Cars and such

I spent more time than I expected today swearing at my phone.

When Android Auto works, it’s a wonderful improvement to the car driving experience. You have the familiar interface of Google Maps rather then whatever bonkers design choice the particular manufacturer made, you can control music via voice and even have messages read to you and then reply without taking your eyes off the road.

When it works.

I drove to Bothell and it was a shit show for the whole 30 minutes. I don’t know if it was the car or the phone, but variously the Bluetooth connection died, the display on thr car froze, the music turned itself on and off and random, occasionally deciding that I wanted Amazon Music (where I have no account) instead of Spotify, and the piece de resistance – when Spotify plays any British Big Beat (that loud sound from the late 1990s) Google Voice Assistant would activate and claim I had asked to listen to the sound of a fire. How relaxing.

All in all, the fact that I got to Bothell and back without driving into a tree through sheer annoyance was quite impressive.

I had gone to Bothell to investigate buying an enormous shed for the back garden. Sadly, the shed specialists take Sunday off, so it was a wasted trip. I went to Home Depot and bought light bulbs and a clamp, then drove back via Target, where I purchased three cheap toy cars.

Earlier in the week, I tidied the house by shifting all the cardboard boxes out of the living room. That meant one room in the house wasn’t a total state. However, somebody had promised to come and take all the boxes away, so I dragged them back into the living room. And then they changed their mind and didn’t come anyway. So the house is still roughly as messy as it was before, although I did do a bit of tidying in the kitchen so we have counter space for the first time in a month.

The reason I bought a clamp in Home Depot was to hold the toy cars while I attacked them with a drill. It turns out this was an optimistic approach and I really need to invest in a proper vice (which I can attach to the workbench in my hypothetical shed) but at least I managed to disassemble one toy car without injuring myself, and then attached some modifications to it and sprayed it with black paint. One small step towards having a mob of post apocalyptic cars to play Gaslands with. None of the cars will be equipped with Android Auto, of course, but they will have machine guns and rams.

After that, I figured it was time to get out, so I went for a 20 minute run, then came home and deleted emails. And now, to bed. I think I did about half the things I was planning to achieve today, but half is better than nothing and crashing a car, so there’s that.