On September 8th, Android 11 was released to Pixel devices and unfortunately, I installed it on my trusty Pixel 3. Pretty quickly, it started bootlooping and never recovered (despite a trip to UBreakIFix and a plea to Google). Even though I have a Google-made phone running a Google-made OS on a Google-made cellular network, they …
Continue reading "The great iPhone experiment"
Back in May, I drove my new 2016 e-golf out to Madison and it left me thinking that it’s not a great option for that drive. With the 24.2-kWh battery pack, my car has an EPA estimated range of 83 miles (which should be plenty of range to get there). In practice, the range is …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: The Range"
One of my big concerns when I bought my 2016 VW e-Golf was how long the battery pack would last. As we established in the previous e-Golf post, if it lasts as my daily driver for 5 years, it should effectively pay for itself. I’m not terribly worried about the battery degrading that fast. Fully …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: The Battery"
As I mentioned in a previous post, I bought my 2016 VW e-Golf for $10,640 but it wasn’t the first electric car that I looked at. Before that, I tried to lease a 2019 Hyundai Ioniq EV but no dealer anywhere near me was willing to provide one. At the time, they were offering them …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: The Price"
In September 2018, I bought a 128gb Pixel 2 off of eBay for $439. In November 2018, I bought a 128gb Pixel 3 off of Google’s Play Store for $949.34. That’s a difference of $510.34 and the Pixel 3 is just not $510.34 more phone than the Pixel 2. I bought it during a 1-day …
Continue reading "Why I don’t recommend buying a new cell phone"
Back in May, I bought a 2016 VW e-Golf (my first electric car). Before I bought it, I did a ton of research and I knew theoretically what I was getting into but really needed to figure out a few things in practice. Two weeks after it arrived at my house, I tried a roadtrip …
Continue reading "Living with an electric car in Wisconsin: The Heater"
Back in 2011, I wrote few short posts about what I install right after reinstalling windows. I figured that 9 years is enough time between these kinds of posts. This time, I’m going to go over my prefered tools for writing code.
Continue reading "My prefered tools for coding"
Last week, I drove from Milwaukee to Madison and back again in the new car. The 2016 e-Golf has a stated range of 83 miles between charges. I wanted to see what that looks like in real life. A level 2 charger needs roughly four hours to fully charge the battery. A level 3 charger …
Continue reading "I tried to do a roadtrip in the new electric car"
I have wanted to get an electric car for a while now. With their supercharger network, a Tesla Model 3 would be the logical choice but it’s $36k and I wouldn’t want to spend any more than $15k on any car. Two years ago, I put down a deposit (that they never gave back to …
Continue reading "I made a big hardware purchase"
A little over a year ago, I bought a DJI Spark used off of eBay and this past fall, I kind of crashed it into my garden shed. I wasn’t paying attention and the drone was trying to save me from myself. I didn’t get it fixed right away because I had a lot of …
Continue reading "Joe bought a drone … again"