Posted inCars Home life

If you’re a Tesla owner, beware of Tesstudio

Buyer beware. That's always good advice. It's especially good advice if you're thinking about buying something from Tesstudio, which sells Tesla accessories and has horrible customer service. My tale of Tesstudio woe hasn't reached a conclusion yet. But I've learned enough about the company to make me want to get this blog post warning out into cyberspace as soon as possible. As a new Model Y Juniper owner, I was concerned that the large glass roof would heat up my car too much in the summer. Actually, I've learned that this isn't a major concern here in western Oregon, as…
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Posted inGrowing older Home life

When it comes to friends, quality is more important than quantity

It's been a while since I've heard the proverb, two's company, three's a crowd.  But it fits with an important conclusion in a story I came across in the May 11, 2026 issue of TIME magazine, "The Myth of the Adult Friend Group." Here's a PDF version of the story in case that link doesn't work for you. The Myth of the Adult Friend Group The author, Meehika Barua, speaks of chasing the fantasy of TV shows like Friends and Sex and the City where a tight-knit group of close friends hang out daily, sharing the ups and downs of…
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Posted inDogs Home life

Our rural south Salem property is looking good in its Spring greenness

We don't get a lot of visitors to our home in rural south Salem, Oregon. I like to share photos on my blog, so all the work we put into our property -- either hired, which we're doing more of as we age, or directly by my wife and I -- gets more views than it otherwise would. This is my favorite view of our yard. Our house is barely visible on the far left. Trees abound. The large old oak in the center of the photo, at the end of the lawn, lost a huge limb in the Great…
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Posted inCars Home life Uncategorized

With Tesla easing out of the car-making business, the BMW ix3 electric SUV looks appealing

My wife and I were early electric car buyers. Too early. Because we only kept the 2011 Nissan Leaf we bought for about eight months. Even though it just had a range of about 100 miles, there were other reasons why we sold it and bought a Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid. Now I'm driving a gas-powered Subaru Crosstrek, while my wife has a Toyota RAV 4 plug-in hybrid. It has enough electric range that she has to worry about its gasoline going bad if the car hasn't been driven out of town for a while. For my next car, I'd…
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Posted inHome life

Yay! We qualify for solar panels, even though our house is surrounded by tall trees

Today I got some good news. After seeing an ad in the Oregonian by Energy Trust of Oregon, I took them up on an offer to have reputable solar companies contact me, rather than taking a chance on the many posts I see on Facebook by firms making grandiose claims about how much a homeowner can save by installing their solar panels. Soon after I filled out an Energy Trust form with my address and contact information, I heard from someone who grew up in our rural south Salem neighborhood, and still lives nearby. Miles Henderson works in sales with…
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Posted inFamily Home life

I just learned about placeholder relationships. Sure didn’t apply to me and my wife.

Thanks to an article in TIME magazine by Meehika Barua, "The Rise of the Placeholder Partner," recently I learned about placeholder relationships. Barua explains what this means in her opening paragraphs. A friend of mine got out of a six year relationship, only to have her ex marry someone new within six months. Another woman I met at a networking event recently has been with her boyfriend for a decade, waiting on a ring. Every time they go on a vacation, she wonders if this holiday will be the one where he will propose, only to be dejected on the…
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Posted inHome life

We’re loving our Daikin heat pumps that we bought from Advantage Heating & Air Conditioning in Salem

I enjoy giving praise to local businesses who provide a great product and excellent service. So this is my shout-out to Advantage Heating & Air Conditioning, who installed two Daikin Fit heat pumps at our house after our previous heat pumps reached the end of their useful life. We've used Judson's for most of the thirty-five years we've lived here in rural south Salem. They're also a fine company, but in the past few years we've noticed a decline in the quality of their maintenance and repair work on our American Standard heat pumps. Won't go into the details, as…
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Posted inHome life

I just ordered six months of emergency food in case the Big One earthquake hits

The Big One earthquake is a matter of when, not if, for us here in the Pacific Northwest. In 2015 an article in the New Yorker brought a lot of attention to the massive Cascadia subduction zone earthquakes that periodically strike our area of the world. I quoted from the article in "People of Pacific Northwest: Be scared, very scared. The Big One is coming." By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating…
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Posted inHome life Writing/Weblogs

Big news in our 2025 Christmas letter: we’re alive!

Every year about this time, out of the depths of my unconscious rises, unbidden, a theme for our Christmas Letter, a.k.a. Holiday Greetings. This year it was being alive -- which used to be one of the purposes of sending Christmas cards in the not-so-ancient days before the internet and social media made it easy to tell who of your friends and acquaintances was still alive. I also talk about other things. Such as the bidet we got for the bathroom I use most frequently. Laurel, my wife, thought it seemed weird to mention something about my bathroom habits in…
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Posted inFood and drink Home life

I didn’t suffer in my vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner

When I became a vegetarian 57 years ago, at the age of 20, that was cause for concern among friends and family who thought I was depriving myself of an essential food group: meat and fish. That didn't make sense then. It makes even less sense now, given how many more options vegetarians have when shopping in a grocery store or going out to eat at a restaurant. We're still a decided minority, about 6%, with about an additional 4% embracing a vegan diet. For Thanksgiving yesterday, I dug my last remaining Trader Joes Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast out of the…
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Posted inGrowing older Home life

My take on why old guys like me are so set in our ways

I'm now the person that I was always afraid of becoming. An old guy (I'm 77) who is really reluctant to deviate from his accustomed lifestyle. I'm not exactly the proverbial senior citizen sitting on his porch who screams at playful neighborhood children, "Keep your damn ball out of my front yard!" But I can understand why that dude would say that. Because the older I get -- and so far I haven't found any way to stop that inexorable trend -- the more I cling to habits in an almost obsessive fashion. The reason I do this, so far…
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Posted inHome life

We got a TOTO bidet. Using the toilet is much more pleasant.

Life is stressful these days. Well, actually, life always is stressful to some extent. It just seems that the state of our nation and the world is more distressing now. So I'll take comfort and relaxation wherever I can find it. Including when I sit on the toilet in the bathroom that I use the most, being adjacent to my bedroom. (My wife, Laurel, and I sleep separately.)  A few weeks ago Laurel had the bright idea of getting a bidet. She'd gotten back from visiting relatives in Indiana who had a bidet. Laurel didn't try it, but they praised…
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Posted inDogs Home life

Our dog misses my wife, but she’s putting up with me

Mooka, our Husky mix, is considerably more attached to my wife, Laurel, than she is to me. Laurel does the dog training. Laurel takes Mooka for her favorite morning walk. Laurel takes Mooka to the dog park, another favorite place.  I feed Mooka in the late afternoon and give her a pre-dinner walk most days. But I'm under no illusion about who is the Alpha in Mooka's mind. It's Laurel. So when Laurel left last Friday for a four day trip to Indiana to see her relatives, I knew that Mooka wasn't going to be thrilled about being left with…
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Posted inHome life

If your Generac won’t connect to wi-fi, here’s a tip that might help

A couple of years ago my wife and I got a Generac whole house generator after suffering through the Great Salem Ice Storm of 2021, which left us without power for twelve days (our 7000 watt Honda generator worked fine, but it isn't anywhere near as convenient and powerful as the 24,000 watt Generac). Aside from an oil leak, which was fixed by the company, Northside Electric, we bought the Generac from, the only problem we've had with the generator is a spotty wi-fi connection. Wi-fi is built into the Generac, but it requires some connection steps via the notoriously…
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Posted inHome life Web/Tech

Trump administration screwing around with expanded broadband access

Of all the fucked-up things the Trump administration is doing, this doesn't rank in the top FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair) category. But it sure bugs me big-time, because I dearly want more broadband options available in Oregon as soon as possible. I speak as someone who has precisely one viable broadband service available to my wife and me out here in rural south Salem, Oregon: Starlink. I've been a Starlink customer since a beta invitation came my way in January 2021. Starlink is way better than the dreadfully slow CenturyLink DSL we suffered with for many years of…
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Posted inHome life

My fall into a creek shows why doing one thing at a time makes sense

Yesterday I fell off a bridge into running water. Fortunately, it was a tiny bridge and the water wasn't very deep. How it appears to have happened contains a life lesson. Yesterday I was taking our dog, Mooka, on her usual late afternoon walk, which begins on our property in rural south Salem. I had her on a leash, since the area by a creek is favored by raccoons, and we don't want Mooka running off and tangling with one. I'd just crossed a little bridge that crosses the main part of Spring Creek, a short creek that feeds Spring…
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Posted inFood and drink Health Home life

My wife made the healthiest main dish in the history of Christmas Eve dinners

Part of me says, "You shouldn't be bragging on Christmas Day." Another part says, "Dude, go ahead and brag -- you aren't bragging about yourself, but about your wife, Laurel." I'm listening to that part. For while the title of this blog post might seem to be an exaggeration, it accurately reflects the prevailing opinion among me, Laurel, and five friends we invited for a Christmas Eve dinner at our house last night  Well, in the history of Christmas Eve dinners is an embellishment that I added for dramatic effect. But it's true that all seven of us agreed that…
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Posted inHome life Writing/Weblogs

Our 2024 Christmas letter is partly about saber-toothed tigers

Another year, another Christmas Letter. Or as we call it, our Holiday Greetings. Per usual, I wrote it. The key to doing that this time was an image that popped into my mind of animals going extinct. Which pretty much sums up how I look upon Christmas letters: a dying breed. Nonetheless, I'm still alive. And I enjoy writing the Holiday Greetings. Plus, because I've written a Christmas letter since 1995, as documented in my regularly updated Collected Christmas Letters post, I didn't feel like breaking that string this year. Here's the 2024 letter, in PDF and JPEG formats.Download 2024…
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Posted inHome life Starlink Web/Tech

Broadband is coming to Oregon’s unserved areas, but slowly

A few days ago I decided to see whether there was anything new being reported by the Oregon Broadband Office, a state agency charged with overseeing projects to bring decently fast broadband to people in this state who lack it. That includes my neighborhood in rural south Salem. Though we're only six miles or so from the Salem city limits, Oregon's capital, the only wired/fixed broadband (as contrasted with cellular broadband) available out here is crappy CenturyLink DSL that comes over ancient copper phone lines at the sluggish speed of 6-7 Mbps down and 1-2 Mbps up. This is a…
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Posted inHealth Home life

My wife’s shoulder replacement surgery is helping me be a better person

When it comes to being a caring, compassionate person, I'd say that I'm about average. I know people who are much more caring and compassionate than I am, and I also know people who are considerably less caring and compassionate. So I've got room to grow in this regard. However, at the age of 76, I pretty much figured that I was set in my ways and wouldn't be improving my caring and compassionate quotient any time soon. That was before my wife, Laurel, had shoulder replacement surgery. More accurately, reverse shoulder replacement surgery. The difference between a reverse prosthesis…
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