Subaru and Toyota (Day 3713 - 1/24/20)

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Today, Stephen and Mallory went to look at cars at 2 different car dealerships. They had done some research to figure out which car companies and car models they were interested in. After researching, they were interested in cars made by Subaru and Toyota. They were interested in the Subaru Forester, the Subaru Ascent, the Toyota RAV4, and the Toyota Highlander. They just went to these dealerships to gather information since they aren't in a rush to get a new car yet.

He is not really interested in people's individual stories about their cars since they have friends and family who already tell them about their experiences with these car brands. He is only interested in data like car reliability ratings and customer satisfaction ratings. This is why they got a membership to Consumer Reports about a month ago. Stephen says that Subaru and Toyota had high reliability and customer satisfaction ratings, so they decided to go to those 2 dealerships. He is also looking for a car that he will fit in since he's really tall. Stephen mentions that the opinions the viewers of certain car companies matched up with the consumer reports.

Stephen says that the salespeople at both dealerships were very nice and friendly. He got to test drive the Subaru Ascent and Toyota RAV4. Stephen realized that the Subaru Ascent and Toyota Highlander were closer in size to their 2004 Ford Escape than he originally thought. He thought their Ford Escape was bigger. Mal tells Stephen that the Ford Escape is a small SUV. Stephen says that the Subaru Forester is like a very modern Ford Escape. Then, he talks about how you don't know how you feel about a car until you test it out yourself. He says there are so many options to consider and he hates that there are so many options. Stephen wishes that someone would just pull a vehicle up to their driveway and give him papers to sign. He says that buying a car and spending a lot of money sucks, but it's exciting knowing that you're getting a new car.

At the Toyota dealership, the salesperson showed them all different kinds of car models. He also showed them a car that had the bare minimum features which had Bluetooth and a backup camera. Stephen says that those features are already great since their car currently has none of those things. He also got to test drive the Subaru Forester and he says that it has neat features. Their current car only has a CD player with a volume knob that hasn't been working for 5 years. They have to turn the knob back and forth in order for it to work. Then, he talks about how he has noticed that after renting cars over the years, their car has a lot of road noise. Their car is also not safe and he says that they would probably die if they got in a bad car accident. There have also been recalls on this car. The good thing about them buying a new car is that whatever that car is it will be safer than their current car.

Back at home, they played Yoshi's Island on stream. Mal says that it was really cute and she enjoyed it. Stephen spent so much time trying to fix the issue with multi-track audio, but new problems occurred. There was an echo and this exact problem also occurred when they were playing The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on stream a while back. At the time, Stephen solved that issue by increasing the buffer size of the audio interface. But, now he doesn't know why it's happening. Stephen put the local recording into Final Cut and found that Mal's microphone fell behind by a few milliseconds in a few spots. It fell behind Stephen's microphone just enough to create an echo. So, the echo came from hearing Stephen through his microphone and then a couple milliseconds later through Mal's microphone.

It is easy to make it not audible in the YouTube video, but he doesn't know how to fix it overall. The only things he changed were turning on multi-track audio and switching over to recording in MKV. He knows that both of those things are unrelated to the issue. After the stream, Mal researched about cars for an hour and told Stephen about what she found out. There are a lot of factors to consider, so Stephen thinks car shopping is the worst.

Stephen says that they were busy today, so they were unable to give the Untitled Goose Game - "Une Oie" painting to his parents. He hasn't told his parents about it yet and they will probably give it to them tomorrow.