Doing all of this maintenance on my car recently highlighted that I need a nice worktop/work table. I’ve been using my kid’s play work bench which has been surprisingly useful but it’s also built for a 4 year old. I needed something built for an adult.

A few years back my dad and I bought a couple of Simpson StrongTies workbench kits. We were going to build some workbenches over a weekend but somehow that never came to pass — I think we went golfing instead. Fortunately, my mom still had the kit in her garage and let me have it.

Tools and Supplies

Specs

The belt was squealing on cold/damp mornings. Since I had never replaced it and I am almost at 90k it seemed like a simple thing to tackle. It wasn’t on the dealer’s list. I vaguely remember them mentioning it a while back during an oil change service but I blew it off (because it hadn’t started squealing and I’m sure they quoted me $350).

This is one of the easiest things you can replace. It’s a $30 belt, and to get it off, you just need a 15mm wrench/socket to move the tensioner to put slack on the belt. Then it’s just a matter of routing the belt properly.

The PCV valve wasn’t on the dealership’s list but one of the youtuber’s that I stumbled on while learning how to do all of the maintenance, MrSubaru1387 (https://www.youtube.com/@MrSubaru1387), flagged it as an easy and important item to swap at this mileage. It’s a $15 part and a few minutes of work.

I remember replacing this on my Prelude back in the day.

Here is the pdf guide I made.

This is one of the easiest DIY maintenance things you can do your Subaru. I believe the dealership wanted to charge me $495 to do it. To DIY its about ~$40 in OEM coolant (from the dealership) and $30 in parts/tools. You could probably get by without the special funnel but it makes ‘bleeding’ the system more straightforward.

Like the CVT Fluid change, I did a lot of research and consolidated it into a list of steps then had ChatGPT organize it into a printable procedure PDF.

One of the first ‘big’ maintenance items I decided to tackle as part of my 88k maintenance adventure was the CVT transmission fluid flush. I did tons of research and watched a handful of youtube videos. Its a pretty straightforward process. I wrote up the procedure, as I understood it from all of my research, then had ChatGPT verify it and format it for me and put it into a guide I could follow.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been watching car restoration videos on YouTube. I got sucked into a YouTube rabbit hole after my 3-year-old daughter caught me surfing Reddit on my phone and wanted to watch the video I was watching. It was an old Land Cruiser restoration video. This specific video became an after-dinner event for the next couple of weeks at my house.

My wife needed an oil change and her car still has the free dealership oil changes. I decided to take mine in as well because I paid $175 to continue my “MVP Service” plan for another 2 years.

My wife found this recipe on instagram or someplace and has made it a few times. It’s fantastic and its relatively easy to make. The original recipe calls for gnocchi, but my wife, who doesn’t like the texture of gnocchi, ‘accidentally’ grabbed 3 cheese Tortellini the first time she made this and thats the way we tend to make it.

So, you can make it with Tortellini or gnocci.

Ingredients#

 1 lb ground mild Italian sausage
 8 oz bag of spinach, roughly chopped (or hand-shredded)
 2 tbsp minced garlic
 2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
 2 cups half-and-half (or heavy cream)
 3 oz grated Parmesan
 1 package of 3 cheese Tortellini
 1 tbsp tomato paste
 1 tsp olive oil
 1 tsp salt
 1 tsp pepper
 1 tsp Italian seasoning
 1 tsp oregano
 1 tsp parsley
 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
 1 tsp onion powder
 1 tsp garlic powder

Instructions#

1. Heat oil & garlic#

Add 1 tsp olive oil to a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the minced garlic and cook until fragrant.

AI Auto Transcription System#

Introduction#

About two years ago, right as the LLM craze was really popping off, I stumbled on WhisperAI–a tool released by OpenAI that let you transcribe audio (voice-to-text). I actually uncovered it when I was looking at a way to dictate some of my personal notes in Neovim (vimwiki). I found nerd-dictation [https://github.com/ideasman42/nerd-dictation] which was super amazing, but didn’t work on my macbook and died on me as linux began the march away from x11 to wayland. Nerd-dictation required some of the security…“openness” that X11 afforded. I switched to wayland to get something working on my Pop_OS! machine, and when I did that, I lost my ability to use nerd-dictation.

Stoney made this during his night to cook during the OBX trip in 2025. Ripe bursted cherry tomatoes, stir in burrata or stracciatella, and scoop it all up with crispy garlic crostinis.

Ingredients#

# For the dip
 2 cups cherry or grape tomatoes  
 2 Tbsp olive oil (or enough to coat the baking dish)  
 ½ tsp salt (or to taste)  
 ¼ tsp freshly ground black pepper  
 Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional, for heat)  
 1–2 cloves garlic, minced  
 1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley  
 1 tsp dried oregano (or 1 Tbsp fresh, chopped)  
 1 burrata (or equivalent amount of stracciatella / burrata filling)  
 Handful of fresh basil leaves, torn  
 2 Tbsp freshly grated Parmesan (more for serving, optional)  

# For the garlic crostinis
 1 French baguette (or similar crusty bread)  
 2–3 Tbsp butter, softened  
 1 clove garlic, minced  
 Pinch of salt  
 1 Tbsp chopped parsley  
 1 Tbsp grated Parmesan (optional)

Instructions#

1. Preheat & prep#

Preheat your oven to 425 °F (220 °C).