Rewiring My Brain

Old Dog, New Tricks

Nine months shy of beginning of my seventh decade on this Earth, I have boldly undertaken several change processes recently, though history and human experience would suggest their ultimate failure. Nevertheless, I persist.

Writing

I have always had atrocious penmanship, for most of my life rationalizing it by invoking an imagined inverse relationship between neat writing and the brain power producing it. It has always been a problem, and few humans could reliably interpret my scribble unless I really put effort into it.

It reached a point recently when, during a meeting, I began to page through the little black journal I write in (and have for years) onto which I keep notes for future reference. Two things occurred to me. The first was that I RARELY go back into my notes at all. Perhaps the act of writing it down writes it on the hard disc in my brain, but by and large, when I take these notes, they are seldom ever seen again. Which is a good thing, because as I paged through the journal, the second thing occurred to me. I cannot read my own writing. At least not as reliably as I once did. It really hit me. I guess I could chalk it up and say, hell, I don’t read these things anyway, so why does it matter? But that’s ignorant and selfish. After all, I am prone to leaving helpful post-it notes to the ladies of my life (mostly on kitchen counters next to ignored instances of kitchen fouling), and what if they simply ignore them because they cannot read them? What a disservice I would be doing them, right?

Below, please find a photo of a page from my journal from a September 2016 back to school night at Dash-1’s school (What’s that? You don’t take notes at back to school night? Don’t you love your children?)

This particular passage is on the high end of the readability scale. I went through a bunch of examples that were downright scary and hieroglyphic. But at least I could read this one.

In an effort to improve myself, I’ve decided to try and write neater. Flat out cursive, being somewhat out of style with the kids these days, seems to lead to the indecipherable mess above. So I’ve decided to implement a print-style writing in which my pen doesn’t leave the paper during the writing of the word. Sort of a print/cursive hybrid. See the translation below.

Clearly I am no artist, but in terms of future readability, there is no question but that the latter version is more likely to be of use.

This rewiring of my brain is not easy. I find myself lapsing into the earlier unreadable mess now and then, and (no joke), I’ll transition back to this new way after writing something like “whoops, writing the old way need to stop”.

Electric Vehicle Life

The second area of my brain to be rewired is that governing the operation of automobiles, specifically the recent switch I made from an internal combustion automobiles to an EV. Lots to rewire here.

First, there are some obvious things. My (recently totaled, God bless its soul) previous automobile got somewhere north of 550 miles to a tank (my driving style), which I found glorious. somewhere inside of 50-75 miles of range remaining would drive me into the filling station where I would almost always have no wait to fill up in a transaction that lasted a few minutes. Those days are over.

Maximum range of my new EV is “up to 420 miles”, which as EV’s go is pretty damn high. Most authorities say something along the lines of not letting the charge go below 20% and not routinely charging above 80%. So, if I listen to the authorities, my max range is 320 miles and I need to “fill up” at 80 miles of range.

The first thing to be rewired is missing all the extra miles I had in the ICE (internal combustion engine) car, or at least THINKING that I miss them. There is no question—a big gas tank and 29mpg highway means you get a lot of miles between fill-ups. And since the gas station I used more than any other is about 2 miles from my house, I routinely had the glorious view of a bursting full fuel tank ready to take me a fifth of the way across this great continent without refilling.

What makes everything different, and what is driving me to rewire my brain, is that home-charging changes the whole ballgame. My super-duper, 80 miles of range per hour, Level 2 charger is due to be delivered tomorrow, and I hope to have the local Sparkies over to install it by week’s end. In the meantime I am using what is known as a “mobile charger”, plugged into the outlet that illuminates our external Christmas lights and the other end to my car. It takes that mighty 120Volts at 1KW and delivers unto me 4 miles of range per charging hour. My car is sitting in my driveway right now at 76% battery capacity on its way to 90% (I am ignoring the authorities for the brief time between buying the car and having the level 2 charger installed). I will take the car out in a little bit to go to the grocery store, but I have no trips on the plan for tomorrow, so sometime late midday tomorrow, I’ll be at 90%, a “full tank as it were”.

If I had no “road trips” to take, I’d putter around town, set my charging limit to 75%, and just plug in every night. Ever morning—every single morning—I’d wake to a “gas tank” of 300 miles, plenty to pursue the life of country gentleman that I’ve carved out for myself.

But I cannot just putter around this week. I have to take a business trip, and I’ll be driving. The target is nearly 200 miles away. So in the next part of “rewiring” my brain, I have to plan ahead. A little. I’ve looked at my route and I see there are a number of options for me to “charge up” along the way, some of which are faster than others. My car ALSO tells me where I can charge, and how many of the charge spots are currently empty. Since I’ll be traveling the day before the obligation, I’ll be on a loose timeline, probably once I get to my destination Tuesday night, I’ll find a fast charger and take myself back up to around 75%. Why 75% and not more? Well, 75% is 300 miles, which is plenty to get back home on to arrive at about 20%. Additionally, the time to get from 50% to 75% is minimal on a high speed charger, maybe 15 minutes. Trying to get more battery charge takes longer, and it isn’t linear. And if there isn’t a high speed charger close-by? Well, that 50% represents 200 miles, and there damn sure is a fast charger within 200 miles.

Bottom line is that I have to think about driving differently, something I’ve been doing for 42 years. Old dog, new tricks.

Voting

Believe it or not, there was a day when I was pretty much a “vote for all the Republicans” guy. I’ve never been particularly interested in local politics, and so until 2016, if there were an (R) next to a name, I could pretty reliably count on the fact that this person valued limited government, individual rights, free markets, and a strong national defense. My primary voting was spotty, especially while I was in the Navy, and I pretty much let the party figure out who would get my vote in the general election.

It should not be forgotten though, that I was (and am) deeply conservative in the old-school way of understanding that term, not the nouveau immigrant hating, entitlement loving, tariff-wielding, “own the libs” style we see so prominent today (and which will undoubtedly manifest itself in the comments to this post). Before 2016, I was a “just win baby!” Republican, who despised the internecine battles within the GOP over who was more conservative and who was keeping the Reagan flame alive, because within an acceptable level of deviation, EVERYONE was keeping the Reagan flame alive. To re-use a phrase from the first part of this essay, “those days are no more”.

What I mean by that is that I can no longer look at that “R” and be confident that there was a reasonable level of agreement between that person and me on policy matters, or more to the point, that there would be MORE agreement between that person and me on policy matters than there would be between me and the person running with a “D” next to their name. I’ve had to rewire my brain to be far more circumspect of the character and policy choices of people running under the GOP banner. The fact that “character” has even slipped into the algorithm is a sad statement on the GOP.

I really don’t need to rewire my brain when it comes to Democrats. They are pretty much what they’ve been for most of my adult life, and that is generally wrong on most important domestic policy issues, and often wrong on most foreign policy issues. And because I have no interest in routinely promoting policies with which I disagree, I’ve never spent a lot of time pondering the character of Democratic candidates for office, because I can’t get past how wrong they are on policy.

All of this points to my having to be a more informed voter than I used to be, and this itself requires some re-wiring.

LATE EDIT

It is 1500 hrs on the day I posted this and I feel the need to edit it AND send it back out.

Bottom line folks, is that I am not going to allow specific attacks on individual people (including me) on this site (comments). I’m happy to criticize BROAD groups of people, and the fact that I run this Substack and constantly do so (criticize) should be obvious. But if you read my criticism and take it as a criticism of YOU—that’s on you. If you don’t want to be criticized by me (broadly), don’t read me. It’s a free country.

But if you get butthurt by something I write and then turn it around as a no-shit personal attack back on me, I’m gonna ban you from commenting. It is that simple. If you turn your comments into personal attacks on other commenters, I’m gonna ban you from commenting.

I hope we understand each other.