lka1988

I've got four paid-off vehicles (2 cars, 2 motorcycles), and am about to acquire another car (W123 diesel Benz) from my wife's grandmother who is no longer able to drive.

I don't care to have any more car payments, and I hope it stays that way for a long time.

I bought my 2008 Toyota Sienna for $4500. I talked him down from $4900.

It had:

• 230k miles (269k now)
• an engine replacement (2010 engine with 110k miles, replaced at 201k on chassis)
• severely worn out sliding door rear hinges, bad enough to be grinding the body under the 3rd row windows down to bare metal
• broken power steering rack (found that a few weeks later)
• balding tires
• rattle-can patch job (black paint on factory black paint, not a deal-breaker for me)
• blown out rear shocks
• more that I've forgotten (noted down in my records)

I bought that van because 1) it was a really good price, 2) engine and transmission are in really good shape, 3) rust-free, and 4) I knew what most of its issues were before I bought it and was able to fix it all in my garage.

Also, I have 5 kids, so the minivan was a necessity. $5000 is the bare minimum for a family car these days.

I did this in my younger years and the cars I got always had some hidden fucked up problem.

My minivan is (well, was) like this. The person I bought it from said the roof-mounted DVD player was professionally installed. I got it home, pulled the interior apart (I was installing a new headunit, backup camera, and some other things), and found the "professionally installed" wiring crossed in front of the side curtain airbag. It wasn't secured anywhere at all, either. Just flopping around. I fixed that up along with some other issues I found.

Yes, let's ban the single most common form of transportation in the country because you've never had to live in an area with zero public transport.

Great line of thinking, there.

I took a loan out on a brand new car many years ago, a 6 year term with 17% interest (don't do that, kids). But I was able to refinance to ~4% a year later, we knocked another year off the remaining term (5 years to 4 years), and I still ended up paying less per month than the original payment.

I miss that car sometimes. It was a 2012 Kia Soul, and I really liked it. I went on a 3-week business trip a few years ago, and my rental happened to be a 2021 Kia Soul in mustard yellow. I loved every minute of it.

"Gmail alternative"

Email. Just say email. It's email.

I do have a blog for my XR500 that I'm slowly working to make street legal. I initially called it a "restoration", but it's more of a "refresh with some light modernization" than anything else haha. I intend on keeping it as apocalypse-friendly as I can, since it's kickstart-only, runs off a CDI system, and technically doesn't need a battery (except for lighting)... The biggest hangup I have with that bike right now is the damn 23" front wheel that's cracked. Not a single wheel repair shop I've called wants to touch it, a not-cracked 23" hoop is ~$150, and it's too much work to convert it to 21" (that requires a disc brake conversion - I'm not tracking this thing, it's just a commuter).

There's not a whole lot of crossover between car/motorcycle enthusiasts and tech enthusiasts. IT guys seem to be an exception here (source: I worked in IT for a bit), but they're a small minority. Car enthusiasts in general tend to lean towards the conservative side of things anyway... 👀

You wanna see me install a Raspberry Pi 3 into my minivan to run the rear seat entertainment system? 😅

I'm more of a lurker than anything else haha. I scour forums for issues my cars/bikes are dealing with, and occasionally will ask a question here or there. I don't really make many posts anymore, unless I'm doing a specific job or troubleshooting process that I haven't seen documented anywhere else.

I frequent forums, too. Mostly car and motorcycle forums. Lemmy doesn't really have those kinds of forums.

Ah haha, the IT/IS department at the last company I worked for saw right through that and nailed me to the wall for "unauthorized VPN usage" 😂😂

(a mid 2010's macbook running debian)

Brave soul. My wife has a 2017 A1706 MBP.... We also have a 2009-ish MBP loaded with Linux Mint that the kids use for schoolwork.

The only reason I’m posting from my shit account right now (I still like this place, don’t worry) is because db0 is blocked at work for “PiRaCy” 🙄🙄🙄

Nevermind, I guess IT decided to unblock it.