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Showing posts from April 1, 2018

The Nissan Leaf Gets a New Rear Axle

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Well, I finally have a salvage title for the 2013 Nissan LEAF (Actually I dont have the title yet, but I think they mail it to me. We are far from settled with the insurance company for sure. It has been six months since Angie was rear ended. The following chart shows a very sad and disturbing trend. Insurance companies aren't paying out. It should be criminal. I went shopping for a new rear axle so I can get the car driving again. The rear ended axle was so bent, the car couldn't move. The new one with no connecting bits was over a thousand dollars. The cheapest used ones I could find on ebay were over 500 dollars. I finally scored at a local used parts place for 95 dollars (removed) and with associated bits such as bearings, bushings, parts of the brakes. It took me a concentrated day with cancelled and moved meetings to get the axle replaced and the car running again. The accomplishment felt good. I am now configuring the car with tractor tires and other modifications t...
We can do better than meeting spec http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/04/we-can-do-better-than-meeting-spec.html Well, that's over. Google AI now sounds indistinguishable from a human. And it'll only get more nuanced and more flexible. It can read aloud better than you can. Which means that anything that's ever been written can be perfectly read to you. Which means that anything a computer figures out or computes can be delivered to you with audio quality that meets spec. That's what AI keeps doing... things we said were impossible. Most of us shrugged when computers could drill holes or assemble machines with more accuracy and speed than a person can. And we avoided the topic when we discovered that computers could read x-rays with great skill as well. But now, it ought to make you shudder to discover that something as basic as speech is now better than the typical human's. Any speed, fully customized, in clear tones with great pronunciation...
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It looks like this may be my next partial ownership plane, a Piper Arrow 2. It is categorized as a complex aircraft and it what I need to get my commercial licence which is still the goal. That will bring our fleet to 4 planes. We had an aviation BBQ Saturday. It is always fun to meet pilots around the area. It is amazing how people are interconnected. We had a nice Easter. We went to church and had a nice Easter Breakfast at church afterwards. We took a bike ride and hike and cooked out. The weather is great. I have travel plans for for Nashville, Budapest and Germany. We also have some possible very cool vacation destinations figured out.