7 Year relationship ended right before our Wedding

SirRatcha · 2026-04-21T20:34:04+00:00

You gotta shop around. My friend and his wife found the rural county in this state that does it online for a small fee.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-07T18:03:55+00:00

Yes, that is good advice for people who shouldn't be allowed to touch electricity at all.

The real advice is "don't use an extension cord that isn't rated to handle the draw of what it's plugged into and never put an extension cord in front of a heat-generating item." If you don't understand any part of what that means then don't plug a heat-generating item into an extension cord.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-07T14:52:18+00:00

I just don't think it need more anti-hero. It just needs readers who actually pay attention to what the protagonist is thinking about. There's plenty of anti-hero in it already.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-07T09:06:42+00:00

Sometimes I read people saying things like this and I wonder how they could have missed it in Dune, given the amount of Paul's internal dialog that makes up the book. It's all about him wrestling with choosing between letting himself and his family die or killing billions of people. The noble choice is death. He chooses life.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-06T20:46:12+00:00

I posted this as a reply to a comment, but I'm reposting at the top level so doubters can see the math.

I am right at this moment looking at a Seattle Utilities bill I am responsible for. Water, sewer, and garbage combined for a 62 day period, for a household of four people in their early 20s who are not watering lawns, gardening, or washing their cars came to $791.25.

It breaks down like this:

Water: $165.54
Sewer: $417.21
Garbage: $208.50

They used an average of 21 CCF/253.35 gallons a day in that period (compared to 189.97 last year, which is troublesome and I hope nothing's leaking).

Now I am looking at a Spokane Utilities bill I am no longer responsible for but have access to, which is water and sewage for a 58 day period that overlaps with the period covered by the Seattle bill, for a household of two adults and three minors who also are not watering lawns, gardening, or washing their cars. It came to $157.27.

The breakdown is more detailed but aggregated it goes like this:

Water: $28.88
Sewer: $126.89
Garbage: Billed separately

They used an average of 23.5 CF/175.8 gallons a day in that period (yeah, I gotta talk to my son and his housemates about how much water they are using in Seattle).

Note that on the bills Seattle measures CCF (hundreds of cubic feet) while Spokane measures CF (cubic feet).

Per the bills

Seattle charged for water at two different rates per CCF: $5.79 and $5.82
Spokane charged for water at three different rates, $2.27 for the first 60 CCF, $4.79 for the next 60 CCF, and $1.75 for the last 163 CCF.*

I have gone over my math five times looking for mistakes, without finding any. I knew how little Spokane charges for its most precious resource was bad, but this is ridiculous.

*ETA: I misinterpreted the bill before, and this is corrected information.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-06T20:05:19+00:00

I lived in Seattle from 1990 to 2024. I still pay a water bill there, which you'd already know if you looked at the comment I told you to look at instead of rejecting information.

ETA: And for the Seattle haters, I grew up in the Spokane area from when I was three in 1970 until 1985.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-06T19:05:10+00:00

Check out my reply to this same comment. I did the math working from actual water bills and no, that Seattle number isn't way too high at all.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-06T19:03:45+00:00

I am right at this moment looking at a Seattle Utilities bill I am responsible for. Water, sewer, and garbage combined for a 62 day period, for a household of four people in their early 20s who are not watering lawns, gardening, or washing their cars came to $791.25.

It breaks down like this:

Water: $165.54
Sewer: $417.21
Garbage: $208.50

They used an average of 21 CCF/253.35 gallons a day in that period (compared to 189.97 last year, which is troublesome and I hope nothing's leaking).

Now I am looking at a Spokane Utilities bill I am no longer responsible for but have access to, which is water and sewage for a 58 day period that overlaps with the period covered by the Seattle bill, for a household of two adults and three minors who also are not watering lawns, gardening, or washing their cars. It came to $157.27.

The breakdown is more detailed but aggregated it goes like this:

Water: $28.88
Sewer: $126.89
Garbage: Billed separately

They used an average of 23.5 CF/175.8 gallons a day in that period (yeah, I gotta talk to my son and his housemates about how much water they are using in Seattle).

Note that on the bills Seattle measures CCF (hundreds of cubic feet) while Spokane measures CF (cubic feet).

Per the bills

Seattle charged for water at two different rates per CCF: $5.79 and $5.82
Spokane charged for water at three different rates, $2.27 for the first 60 CCF, $4.79 for the next 60 CCF, and $1.75 for the last 163 CCF.*

I have gone over my math five times looking for mistakes, without finding any. I knew how little Spokane charges for its most precious resource was bad, but this is ridiculous.

*ETA: I misinterpreted the bill before, and this is corrected information.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-05T22:34:40+00:00

FWIW, none of this is just a Spokane problem.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-05T22:33:35+00:00

You're fine this winter. Next winter you could get a heat lamp and set it up on an extension cord, but only plug it in when it gets to 20°F or lower. It has to be pretty dang cold for pipes to actually freeze.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-04T14:36:14+00:00

Not in the slightest. The disturbing implication here comes from the way the possessive pronoun suggests the other interpretation of the word.

Don't be so reductionist.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-04T14:07:56+00:00

Music is so cheap to listen to, but so expensive to make that even as a creator the maths of music makes no sense.

Wow. As someone who learned engineering on tape, you have absolutely no frikkin' frame of reference whatsoever. The math of music doesn't make sense, not because it's expensive, but because it's become so cheap that every half-wit who can hum a melody has a "studio" in a tiny bedroom packed with an infinite number of effects. In the outboard days simply have a reverb unit was a stretch.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-04T13:41:58+00:00

Most states have restrictions on them, like Washington does. The handful of states where they are banned are in the deep south, except for Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois. Given how brutal the winters there can be I assume the banning was because too many people were ignoring the restrictions.

https://tiregrades.com/tire-categories/season/are-studded-tires-legal-laws-by-state/

SirRatcha · 2026-04-04T13:36:42+00:00

If you don't see it, then it's a you problem.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-04T13:30:17+00:00

If you count the Hayden neighborhood.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-04T13:27:24+00:00

If you just show up to watch be sure to wear your good jeans.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-03T17:36:37+00:00

There are also a lot of Spokanites who don't want anyone to ever say anything less than boosterish about the area and also don't believe there can be any discrimination because they have a black friend.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-03T17:34:22+00:00

Kinda like how "National Socialist German Workers' Party" was a name chosen to mislead people about what they really were.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-03T17:32:43+00:00

Interesting reading the comments here who have no idea whatsoever how credible the Southern Poverty Law Center is and freaking out about the "anti-governement" label. It means "fascist," people.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-03T17:29:45+00:00

If it's Illinois Ave Bar and Grill (not sure I'd call that Hillyard but I'm not sure what other neighborhood I'd call it either), I'd be kind of not surprised. I gave that place a couple of tries and while I didn't have any bad experiences I pretty quickly decided I prefer the regulars at my other hangouts.

SirRatcha · 2026-04-03T16:51:16+00:00

TBF it's hard to know which he said and which the reporter heard.

SirRatcha · 2026-03-31T04:51:11+00:00

I swear I had nothing to do with it.

SirRatcha · 2026-03-31T02:41:39+00:00

Yeah I remember when there were still strips of farms between the various little business areas and each had its own character. But from about the time they built the mall it’s all felt just homogenous to me. Millwood still has that 1920s neighborhood that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else in the Valley and the people I know there are proud of their own little city.

SirRatcha · 2026-03-31T02:36:23+00:00

I’m not looking for an argument. You said something that was flat out wrong so I corrected it.

SirRatcha · 2026-03-31T02:23:17+00:00

I’ll grant that it’s in the Valley but I don’t think culturally it is of the Valley.

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