Ruminations On Modern Cars

I am a fairly picky person when it comes to acquiring cars for personal use. I prefer manual transmissions. I prefer that vehicles handle nimbly. I prefer that they stop on a dime. I prefer that they corner like they're on rails. I prefer that they can accelerate their way out of potential accidents. I prefer smaller cars. I prefer cars that aren't on the HOA-friendly spectrum of greys, silvers, whites, blacks and tans.

Prior to this month, my last two purchases were both custom-ordered cars

• My car — a 2002 BMW 330Ci convertible — had to be custom-ordered because I wanted features that just weren't available on dealers lots. Specifically, I wanted a convertible (as I'd fallen in love with having one due to my prior roadster) and I wanted a car that handled nimbly for its size and weight. Since I was custom-ordering, I took the opportunity to buy a color that wasn't normally available in the North American market, "techno violet metallic":
  
  
  
  
  
• My wife's car — a 2012 Mini Countryman S — also had to be factory-ordered. At the time, there were damned few on the lot with manual transmissions, and of the ones that were, they were all HOA-friendly colors. Wife was never going to accept one of those colors, not when it would have to sit in our driveway next to my metallic-violet convertible. So, we ordered one in Chili Red:
  
  

  

  Pretty spiffy, even at almost 13yo

  
  

For better or worse, my wife's nearly 13yo car had decided to become too expensive to justify its ongoing maintenance costs. In the past 18 months, it had had two failures that resulted in the need to be towed and one that required significant garage-time and repair expensive. Basically, in the last 18 months, a car with a $4000 blue-book value had cost north of $12000 in repairs, only one of which were "natural wear and tear" in nature (and ignoring tire-replacements due to road hazards).

This set us on the path of looking at new cars. While we both significantly prefer manual transmissions over automatics, vehicles with manual transmissions have become very rare on dealers' lots and even in manufacturer's lineups. We both also prefer smaller cars. We'd agreed, a few years earlier, that if we were giving up stickshifts, it would only be for EVs. So, we started by looking at EVs that weren't ginormous and weren't ridiculously-priced. We ended up trying out:

• BMW i4: while, at $65K, normally more expensive than we'd like, the local BMW dealer was trying to clear the 2025s off their lot to get ready for the arrival of the 2026es. They'd adjusted their pre-haggling price to lower-middle $50Ks
• Hyundai Ioniq 5: at nearly $60K (before dealer incentives), it was at the edge of our price-range
• Volkswagen ID4: at a shade over $55K (before dealer incentives) it was still within the top third of our desired price-range
• Ford Mustang Mach-E: priced similarly to the ID4,  it was still within the top third of our desired price-range
• Volvo EX30: priced in the mid $40Ks (before dealer incentives), it was about $8K more than our Mini was when new but $15K less than when my BMW was new 

The BMW:

While I am beyond happy with my current BMW, I'd heard rumblings both about build-quality and handling.

• My wife's Mini — a BMW group product — has had a litany of build-quality issues: it lost its first clutch at less than 35,000 miles (fortunately, within the warranty period) and, particularly lately (see above) has been suffering a spate of "we don't usually see those kinds of failures" durability issues.
• I also have friends and acquaintances who have or have had BMWs made since 2010: my wife's Mini isn't the only BMW group product with quality issues
• When we were last looking for a car — what ultimately became our Mini — I'd stopped in at the dealership to check out the X1. The salesguy asked what else we were looking at. I'd told him we'd liked the Mini and he turned up his nose and said something about their ride being "too harsh". When a BMW salesman tells you that another marque's ride is "too harsh", you know that BMW has lost the plot. That one statement caused me to cut our interaction short and to tell the salesman, "if you think the Mini's ride is too harsh, I know that I'll hate everything you have on offer here".

In spite of the above, we went to look at the i4: the price-cut was too much to ignore. First bit of weirdness is that you had to schedule a test-drive ("uh... Ok. I guess you guys don't want impulse buyers, eh?"). So, we scheduled one. Next bit of weirdness is that, even though the dealership was located a quarter mile from the ramp to a 4-lane interstate, I wasn't allowed to take the car onto the highway. They also didn't have any areas for testing out the vehicle's handling/nimbleness. Other bit of weirdness was that the sales guy had to come with us. My wife is a nervous driver — barely able to tolerate my presence when she's at the wheel — so the salesman insisting on being in the car meant there was no way in hell that she was going to take the wheel. Last bit didn't really matter as I'd already noped on the car before she would have had her chance to drive. While the i4 has decent acceleration and is smooth in the straights, it is an ABSOLUTE PIG in turns. Further, when I'd pressed the salesman on finding a spot to test its handling, he acquiesced and directed me to a (very small) parking lot. I tried doing some slalums in the short length of the parking lot. The i4's handling in that lot made me want to vomit. 

We took the car back to the dealership. The salesguy enthusiastically asked, "you interested in buying," and I responded that I found the i4's drive-quality to be extremely disappointing. I said something along the lines of "it's pretty clear that BMW has long since shed their 'driving machine' ethos". He asked if I'd be willing to talk to the sales manager. I agreed, mostly so I could better convey "you guys have seriously lost your way: this is a garbage car". The salesmanager seemed incredulous.  

The Mustang Mach-E:

There's a Ford dealership walking distance to our house. This was actually the very last EV that we tried: driving past the Ford dealership on our daily trips to the gym (and back), I'd stopped noticing Mach-Es on their lot in recent months. I'd assumed they were no longer ordering them due to Trump's fuckery. Turns out, they still had them on the lot, just not immediately visible from the road and no longer in other than HOA-friendly colors.

Before heading over, I chatted at a friend who'd bought a Mach-E a few model-years earlier. He's a small-car guy, too (even though he'd had an early 2000s BMW M5 for a while). So, he warned me that, while he had been quite happy with his — enough so that he would buy another one if it made sense to do so — he did note that it was a bit large. 

At any rate, we drove over. After parking my car (Mini was still in the shop), we started walking to the showroom. An overly-eager salesguy accosted us and asked us what we were looking for. Said we wanted to give the Mach-E a try. Took nearly twenty minutes to fetch one up. Went out to the car and, as with the BMW dealership, the salesguy wanted to ride-along (bah!). Worse, since "our" salesguy was very new, one of the more-senior salesguys wanted to come along, as well. Whatevs.

The door design on the Mach-E is beyond stupid: not only does it not have traditional door-handles, it doesn't even have the recessed ones that so many EVs have. Instead, you had to electronically release the door latch, then use a little flipper on the door to pull it open. Frankly, the door-flipper thing looked like utter ass — like it was glued on at the last minute. Wife insta-noped just because of how you get into the car. I felt committed to the test-drive, so I got the mirrors situated and started my run. The Mach-E was AWD, so I was more than a bit surprised that I was able to break the tires loose exiting the dealer's lot (not good). While it had nice acceleration and a non-wallowy drive, it felt extremely heavy. It also provided zero feedback through either the driver's seat or the steering-wheel. Driving down a residential street, I felt like I had zero idea of where the Mach-E's corners were. Finally understood why so many people like to straddle the centerlines of the streets in our neighborhood.

Got it back to the dealership and conveyed my misgivings. Sales manager asked what it would take to change my mind. Told him I would need a "can't refuse this deal" kind of low-price for me to even consider it. He assured me that he could get me that. What they came back with was more expensive than everything except the BMW i4 and the Hyundai Ioniq 5. So, uh, "nope".

They phoned me a couple days later. I said, "at that price, it's not even price-competitive with the cars I actually liked.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5:

I'd been looking forward to driving this one. It had very good reviews, was a nice size and had the features we were looking for. My neighbor had recently bought a Hyundai ICE-base car. He was pleased with the dealership. So, we drove down to that dealership for a try-out.

We'd first tried to get a test-drive while we were up in Pennsylvania at my mom's house. However, contrary to what Hyundai's web-site was showing for "in stock" availability, the dealership up there had none (well, they had one but it was broken). The web-site said they had nearly two dozen. So, it had been snake-eyes on that one.

Similarly, before driving out to the dealership where my Neighbor got his Elantra(?), the web-site was showing that they had nearly three dozen, two of which were Ioniq 5Ns (woot!). Got there and discovered that not only did they have zero 5Ns, they only had a handful of regular 5s at various trim-levels. Gave the salesguy my license and insurance information and he got us a key and took us out to the vehicle. He gave us a quick orientation, then headed back inside (yay! No stranger-danger passengers!). We took it out for a spin. It handled (considerably) better than either the i4 or the Mach-E. Quite-respectable acceleration. Flat and even in the turns. Was a little squishier while slaloming than I'd have preferred, but not intolerably so: I feel like the 5N would have been more to my handling preferences. Interior was very nicely laid out, especially the instrumentation. Got back to the dealership and talked price. It was upper-end of the $50-60K range. While I would probably have been ok dropping $70K on the 5N, dropping $60 on even a higher-trim (regular) 5 felt "iffy". Probably didn't help that it was $7K more expensive than the equivalent ID4, but didn't feel like a $7K greater value.

The Volkswagen ID4:

This was a pretty good peer-offering to the Ioniq 5. Good size. Marginally-better handling. Slightly inferior display layout. Better price than the Ioniq 5 — a price that felt better value-aligned than the Ioniq 5's price. Also like the Ioniq 5, it was a bit bigger than the Mini than I'd have liked, but the size came with additional range. I believe we'd have been quite satisfied with it. Other than the better price, this would have been a coin-flip compared to an equivalently-appointed Ioniq 5. At the time, its acquisition-options were a bit more attractive than the Ioniq's: while they wanted you to lease it, it also had a zero-down, 72month 0% purchase option. I wouldn't have had to touch any of my brokerage accounts and there'd have been no pressure to speed-pay it (to save on interest costs).

Only "concern" was (like with the Ioniq) lack of color options. My wife would have been whining at me for ages about doing something about the blandness (presumably resulting in spending a few $1000s to get it skinned).

The Volvo EX30:

This was the one we ended up buying:

 

While I'm not a fan of its having taken interior design-cues from the Tesla 3 — I prefer an instrument-display that's behind the steering wheel, not the solitary, iPad-esque centrally-located display — the display-setup was at least serviceable. Overall, the interior's design is very minimalistic. From the exterior, you wouldn't be able to tell it was an EV but for its lack of a grill.

When I was trying to make my buying decision, I was looking up reviews on Car & Driver for it (and, the ID4 and the Ioniq 5). It was top-rated in its segment. I was amused to see one of the cons as having a harsh/stiff ride. To me, it's the right kind of ride: it provides plenty of feedback to the driver by way of the seat and the steering wheel: you feel very connected to the road. You also feel very connected to the car, itself — easily being able to "feel" where the corners of the car are, how much grip your tires have, etc.. It drives nice and level and stays flat in the turns.

It's a very glassy design, so, you have excellent visibility of the traffic around you. So, while there's lots of sensors to help you out with knowing where traffic and other obstacles are, you don't really need those aids (frankly, the Mach-E would have been dangerous to drive without its sensors).

Ours has the dual-electric motors powering its AWD. It has 440 brake horsepower that the AWD puts a significant percentage of straight into the ground. Unlike the AWD Mach-E, I wasn't able to casually break the tires' grip.

The car really wants to go fast, though. I mean, on the drive back from picking the car up, I went to merge onto the outer-loop of the beltway. I stomped on the throttle, and it accelerated smoothly. It, perhaps, accelerates too smoothly: I looked down and was over 100MPH and at no time did it feel like it struggled to get there nor did is suffer any buffeting or other instability. Really, it feels a lot like driving my BMW …just that it's even quicker to blow through the 100MPH mark.

Had to Get a New Car

My wife's (now "prior") car, a 2012 Mini Countryman, was just a couple months away from being thirteen years old. We'd ordered it in October of 2012. Local dealerships have, since at least 2010, kept very minimal selections of cars with manual-transmissions on their lots. Local dealerships have, since at least the late 90s, have also mostly kept "HOA-friendly" car colors (greys, silvers, blacks, whites and tans) on their lots. Between wanting a manual transmission and wanting an actual color, we had to order that car rather than being able to drive it away the same day we went to see what they had. On the plus side, they did have one car with a manual transmission, so we weren't buying wholly blind. At any rate, we'd ordered a "chili" red Countryman that finally arrived Thanksgiving week of 2012. We were out of area for the holidays, so we couldn't pick it up until the 28th.

Last year, it started to become expensive to maintain:

• A/C had become anemic in 2023 — unable to keep up with the DC summer heat when we took a road-trip to Hampton, VA  — and had all but quit by spring of 2024. So, we had to get a refrigerant recharge that May. Cost to get the recharge: nearly $1,000 
• We experienced a timing-chain failure a couple months later. Cost to repair: a shade over $6,500
• During an unusually warm period, late that autumn, we noticed that the A/C was again no longer functioning. We'd assumed that there was an age-related leak in the A/C lines and that the refrigerant we'd gotten that spring had leaked out. When we finally opted to get it fixed, this past spring, the cause had been discovered to be that during one of our trips to my mom's house, a stone had gotten up into the engine compartment and punctured the compressor. Cost to repair: a bit over $2,000
• Earlier this summer, as I was pulling out of our driveway to go to the gym, I heard a loud bang. I quickly pulled over to investigate and found a piece of metal in the road in front of our driveway at pretty much the exact location the "bang" had come from. Got the car back up in the driveway to investigate and found that the right-rear spring had broken. Cost to repair: another $2,000+

At that point, I was in the "I don't know that I can justify throwing this kind of money at a nearly 13yo car" state of mine. A couple weeks ago, as we were leaving the grocery store, the shift-selector stopped working. I thought, "great: another four- to five-figure repair bill," and decided, "I'm gonna start looking for replacement options while I wait for the estimate." Ultimately, the failure wasn't as drastic as I'd feared — the linkage-cable that connected the gear-selector's R, 1 and 2 to the gearbox had snapped. "Only" $1,500 to repair.

However, by that point, I was well into my new car shopping. When I'd started visiting dealerships, I'd figured "no trade-in" since, at nearly 13yo, I'd assumed that the repair cost was going to be higher than the trade-in value. Once I had the repair estimate, I called all the dealerships (whose cars I'd liked) back to ask about a likely trade-in value. I'd checked Edmunds for an expected value based on the condition of the Mini and it being driveable. All of the dealerships came in at the high end of what Edmunds said I should reasonably expect. So, I authorized the repair.

When I'd first gotten the repair estimate for the timing-chain, I'd had the shop hold off on the repair while I applied for and received a credit card with a 0% introductory APR and a generous credit limit. I'd put that and all subsequent repairs on that card and started paying it off. Given that Edmunds was telling me that it should be worth paying off and, even if the dealerships got fucky, I'd at least have the Mini back in driveable condition, I pulled the trigger. 

There was no fuckery, so we ended up buying a new car. Of all the cars we looked at, we ended up with a 2025 Volvo EX30:

 

It was just too fun to drive to say "no" to. I've never had a Volvo before. Never would have looked at a Volvo because, in my mind, they were staid, boxy cars for old people overly concerned about vehicle safety. Which is to, cars that had no focus on being fun to drive. With 440 brake horesepower, a 0-60 time of 3.4s, stiff suspension that makes for great cornering, this one was the most fun to drive of all the EVs we tried out. It was also the smallest we could find — being the same height and width as our Mini and only 6" longer.

Fuck Twitter (Pt. 2)

 Previously, I said, "fuck Twitter". Today, I found that I'd been temp-banned, again. Apparently, saying that someone should face the long-established legal repercussions of treasonous acts:

Is somehow in violation of Twitter's policies. Apparently, the above violates the policy of "You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so." I don't see it. I'm simply stating that Trump should face established legal consequences of his actions if those actions can be proven.

Fun fact: when you request an appeal, they offer you the option to explain why your penalty should be overturned. However, they limit your explanatory text to not even half as many characters as one is afforded for a tweet. Seems pretty obvious that both Twitter's sanction and appeal processes are a sham.

I guess that, after this (7-day) ban ends, I am going to export my posting-history and delete my account.

It's Technological Annoyances Day

Every month, I archive my personal and work emails to a separate gMail account. It helps keep my actively-monitored mailboxes manageable and provides me a good backup of old mails, "just in case". Normally, I just go into my IMAP mail-client (Thunderbird), do a search for all of the prior month's emails, select all the returns, then use my mail client's message-move feature to kick off the archival process. Normally, it's fire and forget and, depending how much mail I've sent or received in a month, it takes a few minutes to as much as an hour. Today, however, Google keeps timing out on the transfers, as though they've implemented some kind of throttling. WTF, guys. I paid for the extra storage, stop fucking messing with me.

Fuck Twitter

 So, this morning, I log in at 0600 to start my work day. As I'm waiting for the tunnels to my work-environment to set up, I hop on Twitter real quick to see if there were any overnight notifications waiting. Instead, I find:

 So, I follow the on-screen prompts to see what the fuck was the reason, this time. I find that someone had apparently reported me for the post:

I was, to say the least, incredulous. My response was to the post:

When I discovered my issue at 0600-ish, it said I had a bit over six hours left on a 12 hour ban. It asked if I wanted to appeal the temp-ban. So, I clicked on the links to do so. A little while later, I get an email saying "nope: the ban stands". It arrived ridiculously fast. Like, so fast that I have sincere doubts that such "appeals" are actually handled by humans, or, if they are even glanced at by humans, it's only in the most-cursory manner possible (likely some paid-by-the-article-reviewed wage-slave that doesn't actually bother to read the appealed-content).

I mean, the Trumps collectively post far worse on a daily basis. So to do their followers. Even after the ban of DJT and others in his hateful, pin-headed cabal, his followers continue to re-share his horrendous shit as images taken from postings on other sites.

Hell, it took DJT fanning the flames of an insurrection to get perma-banned and had taken significantly more than a joking-fantasy post to get his posts labeled with a moderation-notice (though, interestingly not actually banned).

However, if I make an obvious joke, I get hit with the (temp) ban-hammer? I mean, seriously: when am I going to have the "opportunity" to interact with any Trump, let alone this, specific shit-weasel. Even if I did get a chance to make such an offer, how likely is it that said shit-weasel would accept it – yes, I know the fucktard in question has demonstrably-poor taste in food, but even he's gotta have high enough mental-functionality to turn down a meal at a shady restaurant even if he were otherwise predisposed to accept an offer.

So, again, how is this ban-worthy at all let alone compared to the things they've posted. My post was significantly tamer than other shit, even if one is so clue-impaired as to not see the obvious joke. I get that my miniscule number of followers means I get no special consideration, but still… combined with their years of failure to meaningfully moderate, it really makes one wonder what the fuck kind of sliding-scale it is they're using.

At any rate, with the temp-ban in place and the clock counting down, I was able to at least read posts. However, given that my VPN-tunnels had finally completed their setup and I had a busy work day to attend to, I flipped away to my work virtual-desktop and attended to my work.

I finished up my work-day a bit after 1500. Went to check on my ban-status, fully expecting that, since I'd worked for 9+ hours, the ban would be over. Instead I found my Twitter tab had refreshed itself to:

And I was no longer even able to read posts. Clicking on the Start button, instead of getting me back to the reader, simply bounced me back to the above status page with a slightly decremented counter.

Also, it appears that having filed an appeal at 0600ish caused my temp-ban's timer to be reset.

So, again, "Fuck. Twitter."

You Call This Managing a Project?

 You're in charge of a decent-sized, multi-year project. You've been using a hosted ticketing- and documentation-service to manage the work and documentation for that work. Eighteen months ago, you received notice that the hoster is discontinuing their offering and that you need to be off their service by 2022-08-01 (when it goes into a read-only mode for thirty days before finally being offlined). Do you immediately start planning your move …or do you wait till July of 2022 to start trying to move everyone off?

I think you know where I'm going with this, but, "wait: there's more!"

Middle of last week, project's management-team sent out a request asking us to test their IP whitelisting solution. They had selected a new hosted ticketing- and documentation-system. However for security reasons, they didn't want it to be attackable from random people on the internet. Therefore, to access their new, hosted service, they needed to whitelist everybody. Obviously, whitelisting a primarily-remote workforce of several dozen people would be an unwieldy IP-list to maintain – especially when someone's IP changed due to, say, a power outage. So, they decided to whitelist the IP address of a bastion-host we'd set up for SSH-based tunneling into their networks. However, they didn't understand that our already whitelisted host was strictly for SSH tunneling and not a full-fledged VPN solution. They'd been told that in 2019 but never really bothered to understand the difference. This meant that they didn't understand why it wasn't really meant to be an HTTP proxy. Yes, we tunnel HTTP through it, but the whitelisted host is the first passthrough-hop in a multi-hop tunnel. The proxied HTTP content was all hosted in network-space that was topologically part of the same network-space that the egress-node of the multi-hop SSH-tunnel was in. Setting up the first-hop tunnel-host as a direct HTTP proxy would mean needing to set up a tunneled-proxy on that first-hop host …and a corresponding new browser session so it could be configured to use that new proxy-endpoint. All for for one URL.

Yesterday, they got one of the networks we tunnel to whitelisted. However, only sometimes does the login URL respond before timing out. And, when it does, the login service doesn't reliably recognize our 2FA tokens (and thus far, when I've actually been able to connect, has never recognized my token).

I reported these problems as I encountered them, but their response has been utter nonchalance, even when I reminded them "your current ticketing system dies at 0000 Monday".

Buuuut I'm Already Paying for the Streams??

 Recently, my Google Tiles have brought me a few different articles about how NetFlix is experimenting with shutting down different-household account sharing. This is the article that my tiles brought me, today.

Now, I can understand that there are people that are using NetFlix (et. al.) in a way that is providing more usage than is being paid for. That said, if your streaming plan allows for N numbers of concurrent streams, whether four individuals are using that capacity under one roof or not should be immaterial. Similarly, whether or not those four streams are being used, part-time, across four people or thirty should also be immaterial. The plans offered aren't "four concurrent streams for an aggregate of 48 streaming-hours per month", it's a max of four concurrent streams, full stop. Arguing otherwise harkens back to cellular companies and (post-consolidation/big) ISPs putting their ginormous asterisks on their "unlimited" plans.

Further, What Netflix needs to understand is, if they're selling accounts that allow for "N" concurrent streams, they aren't losing money if, as the account-owner, I retain a stream for myself and set up profiles for N-1 other users – whether under my roof or no. NetFlix offers plan tiers (per the article, $9/mo for single-concurrency; $14/mo for dual-concurrency; $18/mo for quad-concurrency). In the case of my NetFlix account, I popped for the $18/mo. plan. That allows my wife and I to be in different rooms watching two different NetFlix-hosted shows or movies. It also means I have two paid for streams left over. 

My mom's retired and every dollar counts. So, since I have the two, paid for extra streams, I set up her Roku with my login. She doesn't watch much NetFlix. Indeed, if she didn't have the use of one of my paid for, extra streams, she'd not purchase a NetFlix subscription at all.

Me? I tend to be a binge-and-suspend streamer. Which is to say: I sign up for a given streaming-service when I know they've posted a series (or several) that I want to watch; I binge the series (or a few series); I suspend or cancel my account. Why would I pay for a year of any given streaming service when I can buy just one month. Especially, why would I pay four a half-dozen streaming services for a year when each such service might only have a few weeks worth of content I'm actually interested in?

There's currently only two streaming services that I don't binge-and-suspend: NetFlix and Prime Video:

• The only reason I don't binge-and-suspend Prime Video is because it's free with my Prime account. If I had to pay for it as a standalone service ...I probably wouldn't even binge-and-suspend as their content is almost entirely garbage. The notable exceptions being their acquisition of The Expanse after SyFy canceled it plus both the Jack Ryan series and The Boys. While Amazon has had some decent original content (Borat 2 was ok, as was Coming 2 America), it's rarely been content I'd sign up for a month's worth of service for or rent via Vudu (et. al).
• I don't binge-and-suspend NetFlix almost exclusively because I'm sharing it. Basically, I don't want my mom going to actually try to watch NetFlix only to be rebuffed. Absent that share-with-my-mom anchor, NetFlix would definitely be on the binge-and-suspend list.

At any rate, doing the math – and ignoring (for now) binge-and-suspend habits – what does NetFlix stand to make by making sharing outside of a household no longer doable? Absolute best case, I roll back to a two-stream plan and my mom ponies up for a one-stream plan. If both households leave their accounts in place, month in and month out, that $18/mo becomes $23/mo for them (. This is probably what their bean-counters are selling to their executives. But, what it ignores is:

• The risk that the shared-with household won't sign up at all
• The risk that the shared-from household won't retain at least the break-even number of streams
• The risk that the shared-from household won't switch to binge-and-suspend
• The risk that the shared-from household will simply wholly discontinue service due to the annoyance of having terms changed.

The funny thing is, Netflix's primary streaming-base is younger viewers. Which is to say, viewers who are far more likely to move to binge-and-suspend usage patterns. While the risks around boomers wholly turning off or moving to binge-and-suspend consumption-style is low, boomers aren't the primary customer-demographic.

I get that there is probably a non-trivial amount of actual abuse, but you could cut down on some of it by limiting the number of viewer-profiles ...and then using ML to evaluate whether any of the configured profiles are obviously being shared far-and-wide. But, overall, it comes across like NetFlix (and supposedly others) trying to hold on to a fistful of sand by squeezing tighter. There's too many ways to circumvent controls. Right now, circumvention is minimal. But, if the early 2000s demonstrated anything, it's that circumvention will proliferate if content-owners try too hard to dictate usage-terms.

Smells Like Grift

A few weeks ago, I got a letter congratulating me on qualifying for a stimulus check. The letter further stated that if I'd filed electronically, I'd get the funds direct deposited. Since I'm still fully employed and wasn't in need of the stimulus, I didn't think much about it till last week. None of my bank accounts seemed to be surplused by the amount specified in the letter. So, I did a quick search of my accounts and found no deposits in any of them - even having checked as far back as the first of the month prior to the letter.

So, I hit the IRS check-tracking site. After entering my info, it told me an electronic payment shoould have shown up during the second half of May and to doublecheck with my bank before filing a trace-request. I double-checked and, as before, no evidence of a deposit from the IRS.

I returned to the IRS site to see what I should do. I found the steps for filing a trace. The site told me to call an 800 number. I called the 800 number where, after holding for half an hour, the person that answered my call told me that the staff answering that number don't actually have the power to initiate a trace. I instead had to call a different number – a non toll-free number. Of course, this made me wonder "why the fuck is the IRS.Gov website saying to call the 800 number rather than the number I had to get from that 800 number after the long hold??"

At any rate, I called the number. SEVERAL TIMES. Each of the first few times, the number rang, I got a message saying the call was being transferred, heard what sounded like touch-tone numbers being auto-punched ...and then dead silence. Not a summary hangup, simply dead silence. I tried a half dozen or so times, last week, each time the same as the first. With my last failure, Friday, I decided, "I'll try once more on Monday morning. If that fails, I'll re-try the 800 number and see if there's a different number to call."

This morning, instead of getting the rerouting message, I got a "estimated hold time is 30-60 minutes" message and placed in a hold-queue with not entirely insanity-inducing hold-music. At the 62-minute mark, I got a message saying the call was being transferred to a representative ...followed by what sounded like touch-tone numbers being auto-punched ...and then dead silence.

Vexed, I called the original 800 number back. Waited 15 minutes for a human to pick up. I explained why I was calling a number I knew didn't have the power to help me track my payment (and that the website said it WAS the number I needed to call). The agent told me he'd try to transfer me to the group that did have the power to do the tracing. I heard a few clicks and got transferred to a hold-queue. A hold-queue that started by telling me the current hold time was in excess of 60 minutes ...followed by the same hold music I'd already listened to for 62 minutes, today.

I set my phone to speaker mode and continued about my day's work. At about the 95 minute mark, a message saying I was being transferred, followed by what sounded like touch-tone numbers being auto-punched. This time, however, I actually got a human. She asked me for my info. She then did a quick search and tells me, "you were sent a debit card". I was a skosh incredulous given that the IRS.Gov site had said I should have received a direct deposit  – I stated as much to her, further informing her that I've been electronically filing my taxes for well more than a decade and that, prior to Trump's tax "cut" receiving my refunds via direct deposit (since the "cut", I've been electronically paying my taxes from the same accounts that the refunds were direct-deposited to). She told me to wait while she re-verified. A few seconds passed and she verified that I would have been mailed a debit card.

She then told me that the letter would have looked like junk-mail. In my head, I silently railed, "who the fuck thought it was a good idea to make these things look like junk-mail???". She also informed me that I would have to contact the card-issuer to get a new card issued. Apparently, the IRS distributed the fund by way of a commercial provider.

So, yeah, $560Bn+ was given to a corporation to distrubute. A corporation that, no doubt, is both getting a contracted-rate for administering the distribution of funds and I imagine they were given a lump-sum to distribute and are getting investment income from every dollar that they can hold onto before recipients use the last few cents of the debit card. Similarly, if a card gets "lost in the mail", then "replacement fees may apply".

And, I get that they're trying to get people to spend the money rather than throw it into savings. But forcing me to take the funds by way of  a debit card when I (fortunately) don't have any urgent expenses is just dicktacular. The whole thing smells like it was architected to line the pockets of the stimulus-distributor – probably a Trump cronie – rather than get useful money into people's hands.

Further, as someone not exactly currently in a position of need, sending me a payment now, rather than if/when I might actually need it just seems really piss-poor. These one-time, lump-sum things rather than a proper social safety-net programs don't really encourage people to spend: knowing that you'll still have money (for food and shelter) tomorrow is a better way to ensure that people will spend today (in a way that keeps the economy humming).

Then What the Fuck Was It???

Became symptomatic three Thursdays ago (19th). Lasted into the first weekend. Hadn't wanted to be a hyphochondriac or one of the people overwhelming the system. So, I avoided looking up symptoms to try to avoid psyching myself into any I wasn't already displaying. Sat on the increasing illness until that first Sunday night, then went to the CDC website and did the health survey-bot thing. It said, "call your GP about testing".

Called first thing that Monday (23rd). Their lines were, naturally, busy. I selected the "call me back" option. Day passed by with no callback. Since GP's office was due to close at 1700, I called at 1600 to find out, "yo: should I have maybe been called back by now". Got hold of one of the office staff. They said there was no record of my morning call, so, no, I wasn't on the scheduled to be called back. Naturally, I'm thinking, "damned good thing I don't really 'trust the system'." At any rate, she said the my GP was tied up, at the moment, but that she'd put me on the immediate call-back list.

GP called back about 20 minutes later. He ran me through my symptoms and reviewed my health-history chart. He agreed that my symptoms and their progression – combined with my overall health history (immunocompromised due to my arthritis medications) – would normally warrant getting the test. However, he wasn't going to prescribe one at that time. He reasoned that, because the tests take 7+ days to come back and was already four days into my symptoms, I'd presumably either be recovering or in an ER (where I'd get higher-priority testing as a result) by the time results came back. That said, he told me that if, at any point, my fever went over 101, to call immediately for a reassessment.

Couple days later, symptoms started to abate. But, a day and a half later, they returned and were worse.

Having, by that time read up on things, one of the things I'd read was that a lull followed by a return and worsening of symptoms was also a normal progress-path for COVID-19. The really unfun note about that particular progress-path was that it was the more-common one for the 20% of people that end up needing hospitalization. Dandy.

Saturday night, my temperature hit 101.7. Having hit the proverbial red line, I called the GP's after-hours number. The rotation-GP told me to switch from regular cold meds in favor of taking 1000mg/8h (3000mg/dy) of acetaminophen-only. She also prescribed me the test and instructed me to get the first appointment I could the immediately-following Monday (30th).

A few hours after taking the first 1000mg dose, my fever started to come down a skosh. The first 24 hours, it hovered in the 100.0s depending on where in the dosing sweet-spot I was. Tried to level things out a bit by switching from the 8-hour dosing of 1000mg to 4-hour dosings of 500mg. Flattened the peaks and valleys a bit by doing so.

Given that my arthritis meds already cause liver-sensitivity, I decided to follow-up with my GP a couple days later (Wednesday, Apr 1). Wanted to ask about reducing the daily intake. I wasn't relishing the thought of saving my lungs but killing my liver. GP informed me that they had patiets in clinical liver failure that tolerated over 2000mg/dy for extended periods. However, he agreed that it was probably better for me to do the "half as much twice as frequently" thing I'd already started doing and, if symptoms allowed, try to go to 500mg every 5-6 hours instead.

My symptoms were moderately controlled under that regimen between Monday and the Wednesday I'd called my GP back about dosing. Unforutnately, the night after talking to my GP, (Thursday, April 2nd) when temperature increased its upward trend to just shy of 103 even on 500mg/4h and was starting to experience right-lung constriction and pain to go along with increased violence of the hacking cough.

I thought I might have to call the ER to let them know to prepare for a possible COVID19 arrival ("possible" since results still weren't due till today). Didn't tell my wife about the ER thoughts or the lung pain and constriction because she was already freaked out by the progression of things and tends not to be proverbial "rock" when things start looking like they're at risk of going sideways.
 
At any rate, since whatever I have consistently been hitting its temperature-peaks around midnight and this spike happened around midnight (ironically, was a day or two after this spike that I read an article that said nighttime temperature-spikes were also normal for COVID-19), I decided I'd try going to sleep and see if things were less awful in the morning. Took a double-dose of Tylenol PM in hopes it would both knock me out and curb the temperature and coughing-spike. Woke up 7 hours later with my temperature back down in the mid 99.0s.

Friday wasn't much better (evening temperature continued to hover in the high 100.0s to mid 101.0s, lots of coughing, right lung not feeling quite up to par, diziness etc.), but it also wasn't worse. Since it wasn't worse, I opted to continue to defer care-escalation.

Saturday and Sunday things were starting to head in the right direction: I was able to keep my temperature in the high-to-mid 99.0s most of each day on 500mg dosings (4-5 hours Saturday; 6-8 hours on Sunday). Though, each time the thermometer did the "fever" urgent-beep, Donna would come running into the room to ask what the temperature was.

Hospital lab actually called me on a Sunday night (21:12 according to my phone logs) to let me know the results came back negative. I asked the dude, "then WTF do I have that's causing these symptoms on this trajectory and for this long??" Even my GP had said he expected the results to come back positive. He feebly replied "you'll have to talk to your GP." All I could think was "thanks, dude: real helpful."

As I'm want to do, especially when things don't seem to be adding up, I did some further reading on the virus and associated testing methodologies. Found out that, while the RT-PCR test pretty much never provides a false-positive, it had a better than 30% false-negative rate in China and elsewhere and appeared to be doing so at higher rates in the US. Further, one article I found hinted that initial testing-efficacy reviews (though they took care to note that their review of the two English-language studies they'd reviewed – others were in Chinese and they had't had a chance to translate, yet – had yet to be peer-reviewed) seemed to indicate that the oral test might be more prone to false-negatives than the nasal-test. The test I received was the oral test.

Further complicating things is that I had oral surgery in 1998. That surgery left me with a grossly-abnormal throat and posterior-sinus configuration (due to no longer having tonsils, uvula nor much of my soft palate). So, "who fucking knows".

Overall, I'm wondering if we'll ever find out what the accuracy-rates of early(ish) RT-PCR testing proves to be. I'm especially curious about the US and even collection-facility-by-collection-facility differences. Also curious if/when they might take to doing the test as a two-test battery across some period of days, especially given that China's results showed not-infrequent negative-then-positive testing-results both on asymptomatic and symptomatic carriers.