cleared the temporary
codes from the computer, and took the car for a test drive. She passed the
installer's tests just fine. The starting battery was low from sitting for a week, AND
from having the inverter "open" to the point that the defective battery pack
actually drained the starting battery STONE COLD DEAD. Last week I had to
jump start the car and I drove her half an hour to charge the starting battery, AND
still in one week the defective battery pack drained the starting battery AGAIN!
NOT stone cold dead this time, the interior lights DID come on today. HOWEVER;
the car DID NOT have the ability to start.

I don't know how many of you have seen the starting battery on a Prius, or on a
Civic Hybrid.... It's basically a glorified motorcycle battery. AT LEAST for the
Prius, Optima makes a Yellow Top Gel Cell starting battery. This battery
physically fits in the Civic, BUT, the posts are in the wrong place, AND they are
SMALLER than the Civic starting battery. So, I'm stuck with the EXPENSIVE
$200+ motorcycle battery that's designed for the Civic. I'm on my THIRD
starting battery in 12 Years. MOSTLY because as each battery pack went bad,
they killed off the starting battery by draining it each time! :-( Thankfully, this
starting battery is between 6 Mos to 8 Mos old in use, AND CAN recover from
this nightmare! I WILL be driving the car a bit more over the next month.

In addition, California in 2019, (July of that year), passed a NEW smog law
that states that "Permanent Codes", (codes that CANNOT be erased by a tool,
NOR by pulling the power cable from the positive post of the starting battery),
that have NOT cleared by a certain amount of driving, (15 "Warmup Cycles"),
are AN IMMEDIATE FAIL. So, I've been instructed by Green Bean Battery to
drive my car for about a week of normal driving to clear the Permanent Code.
(About a month of my limited and reduced driving....) THEN I can have my
car smogged this year. (This year IS a smog year for registration renewal.)

California gets MORE AND MORE STUPID with smog laws! My brother
states that Illinois DOES NOT even require smog certificates on cars anymore.

Anyway, by May I will have my registration renewed, and the car smogged. THEN,
the car is ALL mine again to drive as I please! :-)


TL

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TimeLord04
Have TARDIS, will travel...
Come along K-9!
Join Calm Chaos

California gets MORE AND MORE STUPID with smog laws! My brother
states that Illinois DOES NOT even require smog certificates on cars anymore.

I lived in Los Angeles in the 1970's with 3rd stage smog alerts. When you took a deep breath it felt like knives in your lungs. You didn't make the mistake of taking two deep breaths in a row. Anything, and I do mean anything that is done to ensure that never happens again is good.

Winning before work.

TGIF

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Maybe one day in the next two or three years I'll get an EV, like a 2016-2019 Volt or a 2021+ Bolt, Volts don't seem to be smogable since the engine is considered a generator and sends electricity to the electric motors while moving and charging the battery in mountain mode while driving, the car charges the battery at home in 3-4 hours with a 240v source for the 3.3Kw charger, charging time is less with a 2019 Premier or an upgraded 2019 LT.

My current car has an OBD, but at 22yrs old is now exempt by law from smog checks, but it is 22yrs old and some parts are either non existent or hard to find or getting expensive.

TL You're lucky if you were not born anywhere in the LA basin, I was born in Los Angeles in 1960 and I have asthma from the dense smog and the oil/gas refineries that are there, among other intense sources of smog, smog that from offshore looked like a big stationary brown cloud with yellow around the edges. Plus I have a hiatal hernia that I was born with as a complication, clean air is much better than air that except for when it rains is very dirty and static, in LA it's called an inversion layer and that just holds the smog in place, LA used to look a lot like Almaty in Kazakhstan.

An inversion traps air pollution, such as smog, close to the ground. An inversion can also suppress convection by acting as a "cap". If this cap is broken for any of several reasons, convection of any moisture present can then erupt into violent thunderstorms

In LA we didn't always get rain, we got downpours.

These Permanent Codes seem to be for diagnostic purposes as in Trouble Codes according to the BAR. As such they should be helpful in fixing a car like when something is malfunctioning and I like stuff that works correctly.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

You should see the battery in my 2008 Charger. It is huge. Size wise it is about the biggest battery most automotive parts stores sell. Then I decided to go AGM instead of lead acid. Expensive but worth it for me. Forth battery bought and working good so far.

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Winning after a Friday afternoon at the pub.

Cheers.

Thank Meow it's Friday.

Meow

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

You have my sympathies, but, sadly you are not alone in your woes with a hybrid.
One of my neighbours until recently had a Lexus hybrid (it was actually a Prius in drag). He got it when he was doing about 80 miles a day to and from work and all was happy. He then changed job, and was now had a five minute walk to work (or a ten minute drive!) and his car sat for days/weeks only moving to allow his wife to get her car out (tiny garage plus tiny car). The woes started. First to go was the start battery, just out of warrantee... Next the main battery started to self discharge, and the new start battery failed, then there were stored major faults connected with the main battery charging system, and so on. I think it spent as much time in the dealers as it did on his drive. This was all over a period of about eighteen months - even when it was at home he had to call the garage to get it started a few times. Eventually he got rid of it as it couldn't be replied on to start (even with yet another new start battery).

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

And just think.
If the environmentalists have their way, everybody will be driving those cars.
Because they think that batteries are just such freaking wonderful things for the environment.
Except that the environmental CO2 cost of making them, transporting the heavy things, and recycling them, suddenly makes them NOT so environmentally friendly as they suppose they are.
AND you still have to add in the cost of generating all the electricity to charge them over and over and over and over......................
In a large part, you just end up substituting one set of environmental problems for another.
And then you also have the environmental cost of building the electrical transmission infrastructure to transmit all that electricity for recharging all those batteries, because we don't have even close to enough capacity to do that now.
And what happens when we have all those battery powered cars on the road and they start getting involved in a lot of car accidents? Ever see what happens when you short out a fully charged battery? I have..........it blows up.
And suddenly, all those visions of pretty little butterflies flitting across the landscape blow up with it.
You can't embrace just the pretty parts and ignore the belly of the beast below.

Meow

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Just to feed the anti-climate conspiracists:


From the UK Met Office News
wrote:

The pre-Easter period will contain a variety of weather across the UK.

The transient cold snap through Friday and into Saturday quickly eases before another dramatic change in weather type brings milder and wetter conditions to the UK.

Met Office Chief Meteorologist Andy Page said: “From Saturday we are going to see a change in weather across the UK, with the northern and southern parts of Britain experiencing quite marked differences. The northern half of Britain will see strong winds and heavy rain, especially in parts of Western Scotland where a Yellow warning for rain will be in force for 48 hours from 6pm on Sunday evening.” The affected region over this period can expect to see 80-100 mm of rainfall to fall quite widely, with the potential for 150-250mm...

... “However, in sheltered central and southern parts of the UK, weather conditions will be much calmer with temperatures climbing in the March sunshine to highs into the low 20s, with the possibility of 24.0 C in southeast England by Tuesday..."

Quite a mix!


And yep, mediocre car design is mediocre and problematic. Even Boeing failed for their outsourced rushed (cheap) battery charger design causing problems, compounded by unexpected airport activity destroying the batteries. All easily fixed after the events...

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

W E E K E N D !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

I drive a Chevy Volt, Ford Edge, and Dodge 2500 Diesel 4x4. I choose depending on the purpose of my trip. Local shopping, regular commute I take the Volt. I am typically able to do about 35 miles on the charge and if the trip is a little longer the gas motor will kick in giving me up to a 275 mile range. Since I charge it every night I am getting over 1,000 to a tank of gas. Avg is over 85 mpg. The Edge is for trip over 100 miles with passagens for cargo that will not fit in the Volt. For me that would typically mean as set of plans for a new development. FYI a set of plans for 5 typical houses, grading, road, utility, and other improvement plans for say a 60 acre development will weight in at 5-600 lbs. Lots of trees and that fills the back of the Edge. Covid did help in that many counties and city are now accepting electronic plan sets. So this is changing. The Edge gives me about 22 mpg. The Dodge is my heavy lift vehicle. If I need lumber, tow a boat, go where there are no roads, I take the Dodge. It get about 20 mpg of diesel. I try to buy veggie diesel when I can. It costs a little more but I like it when my car smells like french fries.

I support the evolution toward electric cars. I looked at all of the hybrid and full EV systems and bought the Volt because it made the most sense to me. Unlike the Honda, the battery is huge. It takes the entire area between the seats and behind the passenger seat. It's about 500 lbs.

It drives like a nice normal car. If you didn't know it was a hybrid you would not figure that out from driving it. I can put it in Eco, Normal, or Sport mode. In Sport it moves. I have a first gen volt. Yes this battery was responsible for carbon release in the mining, manufacture and transport. But it has already given me over 100,000 miles and still charging 100%. As for carbon in the electrical production, remember CA is moving to all renewables. I have solar at home and where I worked. So I would charge at home and at work. The carbon footprint is pretty low. Before the Volt my Edge would burn about $50 or fuel every 4 days. The Volt it's about $30 a month. I guess I could do the math but I think it's pretty clear that I have reduced my emissions by an order of magnitude.

The science of energy storage is evolving. Energy density is increasing dramatically. I grew up with hemi's and Ferrari's. I like and understand the gas engine. I also grew up in the LA area at a time when the air would not let you see the top of some of the buildings. I remember days we were not allowed to go out and play due to air quality. The future is electric. Point source emission control and clean renewable energy is cheaper than millions of catalytic converters and DEF systems. California is pushing for a cleaner greener future. It's putting a burden on people that is true. But I support it. We sort of need the earth and it's current eco system if we are to survive as a species.

Oh and Victor, the Volt does need to pass smog. Mine just did.

Simple:

My next vehicle will be all electric.

No brainer!

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

That is something to think about. If it has a fuel tank. It must be smogged.

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