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Catalytic crime wave

Our 2005 Toyota Prius is in the shop in an attempt by my wife to deter my attempt at disposing of it. Actually, we would get rid of it either way, but she wants to get in running so it can be sold. Our difference in opinion stems from her not being stranded numerous times by that car over the past few years. Most recently, we’ve replaced the battery (regular, not hybrid) twice, and I haven’t bothered to do it a third time while I was working from home. Well, I’m back to the office this week, which means… nothing directly related this story because we’re carpooling. Anyway, enough back story, let’s get to the crime. We had the Prius towed to the shop for a full diagnostic. They let us know early on, yeah, it’s the battery. They will order a new one and replace it. No surprise there. The surprise came after they raised it and found the catalytic converter was cut out like a kidney from a guy who wakes up in a bathtub of ice. At some point while our car was sitting in our courtyard parkin...
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Watched Willow today after watching Willow last week

We just watched the first episode of Willow the series with mixed results. I enjoyed it; my wife is on the fence. In a reversal, it’s bc she’s the fan, and I just watched the movie last week. What can I say? I’m not a big medieval magic fan, so I never got around to seeing it. Anyway, I went into the series without expectations, while my wife could not get past hers. We will push forward now that the quest and crew has been established, but I’m a lot more eager to see how it turns out. No spoilers: that joke from that ‘80s movie made me so happy. It feels like they’re trying to bring Gen X fun to the young folk, and I am here for it.
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Farewell to my faithful car audio adapter

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As we act to send our 2005 Toyota Prius to its next life, I have to admit, I’m not particularly tied to the car. It was my wife’s car until we traded in my Corolla for our Prius wagon. What hits me harder is the loss of the car audio adapter and dock I put together and refined over the years. Yeah, I still have the gear and pulled it out of the Prius, but it’s too dated now to use in another car. The old Prius has a CD changer and a cassette player, no auxiliary or USB input. That meant the only way to connect audio was through a cassette adapter, which even a 10-year old car wouldn’t have. Wanting to connect my iPhone 3G using a single plug, I used a 30-pin dock connector with separate audio output to support power and audio. I later added an audio splitter and Bluetooth adapter, so I could skip plugging in my iPhone on short drives. I wound up not using this much because direct audio was so much better, especially back then. Still, I never eliminated it from the setup. The big step f...
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