Happy July 4th! 🇺🇸🎉🎆

Ma'e Ma'e's going to hang out with her buddies so just Keko'a with us.  Haven't decided exactly where to go but it has to be somewhere with Target - BOGO Hot Wheels/Matchbox offer 😫🤣

SO...some updates from previous.  Will be breaking them down into several parts so that it won't be a long post.

(2) New (to us) 2017 Juke NISMO RS.  Ma'e Ma'e will be eligible to drive soon too, and she really liked the 2014 Juke NISMO RS, which Keko'a has already claimed.  Well, we found another one at Autoland Hawaii, with super low mileage again - even lower than the 2014.  The '14 has lower averaged mileage of 32K over the years, the '17 has 22K total.  Price wise, we paid about $3k more which is fair - well a bit over since if we add on the extra extended service plan (2K more) that's a total of $5K on top ('14 came with basic lifetime powertrain warranty; the '17 we purchased full coverage for 5 years/100K miles total since it's only several hundred dollars more expensive than the "basic" Omega offers).  In terms of body condition, the '17 WAS supposed to be better since it's the fully loaded version of the NISMO RS (vs '14 base version NISMO RS).  However, we couldn't really tell since the entire 🚙's wrapped in Tiffany Blue from the OEM Black.

(3) Nissan US has - will be in the next couple of weeks from this posting - purchased it back as a lemon due to reliability/unavailability of parts from Cummins.  It all started 2023 when we had the pump filter changed.  Honestly, I don't know whether it's the experience of the diesel technician at NC Nissan here in the 🏝, who came to work once or twice a week due to how Nissan US had abandoned/discontinued the diesel back in 2020, or how bad Cummins had built those motors.  The car shook violently within a week after that maintenance service.  It, however, only occurred if we left the 🚚 sat for about a week.  If we drove it daily or so, nothing would happened, and the problem would disappear on the next start...until we sat it for a week's time or so again.  Because of how rare this was, we drove it to the dealership in February only to be turned away because of the lack of diesel technician/advisor.  After a LOT of convincing reaching the management level at the dealership, the manager finally agreed to record the OBDII data during that moment (when the truck was still shaking in the dealership), especially since the diesel service advisor told us to do exactly that when we reported the problem in January.  Turned out it was the fuel injector (of the diesel motor, which should have lasted over 100K mile minimum, and ours was only 10K mile!  BTW, fuel injectors are different beasts between diesel and gasoline motors).  Got that fixed after waiting for 3 weeks due to national backorder plus diesel technician work schedule.  That was toward end of March.  Less than a week after that, check engine light was on. turned out low pressure turbo for the diesel motor was gone all of a sudden - another parts that should have lasted close to 100K miles, minimum!  Brought it in early April.  National backorder again...it's still at NC Nissan waiting for the gasket from Cummins so that technician can assemble the turbo which had arrived a couple of weeks back...every part needs to be custom ordered/made, and if the technician misses out on something, e.g. in this case, the gasket DIDN'T come with the turbo when ordered, 5 months were just gone (including 5 months of warrantied period).  Made me think of those European brands from the '80s/'90s.  Removed essentially everything removable from the Titan XD now, including all the stickers.  Took some images of the before and after 😢

(4) KAC - Ma'e Ma'e got the best of luck - NOT!  She got an "old-school" 🏈 coach (he called himself that, minus the 🏈) who focused on team formation from the '60-'80s style of play, and utterly against motion offense.  In short, 3 of the players, including Ma'e Ma'e, were standing around outside of the key for backup (shooting), and have the tallest kids played guards doing screen and lay-ups.  Well, those guards were pretty bad at lay ups because all 5 defensive players were focusing on the 2 guards since the other 3 offensive players were around the arch!  Forget about rebounding too in this case.  What's worst, he was focusing scoring more than the other team, so he didn't care about - or showed the team how to do -  defense!  It's currently 0 - 4 in record, and all of them blown out loss.  Ma'e Ma'e scored 4 - 6 points with 3-5 attempts in each of those games, except for one which she had only 1 opportunity.  Team scored about 20 points each game; the other teams twice of that, even with a team that didn't really have any strong players!  Worst of all, the coach's son doesn't really know 🏀 well but was set up to be the main scorer and played the most minutes, despite most of his "shots" being blocked.

"shots" as in throwing 🏀 like a hook shot, but very similar to throwing 🏈.

(1) Next time.

(5) & (6)  Next time since they're related in a way.  TL;DR - turned out we just had a quick food court 🍜 and 🍔 (have to save 💵 on tips...thanks, Brandon, for YOUR inflation)  but da kids did make me cards (after they forgot and I reminded them so they had to reuse the cards)...