Wanderings and Maunderings

Well, January 2023 has been a lot less fun than Nov/Dec 2022.

After only 9 weeks on the new job, my contract was terminated with no warning. This is expected; proper security procedures say "do not give the disgruntled person a chance to fuck with things". What wasn't expected was the lack of explanation after the fact, or any conversations beforehand to discuss their concerns with my performance. (And every time *I* tried to instigate such a conversation, I was told, "wait until the new year when everybody is setting goals". Well, I guess now I know what goals they have for me for the new year. :/ )

I'm getting decent traction with recruiters for potential new gigs, though, so we'll see whether this is a bump in the road or retirement. (If it's retirement, that'll be OK, but we were planning on another ~10 years of income to make sure the nest egg lasts as long as we need it to at a burn rate that lets us spend our time how we want to.)

The other shoe dropped a week or so later when a friend of extremely long standing (1984 at least, possibly 1983, and now I can't !@#$% ask him) passed after years of medical issues. I have a lot I want to say about this, but I don't reckon this is the place.

Oh, and our wall oven died when its control board blew some capacitors and caught on fire; our repair folks can't find the parts, so it looks like a new oven is in our very near future, to the tune of a few thousand dollars right after I lost my job. Good thing the aforementioned nest egg is in good shape.

So, to recap: unemployed, bereft, finances are fine and will continue to be so, but big D (and not the fun kind) energy.

The Traeger has a considerably larger and more usable cooking area than the Bradley, so we're trying more things these days.

This weekend's experiment was reverse-seared tri-tip; take a 2.5-lb. triangle of beef and smoke it at 250 degrees (F) over mesquite for an hour, rest it for ten minutes or so, then throw it on a 600-degree grill for three minutes per side. Slice thin, and serve with chimichurri.

To accompany, we had Hasselback potatoes, which are a fancy presentation of a baked potato where you slice *almost* through the spud at an interval of 1/8", season, and roast. We'd never tried these before, but they looked neat and we figured what the heck?

Our green vegetable was roasted asparagus, which we have pretty much whenever Margaret notices that the grocery store has asparagus for sale (note I did not say "ON sale").

Things looked pretty good, if I do say so myself (I feel pretty good about that smoke ring, for what it's worth):


But looks will only take you so far; what really matters is how it all tastes. In reverse order of importance:

The asparagus is Margaret's usual recipe, big surprise: we like it.

The potato is tasty, but not any better than a regular baker. Given the significantly higher effort involved in the preparation, we're unlikely to ever revisit the Hasselback method.

We were super happy with the steak, though. We'd been a little worried that an hour would not be enough for the meat to pick up much smoke flavor, but the two-fire method (one fire for heat, one fire for smoke) I've settled on gave plenty of flavor and that nice smoke ring. We will definitely be adding tri-tip to our beef rotation. And a good thing too, since the Costco pack Margaret picked up to make the steak a bit more affordable had 2 steaks, so now there's one sitting in the freezer waiting its turn. :)

I did manage to smoke the bacon last Sunday, and slice/package it on Monday, but it wasn't until this weekend that I managed to actually eat any of it.

First, the smoking:

The Traeger and the Bradley both offer automated smoke and temperature management, but they differ significantly in how they provide that management.

The Bradley separates smoke production from heat management, but handles both electrically.

The smoke generator is a detachable (more on this later) box that hangs on the outside of the food chamber. It's got a hopper to hold "Bisquettes" (tm), which are hockey-sized pucks (maybe a little smaller) of compressed wood chips. Every twenty minutes, the smoke generator pushes a puck from the hopper onto an electric hot plate near the bottom of the food chamber which is held at the right temperature to slowly burn the wood and let the smoke out. When the new puck loads onto the hot plate, the old one is pushed off into a small bowl of water at the bottom of the food chamber. Four or five pucks is enough to fill up the water dish, so every hour or so I go out and empty the bowl and refill it with water.

The food sits on racks above the hot plate, so the rising smoke passes across the food on its way out the top of the chamber.

On the temperature side, there is an electric heating element inside the food chamber, controlled from the digital panel on the smoke generator box. The element sits at about the same level as the hot plate, at the back of the chamber. The result is that lower food items, and those toward the rear of the chamber, get more heat than the ones toward the front and top. To counteract this tendency, every time I change the water bowl, I also rotate the racks down one step (and the bottom one to the top), and spin them back-to-front. Takes about two minutes an hour to do all of this, which is a lot less effort than managing a real fire would be, which is what allowed me to get started on smoking in the first place. I like barbecue a lot, but not enough to completely give up my weekends to it.

The Bradley does an OK job of maintaining temperature. IF I get the flue set right for the smoke box and outside temperatures, then it keeps things at the set temperature plus or minus about ten degrees F. That's always been good enough for smoking, and the box tops out at about 320 degrees F, so I'm not doing any real cooking in it anyway.

The Traeger, on the other hand, gets both heat and smoke from the wood pellets that it burns. There's a hopper on the side of the Traeger, and an auger that slowly advances pellets into the fire chamber in the middle of the grill floor. The hopper holds around 20 lbs. of pellets (give or take, depending on your model) and goes through them at a rate of one to three lbs. per hour, depending on your temperature setting. Most of the things I smoke are going to be on fairly low temperatures, so I expect to get close to 20 hours per hopper refill.

The user's manual says I should vacuum the ash out of the firebox about every 20 hours of grilling, so no need to open the grill up and let all the heat and smoke out for any purpose other than checking the food. This is already significantly lower-maintenance than the Bradley, and that's saying something.

Adding to the ease-of-use, over the five hours I ran it for the bacon, it was always within two or three degrees of the set temperature, except right after the couple of times I opened it up to check on things.

AND ON TOP OF THAT, the Traeger is big enough that I can easily get all three pieces of pork belly (I originally divided the full 10-lb. bellies into thirds because that's how it fits on the Bradley racks, but it turns out that's also the ideal size to fit into a gallon freezer bag for curing) onto a single rack, and the heat diffuser/grease tray between the fire and the food means the temperature is consistent the length and breadth of each rack, so now I don't have to rotate and spin my racks either. I checked the bacon at two hours and four hours, and brought it in the house at 4.5.

The ease-of-use bottom line: Bradley, A-; Traeger, OMG

The other major difference, to which I've alluded above, is the size/form factor.

The Bradley has 4 slide-in/out trays at 10"x14", for a total of 560 square inches of cooking surface. I actually have 8 total trays, so for certain foods that are less than about 3/4" thick, I can double the surface area by inverting four of the racks and stacking them two per slot, but not many applications will work this way. (Basically, I did a double batch of jerky once and it worked fine.) The Bradley racks are small and light enough that I can transport food in and out of the house on them, saving some effort and dishwashing.

The Traeger, only has three racks, and they are not very portable. On the other hand, they are HUGE, measuring in at 16"x33", 14"x33", and 8"x33", for a total surface area of 1254 square inches. The two larger racks will both easily accommodate a full packer brisket, though I'm going to have to work up to smoking one of those. Maybe next summer or fall, but no promises. Right now, the biggest advantage is that I can get what would have to go on three or four racks at different levels (and thus temperatures) in the Bradley, all onto the same level in the Traeger, which is going to make things a lot more consistent and predictable.

Size/form-factor bottom line: Bradley, B-; Traeger, A

The one place where the Traeger can't measure up to the Bradley is in cold-smoking. Cold smoking is great for foods that would melt or otherwise be rendered less yummy by heat, like cheese, deviled eggs, and salmon.

You'll recall that I mentioned above the fact that the Bradley smoke generator detaches from the side of the food chamber. This allows for the insertion of an auxiliary box and chimney between the smoke generator and the food chamber. Move the smoke generator's hot plate out of the food box, turn off the heating element, and there's nothing left to raise the temperature in the food box much above ambient.

The Traeger, on the other hand, does both heat and smoke from the firebox that can't be removed from the bottom of the grill. There are workarounds to approximate cold-smoking on the Traeger, but they all involve putting your food in a pan and then putting that pan into a bigger pan that's been filled with ice, which I probably don't have to tell you is going to be finicky and error-prone. (Although you could probably re-freeze the ice cubes after they've been in the smoke and use them to chill your whiskey, just sayin'.)

My solution? I just ordered a replacement smoke generator for the Bradley, and I will continue to use it for cold-smoking.

Cold-smoking bottom line: Bradley, A; Traeger, Did Not Attempt

But what about non-smoking applications? What if I have, say, a couple of steaks/chops/burgers? Can I use either of these devices for that?

The Bradley, probably not. I've had good luck and tasty results with higher-temperature (~300 degrees F) smoking bratwursts and similar foods, but it doesn't get anywhere close to hot enough to put a proper sear on a real chunk of meat.

The Traeger tops out at 550 degrees F, though, and I've heard from other owners (hi, JT!) that it makes a mean tri-tip, so I think if you want a good all-around smoker/grill, the Traeger's probably got you covered.

Personally, though, my Weber holds consistently at 600-650 degrees, and that few extra degrees makes a big difference to getting a steak the way I like it, which is good and seared on the outside, but not too warm on the inside. If you don't dig your steaks bloody, the Traeger's probably going to do you just fine.

Steaks bottom line: Bradley, D; Traeger, B+, Weber, A

Of course, it hardly matters how easy it is to use a smoker, or how much you can cram into it, if it doesn't produce quality 'cue. As you know, I am super enthusiastic about both the bacon and beef jerky I get from my Bradley; I have not had store-bought jerky since I got it, and we fairly quickly weaned ourselves off of store-bought bacon, except for applications that are not worthy of the homemade stuff. There is probably (for me) no more crucial test of a new smoker than how it handles my bacon recipe.

On the plus side, the Traeger has the ease of use and consistency of temperature, which mean the actual smoking process went smoothly and within the expected time.

BUT

It turns out that Traeger-brand Apple pellets are ~70% alder, and only ~30% apple wood (if you are on the east coast, the base wood is oak, not alder). There's nothing inherently wrong with wood blends for smoking; most professional pit bosses (I understand) have their own proprietary blends of wood to get exactly the flavor profile they're looking for. But Bradley bisquettes are, as best I have been able to determine, 100% the wood listed on the side of the box, and thus the flavor profile I've gotten used to for my bacon is 100% apple. Alder has a much milder flavor, so the new batch of bacon is considerably less smoke-forward than I'm looking for, which also causes it to taste a little saltier than usual. (My father-in-law tells me he prefers this version, going so far as to call it "perfect", so your mileage may well vary.)

To be clear, even this batch that I'm not completely happy with is still head-and-shoulders above the store-bought stuff. It's not like I'm going to be throwing it away.

Bacon flavor bottom line: Bradley, A+; Traeger, Incomplete

One of the reasons Traeger gives for using alder/oak as a base for their pellets is that alder and oak provide more consistent and controllable heat, which could certainly be a consideration, so I've got some testing ahead of me.

It's very hard to find a supplier for Bradley-style bisquettes that isn't, well, Bradley, which makes it fairly easy to decide what brand to use.

Food-grade wood pellets (for the love of God, Montresor, do NOT use pellet-stove-heater pellets in your pellet grill; most or all of the heater pellets have toxic additives that you don't want in your food and/or softwood sawdust that make bad-tasting smoke), on the other hand, are supplied by LOTS of folks; nearly every maker of a pellet grill has their own brand of pellets (and all of them say you should ONLY use their brand of pellets in their brand of grill), plus there are easily dozens of third-party pellet suppliers, each with their own EXTREMELY vocal band of fans. Add to the fact that wood pellet makers are in no wise required to disclose the actual ingredients that go into their pellets, and the Browser Wars of fond memory pale by comparison.

So I'll be trying various brands and flavors of pellets until I find the right mix. It could take me years and years of producing almost-perfect bacon, brisket, and pulled pork until I find what I'm looking for, but I think I'm up to the task.

To be clear, I do still recommend the Bradley for beginning smokers; the ease of use and great results add up to excellent value for the money, and the cold-smoking adapter greatly expands your repertoire (you might never buy smoked cheese at the store again either).

But I'm very happy so far with the Traeger as an upgrade, and once I find some pellets that perform the way I want them to, I don't think I'll have any regrets having moved on from the Bradley. (Especially since I'll still have the Bradley for cheese and deviled eggs. :) )

Unfortunately, we have run out of bacon.

Fortunately, we've got our bacon recipe down to a science.

Unfortunately, it takes a week to cure the pork belly to the point where we can smoke it.

Fortunately, we started curing the latest belly last Friday, so it's ready to smoke today.

Unfortunately, the smoke controller does not handle the cold well and it is December.

Fortunately, bringing the controller into the house the night before usually warms it up enough to get started, and then the heat it generates itself is enough to keep it going.

Unfortunately, it seems that wasn't enough this morning, and the temperature-down button still doesn't work.

Fortunately, the temperature-UP button works just fine.

Unfortunately, the default starting temperature is significantly higher than the temperature I need for bacon, so being able to increase the temperature does not help me.

Fortunately, I have a dedicated fire-management hair dryer that I can use for applying direct heat to the smoke controller.

Unfortunately, even that is not enough to get the button working.

Fortunately, Bradley smokers have a robust support community and I was able to learn that this is a common problem (eventually the creosote builds up in the electronics and messes them up) and should be easy to fix, given the right parts.

Unfortunately, Bradley customer support (the source of said parts) is strictly a Monday-to-Friday operation and since we took it out of the cure last night, the bacon needs to be smoked ASAP. Ideally today, but absolutely no later than tomorrow.

Fortunately, I have had my eye on a super-nice replacement smoker that would significantly expand my repertoire and capacity.

Unfortunately, it is not inexpensive.

Fortunately (?), we didn't go anywhere on vacation this year, so the entertainment budget is in better shape than most years, and we can afford it.

Unfortunately, there's no way I can get it shipped to me in time to smoke the pork belly that is sitting in the fridge right now.

Fortunately, we discover that a reasonably-local Ace Hardware store (truly, Ace IS The Place) sells the exact model I want.

Unfortunately, they sell UN-assembled models.

Fortunately, when I call them to check stock, they volunteer the information that they've got a display model on the floor, already assembled, and they're willing to sell me that one.

So now I'm the proud owner of a new Traeger Timberline 1300 pellet smoker/grill, and our bacon gratification should only be delayed by a day.

The new smoker won't do cold smoking, but the old one should still work for that.

A coda, if you will, to the ballad of the second DSL line.

You may recall that we left our story with the line installed and the second modem apparently working, and a happy ending assumed by all.

HOWEVER

It turned out that line stability continued to be a problem, in both small and large ways. Small, in that after a couple hours of uptime (or less!), the system would enter a sequence where the modem would detect a dropped connection and spend ~40 seconds reestablishing it. Once this started happening, it would happen over and over again, at intervals of no more than five and often down to around one minute. The modem logs were an absolute joy to read, not because they were exceptionally well-written, but because I had proof.

The large issue was that most evenings, the connection would drop entirely between 10:00 and 11:30 pm, and then it was even odds whether it would have recovered by the time we got up the next morning or if I'd have to reboot the modem.

The small problem wasn't a huge issue for my working from home, as I have few video meetings and the drop-reconnect cycle was *usually* short enough that my VPN would not notice and force a reauthentication.

It played holy havoc with our gaming, however.

A call to customer support resulted in a technician being dispatched to the site. For a change, the delay was only a couple of days, not the two weeks that every prior appointment had required.

When the tech arrived (around 9:00 am this Friday), he confirmed the issue, tested the line with his diagnostic box, and swapped in a THIRD modem, which started just fine and seemed to be doing all right. (Through it all, the techs they've sent out have been professional, helpful, and generally competent. I have no complaints on that front. For that matter, the customer service reps have all been friendly and as helpful as they can be given their limited toolset.)

It only took a couple hours after the tech left, though, before it became clear that the stability issues were still with us. I was busy with work, though, so I couldn't call support and complain until after hours, at which point there wasn't any point.

Saturday morning was tied up with family stuff, but the afternoon was completely free, and I had a very interesting conversation with the support tech. Turns out the local CenturyLink switch has been marked in their system as "permanent exhaust", which (an amusing misunderstanding on my part aside) turns out to mean that CenturyLink has sold more bandwidth on that circuit than it is possible for them to actually provide, "which," the tech told me in the understatement of the week, "can lead to some packet loss".

In other words:
1) The connection will always be unstable.
2) They know the connection will always be unstable.
3) They cannot repair the connection because it's not a problem with the connection causing the instability.
4) They have no intention to ever upgrade the hardware to get it so that it is not "permanently exhausted".
5) They sold me this service anyway.

Turns out the account retention staff only works during business hours, Monday through Friday, so (you will recall, I hope, that it was Saturday) the support tech was unable to comply with my next request. (Which was "cancel the service", obviously, I don't even know where you came up with whatever YOU were thinking.)

This morning, though, I called account retention and they not only canceled the service, they're sending me a check for all the money I've paid them for this service that never worked right, that never COULD work right, and even if I'd kept it, never WOULD work right.

Caused me to tell Margaret, "If it had been half as easy to get this service installed and working as it was to cancel it, I never would have needed to cancel it!"

Thread links:
IT BEGINS

Clearly I should have started lower on the scale.

My replacement modem did not arrive yesterday, after the support tech explicitly told me on Wednesday it would be shipped VIA overnight delivery, leaving the facility the next day (Thursday).

This morning, I chat with CenturyLink CS AGAIN and, after it takes the agent TWENTY MINUTES AND THREE SECONDS to look up the order (I have the chat transcript), I'm given a UPS tracking number.

Which UPS claims is invalid.

I'm also told to "Rest assured that your modem will be delivered 5-7 days to deliver from the date it was shipped out."

SO my best guess is that 1) APPARENTLY (there is a small possibility that an overbusy UPS system missed the arrival scan for the package) the modem has not actually been shipped yet AT ALL, and 2) The modem has NOT been / will NOT be shipped via overnight delivery, so it will take 5-7 business days to arrive from the time it actually IS shipped.

So my next step is to WAIT until UPS finally scans the package into the system, at which point I'll have a delivery estimate. OR wait until I get tired of UPS NOT scanning the package into the system, and reach out AGAIN to CenturyLink to discuss at what point we consider the shipment lost and have them send ANOTHER new modem which I will then have to wait until UPS does or does not scan the package into the system to find out whether I have a delivery date or a need to reach out to CenturyLink.

Thread links:
IT BEGINS
NEXT: A resolution at last.

Got a robocall from CenturyLink today, apologizing for not being able to complete the scheduled service on the scheduled date and telling me that they'll be back tomorrow between 8 and 5 to try again.

And all I can think is, hey, at least they TOLD ME THIS TIME.

If something screws up tomorrow, I'm going to need to find a new icon, because I've used up my progression of sad/angry ones.

Thread links:
IT BEGINS
NEXT: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MONTRESOR

On September 24 (or 25), I call CenturyLink to see if there is any way to increase the bandwidth on my DSL connection to something better than 12Mbps. There is not.

With three of us working and/or schooling from home, the current connection is not sufficient.

So, I do a thing which I've been avoiding all year. I order a second line. No problem, they can have a tech out on 10/9 to install that ("Between 8 am and 5 pm"). Longer than I want to wait, but it is what it is, I guess.

On September 30, I call them again to see if they can send me a replacement modem for my first line, because the old modem is needing to be rebooted a couple of times a day. No problem, they can ship that out to me in 3-5 days. Again, longer than I want to wait, but there's still nothing to be done about it.

On October 9, I am owed a comp day for working through the previous weekend (which is a whole 'nother fiasco, but I digress), so I take the day off so I can be available whenever the tech arrives. Around 2:00, a tech does arrive, but to install a new phone jack. (Wait, what?) He doesn't have the DSL order, but suggests that maybe another tech has that job assigned. And another phone jack *is* a requirement for the second line, so OK, I guess. (But in retrospect, how could *they* know that? My phone and networking setup is...unique for a residence)

Except no other tech ever DOES show up.

Oh, and the replacement modem isn't here either.

By the time I realize the DSL isn't happening, it's too late to talk to a person on the CLink customer service line, but maybe I can use their online chat, right?

Apparently not; I click the link on the "recently redesigned!!!" website, but nothing happens.

That's OK, maybe I'll be less angry tomorrow.

"Tomorrow" is Saturday; no phone CS reps, but chat is supposed to be available.

Except the chat link still doesn't work. WTF?

Fortunately, I have a small amount of experience with websites, and I have four different browsers installed on my machine. I switch to Chrome (from Firefox). The chat link works in Chrome. I grumble under my breath about companies who can't be arsed to do basic compatibility testing, but the chat link is working, and that's what's important right now.

Two HOURS later, I have texted with FOUR DIFFERENT PEOPLE and have learned:
1) My DSL order was input as a request for a new phone jack, and they are charging me $100 for something I did NOT order.
2) NO other DSL order was submitted, the phone jack was it.
3) They have NO RECORD of my order for a new modem for the first DSL line.
4) The fourth rep I texted with is able to order the new line (to be installed on October 22) and the replacement modem (the latter will ship "next business day"--we'll come back to this), but they CAN'T refund me for the phone jack that I did not order. (They *can* offer me a $12 credit for the inconvenience, though!) They do give me a phone number for the customer retention department, BUT they disconnect the chat before I have a chance to copy it down (and the "save transcript" button is only available WHILE THE CHAT IS ACTIVE).

I start a new chat to see if I can get the number again, but the techs I text with can't or won't share it. Not a big deal, I know how to get through the IVR to them, I just have to say in an angry voice when the computer asks me how to route my call, "CANCEL MY SERVICE" and I'm in.

(I should note, I'm not yelling at any of the CS reps; it's not their fault that the company they work for is a piece of shit with a monopoly that means they don't actually have to care about their customers. And every rep I worked with seemed like they were genuinely trying to help, they just don't have the tools to do what needs to be done. I do a couple of times have to break out "I am very angry, but that isn't because of anything you've done and I'm not angry at you personally".)

Unfortunately, the retention department is not available on Saturdays. Or Sundays.

So on Monday, I call the main switchboard and say my line. The rep I speak with confirms that the orders from Saturday do exist and seem correct, and reassures me that we'll be credited for the phone jack installation.

Also on Monday, around 12:30 PM, I get a text telling me that my replacement modem for the first line has shipped, with a UPS tracking number. Tracking the package tells me that UPS does not have the package yet, and expects to deliver it on Thursday, and this is when I discover that "We will send it 'next business day' " ACTUALLY means "we will send it ON the next business day, but we will use standard shipping when we do so."

The good news is the modem DOES actually arrive on Thursday, and I have not needed to reboot it since I installed and configured it.

So all that's left is install the new line, sometime between 8 and 5 on October 22.

You may have noticed that this post was written AFTER 5:00 on October 22.

I'm not leaving things to chance this time, though. Around 2:00 I call CenturyLink because I have not had any kind of contact from them or their tech, but the CS rep looks up my account and finds the DSL order is still there, and still scheduled for today.

Except.

Except then it's 4:55 and nobody has showed up, so I once again try chatting with CenturyLink CS, which leads to this exchange:

CS Rep (10/22/2020, 4:59:52 PM): Checking the order
CS Rep (10/22/2020, 5:00:07 PM): 10/22/2020 Your work request has been completed.
CS Rep (10/22/2020, 5:00:19 PM): EST COMPL TIME 10/22/2020 02:11 PM
George Mitchell (10/22/2020, 5:00:28 PM): Nobody has been here
George Mitchell (10/22/2020, 5:00:34 PM): I do not have a new modem
George Mitchell (10/22/2020, 5:02:36 PM): I just checked the front porch in case the tech delivered the modem without ringing the bell. There is nothing there.

When she drills further into the details, she discovers that the service has been postponed until tomorrow. (I'm guessing the record of completion was the tech marking it postponed, but I don't know for sure and that is a truly TERRIBLE ticketing system if postponement looks like completion at a casual glance.) Of course, nobody has deigned to let me know about that. Which, you know, Kevin-Kline-voice dis-a-POINT-ed.

While texting, it turns out they expect that this will be a "contactless" service, which I'm not sure how they think they can manage that when THE MODEM HAS TO BE DELIVERED AND INSTALLED. (To be fair, I *can* install and configure it myself, and I fully intend to do so, because see above unique network setup, but again, *they* have no way to know that.)

When I asked about the modem, she looked it up and found me a tracking number; apparently UPS has this modem too, and expects to deliver it by 9:00 pm today.

In a humorous twist that you would only expect (and would never believe) in a movie, AS I AM COPYING THE TRACKING NUMBER SO I CAN TRACK THE PACKAGE, I hear a truck drive up to the house. I go up to check the porch, and IT IS A PACKAGE FROM CENTURYLINK. THE PACKAGE CONTAINS A DSL MODEM.

Remember I was literally at my front porch not five minutes ago to check for the modem and it was not there. This is my life.

I bring the package in and set it on my desk. I let the CS rep know that it has arrived. She is gratified and amazed.

I ask if we can have a window that's a little more precise than "8 to 5". She says she can't do that. We say goodbye. I start typing this novel.

I realize that the modem package smells like cigarette smoke.

To which I am allergic.

Thread links:
NEXT: CenturyLink update

OK, we've had the Model 3 about six weeks now. The new car smell is (mostly) gone, and I've got a pretty good idea what I think.

First off, the technology gap between this car and the 2009 Accord (our newest prior vehicle) is astounding, though I'm not sure how much of that gap is just the nine years of general automotive advancement (I suspect more than I think), how much is the upgraded trim package (the Accord is the top trim package available, but Honda is not a premium brand), and how much is the Tesla-ness of the thing (I suspect actually not very much, outside the power train).

A partial list of technology features that make driving the Tesla qualitatively different than driving any of my previous cars:

- Adaptive cruise control: The car detects vehicles ahead of it and slows down, or even stops if necessary to avoid hitting them. I know this isn't a Tesla exclusive because I've had low-end rental cars with the feature, but this is the first time I've actually gotten to sit with the feature for long enough to get used to it. Now that I have, I think it's a must-have for all future vehicles if it's available. If there's enough traffic to keep me from ever being the front car at a stoplight, I can make almost the entire driving leg of my commute without touching either the accelerator or the brakes.

- Regenerative braking: My Accord Hybrid had regenerative braking, but only when I explicitly applied the brakes. The Tesla engages regeneration as soon as my foot comes off the accelerator (and in fact before I come completely off it), with the effect that the car decelerates more quickly than it would if I were managing the process. The upshot is that I rarely have to actually apply the brakes except to bring the car to a final stop at a particular point. It also gives me much more control over the speed of the car, because reducing pressure on the accelerator gives me some braking, so I don't have to move my foot back and forth between the accelerator and the brake pedal, just manage my leadfoot. This made driving Old Highway 30 along the Columbia Gorge even more fun than I was expecting, and I've been overdriving that road for years.

- The touchscreen: Having no dashboard and putting the controls for the vehicle on a touchscreen off to the side is...not implemented as well as it could be. Many controls require at least two taps of the touchscreen, and the buttons are smallish and hard to hit accurately when you can only glance away from the road. The motion of the car makes hitting the controls even more difficult, even for the passenger. Much of the display is in a fairly small font, again making it difficult to find and process information in short glances. Aggravating this is the fact that, on top of age making it more difficult for my eyes to focus, my right eye has macular degeneration in the center of the field of vision, so things that might be accomplishable with a glance from a younger driver with undamaged eyes require a longer look for me. To be fair, most of the essential controls are mapped to the steering wheel and the two control levers, but the tour we got of the car did not describe most of those shortcuts, and we didn't know enough at the time to ask the necessary questions. It was almost a week before I could consistently get the turn signal to stay on longer than three blinks, and I formulated two false models of how that system worked before I got it right. (RTFM helped, but TFM is 169 pages and does not include screenshots, so if you don't see the control it tells you to click, you can't tell whether the control is missing or if you're just in the wrong place in the UI.) I'd still much rather have an additional display panel in front of the steering wheel, where I can glance more safely.

- Automatic headlights, highbeams, and windshield wipers: The Accord has automatic headlights, where the car detects the ambient lighting conditions and turns the headlights on as it gets darker, but the Model 3 leverages its detection of other vehicles and turns the brights on and off as it feels necessary. Its algorithm for this is not perfect, as it tends to think bright yellow road signs are also cars for this purpose, so it dims when it sees them, and if there's a car on the fringe of its distance threshold, it can catch itself in cycling the brights quickly, which makes me look like an asshole to the other drivers, so I so exercise my prerogative to turn the auto-brights off, but usually it's a neat feature. And auto wipers? Since I discovered *that* feature, I haven't adjusted my wipers once.

As far as actually driving the car, I think I love it. It's mostly comfortable to sit in, gives a solid-feeling ride, settles nicely into turns, and accelerates better than anything I've ever driven before. I haven't observed (yet) any of the fit-and-finish issues that owners reported with earlier builds.

When the cruise control is off, it's a hell of a lot of fun to drive, especially if the road has interesting curves. (Though a caveat: with no engine noise, it's much more difficult to judge speed, and at least early on, I found myself having trouble with curves because I entered them ten to twenty mph faster than I thought.)

When the cruise is *on*, driving is boring. Because the cruise integrates braking, when you set a speed, that's the speed you go. Uphill, downhill, doesn't matter, though it will slow down for curves, which doesn't make it *less* boring. There's a valley between home and Silverdale that makes for a nice roller-coaster feel in a normal car, as you accelerate down the hill and then pull some Gs as you get to the bottom and start back up. In the Model 3, though, it's 44 mph down, 44 mph at the bottom, 44 mph back up. You barely even notice. I *guess* this is a feature.

The biggest concerns folks have about an all-electric vehicle are probably range and charging. The short answer here is "no problem".

The advertised range for my model (long-range, dual-motor AWD, not the high-performance package) is 310 miles on a full battery, or ~270 miles at 90%--Tesla tells me that charging the battery all the way all the time is bad for longevity, and I prefer to keep my cars for at least 10 years and/or 100,000 miles--and that seems to hold up pretty well. *I* burn the range down faster than that, but I drive faster and harder than average, let alone ideal, and I'm pretty sure I'm still getting ~240-250 miles off that 90% charge, which is plenty to get us down to Portland without stopping, plenty to get us to Vancouver BC, especially if we grab a ferry instead of driving south through Tacoma to get there. Longer trips would require 1-2 stops per day at superchargers, more about which below.

When we built the house, we wired all three bays in the garage with 240V outlets, so charging at home is a non-issue; even if the battery were flat, we can charge it back to full in 8-10 hours. For daily commuting, it takes about an hour or so to get back the charge I burned that day. We haven't had it that long, and it's hard to tease electricity usage changes month-to-month, so we might never know how much it costs us to keep the car charged, especially when you try to account for the solar panels.

Out on the road, Tesla supercharging stations are plentiful, and even though I bought in too late to get free lifetime supercharging, they only charge me 25 cents/kWh, which means a full charge from 0 to the 85kWh my battery holds would cost me about $20. Many places have "destination charge stations"; the lodge we stayed at on our last Portland trip (our first and so far only Tesla road trip) had one, so it was free to recharge the car overnight, and that took care of all our charging needs the whole trip. We did try other charging options as we were out and about, but that was to get an idea how the infrastructure works, not because we needed juice.

The big practical difference between refueling and recharging, of course, is the time. As I mentioned above, a 240V outlet takes overnight to recharge, which is clearly not workable when you want to go farther than 300 miles in a day. Even the supercharging stations take around an hour to recharge you, which obviously compares unfavorably to a five-minute stop at a gas station. Supposedly, Tesla chooses locations for supercharging stations such that there's something to do (restaurants, shopping) while you wait, but we haven't had much opportunity yet to test that out.

All in all, I think the Model 3 is too small for long family trips, especially with the amount of gear the three of us travel with. So for our purposes, we'll probably be in a gas-powered or hybrid SUV or crossover when we go farther than Portland or Vancouver. I might go farther than that on a solo photography trip; I usually drive (as opposed to flying) as far out as Kalispell or maybe Yellowstone. Assuming I ever have the spare vacation time to go on solo photography trips again.

Left out of the narrative: customer support that ranges from unresponsive to bad; terrible delivery-day experience; software UI designed poorly for while you're driving.

I read somewhere* that a society has the morality it can afford**, and the statement has stuck with me for thirty years. It resonated with me because it shone a light on a thing I'd observed but hadn't really thought about in any kind of organized way.

It speaks, I think, to the idea that there is a hierarchy of needs for societies as well as for individuals. If your community can barely feed and defend yourselves, any morality that says outsiders are equal to group members in humanity, and in their right to the resources necessary to survival, is a morality that will lead to the death of the community. Such a community cannot afford to allow group members to act in a way that does not support the immediate needs of the community; dissension is death.

But a community that outproduces its needs is a community that can afford charity, that can afford to see interactions with outsiders not as zero-sum, if-they-gain-we-lose, but as an opportunity for both sides to gain. It is a community that can afford to view outsiders not as enemies, but as potential allies, and it is a community that can afford to have group members question and argue against the prevailing norms.

And the wealthier a community becomes, the more it is able to view differences not as threats but as strengths. The more it is able to welcome outsiders into the fold, and allow them to contribute to the wealth of the community, increasing the speed of the feedback loop. The more it can afford to look at the group members it has repressed in the past, and extend to them more and more of the privileges afforded by default to the "core" members.

It's important to acknowledge, of course, that what the community can afford will always outpace what the community will allow, for a variety of reasons, most of them selfish. From the history of our own community, slavery persisted long after it made economic sense, which itself was longer than we actually needed slavery in order for the community to prosper. Women's suffrage, the Civil Rights movement, LGBTQ rights, giving women the right to control their bodies themselves, have all lagged criminally behind society's ability to accommodate them.

All of which is a longwinded setup for my actual statement which is this:

The current administration and their collaborators in Congress are not only trying to roll back all the moral progress we have made since WWII (or even longer) as a society, as a nation, and in the world, their attempts to wreck the economy, if successful, will also destroy a great deal of our ability to afford that moral progress. To, in effect, go back to the days when blatant and overt racism, sexism, homo- and trans-phobia, are not only tolerated, but expected and encouraged.

We've seen, over and over again, the right try to block or roll back the rights that have been so hard-fought and won by non-rich, white, straight, cis men.

We've never that I can recall seen the right actually, credibly attack the engines of economic prosperity that allowed those rights to win through.

The rich sycophants to the Trump regime don't care if the pie gets smaller, as long as they get a bigger share. In fact, they'll actively conspire to shrink the pie. And the working- and middle-class white folks who voted for him appear perfectly happy to accept that they're going to lose out "bigly", as long as the folks they look down on are punished even worse.

This is big. This is important. This is not normal.

We need to prevent this from becoming normal.

* in Niven and Pournelle's _Lucifer's Hammer_, if I am remembering correctly.

** I learned much later of MLK's statement, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice", which I think is an observation of the same phenomenon.