Ok so this is our wheelchair van, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to take it to the shop but I am hoping for an idea of what is going on.

We have a 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan with less than 45k miles that's been fully modified for wheelchair use. (This shouldn't impact much but it does mean the electric is a bit more complex). It has separate front and rear controls and separate driver passenger front controls for the HVAC. The rear works fine, but the front passenger stopped switching off of the heat maybe a year ago. I forgot about it because we don't drive the car often and since we don't have a front passenger seat in the vehicle, no one is right in front of those vents. The driver side and rear kept working fine.

In the past month, the front vents no longer have any air movement with the very small exception that occasionally when I switch the AC on there's a bit of a very short, light cold breeze. Even more rarely sometimes at highway speeds this breeze will continue longer.

No setting change this afaict, there's no defrost, no switching to a different temp or set of vents that makes the blower work.

I did check the fuses under the hood and they look fine, I haven't gone behind the glove box, in part because I suspect this is going to be out of my skill set.

Suggestions for what could be the cause? Again I know I'll need to get it to a mechanic just hoping to have knowledge going in.

Much to my chagrin, the company I work for has done a lot in terms of steering/ pushing all software development be done through AI for some time now.

And what gives me much grin, GitHub changed their pricing structure for copilot. I'll skip the details the key fact is what used to be about $30/month per person + maybe few bucks in overages is now resulting in us hitting our usage cap on the 2nd day of the month. Overage costs this month will be hundreds of dollars per developer. I know this is an unexpected expense as I mentioned it casually to our CTO who had no idea.

I'm curious if this is going to force them to rethink the AI strategy. The incessant pushing to use more and more AI maybe will finally bite them on the ass so much they have to ask us to stop or pull back? Or maybe they'll just plunder our salaries, who knows.

I'm curious if anyone else is in the same situation.

I feel like seeing dead birds was very rare before but it feels quite common this year. Maybe I'm just driving more in a different area this year and the rate was surprisingly low last year, but I really feel like I'm constantly seeing dead birds over the last few weeks.

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Basically, the title question.

I'm rethinking my entire data backup routine, considering using Git to start tracking much/most (all?) of my assorted projects' histories. In most cases, it makes sense; but with my Calibre library, I'm not sure.

Has anyone tried this?

More particularly, if I do it ... what-all should be included in the .ignore file? Should I try to maintain a version history of the metadata.db file (an SQLite db file)? What about the ".calnotes" and ".caltrash" folders?

Thanks.

This is the fourth Tildes Book Club Discussion for 2026 and the twenty-fourth overall. We are discussing The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See. For May, we will discuss Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov.

I don't have a particular format in mind for this discussion, but I will post some prompts and questions as comments to get things started. You're not obligated to respond to them or vote on them though. So feel free to make your own top-level comment for whatever you wish to discuss, questions you have of others, or even just to post a review of the book you have written yourself.

For latecomers, don't worry if you didn't read the book in time for this Discussion topic. You can always join in once you finish it. Tildes Activity sort, and "Collapse old comments" feature should keep the topic going for as long as people are still replying.

And for anyone uninterested in this topic please use the Ignore Topic feature on this so it doesn't keep popping up in your Activity sort, since it's likely to keep doing that while I set this discussion up, and once people start joining in.

Things suck but dammit it's pride, please share things that are bringing you joy right now! And if you need some joy yourself please come and fill your cup or ask for something you need so we can lift you up. 🏳️‍🌈

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?