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Last month after an hour of slamming refresh, I was actually able to secure pre-orders for both the Xbox Series X and S. Today
they arrived and after setting them up I'm not as impressed as I'd hoped. The graphics don't seem that much better than my Xbox One X was able to produce, but hopefully that gets better as the developers optimize further. The storage speed is vastly improved, all my games start faster than they did on my One X even with the SSD I installed on it. One drawback is a total drop for Kinect support, and of course my kids still play the dance game, so for now my trusty Xbox One X
remains to play a single game. Everything else transfers nicely to the new one. And now of course, it's time for a new
topology map.
On December 7th 2018, I decided to buy 30 shares of
ATVI after it dove down to $47.23 a share. Little did I know the massive government stock prop up plan known as the "Coronavirus Stimulus" would hit when it did, skyrocketing the shares to $84.60. Today I got cold feet, realizing the government can only print money for so long before it loses effect, so I decided to sell. I think a
79% ROI over 1.7 years (40.34% annualized) is a nice return, so that's why you're hearing about it. Oh fine, here's the
calculator link, but I'm sure it won't work a year from now.
In 2.5 months I've managed to clock 311 miles on my new (to me) Focus RS. Rolling over 17,000 miles seemed like a good milestone to get excited about, and so far I've only had one hard stop on my Progressive Snapshot. That puts me in "A+" discount position. I'm trying to avoid driving it at all until the snapshot period is over, but it's just too difficult to choose an ST over an RS when given the choice. I view 311 miles as a testament to my will power, since any rational person would have over 1k by now.
Shortly after I purchased my Focus RS, the dealer who sold it decided it was a good time to drill a license plate mount for a car that was headed to a state that doesn't require front license plates. Once they drilled it, there was no point in arguing, but today I finally eliminated the holes thanks to a
shady eBay aftermarket replacement cover. Removing the bumper to take off the cover was fairly easy. While I'm not a fan of the drill dimples, it looks
much better than the
drilled stock one it replaced.
Today I discovered the most useless piece of my HVAC system: the Static Pressure Regulating Damper. The purpose of this is to release extra air pressure when only one of my two zones are requesting cooling. This makes sense when you're concerned about overall system noise, but not when I could care less about noise when it's at the expense of cooling speed. The
insulation on this install prevents the weights from ever closing it fully anyway, defeating the entire purpose of it. I zip-tied it permanently closed for a much faster cooling with slightly louder noise and regret nothing.
Tired of looking at the cigarette lighter adapter running to my dashcam in both my cars, I decided today was the day I finally routed them properly. My Focus RS has an
unused sunroof 12v source that I was easily able to modify the dashcam power supply to fit into. The Focus ST had a
slightly more complicated solution, since it has a sunroof already using that source, but still relatively easy. Both cars already had a spot in the headliner for a wire to the european models more complicated center stack, so the end result
looks relatively stock.
After a kickstarter ad for the
WeatherFlow Tempest weather monitor kept flashing on my screen, I couldn't get the idea of mounting it on my mailbox out of my head. Fast forward to today, and I've gone and
done it. The weather data it puts out for having no moving parts is
pretty impressive. Some internet folks on the forums thought mail delivery would result in a false rain report (from vibration), but so far
no problems. If I didn't have cameras on it 24/7 I'd be worried about someone stealing it, but at this point I'm pretty sure nobody even notices it's there, since it looks like a post itself.
With the soon-to-arrive Xbox Series X, it's time to start purging my
excessive collection of Xboxes. It's hard to part with my years of acquired special edition consoles, but my recent purchase of the Focus RS helps me liquidate with a purpose. The actual
INCREASE in value on these things is also helpful. I'm always amazed when there are bigger nerds with more money than me willing to pay a premium for my old crap. Now that I'm pared back to minimum Xbox count, I'm ready to fill back up on the new version.
With my divorce behind me, and my need for a Focus RS never having been satisifed, I found a great deal on a
manufacturer buyback nitrous blue example in
beautiful condition. Already a fan of refurbished products, I figure this one has all the future problems fixed since a good 20% of the car has been replaced, but just to be safe I bought an extra 3 years on the warranty. Once it
finally arrived from Iowa, I removed the 5+ ridiculous stickers the dealer put on it, along with the front licence plate bracket. Of course I
upgraded the Sync version, although I learned the non-navigation head unit may not have enough memory to add navigation, so I played it safe and stuck with non-nav. I also got new shoes, since the existing factory tires had
plugs and
screws in them. It arrived with an almost dead battery and less than 2 gallons of gas, so the dealer was clearly determined to make it the worst possible experience they could. Once the battery was fully charged, I discovered the joys of auto-stop. After 3 minutes of being auto-stopped, the car
actually gets worried you don't know how to re-start the engine again. I enabled global windows and disabled the honk-on-exit in the PCM computer, but left auto-stop on since I actually like it when I'm sitting at a red light, and it's easy enough to disable via button. Now that all my customization was done, it was time to
scare my kids, but sadly the audio was disabled on the dash cam. At least I got their first reactions recorded for drift mode and launch control. It
fits nicely next to my Focus ST, and since Ford is no longer making cars I'm glad I have an example of each of their last hot hatches.
I decided it was time my kids each had their own dedicated PC for Coronavirus homeschooling. A
$100 PC deal naturally appeared, and after an SSD upgrade and the latest BIOS update, I had some
pretty capable machines ready for e-learning. With two new machines added, it was of course time to update to the
network topology diagram as tradition dictates. A recent Woot.com deal also allowed me to finally wire my home theater
properly instead of just a hole in the wall.
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Vehicle Info
1999 Mercury Cougar
2017 Ford Focus ST
2017 Ford Focus RS
2013 Kawasaki Ninja
Last month after an hour of slamming refresh, I was actually able to secure pre-orders for both the Xbox Series X and S. Today they arrived and after setting them up I'm not as impressed as I'd hoped. The graphics don't seem that much better than my Xbox One X was able to produce, but hopefully that gets better as the developers optimize further. The storage speed is vastly improved, all my games start faster than they did on my One X even with the SSD I installed on it. One drawback is a total drop for Kinect support, and of course my kids still play the dance game, so for now my trusty Xbox One X remains to play a single game. Everything else transfers nicely to the new one. And now of course, it's time for a new topology map.
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