Electrify Your Ride with Tax Incentives: A Carbon-Free Fairfax Webinar

Yours truly we be in a webinar all about electric cars on Tax Day, Thursday 5 October, 2023


Interested in owning an electric vehicle but concerned about the cost? 

The Fairfax County Office of Environmental and Energy Coordination (OEEC), in partnership with the Greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition and the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington, DC, is presenting “Electrify Your Ride with Tax Incentives: A Carbon-Free Fairfax Webinar” on Thursday, October 5 at 6 p.m. Together, they will answer common questions about electric vehicles and how drivers can take advantage of federal tax credits and incentive programs.

Electric vehicles, or EVs, are better for the environment and less expensive to fuel and maintain than gas-powered vehicles. Rebate and incentive programs for the purchase of EVs – including federal tax credits of up to $7,500 – are reducing the cost and driving up demand. 

The webinar will be hosted by Fairfax County Environmental Analyst Kate Daley and feature brief presentations and Q/A with Antoine Thompson and Jeffrey C. Jacobs. 
 On The Agenda

  • Tax credits and rebates available through the Inflation Reduction Act and local utilities to help lower the costs. 
  • Tips for first-time EV buyers to help with a purchase or lease decision.
  • Answers to common questions about EV ownership.

About the Speakers

antoine thompson headshot

Antoine Thompson, Executive Director of the Greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition, a public private partnership that promotes the use of clean, American transportation fuels for homeland security, improved air quality, environment justice, diversity, and inclusion.

jeffrey jacobs headshot

Jeffrey C. Jacobs, an EV owner living in Reston, VA and a board member of the Electric Vehicle Association of Greater Washington, DC, an organization of electric vehicle owners, educators and enthusiasts dedicated to promoting the use of EVs as an environmental and energy benefit to society. 

The webinar will be livestreamed on Fairfax County’s YouTube channel as well as OEEC’s Facebook page. No registration required.  It will also be immediately available on YouTube to watch the replay after the livestream. Be sure to tune in at 6 p.m. on October 5!
 


There’s also a sneak preview perhaps tonight at this month’s Ask an EV Owner.

Community Room at The Avant

A Half-Century of a TimeHorse

In one month, I will be celebrating my half-century of existence. What’s more, I will, for the first time in a quarter century, single. After much hemming and hawing over my continued love for the woman who was my wife, with the frustration over so many things I can’t discuss, the coup de gras being things like Nowhere to run? and Sheltered in Place with a Domestic Abuser? and incessant unnecessary forced to sanitize when we really should just Relax—you actually don’t need to sanitize your food!

The thing is, these days I need to physically leave my premises 3 days a week because I’m required in the office. I’m typically the only one wearing a mask there because I do believe in being cautious—especially since the recent SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. It’s not like I’m endangering myself when I go to a writing group or an electric car event. I use due caution every time I’m out, typically 5 days a week. I’ve even tested negative, and triple vaccinated!

You’d think that’d be enough, but nope. Every time I return to the house, I have to do the four S‘s. I’m effectively forced to Surrender all of my items—iPhone, Apple Watch, wallet, even my glasses and wait for them to be Sanitized! Then I need to Strip to my underwear because my clothes “must be contaminated”. Finally, I’m supposed to Shower, but and only when I come home, never in the morning or before I go out.

I put up with a lot for all these years, from a profound lack of physical intimacy to constant threats of divorce whenever she was cross with me. I put up with it for all these years because I truly believed she was the best woman I could ever hope to be with. The truth is, she may still be the best, but with all I have to deal with, I would quite frankly rather be alone—though I’m not dead yet, so we’ll see what the future holds.

Now, you may be wondering why it’s taking me so long to move to my new apartment, especially since I’ve been paying rent since 30 January. Well, for the last 11 years, I have been enjoying extremely inexpensive charging at my house on the Dominion Schedule EV with my Clipper Creek CS-100. But, when I got #CO2Fre, my first Tesla #P三D, it came with free, unlimited SuperCharging. The plan was, I could take advantage of the free fuel, move to an apartment, and just charge up the vehicle on my way to work at the Sterling Supercharger.

But then, while coming back from a Star Wars cosplay event, where I was cosplaying Grand Moff Tarkin, running late for a barbeque with my brother, I found myself on the most evil road in all of Fairfax County. Braddock Road is mostly a straight road, but it makes this one incongruous bend which is the bane of all my existence. I had just paid off #CO2Fre 24 days earlier, when, on 25 July 2021, the same year I watched my mother die and attended my dear Aunt’s funeral, the greatest car I’ll ever own, and my ticket out of here was totaled. I was taken to the hospital and, because of the airbag deployment, I was even left in a cast—which you can see on my TikTok. To top it all off, my uncle died on 31 December 2021 to cap off an utterly tragic year.

GEICO and Tesla refused to fix it. I lost my ride, my free fuel, and my free celular entertainment system, the later a $99 per year value. Supercharging I can’t even begin to estimate, because I wasn’t using it during the Pandemic, and I knew I would need it when I moved to an apartment.

As it was, I did find an apartment with EV Charging. However, if you don’t move your car within 4 hours, you will be charged an arm and a leg, meaning you’d have to get home, and set an alarm to remind you to go back down and move your car. What’s more, while charging under Schedule EV costs me about 7.5¢ per kWh, the apartment costs 15¢ per kWh, double the price. And, if I wanted to use the Supercharger, it would cost 30¢ per kWh, four times what I’m used to paying. And that cost is constantly increasing!

People seriously lambasted me on social networks when I lost #CO2Fre. Of course, it’s just a car, but my whole plan went up in ashes with that loss, and here I am, 123 days with an empty apartment, stuck with the quadruple S‘s, because I just want keep saving on fuel. That’s why I was so sad when I lost my ride, because I knew life would be more expensive and I would end up staying longer than I needed. I wish folks could have understood—I had to take whole 2 month hiatus from social networks to avoid the vitriol.

However, here we are, today. I now have #NoSO2, I pay for Supercharging and Premium Connectivity, but I got rid of GEICO, who grossly undervalued my precious ride, and now am insured by Tesla, constantly trying to improve my Safety Score to lower my insurance rate, as well as finally qualify to beta test my $14,000 investment in the Full Self-Driving Beta. And my wife is working with my to get the divorce finalized as soon as possible as a final birthday present to me.

And you know what? Imma have a party! A party to celebrate a half-century of existence, a party to celebrate my divorce and freeness, a part to play board games and sing karaoke and cosplay at your leisure, to grill with my brother and have pizza aplenty with plenty of vegetarian and other dietary options as requested. And unlike Jeffrey’s Jammin Birthday Bash 2 years ago, this party will be in person, on the third floor and community space of my new apartment in Reston Town Center. I’m hoping maybe even the Metro will open by then, but then, I’ll be lucky to just have you show up.

Get your free tickets here! Please remember to RSVP so I can let the concierge know you’re coming.

The Esher Demos

Legend among the diehard Beatles fans, such as myself, is the folklore of the Esher Demos recorded at George Harrison’s house on his Ampex 4-Track Reel-To-Reel. Fans got a taste of some of those tracks on Beatles Anthology 3, but not until the 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe version of the eponymous Beatles’ White Album.

Ampex 4-Track, available at SonicCircus.com, only $3,500!

The problem with this release of the 27 demos from May, 1968, is that they’re not put in the proper order as intended by the Beatles. However, thanks to YouTube Music, this can be remedied!

Behold, the Esher Demos, in their proper order!

The Esher Demo Playlist

Get Back to Where You Once Belong

Yes, the site is back in business. And while I was away, we got a wonderful edit of the Let it Be sessions from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, now available on Disney+. With over eight hours of footage from the sixty our corpus from Michael Lindsay-Hogg we got a complete narrative on how the album developed, how the songs included were developed, as well as how some songs which made it onto Abbey Road or some solo works post Beatles came about.

One of the more interesting bits is how Isn’t it a Pity is heard in the credits to the first episode, how the anvil is brought in for Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, how Ringo came up with Octopus’s Garden with George listening intently, how George wrote the bridge to Something before the main song, a take of All Things Must Pass, the original political protest version of Get Back, and how the band worried when George went AWOL. My only nit is the riff from I Want You in the rooftop concert couldn’t be heard because of the interviews below. And I would have liked to have Hear Me Lord included from the sessions. Shame on you, Peter.

Overall, a most joyous eight hours of my life!

Meanwhile, this server is back bit not for long. I plan to move TimeHorse.com to OpalStack in the coming month so stay tuned for that.

Let’s talk about Hala Ayala tonight

Folks, I want to talk to you about my good friend Hala Ayala tonight. I’ve known Hala since my early days lobbying for the ERA. I passed her on Main Street East in Richmond as I was leaving an ERA shindig. I needed to drive all the way back to Herndon in #CO2Fre1 that evening so was leaving early, so all I got to say to her was “hey!”

However, months later I got to talk to Hala at length at an ERA event in Tyson’s Corner and was happy to make her acquaintance. After all, she’s a tireless fighter for for women who knows first hand the struggles many women, including my mom, have to make to make ends meet. She worked in a petrol station, making minimum wage when the unthinkable happened. She’s a survivor. And as a survivor, no other candidate can more personally know the struggles too many women face.

But Hala didn’t just survive, she thrived. She went back to school and became a Cyber Security expect. In the twenty-first century, we need a Lieutenant Governor who knows her way around the Internet, and how to keep us secure. With growing threats to our very democracy coming from overseas, we need someone like Hala, and no other candidate for Governor has this qualification.

Hala is also a great organizational force. As the Deputy Majority Whip, she makes sure the Virginia Speaker of the House of Delegates has the votes she needs to pass the bills she wants. As our Lieutenant Governor, Hala is well suited to keep push the Governors wishes, whoever she or he may be, through the General Assembly.

And that’s just a small taste of what makes this African-American, Latino, Irish, and Lebanese candidate the best candidate for Lieutenant Governor.

Still not convinced? Then join me tonight in 75 minutes as I discuss what makes Hala so great. Simply register here: https://www.mobilize.us/halaforlg/event/380236/

How to tell Hala's Story
How to Tell Hala’s Story

The Hourlings Podcast—Episode 6: Developing Characters

In this episode I mention my stint acting for my friend Shea. She wrote a cute series of situational comedy episodes taking place in a Zoo. My character was a rival animal husbandry expert from the local aquarium, and my character didn’t like the land-loving animal tenders one bit. I don’t know if it will ever be released, but I did get an IMDB credit out of it.

In this episode, I also talk a lot about Project Kronosphere. I recently decided to novelize the series and was excited to talk about the Kronosphere cameo in my story Let’s Kill John A. or John Wilkes Booth Must Die. I’m excited to get this project started and hope to work on an episode over the weekend!

The Hourlings Podcast—Episode 6: Developing Characters: Another Finely Structured Meeting

I really enjoy working on these episodes but I have been concerned with how long they are. This one was 75 minutes and other episodes have been about the same. We therefore agreed to make a change to how we release the episodes. Stay tuned to this page and keep watching Channel 137!

SARS-CoV-2: The Vaccine

I did a science. Back on 11 March, I told you about the virus that now is ubiquitous in our modern consciousness. We had the genome of the Virus sequenced as soon as January and I was already speculating that the vaccine would be faster than any vaccine ever in history because of it.

The interesting thing I didn’t expect is for someone to go from matching a viral protein in the B-cells and T-cells. I never expected we could develop a vaccine that is purely the Messenger RNA (mRNA). Why I’m not clear how you could get such a vaccine into the cellular production machinery, it’s clear if you can, that you can have your own body’s cells produce the protein markers that your immonolocal system can match. Of course, the other potential issue is, if you do have one of your cells producing this viral protein then what’s to stop your immune system from targeting it?

Dr. Joe Hanson explains how one SARS-CoV-2 vaccine was created.

2020 has indeed been quite an unexpected year. When I first created Project Kronosphere, back in 1999, I set it in 2010, which was still a ways off. When we started to approach 2010, I moved it to 2020. Now that it’s 2020, I’m kind of happy I didn’t set it then. There is no way I could have predicted the life-changing events of this year. But, I was able to predict the expedited vaccine development, which makes me quite happy and hopeful. And Project Kronosphere is now set in 2030 and features a 67 year old Professor Rebecca Priestley. And though I have some screenplays in the Project Kronosphere Universe, I am about to start its novelization…

Project Kronosphere was always intended to be an education drama, and like the Professor, I hope you have learned something from this post here. Make good science, my friends!