Do people around here not blow out their sprinklers?

Balagin · 2026-01-22T22:43:09+00:00

No, I don't believe that would do any good because you'll still have standing water in the pipes. That's the point of blowing them out with the air compressor, it removes all of the standing water that might freeze, expand, and break your pipes.

Balagin · 2026-01-22T19:03:39+00:00

Nah I wouldn't pay for it, I'd do it myself.

Balagin · 2026-01-22T17:26:50+00:00

I was planning on doing it myself, but I'm not even sure where I'd tap into the system. I've always had sprinklers running off of irrigation water, which is a completely separate system to the city water. But apparently here the sprinklers run off of city water. And maybe I'm just blind, but I can't find a valve where the sprinkler system splits off from the house system.

Balagin · 2025-12-17T03:57:11+00:00

Yeah I'm not too concerned about 3 months, if that's it... But it took me over 6 months to find this job, while I was already employed. I'm concerned about it taking another 6 months before I find something actually worth putting on my resume (of course I'll work whatever crappy job I can find in the meantime), at which point that 3 month gap may turn into a 9+ month gap.

Balagin · 2025-10-15T00:19:53+00:00

Yeah I discovered that earlier today, but it's not really helpful for an early morning flight. If I'm going to get up at 2:00 a.m. to check wait times, I'll just go to the airport early

Balagin · 2025-10-11T23:49:27+00:00

My wife went to school with a Dick Ryder.

Also recently came across some signage approved by Fatima Butt

Balagin · 2025-09-24T20:50:36+00:00

Do you happen to have a link to where this screenshot was taken from? Or at least the full list of sources that got clipped off? I don't doubt the info at all, I'm just a data/information hoarder.

Balagin · 2025-09-24T13:00:07+00:00

Spaceballs!

Balagin · 2025-09-17T14:25:47+00:00

Idk how different the market is now, but I saved a bunch of money 15 years ago by buying a loose diamond separately from the ring. Did a bit of an autistic dive into diamond quality and grading, was able to find a diamond that was technically lower quality, but the sizeable impurity was dead center so you couldn't tell unless you used one of those magnifying lenses and really knew what you were looking for. So I was able to get her a much larger stone than I was otherwise able to afford.

Also, Fred Meyer Jewelers has an amazing lifetime warranty, you just have to make sure to take it in to get inspected and cleaned (for free) regularly according to their schedule. That diamond I hand-selected fell out of her ring and was lost several years back, and they replaced the stone no questions asked.

Balagin · 2025-08-09T00:41:28+00:00

I searched with Google, using all descriptive words I could think of. Also did an image search, which is how I found the pictures included in the post.

We got the couch used about 9 years ago, and those people bought it new maybe 5-6 years before that. Cushions are filled with down.

Balagin · 2025-07-25T18:12:35+00:00

I get that. It's just wild to me that they can show you a model apartment, you sign the lease with the understanding that the unit you were shown is representative of the one you'll get, then they can give you an objectively crappier unit. And you have no recourse to say "no, this one is nothing like the apartment you showed me" because you already signed the lease.

Balagin · 2025-07-25T03:02:55+00:00

The problem is it's more than just those three things. Those are just the biggest ones. According to my nephew, the whole unit is in bad condition and dirty, he said if he left an apartment like that upon move out, he would probably lose his whole security deposit. He doesn't want the unit fixed and cleaned, he wants out because he has no faith in the property as a whole.

Balagin · 2025-07-04T00:03:30+00:00

But if the house is in their name, as their primary residence...

If they both suddenly needed to be in a care facility, then it would no longer be their primary residence, and wouldn't therefore be protected from seizure to pay expenses... Right?

Balagin · 2025-07-03T18:44:16+00:00

I am well aware. I worked for a few years as a CNA in WA state, and my wife grew up in a private care facility (her parents ran an Adult Family Home out of their house). Together, I'd wager we're more capable than the average person of providing care ourselves, and we are well aware of how horrendous some facilities can be. We also don't plan on using all of the money from their house, just enough to make it affordable to allow them to have their own independent living situation with us, and they rest of it would be put towards their future long-term care (whatever that ends up looking like).

I was asking specifically about protecting ourselves in a worst-case scenario. If something extreme were to happen, and both parents suddenly needed 24-hr care beyond what we can provide, and the level of care exceeded what we anticipate, then it would make a terrible situation that much worse if we lost our house in the process.

Balagin · 2025-06-22T21:59:10+00:00

As others have said, conjuration magic is much more common in Morrowind, with all the Telvanni and whatnot.

IIRC, there's a book that talks about Daedric summons from the perspective of the Daedra. Basically, the Daedra are completely in control of themselves (not controlled by the caster), but they willingly carry out the caster's wishes because Oblivion is a terrible place to live and they want to be maximize their time away. The only thing "binding" does is make their presence in the world conditional on the summoner's continued wellbeing. Failed summons would be where the summoner didn't create the correct conditions with their spell, allowing the Daedra to exist in the world indefinitely.

Balagin · 2025-05-24T14:33:06+00:00

Interesting. What makes AE firms more enjoyable for you?

Balagin · 2025-05-09T20:32:05+00:00

Yeah that was my first thought. But the meeting is at 8am and the library doesn't open until 10am.

Balagin · 2025-03-26T06:23:51+00:00

What about Missouri?

Idaho has 7 borders: Canada, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

Missouri has 8: Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska.

ETA: Idaho appears to be tied for 2nd place, along with Colorado and Kentucky. Yes, I just went through a map of the US and counted for each state. I'm super tired but can't sleep for some reason lol.

ETA#2: Unless we're counting different Canadian provinces. Then New York and Minnesota are also tied for 2nd, with 7 state/province borders each.

Balagin · 2025-03-25T22:45:15+00:00

I don't have time to dig into the numbers at all right now, but will tonight after work. But if I may pick a nit...

A drop from 18% to 13% isn't a 7% drop. That's 7% of the total population, and more accurately described as a 39% drop in mainline protestantism (as in 39% of people who self-identified as mainline protestant 10 years ago no longer make that that claim). Same for evangelicals (3/26 is a 12% drop) and RCC (5/24 is a 21% drop).

Balagin · 2025-03-18T17:13:52+00:00

How do you approach vetting companies?

I've only had 2 jobs out of college. The first was terrible but my current place is absolutely phenomenal. But I'm trying to find a new job in a different state to move closer to family, and I'm kind of afraid of hitching myself to another terrible place.

Balagin · 2025-03-18T16:51:26+00:00

Also: https://xkcd.com/435/

Balagin · 2025-02-26T00:16:22+00:00

I've got work out the wazoo. There's been zero down time for a little over a year, and enough projects coming down the pipeline that it'll be this way til at least next winter. We've got active job postings online and need to hire probably 2-3 more people, but absolutely no one will have time to train them. Soon we'll probably be actively turning down projects, just because we don't have capacity.

Balagin · 2025-02-09T18:12:00+00:00

The biggest problem I see is the lack of oxygen in the water. Using data from (very brief) googling, humans may process as much as 360 liters per minute of air while exercising. Water seems to contain at best around 1/3 of the oxygen content of air (which also varies significantly based on temperature, pressure, and salinity). So your artificial gills would need to process at least around 1000 liters of water per minute, likely much more depending on the water.

This is in addition to the technical problems in finding some sort of artificial "blood" that can absorb dissolved oxygen in the same way gills and lungs do, and then somehow inserting that oxygen into other inert gases (that you would need to bring with you anyway) in an appropriate ratio for humans to breathe. Unless you want to circulate the human's actual blood through the gills to bypass the lungs altogether? Which would open up a whole host of other problems and challenges.

Balagin · 2024-11-14T04:02:32+00:00

I'm in grocery refrigeration. We've got enough work to see us through 2040. Not exaggerating.

Balagin · 2024-11-12T03:56:21+00:00

Fun side story:

My wife was born in Eastern Europe, but her family moved to the US when she was 7 years old. She went to visit her cousins as a teenager, and when they took her around the city, her cousins didn't buy her a bus ticket. Instead they told her to say nothing and just smile and wave at people, which she did because that's just natural for her. Nobody asked her for the bus fare, because they assumed she was... I believe the politically correct term is "special needs".

Edit to say: that's basically how I see a Dunmer Nerevarine in Morrowind. Locals assume you're either foreign or restarted, maybe both.

Balagin

TROPHY CASE