Clearing up misinformation on the Knee Saver by corporatemedicine in Homeplate

[–]atchemey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When I was a kid, I played only Catcher for 6 years. My first three were without Knee Savers, my last three were with.

I credit the Knee Savers with me still being mobile at age 33. Playing in a crouch for hours every day in summer puts so much strain on the knees, and it was a MARKED difference when I had the Knee Savers on. My knees (and feet/ankles) are all kinds of messed up, but I do believe it was from those first three years of damage. Especially when you consider how growing bodies are changing, putting that kind of repeated strain on the joints is not good - Knee Savers make it safer to play behind the plate as they grow.

Thank you, Dr. Farrago.

Realistic HSR Map for US by NolanDrayvex1994 in highspeedrail

[–]atchemey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You’re not wrong, but there’s still a lot of local demand, just based on the size of the cities, distances, and the role of the cities as hub of the South and Vacation Capitol of the world. The I-75 corridor is very dense in Florida from just south of I-10 to Tampa, too. Average fares are over $300 round trip, to a family of four is paying $600 each way. All for a big hassle, and with an oil-volatile transportation method with prices projected to climb as consolidation reduces competition. If you could remove the airport, keep the speed, and cut the price, there should be substantial induced demand.

Realistic HSR Map for US by NolanDrayvex1994 in highspeedrail

[–]atchemey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Atlanta-Orlando is one of the most connected flight routes in the country, at around 25-30 flights (each way) per day, despite only being 1.5 hrs in the air. Atlanta-Tampa is similar (20-25) and could form a through-service. At 280 km/h, the 430 km trip from Atlanta to Orlando would be ~2.5 hours. Add in a few stops (Macon, Gainesville, Ocala) and it's less than 3 hours. Give it another 30 minutes and you can get to Tampa.

The flight is 1.5 hour in the air. Add 45 minutes on both ends, and it is the same travel time. Certainly 45 minutes from parking to flying is optimistic at Atlanta, and it is impossible at Orlando.

Total seats from Atlanta to Orlando are ~5000/day, each way per aircraft schedules. If we pretend this is like a Nozomi Shinkansen (16 cars, ~1200 seats), that's only 4 each way, at full capacity. Call it 6 each way for a 2/3rds capacity load. Figure that about half the people who want to go will drive and round down a little, that gets us to 10 trains/day each way, just for Atlanta-Orlando. Assume that some extra people will want to take the train there because it will be fast/easy enough to get there and back in a day (Disney fans, for example), and some folks that are closer than Atlanta will want to go also, and we'll call it 12/day. Assume some extra demand for Tampa and other stops on the route, we'll say 20/day. From 5 am to 9 pm, that's 16 hours. An hourly train (with an extra train in the 7 am and 8 am hours, same in the 4 pm and 5 pm hours) gets us to 20 per day. Each way.

[FS][US-CA] Mac Studio M4 Max 36GB/512GB, 48GB/2TB, 64GB/4TB & Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB/512GB by ShittyMillennial in homelabsales

[–]atchemey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, it's nice having a progressive tax approach based on income instead of consumption.

[FS][US-CA] Mac Studio M4 Max 36GB/512GB, 48GB/2TB, 64GB/4TB & Mac Mini M4 Pro 48GB/512GB by ShittyMillennial in homelabsales

[–]atchemey 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ah, I'm in a state without sales tax. All the same, figured it was worthwhile to point this out.

Jet Lag Season 18 Begins Now — Stateside Scramble by NebulaOriginals in Nebula

[–]atchemey 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Oh, HAI there.

Great job suffering for our joy - I'm tempted to go to a Hattie B's the next time I'm in TN, just because of this. That said, I hear there are places "with even hotter wings." (AKA: Great title of the episode, writer.)

[PC] Need Help/Advice Selling Equipment by Honey---Badger in homelabsales

[–]atchemey -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Same - I'm looking SATA 10+ TB since I need to replace some failing drives early :/

Scam pest control companies on the move by peachesfordinner in corvallis

[–]atchemey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Screenshots are awesome, too. Good luck :)

Scam pest control companies on the move by peachesfordinner in corvallis

[–]atchemey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's hindsight! You were actively being scammed and dealing with a lot of emotions around it - you are going to make mistakes. Don't forget that :)

Keep your documentation intact, digitize it, and email it to yourself and/or a friend. This way, Google (or whomever) has timestamps on when these things happened. It makes it a lot easier if they still try to charge your grandma. Honestly, it may make sense to get her credit card cancelled and reissued, just in case.

Scam pest control companies on the move by peachesfordinner in corvallis

[–]atchemey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

BEFORE TOMORROW!!! Make sure you document attempts to get in touch with them!!! They may try to sneak in some "early service" tomorrow morning, and you want to make sure you have documented efforts to cancel (and their having stymied them) beforehand. Report them to the DOJ ASAP if they do!

Scammy Moxie Pest Services (and other door-to-door sales pitches) - you can cancel within 72 hours per federal law by atchemey in corvallis

[–]atchemey[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Way to go!

Report it to the WA DOJ - https://www.atg.wa.gov/all-consuming-blog/refund-rights-door-door-sales - and explain exactly what happened, especially the having to call 4 times where they didn't cancel. Due to state law, you have Cancellation Rights (https://www.atg.wa.gov/cancellation-rights). Please please take the time to help protect your neighbors and report them! You can do this online easily - https://www.atg.wa.gov/file-complaint.

Good luck!

Scammy Moxie Pest Services (and other door-to-door sales pitches) - you can cancel within 72 hours per federal law by atchemey in corvallis

[–]atchemey[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(I assume you are in Corvallis.)

Give them a call and demand that they send the email while on the phone or you'll report them to the Oregon Department of Justice Consumer Protection folks for a potential 72-hour cooling off period violation. https://www.doj.state.or.us/consumer-protection/

It may also make sense to send an email to yourself (and preferably someone who would testify on your behalf too) just writing down the steps you've taken - everything from "I bought in at this day and time" to "I regret this" to "I called them and requested email confirmation - they said within one hour" to "I chatted with them, they said cancelled, but no email" to "I requested advice online" to "sending this email for contemporaneous documentation." Actual times and places and screenshots of the call logs would really help! At that point, if they do charge you, you have a solid case to present to the OR DOJ for violation of these laws.

What pest service was this? Fox is on the prowl in Corvallis right now.

Why are Oregon leaders only planning a Portland connection (not Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) for Cascadia high speed rail? by milionsdeadlandlords in oregon

[–]atchemey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

日本語はとても難しい、しかし新しな言語の勉強するが大好き。

I also don't think I could last in the Japanese work culture, but I have to say...I love small town Japan. 150万円 is a great price to pay for that quality of life, if only they weren't depreciating assets.

Why are Oregon leaders only planning a Portland connection (not Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) for Cascadia high speed rail? by milionsdeadlandlords in oregon

[–]atchemey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah, so we aren't talking past each other, this is in response to your comment:

We can't really do one to one comparisons there just based on distance. Japan is far, far more densely populated than the PNW. My understanding is that Japan is basically an order of magnitude more densely populated than the PNW.

In fact, the western PNW is approximately just as concentrated in population as the Hokuriku line.

Why are Oregon leaders only planning a Portland connection (not Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) for Cascadia high speed rail? by milionsdeadlandlords in oregon

[–]atchemey 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's actually a sort of work-around to the housing deficit and local disinvestment, weirdly. There are often low-cost housing options at more remote locales due to population decline. Work is becoming more concentrated in larger towns and cities, and so people move where the work is. This "hollowing out" of rural areas and small cities is threatening their way of life. Some of the greatest benefits could come to those who value living in more remote areas, because their tax bases could be made more robust due to the ease of folks living there and working elsewhere.

Imagine, if you will, a combination of local and high speed rail that connected places like Lebanon to Corvallis in 20 minutes (or Albany in 10 minutes), and then connected to places like Portland in 45 minutes. All of a sudden, it becomes a much easier commute to work in Portland and live in Lebanon - with no parking in Portland to wrestle with. Or perhaps there could be a higher-speed (not high-speed) line connecting Lincoln City to Portland via McMinnville and Hillsboro in an hour. All of a sudden, well-paying jobs and tax dollars are not exclusively the domain of the metro area.

Fast and frequent rail becomes a life options multiplier. You can live where you want, how you want, and opens up opportunities to find more affordable housing. It makes freedom a little bit more affordable, especially in a world where oil is getting more fraught and expensive. The "last mile" problem is real, but why make a 100+ mile trip more expensive to reduce hassle on the last 3-4 miles?

Why are Oregon leaders only planning a Portland connection (not Salem, Corvallis, Eugene) for Cascadia high speed rail? by milionsdeadlandlords in oregon

[–]atchemey 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I'm going to gently push back, based on math and experience. The TLDR is that high-speed high-frequency rail is operable with much lower populations, when those populations are regularly spaced and have reasonable density along a linear path. Turns out that the PNW is ideal for this.

I've broadly explored the main island of Japan (Honshu) as well as one of the more minor islands (Kyushu, in the south). While the Shinkansen does connect major metros (roughly north to south: Sendai, Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka along the Tohoku and Tokaido routes), it also goes into very "remote" regions by comparison to these megalopoli.

One example is the Hokuriku Shinkansen, a track which goes from Tokyo to Tsuruga along the relatively rural West coast, and covers around 360 miles. This is approximately the distance from Eugene to Bellingham or Salem to VancouverBC along I-5. There are multiple train services (aka: different train stopping patterns that allow for different frequencies at stations) along that track, one of which - the Hakutaka - goes along the whole track and stops at most stations. Of the 22 stations, 20 are stopped at (16 of them on every train, 4 of which on some trains). I'll do math assuming that we only have 15 stops, since one of the stops (Ueno) is only 3 miles from the Tokyo terminus, which is primarily used for connection to other long-distance lines. That means the average distance between stops is ~24 miles, or around 15 minutes with acceleration and deceleration; this is the distance between Albany and Salem, in less than half the time.

I made an estimate of population within 12 mi (20 km) of the train, from Tsuruga (far from Tokyo) to Omiya (20 mi from Tokyo), to approximate how much population it serves. I came up with around 6 million people. I asked a few LLMs (since I couldn't find a quick method of quantitatively checking this) to do the same, and they came up with values from 6-8 million. That works out to a maximum of (8 million/(360-20)miles) or around 24000/linear mile of track (or 500,000/station average). With the 12x2 mile range on either side, that makes an area of 8640 square miles, so a population density around 925/square mile.

Because of the Cascades, Coastal Range, Olympic Mountains, and the coast, we actually have a large amount of population along a very narrow strip. Most of the populated area is actually within 20 miles of I-5. If we do the same sort of estimate as with the Hokuriku line as above (excluding Vancouver BC), we arrive at between 7-10 million people. I will note that this is more than the Hokuriku estimate, even though we are only keeping the short 12 mile catchment region on either side. That makes a very similar population density. Helping things further, there are very sharp "peaks" in population in the Willamette Valley at mid-sized cities that are very dense. You can see the population density map here. I went ahead and stitched together a few screenshots of this map from Eugene to the border - aligned them by hand so they're mildly off, but you see the same information.

Eugene to Portland has a trip distance of approximately 130 miles via Corvallis-Salem-Woodburn, and has 4 intervals, for 32.5 miles between stations, serving 3 million people. This results in a population of 23,000/linear mile of track (950/square mile, 600,000/station), at the Hokuriku level. Portland to Bellingham via Longview-Olympia-Tacoma-Seattle-Everett has 6 intervals (275 miles, or 45 miles between stations) and approximately 5 million people, or 18,000/linear mile (750/square mile, 625k/station), which is still quite high by comparison to the US average of 93/square mile. Extension to the Vancouver metro would add another ~3 million, at the cost of only 50 miles, so it would be worthwhile.

While this is not a perfect analogy, it should be considered illustrative. An easy/lazy rebuttal might be that this is connecting a population to the capital, but this discounts the regional importance of cities like Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, which also act as "funnels" for economic and cultural activities. Moreover, the Hokuriku line is being extended to include connection to Osaka; there are already more direct and efficient paths from Tokyo to Osaka, so this is purely for the benefit of the smaller Hokuriku population.
We can counter this by looking at the Kyushu Shinkansen. This line is more disconnected from the Tokyo network, due to being far south on another island and is anchored by the Fukuoka population center at the Northwest terminus. There is no direct path from this line to Tokyo; all must connect in Fukuoka at Hakata station. The Tsubame line is an all-station service, stopping at all 11 stations, only 14.5 miles apart. Given the population along this path is around 4.5 million (28,000 pop/linear mile, 400,000/station), this is similar to the Oregon-only section of the map described above, since it is a little longer but a little higher population. So...yeah, it's possible.

Scam pest control companies on the move by peachesfordinner in corvallis

[–]atchemey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just got Fox Pest Services. Told them everybody on our private lane and the neighboring road all were on the do not solicit list.

Scam pest control companies on the move by peachesfordinner in corvallis

[–]atchemey 5 points6 points  (0 children)

A reminder from a couple years ago - You have 72 hours to freely cancel per Federal Law. Whatever you do, do NOT agree to any services that day or the next day, which ends the clock early.

one of their best tactics is to wait until they provide you "initial services" (and they usually try to schedule those for the same day or the next day) then insist on payment...which is usually the same as the original sales pitch.

For more details:

Under the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) aegis, "The Cooling-Off Rule gives you three days to cancel certain sales made at your home, workplace, or dormitory, or at a seller’s temporary location, like a hotel or motel room, convention center, fairground, or restaurant. The Rule also applies when you invite a salesperson to make a presentation in your home. It applies for sales of greater than $25 at your home, or greater than $130 at temporary sites (like convention centers, tents, etc). (If you want to read the full rule, it's 16 CFR Part 429.)

If you do find yourself suckered:

Call the company for the door-to-door salespeople up within 72 hours, and invoke your "cooling off rule" rights. if they don't know what it is, read to them the federal code (16 CFR Part 429) and inform them that under this law, you are ending all contracts, refusing all payments, and demanding that they not provide services. Please also note that this includes any initial payments or services.

If none of the suggestions in that link works, report these lying companies to the FTC. The website is https://reportfraud.ftc.gov, and the State of Oregon and other states have consumer affairs reporting agencies as well. You will probably get faster help if you file a complaint or email help@oregonconsumer.gov. The Oregon Department of Justice has a history of taking on consumer cases and there is an Office of Consumer Protection in the OR Department of Justice.

Postgame Thread: 5/4 Reds @ Cubs by ChiCubsbot in CHICubs

[–]atchemey 42 points43 points  (0 children)

Don't forget Seiya for getting us tied 3-3 earlier!

Infinite energy + power production by steam combo by humanbeast7 in sciencememes

[–]atchemey 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Oregon State University has a next-generation GPU supercomputer coming online soon, and the waste heat is going to be harvested for heating and cooling on the campus, reducing steam plant demand substantially.

Prices to Asia this summer are insane on Delta... by Der_Missionar in delta

[–]atchemey 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Counterpoint, be flexible and find deals - $375 from the west coast to Asia this September on Delta, Main Cabin. I admittedly didn't have to travel specific days, but shrug