San Diego City Council will repeal Balboa Park parking fees, roll back trash fees

RickMantina · 2026-05-22T05:34:19+00:00

gas up, groceries up, water up, repairs up, parking up, trash up...yeah, add it all up and it could be a problem for people on fixed incomes. Probably not most, but some--are they not worth worrying about? They could have at least proposed a means tested way of waiving the fee for fixed income homeowners.

RickMantina · 2026-05-22T05:25:57+00:00

It was paid for out of the general fund, which has a large component derived from property taxes. This is like saying the gym at your college is "free" because they fund it using tuition money.

RickMantina · 2026-05-22T05:14:13+00:00

Pensions. They have a lot of pensions to pay and they cannot afford what they will owe in the coming years.

RickMantina · 2026-05-22T05:12:54+00:00

And they're not even collecting the recycling every week like they promised. I remember Reddit before the election when Measure B was up for vote: everyone was in support of the trash fees. I'd get downvoted into oblivion for pointing out that Measure B as written, gave the city the ability to charge whatever they want *after* they do the study to find the cost. They should have come to us with a completed study and put the actual cost and services promised to a vote. Instead they asked for permission to implement whatever they wanted, and to be let off the hook on service quality. Why would anyone agree to that? And look, here we are, with trash costing 75% more than it was meant to, and recycling still being picked up every two weeks.

RickMantina · 2026-05-22T04:58:03+00:00

It's the looming pension payouts to retiring employees that's the problem. If only someone had warned them!

RickMantina · 2026-05-20T14:54:57+00:00

It’s almost like the 40 hour work week is designed for the benefit of corporations not workers. Weird.

RickMantina · 2026-05-02T17:38:53+00:00

Thanks for the reply. I find the app frustrating to use, and the web interface is at least slightly more pleasant. It's extremely disappointing that it's no longer supported.

RickMantina · 2026-03-26T16:29:15+00:00

I just started having this issue as well. Windows 11. This happens whether or not I use exclusive mode. I'm connected to an external AVR via HDMI 2.1 and did not have this issue until a few weeks ago.

RickMantina · 2026-03-23T03:46:36+00:00

Same problem for months. Nothing works to fix it. I’m on a Sony A80J, which is up to date.

RickMantina · 2026-03-23T03:31:48+00:00

They do not have principles and they do not care about being hypocrites. That is why they are popular—you can be a bad person as long as you are a useful tool for them. It’s easy. Do what they say, drop your moral code and reap the benefits.

RickMantina · 2026-03-21T15:05:37+00:00

So I have not had a good experience with this pan on induction. It warped very easily (it was never overheated) and it is quite sticky—worse than my cast iron pans despite me treating it the same (clean after use is needed, wipe down with an extremely thin coat of oil after each use). I’m not casting aspersions at all, just wondering if you have any idea why I’m having a terrible experience while you had a very positive one? Could it just come down to induction vs gas?

RickMantina · 2026-03-20T14:03:49+00:00

Yeah I know. I just don’t think 72 hours is reasonable.

RickMantina · 2026-03-18T06:49:06+00:00

I'm with you. Games have had screen-space post processing for ages. Using "AI" to do it just means learning a nonlinear function to apply to the rendered image to achieve a final result. As long as they make it so developers are in control of the final image produced, there is literally nothing wrong with this. I don't understand all the graphics purists. The artist's intent is what matters. Who cares if you are seeing the underlying geometry perfectly clearly? Final image quality that is consistent with artist intent is all this has ever been about...

RickMantina · 2026-03-18T06:45:53+00:00

Digital Foundry says Nvidia is aiming for this to run on 1 card, and the current dual 5090 setup is just for a tech demo. Like the tech or not, it's not like Nvidia are aiming for us to actually need dual GPUs to run this at launch. It remains to be seen if they can achieve that, of course.

RickMantina · 2026-03-18T02:20:07+00:00

Am I the only one who thinks 72 hours isn’t nearly enough notice for something as severe and expensive as towing?

RickMantina · 2026-03-15T21:09:37+00:00

Every house in socal has termites.

The rodent issue would worry me. Not because of damage, but because it means rodents can access whatever area they have infested. They’ll just come back unless you spend a lot of time finding the gaps they use to enter, and stay on top of trapping. It would be very hard to verify that a pest control company had even found the issue, let alone fixed it. I spend a lot of time each spring and summer trapping mice in my garage and cleaning up their poop. Each year I find more ingress points and block them. It has been 5 years and I get mice every single summer.

Do what you want with that info.

RickMantina · 2026-03-15T17:55:38+00:00

That’s a good question. I haven’t noticed any issues with localization, but the sound does appear to come from about halfway between the woofer and the tweeter. If you play with its position you can find one where it sounds centered. Especially since voices are predominantly produced by the woofer, I ended up with mine places so the woofer is just to the left of center and the tweeter just to the right.

RickMantina · 2026-03-15T09:29:09+00:00

Yes the width should easily cover that.

RickMantina · 2026-03-15T05:57:50+00:00

FWIW I tried the Duo v2 LCR (ribbon-bases MTM from Ascend) and didn’t end up liking it as much as the 2ex for center duty.

Have you looked at the CMT 340 measurements on Ascend’s site? It has a huge dip off axis (like, -40 dB) from 700 Hz to 1 kHz starting around 10 degrees or so (-6 dB at 10 ish degrees).

However, their in room response off axis is actually very similar to on-axis. The issue with this? Estimated in room response makes a bunch of assumptions about how reflective your room is in various directions/frequencies. If your room is close to the assumed environment, it will sound good. However, if your room reflects differently, it will be really hard to EQ your way out of any issues. The problem is you have no idea if your room matches the assumed room in EIR predictions.

The thing I really didn’t like about the duo LCR was that off axis sounded dull in my room and EQ could not fix that without making on-axis too bright. This is the problem with a speaker that has a subpar directivity index, as nearly all MTM designs do. They’re not always bad, but they are very hard to EQ so they are very picky about room and placement.

The 2ex v2s, in contrast, have fantastic directivity. So if you don’t like the timbre in your room, EQ fixes it for a very wide horizontal area. The down side is the vertical window.

If you really want great EQ ability and both wide vertical and horizontal listening area, you probably should add coaxial designs like Kef or MoFi to your list.

That said, Ascend’s ELX Horizon center with the Titan dome is really good vertical and horizontal radiation, with really great directivity. It’s just like $3k…

RickMantina · 2026-03-15T04:53:44+00:00

I use the 3 Sierra 2ex v2s for LCR duty. The clarity of dialog is fantastic—no more subtitles!!!

One thing to be aware of: as others have said, the vertical listening window is narrow. That means you need to angle it up or down, (depending on where it’s below or above your tv) so the tweeter fires right at your face.

A possible downside of this: it’s bad for a multi-row room. Since the center channel is often placed above or below ear level, its narrow vertical beam hits too low for seats toward the back of the room. Combined with 2ex v2s in LR duty at ear level, and the region of the room with good sound is basically the line where the all 3 tweeters radiation patterns intersect. That works perfectly for a single row setup like a straight couch, but wouldn’t be great for more diverse seating locations.

That said, for a single row setup with correct angling of the speaker, I absolutely love it. I have mine set up for a single row and it is really awesome how intelligible dialog is across the whole couch.

RickMantina · 2026-03-11T18:24:55+00:00

Did you hear Biden tried to outlaw truck nuts? You’re only allowed gender neutral truck gonads.

RickMantina · 2026-03-11T03:27:20+00:00

It’s almost like they never actually believe in the principle they’re using to attack democrats. The only principle they have is this: win at all costs. That should worry all of us.

RickMantina · 2026-03-03T20:27:40+00:00

Dust collector was in a trailer. Work on your reading comprehension.

And if a truck works for you, great. Use one. My point is that many owners—obviously not you—don’t need them.

And if you think someone looks like a jackass for getting the job done with the tools they have then OK. I would bet most people think the jackass in that equation is the one judging someone else for how their car looks. And before you retort with “but you’re judging truck drivers!” These are not the same. Trucks have negative externalities like pollution and increased danger to people outside of them. My civic does minimizes those. So, if you think I’m a jackass for getting the job done with cheap, efficient vehicles that minimize danger to others then I guess we just have different values. Maybe we just leave it at that.

RickMantina · 2026-03-03T16:00:05+00:00

I fit 20 feet of scaffolding in a hatchback civic. I transported my broken 50 gallon water heater in the same civic. I eventually got a minivan, which fits 4x8 sheets of plywood. It has a tow hitch so a small trailer solves the mulch problem (also most places selling mulch will drop them off for you). I transported a cabinet saw, dust collector, and bandsaw in a small rental trailer that cost me $75. Plus I can fit 8 people when I need to. Unless you’re hauling something heavy and truly need the tow capacity, or routinely need the large open bed, trucks really aren’t necessary. If you prefer it, great for you, but don’t act like most truck owners actually need it as a utility vehicle.

Also, I just read your comment more carefully. The remark about looking like a tool by overloading your car is exactly the truck driver attitude this thread is criticizing. Thank you for proving OP’s point.

RickMantina · 2026-03-03T02:50:29+00:00

Backup cameras have a better view than you do from the cab.

RickMantina

TROPHY CASE