A bit of the lookback, a bit of the now

 As per tradition, the Russia-Ukraine fight goes on, with much of the action currently around one town that neither side is willing to give up on.  Russia's "Wagner group" private army was recently complaining about not getting the ammo they need, though, so that's a promising sign.

Here at home, the weather's nicened up a bit, so I've got plenty of work in and out of the house to take care of... so of course, I decided to take the time to look back over some of my old posts (basically, 5, 10, and 15 years ago).  Some take-aways include posts that haven't aged well (for example, it was easy to mock antimicrobial pens in pre-COVID days), movies I'd forgotten I'd seen, and the fact that, originally, my plan was to post once a week or shut down the blog.  Facebook took a bite out of that, I'm sure (and have I mentioned I recently dropped Facebook when they re-activated the Orange One's account?), and there just isn't that much interesting in my life going on to make a weekly post worthwhile... so, since this blog costs me nothing, we'll just keep going with the "monthly or so" schedule I've arrived at for now.

On the electric car front, I should have my charger hooked up in my garage next week... buried electrical and run length will make for a pricey install (more than $5000 after GM's credit), but it's just too convenient to pass up.  That, and it'll pay for itself over the years... for those of you wondering what the fuel cost saving are like, based on the past month of use vs. the month of gas purchases for my old Yaris, I've calculated it out to be less than one quarter of what I would have spent otherwise.  That's if I was charging at home all the time, of course.  Up to now, I've mostly charged at the level 2 charger at work, which costs me nothing.  Contrariwise, if I were charging solely at fast-chargers, the per-kWh rate on those equals or exceeds what the cost of gas would be, from what I've seen.  So, basically, EVs are great if you have someplace to charge them while they're parked, not so great (economically) if you have to rely on fast-chargers to meet your needs.

On the games/Steam Deck front, Steam did just have a Spring Sale, which triggered my inflation-adjusted cheap-bastard guidelines for getting a few games off of my wishlist (for the record, that's 50%+ off for a resulting price under $20, any% off for a resulting price under $10).  One of those that's made it onto the Steam Deck is a game called Slipways (Compatibility: Playable), which is a sort of space-empire puzzle game (that I have declared to be sufficiently different from Tiny Civilization that they don't share the same "niche").  It basically gives you the 4X game experience, without the eXtermination bit, resulting in a game that takes just a few hours to complete (mainly because you have an in-game time limit for how many turns you can take).  I had to crank up the interface scaling to make it work well on my TV, and I don't know how well I'll be able to see it in handheld mode, but I have high hopes for now.

And that's about it for this time, I think.  See you in a month or so, hypothetical reader!

New car time!

 So, for the obligatories... yes, Russia is still fucking around in Ukraine, and continuing to find out, more than 400 days later.  Getting no traction there, they've gone and arrested a U.S. journalist on spying charges... obviously, I can't say they're wrong, but their past history makes them highly suspect.  Also, this falls under the category of "somebody being somewhere dangerous and knowing the likely consequences", so here's hoping the Russian regime doesn't get the leverage they so obviously desire, this time around.

Right, that out of the way, the big change here is that the Bolt EV came in!  I've spent a fair bit of time familiarizing myself with all the extra features it has, compared to by decidedly bare-bones Yaris of yesteryear, and I've got to say, I could get used to this (which, since most of this stuff is standard on pretty much any new vehicle nowadays, I guess I can let happen).  Setting aside all the ooh and aah of, well, any time you get a new car, here's the bits that I've picked up on that aren't all that:

• Single-pedal drive mode - honestly, this is likely to be more of a "needing to get familiar with it" sort of thing, but, with as strong as the regenerative braking can be on this car, the jerkiness of it all gives me strong "remember when you were learning to drive stick shift?" vibes.
• Storage - one thing I always loved about my Yaris was the copious storage scattered throughout the interior, especially up front, where there were multiple "glove box" enclosures in the dash, cup-holders for driver and passenger near the windows, plus another in the center along with some open-air storage options both in the center and in each of the doors.  In the Bolt, it's one glove box, a pair of cup-holders in the center island, a "storage bucket" under an arm rest, and some smaller open-air storage in the doors.  The downside of all the new tech and controls is the loss of places to put things.
• Steering wheel - another "gotta get used to it" item, the steering wheel feels... small.  How much of that is the actual size, and how much of that is controls embedded in and around the wheel, that I'm not sure.
• Internal rear-view mirror - this piece and its surrounds, I get why they are the way they are, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  There's two main issues I have so far, first being that the mirror is small, for all its field of view covers the back window fully.  The second issue is that it mounts into a sensor suite for all the techno-wizardry the car supports, which takes up windshield space directly behind the mirror - so, if you have something that needs to hang from the mirror, like a parking pass, good luck getting that to be visible.

However, setting aside those petty grumbles, make no mistake, I'm actually liking the Bolt quite a lot.  Once I've adjusted to the new normal of charging up instead of gassing up, I should be quite happy with it for years to come (assuming, as always, nothing changes drastically due to, say, an over-the-air update of the car's systems or something like that).

Beyond the new-car thing, I did find one more thing to add to my Steam Deck that might be of interest - Tiny Civilization (Compatibility: Unrated). I like Civilization-style games, but they tend to be massive time-sinks, so I'm always on the lookout for Civ-like things that don't take much time.  Tiny Civilization is probably as good an embodiment of that concept as I can imagine, using match-3 mechanics to cover much of what makes a Civ game.  I could say it's been pared down too far, in some respects, but, for the style of game, the choices made in what to keep and what to simplify or eliminate just make sense.  For $2, I'd recommend it to almost anyone to try out.