1 year with an electric car (2017 Chevy Volt)

• Yes, I still love it and I'm realizing that an electric car would work for more people than you might think
• It has a battery large enough to run about 50 miles, then it starts the gas engine to recharge the battery. I've used 14 gallons of gas total, to go just under 7000 miles, saving me roughly $1000 from my SUV. That includes electricity cost of a couple hundred.

• 94% electric according to the excellent voltstats.net that uses OnStar data if you opt in.
• I've definitely gotten a feel for how far I can go on a charge, and what types of things will drain the battery faster. The heater and driving over 65 are the two biggest killers. 
• I can get as low as 40 miles of range in the winter and as high as 70 miles in nice spring/fall weather
• If I know I'll be driving further than the electric range, I try to put it in "Hold" mode to use gas at highway speeds instead of in stop and go driving in the city since it's more efficient that way, but the car would be fine if I never even thought about it.
• I burned more gas than I probably needed to last winter before I found the setting to lower the ERDTT (Engine Running Due To Temperature) threshold down to 15F instead of 32F
• I've found that the onboard 3.6kW charger is too slow to really bother plugging in while out on the go unless I'll be there for more than an hour (or if it makes the difference between me burning gas for that day)
• I often find chargers near where I'm going in KC, but a lot of the time they're just far enough away that it's not worth walking (also see above).
• I've joked with friends about plugging in at their house while visiting for a few hours but never actually done it. Still doesn't seem socially acceptable in 2018 in Kansas.
• Still using level 1 (normal electrical outlet) at home every night or two. Usually just 8A instead of 12A since I haven't had the time to run a dedicated circuit and I don't want to trip the GFI since a chest freezer is also out there in the garage.
• Very few times where I needed more charging than overnight at home on a normal outlet gave me
• Only a handful of trips longer than the ~50 mile range
• Having a new baby in the spring (that hates her car seat) meant that I drove less in the summer than I probably would have otherwise
• I could have gotten a Bolt instead and been fine. I was worried about driving 150mi. to the Lake of the Ozarks and back, not being able to charge while there, which would exceed the battery capacity. But I haven't even done that. Still the anemic non-Tesla fast charger situation in the midwest makes me a little bit glad that I didn't. Well that and the ~$5000 price difference in the Volt's favor.
• Since I bought in December of 2017 I got my full $7500 tax credit when we did our taxes earlier this year
• Considering taking it in to the dealership for the first service. Oil life is still at 52% (whatever that means) since I have so few gas miles but I'm getting close to 7500 miles for the recommended tire rotation.
• I tend to not use the Sport mode much. I tend to get more satisfaction seeing my efficiency numbers than the acceleration plastering me in the back of the seat.
• I usually drive in L "gear" except when I'm on the highway. I like the combination of regenerative braking when I let off the accelerator and even more on demand with the paddle behind the steering wheel. This also seems safer in icy weather since you just automatically start slowing down when you let off.
• But D "gear" is nice for when my wife drives it and just wants to treat it like a regular car and not think about crazy things like regen
• The back seat sucks
• I originally hoped that I could stick a car seat in the 5th center seat, but neither of the ones I have will fit since the plastic of the car seat and the silly cup holder overlap.
• Android Auto and Apple Carplay both work well 90% of the time, but sometimes the system doesn't seem to recognize that a device is plugged in. Sometimes re-plugging it fixes it. Factory and 3rd party cables both have the problem. I've heard other people complain about this on Volt & new Leaf as well.
• Cruise control sometimes just won't turn on and needs the car to be restarted to fix it. Not always an option when you don't realize this until you're on the highway. Similar with the turn signal sounds. I've seen both of these reported on the GM Volt forum.
• I've heard complaints about the Bolt's front seats being too narrow. The Volt's seem fine, but one very minor complaint is that the heated seat area isn't quite wide enough. On a really cold day you can definitely feel where the heated section ends on the outsides.
• Rear visibility is kind of terrible and I really have to rely on the backup camera and the rear cross traffic alert.
  

Why I pre-ordered a Nintendo Switch

While the short version is "I have to play the newest Zelda game!" I'll try to give a list of justifications for a new toy that some people think is overpriced or irrelevant.

First, some quick video game system background is probably in order. I have a PS4 and have been thinking about adding a PS VR to it. But the $500 price tag is hard for me to justify for something that doesn't seem to have much more than a few cool tech demos. I have an original 3DS that I (very) occasionally play Mario Kart with friends. I've been somewhat interested in a few of the Wii U games that came out over the years, but never enough to justify the cost of that failing system.

So a Switch gives me basically everything I would want out of a Wii U (Mario, Zelda, play without taking up a TV) AND act as a 3DS replacement for a price that's less than PS VR. I worry a little bit about eventual 3rd party support, but I'm okay with it being a Nintendo first party machine. Anything beyond that would just be gravy. I don't care much about streaming services on Switch, I probably have 7 other devices that I can watch Netflix or Amazon Video on. Oh, and I'd be more likely to hand my still-a-bit-too-young-for-video-games kid a Nintendo controller than strap on a VR headset to her. That's a pretty weak rationalization I know, but whatever...Zelda!

I donated bone marrow

I didn't actually tell a ton of people, but yeah, a few weeks back I donated bone marrow since I was a good match with a stranger with a life threatening blood disease like leukemia. Not the 'stick a huge needle in your bones and extract marrow' type, more like the 'take shots for a few days and give blood' type. There was a bit more to it than that, but you get the idea.

Okay, let's back up to the beginning. Several years ago shortly after I got married, my wife's friend's dad went through some battles with leukemia. He needed a transplant or two and she convinced my wife and I that we should sign up for a marrow registry (Be the Match) to help out people like him. We swabbed our cheeks and sent it off in the mail. It was quick, it was free, and we didn't really think much of it after that. Many years later, I got a call that said I was a good match with a ~70 year old guy I didn't know with a similar disease. I had lots of questions of course, but I soon decided to donate. I figured I'm relatively young and healthy, why not help somebody? What really sealed the deal was the description of the process. It's called apheresis and really similar to giving blood plasma. They hook you up to an IV and a machine that separates your blood, then feeds it back to you, no surgery or anesthesia necessary. Wait, but I thought you gave bone marrow, you say? Well...sort of. I technically gave blood stem cells, which is what the shots from the days before told my body to start producing more of. They took out all the extra blood stem cells with apheresis and I was back to normal pretty much by the end of the day.

Let's see, other questions that people ask about? I did have to travel for the donation. I got on a plane on a Sunday night, did the donation on Monday morning, and flew back Tuesday morning. I was pretty exhausted that Monday afternoon, but I was actually feeling pretty good by that night. The shots for 5 days leading up to it were actually a bit more of a pain than the recovery. Since I had an excess of blood stem cells, I had some pain and stiffness in my lower back, and an occasional mild headache. During the actual apheresis they set me up to watch a few movies and it was a bit uncomfortable at times, but never really painful.

I'm looking forward to hearing how it went for the recipient. Usually that's around a month after the donation. Different organizations have different policies on contact between donors and recipients, but Be the Match doesn't allow contact until a year after, I believe. All I know about him is age, gender, and his disease. All he knows about me is age and gender. I'm sure they have good reasons for their rules, but it was almost too disconnected for me. I had to remind myself a few times that I was doing this for some guy out there that was relying on me. He had to go through severe chemotherapy right before my donation to completely kill off his immune system so that he'd be able to accept my stem cells. He actually gets my immune system and blood type after this. If I had backed out at that point he'd almost surely have died. Even with the donation the odds are around 50% survival, but that's literally his best option.

I decided that my motivation for doing this had a lot to do with my wife, 2 year old daughter, and my dad. I really like spending time with those girls and I'd want someone else to get as much time as possible with the people they love. Plus I want her to grow up in a world where people do stuff like this for other people. My dad died from cancer more than 10 years ago. I would have loved to have the ability for some kind of transplant to cure him but that wasn't an option in his case.

You might think about signing up. If you're under 40, the entry and cheek swab kit from Be the Match is free. They're slightly more likely to call if you're younger and male, just because men have more marrow and have more to donate. Minorities and people of mixed race are in even more demand, since the percentages of donors in the database mirrors the population as a whole.

Dead Space 3

It's not good. I looooooved the first two. This one sucks. Too much action and the dudes are bullet sponges, even on Easy. I sent it back after two hours. That is all.

Catch Up

I've played a few games lately but don't feel like making a post for each one. I picked up Dishonored and Call of Duty Black Ops. I really haven't been liking the stealth in Dishonored. It feels like I can't really tell if I'm going to be seen or not. And of course as soon as they see you, you're pretty much dead.
Black Ops is fun, but man, you know the part of the action movie where stuff is blowing up all around you, and there's dudes shooting in every direction for a minute or two? That's the WHOLE GAME of Black Ops. It got to where I learned not to play it before I go to sleep since it kind of put me on edge.
I also played through almost all of Resident Evil: Revelations for the 3DS. It was okay, I guess. The voice acting was terrible and the story was kind of a throwaway, but it was occasionally pretty, and it was something to do on the portable system.
Okay, just this weekend I plowed through all of The Last of Us. Holy crap that game is good. The story was excellent, and the gameplay was a lot of fun. It had decent stealth and a great variety of types of play and locations. So when I gush about the story and voice acting, don't think I'm glossing over the other stuff. It's the kind of game that made me stay up late to finish more of it, think about it while I went to sleep, then start playing again first thing when I woke up. So, so good. They made some really unexpected choices with the direction of the story at some points. Which just made me like it even more. Okay, I'll stop typing so you can just go play this one.