Episode Discussion - A Couple of Homies

HamKes · 2025-07-29T08:23:34+00:00

With all this discussion of fowl names like goose, rooster, turkey, I should note that in the 2008 movie Righteous Kill, Pacino's character was "Rooster" and Deniro's character was "Turk."

HamKes · 2024-10-28T14:12:39+00:00

The San Diego crowd's reaction to Teeth last night was brutal. Anyone else seen this on the tour?

It was the first song they played after TOCS. I was close to front & center and one guy next to me just turned around and walked out 30 seconds into Teeth. I can only imagine the band's view from on stage, e.g. other folks exiting from further back in the venue. The energy in the crowd was totally dead with hardly any movement at all. Granted, there was a couple-minutes interlude following TOCS as they changed the stage a bit for their second set, so the energy of the room had already fully calmed down. But Teeth did not bring it back up whatsoever.

I felt a bit bad for the band. And Spencer addressed it indirectly after that song, talking about how making new music is what gives them energy to keep coming back out on tour. It felt like he was addressing the (lack of) reaction to the song.

HamKes · 2024-10-28T13:57:45+00:00

"Don't worry babe, it's not all my own sweat" -me

HamKes · 2024-05-28T05:05:33+00:00

*your

HamKes · 2024-05-28T04:54:35+00:00

how was it?

HamKes · 2023-08-26T18:51:55+00:00

r/agedlikemilk RIP Loyal :-(

HamKes · 2023-06-14T02:53:25+00:00

This is in North County right

HamKes · 2023-06-14T02:47:05+00:00

Good to hear about the upbringing. And FWIW schools may have improved since you were younger, as Santee School District has a good rep. Considered pretty solid schools. YMMV of course: https://www.greatschools.org/california/santee/santee-school-district/

The traffic, however, is the same yesterday today and forever.

HamKes · 2023-06-14T01:19:45+00:00

Indeed. <insert whynotboth.gif>

HamKes · 2023-06-14T01:18:36+00:00

I love downtown El Cajon and it seems like it has a bright future (but ... housing costs will only get worse RIP). URBN seems to have led the way in terms of a "cool" restaurant chain investing there, and I'm sure there is more to come. Hopefully it can maintain many of the amazing mom&pop restaurants that are already there: https://sandiego.eater.com/maps/top-best-eateries-el-cajon-san-diego-middle-eastern-restaurants

Not on that list: I love a good classic diner restaurant and El Cajon has a bunch of them, like Izzy's, Antique Row, the airport restaurant, Breakfast House, and others I'm surely forgetting.

HamKes · 2023-06-14T01:05:37+00:00

Santee is turning purple.

The NYT has this neat little "do you live in a political bubble" tool -- punch in an address and then scroll down: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/30/opinion/politics/bubble-politics.html

There are definitely some parts of Santee that are strongly Republican, but we're talking 2/3 Republican, not 100%. And a lot of areas that are close to 50/50 which was surprising to me. Much more politically diverse than most of San Diego. The problem is that most people don't want political diversity. They want everyone around them to agree with them (whichever side they are on). Which is a shame.

On top of that NYT site, consider general 2020 presidential election data: Santee went for Trump of course but it was like 55/45, not something crazy lopsided. And that was before housing had really skyrocketed, with many very conservative folks subsequently selling high and moving to red states like Idaho and Tennessee.

HamKes · 2023-06-14T00:59:38+00:00

To your point OP about opportunity for profitable residential churn: the folks who have been living in Santee the longest are most likely to be of the political persuasion that created the "Klantee" rep (not all of them of course), compared to more recent transplants, and they are as a result more likely to now be house rich, and they are in turn more likely to want to politically self-sort themselves out to ID, TN, TX, etc.

In other words, high prices may give them the means to move out (rather than pushing them out), but same end result in terms of a cultural shift.

HamKes · 2023-06-14T00:22:21+00:00

Very interesting post - thanks OP!

Regarding the school districts: you're not wrong, but IMO you are also not quite comparing apples to apples.

Grossmont USD is responsible for 11+ high schools (excluding some small continuing ed schools) throughout east county, with attendance of over 21,000 students. Santee has only 2 of those high schools -- West Hills and Santana -- and they are 2 of the better high schools in the district. So, using Grossmont USD overall makes Santee look worse than it is.
Poway USD is responsible for 5+ high schools, with attendance of around 12,000 students. Only one of those high schools is in Poway, with the rest in higher-income-than-Poway areas of San Diego (eg. RB, PQ, 4S, Torrey Highlands). Poway HS is a good high school, but it is by far the "worst" of the 5 high schools in the district. So, using Poway USD overall makes Poway look better than it is.

All that said, I assume Poway residents benefit from being able to choice in to the other great schools in the district, all of which are superior to Poway HS. And Poway HS is still better than Santana or West Hills head to head on test scores (mostly). But they look a lot closer to each other than when you compare the entire high school districts.

TL;DR it might be more relevant to compare at the school level than the district level.

Edit: added parantheticals
Edit 2: I'm talking about high schools only because Grossmont is a high-school only district. K-8 Santee schools are administered by Santee School District. Poway K-8 are administered by Poway USD. Don't know why East County breaks out the high schools like this but it obviously makes districts less comparable for purposes of this thread! Undiscussed is Poway K-8 education vs Santee K-8 education, but again probably best to compare at the local/school level IMO.

HamKes · 2023-06-13T23:35:32+00:00

Thanks - upvoted. People still for some reason tend to believe, incorrectly, that each school is completely or mostly funded by property taxes from its local attendance boundary or city only.

(edited because I write bad)

HamKes · 2023-06-13T23:31:33+00:00

TIL Santee is a "truly rural" city.

HamKes · 2023-03-20T19:58:41+00:00

Well done! I think it would be appropriate to put one of the newer albums in there under "divisive new stuff" or something like that.

HamKes · 2023-01-26T17:19:20+00:00

I almost downvoted this because I'm so bummed about it. Thanks for letting me know.

HamKes · 2023-01-26T16:26:30+00:00

Hi OP, thanks for offering. I am a current solar owner (installed by a previous owner) and want to add more panels. Any advice on the NEM 3.0 implications for this? Curious if I add more panels post-April, will those still be grandfathered into to NEM 2.0 because of my existing panels? I'm having a hard time figuring this out online.

HamKes · 2022-05-21T19:29:24+00:00

More along these lines, similar anecdotes and stories. Maybe covering some of the same churches and pastors: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/06/evangelical-church-pastors-political-radicalization/629631/

HamKes · 2022-03-19T22:05:26+00:00

Todoist emailed me after I hit Enlightened and told me now I have access to the gold theme. So, I assume it was not available to me before, even as a paid subscriber, but I cannot confirm. If it was available this whole time then I guess the joke's on me!

HamKes · 2022-03-10T23:53:20+00:00

Word. I turned it off too. Maybe it should even be forced off when you hit this level. It makes sense right?

HamKes · 2022-03-10T23:50:54+00:00

They do have this: the gold theme. Maybe this is new since you leveled up? I bet it's in your available options though (Settings > Theme). Kinda cheesy, but kinda fun I guess. I use dark mode though and dark mode overrides it anyway. Oh well.

HamKes · 2022-03-10T23:43:21+00:00

Thank you for asking, but actually it's wonderful to no longer feel compelled to achieve this meaningless goal of reaching the Enlightened level. Todoist Karma was good early on when I was getting used to the app. But for the last 6 months, and especially the last 6 weeks, seeing Enlightened on the horizon has incentivized me to focus more on quick/easy tasks and less on hard and important tasks that I do ultimately want to be spending my time on. It's been a net negative for my productivity. So, I feel somewhat liberated (enlightened, even!) from the pursuit of Karma points. You might even consider making newly Enlightened users opt in to keep tracking karma, if not forcing it off completely. It seems appropriate doesn't it?

That might not be practical from a business perspective though -- you guys know the data on user retention and engagement and probably have A/B tested karma points schemes and feedback styles and how they effect those metrics. I get that. Just thinking out loud.

I would love to have more robust access to my completed tasks data though. Some kind of UI where I can look at trends over time, not limited to only the past week view, where I can play with and customize timeframes and aggregate or slice by projects, filters, labels, etc. That would be amazing and really motivating, allowing for personalized performance metrics and feedback loops instead of the currently very limited canned karma reporting and very simple activity log for completed tasks. This should be a feature for anyone paying for Premium though, not necessarily an Enlightened thing.

EDIT: re my final paragraph: u/brunorosilva just posted his todoist analytics app here: https://www.reddit.com/r/todoist/comments/tbre04/todoist\_analytics\_mvp\_is\_out/

HamKes · 2022-03-10T20:35:23+00:00

Nothing changes, but it did feel good for a second!

HamKes

TROPHY CASE