u/Top_Technician7675

I was booking ZRH-BER and I saw that google flights suggested separate tickets. Price for return ticket on Swiss we page was 298. Out and in bound as separare tickets on Swiss was 270 (best outbound time for me was an Eurowings flight, but price exactly the same as Swiss) I went to the Eurowings webpage and saw that the price on Swiss webpage was 10 francs more than on Eurowings with checked bag (ob Swiss it was economy light), so I booked there the ultra light option and added a cabin bag for a total of 233. That’s a significant price difference.

I thought that return tickets are always cheaper. Is this a new thing now to check for separate tickets or was this just an outlier in pricing?

My 12" F4 Orion Optics UK OTA, had a great mirror back in the day (early 2000s). I remember start testing was close to perfect.
Around 2010 I moved and I couldn't use the scope, so I lent it to a club. Got it back just recently in an partially updated, partially destroyed condition. It's nice that it was well used, but what shocked me is that somebody totally fixed the mirror and it was strongly pinched, both from front holders and from the side nylon screws.

Initial star testing shows now that the mirror is quite a bit undercorrected.
Is it possible that mirror being pinched for a decade caused deformation and undercorrection?
Am I perhaps used to old types of eyepieces which showed a more true image (like Plossl and Vixen LV), and today's 100° and 82° eyepieces introduce some spherical aberration?
Or, the mirror was actually not as good as I remember it? :)

Having back again a 12" telescope after 15 year and using a 20mm 100° eyepiece where I can see beta and gamma Lyr in the same field with M57 in the center is absolutely amazing. Also the control of coma of modern eyepieces is crazy good.

About 3000 miles ago i did a piston soak on my S4 as one cylinder was fouling the plug with oil under longer engine braking. While doing that I also ran injector cleaning by a PEA fuel additive. After that the car ran absolutely perfect, probably as good or better than when I bought it at 40k miles. Fuel consumption on the same long stretch I do often (250 miles, >90% of way at 90mph on cruise control) improved from 21 to 23.5 mpg.

However, now I noticed that the 2-3000k acceleration in high gears now isn't as smooth, and while I was driving behind my wife and told her to do a pull 2nd and 3rd until redline I noticed that at the start of the pull and after gear shift a fair bit of black smoke appeared, closer to redline it was smoking too, but looked pretty ok.

How much black smoke is normal with B8 S4 under full load?
I remember that event when the car has 50k miles friend told me it made a puff of black smoke when floored.
Is 3000 miles a reasonable interval that would be needed to use injector cleaner additive?

I am fairly often relatively close to Venice and when looking at flights I sometime look at going from Venice. Recently I was shocked to find that for some destinations the cheapest flight was with Swiss over Zurich. Very commonly I find a flight for about 200 with a stopover in Zurich, but the same flight is about 500 when taking only the leg from Zurich. This is not isolated, neither new and I found the case for many destinations. In the past (neraly 10 years ago) I almost went from VCE over ZRH to LAX with family because the saving was nearly 2000, before they dropped price for directly flights enought thay saving wasn’t worth it. I often get people fly with Swiss from Americas over Zurich to Europe bacause it was the most affordable option. Why are we getting ripped off like this? Why is so much more expesive for us to fly from Zurich and why Swiss is so cheap when starting the flight somewhere else?

Just had my oil changed and I requested 5w40 instead of usual 5w30 that they normally use for all cars and saw that the mechanic put in the castrol 5w40 for turbo diesels with 505.00 and 505.01 specification. Should I be worried or one oil change for 6-7k miles will not be an issue?

A Swedish startup is asking me for an advisory and they would pay in stock, they suggest either shares delivered monthly or all transferred in full at the start with buyback if contract terminated early.

I read that getting paid in stock is taxed as regular income in Switzerland. How is actual value for such a startup calculated for tax purposes? Both options don't sound good to me and high risk to pax tax and then don't get anything out. First option by receiving stocks monthly sounds worse if the value of the company increases through finance rounds, and still is not a given that I get anything out at the end.
I am prepare to risk my time as potential gains can be large, but not prepared to risk to pay tax for nothing that I couldn't write off later.

What are better ways to do it? Ask if they issue options and I would then only exercise them if I knew that is possible to sell the stock? This would be much higher tax for me then, but perhaps safer?

Any other ways?

I am getting a leak at the oil filter. Not the oil filter housing seal, but at the oil filter directly. I used a Mann oil filter. I torqued to 25Nm as soecified and then I took it out and torqued less - 15Nm, didn’t help. Has anybody else had problems with this? Should I rather replace with an OEM filter? What would be the torque to be used when problems with leakage.

Drain plug was also leaking 😂 but that is another story, well described