LED lights are in, but I am not super-confident of the fit for the guard... but time will tell. Got my arm stuck on the driver side headlight. :D The windshield washer reservoir took up a lot of space, making it hard to get in there.
I ordered a flush guard for the hood, looking forward to getting that. Still looking at running boards.
So I am making minor tweaks and changes to the truck to get it "the way I want it."
First was to replace the tall wire antenna with a flexible stub antenna.
Second was to add colored lettering to the tailgate ... CHEVROLET now is in a pretty, deep blue color (truck is white). Colored the chevy symbol on the front grill to a blue. Planning on adding a blue "stripe" to the center of the hood, probably a 3M tape.
Third, bought (and had installed) roof running lights.
Fourth, I have LED headlights on their way (possibly delivered tonight) to replace the halogen bulbs.
After that possible running boards. Been looking at them but haven't found a set that appeals to me yet.
The truck itself is averaging (well, with MY driving it is averaging) around 19 miles per gallon, mixed city and highway driving. I know it can do better, I am not being particularly careful in my driving and can be somewhat of a lead foot.
Transmission shifting is great, motor itself is pretty awesome, love the sounds it makes (V8 lovers probably need not apply).
The ride is surprisingly good, though not as nimble as the Colorado was. It is very roomy, even being a double cab, and even easier sliding in and out of the drivers seat... easier than the Colorado I mean.
Love the center console that flips up... I leave it down mostly so that Heidi (my dog) can stand with her front legs on it as I drive... she likes to see what's going on. She is generally relegated to the back seat, which I cover with a towel due to her water and mud proclivities.
The acceleration, not that THAT should be a reason to choose one engine over another, is actually pretty darn good! It really PULLS like a V8 with maybe a very very minor ramp up for about a half second after you let go of the break. Turbo has to spool just a wee bit first, but once it does... zoom! Almost max torque at just 1500 RPMs!
Passing on the highway, which IS something I do a lot of, is easy as pie... never strains, never a worry, she just gets up and goes.
One of my favorite things to do though is to roll down my windows when I am driving through my neighborhood so I can hear the turbo spooling. I've owned several turbocharged cars (mini, honda, saab) and none of them sound like this beast of a turbo... my truck kind of sounds like a diesel city bus driving down the street. :) I enjoy it. Does not rumble deep and low like a V8, it is a different kind of sound, but as I said, I appreciate it.
At some point my old PC finally started dying. I figured it was time. So I went with a new machine (same outer box, and other similarities, I kept my new-ish AMD graphic card). Since my new AMD CPU supported Windows 11, I decided to install W11 Pro. My reason was specious and sort of silly, mostly I just wanted to be able to play Diablo IV which, as it turns out, I am terrible and die frequently. Here are the specs...
Device name DADS-PC
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 8400F 6-Core Processor 4.20 GHz
Installed RAM 32.0 GB (31.6 GB usable)
Device ID 4C47F1B8-4495-4B01-A96B-036082A04F1A
Product ID 00330-80033-45108-AA439
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch No pen or touch input is available for this display
And my graphics card is a Radeon 7800 XT
Runs very nicely. I really do miss linux though. Not sure how long I can bare this. :)
Meanwhile, I traded my faithful 2021 Colorado in for a 2024 Silverado Double Cab WT.
She has the TurboMax base engine, which is quite an engine!
I've replaced the antenna, added blue letters to the tailgate, am having running lights installed tomorrow, and have ordered new, LED low beam bulbs.
We also bought Isaac a new 2025 Malibu RS. Very nice car.
Other things done, we had to replace our hot water heater, again. I don't remember if this was the 3rd or 4th time since we built the house. But now we have a fancy new componentized tankless, gas heater. Seems to work well, been told it will last better. We shall see.
My mother, Bessie, passed away early Tuesday morning, August 6, 2024. She was 88 years old.
The previous week my brother suggested I come visit, as she had gone into hospice care due to atrial fibrillation, and a pretty constant high pulse. I arrived on Friday, spent time with her Friday, and Saturday. Early Sunday morning we received a call from the care center that she had taken a sudden turn for the worse.
It appeared that she had had a stroke. It didn't help her breathing, which was already labored due to fluid buildup in her chest and abdomen (from the heart arrhythmia) and she began to decline rapidly. For Monday and even early Tuesday she was aware of us and would nod to answer questions and squeeze our hands. But later in the day she began to be less and less aware and it really felt like she would probably pass that night. And she did.
I think the only solace is that she was probably not very aware when it happened.
She will be missed.
It has been pretty solid, like 23.10. Ubuntu's implementation of gnome is very nice and wayland is working very well with my 7800XT card. No complaints at all.
I did, for fun, enable the extension "Burn My Windows" which allows you to enable a variety of special effects upon window creation and destruction. They are very efficient, being native shaders. They are pretty cool too. :D
I watched an interesting KDE6 review the other day. I feel like I need to experience it, install OpenSUSE or something and try it out, despite how stable Ubuntu has been. The only problem is I never really LOVED KDE and, while they have actually made some improvements around the decoration aspects that always bothered me, I am hesitant to try it. The reviewer said "if you didn't like KDE before, you probably won't like it now" despite the improvements.
So anyway...
I had already tried to upgrade from 23.10 to 24.04 about a month ago and ran into several issues (which I promptly forgot about once I reverted to 23.10, so don't ask). Today I took the plunge and upgraded again. I figured Ubuntu has had a month to iron out some minor issues.
So the install was relatively quick (I have a pretty good internet connection) and after the install and reboot Ubuntu came up fine. It DID however break my wine setup, so I had to install a few components to fix it (there will probably be other issues)... it did not honor my dpkg architecture settings which indicates amd64 and i386. I had to tweak it after the fact, but... after installing a couple extra things I was able to use wine to fire up a non-steam, Windows game. And in fact I think there must have been some more AMD driver improvements because I swear the game actually ran smoother than on 23.10.
On steam, I fired up the frequently fickle World of Warships and it ran great.
I think it is (at least so far) safe to say the upgrade was successful. I don't record much, I will have to install OBS and see how that works, and while I am sure it is just fine, I need to fire up some of my development applications.
A difference of one month, in this case, was pretty significant. I am now rocking a safe, long-term version of Ubuntu. Oh, and it is running gnome 46 as well, a minor upgrade from 23.10 which ran something like 45.x...
