Tag: agoraphobia

Happy 2024! Goodbye fulltime RVing, complicated Tesla feelings, Self Driving, and maybe COVID?

First off, GOODBYE JEEP! I will never, ever own one or a Chrysler product again unless it’s free or damn near dirt cheap. To be fair, we did get it at the absolutely worst possible time, during the pandemic. Everyone and their mom was jacking up car pricing and things were stupid. I’ve been flipping cars and buying, driving, and trading in or selling shit since I was a teen; it’s the first time I got a bad deal.

In fact, I sold a 2019 Tesla Model 3 a month after picking it up for MORE than I paid for it! That $50,000 car is worth $28,000 today, hardly two years later, and it was already two years old by when it sold! Brand new Model 3s cost around $37k now and Model Y was… $70,000 during the pandemic and is $34,000-$37,000 now.

I really wanted to try Full Self Driving Beta, the thing that takes you from point A to B. The issue is that it was invite only and locked down and I wasn’t going to play the safety score game. Also, I was very unimpressed by Autopilot, it felt robotic, unreliable and phantom braking was awful. The Open Source alternative, Openpilot, had better quality of autonomy back in 2018.

Now days FSD Beta is basically free game now and from what I can tell (open invite), is pretty damn good from what ride along videos I can find by real life users. Not that you can take a nap, and there will be situations where it’ll be more stressful as it can screw up and you MUST be paying attention. But the promise of your car driving you across town, through stoplights, weaving around tight corners and handling stop signs, stoplights, unprotected turns, etc seems much more realistic than it ever has been.

They are working on what’s called “end to end” and I’ll explain. Right now, they have a self driving stack of around 300,000 lines of code. They hard program policy for the car to drive and as expected, it can often feel pretty robotic. The driving task isn’t a binary thing to solve, there are unlimited edge cases and trying to hard code real life can be just about impossible.

End to end is a method, basically, where you show a machine learning agent what a human does. Shove in camera images/videos of a human driving and where the steering wheel was pointed, gas, brakes. Shove in enough videos and data and by the end of it you get a model that can just kinda magically replicate what a human can do. Instead of being like “Hey, this is a stoplight, stop while red, etc”, the model just inherently learns that the human stops when the light is red, without even knowing what a stoplight is.

It’s kinda like… imagine two setups to fling poo. You can sit down and explicitly program a robotic arm with every single movement needed to pickup the poo, how hard to fling it, etc. Then, you can show a monkey how to. You squat over, shit in your hand, then throw it at the wall. You don’t have to say a word, and they get a banana if they do well. The monkey is likely going to learn how to do it and it’s motivated by a banana. Show the monkey over and over again. Show it at night, in rain, if someone is standing in the way, if the monkey is male or female and has those body parts, if they are tall or short. The monkey more organically learns and if you teach it a million different use cases and situations on how to throw poo, it’s generally going to learn how to do it.

End to end is the monkey. Right now, and why Tesla Autopilot requires lane lines and kinda sucks, especially compared to Openpilot, is that Openpilot has been using what is called a “laneless” model, which uses end to end. They have showed their monkey how to throw poo. Not how to move their arm or every single little millimeter of which joint to exactly move, but example after example of throwing poo and it just figured it out.

Same with speed bumps, stop signs, stop lights, cars pulling in front of you, etc. It just kinda figures it out.

And that’s why we’ve been told self driving is coming every year for a decade now. Well, first off because Elon is a twat, but also because it’s really, really hard. Let’s say that when it’s dark, it’s raining, and the monkey can’t see to the left that it flings poo at children and you don’t want it to do that. You can’t simply tell the monkey what a child is and not to fling poo at it. Instead, you just have to show the monkey that in those situations you don’t fling poo at children by showing it what to do in close enough of those specific situations again, and again, and again so it just learns. Maybe that sounds complex and ambiguous, and that’s my point, and why it’s hard. It’s a round about way of doing things, but closer to how humans actually learn.

And that’s what Tesla is doing come FSD v12, or such is the goal. Of course, you can throw manual policy on top of it like override the monkey when we know for sure it needs to stop, like when we are about to run into a car or something, or it’s clear that we need to turn left. We can manually grab the monkey’s hand when needed.

Anyway, I’m excited to try it out! I think it’s going to capture my wonder and awe that I first had with Openpilot and what led to driving around the neighborhood for 10,000 miles tinkering with things back when Openpilot needed tinkering to work well, I was pretty much completely over my driving anxiety then. This gets me driving, this helps me work on my agoraphobia, this gives me something to think about when doing the hard, scary work of exposure therapy and there’s something comforting about knowing I can let the car take over to some extent. Anxiety is one of those funny things. Anxious drivers are statistically very safe drivers as they are hypervigilant and when I say I can let the car take over, this doesn’t mean I’m not ready to take over at anytime or that I’m not paying attention, that would be very unsafe. More of, it’s just comforting to know that I can delegate some of the driving task when panicking in the car and chill out for a moment while still being in total control, if that makes sense.

Don’t think for a second that I like Elon Musk, however. It’s the most painful thing for me to own a Tesla and I think it’s why Teslas have become cheap enough for me to afford right now. It’s the major reason why I got rid of the Model 3, it was downright embarrassing to be associated with him and the fanboys are even worse.

I have an Anti Elon Tesla Club sticker coming which I will proudly display on the car:

Not that it’ll prevent me from getting keyed. I guess, just like playing the new Harry Potter game, I had to realize that thousands of other people worked to bring it together and just because the leader is a douchebag, doesn’t mean that it has to completely ruin the end result. Harry Potter has a trans character, you can have a trans character. I’m sure there are plenty of people who worked on the game that hate Rowling. It’s still a shame though on some level. I also think that Hybrid cars are more practical and if we actually cared about the environment, we’d have diesel hybrids with 200+ MPG. Alas, instead we have douchebags buying Rivians to virtue signal and greenwash and I suppose I’m a bit of a douche at the end of a day for considering a Tesla, even if I found one cheap.

Anyway.

We received approval for an apartment!!! I’M SO EXCITED! No more having to empty our poo every two weeks! No more 5 minute showers and water pipes freezing up! MORE SPACE! A GARAGE!

We are getting our shit from storage this weekend and honestly, I don’t remember the majority of what’s in there! It’s gonna be like Christmas from my past self.

I’m also feeling about 30% better, I’ve been sick these last two weeks. What started as an ear infection due to sleeping with Airpods in turned into bad vertigo. Now I have the sore throat and sinus headache going around. I’m thinking, honestly, it may just be COVID. My sleep the last few days has been pretty awful, just hard to get to sleep and stay asleep. I also had a breakdown yesterday between lack of sleep, not feeling well, and the stress of so much going on. Our lead is leaving at work and we’ll be down to two people from six in support, which is insane. I literally just hit a point where I caught up my queue.

And that’s about it for now!

Suddenly, December; it’s been awhile

Life is good. It’s 6am, Mike’s surprise birthday party was last night. I’m sitting in the RV out back and it’s pitch black outside. Another week or so will mark one year since leaving Indianapolis and I can’t believe it’s “only” been a year, it feels so much longer.

Lately the theme has been downsizing and getting finances in order, coming to terms that I can be an emotional spender and making better decisions post pandemic as I finally feel generally good in life again, stable, safe. Motorcycle? Sold. Bunch of other shit? Sold. The Ford truck was traded in two days ago, but hear me out, the APR was so bad on it, which I knew going into it. We needed to be able to pull the trailer somehow.

No more worries there, went with a slightly used 41MPG Rav4 Hybrid with a better interest rate. Our 6 year Total Cost of Ownership massively dropped and 14MPG vs 41MPG with all of the driving I want to do in the tail end of what’s becoming what used to be my driving paralysis, and the exposure work needed to get there. Fill up from half tank? $15. 528 miles per tank. I tried the aimlessly drive the truck around on the daily, refilling the tank is a hundredaire affair.

But how do we pull the RV? With the other RV, of course and the Jeep in a pinch. We hope to sell the travel trailer and Jeep by next spring to further drop our monthly expenses. It’s the meantime, it’s paying off a few credit cards, building up savings again, working in the tail end of my driving anxiety. That is, if the Jeep isn’t totaled out come Monday.

Dead mice dying in air vents and their goo getting on the thing deep in the dash that gets hot… doesn’t smell well. The Jeep has been underivable for about two weeks now and I finally gave up trying to fix it, for now.

See the black box lower center? That’s the blend door/heater core/airbox assembly. Also see the metal frame around it? It’s impossible to get to without removing the whole ass dash, depressurizing refrigerant, draining coolant, dropping steering shaft. I’ve dumped disinfectant down it, I’ve ran ozone (and ruined some of the interior, ozone did not work regardless of how many people told me to try it on Reddit). I found another nest in back. I’m done dealing with it, hope the insurance claim adjuster brings a mask Monday.

If they don’t cover it… I’m going to get creative and try vinegar and some other things, the airbox has a drain at the bottom due to aircon condensate so dumping shit down the airbox.. anyway I’m not going to think about it right now. Worse case we’ll trade it in come spring, which we want to do anyway but I’m secretly hoping they total it due to biohazard. Good riddance. It’ll easily be a $6,000-$8,000 fix to do properly at dealership prices as you can’t get mouse goo out, you replace parts and start over.

But anyway.

No, we seriously sat down and talked about moving south and what we would need to do to get there. The simple facts of the matter is, I still have a bit more driving and exposure to do (the biggest thing) and I simply own too much shit and need to downsize (my call). We don’t need an electric bike, motorcycle, cars, RVs, a storage unit full of electronic parts and other shit, we need paid down credit cards, a fuel efficient car, money in savings again. I’ve needed to give myself an allowance for the longest time and get my spending under control which I don’t think I’ve done since living in Lafayette.

Feels weird talking about it, but admitting shit is the first step I suppose. I’ve just never really talked about money and thought of life as transient, so who cares? But it matters and no amount of random shit, or otherwise, fills that void we all have within.

Speaking of the void and general anxiety levels, I’m up at 6pm as I went to bed earlier, and have been for a while. The colder days and getting dark around 5-6pm does tend to do that. I’m finding my general anxiety levels are lower than they have been for a very long time. I still get bouts here and there, of course, like when I eat a bunch of things that don’t go together and I get a tummy ache or if I choose to go get breakfast early in the morning and I’m still groggy and a bit disoriented.

Even the Amanda dreams that my brain like to queue up from time to time are softer, it’s actually what led to writing this morning instead of just going back to sleep, which I will here soon. Yeah, the tail end of the bulk of healing, a reconciliation in my mind. It’s that threshold where memories fade a bit and the trauma and bad juju wanes off and a bit of nostalgia takes hold. It’s those last bits of healing in the subconscious. The dreams are basically just sitting and talking to understand each other, with a slight bit of want, and a slight bit of sadness, but overall positive.

Things happened and went off the rails so quickly that things just fell apart overnight and regardless of comparably how short the relationship was, or even knowing her, it’s what made healing and closure so difficult, as there was no closure and we were both quite uniquely cruel to each other, inflicted that trauma really deep in each other.

It’s crazy to think how much that impacted my life by the end of it, not only how deep it cut, for whatever reason, but how much I’ve learned about myself and the other things I’ve worked on in my life since then that I may have otherwise wouldn’t. I don’t know, it’s weird.

I don’t talk much about Kasey on my blog and I think it’s due to knowing, inherently, that she’s a private person, and also, I have to work hard to blog about positive, good things. Not because I don’t want to share them, but more, my blog is the place I go to process, to think, when it spills out and when things are good I don’t feel the need to write about it, I feel the need to experience them.

But still, I enjoy writing and I like that I’ve been in a better place. The lack of content on my blog and what content is here evidences that pretty well I think. I usually write more when traveling, also, gives my mind something to do.

Kasey and I are good. There’s been some recent upheaval due to a death in her family and some awkwardness with how to approach someone she has strong boundaries with as the person who died was married to said person. There’s also some awkwardness due to another family member being passive aggressive about things. As for I, we lost our oldest surviving relative the other day, my Great Aunt.

December has also been weird in general, it’s been in the 40s, 50s and the weather and wild clouds were strange yesterday. I guess snow just isn’t a thing Indiana does anymore and it kinda sucks. I can’t remember the last time we had a good snowy winter and things were white for more than a weekend or so.

We also have some friends locally that live just on the edge of my driving comfort zone, it’s nice! I’ve been to their house and look forward to going over more often. Then it’s just another 10 min to Kokomo, then wherever else. Openpilot/self driving arrives, again, Monday. it’ll get me out driving and will be fun to fuck around with.

But anyway. It’s time to head back to bed.