So, been chatting with @Range Bear 🔜 MFF about gig work, and figured it was a good time to put up a few details about what the options are out there, and there are a fair number.

When you say gig work, most people think DoorDash, which isn't surprising considering the amount of marketing they do, however there's a lot more, basically you can deliver people, packages or food.

People
Uber and Lyft are the best known, though if'n you look around you might find something local or regional in your area. I believer there's also companies dipping their toe into child transport and/or non-emergency medical transport as well.

Food
Like I noted, we all know DoorDash, UberEats is about as well known, and then there's GrubHub, but once again, look around for regionals which is often easier with food as companies put up signs, stickers and other marketing at restaurants they serve. There's also GoPuff which is sort of a virtual convenience store

Packages
Now here's my niche, and the biggest problem here is that nationwide companies are rare, I primarily work for Better Trucks, but they're based in Chicago and have about two dozen warehouses, so less than half the country covered. Like them, Jitsu and Veho do package routes, and nationwide there's of course Amazon Flex. And that's assuming you want route work, if'n you want packages on demand, there's more, DropOff, Roadie, Dispatch, GoShare, Senpex, Frayt and Courial off the top of my head. They all work much DoorDash, offering the order to the nearest driver, but they also list the unclaimed orders on the app.

How does package route stuff work? Well, it varies from company to company, but except for Flex, typically you pick your work days ahead of time, go to the warehouse, and pick up your load. In the case of BT and my warehouse, as I'm not sure all warehouses do things the same, I show up, tell them where I'd like to work, how long, and what I'm driving, and they try to accommodate as many of those as they can. I'm only familiar with BT and Flex, and with Flex, you show up, check in, and it gives you a route. No offer, take it or leave it, and the only things you know ahead of time is how long it should take, and what it'll pay, where is random and can be far if you're working out of a Flex aka Same Day warehouse as opposed to a standard delivery warehouse, which is where you'll usually be working. And that's about it, the software will guide you stop by stop, and you go home when done. Pay is usually lower than the on demand work, but you're trading pay for guaranteed income, so you have to decide which is better for you.

#gig #income #work #drive

Ok, that's prolly a wee bit dramatic, but I reserve the right to be dramatic.
For six or so months I've been planning on changing vehicles, the main catalyst being how much of a pain a Subaru Crosstrek is to maintain and repair, far too many parts are expensive dealer only, and those what aren't, can be hard to get, my last repair, a brake hose, required the part to be shipped out of a warehouse on the other side of the state. With it developing a problem that kept me from working for nearly two weeks, I finally had enough and decided to go buy something.

Problem was figuring out which way I wanted to run, full sized van or box truck, good money in that, but I'm too old to be dealing with high volume or pallet sized loads. A Transit Connect was worth considering, and I highly recommend it as a delivery vehicle, big enough for a couple pallets, and yet mid to high twenties fuel economy when unloaded, so it's an alright choice for any kind of gig work. A hybrid or an electric was a choice, but nothing affordable is particularly large, heck, there isn't much large at any price.

These days though, with what's happened at work, a large vehicle really isn't needed any more, we're moving a lot of small packages, so we decided to go with an affordable electric, specifically a Chevy Bolt. Next problem, finding one, something that's both easy and hard, there are many out there, but most are above $15K. Worse still is that many dealers only have one or two when they have cheaper ones. Plus Missouri is a pain to title and register a car in, it's hard enough if'n you buy the car in state, but out of state? Yeah, how about no.

Good news, found a dealer with 9 in stock, most under $15K. Bad, they're in St Joseph, 291 miles away.

So that was Saturday, a long drive to buy a car at Victory GMC, of whom I can give a guarded thumbs up to. The cheapest Bolt, the one I was planning on buying had a noticeable shake at 40, which became intolerable at 70. That was followed by another one which didn't shake, but did sound a bit noisy in the back, either lacking sound deadening, or needing something back there, prolly tires or bearings. Third time the charm? I decided to give the one white one a shot, the others were all black or dark grey, and I chose that one because we already owned...

Wouldn't it be funny if'n we bought a white Bolt...

Yep, that one was fine. Not perfect, in fact they surprised me with the fact that it was a repaired lemon when we got to the paperwork, another strike against them, but it was certainly good enough. I will say that I was a little careless by that point, and failed to notice that it was a no extra options 1LT model, so no heated seats or steering wheeling, nor smart cruise control, but none of those things are a deal breaker. Sure, heated seats are more efficient than cabin heating, but I've got more than enough range for a day's work even allowing for up to 40% drop in the winter.

How am I able to give a soft thumbs up to Victory? Despite the first two cars having issues that should've kept them from being put out, for locals it wouldn't be a big deal, just bring it back for repairs, just make sure you negotiate that into the contract. For me, I have a long highway drive home, so no go. Of course they had plenty of cars so finding one I could afford was all but guaranteed which is why I chose them. And the shopping experience was very good. $500 GPS add on, the modern equivalent of window etching? No argument when I said I didn't want it. I'm paying cash, no argument, no attempt to talk me into financing, they just sold me a car. Me wanting to test car after car like Goldilocks? Sure, no problem. The dealership experience wasn't perfect, it never is, but frankly, Ryan was great to work with, and the dealership didn't fight to take every dollar I had. Heck, through the website, I got a tentative trade in offer of $7925. What'd they offer when I got there? $8060, yes, it went up!

In the end, I moved up a bit in price, but with trade in, and the $4K used EV credit, I walked away with a 2020 Chevy Bolt 1LT for $2520. No, that's not a typo, I suppose it was a good thing that I waited so long, since that was readily available out of pocket. I do have a few things to sort out, for some reason the back up grid often don't show up, and I can't figure out how to name the car in the My Chevy app, it's offered when you originally set it up, and it gives instructions on how to change it later, but I forgot those, and can't find them. Real small problems, right?

Not much to say beyond that, long drive home, charging problem at the first charger, but apparently @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe has had problems with that company before. We did finally get home around 2AM. Since then, it's been tweaking things a bit, getting signed up for SiriusXM, or rather added to his account, getting insurance sorted out, something complicated by me shutting down my company, and getting things updated with all my gig apps (6 of 8 done).

I guess the only thing we have spoken about is why an EV, and that's easy, because it's cheap. Even ignoring the unusually high maintenance costs of the Subaru, savings are on maintenance, there's not much to maintain on an electric, bulbs, fluids, wipers, brakes and tires. Yes, fluids, the battery like all modern EV's has temperature management to keep the battery healthy, and then there's brake fluid and wiper fluid. Brake services are farther apart than gas powered vehicles if'n you use regenerative braking, which only leaves a few minor cheap repairs. And then there's fuel, or the lack of, I was averaging something like $60/wk with the Subaru, and with this I expect $100/mo at worst in electricity. So something like $1500/yr in savings.

So, Vik has White Lightning II, and now I have Doppel, and only our roommate, Chakat Silvertail, still burns dinosaurs.

#car #ev #electriccar #mo #missouri #KC #kansascity #travel

Ok, I'm sure all of my followers who care about me have realized I've moved over here from social.xcetera.biz, and I thought I'd share a few details about the why and the highlights.

The why is actually rather easy, the main reason is that xcetera.biz is going away, it was part of my business, Xcetera Enterprises LLC, essentially my email and my Mastodon borrowed the domain. Of course no domain to borrow when I shut down the company, so a new home was needed. The catalyst to do it now however, was discovering SpaceHost, who offers hosted Friendica. I've wanted to do Friendica for a while, but finding a host is hard, I had previously found another hosted instance, but it's not quite turn key, you still had to decide on a database service I think it was? Any how, SpaceHost is like using MastoHost, iKnox, or any of those others out there, pick out the size you need, pay, link your domain, and Bob's your uncle.

Somehow @#SpaceHost Help has managed to put up with me fumbling around, I'm high maintenance while setting things up, going so far as to break my instance not once, but twice. I also managed to break the admin account but not the instance once two, all in less than a week. But, it's all running, @Recalls , @The Taur Nation are both over here, along with this, my personal account which will be taking over from both @Seph :verified: VOTED and @Vex for Harris & Wallz has voted, giving me a single personal account on the Fediverse.

One of the best things to happen today was to find out that SpaceHost had quietly added the last of the relays I asked for, The Doodle Project. @Fedi.Tips can likely explain relays far better than me, but to my understanding, it's basically every member agreeing to share each others posts with the other members. For a small instance, this is crucial to getting a good Fedi feed up and running, doubly so for tiny personal instances like this. At a quick glance, it was clear this was a wonderfully diverse relay that was perfect for quickly populating my Fedi feed. Sure, not real interested in Ghana Today for instance, but I think diversity is healthy, and this is wonderfully diverse. Definitely going to be donating regularly to help keep it up and running.

So, on the Fediverse I now have everything I wanted, my very own #friendica instance, with a wonderfully diverse global timeline.

Too tired to say much, drove from Hazelwood to St Joseph, 287 miles each way, left around 1030, arrived home around 0200. And Friday had been 10 hours and 110 miles of deliveries, I'm knackered.

So, introducing Doppel...

my 2020 Chevy Bolt EV, an ex-lemon with just under 18K miles.

Why Doppel? Well, here's my husband's ( @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe ) White Lightning II:

#chevybolt #chevy #ev #electric car

So, here we are, still not working as they try to get the truck fixed, well into the second week, joy. Oh well, we're planning on replacing it any how, should've done that months ago, but like always, been dragging my heels on it.

Plan was to sell it and buy something that would leave a couple thousand in the company bank account, and that something not being a super nice vehicle since the job is hard on it. I had my eye on a Caravan, but after today, I might need to see if'n I can stretch the budget to afford a Chevy Bolt.

I drove @Vik-Thor / Lirleni Hankeshe 's car home, big event going on at the office, so he figured it'd be better if'n he didn't take up a parking space. So, minimum range, 71 miles. Drive home via I-64, Lindbergh and a side run to Wendy's for breakfast, 21 miles. Range when getting home? 60 miles. Thanks to rush hour traffic and the route I used, this was very similar to what kind of driving I do for work, and this is with me being less than smooth as I don't often drive the Bolt, so with time I could do better. Let's see, no more gas, minimal repairs (and Crosstrek repairs are expensive and parts are often special order), yes please. Heck, I think I could get as much as 300 miles out of a Bolt, even though it's rated at 250 or so. Yeah, this might be worth doing.

#bolt #chevy #electriccar #work #gig #driving

Ummm, I broke the admin account over here on #friendica . I can proudly say I'm an idiot.

Why?
Well, my host agreed to put up the pack of Friendica themes that's out there, and I had the brilliant idea to try one of them... using the admin account. Firefox now loads a blank web page, and Chromium spits back a 500 error. Ummm, hopefully my host knows a way to fix this. In one way it's good, if they can restore that account to an hour ago, it'll fix it without changing anything appreciably, the only thing I've done over there other than the theme was turn off the Tumblr plug in since I couldn't get that to work.

#friendica #Fediverse #adminstupidity #adminfollies #glitch

And I gently shooed him off, and watched him wander off, while being careful not to step on him.

Took down the Halloween decorations, though the inflatables are still outside drying out, or at least I'm hoping they are. Took down the elections signs too, since that's over.

Christmas decorations will go up around Thanksgiving or a bit later, but these aren't going anywhere:

Nor is our Pagan holiday flag (wind didn't let me get a pic of the Samhain flag that's out there at the moment).