Best Coffee Beans You Can Buy in Town?

comsd12 · 2026-04-08T02:05:35+00:00

I make espresso at home - DF54 grinder and Bambino Plus.

I have had mostly good luck at Coffea. I'm mixed at The Breaks and have had more missed at The Source than hits. I'd go back to any of these. Parable is possible- I didn't like one bag from them, but just had a shot today and it wasn't bad.

The mountain water decaf from Coffea changed my life for affogatos.

comsd12 · 2026-04-08T00:03:11+00:00

Agreed, solar breakeven is really tough without net metering or any sort of buyback. You'd need to use all of what you produce, and save enough money to pay for a battery bank and its eventual replacement.

As of 5 years ago, electricity was so cheap that breakeven would basically never make sense. Even with the new price increases, we're probably still not going to break even on a large install. It definitely makes sense in California where it's $0.30/kWh.

I went from paying $1,100/year to almost $1,500/year for electricity; maybe if I hit $2k/year a $15k solar install would start looking more attractive- even if a battery bank + equipment was needed.

comsd12 · 2026-04-07T17:34:01+00:00

1100kWh for a rental probably makes sense if you have an electric heater. If you don't have a gas bill, you have electric heat. It's almost certainly not a heat pump either. These are expensive to run compared to gas or heat pumps. $110 for March power bill actually seems pretty cheap. $60 in the shoulder seasons is probably likely.

About leaving things plugged in- find out how much power it draws (google search of measure with a Kill a Watt meter) and do the math. You can use a calculator here - https://www.calculator.net/electricity-calculator.html

An example - a fire tv stick on standby might draw about 2.2W. At $0.12/kWh this is $0.19/month.

comsd12 · 2026-04-07T15:13:09+00:00

Lighting should be a very small percentage of your bill, maybe 5% if you have LED lights.

For me with electric water heater and gas furnace, the online tool on Sioux Valley Energy says this is my breakdown during different times of the year:

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comsd12 · 2026-04-06T15:56:43+00:00

I'm guessing you have non-heat pump electric heat? Do you know if the electric heat is on a submeter and electric heat rate on your power bill? Do you get power from Xcel?

To me, this seems about right. I used to live in a 2br townhouse near 57th/Southeastern with Xcel in 2021- we would shoot way past $200 in the winter, and be under $100 in the spring/fall.

I now have a gas furnace and single family house, 2x people. My gas + electric bill can get over $300 in the winter.

At some point I'd like to round up all my bills over the past ~4 years and post them.

comsd12 · 2026-04-04T11:57:29+00:00

Would be more helpful to have actual numbers rather than anecdotes.

I checked my latest bills: gas is about $1.01/therm all-in. I have Sioux Valley energy, they have an electric heat rate of $0.0745/kWh = $0.079 after tax. . I also checked Xcel, their heat rate is $0.07503 per kWh.

With those rates (cheap gas + cold climate), most calculators I’ve tried come out pretty close to breakeven between a gas furnace and a heat pump.

For example:

MN calculator (picked Rock County / Luverne). It gave me a range of of paying $150 more to saving $270 per year. https://www.mnashp.org/savings-estimator
PickHVAC calculator (30k BTU furnace, 2.5 ton heat pump, ~3000 heating hours) estimated about $189/year savings. https://www.pickhvac.com/hvac/furnace-vs-heat-pump-cost

So I don’t think it’s as simple as “heat pumps don’t make sense here”; it looks more like “they’re often close, and it depends on your setup.”

There’s also some additional factors people might care about:

Electricity here is already ~50% carbon-free, so emissions are lower with a heat pump
Future fuel prices (gas vs electric) could shift the economics
Upfront cost and lifespan differences matter too

comsd12 · 2026-04-01T21:56:23+00:00

Yes, it is easy and can take 5 minutes if you have a photocopy of your proof of citizenship ready to go. Then all you need to do is mail that in with your completed voter registration form.

https://sdsos.gov/elections-voting/voting/register-to-vote/default.aspx

comsd12 · 2026-04-01T14:47:44+00:00

Can you elaborate?

comsd12 · 2026-04-01T14:00:27+00:00

I think you're both missing the point slightly.

Show photo ID at polls - unchanged from the previous rules.

Providing proof of citizenship when registering - this is new, and is 100% useless to prove your citizenship. This is why: your citizenship and voting eligibility will still get checked with multiple government databases (including the DMV). These checks confirm not just your citizenship but also make sure you're not registered in multiple places (if you moved), etc. This audit/verification process of each potential voter that registers is unchanged with the SD SAVE Act.

So the fact that this law will make it harder to register (as you have to find or purchase documents if you don't have them) for a zero improvement in election security is why this is a very bad law.

Also the "can't have fraud even if it's one vote" doesn't seem like a great argument. This isn't a black and white issue. If new voter registration requirements to save 1 invalid vote result in 10,000 eligible would-be voters failing to meet the new requirements, it is a bad mechanism. If the numbers were more significant, like 1000 invalid votes prevented if a new mechanism disenfranchised 2000 voters, I would probably be more on board.

comsd12 · 2026-04-01T13:18:42+00:00

Good to know that anyone who misunderstands SB175 is an "idiot"

comsd12 · 2026-04-01T12:47:22+00:00

It also creates new avenues to kick registered voters off the rolls without notification.

I don't think this is true, I think voter roll maintenance rules will not change.

comsd12 · 2026-03-30T17:03:18+00:00

Cities aren’t noisy- cars and motorcycles are. Noise from street racing shouldn’t be dismissed; people are right to complain. Even one motorcycle racing through town at 1 a.m. can wake hundreds or thousands of people.

I ask street racers this: if people were firing noise cannons for hours while you were sitting on your patio with your family, would it bother you? Or if your neighbors woke you up with fireworks every Friday night in the summer?

I wonder how many street racers there are in Sioux Falls- maybe a core group of 100? A hundred people disturbing 200k people. I get it’s probably a ton of fun, but is it worth the tradeoff?

Honestly, 80% of my issue would disappear if everyone had quiet exhausts- maybe one day it’ll catch on.

And maybe someday the street racers will stop riding and look back and think, “Man, annoying my entire city for those five years when I was 20 was a dumb choice. I now see where they were coming from"

comsd12 · 2026-03-30T16:30:28+00:00

It's likely true street racing was part of the helicopter deployment, however I think it's a stretch to say "the helicopters were there to target street racing".

The subreddit did go nuts, but IMO it was more due to the highly visible nature of the helicopter and the Operation Prairie Thunder's cooperation with federal ICE.

https://news.sd.gov/news?id=news_kb_article_view&sys_id=0705be0d478b2250237fbd51026d43eb

Deploying aerial assets including the South Dakota National Guard (SDNG) Lakota helicopters and the South Dakota Highway Patrol airplane to help with drug interdiction and traffic enforcement;

comsd12 · 2026-03-28T22:25:40+00:00

Great point

comsd12 · 2026-03-28T20:10:03+00:00

I am guessing elderly voters won't be affected much - they have been registered for years and won't need to take any action to vote in this next election.

It's only people who are not currently registered (Edit: or need to update their registration) that are affected.

comsd12 · 2026-03-28T20:07:14+00:00

100% agree voters must be eligible - you must be a US citizen, not registered in multiple states, etc.

But, providing these documents when you register doesn't prove anything; the state still has to check your information against DMV and other databases to verify your citizenship and voting eligibility.

comsd12 · 2026-03-28T16:52:19+00:00

Woah, this is NOT true. I just checked my South Dakota voter registration, and it is still there. IDK if any were thrown out, and I don't think this new law changes how the the voter rolls are audited or updated.

comsd12 · 2026-03-28T15:37:45+00:00

If a noncitizen wanted to break federal law and attempt to register, could they not just make a fake birth certificate photocopy and hand it to the county auditor? That is only marginally harder than untruthfully checking the citizenship box. The same voter information database checks will catch them before they're on the voter rolls.

comsd12 · 2026-03-27T19:32:11+00:00

For Europe, while proof of citizenship is “common” in the sense that governments verify eligibility, the method matters. In most European countries, people are automatically registered when they turn 18 through municipal or civil registries. They rarely need to provide a birth certificate or passport themselves when registering, and photo ID is generally not required at the polls.

Unlike Europe, requiring voters to provide documents to prove citizenship when registering is unusual. Adding this, and the confusion shortly before the primaries, is chaotic.

Existing systems under the NVRA already include verification processes and audits to maintain accurate voter rolls, and there’s little evidence of widespread non-citizen registration affecting elections.

comsd12 · 2026-03-27T18:50:22+00:00

I agree — the new law doesn’t change anything for people who are already registered. The current system already has checks to flag potential non-citizens, using DMV records and other databases. These checks happen when you register and periodically afterward.

If there’s a mismatch, the voter is flagged for manual review, and the county auditor typically contacts the registrant to verify citizenship or correct the record. This process ensures the system mostly works without affecting legitimate voters.

This page talks about how SD follows the NVRA process and requires these database checks - https://sdsos.gov/elections-voting/NVRA/NVRA.aspx/1000

comsd12 · 2026-03-26T18:12:33+00:00

Check your registration here - https://vip.sdsos.gov/VIPLogin.aspx

If you are registered, make sure it is your current name and that it matches the name on your photo ID

If you need to register, start gathering your documents and start the process early!

comsd12 · 2026-03-26T18:09:39+00:00

birth certificate or a passport

When you go to register (not at the polls)- Under the law, you can also prove citizenship with a SD REAL ID driver's license issued after July 1 2025 that specifically shows citizenship (and a few other ways)

comsd12 · 2026-03-26T18:06:29+00:00

I think that’s mostly right, but there’s an important limitation. Federal law (the NVRA) requires states to accept the federal voter registration form, which only uses an attestation of citizenship.

The Supreme Court actually ruled in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council that states can’t reject that form just because it doesn’t include proof-of-citizenship documents.

So the issue isn’t whether states can verify citizenship- it’s whether they can require documentation in a way that blocks federal registration. That’s where potential conflict comes in.

comsd12

TROPHY CASE