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Some food for thought about Pres Trump's speech, customer service, and planning for contingencies.

1. Last night during his speech Pres Trump pointed out that so far $6.1M had been raised for the three affected families. He also pulled out a physical check (not a personal check) for $1M. He said softly "thanks Dan." I *do* wonder if the Dan of that donation is Dan Bongino. Dan's there at the RNC; he's a personal friend-acquaintance of Mr. Trump with access; and this is the kind of thing Dan can now do due to his success.

2. For years I have used an Eotech holographic sight on my squirrel gun. It's man versus wild for me to keep the squirrels from harvesting more apples from my orchard than I do, and I've needed a good 10 - 60 yd sight on the .22LR firearm. It's one of those .22s that looks like an AR platform rifle with a mag well - even has Picatinny rails. But underneath all that makeup, it's just a Plinkster. Well three weeks ago it suddenly became a CHS rifle. I was missing every shot. So ... of course I blamed the tool instead of me and checked the zero. Turns out it was shooting 6" high at 25 yds. OK, no big deal I thought. Maybe I whacked the sight handling the rifle and it needed re-aligning. I started trying to drop the elevation on the Eotech and no matter how I turned the elevation knob, the elevation never adjusted. As most shooters are aware Eotech caught (deservedly) some bad press from our warfighters about losing zero while deployed. Afghanistan is not a good place from which to call customer service. ANYWAYS they stepped up and did a great job of taking care of folks with FUBAR holographics. Now it was my turn is seemed. My sight was 12 years old - WAAAAY out of warranty, but Eotech rep informed me that for $80 they'd fix or replace my sight, and ship it back to me at no other cost. All I had to do was ship my old one to them at my expense. Deal.

The good news is that exactly three weeks after shipping my sight off by UPS I received a *new* Eotech holographic (same form factor as the original but clearly not my antique) by UPS. Can't wait to set it up and sight it in. This the praise for Eotech. I love the sight picture and the lack of paralax in Eotech. Makes target acquisition simple. Kudos to Eotech for the outstanding service.

3. We've owned a plug-in hybrid (Fusion Energi) since the spring of 2015. With all the hub-bub and nonsense around the EV push, I just want to reinforce the logic and utility of a plug-in hybrid. (a) my wife has a 12 mile round-trip commute. She is able to do that 100% on the 'big' battery. So we get the daily benefit of a no-gas-needed EV. (b) this AM she's working from home and I had to run errands so I took her car. Understand that where we live in N Ga it's quite hilly at times. After all one of the roads on the way to Publix and Home Depot is called 7 Mile Hill. A plug-in hybrid works off it's 'big' battery as an EV until that battery is discharged, OR the load (like climbing a long steep hill) exceeds the power output of the battery. Then the motor runs and the car runs like an everyday hybrid. On my 36 mile round trip this AM - which meant using up the 'big' battery and then operating as a hybrid - I got 175 mpg. Gotta love that. With a plug-in hybrid ya get the benefits of an EV with ZERO range anxiety, and after 14 years, we still don't need a new battery. Sure it's degraded some, but to me it the THE BEST overall design for a commuter-run around vehicle. Of course Ford has discontinued the model ... PS - it gets about 47-49 mpg on long trips. So redirect your 'hate' for EVs to a love for plug-in hybrids. ;-)

4. This AM we all awakened to the news that Microsoft and Cloudstrike had sh!t the bed for millions of users. My wife's laptop and her company were severely affected. She drove to the office to give her laptop to the swamped IT guys and as mentioned above, is now 'working' from home. Well this item is actually about the value and utility of keeping adequate cash in your home. Let's suppose this outage (deliberate or stupidity?) had affected LOTS and LOTS of businesses to the point where the retail, banking, point-of-sale, logistics, utility, healthcare etc industries were severely degraded. Well then cash is king. This AM as I headed off to Publix and Home Depot, I went to our safe and 'withdrew' cash sufficient for our needs, just in case. Turns out it wasn't needed, but ya never know. NET: I recommend that you accumulate and safely store adequate cash on hand for the contingencies you plan for. It'll give you a measure of peace of mind.

3. I like your PHEV hybrid strategy, particularly if someone has just one car (which isn't you, just throwing that out there).

One of the reasons we went with a full EV (BEV) instead of a hybrid is because my wife and I have two cars and I wanted to diversify our dependency on energy type. Thus, if the Dims mess up our access to one energy type, we'll take the car that depends on the available energy type. So, if the Dims make a gasoline shortage or make gas too expensive (IMHO gas is expensive now), we'll take the BEV car. If the Dims make the grid undependable or too expensive to use, we'll take the gas pickup. As you pointed out the range of power alone in a PHEV hybrid, using that for long trips would be impossible if we had to depend on just power.

I'm not in any way criticizing people who get a hybrid EV or no EV at all. I'm just saying that's my strategy for a two-car couple.

Of course, the other reason I went with a BEV is because of home solar. We drive on average 40 miles per day local driving (in the past 12 months, 15,500 of our miles were charged at home). As you said, a PHEV can handle most local driving days with power alone. But with the BEV getting about 250 miles range on 80% charge, I can have a few days in a row of low solar (rainy days) without having to charge the BEV. That allows me to usually wait until a good sunny day to charge the BEV without having to charge from the grid. Thus, doing most of our driving in the BEV instead of a hybrid or our ICE pickup is part of why in the past 366 days, 82% of the power we've consumed in our home (including charging) came from homemade power, only 18% had to be pulled from the grid.

That doesn't make our home and local driving 100% energy independent, allowing me to disconnect from the grid. But it does allow my financial planning into retirement not worry nearly as much about runaway energy price inflation form the Dims' warmageddon cult policies.