scha·den·freu·de

Not anytime soon.  My Cobra replica sat for 14 months with gas that was probably several months old to begin with. Started right up and ran fine.

My ‘19 GSW has an is38, R springs and rear antiroll bar, Koni SA struts&shocks, 312mm front brakes, MST intake and elbow, an S3 shifter bracket, Audi TTRS clutch, and 18" Pretorias (18" version of wheels found on the R). All part of the COVID-improvement-plan. Transformed the car without ruining it.

Once since mid-March.

I think the cracks are just starting to show. This morning we had a discussion - do we know any low-level C/C++ developer we can add to the team - and I realized any knowledge of that was frozen in time. Yeah, I know the guys I’ve worked with directly but I’m not going to have a conversation in the lunch room where I…

I can see how that would burn you out. I have my office, my wife has her office, our 11yo daughter is .... somewhere (mostly with her babysitter). 

I am so lucky. My daughter is 11. Old enough to be relatively autonomous, young enough not to be full of teenage angst.

Yeah, I’m at a tiny little site but in NJ so my motivation is a little more clear. I know people with deaths in their families and two of my colleagues in our MD office were out for a week with COVID.

I would argue that a month ago, hanging out and eating pizza wasn’t a great idea but I assume you are in a location that wasn’t (and possibly isn’t) hit hard at the time. I can’t speak to your company specifically, but this is my take:

This whole storyline is the gift that keeps on giving.

Same. I picked it out of stock on the web and it had not been inspected yet. They insisted I drive it, then let them detail it, then walk around it with me so we all agreed there was nothing cosmetically wrong with it. I imagine they get jerked around quite a lot.  

Oh that’s going to be a mess. We are mostly 1-2 person individual offices.

I hear you.  Just keep looking at the big tech/financial companies. What are they doing? All still WFH. My own techy company (~10k people, 20 epidemiologists on staff I was surprised to learn) is gradually moving forward on a plan to allow a maximum of 30% of the employees at any individual site. The buildings that…

My two Model S-owning friends make the same comment: great cars, awful service. One of them is shopping 997TT cabs in fact.

Yes!  The Changli is becoming my favorite diversion of 2020.

A corollary to that that took me a long time to get to: just fix the damn thing. You’re going to spend the money eventually - why not enjoy the fixed version of your car now rather than later?

I think the trick to owning an unreliable car is to choose one with an enthusiastic following.  You know what to expect and how to deal with it when it fails.

My opinion of this random dude I’ve never met just did a complete 180. That is freaking awesome!

On my ‘19 Golf Sportwagen: is38 turbo (from Golf R), Audi TTRS clutch, Koni SA struts/shocks, Golf R springs and rear antirollbar, 312mm front brakes (from 288), MTS intake tube & elbow, 18" VW Pretoria wheels, Michelin Pilot Sport 4S. Claimed HP is just over double stock. I’m sure it’s not quite that much but…

You have changed my life for the better.