Wandering Wednesday

I strongly suspect that non-specific post titles such as “Wandering Wednesday” have a negative effect on the number of blog views. Many days, though, I cannot think of anything with a stronger hook.

<Rant> It is difficult to write a cogent post almost every day and think of a title without an editor or someone else providing ideas. If you don’t think so, try it yourself for just a month. <End Rant>

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I am not a fan of the world and the feeling is mutual.

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The author of this article argues that those of us who want to see the United States dissolve are “wrong.” Well, I don’t want to live in a country where the last two candidates for President were…how can I write this? How about I don’t want to live in a country where my choices are between the Lunatic Left and the Ridiculous Right. How about I don’t want to live in a country where both Schmocasio Schmortez and MoronToGo are serving in one of the two federal legislative bodies.

The political and social divide in the US is intractable, in my opinion. Whether it is “wrong” or not, to quote Abraham Lincoln, a house divided against itself cannot stand. I won’t live to see it, but I would bet a large amount that the US as we know it will not exist to celebrate its 300th “birthday” in 2076.

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This Free Press article reports on an illness that’s engulfing America and how it’s ruining the practice of medicine: DEI. Of course, I define DEI as Deny Excellent Individuals. This remark by Stanley Goldfarb, former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, is spot-on:

“For better or worse, I have had a front-row seat to the meltdown of twenty-first-century medicine. Many colleagues and I are alarmed at how the DEI agenda—which promotes people and policies based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and sexual orientation rather than merit—is undermining healthcare for all patients regardless of their status.”

In the constitution for “my” successor country, including or excluding a person from consideration based on any reason other than merit would be illegal. First earn, then receive.

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Here is a link to a post from Why Evolution Is True. The first (title and link below) begins,

“Is a turning point really being reached in the War Against ~~Wokeness~~? [my mark] Every time I read a piece in the mainstream media decrying the pernicious antics of the Authoritarian Left (one of the terms I use for “the woke”), I think to myself, ‘Is the tide really turning at long last?'”

Based on what I have just written, you can surmise I think ~~wokeness~~ is just as pervasive as ever, if not more so.

The Washington Post decries the suppression and deplatforming of speech by students

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Here are references or links to three pieces from CNBC:

Supreme Court to consider weakening power of federal agencies in fisheries case

I think most Americans have absolutely no idea how much “legislation” is created by un-elected bureaucrats.

Phil LeBeau covers the automotive and airline industries for CNBC. As part of a recent story, here is what he wrote: “EV adoption was expected to soar this year, but the latest report on car buyer sentiment shows a growing percentage of people say they have zero interest in buying an electric model.”

In places like the US and Australia, the push to EVs is turning out like the rejection of an organ after a transplant. Most of the people don’t want them despite the years of hype and propaganda and despite being told we must have them for “our own good.”

#DeathBeforeEV

The third CNBC piece is titled, “‘Godfather of A.I.’ leaves Google after a decade to warn society of technology he’s touted.” Here is a scary comment by Geoffrey Hinton, the Godfather of A.I.:

“I now think the digital intelligences we are creating are very different from biological intelligences. If I have 1,000 digital agents who are all exact clones with identical weights, whenever one agent learns how to do something, all of them immediately know it because they share weights. Biological agents cannot do this. So collections of identical digital agents can acquire hugely more knowledge than any individual biological agent. That is why GPT-4 knows hugely more than any one person.”

In my opinion, I think it’s too late to “save” us from A.I.; the cat is out of the bag. Like virtually everything else, A.I. has the potential for good and bad, but I think it’s an asymmetric paradigm in that the bad can literally be an existential threat.

#WanderingWednesday

#TheOnlySolutionIsDissolution

#DeathBeforeEV

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Wandering Wednesday

I think I would have liked Mike Leach. The innovative and iconoclastic head football coach at Mississippi State died Monday night from a major coronary event.

Leach never played college football and yet was successful as the head coach at three different schools not normally associated with football excellence: Texas Tech, Washington State and, of course, Mississippi State. In general, Leach–unlike the current state of America–didn’t care about credentials. He cared if you were intelligent and had an open mind.

In one of the ESPN stories about him was this passage: “He was also known for his quirky personality, dry wit, and penchant for talking about history, business and politics (and, really, just about anything else) as comfortably as he did quarterbacks making the right reads and receivers running the right routes.” I think most major college and NFL coaches seem to be devoid of personality, but Leach was a rare and valuable exception.

When Vince Lombardi died, then commissioner Pete Rozelle remarked at his funeral that the people who would most miss Lombardi were those who had yet to meet him or be coached by him. While I don’t want to minimize the suffering of his family and friends, I think that could apply to Leach as well.

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My wonderful wife and I made an offer on the “goose bumps” house. While I remain pessimistic that we will actually be able to consummate the purchase, for many reasons, at least we are in the game. We should have the sellers response to our offer within the next 10-12 hours.

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Among the 3,800+ cars already consigned to the Mecum auction in Kissimmee, Florida next month are four of these:

The Precision of the Cadillac XLR GT Car - i GT Cars Directory

This is, of course, a Cadillac XLR although not one of the cars consigned to Mecum Kissimmee, at least not as far as I know. My wonderful wife and I have talked about attending that auction in the future, but might only attend the first few days and leave before the crowds become uncomfortably large.

Right now, unknown months before any potential purchase, I would say the XLR has a slight lead over the Pontiac Solstice GXP. I am in my early 60s and I think that the XLR would simply be more practical and more comfortable. Besides, I also think the exterior styling is better; in fact, the XLR, to me, might be one of the ten best-looking cars ever made. Hey, in many ways it’s just a re-skinned C6 Corvette and was built at the Corvette assembly plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Speaking of Bowling Green, rumors abound that General Motors might either close the plant entirely or have it just build engines. That would be sad, but…here it comes…the only constant in the world is change.

#WanderingWednesday

#MikeLeach

#MecumKissimmee

#CadillacXLR

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Sorry, meant to show this within the body of the post. Yes, it’s freezing in the desert. Well, it was.

Ah yes, the beauty of digital publishing. Here are some frosty pictures from this morning.

Wandering Wednesday

This is not a recent comment, but seems relevant in light of recent events. The remark was made by Alecia Beth Moore, better known to the world as Pink or P!nk. She tweeted more than a decade ago, “Kanye West is the biggest piece of shit on earth. Quote me.” I’m just doing what she asked…

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My daily computer football league playoff game was really a tale of two games. The Los Angeles Cobras scored 23 second-quarter points to take a 23-21 halftime lead over the Texas Tornadoes. LA was the only team to defeat Texas during the regular season and the score was 46-44; the first half of the playoff game seemed like a repeat of the regular season game would occur.

However, LA did not move the ball well in the second half. Matthew Stafford, the Cobras’ quarterback, had very little success after halftime and threw two interceptions to boot. Texas QB Joe Burrow did not have a great game, either, also throwing two interceptions, but both were in the first half. After an otherworldly 144.3 passer rating in 573 regular season attempts, Burrow’s rating for the playoff game was just 90.9. (The real NFL record for single-season passer rating is 122.5 by Aaron Rodgers in 2011. Of course, adjusted for league averages I don’t know what the best performance is.)

The Tornadoes just kept grinding out yardage in the running game (Damien Harris had 129 yards rushing on 20 carries) and made enough completions in the passing game to keep moving the ball and adding points, mainly Justin Tucker field goals. Texas’ defensive lineman Dean Lowry had two huge fourth-quarter sacks of Stafford and Texas advanced, winning 40-26.

Just five playoff games remain and it is exceedingly likely I will write about all of them. In many ways, this most recent season was the most enjoyable of any computer or table-top season I have ever played. Unlike most of my seasons, where–for some reason–the majority of games were decided by 10 points or more, nearly half of the games were decided by one score (8 or fewer points). Of course, in the real NFL more than half of the games are one-score games.

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My long-time friend Vin, we met in graduate school and have known each other for 40 years (wow, we’re getting old), graciously sent some photos he recently took at a local car show (local for him, not for me). Here are two of them:

Can’t go wrong with any Hawk from Studebaker and a C6 Corvette, in Red no less. Part of me still wants to buy a Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk (shown below), but I worry about maintenance and safety.

If anyone wants to offer an opinion on a potential purchase of a Gran Turismo Hawk, as opposed to a Pontiac Solstice GXP, I would like to read it. Thanks. Oh, “buy both” is not an option, at least not at any time in the near future.

#WanderingWednesday

#FuckKanyeWest

#ComputerFootballSeason

#StudebakerGranTurismoHawk

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Wandering Wednesday

Even though I have been out of baseball for more than a decade, the news of the death of Vin Scully is still sad to me. I had the privilege of speaking with him every now and then during my tenure with the San Diego Padres. He was always most gracious.

As some of you may know from firsthand experience (as I do), many famous people are most unpleasant. They are rude and dismissive of people they don’t know or those they perceive to be unimportant. I’ll pass along something taught to me by a high school English teacher: a truly great person will neither trample on a worm nor sneak to an emperor.

“And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

– John Donne

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This CNBC article reports that Russia is facing “economic oblivion.” If that’s true, imagine how much faster that would happen if most of Europe were not still buying huge amounts of natural gas from the Russian dictator. utem itud psin

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This post from Why Evolution Is True, the title of which is “Intellectual freedom in STEM: An interview with Anna Krylov,” is both interesting and disturbing. Krylov is a quantum chemist and the Gabilan Distinguished Professor in Science and Engineering and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Southern California. Here is a passage from the first paragraph of the post:

“And we met her because she’s an opponent of the invasion of wokeness into STEM, and because she somehow got an anti-woke paper, “The perils of politicizing science” into the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. That paper got a lot of attention, most likely because it was congenial to all those who deplore the fulminating wokeness of science but are afraid to speak up. (Try getting an op-ed extolling merit over identity into a science journal these days!)”

I think much, if not most, of the world–especially the so-called developed world–is losing its mind.

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On this day in 1977, Radio Shack (remember them?) introduced the TRS-80 personal computer. Some users called them the “Trash 80.” My first PC experience (personal computer, not political correctness) was using a TRS-80 in my first job in radio. I had the title of Assistant Producer, but I was a call screener for a call-in sports talk show. I also called guests that were going to be interviewed as well as providing news to the show’s host.

The TRS-80 had a program that allowed me to input the name of a caller and the subject they wanted to talk about so the host could see that in advance. The program usually worked without a hitch. My experience with the “Trash 80” really fueled my desire to have a PC of my own, but one with much more computing power.

In one of the few times my father really stepped up for me, I bought a Tele-Video PC from a friend of his who owned a computer store and, technically, we leased it through my father’s gas station. He even made the first few payments. I purchased the PC after the expiration of the lease and then sold it to a friend of mine who, sadly, is no longer among the living. The first four or five PCs I owned more than paid for themselves because I usually was able to get consulting work in lieu of or in addition to a regular job. As I have now owned a PC for about 38 years I have lost track of just how many different ones I have had.

I still prefer using a PC over any mobile device like a phone or a tablet. PC prices have also plummeted, especially in real terms. The purchase price of my first computer was more than $3,000 in 1984. The computer on which I am writing this post cost me about $500. By the way, $3,000 1984 dollars converts to about $8,500 today. Of course, my current computer is orders of magnitude faster and more powerful than my first one. My first PC didn’t even have a hard drive.

#WanderingWednesday

#VinScully

#~~Woke~~IsACult

#MyFirstPC

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Wandering Wednesday

This is the 17th post with the title “Wandering Wednesday.” Do you think my penchant for alliteration is an asset or a liability? I do think, and granted this is a subjective observation, that post titles affect readership.

A “dump” of links to posts from Why Evolution Is True:

Every planet in one photo (except Pluto)

Pinker: The “evolution war” is also a culture war

Peter Singer’s contrarian view on the Dobbs decision

I have avoided writing about this because, in my opinion, abortion is the very definition of a “hot button” issue. One thing I like about Why Evolution Is True is that the blog author (Jerry Coyne) can acknowledge that points of view with which he disagrees can still have merit, unlike the majority of today’s American population.

A NYT columnist accuses extremists on both Left and Right of erasing women

Once again, I lament the loss of real debate in this country. People shout at others instead of talking to them. Both sides are guilty although partisans will either not acknowledge that reality or arrogantly and blindly claim that they are right and, therefore, shouting is appropriate. From the post:

“It’s heartening to see someone of [Pamela] Paul’s stature at a paper as influential as the NYT pushing back on irrational wokeness. [My note: I think virtually all wokeness is irrational.] Is this a trend now? Will it go away? I doubt it, but voices of dissent from Leftists themselves are beginning to be heard, and this article—I’ve quoted only a bit of it—is one. I’ll just add her ending:

‘Tolerance for one group need not mean intolerance for another. We can respect transgender women without castigating females who point out that biological women still constitute a category of their own — with their own specific needs and prerogatives.'”

For the nth to the n time, NO ONE has a monopoly on truth, wisdom and good judgment and neither does ANY ideology. I once opined that if the five most liberal and five most conservative US Senators were replaced with moderates, then the country would be on much sounder footing. I don’t believe that, anymore. The division is far beyond Congress and, once again, the scourge of social media bears much/most of the blame.

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Here is a link to a Hemmings piece from ten days ago about a car that may or may not be included in a Hall of Very Good Cars post, the Pontiac Fiero. A picture from the article:

While the exterior design is very much of the period I think the Fiero has a very sharp and clean look. I have never driven one or even sat in one. Despite the mid-engine layout, the Fiero was not designed as a performance car. Even the Formula/GT version was powered by an engine that produced just 135 HP/165 LB-FT of torque. However, if the car’s designers had tried to position the Fiero as a true sports car, it is likely that upper-level executives at General Motors would have never allowed the Fiero to be built as it would have been seen as potentially cannibalizing the Corvette market. How ironic is it that moving the Corvette to a mid-engine platform came to be adopted as the way to broaden the car’s worldwide appeal?

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Here is a link to another Hemmings piece from late May (I no longer subscribe to Hemmings, which is why this reference is “late”) about George Murphy, owner of the largest GM dealership in the world in the mid-1960s, and his efforts to save Studebaker. From the article:

“Murphy sensed an opportunity with Studebaker, so in February of 1966, after selling Honolulu Iron Works, he approached Studebaker chairman Randolph Guthrie with an offer to buy 500,000 shares of Studebaker stock—more than a sixth of the outstanding shares of common stock—at $30 per share, above market price. The offer came out of left field, according to a lawsuit between Studebaker and Allied Products, a Studebaker supplier that also entered in negotiations to buy the company immediately after Murphy’s offer. Studebaker’s board of directors appeared in favor of Murphy’s offer but ultimately left the decision up to the stockholders, who, by all indications, let the offer die on the vine. Guthrie, in turn, rejected Allied’s offer, and a month later Studebaker shut down the Hamilton assembly line, bringing an end to the company’s car making efforts.”

By the time Murphy made his offer, the cars shown below had already been discontinued. Still, who knows what might have happened. Many of those who know far more about Studebaker than I do think the board just wanted to leave the automobile business regardless.

See the source image

The top photo is a Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk, a member of my Ultimate Garage 3.0, and the bottom is a Studebaker Avanti, a member of my first Ultimate Garage.

Another idea often written here is that what actually happens/happened is virtually never the only thing that could have happened. If Murphy’s bid had been accepted or Studebaker had signed any of the three offers to import ~~Volkswagens~~, then the company might still exist and might still be manufacturing and selling cars. I don’t know how I would feel about Studebaker under the latter scenario, but that’s another story.

#WanderingWednesday

#IdeologyIsAPathToRuin

#PontiacFiero

#TheEndOfStudebaker

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Wandering Wednesday

Turmoil reigns…

The path of least resistance is not always the best path. On the other hand, the world is complicated enough so that adding unnecessary complications is not a smart thing to do, either.

Originally, I was going to add remarks from Carol Roth and Alex Tabarrok. Roth’s comments were an indirect criticism of ESG while Tabarrok’s were about retribution, not solution, being the main aim of many “environmentalists.” I decided that nothing I write about the state of affairs in the world will make any difference at all. I am beginning to think that nothing I write in this blog, regardless of topic, makes any difference at all.

#WanderingWednesday

#disaffectedmusings

Wandering Wednesday, June 1

It’s hard to drive straight down a crooked road. It’s hard to be smart in a stupid world. No, those are not lyrics to some song I am writing.

“It’s hard to win an argument with a smart person. It’s damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person.”

– Bill Murray

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I have not been feeling well for a few days. I don’t know if the cause is allergies or not, but my sinuses hurt leading to other pains in the head. My GI tract has not been 100 percent, either.

I have written about this before, but I have never been blessed with good health. For example, I once caught the flu twice during one flu season about two months apart when I was in elementary school. I had my first kidney stone when I was 17.

As I get older, though, anytime a new ailment arises part of me worries that it could be very serious. My most recent blood work, blood drawn in early May, was good. As my primary care physician has told me, “I know you don’t feel well, but on paper you’re very healthy.”

What’s that joke about the tombstone of a hypochondriac? The tombstone reads, “See, I told you I was sick.”

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Do you want to read an update about my Z06? I really don’t want to write it, but…sure enough, our friend Bob and I were right in that the ECM (the main “brain” of the car, sometimes known as the ECU) will have to be replaced. The dealer that has now had the car for more than six weeks finally got General Motors tech support involved. They recommended replacing the ECM. At this point, I’m guessing it will be at least another week until the car is back home, hopefully for good this time.

This experience has led me to start thinking about selling the car. Is that cutting off my nose to spite my face? Maybe, but it’s difficult to drive/own a car that can’t be trusted.

IF I sell the Z06, the car pictured below would be my first choice:

See the source image

This is a Lexus LC convertible. Lexus has ranked at the top of the annual JD Power Vehicle Dependability Study something like 11 times in the last 12 years. My wonderful wife has owned two Lexus convertibles and while the second one was boring (an IS 250C), the cars never gave her major trouble. The second one did have a GPS system that didn’t always seem to know where you were and the AC system had to “cleaned” by the dealer twice in the 25 months she owned the car. Still, the cars always started, drove, steered and stopped. That’s more than I can say about my Z06.

The only drawback to the LC convertible is the price; it is not possible to find one without major accident damage for under $100,000. My wonderful wife and I test drove the LC coupe in January, 2018 and were very impressed. Before the Z06 crapped out on me I was considering the purchase of a convertible as a companion. Buying an LC convertible kills two birds with one stone.

I would appreciate any thoughts from any of you.

#WanderingWednesday

#LexusLCConvertible

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Wandering Wednesday

My life belongs to me, but I’d like to disown it.

You can’t make this stuff up…obviously, we had our mail held while we were away. The held mail was delivered yesterday. Among the mail were two notices from the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division (MVD) indicating that the registration for our two Corvettes would be suspended on May 16 because we had let our insurance lapse. Of course, we did no such thing.

What I think happened is that when we sold the Cadillac ATS on April 6 and called our soon to be former insurance company to have the car removed from our policy, some incompetent sent a notice to Arizona that we had completely cancelled our policy. (Of course, that didn’t stop the company from billing us with a due date of May 6.)

By the way, the date of the notices was May 1. Our mail was delivered to us through May 10. Why didn’t we receive the notices before we left and why does MVD only give 15 days after the notice to “fix” the situation?

The world is fraying way past the edges.

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Those who scream “Abortion Is Murder” and only “God” can take a life are the same people who agitate for the universal right to own a device that is used to kill more than 40,000 Americans every year. Sorry, but the gun “advocates” are wrong and are hypocrites like all of those who blindly follow any so-called ideology.

Guns are a force multiplier. The cretin who murdered 19 students and 2 teachers yesterday would NOT have been able to perpetrate such evil using rocks or a knife. I vehemently disagree with most of the “policy” advocated by the Left, but they are right about guns.

This CNBC article lays out the sad and disgusting data from 2020. More than 19,000 people were killed in a homicide by gun in the US that year. The point of the article is that figure represented a 35% increase from 2019. Since when is “only” 14,000 gun homicide deaths acceptable? Oh, the rest of gun deaths are by suicide, which has been more prevalent than homicide in the US since at least 1900.

Think about this: of all of the children in the world age 0-14 who are killed by a gun, 87% of them are US children.

The world is fraying way past the edges. Blind adherence to any ideology is a road to disaster.

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Some links to posts from Why Evolution Is True:

Are college students “excellent sheep?”

Julian Baggini on free will

In a California case, ACLU and co-litigants claim that there are no biological differences between men and women

That last story is disturbing and is an example of the foolish and dangerous agenda of the Lunatic Left. In case you hadn’t figured this out, I loathe and despise both major political parties in this country and do not subscribe to the Bullshit Binary Political Paradigm that says you have to pick either all from Column A or all from Column B. Both columns are full of shit.

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Can I segue to automobile pictures? Why not?

This is a 1938 Packard Twelve Convertible offered at the recent Mecum auction in Indianapolis. While my obsession with defunct American makes has lessened into more of an interest, I still really like to see cars from those makes. This car went unsold at a high bid of $150,000.

This is a 1969 Corvette L88 convertible. That was the last of the three years of L88 production; 116 were built in 1969 and 216 were built in total. In an admittedly brief search I was unable to find production figures by body style. This car went unsold at a high bid of $700,000.

At a Barrett-Jackson auction in 2014, a 1967 L88 coupe sold all in for $3,850,000. Only 20 L88s were built that year.

While I prefer the 1963-65 Buick Riviera, in particular the ’65 GS, I wouldn’t kick this 1966 GS out of my garage for leaking oil. Only 179 Super Wildcat dual quad Rivieras were built in 1966; this example sold all in for $88,000. The $155,000 “ask” on the screen is for the previous car.

#WanderingWednesday

#GunsKill

#MecumIndy2022

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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Wandering Wednesday

<Bitching About Blog Views> I am at least 99% certain that it’s been more than two years since a post has had as few views on the day of publication as yesterday’s installment of Threes And Sevens. That small number means the day had very few views as well. Very disappointing to me…<End Bitching>

I have written, on occasion, about the very imperfect nature of record keeping by people, especially the further back one goes in time. I have also written that many people, even intelligent ones, don’t seem to grasp this truth. I have had very smart people express incredulity that we don’t know for certain what was the first American car produced, for example.

ALL endeavors of human beings are imperfect because ALL human beings are imperfect. That truth is not understood, or is ignored, by people who blindly follow any ideology because it seems to me that all of the people in that category cannot acknowledge the possibility that their view, their belief, might be wrong.

I humbly offer this photo as an example of the fallibility of record keeping, even in modern times.

I showed the sheet on the left here. The sheet on the right arrived in yesterday’s mail. Note that except for the valuation date, none of the other figures match.

While none of the figures on either sheet indicate(s) the pension plan is in poor shape, it would be reassuring if they matched since they are supposed to measure the same things at the same time. I am in no position to ascertain which set of data is correct, or if either is even correct. (Oh, I’m not sure if “none” is singular or plural in the first sentence of this paragraph so I covered my bets with conjugating “to indicate.”)

NOTHING human beings do is perfect and that applies to recording/displaying data even in this day and age of computerized “big” data and analytics.

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This piece from Hagerty is about which “classic” cars have the least and most volatility in their prices. Hagerty has (have?) calculated something they call the “annualized volatility score.” From the article,

“Hagerty Insider does this regularly by calculating vehicles’ annualized volatility score. Considering vehicles that have run in the Hagerty Price Guide for at least 3.5 years, our data analysts plot percent changes in value over time.

A lower score denotes the car’s market value is fairly stable, with higher scores indicating volatility—they can swing wildly from one price guide update to the next.”

The most volatile car, by their measure, was the 1988 BMW M5. This car was the least volatile (picture from the article):

This picture represents the 1955-57 Pontiac Star Chief, which has an annualized volatility score of 1.6 percent. I think that is a 1957 model actually shown in the photo. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

I don’t want to get into an esoteric discussion of the difference between structural and reduced-form mathematical models. I will say that statistics are not truth in themselves, but are an approximation of the truth. The underlying structure of a situation can change before we can ascertain that it has changed. Oh, show me another “car blog” where you would read anything remotely resembling this paragraph. (I’ll try not to break my arm patting myself on the back.)

As always, I welcome thoughtful comments. Like all other blog metrics, the number of comments has markedly declined in recent months.

#WanderingWednesday

#AllHumansAreImperfect

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

If you like this blog please tell your friends and share the blog URL (https://disaffectedmusings.com). Thanks.

Wandering Wednesday

The daily Z06 update: returning the ECU to stock tune did not solve the “Engine Power Is Reduced” problem (of course). The service department at the Chevy dealer finally decided to avail themselves of corporate resources. They learned that one or more of four particular sensors is/are the cause of that error message, which cannot simply be ignored because that message means the car can only operate in “limp home” mode. Apparently and par for the course, the one sensor that seems to be the cause is the one most difficult to access and the one that requires the most labor to change. Maybe the car will be ready tomorrow. The repair bill is now in four figures.

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What do you think of the looks of this car?

Expanding my search horizon for the “down the road” purchase of a convertible unearthed a couple of Fiat 124 Spiders, the car shown above. They are/were, of course, manufactured in Japan alongside the Mazda MX-5, but do not share the same engine.

I have always thought they have a great look although many automobile journalists do not share that view. They have a little more power than third-generation MX-5s, but are not power monsters, either. (Good fourth-generation MX-5s cost more than I want to spend.)

Of course, we no longer have a grocery car/taxi. Maybe I need to look at one of these, instead:

See the source image

This is a 2016 Maserati Ghibli S. It is difficult to find a good low-mileage one (doesn’t have to be a 2016 model) for under $35,000 right now and that is definitely more than I want to spend. I’d rather buy a convertible for $15,000-$18,000.

I am so bored that my brain creates things about which I can obsess. It is OCD, after all. I am seriously considering purchasing the most recent edition of the computer football game I could not bring myself to buy last year. At least that will give me something to do most days.

How bad is my OCD/boredom? I have started compiling a list of all US network primetime TV shows that aired in the 1940s. Don’t ask me why I am doing this because I really don’t know. I have always been fascinated by the beginning stage of a process much more than by its mature stage. Here is a picture of what I have done so far. Please note the message under the spreadsheet title.

You can see I have not gotten very far, at all. This could end up like my project to document all engines used in US automobiles since 1930. The effort ended with American Motors.

Once again, you can understand why Disaffected Musings is so important to me and why declining readership is so disappointing. Just as C/2 gave me the idea for Cars A To Z, a new reader might suggest a topic I had never considered.

I think that’s enough of a look into my brain (or what’s left of it) for today. As always, I welcome thoughtful comments. Thanks.

#WanderingWednesday

#Z06Update

#Fiat124Spider

#MaseratiGhibli

#OCDAndBoredom

#somanyCARSjustonelife

#disaffectedmusings

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