Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

Two months ago, I bought a Chevy Bolt. I won’t go into the purchasing process, others have ranted plenty about the antiquated dealership/haggling process.

Michele and I got our first all-electric car about 2 and a half years ago, a Kia Soul EV, which we love. I installed a home charger (Clipper Creek HCS-40) and we found the EV life easy and without problems. We learned the basics about how to find public chargers and how long recharges took.

The largest incentive was the ability to drive in the HOV/car pool lane. This is attractive to drivers in Los Angeles and my daily commute has a car pool lane. Second, the car gives off no emissions, which is a benefit in smoggy Los Angeles. Along with no oil changes, fluids to manage, other costly maintenance the appeal really adds up. Lastly, with chargers at home & work, no fucking gas stations.

The car itself is well designed, and pleasure to drive. Plenty of guts and fairly good handling for a small car.

The electronics package works well, and has integration with both Android Auto and Apple Car Play central to the operation of the car. Apple appears to have intentionally crippled Car Play, so I can’t blame Chevy for those limitations.

The core issue is really about “range anxiety”. Range anxiety is the concern about running out of energy and not having a way to recharge quickly. In my normal drives and commute, it’s a non-issue, but on longer trips, you have to think it through.

For our anniversary weekend, my wife Michele and I decided to drive up the coast, ride our bicycles, stop at wineries, and “test” their products. The concern was the drive. The stated max range of a Bolt fully charged is ~240 miles. The trip from our home to Cambria, our destination, is ~240 miles.

We agreed to give it a try.

Before I go further, a little on charging an EV car. EV cars have huge batteries. Truly gigantic batteries that can hold an incredible amount of energy. The process that converts electrical energy into the chemistry of batteries is complex, and can only go so fast. One of the ways of dealing with this is using lots of smaller batteries that charge quickly simultaneously, rather than one large one that takes a long time to fill up. Computer controllers are used to manage the process.

Even with these techniques, there is only so fast a battery can charge. Using a charger that plugs into a traditional wall outlet, called a Level 1 charger, works, but can literally take days to fully charge a car. It’s fairly impractical for day to day usage.

Most people with EV cars are familiar with Level 2 chargers. A Level 2 charger can be connected to the same kind of circuits in a home that run your large appliances (220V), and provides a much faster level of charging. Even with the big batteries in Bolts and Teslas, a Level 2 Charger can fully restore the battery overnight.

Getting a Level 2 charger installed is not hard, but can cost a little. The charger will cost ~$500 and the install probably another $500.

You get huge piece of mind and can take advantage of power pricing plans that make charging at night much cheaper than charging during the day.

Level 2 chargers are being found more in more in public places and are commonly used by all EV drivers to recharge a little while shopping or at work. Many of the public chargers are free, which is basically the equivalent of free gasoline while you shop.

Even with Level 2 chargers available, the recharge rate still isn’t fast enough for road trips. No one wants to wait 6 hours in the middle of a trip to refuel.

Hence the need for a Level 3 charger also known as a DC Fast Charger. DC fast chargers can replenish an EV car in hour if everything goes right.

The issue with DC fast chargers is that they are fairly new and come in three different flavors: Tesla Supercharger, CHAdeMO, and CCS.

Telsa’s Supercharger is for, well, Tesla cars. They are the only ones that can use it. CHAdeMO is commonly found in Asia. CCS is the newest standard, mainly found in Europe and now the US. This is important, since my Bolt has the CCS connector.

Plug compatibility is a big issue for EV car owners. If you don’t have the right plug you can’t charge. The EV car industry has cycled through multiple versions of plugs and charging system from a funky induction paddle for the old GM EV1, to a military-spec connector on the first Tesla Roadster, to the current common standard of the J1772 found on most cars (Telsa have adapters to use these.)

Back to our road trip!

To make the trip reasonable, we’d need to recharge on the way north at a CCS fast charger on our route to make it in a reasonable amount of time.

On the route we had planned, there are six CCS charging stations we can use, one of them being out of the way, but close to our destination.

Our plan was to stop in Solvang/Buellton and charge while we had lunch.

As we headed north of Santa Barbara on the 154 up the hill, I was nervous. We’d used a lot of battery already. Would the charger be open or would someone else be using it? Would it be working? Would it actually charge as fast as it’s supposed to.

The charger is at Marriott hotel, where Tesla has installed their Superchargers and common stopping point for Tesla drivers. As we rolled past the Tesla area, I saw 4 cars charging but didn’t see the charger we needed. After a frantic map check, we headed to the rear of the hotel and spotted the Chargepoint charger.

Still nervous, I plugged into the Bolt and started the charge. Relief flooded through me as the charge began and the car said it would be full within an hour.

We wandered off in search of lunch. Passing by several fast food joints, I was obsessively checking my phone app to confirm that the car was still charging. Michele spotted a Mexican restaurant and we went in to have lunch. In case you are wondering, I had the two taco combo and Michele had the enchilada plate. Able to relax, we enjoyed a margarita and then wandered into the store next door to buy some supplies (junk food) for the weekend.

Returning to the car, we found it just over a 90% charge. DC fast charging works great when the car is near empty, but dramatically slows down when you get closer to full. Kinda of like filling an ice cube tray. At first, you can pour water in, let it slosh around where ever when it’s empty, but as they fill, you have to be more careful to fill each cube slot slowly and more carefully.

Batteries work in a similar fashion, when they get close to full charge, you need to lower the amount of electricity you feed it since there are fewer electrochemicals floating around freely waiting for a charge.

90% was plenty enough to get us to Cambria, and we headed out with grins on our faces, since our vacation was not ruined.

Our hotel didn’t have a charger we could use. They did have a Tesla Destination Charger (Level 2) though. We hooked up the slow 110V charger to grab a few extra miles of charge.

Over the weekend, we made our way to Paso Robles for a bike ride and while we rode, we had the car charge at a CCS charger there. Once again, we had a full charge.

On a side note, I highly recommend riding between wineries up in Paso Robles. There’s no better way to burn up the calories and alcohol between tastings. Plus you have a great excuse to eat all the things when the ride is over.

Heading home, we didn’t have enough charge to make it all the way home, so again, we stopped in Buellton to charge up while we had breakfast.

As you can see, in an hour we added 104 miles worth of charge for a little over 15 bucks. Using the DC fast charger costs a bit more than level 2 chargers, mainly because they can charge whatever they want. This will change as more are deployed.

Notice how the charge starts out at 45kW, which is a LOT of energy pouring into the battery and ramps down over time as the individual batteries start to get full. With a typical home charger you are going to get 6 kW levels.

We headed south on the highway towards home.

I kept our speeds lower on the way home and noticed that we drained the battery much slower. Just like a gasoline powered car, going fast costs you more fuel.

After completing our first real road trip, we were a lot more confident in our choice. We didn’t have any problems and learned about fast charging.

The car itself is great. Full of features and besides a few small “would be nice” issues like adaptive cruise control, GM built a solid car. It’s my first GM car since buying a Saturn in 1993 and I’m happy to see General Motors engineers developing a well designed car that can compete with the new ideas coming out of Tesla. Real competition in this area is great for everyone.

Our lease runs three years, at which time I expect a lot of even better choices. The Tesla 3 should be widely available, and new EV cars from all the major manufacturers will be on the market, each trying to out do each other with features and lower prices. As the charging networks continue to increase, range anxiety will be even more reduced.

So if you are in the market for a new car, come join the EV bandwagon.

In 2016, I read 41 books. I was aiming for 50, but didn’t quite make it.

I read on a Kindle, which allows me the ability to highlight text and save it. Recently, I saw a post by Michael Sippey with his Kindle highlights for the year. Fun idea.

Here are my highlights from 2016

Last First Snow: A Novel of the Craft Sequence by Max Gladstone
Last annotated on January 2, 2017

You want to protect yourselves from change, just like every conservative since the dawn of time. You’re on the losing side of history.”

A Night Without Stars by Peter F. Hamilton
Last annotated on October 27, 2016

He’d learned long ago that logic and facts never meant anything to true believers — of anything.

Méridien (The Silver Ships Book 3) by S. H. Jucha
Last annotated on October 3, 2016

“When those three reach maturity, our world will either be safe for generations or doomed.”

The Phoenix Descent by Chuck Grossart
Last annotated on August 9, 2016

“Hear me!” Litsa yelled as she pointed toward the flaming glow in the sky. “A warrior dies for you today! Urrah!” she yelled, holding her fist high in the sky.

American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition: A Novel by Neil Gaiman
Last annotated on August 4, 2016

Valaskjalf

The End of All Things (Old Man’s War Book 6) by John Scalzi
Last annotated on August 3, 2016

“You have good news?” I asked. “No,” Oi said. “But some of the news is less objectively bad than the rest.”

Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross
Last annotated on July 4, 2016

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that every interstellar colony in search of good fortune must be in need of a banker.

“Ee’s going aboard the Permanent Crimson

Steel Beach by John Varley
Last annotated on June 29, 2016

There goddam sure ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and they’re out to prove it.

Two Serpents Rise (Craft Sequence Book 2) by Max Gladstone
Last annotated on June 7, 2016

to skeletal immortality. Do you understand?”

The Mechanical (The Alchemy Wars Book 1) by Ian Tregillis
Last annotated on May 18, 2016

I CAN THINK MY OWN THOUGHTS. I CAN SPEAK MY OWN WORDS. I CAN CHOOSE MY OWN PATH. I CAN SAY NO.

Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson
Last annotated on April 12, 2016

The main bar smelt of failure.

Judge me by my enemies,

The Mongoliad (The Mongoliad Series Book 3) by Neal Stephenson, Joseph Brassey, Greg Bear, Erik Bear, Nicole Galland, Cooper Moo, Mark Teppo
Last annotated on March 8, 2016

“You negligent fool!” he snarled. “You’ve misplaced the Pope!”

Captain’s Share (Trader’s Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper Book 5) by Nathan Lowell
Last annotated on March 8, 2016

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife. However, a man of good fortune, in the company of a wife, may find himself questioning that truth — or at least its universality.

Cibola Burn (The Expanse Book 4) by James S. A. Corey
Last annotated on February 29, 2016

“You are an amazing woman, Elvi, but I don’t know how you survive in the wild.”

“No coffee. This is a terrible, terrible planet.

Nemesis Games (The Expanse) by James S. A. Corey
Last annotated on February 29, 2016

“Why the fuck are you still on my planet?”

The Mongoliad (The Mongoliad Series Book 2) by Neal Stephenson, Joseph Brassey, Greg Bear, Erik Bear, Nicole Galland, Cooper Moo, Mark Teppo
Last annotated on February 25, 2016

“All titles are unwarranted, Raphael,” Sir John said. “Whether or not we live up to them is what matters.”

Caliban’s War (The Expanse Book 2) by James S. A. Corey
Last annotated on February 19, 2016

“When this is over, I’d like to buy you a drink and talk about how a dishonorably discharged UN naval officer winds up flying a stolen MCRN torpedo bomber crewed by Martian military personnel and a senior UN politician.”

Cruft Manor has once again returned to our Halloween traditions. Every year, we give out full size candies, made a listing of all costumes, and make a timelapse movie.

~300 Full Size Candies, ready for the trick or treaters!

This year I had sugar-free, gluten-free, and vegan options just in case.

I let the kids choose their favorite candy themselves. This can sometimes lead to a prolonged choosing process and discussion. It’s awesome to hear them debate the pro and cons of various candies.

As has become tradition, I made a timelapse movie of handing out candy to the kids. This year, I started when the first trick or treaters appeared around 5:30 PM. Former Nanny Rachel was here to help in the beginning.

Early on I ordered a pizza for dinner but it took a long time to arrive. Once it was here, I was so busy with kids, I couldn’t get up to eat. Syd arrived around 7:30 and spelled me for a bit while I wolfed down a pizza slice. To our Halloween horror, we realized that I was out of Rye and we could not make our regular Manhattans. We cracked open a bottle of Glenfiddich and enjoyed some scotch on the rocks.

I had wired up the GoPro camera to make the timelapse movie and had have power full time. Unfortunately, in my haste I forgot to flip the power strip on, so the camera ran out of battery before the evening was over. The video captures just over 2.5 hours of the 3 hours we were handing our candy.

When people come to the door, I ask every person what they were dressed as and wrote down their answers. I am careful to ask what they are, accepting their answers rather than interpreting what I see.

This Halloween makes it 12 years of data to compare, though 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.

Here are the top ten costumes for the last eleven years compared.

This year, Dwarves take the top spot. A bit of an outlier, a family showed up with a toddler dressed as Snow White accompanied by 7 adult dwarves. Each dwarf had a custom and correctly colored costume made of felt. They put a lot of work into the effort, all for a toddler that seemed bewildered by the whole thing. I considered not counting the Dwarves, but considering the time they took, decided to count them all.

The rest of the list are perennial favorites with Witch easily taking second place. I was pleased to see Zombie Adam Sandler make a return visit from last year. Amazingly, there was not a single politics themed costume. It seems children aren’t into the nonsense.

Our total number of visitors was up significantly, into 200s easily. Getting back to a weeknight for Halloween has seemed to improve the numbers.

This year’s complete costume list of 211 people:

7 Dwarves
6 Witch
4 Batgirl
4 Captain America
4 Death
4 Días de Muertos
4 Elsa
4 Minnie Mouse
4 Princess
4 Vampire
4 Zombie
3 Batman
3 Iron Man
3 Spiderman
3 Superman
2 Animaniacs
2 Bumblebee
2 Cat
2 Devil
2 Dorothy
2 Elena
2 Fairy
2 Harley Quinn
2 Indian
2 James P. Sullivan
2 Jason Voorhees
2 Minion
2 Monkey
2 Ninja
2 Police Officer
2 Skeleton Boy
2 Snow White
2 The Flash
2 Wonder Woman
1 $100 Dollar Bill
1 50s Girl
1 Alice in Wonderland
1 Amelia Earhart
1 Andy Biersack
1 Angel
1 Anna
1 Anonymous
1 Assassin
1 Astronaut
1 Baby
1 Baseball Card
1 Bear
1 Bela Legosi
1 Belle
1 Black Panther
1 Bunny Hopper
1 Butterfly
1 Buzz Lightyear
1 Candy Corn Fairy
1 Charizard
1 Cheeky Chocolate
1 Cleopatra
1 Cloud
1 Darth Vader
1 David Beckham
1 Deadpool
1 Doctor
1 Dora the Explorer
1 Dracula
1 Eastwood
1 Elmo
1 Evie of Descendants
1 Ghost
1 Ghostbuster
1 Halo Soldier
1 Hot Dog
1 Hulk
1 Ice Cream Cone
1 Insane Asylum Inmate
1 Irish Dancer
1 Jabberwocky Dancer
1 Jack Skellington
1 Jasmine
1 Jedi
1 Jeffrey
1 Jester
1 Joker
1 Josh Dun
1 Katniss
1 Killer Clown
1 Kings Hockey Player
1 Kubo
1 Kylo Ren
1 Leo — TMNT
1 Lifeguard
1 Light Up Pumpkin
1 Little Red Riding Hood
1 Mad Scientist
1 Mass Murderer
1 Mickey Mouse
1 Monster High Skeleton
1 Monster Hunter
1 Mr. Grimm
1 Negan
1 Noah Syndergaard
1 Obi Wan Kenobi
1 Optimus Prime
1 Ostrich Rider
1 Panda
1 Party Animal
1 Piggy
1 Pikachu
1 Pirate
1 Princess Leia
1 Queen of Hearts
1 Rafael TMNT
1 Reaper
1 Rey
1 Robin
1 Ryu — Street Fighter
1 Saint
1 Samantha
1 Scarecrow
1 Scary Skeleton
1 Scream
1 Sheriff Kelly
1 Skeleton
1 Skull Man
1 Slinky the Dog
1 Soldier
1 Spider Cat
1 Squirtle
1 Stitch
1 Supergirl
1 Surgeon
1 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
1 Thing 1
1 Thing 2
1 Tokyo Ghoul
1 Transformer
1 Turtle
1 Tyler Joseph
1 U of Wisconsin Fan
1 Viking
1 Waldo
1 Yoda
1 Yokai
1 Zombie Adam Sandler
1 Zombie Cheerleader
1 Zombie Prom Queen
1 Zombie Skeleton

211 Costumed Visitors

Since the New Times Times published a story on cycling and business, the wave of “cycling is/isn’t the new golf” articles has hit the interwebs.

Let me set you all straight, cycling is NOT the new golf.

First, my bonafides:

I like to ride a road bike silly distances, often up hills, for no specific reason.

Also, I’m a tech executive in a Fortune 50 company with final decision authority. To sales people, I’m the goose that lays golden eggs. Being in technology makes me even more interesting to salespeople because I can say things to corporate purchasing like “we’re going to single source this item from Yoyodyne because it’s the only one we can get 40Gb/s Ethernet working over a 2km single-mode fiber link with the gateways we bought from HugeCorp…”. Corporate purchasing will say “Sure… OK… Whatever…” and tens of thousands of dollars flow, without them trying to get me to bid it out to dozens of other vendors.

People have been trying to sell stuff to me for over 20 years and I’ve seen many of the techniques used by salespeople to make me choose a specific product. By far, the most widely used technique is the salesperson trying to develop a personal relationship with me by any way they can so that I will favor them in the decision to buy. Ideally, they want me to feel like I ‘owe’ them the sale.

Typically it starts with a vendor buying lunch. In theory, the exec is so busy, that they can only meet at lunch, thereby optimizing time. Bullshit. It’s a free meal and the exec gets their ego boosted as the vendor fawns over them.

Dinners can be even more over the top with popular restaurants, wildly expensive bottles of wine, and other unconstrained spending that is un-monitored by anything other than the executive’s own personal ethics. If the customer is a wine snob, no bottle is too expensive. If they love sushi, no amount of toro is too much.

It’s the path of a legal bribery system that occurs everywhere in business and politics. It’s so endemic in business that big companies have to set-up elaborate rules and processes to minimize (but not eliminate) the amount a vendor can give.

You can accept a gift, but it must be worth under $75.
Total amount of gifts per vendor per year must be under $250.
You can attend a sporting event with free tickets, but the vendor must be there.

Which brings us to golf.

Playing golf costs money. The nicer the course, the more it costs. For those that don’t golf, ‘greens fees’ (the price to play) can range into hundreds of dollars. Toss in a few boxes of balls, drinks on the course, and lunch/dinner and you are talking about a lot of money. The exec can’t or doesn’t want to pay this, but they do want to play at the Bushwood Country Club, so they accept a round of golf to “do business” and “get to know” the vendor.

This puts you in the vendor’s pocket if you are an exec. Like politicians saying that donations don’t affect their decision making, some executives will say that a round of golf won’t affect their decision making. Bullshit.

At some level after receiving a gift of any sort, you feel a sense of debt or obligation, and this is what salespeople are counting on. Because it works. Luxury boxes at sporting events, paid trips for speeches at luxury junket destinations, ‘demo’ hardware given for ‘testing’ purposes are all standard practices in sales BECAUSE IT WORKS.

Which brings us to cycling.

To go for a ride, it doesn’t cost anything. Sure, you show up on your expensive carbon fiber & titanium machine wearing expensive kit made from exotic wool from Iceland with a slew of electronic gadgetry strapped on, but the ride itself costs nothing.

There are no road fees to pay or expensive cocktails on a ride. Food is typically coffee & a donut or a can of Coke & a burger. There just isn’t the same scenario of a ride being a special treat, like a trip to the golf course can be.

The core process of vendors paying for things their customers like just doesn’t occur. The vendor is doing anything for you that you you ‘owe’ them for. The sense of obligation never forms.

Even time to talk business is interrupted with the actual exertion of cycling, the calls of ‘car back’, and the inevitable separation of cyclists of different fitness. Compared to golf where you spend ~3 hours in roaming in two carts constantly chatting, cycling is a nightmare for getting critical information to and from the customer. Worse, the customer can lose respect for you if you aren’t really a cyclist or break one of the many cycling etiquette rules that infect the minds of riders.

That doesn’t mean the sales people don’t try. I’ve had vendors chat me up about riding, want to go out together, and even once been given a company’s branded cycling kit to be a riding billboard for them. But cycling vendors are the exception.

Golf days are within reach of every salesperson, regardless of fitness level or skill. All that’s required is a credit card and willingness to put of the customer for several hours of bad golf and inane conversation in hope of a sale.

Now, in the reality distortion field known as Silicon Valley, where normal logic and reason don’t apply, there may be some strange rituals that occur resulting in very rich people giving money to mildly rich people in an elaborate gambling system known as “venture capital”, but in the rest of the world, cycling is not the new golf.

My best guess is that business and cycling writers, pressed for story ideas, occasionally recognize that some new business leaders like to ride bicycles and that this is of historic significance and the meme surfaces on the web again.

In the real world, golf remains golf, an essential sales tool, and a perceived benefit to many ‘final decision makers’, in a way that cycling can never be.

Cycling is not the new golf.

Please, New York Times, stop writing this article every year.