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2 years ago
General
Hello. Just a brief journal to say a few things. Life continues after the previous event. My brother has has to take care of everything back at his place since I cannot be there to help, as well as he has been insistent that I take care of some things here before getting there. Not to mention that higher summer airfares and this year hurricane season about to start. I do plan to be there later this year, however.
-- Slowly getting my mind into drawing again. I have posted cropped WIPs to my Twitter account, if anyone here that is not following me there is interested in taking a peek.
-- Hamakei and myself are still in the process of getting a home of our own. We already selected a place and have done everything we have been asked so far from our side, but we are still waiting on a few things from the seller, so we still don't have a firm date as to when we can move in.
-- We got ourselves a used electric car. It has required quite a different mentality after decades of driving gasoline vehicles. On the plus side, electric vehicles are all automatic, so manual gear shift is not something I have to be concerned as I get my mind adjusted to driving on the opposite side of the road, as well as the rules of the road here. To paraphrase something that a character (Drovas Relvi) in Skyrim would say, "And the roundabouts. The thrice damned roundabouts!"
BTW, this Wednesday (March 10) will be one year since I boarded the plane out of Denver, and into these shores.
-- Slowly getting my mind into drawing again. I have posted cropped WIPs to my Twitter account, if anyone here that is not following me there is interested in taking a peek.
-- Hamakei and myself are still in the process of getting a home of our own. We already selected a place and have done everything we have been asked so far from our side, but we are still waiting on a few things from the seller, so we still don't have a firm date as to when we can move in.
-- We got ourselves a used electric car. It has required quite a different mentality after decades of driving gasoline vehicles. On the plus side, electric vehicles are all automatic, so manual gear shift is not something I have to be concerned as I get my mind adjusted to driving on the opposite side of the road, as well as the rules of the road here. To paraphrase something that a character (Drovas Relvi) in Skyrim would say, "And the roundabouts. The thrice damned roundabouts!"
BTW, this Wednesday (March 10) will be one year since I boarded the plane out of Denver, and into these shores.
To borrow a line from MIB, "Oh, yeah, it's worth it. If you're strong enough."
And getting the kind of house you want vs. the kind of house you could get was worth the wait in the end, at least for us, I'm certain it will be for you too!
Many people refuse to buy an EV because they somehow believe you need a range of at least 400 miles. Yeah...how often do you actually GO that far? Most people's commute is around 10% of that.
It also needs a change in attitude regarding charging. Again, people are installing 50kW chargers in their homes because they believe they HAVE to have their car charge from 0 to 100 in less than 20 minutes. First of all....how often do you drive around with NO fuel? You're almost never starting from empty. And...the point of charging is that it's done while you're doing something else. Yes, you can fill a gas tank in 60 seconds. But you can't do anything else at the same time. Charging a car might take a few hours, but if you're ASLEEP, so what? It puts far less strain on the infrastructure and lowers the cost of equipment if you're prepared to accept that. Plus many power companies offer discounted rates at night, so you can schedule your car to charge then to reduce costs.
"Technology Connections" on Youtube made a nice comment regarding dishwashers that I think applies to EVs too. He said he once met somebody who got upset that their dishwasher took a couple of hours to do a cycle "And I could wash them by hand quicker than that!". Yes...but you can't do anything else at the same time. The dishwasher might take longer, but you're free to do other things.
When we go to get groceries, we put the car on charge. It doesn't fully charge during our trip, but in the 60 minutes or so it takes us to do our shopping and have lunch, we've just about replaced the charge lost on the trip - so we arrive back home with around the same level of charge as when we left. That's a simple 7kW charger in the parking lot of the store. It didn't require them to install huge rectifiers like you see near Tesla chargers, the cables are less bulky, and the equipment is cheaper.
Charging at home inherently changes the nature of the game. You no longer need to build dedicated infrastructure (gas stations) and make special trips or diversions to fuel up. You park on your driveway and connect the cable. That's it. Job done. And if you do need to make a long journey, then you can charge en route at specialist facilities on trunk roads and major routes. We don't need huge charging stations on every street corner. Have you SEEN how many gas stations there are in the US? That is unneeded with EVs.