Octopus Overlords

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Mon May 30, 2022 1:07 pm

Kurth wrote: ↑Fri May 27, 2022 2:14 am

Kurth wrote: ↑Sun May 08, 2022 7:46 pm Just put a deposit down on a new Leaf SV with technology package. Was disappointed to find out they were baking the OR state $2500 rebate into the price. Still, even with the BS “market adjustment” it’ll end up netting out at about $27.5K after the Federal $7500 tax credit.

Paying too much for this car, but that’s where the market is.

Well, that didn't go too well. Got the word from the dealer earlier this week that the car would be arriving Wednesday evening and would be ready for pickup Thursday. Showed up today with checkbook in hand, ready to buy the car. They asked if we wanted to go out for a test drive, and we said we were good - we had already driven a bunch of them and knew what we were getting. The sales guy went and told his manager, and then he came back and told us we had to go for a test drive - dealership policy. We said fine and went on a quick drive with the guy.

We came back, and he gave us some credit applications to fill out. We told him we'd be paying cash, and we could tell that kind of bummed him out.

Then he went and talked to his manager again, came back and showed us the price, which was $5K more than he had quoted me. I showed him the text exchange where he verified the price, and he told me, "that was just an estimate." We went over his new pricing sheet, and the difference was mostly came from an extended dealer warranty he was trying to shoehorn in at $3K and nearly $2K of dealer installed equipment. Getting them to take off the warranty was easy, but they wouldn't budget on the "equipment," which was a joke. For one, the car had just rolled off the truck. They didn't even have time to install any equipment. For another, the equipment wasn't even real - $500 for "theft prevention registration," $900 for some paint coating thing, $300 for floor mats, $100 for inflating the tires with nitrogen. He told me these were just standard things that they add on to all cars that leave their lot. I told him he should have obviously included that in the price he quoted me. At that point, we walked.

Out of curiosity did you ask for an out the door price? I have found that if you don't LITERALLY say that, or use that phrase, or write it (OTD), you will get shenaniganed as above (with shady car dealers like the one above).

Good tip. No, I never used that phrase. But, in the end, it all worked out for the best. I think the Kona EV is a much better car for the money than the Leaf we were trying to buy from the shady Nissan dealer.

Tomorrow morning the tree people come, bright and early, to do $2,100 worth of removals and pruning.

Yesterday I got a first estimate on rebuilding our porch: $17,000 for a deluxe job. The contractor happens to be our next-door neighbor's uncle, who grew up in a house three blocks away, so he's giving us the materials at his cost thanks to that connection and his affinity for our neighborhood.

Today I got the second estimate. I described the job before the guy took any measurements, and he said it's going to be $25,000, minimum. I told him not to waste his time working up a proper quote and off he went after warning me about cut-rate contractors who "discover" extra costs after the job begins.

Friday I'll get a third estimate.

Meanwhile, our CPA is working on the estate tax return that will enable us to divvy up the money and finally close the estate. We'll send our share of the capital gains tax to the IRS as an estimated payment, but we can't actually file until the 2022 forms become available at the end of the year.

Contractor #1, who's probably going to get the job, also has a lot of experience flipping local houses, so we might be working with him extensively on renovations over the next year.

Well its only a major purchase to me but Im going to have to somehow get a new keyboard. This one is sticking, keys come off the switch and sit off kilter on the spring as I use them, some keys simply come off when i take my finger off them when Ive held them down a few seconds and some keys like my period key and spacebar dont work a lot of times at all. The period especially ..sometimes have to punch it 6 or 7 times.

Now that I posted this in major purchases I feel small and will slink off to the hardware area to read up on whats out there at low price ranges... I only care about switches and bright lights.

Did i mention allergy shots? Getting the vials done was a chunk of change. First shot was today, and I did not swell up like a beach ball

Sometimes I miss the days when a new keyboard was a hurdle. In the next year we're going to commit stupid amounts of money to stuff that I'm stupid about.

We have four keyboards and two monitors in various degrees of dead-ness that we're going to take to Staples for recycling. Staples seems to be the only retailer that takes junk electronics for free.

"Best" Buy does. Or did. I don't think they recycle books, however.

For those interested in the struggle.

So last weekend began the process of opening the god-forsaken pool. I emptied about 4000 gallons of water out in a futile effort to not have to dump the debris on the cover into the water. Learned a physics lesson - the weight of the water on the cover is enough to ensure that the cover is always partially submerged - so you cannot win. Got the cover off, dumping filth into the water. Sweet.

Changed the mineral reservoir, changed the filter cartridge, sealed a crack in the outlet valve coming out of the chlorination and reinstalled that. Put 5000 gallons of water back into the pool to bring the water level up. Primed the pump and filter (ensuring that they were both completely filled with no air in the system. Turned the pump on. And watched the bottom blow out of the pool chlorinator, which immediately caused water to firehose into the ground.

Goddamn it. Cost of new Pool Chlorinator? $225. F that noise. Scheduled the pool for demolition as soon as the water is removed.

I learned last year that while apparently it is perfectly safe for Amazon to ship these bullshit chemicals to me, it is apparently super unsafe for me to ship them back to Amazon. So I’m the proud owner of a bunch of bullshit chemicals for a pool that is going to be detonated.

My wife was not satisfied with that, so she started looking into communicating with Amazon to try to get them to take this shit back. She looked up the incident last year, and apparently I bought a chlorinator and tried to return it. They wouldn’t take it back, despite the fact that it’s a piece of plastic, and not a pile of dangerous chemicals. With enough complaining, they refunded the price of the entire thing. But they still wouldn’t take it back. So downstairs on a shelf, is a brand new pool chlorinator.

We begin the dance again. I don’t know whether I hope that it too explodes when I turn the pump on (after I bring the goddamn water level up again).

F pools.

Could you not have wet-vacced the debris off the cover?

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 12:57 pm Could you not have wet-vacced the debris off the cover?

It's a 26 ft diameter pool, and the problem area doesn't start until about 4 ft from the edge of the pool. It's not the the most convenient location to get to with a vac (moreso given that it's an above ground pool with no deck around it.

Sounds like you need a pool boy

I don’t understand how and even why you made and failed to remember a purchase you apparently had no need for, a purchase you completely rejected making this year.

Unagi wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 3:03 pm I don’t understand how and even why you made and failed to remember a purchase you apparently had no need for, a purchase you completely rejected making this year.

I have no memory of why I bought it, why I thought I needed it, or why I concluded I didn’t need it. I rejected making the purchase this year, because when the chlorinator blew out, I decided I wasn’t paying any more money for this god forsaken pool. I will have to see if there is a record of my explanation to Amazon for why I didn’t need it.

Oh, you're definitely paying more for the pool, even if just to destroy it. Pools! Fun!

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 12:07 am Did i mention allergy shots? Getting the vials done was a chunk of change. First shot was today, and I did not swell up like a beach ball

My mother had that done to me as a child. I think it was a load of hokum. It seemed like I tested positive for all the things she didn't want me or my father to have like pets, chocolate, cigarettes.

On today’s episode of “How the Water Turns”…

Thought we had everything fixed yesterday. Plumbers fixed the shower valve, we ran the bath spout and the shower for a full 10 minutes, no leaks upstairs or down. At least that part is fixed (we thought), now we just have to deal with getting everything rebuilt. And Mrs Skinypupy was relieved that she could finally take her nightly bath again.

After we put the kids to bed tonight, she calls me downstairs to look at something. All the carpet in the room underneath the tub is soaking wet again. What the hell? We turn on the shower. No leaks. We run the bath. No leaks. We fill up the bottom of the tub and drain it. No leaks. We shine a flashlight up through the torn out ceiling and couldn’t see anything that was wet. I start freaking out, thinking that maybe a line under the house ruptured and was leaking up from underneath.

On a whim, I took off the shower head and shot it upwards into the tub overflow. Instantly water starts draining into the basement. I shine a flashlight through it, and there’s a giant hole where it’s supposed to be connected to the drain. So when Mrs Skinypupy took her bath, any water that was over the level of the overflow simply went right down into the basement instead of into the drain. Awesome.

As I see it, there’s two things that could have happened here. Either:

A) That hole in the overflow was the original cause of the problem and I just paid them lots of money to replace the valves for nothing, OR

B) They knocked that overflow loose in the process of replacing the valve and just didn’t bother to check it and/or close it back up.

Needless to say, I’m pissed about either option. Silver lining is that we at least know where it’s coming from and it’ll be easy to avoid (just don’t take a bath until it’s fixed). Plus it was dripping down into an area that had already been torn up from the original leak.

So I get to call the plumbing company and deal with that in the morning. The saga continues…

I'm going to buy an assault rifle.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 9:33 am "Best" Buy does. Or did. I don't think they recycle books, however.

Best Buy does electronics. Max 3/day. Free for most stuff. Old CRT monitors (I had one in the attic shortly before the pandemic shutdown came to town) they charge $25 for. As well as some other things (maybe PCs? I had several old ones (think the newest was more than 10 years old) to get rid of but retired guy by my dad fixes/sells old PCs on the cheap; hooked my dad up with some stuff - I wiped the drives and gave them to him; except one drive that was going to take 7200 hours or something insane like that - physically destroyed that one.

That was 2020 or 2021 when I finally got the stuff to BB (I had old flat screen monitor and some other stuff I took to them; ended up going 2 separate times).

Porch estimate #3 came in at $19,500 today. Even though #1 was the low bid, and I liked the guy personally, I'm getting a more professional vibe from #3 and leaning toward hiring them. Plus, a woman-owned construction company appeals to me.

I have to ask #1 some questions about his bid before I make the decision. For example, I told all three bidders that I wanted to reuse my existing railings. #1 said sure, no problem. #2 said it's so much trouble fitting old railings into new construction that it's cheaper to use new ones. And #3 said my old ones aren't up to code -- they're 29" high vs. a requirement of 32" and won't pass if it's new construction vs. reconstruction, which is a nebulous call that the building inspector can make. #1 was dismissive of permits and inspections in general, and I suspect he's the low bidder because he skirts the rules. #3 seems more trustworthy, and that might be worth paying a $2,500 premium.

I also need to look for reviews outside of the HomeAdvisor environment, where all the reviews of all their contractors are positive.

#3 because they’re paying attention to permits. Sneaking one by the permit office seems fine until you actually have to sell. Or someone complains.

We’ve had more luck in dealing with nearby drug/gang houses in Chicago by calling the city housing inspectors rather than non-emergency Chicago police. A code violation complaint will get a site inspection the next day, rather than a possible follow up within the week. And none of the drug dealers have connections to the Housing Department.

The city makes money on Code enforcement, and the guys turning their extra rooms into grow gardens or drug dens never pay attention to health and safety rules. One place had an unsafe spiral staircase installed to escape a police raid, and eventually sold to house flippers after getting constant fines. The best that CPD raids did to the place was cause a few days visit from a plumbing service, presumably from the damage caused by flushing evidence.

I need to have #1 repeat what he told me about permitting because my brain takes lousy notes. He suggested that I should get the permit myself for reasons I don't remember that had something to do with cost and oversight. I told him I want to have this discussion by email so that I have written reference because of my failing memory for telephone conversations.

I also suspect that his low bid won't stay low, because his quote is $11,000 for labor with a notation that materials are estimated to add $6k. That's too open-ended as written.

Hired contractor #3 today. She's going to pull the permits today and get the site prep work done next week, then start construction after Independence Day weekend.

Gonna have to use the HELOC to pay for it since our money from selling the Lansing house is still frozen until we close out the estate. I just paid off the HELOC (our mortgage) two weeks ago. It was nice while it lasted.

This is how my deck project turned out. The bottom step in photo 2 looks wonky because it's a slope. The step is level and that bottom riser is cut at an angle. I replaced the lights myself to modernize and they have GFCI protected outlets in them for additional flexibility.

Looks great !!

Congrats!

Very nice. Some awnings would look fantastic.

And good riddance to those old pyramid stairs leading out the back door. My sister's home has those and I don't know how people don't break their necks on them. I'm not sure if it's the way they fan out, or the lack of a railing (not for support, but just for the eye to follow), but I almost get dizzy when I am on them. Not quite 'dizzy', but I feel my senses being played with for some reason like I don't trust my eyes to gauge the next step down.

I've been here 10 years and have had many rollicking drunken parties. Never had anyone fall. They were 2x6 boards so wide enough that they were wide enough to navigate. They were really starting to buckle though. I painted them every couple of years but they were nearly 35 years old.

Zaxxon wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 1:21 pm Very nice. Some awnings would look fantastic.

Yeah phase 2. I have a new sectional on it and its in direct sun from 7am to about 330-4 pm. That's going to get old quick.

Looks great...I need to do that to my front porch which has wooden railings. Considering doing it myself since it's just a small porch.

Will definitely switch from the current wood railings (which I have to clean, paint and repair or replace almost every year) to the same PVC stuff I have at the back.

Switching from having to re-prime and paint wood every year to pressure wash PVC every year...a slight improvement I guess? Certainly will cut down on the "replace and repair" part though, which is the real time killer.

My most "major" purchase... was to buy a $40 window fan for myself to replace the one that got gunked up. One side is so gunked it doesn't start properly and occasionally makes a terrible noise. I think it had thrown its bearings.

EDIT: and the window fan is installed. $40 "AmazonBasics" fan, manual control. I can throw it on a wifi switch to make it respond to voice commands... maybe later. Today is certainly warm enough, and I had to travel quite a bit in San Francisco. USPS "ready for pickup" pink slip went missing, and the automated system gave the WRONG POST OFFICE. Went to the right one, and they found an extra package I was sorta expecting. Yea! But that's traveling all over town. That extra package: a book scanner I bought on a whim. Yes, a BOOK scanner, that you place on a table, open up a book, and you can scan the book. It was on IndieGogo and it was only $100. Don't have a use for it at the moment, but we'll see...

Remodeling work having become urgent (toilet has a slow leak, floor sinking a little), we got our guy over yesterday.

Fix the floor in the bathroom - same thing me and Dad did - new board - though he's going to put leveling cement in there - said the support rafter likely has issues, so he's going to shore that up.

Same approach to floors through the house that we are fixing (living room, kitchen, backroom, hallway).

Vinyl for all the fixed floors.

Talked about building a new closet in the bedroom and a funky small bathroom in the existing closet (move the wall out a little, get like 8 in more room) - toilet, sink, tile all over, put a faucet/hose-shower head in the wall, the toilet/sink would be part of the bathroom). We didn't really like that idea and couldn't figure out where to put her desk/computer (that's in the bedroom now where the new closet would go). Instead, gonna ask about just expanding the existing closet and replacing the hanging/shelving with more optimal hanging area and more/better shelving. And bathroom in the back room w/ the laundry (just 1/2 bath, no shower).

Roof-over - he thinks we don't need a new roof, this approach will solve problem with whatever moisture is getting the attic (many nails rusty, few periodic drips here and there) - new shingles fix that plus insulation from old one will prevent snow melting prematurely, reducing issues with ice dams.

New faucet in kitchen (old one leaks periodically from years of rust build up from super hard water; just got water softener installed in the fall when we got new furnace).

And new water heater (we paid for it w/ the furnace/water softener, but they didn't get a chance to install yet, they had some health issues come up). Ours is still good far as I know, but it's rated for 6 years, is at least 8, maybe 10 years old and the hard water was likely not so good for it. Figured might as well replace it now while doing all the other work before it becomes a real issue.

He's gotta write that all up still, but that's going to be most/all our remodeling budget for a couple years at least. Hopefully some money left after for some new furniture wife desperately wants.

Just went guitar shopping with the kiddo for her birthday. Didn't expect it to make this thread. Who knew?

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 10:19 am There was a puddle on the floor of the downstairs bathroom this morning, which is directly below our master bath. Looked up and saw a big "water bulge" in the ceiling. Poked around the bulge and all of the sheet rock in the entire ceiling is mushy, which indicates that there is likely some pretty extensive water damage going on.

Fuck.

Between mitigation, demolition, plumbing, and reconstruction, the final tally for this leak will be just over $7,000.

Insurance will not cover any of it because it’s considered a “maintenance issue”. They said that the presence of mold in the downstairs closet is an indicator that the leak had been going over time and we should have seen it. Never mind that we only go in that spare room once or twice a year, and I don’t even remember the last time we opened the closet. If the pipe had simply ruptured, they would have covered everything. Since it didn’t, I’m on the hook for it everything.

The lesson here is to make sure you check rooms that you don’t go into often for potential water leak damage.

Likely going to get a boardgame table.



Local guy. I have played on the table at the links and saw the nearly completed next one he was making. There are some interesting features with the vertical dividers if you only need part of the table and I like the storage cart. If the quote is reasonable, I would likely get it in October. I am expecting it to be ~ $4k.

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Jul 02, 2022 6:21 pm Just went guitar shopping with the kiddo for her birthday. Didn't expect it to make this thread. Who knew?

So you’re finally letting her get the Mosrite, right?

Montag wrote: ↑Sun Jul 03, 2022 5:13 pm I am expecting it to be ~ $4k.

I paid $800 for mine that functionally looks pretty similar to that one.

For $4k it better be the most amazing gaming table ever made

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Sun Jul 03, 2022 6:08 pm

Montag wrote: ↑Sun Jul 03, 2022 5:13 pm I am expecting it to be ~ $4k.

I paid $800 for mine that functionally looks pretty similar to that one.

For $4k it better be the most amazing gaming table ever made

When and where?

I got one of these, about 18 months ago I think.

Looks like yours may be a bit bigger, but for this table $4K would get the table, topper, cupholders, dividers, and chairs and still have some left over.

A nonny mouse wrote: ↑Sun Jul 03, 2022 6:07 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: ↑Sat Jul 02, 2022 6:21 pm Just went guitar shopping with the kiddo for her birthday. Didn't expect it to make this thread. Who knew?

So you’re finally letting her get the Mosrite, right?

Acoustic. She got a Taylor of some sort.

She got hands on some pretty cool vintage guitars but we wanted to keep the price under 4 figs. That store is interesting, they aren't arranged by price so you could looking at a $600 guitar and pick up the one next to is and it's $2600. For someone who knows nothing about guitars its a bit daunting. Fortunately kiddo knew what she was doing.

Skinypupy wrote: ↑Sun Jul 03, 2022 6:34 pm I got one of these, about 18 months ago I think.

Looks like yours may be a bit bigger, but for this table $4K would get the table, topper, cupholders, dividers, and chairs and still have some left over.

The recessed playing area will be 72 x 44 inches to cover all my playmat sizes. It will be custom made from Ash. It looks similar in pricing to other options out there.

The porch people are supposed to drop their materials and a dumpster on Tuesday, with demolition on Wednesday. For this I will pay them approximately a billion dollars, give or take a billion.