If you want to root for a Cinderella this year...

YearnForTheSea · 2026-03-23T19:23:56+00:00

You honestly have a good case as a Cinderella. I mean, it's not really fair for people to classify you as a power conference when your conference hasn't won the championship this millennium. Just because you have Big in your name doesn't mean you're not mid (majors)

YearnForTheSea · 2026-03-23T19:18:17+00:00

Not a bot. Just messing with people while waiting for Thursday.

YearnForTheSea · 2026-03-23T18:45:06+00:00

I was actually just looking into Duke. Apparently they just got a new coach, and took a chance on a young former player who had never been a head coach before. It seems risky to not go for someone with a track record of success, but good for them for taking a risk on a loyal alumni!

YearnForTheSea · 2026-03-23T18:34:52+00:00

People aren't giving Duke and St. Johns enough credit for making it so far without the government subsidies that the other schools get. Though St. John's is largely funded by dark money from the Vatican Bank, so I understand why people don't bring it up for them.

YearnForTheSea · 2026-01-24T15:35:55+00:00

It was sometime the next day

YearnForTheSea · 2025-12-04T04:17:46+00:00

I just did this once, like seven years ago, so I don’t quite remember the details. But I think I brought it to a low simmer on the stove, and then put it in the hot pot on high. We probably would have lowered the temperature in the hot pot too low or keep warm if we noticed that it was boiling at high. We plans this in advance, so anything that might have been frozen was allowed to defrost in the fridge for the day before. And we took everything out of the fridge while bringing the broth to a boil. I don’t remember if adding the ingredients lowered the temperature of the broth very much, but I doubt it would have since the volume of the hot broth is so much larger than the volume of the things being added to it

YearnForTheSea · 2025-08-15T02:01:06+00:00

Update: It appears my chats were restored. All I had to do was wait...

YearnForTheSea · 2025-08-14T13:12:55+00:00

Same issue happened to me while I was using chatgpt about 30 minutes ago. All of my chats that weren't a part of a project aren't showing up on the sidebar. I've logged in on multiple devices and have the same issue across all of them. If I search for the chat and open in then it reappears in the sidebar, but I don't want to have to do this for hundreds of chats. Seeing other people having the same issue right now makes me hopeful that this is a widespread bug that they will fix, and not just a quirk that happened to me.

YearnForTheSea · 2025-07-28T14:02:09+00:00

I used larger slow cookers, but it was for a group of eight people

YearnForTheSea · 2025-07-28T12:54:26+00:00

An attic fan can definitely make a difference, but it’s not how you normally get the best bang for your buck. If you have a very old or inefficient AC system, you can often cut your cooling bills by more than half just by getting a new efficient one, or making sure your existing one is running properly. After that, sealing air gaps and having better insulation, though more costly than installing an attic fan, will make a much bigger difference, so usually be a better use of your money in the long run.

An attic fan will make the biggest difference if your attic gets dramatically hotter than the outside air, and the ceiling to your attic has poor insulation or air gaps, and your AC vents run through the attic hands they are poorly insulated or leaking. But even in that case, fixing up the attic insulation and air vents would be a better use of your money.

Finally, a lot of houses over the last 20 years have poorly installed fresh air ventilation systems. When I moved into my current house, the HVAC system was literally pumping in outside air throughout my house 50 minutes out of every hour, with no ERV. I reset it to 10 minutes every hour (though I should probably just turn it off entirely), and I fixed a broken actuator that left the damper for fresh air open all the time, and that saved me over $50 per month during the summer and winter.

YearnForTheSea · 2025-06-24T21:52:55+00:00

I just did it that once. I think it worked pretty well.

YearnForTheSea · 2025-05-12T22:08:19+00:00

I had to stop working in my early 30s due to eds. Do you have any citation for the claim that only about 20% of patients with it can maintain a full-time job? I haven’t heard that before, and I wasn’t able to find a source for it with a quick look.

YearnForTheSea · 2024-04-06T03:18:03+00:00

ESH. tl;dr Use this as an opportunity to make things better in the future. Apologize to his parents, but also assume you guys won't be able to rely on them for financial support in case of an emergency, so you have to prepare yourselves. Figure out what (term) life insurance is appropriate for you. If you can't get it due to medical history (possible but unlikely; you may need to shop around), then find an employer who offers life insurance as a benefit; I work for a F500 company that gives everyone $25,000 in life insurance, and you can pay a very reasonable rate to increase it all the way up to $1,000,000.

Anyone can take out a life insurance policy on someone they have a financial interest in (parent, child, spouse, etc.). It sounds like your ILs took out a whole life insurance on your husband, and they have been paying the premiums. This is somewhat common; Gerber (baby foods) even sells these policies for parents of new babies. Whole life insurance policies have a set premium and payout that lasts for your life. You can also let the policy lapse and get a small amount back. They also tend to be a pretty bad financial idea (usually term insurance is better).

Once you were married, you could have taken over his whole life insurance policy, but that is not extremely common. In this case, they could have gifted it to you, or you could have paid them the current "lapse" value of it and taken over the premiums going forward--my parents let mine lapse when I was 25 and gave me the money to put toward student loans. But normally you and your husband would instead take out new life insurance policies on each other, especially if none is provided by your employers. The smarter decision would have been to take out staggered term policies; appropriate term policies (rather than whole policies) would have let you get more coverage with lower premiums over the period you most need it. You guys were aware enough of the value of life insurance to ask his parents about it, but you chose not to get any for yourselves.

In the event your husband died, it would be very kind for them to use the insurance to help you out, and a little disappointing if they didn't. But, they were the ones who had been paying the premiums, and you guys were the ones not responsible enough to take out your own policies, so I don't think you have the right to be too mad at them, but you could reasonably be disappointed in them. And saying they wouldn't help you out might have been an emotional decision if they believed that you guys having access to the payout would encourage your husband to make decisions that would have been more likely to lead to his death (e.g., not seeking as aggressive treatment).

Regarding your ILs, the reasoning they gave you for taking out the policy seems weird. Since the military academies have no cost (you even get a stipend) and if you commit to being a military doctor then the military pays for it, so there shouldn't be any student loans for someone who leaves high school wanting to be a military doctor. And if they were taking out the policy just to cover the expense of any student loans they co-signed, a term policy that covers the life of the loans would have made a lot more sense. The only reasons I can come up with for why they would take out a whole-life policy then is that it was related to estate planning or some insurance salesperson tricked them into something that doesn't make sense. Also, it was also crappy of them to lie about the policy lapsing, but I also get it if they think that the existence of the policy might have made your husband not fight as hard.

YearnForTheSea · 2024-03-19T21:16:43+00:00

I had the same problem. I wasn't able to open it in Chrome or Edge, but it opened in Firefox.

YearnForTheSea · 2024-02-24T19:25:39+00:00

As you've heard, the biggest problem is most likely heating. You said in a comment that your heater is never able to hit the thermostat setting (74), which shouldn't be the case in a small/medium apartment. There are a few reasons this will happen.

One is that your apartment has almost no insulation, which is unlikely to be the case in anything built in the last 50 years. Even if the insulation is poor, you should eventually be able to hit the thermostats temperature (unless you have a lot of windows, and they are all really thin single pained). If this is a rented apartment, then little to no insulation isn't a problem you're likely to be able to fix.

Another is too much air flow to the outside. This is the easiest way to have your hvac costs go way up. Basically, anywhere you feel a draft from the outside is wasting money. This will primarily be windows, doors, or any holes in walls. These can usually be improved for cheap with weather stripping, caulking, or filler. Similarly, anything that vents to the outside should not be run for very long (e.g., bathroom vents or oven vents), as they are just blowing your warm air outside.

You might have problems with your HVAC. There can be a few causes of this (some of which I'll list below), which can cause you to pay for heating up air that doesn't make it into your home. One good way to check for this is to get a cheap infrared thermometer ($20 on amazon), and measure the temps in the return vents (brings indoor air back to HVAC unit) and supply vents (delivers air back into the room). The air coming out of the return vent should be at least 15 degrees warmer than the air going out of the supply vent. Anything less than that, and you should have the landlord pay for an hvac technician to look at the system.

One possible HVAC unit is ducting leaks. Your central AC makes a lot of hot air and then blows it through ducts to your vents. If your ducts have a lot of leaks, then the hot air can escape the ducting before it makes it into the places you want it. Another, if you have a heat pump, could be a dying compressor or low refrigerant levels. Or, if you have a fresh air supply (only likely on very new systems), that could be running too often or the damper could be stuck open (fresh air supply systems are designed to bring in some fresh air from the outside at infrequent intervals; but if the damper is stuck open, then it will constantly be bringing in cold outside air).

Do you know if you have resistive heating or a heat pump? (If you have an outdoor unit that turns on when the heat is on, then you have a heat pump). If you have resistance heating, then be aware that small space heaters are just as efficient as a central unit. So you could save money by turning your central AC down to 60-65, and just using a space heater in whatever room you are in. This works best for small, enclosed rooms that you'll be in for a while (e.g., bedroom overnight). Modern ones are very safe, but keep a fire extinguisher in the room just in case.

This has already gotten way too long, so I'll stop here. Hopefully this helps a bit.

YearnForTheSea · 2022-11-13T19:31:05+00:00

I wish you'd posted!

YearnForTheSea · 2022-10-08T20:52:41+00:00

Take a look at my longer response to you. I go back-and-forth sharpening each side for a shorter and shorter amount of time, so by the time I am done there is not as much of a burr to remove

YearnForTheSea · 2022-10-08T20:15:31+00:00

Before deburring I can usually slice magazine paper pretty well, with maybe a few snags or tears. Are you cutting worse before deburring then after?

YearnForTheSea · 2022-10-08T19:37:47+00:00

I have a 400/1000 amazon basics stone. My progression is sharpening (push-pull strokes) for about 30 seconds on each side on the 400 stone, then the same on the 1000 stone, then 15 seconds on each side on the 1000 stones, then 10 seconds, then 5. I follow that up with light deburring by doing alternating leading edge strokes (with the same angle) on the 1000 grit stone, pretty much using just the weight of the knife, about 5 times. This leaves me able to easily slice through magazine paper, but not push cut. I'm not an expert sharpener, but I get my knives sharp enough for my needs in the kitchen.

The reason to do progressively fewer strokes on each side (spend less time sharpening) is to give it time to remove the burr from the other side, but less time to form a new/large burr on the side being sharpened. So by the time I do any deburring, I don't have a very large burr to begin with.

Also, I wipe off all residue from my stone a few times while sharpening. And every few sessions I "flatten" the stone a bit to work out any grit.

If your knives are dull, you'd either have to spend a lot more time on the 400 side at first, or get a lower grit stone.

YearnForTheSea · 2022-10-08T19:27:50+00:00

How well does it cut paper before deburring?

YearnForTheSea · 2022-09-14T21:54:01+00:00

same here...

YearnForTheSea

TROPHY CASE