A refrigerator, a refrigerator,
My kingdom for a refrigerator.
The orange Big Box store delivered our new refrigerator yesterday as promised on the day we ordered it 4-5 weeks ago. By 10 AM the delivery crew had left and the fridge was running.
Obviously, my wonderful wife and I are very happy we finally have a working full-size refrigerator. I went grocery shopping yesterday and bought milk, orange juice, eggs and iced coffee–items we have not consumed at home for weeks.
Speaking of milk…since I hadn’t eaten cereal for weeks I thought my favorite brand (Cheerios) would be stale for having sat in the pantry for so long in an open box. We have those clear containers that are supposed to keep cereal fresher for longer, but the Cheerios were not in one of them.
I decided to warm the Cheerios on a new cookie sheet for a few minutes at 180°. I then let them cool down for a few minutes because I didn’t want to pour cold milk over hot cereal. Well, it wasn’t easy getting the Cheerios into the bowl from the cookie sheet. Quite a few spilled on the floor before I got the hang of it. Yes, the Cheerios tasted great.
It is amazing what we take for granted until it’s gone.
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This video from a Minion of the Evil Empire shows Chip Foose “re-designing” the C8 Corvette. During the presentation Foose said that unlike the previous Corvette generations that were unmistakable in appearance, it was difficult to tell the Corvette from an Acura NSX or a Ferrari. He also said, “Don’t get me wrong when I’m saying that I don’t know if I’m a fan or not. I’m a huge fan of the performance…It’s the styling that I keep looking at and wondering why they do this or why did they do that rather than keeping that evolution of the Corvette.”
I thought I would show the three cars Foose mentioned:
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The cars resemble each other, but are certainly not identical. Oh, the Ferrari is a 488. Remember that, unless great (read expensive) effort is made, mid-engine architecture rules out certain design elements and rules in others.
If I had been involved in designing the C8, I would have pushed for a slightly smaller engine block that would be transversely mounted so the car could have kept more of its traditional “long hood, short deck” look and still be a mid-engine car. Of course, no one asked me and I’m sure designing a drivetrain around a transversely mounted engine would not have been cheap.
In any event, the C8 is very popular even if awful General Motors CEO Bary Marra and her board don’t want to acknowledge its success. In a recent company video, the success of the Corvette was not mentioned at all, but the company push towards an all-EV portfolio was 80% of the presentation. Whatever happened to diversification?
I have to admit that the more I see the C8 Corvette, the less I like the looks. The front of the car looks great to me and, in my opinion, is unmistakably Corvette. It’s the rear three-quarter views that are unappealing for me. That perspective is just ungainly. In an admittedly short Internet search, this was the “best” rear three-quarter view I could find:
That view just doesn’t do it for me. Who knows? In a few months I might like that perspective. When the C6 was first introduced I wasn’t a fan of the exposed headlights, but grew to like them enough that I bought a new C6. It’s OK to change your mind, even if nothing is wrong with the one you have.
#ParaphrasingShakespeare
#NewFridge
#Cheerios
#ChipFoose
#C8Corvette
#AcuraNSX
#Ferrari488
#IgnoreDiversificationAtYourPeril
#It’sOKToChangeYourMind
#somanycarsjustonelife
#disaffectedmusings
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Disaffected Musings 
Last year, our refrigerator in Buckeye “went south.” We replaced it with what looks to be the exact same model GE unit you now have. Here’s a tip on replacing the water filter. Ours shipped with an XWF filter. That filter is no longer available in some stores, having been replaced by the XWFE. As recently as December, when I attempted to buy the XWFE, they weren’t readily available at the big box stores. We ordered directly from GE. By the time you need a replacement, that’s likely to be a solved problem. (You will probably want the XWFE as it’s better at filtering out pharmaceuticals than the XWF, or so says GE.)
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Thanks, JS. We often purchase water filters for the fridge online directly from the manufacturer.
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GE makes that easy. We do that as well unless we want to get one “in a hurry.” 🙂
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Congratulations on the new refrigerator. I am sure it will be making life a lot easier. As far as the Corvette, as long as it has an internal combustion engine I will be a fan. By the way it is still snowing here and very icy. Enjoy the sunshine and warm weather.
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Thanks, C/2. No, I do not miss the cold and snow and ice although I must admit I enjoyed our one-hour snowfall here on January 25. Two hours after the snow ended, it had completely melted except up in the mountains where it made for amazing scenery.
I think the C9 will be the last ICE Corvette although I am 100% sure that some segment of the vehicle-buying public will prefer ICE vehicles for decades to come. I guess “the customer’s always right” is no longer a part of doing business.
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Rather than have an ice maker in the refrigerator, we have a countertop ice machine, an Opal, now owned by GE. I feed it distilled water as the tap water in Arizona is high in total dissolved solids, commonly referred to as “hard” water. The machine makes pellet ice which is the soft crunchy ice preferred by many people.
The frantic push by the auto makers to go “green” and build electric cars is crazy. Ford has announced they are going all-electric in Europe by 2030 I believe. Cold temperatures effect the charge life of a battery, resulting in less available charge. With the current extreme cold weather in a major portion of the country, I would be interested to know if the drive distance of electric cars has been shortened by the cold. This could be another unintended consequence of the Green New Deal. I did read that some folks are back feeding from their electric cars into the house when the power went out. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, so when the car charge runs out and the power company still is down, you can’t escape to someplace safe and warm. ICE powered automobiles and trucks are a safe bet.
When we remodeled the house, I had a special panel added for a set of essential circuits. That panel can be fed from the regular electric service or from a generator. I have been searching diligently for a Lister, slow speed diesel generator set. Tough to find, but as a diesel it can be fed regular diesel from the gas station or with home made bio diesel. The Lister engines are extremely reliable. It is the “prepper” in me.
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Thanks, Philip.
People blinded by ideology fail to appreciate the power of diversification. Just like all of a person’s investment portfolio shouldn’t be in one stock, all transportation or energy infrastructure shouldn’t rely on one paradigm.
Consider this scenario with a non-zero probability: what if China, in retaliation for some perceived slight and facing a population implosion, decides to cut off all exports of rare earths to the US? Where does that leave “all electric?” The US can’t magically create deposits of rare earths.
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For some reason, at the mention of Shakespeare, I always think of how creative they were with insults back in his day and the next thing you know, I’m thinking…”your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.. !”
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“Hello, Daffy English Kuh-niggits and Monsieur Arthur King who has the brain of a duck, you know.”
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The mention of elderberries brings to mind the wine made by the Brewster sisters in “Arsenic and Old Lace”. The elderberries came from the bushes in the cemetery next door.
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I’m fairly certain your new fridge is the exact one we got this past summer. I guess GE must have done something right. To be completely honest, it came down to it was the best fit for our space that was also a full side by side. My mom had one of those new ‘freezer drawer on the bottom’ units and hated having to dig for items that had shuffled to the bottom. It’s not easy for someone in their 70s to unload a freezer to retrieve a frozen roast or bird from inches off the floor.
I’d seen the Foose video yesterday and actually was going to ask if you’d seen it. I think he makes a lot of good points. It seems somewhat obvious that mid engine architecture is going to dictate the ‘long hood short deck’ just can’t be carried through. Perhaps that was a big consideration in why it took so long for a mid engine Vette to come along.
I tend to agree there were a few other areas the designers could have brought forward that would have tied the C8 more closely to its predecessors. But then again maybe GM wanted a bigger break to emphasize this is truly a completely new Corvette.
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