My Garage ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................
My first Mercedes .....
2003
A restless heart rarely sleeps as sharks don’t sleep at all
A lonely heart often weeps even if no tears fall, burning cheeks
Having a voice with no ears to listen, a most lonely place to be
A shelter harboring souls like myself, most comforting
I have a beautiful necklace
The chain had tangled into a knot
I put it in a cigar box
On a day with time, took the time
With patience, I worked the chain
With fingers, I worked the knot
Not knowing if the chain would break
And the pendant balanced
As judgment balanced
My neck, naked as my heart
After some time, the time spent handling
A delicate strand, freed
The weight of the pendant buffered
The weight of sadness, tangled
?
online now!
The signs are on the highway. Now that I'm doing half the miles as I did when I lived in Miami, I still enjoy a drive on a few roads in south Florida.
This was the case on Sunday when I drove to Miami Beach to drop off samples to a customer, catch a few model helicopter flights with friends, get a haircut, visit my daughter and grocery shop. I logged in more than 150 miles.
The 2 main roads were I-95 and I-595 that each have 5 lanes.
Speed limit on both is 65mph.
Yesterday I was in the middle lane for most of my travels and at times doing 80-85mph.
But... that doesn't matter how much I exceed the limit as cars fly past me on both sides. What pisses me off is when they swerve around and cut in front of me from both sides so aggressively the 2 cars almost collide.
It's not like I'm doing 50 being tailgated and in the wrong lane, but I find that I have to prepare well ahead of my exit as cars that normally merge to the right into the deceleration lane. Often I see drivers who are willing to drive on the right shoulder, cut in front the car making an exit, then skate across 2 lanes to get back into the flow of traffic.
I did have a theory that worked for a while... Stay in the left lane and limit the number of morons to only the right side. I did have one try to sideswipe me on the left as he squeezed into the safety zone.
Slower traffic keep right...
From The Guardian;
In response to:
Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced
Exclusive: first factory production means recharging could soon be as fast as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles
Batteries capable of fully charging in five minutes have been produced in a factory for the first time, marking a significant step towards electric cars becoming as fast to charge as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles.
Electric vehicles are a vital part of action to tackle the climate crisis but running out of charge during a journey is a worry for drivers. The new lithium-ion batteries were developed by the Israeli company StoreDot and manufactured by Eve Energy in China on standard production lines.
StoreDot has already demonstrated its “extreme fast-charging” battery in phones, drones and scooters and the 1,000 batteries it has now produced are to showcase its technology to carmakers and other companies. Daimler, BP, Samsung and TDK have all invested in StoreDot, which has raised $130m to date and was named a Bloomberg New Energy Finance Pioneer in 2020.
The batteries can be fully charged in five minutes but this would require much higher-powered chargers than used today. Using available charging infrastructure, StoreDot is aiming to deliver 100 miles of charge to a car battery in five minutes in 2025.
“The number one barrier to the adoption of electric vehicles is no longer cost, it is range anxiety,” said Doron Myersdorf, CEO of StoreDot. “You’re either afraid that you’re going to get stuck on the highway or you’re going to need to sit in a charging station for two hours. But if the experience of the driver is exactly like fuelling [a petrol car], this whole anxiety goes away.”
“A five-minute charging lithium-ion battery was considered to be impossible,” he said. “But we are not releasing a lab prototype, we are releasing engineering samples from a mass production line. This demonstrates it is feasible and it’s commercially ready.”
Existing Li-ion batteries use graphite as one electrode, into which the lithium ions are pushed to store charge. But when these are rapidly charged, the ions get congested and can turn into metal and short circuit the battery.
The StoreDot battery replaces graphite with semiconductor nanoparticles into which ions can pass more quickly and easily. These nanoparticles are currently based on germanium, which is water soluble and easier to handle in manufacturing. But StoreDot’s plan is to use silicon, which is much cheaper, and it expects these prototypes later this year. Myersdorf said the cost would be the same as existing Li-ion batteries.
“The bottleneck to extra-fast charging is no longer the battery,” he said. Now the charging stations and grids that supply them need to be upgraded, he said, which is why they are working with BP. “BP has 18,200 forecourts and they understand that, 10 years from now, all these stations will be obsolete, if they don’t repurpose them for charging – batteries are the new oil.”
Dozens of companies around the world are developing fast-charging batteries, with Tesla, Enevate and Sila Nanotechnologies all working on silicon electrodes. Others are looking at different compounds, such as Echion which uses niobium oxide nanoparticles.
“I think such fast-charging batteries will be available to the mass market in three years,” said Prof Chao-Yang Wang, at the Battery and Energy Storage Technology Center at Pennsylvania State University in the US. “They will not be more expensive; in fact, they allow automakers to downsize the onboard battery while still eliminating range anxiety, thereby dramatically cutting down the vehicle battery cost.”.
I am a huge, huge, HUGE car nut, so I devour any sort of car related videos and tv shows. The biggest one was Top Gear, when Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May were the hosts. I loved watching the stupid challenges, the car reviews and the epic journeys. I was super bummed out, when Top Gear ended in 2015.
When it was revealed that they went to Amazon to make a new car show, I immediately subscribed to Amazon Prime, in order to be able to see it.
The first season was amazing! Full of fun shenanigans, cringey bits and amazing cars. The opening scene was the best thing ever! I loved every episode, and I was hoping they would release a season 2, which they did.
That was even better, and it was clear that the show would only be bigger.
Now we are six days away from season 3. It premiers on the 18th of January, and I am so going to see every episode!
I hope they will include some truly spectacular cars!
He wrote that he thought he was dull
I told him I didn’t think so
First impressions second impressions
The language is not limited to the written word
online now!
I left out speeding and attempting to run away. Several motorcyclists in Florida were driving recklessly Friday night when police told them to pull over. One guy didn't quite make the getaway...
Captured on body-cam.
Maybe a broken bone or two... the guy is lucky to be alive.
Story:
How NOT to make a good impression on your bosses boss.
One day years ago, 1973 to be exact, my company "Koni America" went to Watkins Glen as was our annual tradition, to service the Formula One race. We had our usual spot in the main garage where we entertained race drivers and crew members that came by to chat on various technical matters referring to suspension setups especially shock absorber settings and adjustments, and also test and set their shocks on our shock dyno as well. On this particular day a driver came by to chat and we formed a rough circle in the bay. There was my boss Ted M. to my right, between us was the driver, opposite to me was my bosses boss John Z., to my left was my co-worker, Bob K., another technician. I don't remember who the driver was, it could have been anybody. Normally an event like that would be engraved on your memory, however what follows is all that I remember of that moment in time.
So there we were chatting and my bosses boss John had a banana in his hand and was mindlessly trying to peel it while deeply engrossed in the conversation. I was trying to follow the flow of the conversation but the distraction of John and the banana made that nearly impossible. My focus kept shifting from his face to his hands and I was getting increasingly agitated. Ted was watching me watching John and he later told me that he could see my eyes going up & down as my attention shifted. He said he could also see my nostrils flare. My frustration grew to an unbearable level. I wanted to rip the banana out of his hand and peel the goddamn thing for him. Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I blurted out "YOU'RE PEELING IT FROM THE WRONG END". Well, Ted nearly had a seizure from laughing so hard. My first thought was OMG .
what did I just do? Did I just make my bosses boss look like a fool in front of some big Formula 1 driver? Do I still have a job? Lucky for me John took it as a learning experience and flipped the banana over and successfully peeled it.
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