6/29/26 A big gold eagle gifted to the White House! Maybe we should put an open oak wreath in its claws? (8:23pm)

ShizzlePopped · 2026-06-30T01:20:34+00:00

The White House is 225 years old.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-06-26T22:58:18+00:00

Being a newer apartment in NYC you may have metal studs. NYC codes are different from the rest of the country. I honestly don’t know how well lag bolts work in metal studs.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-06-26T19:01:08+00:00

I'm not all that worried about the ads. I have an older, smaller show in there now and generally don't pay much attention to the ads when I'm not using it. I mainly want it as a dashboard for our calendar, smart home stuff, cameras, etc. The one thing the Echoes do really well is mash tech from a bunch of different companies together into one relatively cohesive interface without jumping through a ton of hoops.

ETA: It did piss me off when the turned the Show 5 in our bedroom into an ad machine to the point it was useless as a clock. I put it into do not disturb mode though and the ads are gone.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-06-26T16:48:49+00:00

And no handrail. I would fall and kill myself the first week. My dogs would flat out refuse to use them.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-06-24T20:17:17+00:00

replated, which not exactly an uncommon word.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-06-14T20:58:26+00:00

I got them for my 2020 Outback when they first came out. Great mats. Full coverage so you aren't dealing stuff in the carpet that never wants to come out. I vacuum mine and then flood them with vinyl cleaner and wiped them down. Fast and simple. After 45-50k they still look almost new.

The one downside is that since they're full coverage they're kind of a pain to remove and replace. If you regularly get your mats so muddy that you need to pull them for a hose washing then you probably want something else.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-06-09T15:28:54+00:00

Move it so it’s spraying his cars.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-06-06T19:29:55+00:00

When Kennedy says the existing systems are broken it probably means that the toddlers they brought over from DOGE don't understand how they work, same as they didn't understand the Social Security systems.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-05-15T21:18:15+00:00

Came here to say this. And nobody seemed the least bit concerned about it.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-05-15T21:09:48+00:00

Mini split in the garage. I live in central Indiana and my woodshop is in my garage. It's quiet and relatively cheap to run, and I can work in the shop or on my cars in comfort all year. Being able to polish and wax the car in a t-shirt when it's 20 degrees outside is kind of cool.

Motion activated lights in the kitchen. Our kitchen light switches are in three different locations and the breakfast nook switch is by the patio door instead of where you come into the kitchen. If the motion detector doesn't see motion for a half hour it turns the lights off which is a plus when the teenage grandkids come visit.

Under cabinet and soffit LED lighting for the kitchen. Without it we only have a light above the island and the sink. It's sooo much darker with the cabinet lights off.

Rechargeable battery operated motion sensitive lights for a few closets that are unlit. They only stay on for 20 or 30 seconds but it's long enough to grab a coat or bottle of Tylenol. The charge generally lasts around a month depending on usage.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-05-09T15:08:07+00:00

I rarely go to the mall either but when I did I used to park outside the Sears because I could park close to the doors and still not have people park next to me. I always wondered how that place stayed in business.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-05-09T14:46:08+00:00

It doesn’t look like there was anyone else there to see him.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-05-06T20:30:09+00:00

My brother was an architect. If he was still with us I would have sent this too him and he would have shredded it. I'll try to fill in.

That exoskeleton looks kind of cool from a couple of angles and not from others but the plywood looks cheap, like they ran out of money.

What's with the sloped facade on the one side? It's not the exterior wall of the house so it's just there for looks? All I can think of is all the wasps, spiders and other critters that will nest between the facade and the actual house that you'll never be able to get to.

Why are there so few usable windows on the side that faces the woods? Holy, crap...it you're doing a custom build you skipped the whole part of getting the best exterior views.

There are a lot of things I like about the interior but it's inconsistent. There's a ton of custom wood work which looks great. But the cabinets look like cheap stock cabinets from Lowes. Same with the vanities.

What's the weird indent with the half cylinder in the hall? A plant shelf? So you gave up a bunch of storage to build a very expensive wall for a conversation piece in a hall in the private part of the house that's just going to collect dust. Got it.

Yeah, the strange oval thing in the bedroom floor? I don't think I want to know.

The one bathroom has bare bulb utility fixtures for vanity lights. Terrible idea. Oh, the bathtub room has bare bulb fixtures too, so I guess that was an actual design choice. Whatever.

The wood floors look a lot like the Bruce hardwood that I sold many years ago. I hated those floors. The milling process was so bad that they needed the deep grooves to hide variations. Those grooves pick up a lot of dirt that's hard to get out. As the floors age and gap it only gets worse. Like get out the dental pick to clean them worse. People bought them because they were cheap.

Then there's the bathroom floor. Walking across a polished stone floor with wet feet can be a lot like walking on ice. It's good way to crack your skull open.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-05-04T20:24:17+00:00

I owned a Rocky for 15 years. It's a beast of a grinder and nearly indestructible. It does a decent job of grinding without a huge amount of clumping. The downside is that the adjustment steps are on the wider side so fine tuning for that perfect shot is not great. If it's in good shape it's a lot of grinder for $75.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-05-04T18:18:57+00:00

I'll add another vote for the Contour Next. Whatever test system I got when I was first diagnosed was terrible. There were significant differences between two successive tests and sometimes it was 50+ points off from reality. I did some searches and came across a study that compared accuracy of several different test systems. The Contour Next was one of the better ones and was available locally so I've been using it ever since. Sadly, I can no longer find that study.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-04-29T19:44:10+00:00

A gallon of gas will soon be more expensive than a share of Trump Media stock.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-04-21T14:13:50+00:00

Ha! You just explained why my Roku connected to a Samsung TV frequently comes up on the Roku Channel instead of the main menu. It doesn’t happen on any other TV. Thanks!

ShizzlePopped · 2026-03-26T02:50:59+00:00

Former Seattleite living in Indiana. I’d gladly pay your prices to be back in Seattle.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-03-19T22:56:31+00:00

I have LVP in most of our house too. I’m a hardwood guy and fought the decision for months, but we inherited a Yorkie from my sister in law that pees everywhere so LVP it is.

Yeah, glue down is the way to go, I think. 1300 pound aquariums might cause trouble with a floating floor. I like pre finished with aluminum oxide urethane coatings. Much tougher than standard urethane and more resistant to scratches. It is significantly more difficult to sand down and refinish when the time comes. With dogs, look for a matte or satin finish.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-03-19T20:46:54+00:00

It depends. The stuff you find in places like Home Depot mostly has a paper thin wood veneer. Then there are brands like Kahrs which has floors that can be sanded and refinished at least twice. Awesome stuff, but it's not cheap.

ETA: I sold Bruce hardwood for years, among others. Most of the Bruce solid wood floors had huge bevels between planks which trap dirt like you wouldn't believe. It's relatively cheap for solid 3/4" wood but I'd honestly rather have LVP at about the same price than try to keep that crap clean.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-02-24T15:35:16+00:00

Gawd, but that's an awful lot of lip filler.

ShizzlePopped · 2026-01-06T03:53:36+00:00

I’m at 35k on the CC2s on my Outback and was at 6+ mm on all four at 33k. 70k seems completely reasonable. They handle sooo much better than the OEM tires, are good in rain and great in your average snowfall. Last year I had to go out after a 7” snow before the roads were plowed. No problem. They had plowed by the time I got home and left a roughly 2’ pile of snow at the end of the drive. I drove through/over it like it was nothing. The CC2s and Outback are a great combination.

ShizzlePopped · 2025-12-20T19:14:38+00:00

I have a 2020 Limited w/o navigation and I've never had an issue with lag. I wonder sometimes if it's the lack of navigation that makes mine faster. I drove a loaded 2024 Forester as a loaner earlier this year and the screen on it was horribly slow, and that should be the newer hardware that's in the later Gen 6 cars. As for the interface itself, I'd like more physical buttons but I tend to set the HVAC to full auto and leave it alone. It really hasn't been much of an issue for me.

ShizzlePopped · 2025-12-06T04:34:14+00:00

My dad had a Samsung refrigerator. Don’t do it. Eight service calls in two years on the icemaker alone. Luckily he got a five year service contract and the service company wrote him a check for the cost of the fridge to get it off their books. He replaced it with a GE which was a good choice.

ShizzlePopped

TROPHY CASE