I’ve often wondered, how were the economics of renting a car to drive for a service? Did you usually make back your money for renting and fuel, etc?

Well, what I meant was don’t just take a dealership’s word for the maintenance of a car they’re trying to sell you. But yeah, dealer mechanic shops can be some of the best out there especially for their particular brand.

Kind of a “duh” thing but, only buy used cars.

Always have a trusted mechanic who doesn’t work for the dealer look it over before you buy. Usually new car dealerships are reputable and are looking to move their trade-in inventory, especially at the end of the year when they need to clear the lot for the next year’s models. You can even find deals on vehicles that are only a year or two old like a returned lease, with a moderate number of miles on them and little to no wear and tear. Those are usually just as good as new but so much cheaper.

Be super cautious of the used car dealer chains, like Drivetime and Carvana, they have loads of customer complaints and legal problems in a couple of states (basically, if it seems too good to be true, it is). Do not ever buy a former rental car, unless it’s true love at first sight or you’re desperate… even then think about how people, who’ve only paid like $10-20 for rental insurance, have probably treated that vehicle and reconsider.

The newest and most expensive car I ever bought was a previous model year’s dealer demo. A dealer demo is what it sounds like, it’s the car the dealership displayed in the show room, used for test drives with unsure buyers, running office errands, and showing off at the mall or in parades. Cons: There’s only a few of them, they’ll have a couple hundred miles on the odometer, and you don’t get to pick the color or options. Pros: They’re usually at a decent trim level, in an agreeable color, and well maintained… for thousands less than brand new because they’ve already left the lot a whole bunch.

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Agreed on all soaps… except shampoo. My hair gets crazy damaged by the cheap stuff.

If you have one in your area, go to Aldi. Their knock off magic eraser has held up rather well for me.

Left Samsung’s ever more expensive Note and Galaxy S lines for Motorola’s cheap ass G series like three or four years ago and haven’t looked back. I buy a new phone once a year on my tax return for like $200-250. I gift my previous device to my younger cousins, nieces, nephews, and mother. Keeps everyone from having to pay off devices on their phone plans and the phones are still running rather well year over year. The only hold out, claiming to “need” the latest and greatest, is my older sister who insists she needs the new iPhone every two years.

Drug store nail polish too. $7-9 at Walgreens or CVS and I’m good.

Eggs, eggs, spam.

Anything Aldi brand, Wal-Mart store brand is the same price usually, but Aldi just seems to have better quality. Really it’s easier for me to list what I won’t ever buy store brand: toilet paper, laundry detergent, and hot sauce.

Yeah, I’ll still check out Reddit when it pops up in search results, but I’m not on there passing the time like I used to be.

The 2021 Congressional testimony of the Facebook whistle blower drove me to try out Mastodon. Elon Musk buying and ruining Twitter convinced me to stay on Mastodon and to learn more about the Fediverse. Reddit API changes shuttered Bacon Reader; that was the only way I got on Reddit and that’s how I found this place. Hadn’t even heard of Lemmy or Kbin until Reddit started messing around with their modmins and API.

I still go to Reddit when Google results lead me there, but I haven’t downloaded their app and have no plans to do so. Still cross posting between Facebook and Mastodon, but have completely left Twitter X and haven’t looked back.

First thing, I’d probably solve practical fusion power and distribute that info worldwide… make it as available as the knowledge for building a fission reactor is today. Then, I’d set out away from humanity, into space. I’d start by visiting the nearest several dozen solar systems to begin the terraforming process on a handful of planets. Once started, I’d signal back to Earth that I’d done this and that the planets would be ready for settlement in about two hundred years. I would then go on to build an Expanse type “ring space” pocket dimension with wormholes connecting all these star systems, but put the “Sol gate” to this network in orbit of Saturn. Hopefully this would limit humanity’s settlement rush to some unmanned probes for the first dozen or so years, possibly only seeing manned missions in about a century, but not make it impossible that humans could spread amongst the stars using the gates. Once most of the systems wirh gates are settled, I’d return to gift the knowledge of gate building along with several dozen more star systems all with ready terraformed planets.

My parents work at the job factory and make taxes!

Kept the covers over my head for this exact same reason. I figured I would feel it if a vampire tried to remove the blanket or sheet and I could defend myself… no real thought or planning put into how I would defeat a vampire, but at least I’d be awake. A very religious aunt told me vampires don’t exist and that it was in fact demons sent from hell that were trying to get me and all children… I was four when this was explained to me. It’s one thing to get scared because you saw a movie about a kind of monster and quite another to have an adult you’ve been told by your parents to respect explain what to her was a real monster and one of which she was convinced actually existed. I was a very light sleeper well into my teens.

It’s also that the roads aren’t treated and won’t be treated. Y’all are used to de-icing (or whatever it is) to help clear up all the frozen patches. We got 3.5 inches overnight like five years ago and, in some shady spots, the roads had ice for days afterwards.

Right! Also I would rather our state, counties, and municipalities spend their emergency prep dollars on things that actually hit us hard and often… like hurricanes. We might not be ready for what Wisconsin considers a laughably small amount of snow, but those cheese heads have no idea what even just a Cat 1 named storm can do in just six hours.

Southern Georgia, USA.

This is more of a regional rationalization about occasional weather hazards. Here in coastal Georgia, we get snow from time to time, about a half an inch to two inches once every three to five years. There’s a lot of people from colder climates that move here for work or retirement; they hear “a possible light dusting of snow” on the news or from a weather app and think that means nothing. Where they’re from it’s just normal, happens every year and there’s often more. They’ll even laugh at us for shutting down the schools and staying home from work for freezing rain. Here’s the thing: no one here knows how to drive in snow and will likely only see black ice a dozen times in their lifetime. Further, we have no salt/sand trucks, we have no plows, we have zero civic infrastructure to meant to deal with our very occasional ice storm or light snow. It happens so infrequently that there’s no way to justify spending taxpayers’ money to prepare in that way for those kinds of situations. So we shut down the schools and most businesses for a day or so and everyone mostly stays home. We’re not necessarily unprepared for winter weather, we just prepare in a different way that makes sense for the situation.

Yeah, us Americans never really moved away from SMS. I think probably BlackBerry messenger, back in the day, was probably the closest we came to having a messenger replace standard mobile texting along with Facebook Messenger and Insta DMs are pretty popular but never as used as plain old texting. Lately, I’ve seen Meta running ads stateside for WhatsApp. It’s weird because I’ve never seen them advertise anything before.

I like Android because I get more of a choice in phones than just the two or three on offer by Apple. I usually go with Samsung but I’ve had Motorola and LG before… just depends who’s got the best device in my price range.