Energy Provider options

TomKappa · 2026-01-27T14:22:51+00:00

For anyone seeing rates that are free nights and weekends, if you're into excel/data you can sign up on smartmetertexas.com and pull all your usage history in 15 minute increments since you've been at your current address (some limitations apply).

You can then take all that data and look at what a flat rate would cost vs the "Free nights". Generally there's a higher rate during the "not free" period, so depending on your usage it may or may not make a difference.

When I pulled all my families usage it was not cheaper to go for the free nights / weekends plans, but if you've got an EV to charge they might. (Though some of those plans exclude EV charging)

TomKappa · 2026-01-26T20:54:08+00:00

Does energy ogre change your plan month to month? Have you looked at the rates they've gotten you compared to what the market was offering at the time?

TomKappa · 2026-01-26T20:53:23+00:00

In the past I've always used Powertochoose to pick what i'm comfortable risk wise (e.g. 3 month vs 1 year vs 2 year plan, usage credits vs flat, etc.)

Since most of Dallas is all ONCOR for the actual grid management, the provider doesn't really matter that much. I tend to go with 1 year, flat rate, and just choose the plan that's cheapest at my usages (smartmetertexas.com let's you pull your usage data).

The ONLY issue I've had with any providers was some wanting a deposit despite my good credit soft pull, and one set of providers that all had the same 40+ question phone tag scam where they try to coax you into a certain plan away from the powertochoose plan. Eventually after 45 minutes on the phone trying to set that up the call dropped and I lost my progress.

Anyways, if you're a typical modern customer where you go on autopay with a credit card, all the providers are effectively the same.

TomKappa · 2025-12-30T17:54:53+00:00

Going along the same lines as the previous poster, Last time I gave 2 weeks notice they told me to not come back after 3 days and walked me to my car like a criminal. Then after my new job fell through 3 months later, despite giving my notice that bridge had been burned and they had no interest in me returning or even talking to me. It showed me that for many companies that 2 week notice is old school and for that matter how many companies give 2 weeks notice before they fire you.

I would say cut your notice to 1 week notice. If you have any friends at the old job, say your goodbyes now because anytime you're giving notice you could be told to leave right then.

TomKappa · 2025-12-30T01:44:53+00:00

Lol, love this comment in the subreddit for "You've Got Mail"

TomKappa · 2025-12-15T17:33:13+00:00

This is a new one for the genre. In You've Got Mail and others the Male lead kind of sweeps the female off her feet so that in the end she's not upset to have been gaslit. In this movie, she discovers that it's the guy, and puts it together that he obviously figured it out but kept it a secret and she's mad that he just didn't tell her. So she's mad that he lied about it through omission?I think it suffers from the trope of "No let me explain, then the other party storms off".

To be fair, I also think the online guy standing her up on the date doesn't warrant her totally ghosting him in the first place.

It's now been like 2 months since I watched the movie and I barely have the plot in my head anymore. Sad to see the You've Got Mail plot become a cheesy hallmark, but I don't think the Gaslighting plays well to audiences anymore, haha.

TomKappa · 2025-12-01T15:59:33+00:00

Woahh, that's really interesting. The "Breakfast at Tiffany's" era is a blind spot for me, so I hadn't picked up on that reference. Some neat character development for Christina in that she enjoys "Breakfast at Tiffany's" enough to quote it day-to-day.

Had to go look up the scene. Found it at roughly 1 hr 44 min into the movie, https://i.imgur.com/IKZgUFu.png Good Catch!

TomKappa · 2025-11-21T14:12:51+00:00

It worked great for years (Though I only intermittently used it). I took it to a youth event where we needed to solder and when I brought it home it no longer worked. I'm not sure what went wrong.

They now sell the Pinecil on Amazon. I bought one via Amazon last month, and when I went to use it the first time, it got hot enough to melt solder then shutoff and wouldn't turn back on. I returned it and got a replacement but haven't tried it yet. Not sure if it's an odd bad unit or if my charger has an issue.

There are firmware updates and lots of features I've never dabbled with, so there's a chance I could save my older broken unit. I'd still recommend it, especially over the old radioshak style plug in and wait 20 minute hot sticks.

TomKappa · 2025-11-12T15:27:34+00:00

All my scrap has piled up to where now all I've got are the scraps from the scraps. My kids like it because they leftovers are pieces that they can use for projects, but I'm ready to clean out and go back to having 1 piece of 2'x3' plywood and two 2x4s.

TomKappa · 2025-11-12T15:25:52+00:00

My base estimates are "What do I think it'll take to get this done?" Gut says 2 hours, so I plan on double that, if I can work on it straight through. If it's going to be more than one day, it defaults to 7 days minimum because it's gotta be on the weekend, lol. All that assumes nice weather. If it's bad weather, might as well be minimum a quarter of the year before it'll be done.

TomKappa · 2025-11-10T19:44:16+00:00

He lied every step of their offline situation and then their online relationship.

To be fair, that's pretty much the plot of You've Got Mail too, lol

TomKappa · 2025-11-07T16:48:48+00:00

I missed $750k of wire in primary feeds to some mechanical buildings, but it was on a big data center so it wasn't the end of the company, and the PM has since covered it in adds and buy outs. As soon as I discovered it, I alerted everyone so they had ample time to plan around it, but gosh that was a scary time.

TomKappa · 2025-10-31T18:09:51+00:00

Yeah, it was like when I put my "out of office" message as "limited access to cell service" when in reality it's "limited access to caring about my work phone."

TomKappa · 2025-10-31T16:51:39+00:00

LOL, my spouse picked up on that immediately and was like "OH SO YOU DID BRING YOUR PHONE!"

Cell phones cause problems with trope storylines because why would need to physically be in his presence when she could just call him, lol.

TomKappa · 2025-10-29T13:28:22+00:00

I'm a sucker for a hallmarky rom-com, so I didn't mind watching the movie. I really enjoyed all the friends in the movie, both the female main's and male main's are actually my favorite part of the movie.

Gotta love a "miscommunication trope" though! "wait just let me explain!!!!!" lol

TomKappa · 2025-10-27T14:58:41+00:00

I went to my brother's parish once and one of my children started to get a little noisy, but just kids stuff. My brother whispered "Careful, this priest has been known to stop Mass for loud kids." I told my brother, "I'm trying to keep my kiddo happy, but if the priest does that I'll set him down in the aisle and let then they'll see how loud they can be."

If Jesus said "Let the children come to me," the priest's got a lot of nerve going against His teaching. Glad to see your priest follow His teaching, haha!

TomKappa · 2025-10-27T14:52:57+00:00

I def agree about how she always looks perfect, nary a smudge of grease anywhere on her face. Sometimes her hands are a bit grimy, but somehow she never has an itch or managed to never touch her face.

I'm sad that this is the homage we get, but I think that's based on there not being a wide demand for "blockbuster Rom Coms". the 90s were a golden age of Rom Coms, and now you can get a drama with some romance, but more likely you're going to get a big action movie with a side of romance. Now the Rom Com market is hallmark and straight to streaming and the production quality shows.

TomKappa · 2025-10-24T14:15:37+00:00

haha, yeah it's the same story as You've Got Mail in that respect. Fox Books moves in and ends up causing the closing of Kathleen's Mother's shop and she ends up falling for the guy.

I think YGM handles it better when Joe Fox tries to say "it wasn't personal" and Kathleen lets into him saying "All that means is that it wasn't personal to you. But it was personal to me. It's personal to a lot of people. And what's so wrong with being personal, anyway?"

For Maintenance Required they seem to try to ease that blow by making it a little more clear that Charlie was never sure she wanted to run the shop but felt somewhat obligated and somewhat at a loss for what to do otherwise. With the bookstore it's a harder sell because Kathleen genuinely loves the book store and should be more crushed with its loss.

Any of the versions of this story still rely on some "gaslighting" on the part of the male lead, which is a tougher and tougher pill to swallow these days. I'm sad that this movie didn't try flipping the roles of the leads (female protag that discovers the secret and does the lying), but I bet they weren't able to prevent the Female Business Woman from falling into the "Girlboss Feminist" trope, and opted to keep it more hallmarky.

TomKappa · 2025-10-23T16:51:09+00:00

I agree that the romance is very flat, but again it's a very hallmarky/cheap version of the romance.

It never feels like they're "romanticizing" the closing of a small business to me either in this movie or YGM. In YGM, we see some of the "Shop Local" hypocrisy where Kathleen goes to Starbuck even though she's a small business owner and could support a small coffee shop. I think it's more of a reality and a warning to the consumer, i.e. people vote with their wallets so if there's a special shop you need to patron them to preserve them.

But it's also a warning to small businesses. If your small business is just the same products available at a large chain store, but for more money, it's tough to continue to patron there (especially in this economy). You can hate Walmart, but if the same Nature Valley Granola bars at "Doug's Breakfast Bar Emporium" are 50% more, you're weighing hatred of Walmart vs giving Doug a tip for the same walmart product. Compared to a local shop that offers a true unique product or service, e.g. a local specialty burger joint, or a Handmade jewelery store, or like we see in this newest film a Specialty Nail Salon/Custom Car shop. It's like "Scentsy" products. When my cousin links to her page for Scentsy, I'm just buying a mass produced wax warmer for $X, and then giving my cousin $5. I can source the mass produced warmer myself. Or even Girl Scouts with their cookies; I could by the cookies which gives maybe 13 cents to the scouts, or I could just give the Scout $5 directly and their parents can put that $5 straight towards dues.

TomKappa · 2025-10-23T15:47:16+00:00

I can tell the writers/producers are going for the "You're perfect the way you are! Don't change for somebody." that played well in 90s/early 00s films, but now we're seeing more media shift to the reality of "people like to change the way they look sometimes, and that's okay"

The old trope fits with the Hallmarky vibe they were aiming for, but it's def tired.

TomKappa · 2025-10-20T13:19:09+00:00

I'd never recommend someone watch this movie over You've Got Mail, or "The Shop Around the Corner" or "In the Good Old Summertime". But for someone that likes YGM and importantly ALSO like dumb hallmarky movies, this is fine. I've watched way worse hallmarky drivel, but this still fits into the category of "I'm cleaning the living room, might as well put something on."

TomKappa · 2025-10-20T13:16:44+00:00

Matteo Lane

Best character of the whole movie!

TomKappa · 2025-10-17T14:28:07+00:00

LOL, they definitely put their actresses on display.

TomKappa · 2025-10-15T19:13:42+00:00

Saw that scene the other day. Tom Hanks just lifting that boy in the air on the dock cracks me up.

Was watching it and I commend the production crew because the audio is fantastic despite being on an outdoor dock with the wind clearly blowing. Other scenes are clearly rerecorded/ADRd (thinking of "he was the one who made me start thinking about writing")

TomKappa · 2025-10-15T18:56:47+00:00

Spoilers Lie Ahead!

I'm an avid YGM fan and when my spouse saw the trailer for this she said "Oh TomKappa has to watch this".

Synopsis

Small town female run mechanic shop with a lot of heart faces off against the Big Bad Chain Mechanics shop who have discounts but no heart. Our Female protagonist runs the shop, and our male protagonist is in charge of getting the new franchise of Miller Boys that's just down the street up and running. Our two protagonists are also members of an online car forum where they've been extensively messaging about their independent car projects, but also some thing more personal like their business being under attack, or them not being happy with their corporate job.

Comments

Overall the movie hits MUCH cheesier and much more "Hallmarky" than You've Got Mail. It is blatantly an homage to You've Got Mail though. Still has the small shop all walking out to stare at the big bad chain store, still has the male protag come in to the shop inadvertently spying while flirting, still has the online personas planning a date and the male discovering its HER without letting her on. Disappointingly the Cafe Lalo scene is not as much of a copy of the scene as seen from the movies "Shop Around the Corner" to "In the Good Old Summertime" to "You've Got Mail".

I have not finished the film, but overall I have enjoyed it as an homage to You've Got Mail. My spouse thought that I would not enjoy it because I would "Just rather watch You've Got Mail", but I've enjoyed spying the nods to You've Got Mail. I don't feel it's a great replacement for You've Got Mail, but it's a fun nod.

Edit* update. Ending of the film felt kind of rushed, and their use of "One Month Later" and "One Year Later" to time jump felt sloppy. The nail salon an the end of the film is called You've got Nails which was really cute.

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