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The last time I moved, I found some moving boxes that hadn’t been unpacked…since the previous time I moved! This is obviously one of the most pointless things ever. If the contents were so unimportant that you haven’t used them in years and honestly forgot about them, chances are they belong in the trash or the 2nd hand market. However, sometimes there can be exceptions.
Just after 15:00, a beautiful autumn sunset, perfect traffic conditions and around 4 hours on the Swedish main road E4. A full tank of diesel and two nights of proper sleep. It doesn’t get much better than that. I was just smiling in a state of total relaxation. This is what driving is all about. And I haven’t felt it this strongly in years. The W124 has finally arrived in my garage.
I recently built an extra home office at my parents’ house with a fully equipped workstation with thunderbolt docking station, two 1440p screens mounted on a premium gas arm, keyboard, mouse and everything you need. The total price was below 2000 SEK. A brand-new setup with equal performance is likely to cost at least 10000 SEK. With some patience and a clear focus, 2nd hand deals are abundant. There is a lot of money to be saved on this road. For the past years, I have learned to shop at auction sites. Mostly electronics, but the principle holds equally well in other areas too. The limiting factor is time.
Do you recognize this feeling? You are working on a report or a text document, and you proofread it 10 times without finding any errors, and then send it to the printer. While proofreading the physical copy, you often discover several issues within seconds or minutes, that you have been staring at on the screen, completely unable to see. It has happened to me more times than I can count. Moral of the story; By engaging other neural pathways in your brain, you will bring new insights even with very familiar input data. Tonight, I had just that experience in VR.
Nowadays, all cars have electronic parking brakes. This makes me worried, when I consider the declining birth rates and the threat of population collapse. Up until the turn of the millennia, the handbrake was an important component in human reproduction. When a male identified an attractive female, he would usually engage the handbrake and slide the car. This manoeuvre was very effective in attracting female attention, and usually resulted in 2,5 kids and a Volvo on the driveway some years later.
I recently sold my Kodiaq L&K SUV, and now I plan to replace it with a 31-year-old classic W124. It all started out as an obvious way to save money because my wife is not commuting while on parental leave and it did not make sense to have two expensive cars rusting away in the carport. We decided to try and get by with only one car. Before long, we realized that a 2nd car is indeed a very good idea when you’re living in the countryside. But it does not have to be anything fancy if you only need it a couple of times per month. I then remembered that my grandfathers very nice W124 has been collecting dust in a garage for at least a decade. Is this a proper barn find perhaps?
The Swedish government introduced a “scrapping bonus” in august, for those who want to replace their old car with an EV. A whopping 10 000 SEK in bonus and the requirement is that the car must be road-worthy, and you must have owned it for more than a year. Apparently, almost no-one has taken them up on the offer, what a shocker. During the first month, only 28 bonuses had been paid out of the 250 million SEK. It is moving a bit slower than expected, because the original plan was to do during 2024-2025. At first, I had to double-check whether I had read correctly. Unfortunately, I did, and this might be the most out-of-touch idea I have heard in a long time. But it gets worse…
Dogs and humans have been together for some 30 000 years or thereabouts. We are so intertwined that our evolutionary progression is linked. Apparently, when hunter-gatherers domesticated dogs back in the day, they obviously served as an excellent early-warning system. Dogs are more alert and will detect any incoming danger well before us humans. This is a killer feature and no wonder that we have become good friends over the years. Here’s a cool fact about dogs. Your sleep quality improves if you have a snoring dog nearby.
Last Tuesday, I had five consecutive Teams meetings booked. I landed with the early morning flight, and connected to the first meeting while in the car on the way to my ordinary office around 30 minutes from the airport. My plan was to transfer the call to my workstation upon arrival. Instead, as I parked my car, I got disconnected. Before long, I realized that I had no reception on my phone. Unfortunately, my office isn’t connected to fibre, and thus I am running a 5G broadband service. The problem is that when the phone tower dies, I am completely cut off from the world.
When I was 18 with a fresh driver’s license, my top priority was to upgrade my car – a W124 200D – with a subwoofer. The only thing I cared about was to get maximum bass. I put a 12” closed box and power amp in the trunk and from what I remember, it worked quite well! Thinking back now, I do have some serious doubts regarding sound quality when matching terrible factory speakers from the 1980’s with a (then) modern powerful sub. But that was not important then. Bass was. Two and a half decades later, here I am, designing a car audio system for a W124 again. The circle is closed. But this time however, I intend to do it right.