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  • Smiles Per Hour

    29,000 miles now

    Something I do to keep track of miles and maintenance over time is snap a photo of the odometer every thousand miles to timestamp it.

    I bought the car with 24,800 miles on 31 MAY 2024 – 383 days ago. So I’m averaging 10.96 miles a day – and anything over 10 miles a day on average is officially a ‘daily driver’.

    Overall miles average since new though (delivered to the dealership on 22 NOV 2016) is 9.2 miles per day – which is part of why I bought it.

    See, buying a car literally built to be abused is typically a very bad idea because, well, it’s been abused…

    But my Hellcat had tons of detailed maintenance records and the first owner leased it – and only put 12,000 miles on it in the four years he had it before trading it in. The second owner was the shop manager at the AutoNation where I bought it, and he too only put about 12,000 miles on it over four years.

    Meanwhile I’ve put about 4000 miles on it in a single year – and it sat in the garage all winter. But I also tend to drive my cars instead of look at them.

    Since I bought it I’ve installed the best automotive alarm system money can buy, put in a new battery, had the radio / head unit replaced, flushed and filled the diff, put in new plugs, replaced the drive belts, rotated the tires and put two new Nitto Motivos on the back, replaced the front rotors, pads, and brake fluid, had an alignment done, did an oil/filter change, and replaced the fuel pumps…

    Mostly maintenance stuff and some upgrades… I think I’ve got about $5000 in the car at this point not counting gas and insurance.

    The reward for this expense and effort happens almost daily…

    See, when you drive a murdered out Challenger Hellcat, you’re a bit like the old gunfighter in a western and every punk kid with a pistol wants to take a shot.

    Last year most of the challenges came in the form of ricers – tuned nitrous sucking imports with ‘bees in a can’ exhaust, too much camber, and not enough torque to be taken seriously.

    They are plenty fast, but they aren’t purpose-built drag cars, and the Hellcat is still undefeated against the turbo cars I’ve come across in both digs and roll races.

    This year it’s mostly been EVs wanting a shot at the dinosaur, and while a performance EV (especially high end Teslas) are stupidly quick, I can still hold my own because I tend to have the better driver mod.

    I mean, I’ve been building and racing cars since the mid 80’s – and old age and treachery will always win out over youth and enthusiasm…

    This morning on the way into the office saw another speed contest – this one came in the form of a new BMW M4 Competition…

    I was minding my own business, just tooling along the divided three-lane road on the way to the office. I’d just left the light in the right lane and made a bit of noise to get to my usual 50 in the 45 – as you do – and put a dozen car lengths between the pack and myself. And in the mirror I spotted the battleship gray M4 with that comically oversized grill desperately weaving around cars to catch up and prove something…

    As he was being a danger to himself and others I analyzed the situation; no traffic in front of me for about a half mile on a straight, dry, divided road with good visibility. The Hellcat was showing 170 degrees in the transmission and my intake air and oil temps were satisfactory – so I down-shifted into my 50mph power band and waited for him to start his mad charge as he got around the final car in front of him.

    He came flying up to do a high speed pass to show me up, and as he got to my door I nailed it… The Hellcat exploded forward, pulling the front wheels up and the supercharger screaming its warning to the half mile around us – and the M4 instantly appeared in the rear view mirror.

    I went from 50 to three digits in about three seconds, and let off at three times the posted limit at about 5 seconds – which put probably 3 car lengths between us…

    The M4 then flew past me and high-tailed it into the traffic up ahead, and started being a danger to himself and others again.

    This is the ‘driver mod’ that lets the old gunslinger keep pace with the punk kids… And was a pretty typical drive to work all things considered.

    I really should get a ‘gap cam’ to record the beatdowns, but then again I probably shouldn’t be recording myself doing this sort of stuff… I’m too old for jail time.

  • Hellcat costs

    I got the Hellcat back from the dealership this afternoon – they swapped out the fuel pumps on it and that seems to have fixed the issue.

    Without the warranty it would have run me $2371.39 – about $1800 of that was just the cost of the pumps.

    With the warranty it cost me $200.

    And with the radio that was replaced under warranty (~$3000) I’ve now exceeded what I paid for the super uber high-end platinum package…

    So, the moral of the story is “If you really want to buy a used supercar of some sort – spend the extra money on the warranty.”

  • Sports Cars

    My CFO’s Porsche Boxster

    My CFO came into the office today and asked if I could drive him over to the dealership to pick up his Lotus Emira – and being as my Hellcat is still in the shop the only option was to ride with him in his Boxster, and then drive his Boxster back to his place.

    Not exactly a hardship.

    Now, granted, his Boxster is dramatically underpowered for what I’m used to – it’s about 200hp compared to my Hellcat’s roughly 800 – but it’s a different kind of car. It’s more about cruising around with the top down and enjoying the moment than ripping a launchpad out of the nearest available tarmac…

    In the long list of cars I’ve owned, one was a white 1972 Porsche 914 2.0 – which had about 100hp but only weighed a smidge over 2000 pounds. It was a very similar beast to the Boxster, and I had a nice wayback moment when driving the Boxster back to his place.

    Anyway, back to the Emira…

    Taking delivery of his Emira with my Hellcat in the background

    He took delivery of his Emira back in August, after waiting like two years for the thing, and last week the first service interval came due. So it’s been in the shop for a week now – not that this phases my CFO much as he has like seven cars.

    The Emira had a slew of firmware updates that needed done, and there’s the typical Lotus issues with sticky reverse gear, electrical foibles, and excessive wind noise… The dealership apparently fixed all of the little things under warranty and did the oil/filter change which was only $250.

    I know readers might be justifiably alarmed at that cost, but it really isn’t that bad considering what it takes to get the car apart to do it… The Emira isn’t your granddad’s F-150, and it takes a solid 30 minutes just to get the underbody panels off and back on again.

    The Hellcat has a similar oil change cost, but for other reasons – such as needing to drain the oil coolers as well as the pan, and the thing holds 7 quarts of oil…

    As for the Hellcat – it’s still in the shop.

    They did determine the issue was one of the fuel pumps and my extended warranty is covering the cost. Right now they’re waiting for a new Hellcat spec fuel pump to show up, and then they need to do the work – so hopefully I’ll have the car back by the end of the week.

  • Recollections

    To say the world has changed a bit since I was younger is a dramatic understatement. And I like to ponder the tides of change on slow, quiet weekends like this one…

    One example of the past versus present is airports.

    Prior to 9-11 you could hang out at the gate with whomever was on the flight, or meet them there when picking them up. So it was normal to arrive, walk up the boarding ramp from the plane, and have someone waiting right there at the gate for you. And tearful goodbyes at the gate were just as common.

    And all of those eateries and whatnot on the other side of security used to have families sharing a meal before jetting off to parts unknown.

    I spent a lot of summers with my grandparents growing up, so I had a lot of solo flight time between Colorado and Ohio when I was little. Being a solo 8-12 year old had some perks – like always getting invited up to the flight deck where the pilot and co-pilot would show off the controls and answer my million-and-one questions. Every flight I also got a pair of gold-plated plastic wings pinned to my lapel from some very nice stewardess, as well as a bag of airline swag.

    Airports were also a lot less stressful back then and I fondly remember the old “Stapleton” airport in Denver, which seemed like a mall with airplanes to me. And plane flight was more of an event back in the day; people were generally all dressed up for the trip and everywhere parents whispered to children to be on their best behavior.

    Notable flights out of Stapleton for me include:

    • 1986 – departure to boot camp in Great Lakes Illinois
    • 1987 – departure to groton sub-base from Christmas leave
    • 1991 – departure to Galveston for work in the gulf
    • 1992 – departure to Istanbul for work off the coast of Mersin

    Stapleton was closed in 1995 where everything moved to DIA.

    I’ve flown out of DIA a handful of times – the most notable being when I left Colorado in 1997 to restart my life in D.C. – but since 2004 I’ve basically sworn off airlines and just drive everywhere… It’s cheaper and less stressful.

  • Car Stuff

    I need to take the Hellcat into the shop this morning to have them look at one of the fuel pumps. The car keeps tossing a P062A error, which is fuel circuit A out of spec, and the pumps Dodge used in 15-18 are notoriously crap – so it’s probably that.

    Fortunately I bought the ultra top-end extended warranty when I bought the car, so I should only be $200 out of pocket… $200 because the work will be out of network.

    See, I bought the car at AutoNation – from their repair shop manager as it was his personal car and he was just selling it through the dealership because it was easy. When I bought it he was very specific about not bringing it to AutoNation for work as the car was beyond their ability… So, I take it to a shop I’ve been using for the last few decades, who also happen to have SRT techs.

    And that’s why it’s $200 instead of free.

    In other car related news – why are BMW drivers like this?

    It’s not even an M-Series or something special – it’s just your bog-standard X3 SUV which simply means you paid too much for the same SUV everyone else drives… New York plates though – that might have something to do with it…

    And we’ve been having some construction going on in the building where my office is – construction must pay well these days…

    Owning something like a Hellcat is kinda spendy – just because you can afford to spend $80,000 on a car doesn’t mean you can afford it…

    For example, I’m over 55, no accidents or anything in the last few decades, have had a long string of performance oriented cars, take yearly offensive/defensive driving courses to keep my skills up to snuff, and have been with my insurance company since Reagan was in office – and I still pay about $300 a month for insurance on the Hellcat.

    Mostly because it’s literally a guided missile…

    Other costs include things like the $300 a piece for the 305 width tires, and you get to replace the rears yearly. It uses expensive fluids – the thing has two full cooling systems filled with $50 / bottle coolant, has about a half mile of oil cooler piping so it holds 7 quarts of high-end Pennzoil synthetic, and the drivetrain lubricants are made with unicorn tears or something… The lube in the LSD is almost $200 for a fill. And the gas milage is pretty bad most of the time; I think I’m averaging about 16MPG, and it’ll only really run right on Shell V-Power Nitro+ which is always about a buck a gallon more expensive than everything else.

    Hell, it uses sixteen $50 spark plugs…

    I’ve been dealing with this sort of thing for so long it doesn’t phase me much, but I wonder how the 20-something drywall guy is making ends meet with that Trackhawk.

  • Macintosh

    Some relics of my past

    I’ve been into Apple Computers since Apple Computers was invented, and accordingly I have quite a collection of hardware from bygone days.

    Back in 6th grade (1980) there were four Apple IIs in the ‘computing lab’ located in a repurposed storeroom off of the library, and I spent a ton of time on them… This was where I started using a hex-editor to crack copies of friend’s games so that I could play the game when they weren’t around.

    I personally never owned an Apple II of any flavor though, as they were inordinately expensive even back then. My father had an OSI C1P and then a TRS-80 Model 1 that I messed with in the late 70’s, and my first personal computer – as in it was mine – was a Sinclair ZX-81 that I built from a $99 kit in 1981. I then moved to a Commodore VIC-20 in ’82 and an Atari 800XL in ’84 – but at school it was all Apple IIs and I used the crap out of them…

    My first exposure to the Macintosh line was in late 1986 – one of the guys in the barracks at General Dynamics Electric Boat (EB) had a brand new Macintosh Plus his parents had bought for him right before he enlisted, and he wasn’t into it. So I picked it up off of him for a couple hundred bucks even though it was a $2600 computer at the time – which is $7500 in today’s money.

    That Mac Plus is there on the left in the above photo, along with the “Mac Saver” fan on the top and the HD20 external drive I added later… 20 megabytes – it can hold almost three of the above JPGs – and it was amazing at the time.

    That Mac Plus still runs, almost 40 years later. I need to re-cap the analog board as the monitor image is getting a little wobbly, but other than that it still runs MacPaint and Zork flawlessly.

    In 1988 I moved to an Amiga 500 to get access to better color graphics, and the Mac Plus was relegated to the closet.

    I was still using the Amiga 500 in late 1993 when I picked up the PowerBook 165C – the grey laptop just to the right of the Mac Plus. The 165C came out in early ’93 and I really wanted one to run this new “PhotoShop” application on, but they were around $4300 (about $9500 in 2025). By Christmas ’93 though I was able to score a used one for a grand – and it too still runs, though the battery has long since given up the ghost and is unobtanium these days.

    The next Mac chronologically is the Power Mac 8100 sitting under the 165C. I picked this up in late 1995 for a song… I was working at a local used computer store called Action Computers as one half of the repair department, and the 8100 came in for repair. It was a $9,000 machine that needed about $700 in parts as I recall, and they never came back for it – so I got it for parts cost.

    1996 – from some mid-90’s digital camera

    The above image, taken in March of 1996, shows the 8100 sitting between the machines for my BBS ‘Silicon Psychosis’ and under the ISDN modem and router that was my connection to the raw, unfiltered Internet. The 8100 was my workstation, where I cruised the nascent Internet, hung out in IRC and a few MUCKs, and did digital image stuff in PhotoShop. It also ran my website using HTTP server software called WebSTAR.

    By the time the 8100 was retired it was maxed out in ram (264MB), HPV video with 4MB ram, 2GB HD, and a CD Burner. I recently replaced the HD with a SCSI to SD card adapter, but the rest of the machine is as it was back then – and it still works…

    The next Mac is the PowerBook G3 (black laptop in the center). I picked up a PowerBook G3 “Wallstreet” in 1998, after I moved to Virginia in 1997, for use in my work in D.C. I eventually traded the “Wallstreet” for a “Pismo” in 2000. The Pismo is a 500Mhz G3 with a gig of ram and the “Airport” card – it was a hotrod back in the early aughts… Also still functions apart from the unobtanium battery, and I use it to dial into a few local BBSs on occasion.

    Next is the 17″ 1.33Ghz PowerBook G4 (silver laptop in the center). This was a laptop I was given when I returned to Virginia in 2003 for an ill-fated teaching job. The tech school fell through but I got to keep the laptop. I did a full restoration of this machine with new old stock parts five or so years ago, so it’s pretty much as-new – even has a working battery! I pull this out and get it onto the Internet on occasion just for giggles.

    From here I had an assortment of “Intel Macs” that weren’t really worth hanging on to and they generally got horse-traded for newer more powerful models… Things like iMacs and MacBooks and Mac minis…

    Eventually, in 2010, I traded my way into that MacPro 5,1 (the big silver machine on the right). This was originally the bottom-spec single-CPU Xeon W3530 machine, but is now a fully maxed out dual-CPU 12-core 3.46Ghz Xeon machine with 128GB of ram, a Radeon RX580 video card, a 1TB M.2 PCIe adapter, 4TB of SATA storage, USB3, etc., etc. I used this machine for work as recently as last year as with some effort it’ll still run current MacOS versions. It’s a beast, and it’s a shame Apple went away from this sort of machine.

    Lastly is the 2013 Mac Pro “Trashcan” that I picked up in 2015. This one is the dual D700 video card version that I upgraded the CPU, ram, and storage on. I used this as my daily driver until last year when it was replaced with an M2 Ultra Mac Studio – which was recently replaced with a 2025 M3 Ultra Mac Studio that I am using to write this post.

    Also in that first picture, for the eagle-eyed viewer, are three of my original iPhones – iPhone 2G, iPhone 4, and iPhone 5. My iPhone 3, being made of plastic, didn’t fare so well and I no longer have it. The 4th device is my old iPod. I had a first-gen iPod when those came out, but it got lost in a move…

    On top of the Mac Plus is the last modem I ever bought – a USRobotics Courier V.Everything from the mid 90’s. That runs through a Grandstream HT802 to the Internet and allows me to simulate the days of analog when dialing up BBSs.

    In the upper right is a very special Commodore 64 – that one has a mini-ITX board with an Intel i9-9880H, 4GB GTX1650, 16GB ram, and a 1TB M.2 stuffed into it. It’s a perfectly reasonable modern computer that is also a perfect recreation of the original Commodore 64.

    To the right of the cheese grater Mac Pro is a small silver box – this is a modern recreation of an Amiga 500 – a Fauxmiga if you will… It has all of the Amiga’s custom logic (Paula, Denise, Agnes) in FPGA, but all of the actual CPU functions and processing happen on a new old-stock DIP-style Motorola 68000… So it’s an actual Amiga 500, just with modern VGA, PS2 keyboard and mouse, and SD card storage.

    Next to the Fauxmiga is an Atari 800 “mini” and joystick that I use to play 80’s video games on occasion.

    And lastly you can just see my old MiniDisc player from the late 90’s under the Fauxmiga and 800 mini. I still take this on my walks and listen to minidiscs that I recorded back in the day.