iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Happy Birthday! I feel a similar, I'll be 51 tomorrow.

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We hit a nice milestone with our solar array, the equivalent of 100K miles driven on sunshine or 84K lbs of CO2 emissions offset.

Icon of a car driving by some simplistic trees with the caption 100K miles driven on Sunshine

Icon of two cooling towers and 3 smokestacks captioned, 84K Pounds of CO2 Emission Saved

Ciara Torres-Spelliscy @profciara.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Reposted by Justin Long

Please if you have the opportunity, 🗳️VOTE EARLY. 🗳️ It’s a way to avoid any long lines or other tomfoolery. 🗳️ (Thank you for your attention to this matter).

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I-405/ NE 85th Street Interchange and Inline Station Project

I had to go find this to wrap my head around what it will look like. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz0o...

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YouTube video by wsdot

Finally had a chance to take a picture of the painted home.

Picture of our freshly painted house from the street showing the south side and west face. The garage door is open and a white Volvo EV is visible. The south side is black with a single window on the second floor. The solar panels are just visible along the south roofline. The front of the house is black on the first feet of the first floor, then light blue up to the roofline dividing the first and second floor. The second floor is tan faux shingles. The windows and roof are timed in light beige. In front of the house is a small evergreen tree with a concrete driveway and walkway tot the front door. There is a blue cloudless sky.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Interest, capital gains, & dividends are all new income & are taxed in most cases. How is that being robbed by the IRS? Depending on how much your make & how you file, the taxes on that income can be lower than the taxes on regular income.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

You should only be taxed on the profit you make, how much depends on how long you held the stock & how much other income you have. I've always used TurboTax (or more recently FreeTaxUSA) for filing my taxes, they both correctly handle investments without needing to pay someone to prepare my taxes.

IRS Updates Capital Gains Tax Thresholds for 2026: Here’s What’s New

The capital gains tax is on the gain, not the total proceeds. If you buy $100K of stock & 2 years later sell it for $110K, you are only taxed on the $10K gain. In the US the long-term capital gains tax rate isn't 31%, it's 0%/15%/20% depending on income. www.kiplinger.com/taxes/irs-up...

kiplinger.com

The IRS has increased the capital gains tax income thresholds for 2026. You'll need this information to help minimize your tax burden.

The image in the original post is a poor example using an unlikely scenario to push for tax reforms. It is possible for an investor to pay zero tax if they have just under $50K in capital gains and zero other income. People who've taken early retirement could potentially take advantage of this.

I found the 4th jar in my garage.

a glass jar with a clamp style lid sits on a desk. It's packed nearly full with various marbles with different ribbon colors, solid colors, and sizes. The glass in the marbles has a green tint.

I had to ride my bike home with one hand while my other arm tried to hold a heavy box with a couple thousand various marbles. 3/4 of the way home I spilled the box and had to pick up all the marbles from a busy street. Not sure how many I lost, but I still had more than any other 3rd grader.

If only I was that good at marbles 😁 I got most of my collection from a grocery store. There were a bunch of loose marbles in their toy section. 3rd grade me asked the store manager how much could I buy some for, he asked how much money I had, ($2), and then sold me all their loose marbles for $2.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I have a few jars left from the grade school in the mid-80s.

three glass jars filled to different levels with different types of marbles.

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Reposted by Justin Long

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

If those who benefited from the status quo had been willing to listen instead of sabotaging the #MeToo movement, we’d be in a very different place right now. Same story w/ BLM and so much more. But it’s not too late to rise in collective solidarity now to create a more possible world for everyone.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

PSE is requesting approval to increase rates for electricity 15% & natural gas by 14% in 2027. While I'm glad I switched to a heat pump & have solar covering most of my usage, this is going to add more strain to so many people on top of rising gas & food costs. www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6CK...

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Puget Sound Energy proposes double-digit rate increases for 2027 | FOX 13 Seattle

YouTube video by FOX 13 Seattle

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

"This is your brain on drugs"

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

That's a great pic. We also take family there when they visit. Here's a pic of it at flood stage and one from the observation deck below the falls with a normal flow rate.

Snoqualmie falls at flood stage in 2012. A large volume of water pours over the falls creating clouds of mist mostly obscuring the river below. Some plants in the foreground.

Pic of Snoqualmie falls from the observation deck below the falls. Trees in the foreground the left of the falls and they split around a rock into two white water streams that converge partway down. On the right, the tree topped cliff is visible as the rocky river flows from the falls. The cloudy is sky is overexposed and just a flat light gray backdrop.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Adding a small sweet potato to the split pea soup I made tonight was a stellar idea. I already had too many bowls and want more. The left overs will make a great lunch the next couple days.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I was surprised I hadn't heard anything after signing up. I finally got contacted yesterday! I've signed up to take the training to be a ballot observer. Hopefully there will be additional opportunities to help, but I'm happy to help however I can.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Doing our first road trip to Redding CA since 2015 & our longest road trip since getting an EV. I'll share my experience & costs for public charging afterwards. On the way back to WA, we are going to stay in Portland for a couple days & do some exploring. A nice change of pace from past trips.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I guess it's time to shop for a microwave. Ours just stopped being able to cook food after 14 years. I can hear the magnetron cycling off and on randomly and after 10 minutes my potato was still room temperature. After some troubleshooting it does appear to be toast.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

😁Back in the 1900s I was burning CDs full of MP3s setup with a simple autorun to load a playlist and automatically start playing with winamp. These replaced my binders of purchased CDs, that I still have.

Screenshot of the root directory of one of my old custom MP3 CDs with file dates from March 1999. Also visible is the autorun.inf that told windows to launch winamp from the CD with the custom playlist and specifying a custom icon file I created.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Not a coffee person, but I did stock up on my favorite tea.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Something's off with the link. This URL works: www.transportevolved.com/2026/09/24/ Clicking the link in your post takes me here: www.transportevolved.com/2026/09/24/t... and just displays text as pictured.

screenshot of the wall of text displayed when browsing to https://www.transportevolved.com/2026/09/24/the-f-150-lightning-12v-battery-sucks-the-powerbase65-fixes-it/

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Watching this storm closely. The island of Hawaii has been getting hammered this year and they may get hit with another hurricane dumping 35" of rain over the next few days. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MBp...

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Nolo Update: Latest forecast track and what to expect

YouTube video by Hawaii News Now

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Today is the day. The pressure washed last week, did most of the prep yesterday, and will paint today.

screenshot of the camera feed for my home showing 6 different views of the house and all the masking the painters have done in preparation for paining and their drop cloths. Their truck parked in the driveway

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Less than the example in the original post for car payment + insurance + fuel combined being roughly $1200. My Total cost is lower even if my car was much more expensive. The $885 figure is if I keep my car 8 years. The longer I keep it, the lower that figure gets.

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I drive a Volvo C40, if I had financed, the payments would have been about $880 a month at 1.5% interest over 84 months. Insurance + registration + maintenance + charging = $155/month. If I spread the cost of the car over 8 years the monthly total is $884, still less that the average.

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Especially after I had just leased a Leaf for 2 years and only paid a total of ~$6,300 to drive that car. Less than some folks pay in gas.

I remember sitting in the Nissan dealership when my lease was up on the Leaf we had for a couple years, listening to the salesperson trying to talk a family into an 84-month loan at 5.99% and somewhere over $800/month payments and just being shocked at how much someone was going to pay for a Nissan.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

+1 for freetaxusa. Handles our moderately complex taxes as well as turbo tax, but free.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I used to do them by hand until my taxes got more complex, then I used various paid tex software iver the years. The last two years I've used freetaxusa to figure out and file my taxes. Its free for federal and is easier than manually filling out the forms.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The average American drives 37 miles a day. I was driving 26 miles round trip to work and based on my mileage, I've only averaged 17 miles a day over the last 3.5 years.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I'm not walking every day, but making an effort to walk 5 days a week. Some days on the treadmill and other days I'll walk somewhere downtown like the post office, pharmacy, or to Physical therapy for my shoulder.

Screenshot of the samsung health app showing 2:57:04 of total sustained active walking time. Estimated 1,339 calories burned from September 13th through the 19th. Today I walk 2.48 miles in 46 minutes.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Reminds me of in the early 90's when my dad was out of work for >9 months due to a lack of union sheet metal jobs in & around our area, the Union sent him ~$20K to help us stay housed. He's now retired with a pension. The union wasn't perfect, but it did take care of us.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

20 y/o me would be impressed by my successful career, happy marriage, and early retirement. He would be disappointed that I didn't have children. As a Nintendo fanboy, he would be shocked that I still haven't played the latest two Zelda games because I was working too much.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Just signed up to volunteer for King County Democrats. Excited to be more involved instead of just donating money. I have much more time than money now that I retired.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

+1 These are the two apps I use for planning EV road trips.

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At first, I thought of an NA Miata, but then I remembered when I was in high school, I wanted one of these.

A blue VW Karmann Ghia on a cobble stone driveway.

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I wish ziply would let me just connect their fiber directly to the router. Still better than comcast fiber though, they required me to use one of their massive 10g gateways and a generic Nokia ONT.

Image of my media cabinet with comcast fiber showing their massive 10g gateway and bulky ONT. Also pictured is my ethernet switch, old WAP, and UPS

Image of my media cabinet with Ziply. Showing their small ONT a couple 2.5GB dumb switches, and my UPS. Hidden in the image is my Unify Gateway on the backside of the OnQ mounting bracket above the ONT.

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I've been happy with the cloud gateway Max+ Ziply's free ONT and they now have the Cloud Gateway Fiber for the same price $279*. * I just noticed Unify is including a "memory surcharge" an extra $22 to cover RAM price increases.

I suspect we will see compounding inflation traced back to the Iran way that will catch a lot of folks off guard as anything with plastic gets more expensive. Adding to the already astronomical increases in computers or anything with RAM and Storage.

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As fuel prices rise, I'm starting to see more people talking about the indirect cost increases due to shipping, but what I'm not seeing is the impact of increased costs for the byproducts of refining crude that are key components in a vast array of products.

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Got my COVID and FLU shots today. The COVID shot was more painful than most vaccines, but I just assumed my arm was still tender from the shingles shot. Went to take the band-aids off and see that the person who gave me my shot must have hit a blood vessel as there is a decent amount of blood.

Pic of most shoulder with two adjacent bandages covering the injection sites. The lower bandage has a 1cm circle of dried blood under it where the other bandage has no visible blood.

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Ah, I see. I didn't provide an insurance information, but it's possible they had it on file.

Just got my covid and flu shots at safeway pharmacy in Washington state, no charge for either.

ᴄ ꜱᴛᴜᴀʀᴛ ʜᴀʀᴅᴡɪᴄᴋ🛸 @cstuarthardwick.com · 15/09/2026

Reposted by Justin Long

Guys, please, PLEASE verify your voter registration. The fate of American democracy will be sealed in two months.

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Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

What the change actually did was make it cheaper to lay someone off as Microsoft no longer has to pay out any remaining PTO to someone they layoff. They did have to payout any accrued PTO when the switched to unlimited, so it was nice to get an extra 5 weeks of pay that year.

Justin Long @nitsuj116.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Depends on the company. After Microsoft switched to unlimited PTO in the US, I would still take the same 5 weeks of PTO I had before the switch (or more) & would strongly encourage each of the people who reported to me to do the same. Taking time off to recharge was part of the company culture.