Drew Dowdell

Mine is very much green rather than gray. It might get repainting to a lighter color in the summer. That color has been up 15+ years.

Cozy night

Yes Watson.

Don’t buy wipers at the store. Don’t buy wipers at Amazon. Buy wipers from RockAuto.com they are 1/3rd of the cost compared to any retail or Amazon. You can get the Trico bar wipers from the which are equivalent to Bosch Icons for like $6 each plus shipping. If you have a bunch of vehicles, order for all your vehicles at the same time and save on shipping costs. Getting 6 blades for my whole fleet was like $48 after shipping. That’s the same as 2 Bosch Icons at Amazon.

It takes 6 batteries? I hope you can just plug the mower in to charge instead of having to have a rack of chargers

The whole thread was super helpful. My gas powered snow blower bit the dust years ago and I’ve just been shoveling manually since then. With the first 8” of snow on the ground here for the season, I said Eff this. I dug myself a path out, put the Avalanche in 4 low, and crawled to Lowe’s. I picked up the EGO snow blower. I also ended up ordering snow tires for the truck because I’m still rolling on the OEs and they are dry rotted. Even with tread they are awful in the white stuff. So now Gus will be getting new Blizzaks on Dec 27th.

My ski slope is only 90 minutes from me. We’re getting blasted with snow today. 8 to 10 inches total expected here in the city. More out at 7 Springs.

I think in terms of the end of Next Gen / DS9 timeline. My Toronado is an old Constitution class Refit My Avalanche is a Galaxy class. Big. Previous generation of design. Versatile. Powerful, but not the fastest or most maneuverable, but definitely not something you want to pick a fight with. My Chrysler 300C is an Excelsior class. An old design that just keeps getting upgraded with the newest tech. Known for speed.

I got out a bunch this past summer. Not much else to do.

Tax avoidance is legal but a lot of it shouldn’t be. It doesn’t count as shortfalls

Well that’s certainly an interesting twist!

Uh.. I don't know. I haven't had to configure that app in so long. I'll check. Yup, there was a 10 item max I changed it to unlimited. You should be able to add stuff now.

Except in extreme cases, Individual taxes matter a lot less than corporate taxes. Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, but his W2 salary has stayed the same ~$81k for 20 years. His personal wealth is 90% paper based on the share price of the companies he owns. But when he does sell stocks, his tax rate is generally only 15% because he only pays Capital Gains. On the flip side, the actual corporation of Amazon pays very little of their income to taxes. This is where the bulk of the cheating is. Walmart is not only just as bad with the cheating, they are actively predatory. They'll hunt down some financially struggling town and promise to build a store there if they get a property tax exemption for the next 10 years. The town, being short-term greedy, accepts. Walmart builds the store and starts placing a burden on the local infrastructure. After the 10 years are up, Walmart threatens to close the store if they don't get an extension on their tax exemption. They'll cook the books to make the store look like it is barely profitable or even losing money. They'll claim "they want to keep the store open because they care about the community". If they get the extension, they continue to be a burden on the local infrastructure without paying towards its upkeep. If they don't get the extension, they close the store and move 10 miles down the road to the next gullible town and repeat the process all over again. The store they close they "Sadly, wanted to keep it open for the good of the community, but it just wasn't a good business decision." All the while they are doing this, they are having their workforce subsidized by Federal Tax dollars by compensating their employees so poorly that they need to go on Food Stamps (redeemable at Walmart), Section 8, and Medicare. Then they funnel a huge amount of their profits back through the Walton fund as charitable tax write offs and pay the family huge sums of money to sit on the board. And it's all legal.

I just wanted to see if, in addition to all the car geeks, we have Star Trek geeks too? I've always kinda thought about my vehicles as classes of ships from the series. I just wondered if any of you Star Trek (or other Sci Fi series) thought about it in the same way. Like my Toronado is a Constitution Class - Old and out of date, requires a bit of tinkering down in engineering to keep running right, not particularly fast, but be good to her and she'll always get you home. I already have my other two thought out, but I want to see if anyone else participates before I share them.

Still way too warm for us here... but I can't wait for my first ski trip of the year.

An Audi having electrical issues?! I'm shocked! SHOCKED I SAY!

I ended up pulling the trigger on this pair of Linksys Velop Wi-Fi 6 for $299. Linksys Velop AX4200 WiFi 6 Mesh System 2-Pack https://www.costco.com/linksys-velop-ax4200-wifi-6-mesh-system-2-pack.product.100701373.html my airport crashed multiple times today while I was trying to work

Don't do that. Blow it back onto the grass and then suck it up into the mower if you want it gone. Grass on the street is bad for motorcycles and bicyclists, plus it looks like crap.

I have a leaf blower, but I don't find it particularly useful at clearing the lawn of leaves. I just hook up the mulcher attachment on the mower and let'er rip. I do use the leaf blower for porches, the truck bed, or my garage, but I don't need super high power for that.

If you keep up with it once or twice a month over the summer, you probably won't need the commercial grade one again. It's when you go years without that you need the commercial grade one to catch up.

It's just one room that has the signal issue and is is diagonally the furthest distance away.

Here's what you do. Rent a commercial grade one from Home Depot to get it into decent shape. $32 for four hours. Then you can maintain it easier with the EGO tools.

Yeah, those prices align what I paid for attachments for my gas powered string trimmer. I'd have to look a bit more closely, but I wonder if my existing attachments will work in the EGO system.

So, you all know I lost my job with the energy company almost exactly a year ago. Then Covid hit and jobs became scarce. I got a contracting job in June with a local government as their Project Manager and also acting as Director of I.T. Well, Friday (tomorrow), my contract is officially up. My boss has decided to extend my contract by 30 days and then January 11th, hired me as a direct employee. I'll be getting a 5-digit raise to come on plus my health insurance costs will drop by about $4700 a year. We're still figuring out the title, but at the moment Director of Special Projects is most likely. I really enjoy working there and I'm happy to have this whole thing settled.

I don't get a choice on the modem. Fios drops an actual ethernet cable into my basement and I have to take it from there. So that's the downside. The upside is that all I have to do is call in with my credit card number and they'll increase the speed to 1.0 gigabit. I don't need that much though.... 60mbps is fine for me. If only I could get the wifi to be that speed. I already tried the Nighthawk, though a different model that still had Wifi6. I didn't like it. The interface was painfully slow. Wifi was more reliable in that it didn't drop like it does now, but without an extender, I couldn't reach into my office for signal. I'm not spending $700 on a mesh system. I found a set of two Wifi 6 Mesh Linksys Velop routers on Costco for $300 plus shipping. It's more than I wanted to spend, but the only other option I'm seeing is the Google Wifi, but I can't bring myself to pull the trigger on something that is already out of date. I woke up this morning to no internet at all. The Airport had crashed and it took two reboots to bring it back before I was able to get on for work. I think I'll be pulling the trigger on this today.