… one is a 690 horsepower, 5000 pound luxury monstrosity with warp capability… and no warranty.
The other feels like a padded elevator with a steering wheel.
I had to drop my SQ8 at the dealership this morning. Again. It was supposed to be a quick in and out, but they asked me to stay for the mechanic to ride along (Probably because they already rebuilt the damn engine 400 miles ago). Lucky me, the fella that did that work was my ride along victim! (Don’t worry – I did not put anyone in danger. This time.) We were able to reproduce two of my three complaints pretty rapidly. The third is just a rattle / noise from the right rear quarter, probably insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The weird roughness between 4 and 8 cylinder mode and the air suspension noises are definitely not as benign.
Anyway, they held a new Q7 as a loaner for me. I can truthfully say I am not a fan. It rides real nice, but that’s about all it has going for it. I wish they’d have let me take out that 2025 RS7 in the showroom, instead! 😈
The SQ8 is *THE* hole in my wallet. It would have been cheaper to have children. I’m suddenly questioning my life choices…
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My Tuned SQ8 vs the Q7 Loaner
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mkinitcpio 42 breaks LUKS auto-unlock using crypttab.initramfs
Updated the Dell XPS 15 this morning using the latest Linux 7.2.6 and mkinitcpio 42 only to be repeatedly greeted by the LUKS unlock prompt. After some quick Kagi searching, I noted this little nugget in the release notes:
- install/sd-encrypt deprecates the mkinitcpio-specific
/etc/crypttab.initramfs file in favour of using the x-initrd.attach
option in /etc/crypttab (in the fourth field). This matches the
behaviour of other initramfs generators.
If you’re using crypttab.initramfs take heed! Your shit’s gonna break! (Mine did!) No amount of re-enrolling is going to fix this one.
The fix is easy enough, and documented on the Wiki here. Merge your crypttab.initramfs into /etc/crypttab and include x-initrd.attach in the 4th field like so:
/etc/crypttab root UUID=XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX none x-initrd.attach,tpm2-device=autoUpdate your initrd and reboot!
Hold on to your butts….
- install/sd-encrypt deprecates the mkinitcpio-specific
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Hi-Res Audio Surprise
Just discovered my 2021 Audi SQ8 can play Hi-Res lossless audio! 24bit 192khz FLAC is apparently no big deal. WHO KNEW!
I’ve got one of those 2TB SanDisk USB SSDs from Costco… yeah, that one. I don’t trust it for REAL work, but holding 600 gigs of FLAC and serving as my mobile jukebox? Yeahhhhh buddy! -
Uh-what-the-fuck
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/08/05/uh-im-pretty-sure-people-would-know
I… don’t know what the fuck I just read. But I nearly spat coffee all over my screen. 🤣
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Petlibro Granary Smart Feeder Review
Wow. I’m not typically moved to write a product review. You’d think it would be for something special, right? Like it was because something was mind blowingly awesome, riiiiight? NOPE! This review is for a thing that is a total piece of shit. Well, hang on, let me back up. The physical pet feeder itself seems to be fine. So far. Other than it being entirely dependent on the App. But guess what *IS ACTUALLY* shit? You got it – the “app.” Or should I say, the ad. It’s entirely, completely, one giant advertisement full of dark patterns. Every other click pops a new Ad modal, with check boxes already selected – just waiting for you to accidentally “consent” to their up-charged subscription “care plan” for ONLY $10 per month. Charged annually, of course.
You can’t create a fucking feeding schedule without encountering this bullshit. Go ahead. Try.
I’ve already opened a request to return it. Support seemed pretty prompt – at least until I said the R word, now it’s the old fashioned “let’s delay a week and see if they cave, maybe they’ll keep the garbage we sent them.” It hasn’t even been in my possession for an hour and I am already looking for something else. I won’t accept this kind of blatant disrespect.By the way, did I mention the device connects to WiFi *AND* it has a Microphone? I’ve set up a packet trace to see if it does anything ‘funny’ between now and the “3-5 business days to escalate to a supervisor” to return it… I’ll report back.
Fuck. Me. -
Chuck
Last night, Chuck, my next door neighbor passed away unexpectedly. He wasn’t even 70.
When I first heard, I noticed I felt mostly unaffected. Almost as if floating out of body, looking at myself, seeing the “well, shit” reaction crossing my own face. I guess that’s why it’s called shock. He had just been out mowing the yard yesterday. I saw him driving around in his old red pickup the day before that. He was always on the go. And now he’s just… gone. It’s only now really sinking in.
He was an ornery old fuck, a retired sheriff deputy, working across the road at the gun range in his retirement. Got away with more than most, probably. Always lit his bootleg fireworks in the cul de sac every 4th of July. Hah, I remember one year the police actually came out and he told them “oh, they’re just sparklers.” … And the fireworks continued.
I won’t pretend I was super close with Chuck or that I knew him more than casually, but he was the first person to truly make me feel at home, like part of the neighborhood, when I bought this house. It had really low water pressure and he crawled underneath the house with me to check the pressure switch on the well controller.
I hate this part of being an adult. The cost of building connections in life is becoming the keeper of more and more absences as it goes on. What a shitty bargain.
Damn. Rest in Peace, Chuck.
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No AI Slop
I’m really starting to get tired of the AI written garbage all over the internet. Where’s the original content gone? Why’s every thought have to be augmented by an agent that makes it all bland and sound the same. I used to love being able to tell the difference between writers – now they’re starting to all sound similar.
Hell, I’m guilty of it, too. I used AI to help write a few things in the past – an entry bitching about Ticket Master, another complaining about Garmin BS – I’ve since deleted them. From here on, the only text posted to this site will be written by me. If my two hands didn’t type it, I won’t post it, let alone have it attributed to my name.
We should own our own damn thoughts. I’d rather see some personality in writing than some grammatically perfect but overly calculated clanker (de)generated slop. -
Come say hi
I spent some time this weekend playing around with Matrix federation. It’s… fascinating. I’ll leave it at that. Come say hi 🙂
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Breezeline tried to bill me for internet service that never worked
Breezeline installed their “best” internet service at my house on March 28, 2026. Gigabit. Very impressive on paper. In real life, I couldn’t even use it. It did not work.
That should have settled the question of whether I owed them a full month of service charges. Instead, it turned into one of those stupidly familiar consumer fights where a company wastes enough of your time that the dispute itself starts to cost more than the bill.
I asked the installer to use my own modem, an Arris SB8200. It is a supported model, and it was already working on another provider. They tried to provision it and failed. The installer then suggested using Breezeline equipment instead. Fine. I agreed. If they wanted their own hardware in the loop, I assumed they would be able to configure it correctly.
They couldn’t.
The modem they installed was unstable. It rebooted repeatedly, would not hold the needed configuration, and was never actually verified against the setup I needed before the installer left. The install was treated as complete because “the lights show it’s connected,” not because the service was actually working. The installer would not take the equipment back and told me I would have to contact support to sort it out.
So now I had non-working internet and a brand new part-time job: cleaning up a problem that should have been solved before the technician walked out the door.
Support, after trying and failing to properly configure the original dud, later decided their modem needed to be replaced. The replacement unit did not arrive until April 2. So Breezeline had already started the billing clock while the original install was broken and the replacement hardware was still in transit.
When the new modem finally showed up, I plugged it in only to learn that Breezeline does not support IPv6 at all. I was done. Fed up. Pushed over the edge. So I tried to cancel, but their phone system was malfunctioning. I have several recordings of those attempts. If they can record me, I can record them. I eventually got through their incompetent, maddening phone tree, canceled on April 9, and returned the equipment shortly after.
That should have made the billing issue pretty simple. Failed install. Broken service. Replacement hardware delayed. Cancellation completed. Equipment returned.
Instead, Breezeline told me they were charging me anyway.
Their rep said, in writing, that they would still charge the first month. They also said Breezeline is “no longer working with prorated charges, discounts, credits or changes on the account,” that “the system will charge” even if the service was not used, and that they would not escalate the matter.
That is the part that really gets me. Not “we reviewed the record and determined the service was working.” Not “we found usage that supports the actual bill.” Just: the system charges, and that is apparently the end of the conversation.
The billing period they pointed to was March 28 through April 27.
The replacement modem arrived April 2. I canceled April 9. Today is only April 22nd. That math sure as hell just don’t math!
So even under the kindest possible reading for Breezeline, they are trying to charge me for a full month when the replacement equipment was only in my possession for about a week. And that week came after a failed installation and non-working service.
That is not a gray area. That is a stupidly blunt billing policy being used to bulldoze reality.
The agent wouldn’t escalate internally, so I escalated the way I know how…
I filed an FCC complaint. I filed an Ohio Attorney General consumer complaint. I filed a BBB complaint. I sent certified letters to Breezeline’s corporate office and Ohio office with the documentation attached: screenshots, shipping records, my written install notes, return receipt, and call recordings.
This is the real trick in a lot of these disputes. The company isn’t just trying to take your money, they’re trying to make fighting back so annoying that you decide your own time is worth less than their bad behavior. FUCK THAT!
That is the business model. Drag it out. Hide behind policy. Force the customer to do paperwork. Hope they cave.
A lot of people would have paid this just to make it go away. My mother would have. That isn’t a moral failure. It’s what these companies are counting on.
I’m just not the right customer for that strategy.
So no, I’m not about to let it slide. And no, I am DEFINITELY not sorry about becoming a bureaucratic problem. Even the clerk at the post office had her own Breezeline horror story.
If you find yourself in a situation such as this, document everything. Save screenshots. Save tracking numbers. Save return receipts. Save call recordings if you legally can (they’re recording you… I think it’s only fair). Write down dates and details while they’re fresh. Then escalate in writing and make the company answer in more than one place.
Sometimes that is the only language a shoddy company like this understands.
Breezeline should have just fixed the damn bill.
Instead, they got me. 😘