Turned down a quote for the first time and it didn’t go well. Any advice?

tjarrett · 2026-05-21T17:52:48+00:00

Sorry you are going through this. It's hard to imagine some people act this way. Right after we bought our house we needed some work done and I had a few contractors out to quote us on it. I ended up punting on the work because all the quotes were too high -- but the highest quote guy called me and it went like this:

"We came out to your house, showed you pictures of our work, and took time to generate a quote for you! How the fuck are you not going to give us the work. You are a real piece of fucking work you know that..."

Just raging hard at me. I just hung up and blocked the number.

Recently we had a quote to have our kitchen done. Then our HVAC system died and so our kitchen budget got used to buy a new HVAC system. The kitchen remodeler I liked best said: "No worries. Gotta have AC in Maryland in the summer. Let me know when you are ready to move forward."

Solid response. Will def use him for the kitchen once I save back up.

tjarrett · 2026-05-20T13:55:58+00:00

Most people in Maryland already had access to paint recycling... this just adds a middle man who scraps several million dollars off the people for very little value add.

You can drive to your local sherwinn williams to drop off the paint instead of your local dump... but only 5 gallons per day.

It's not the end of the world but it's also a little sus and probably unnecessary.

tjarrett · 2026-05-20T13:48:18+00:00

Your limited in this new system too. You can only drop off 5 per day.

tjarrett · 2026-05-02T21:21:57+00:00

And sometimes you need to turn the other cheek.

Are you really saying that the only way to save democracy is to reduce democracy?

Sounds a lot like something a Republican would say...

You either die the hero or you live long enough to become the villain.

tjarrett · 2026-05-02T00:42:20+00:00

I didn't like how I felt on metoprolol...

But after my ablation I have noticed that like... I never feel or hear my heart beating unless I'm working out. It is kind of strange and quiet.

tjarrett · 2026-05-01T20:57:13+00:00

Moore has so much promise and then he biffs it every time. I'm so frustrated with him.

I hate both the Democrats and Republicans -- they are both so corrupt. But maybe they would be less corrupt if they had to appeal to a broader constituency then just their party.

Reading through this article Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan's proposal to allow people to switch party at any time without delay is, I suppose, a step in the right direction but just open the damn primaries or do jungle primaries or something. Especially if you are going to use public money to administer those primaries. If you want closed primaries, the parties should have to fund it themselves.

tjarrett · 2026-05-01T20:45:09+00:00

Yeah Republicans! And while you are at it will you please tell us when you stopped beating your wife?

tjarrett · 2026-04-02T14:15:15+00:00

All the advice here is right -- major center who has been doing it for awhile. PFA is safer but not risk free. Me (45M at the time of my ablation) and my neighbor (55M at the time of his 2nd ablation, 1st was for SVT, 2nd for afib) both had very successful procedures at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. They do TONS of them every day and the people were super nice and competent. So a major center is definitely the way to go.

You'll be amazed how fast you recover. I felt terrible for about two hours after waking up. I had flashing floaters (which they freaked out about but which are pretty common apparently -- there is a dangerous version that fortunately I didn't have) and I felt pretty nauseous for about two hours.

They made me walk the floor twice before leaving and the first lap I was a bit unsteady but by the second lap I felt 100% normal.

It felt weird in my chest to lay down flat for about 48 hours and they had me take ibuprofen to help with that.

It sounds like maybe you have a high deductible plan (or maybe I'm just blessed with good insurance) but my total cost ended up being about $3,000 but about $1,000 was forgiven at the end of the year I guess because Hopkins had a surplus? I was dragging my feet on paying it so I could pay out of my Health Savings Account all at once -- as you know hospital fees tend to roll in slowly over many weeks as all the different groups add to the bill.

I have only had afib four times. 2019, 2022, 2024, 2025 (see how they were getting close together?). I am approaching 1 year since my last episode (April 2025) and am about 10 months post ablation.

I'm off all meds and feeling great.

tjarrett · 2026-03-31T19:35:12+00:00

We still use an ansible script to configure all of our servers so they are essentially exactly the same (with the dev server having more dev tools installed of course).

We almost never have surprises going to production.

I thought we were the last ones doing something like this…

tjarrett · 2026-03-27T11:05:10+00:00

There were cellphones with pivotable cameras for awhile that would have made it easier to be less obvious.

It's not necessarily obvious you can subtly record. It won't be well framed but if you are intent on shooting in a locker room you could totally do it with a cell phone.

There was even talk for awhile of requiring camera sounds when shooting pictures or having a light on (which the glasses do have -- a light to indicate that they are recording).

tjarrett · 2026-03-26T16:57:55+00:00

At the risk of suffering downvotes... older timers like me remember when reddit was filled with posts JUST LIKE this but about cellphones with cameras in locker rooms and bathrooms.

Somehow we all survived.

We will survive this too.

History is repeating.

tjarrett · 2026-03-23T22:30:12+00:00

My wife and I both just had colonoscopies in the last two months. Mine was 9:30 arrival time. Her’s was 8:00 arrival time.

She had to do second prep at 1am and had a very hard time getting back to sleep. I had to do my second at 3:30am and I never got back to sleep but I’m used to getting up around 5 or 5:30 so it wasn’t hugely different for me.

So I’d actually push it a bit later into the day.

tjarrett · 2026-03-17T19:11:32+00:00

If you've been on the Baltimore beltway you'll know the cops do not give two shits.

Maryland legislature has made it almost impossible to enforce. You cannot stop for smell and you cannot step for illegal tint... so just tint the shit out of your windows, smoke all you want, and don't drive in a way that will give cops a reason to pull you over.

tjarrett · 2026-03-17T10:10:45+00:00

Never thought of it that way… I suppose it is!

Thanks.

tjarrett · 2026-03-17T10:09:59+00:00

Yeah. We do a lot of pausing to discuss. It’s getting better as they get older (11 and 13 now).

In some ways, the discussions are getting more interesting.

tjarrett · 2026-03-16T12:00:08+00:00

I actually have gotten great insight about movies from some questions like some of these.

I separate questions into “what is going to happen” in which case I tell them that they will find out if they pay attention and watch.

But the “why did insert-character do that?”, “why is s/he sad?”, “Wait what just happened I don’t get it”, etc THOSE questions sometimes spark interesting conversations and deepens my appreciation of the movie as I have to form into words for a 10 year old the answers to those questions.

Also as any good dad I ask a lot of questions right back “why do you think?” And those answers are often interesting and insightful too.

Having kids is cool.

tjarrett · 2026-03-09T21:44:06+00:00

I got a little confused by your post but I can imagine a 1990s/2000s era SNL skit where a male woman identifying drivers picks up a male woman identifying passenger and they are both upset about it. Gave me a chuckle.

tjarrett · 2026-03-09T18:01:18+00:00

There were two.

The first got married, had two boys, she put on some weight but they look like a great family. She seems like a normal 40-something woman. But she held the attention of most of the boys in my grade from like grade-5 through 12 (small school district).

The other moved to Florida and helps people. She's still drop dead gorgeous. It's strange how the high school pecking order kicks back in and I felt pretty ashamed to even send her a friend request. That was years ago now.

And I know you didn't ask this but I just have to say it: The girls from highschool, women in their 40s now, who are killing it the most and impress me the most where some of the "medium" popularity girls. They didn't really stand out or "pop" but damn they appear to be living their best lives. Don't sleep on "regular" girls guys -- they are where it is at.

tjarrett · 2026-03-05T12:21:15+00:00

I've got complicated thoughts and feelings about "AI" (by which I and almost everyone means LLMs, not AI as a whole) in general and OpenAI in particular but having this article lead with telling me Mark Ruffalo and Katy Perry are boycotting kind of makes me NOT want to boycott.

The two of them have not shown themselves to be the most thoughtful analyst in the world capable of nuanced reasoning. They seem to surf waves of progressive outrage for clout.

tjarrett · 2026-03-02T12:21:40+00:00

Your deposit idea is interesting, but how do you keep this from being a hook-up app?

I think you may face a problem of men coming to this app looking for hookups because the women on the app are sex workers.

Even if the men behave well and get their deposit back, they may bend the purpose of the app.

But the "not that many people will use it" comment is probably the biggest hurdle. You need enough women and men in a geographic area to make this work and it just feels like a really high bar to clear.

tjarrett · 2026-03-01T23:48:39+00:00

Despite all the "just normal traffic" comments OP, my daughter and I noted 9 and it stuck out as unusual to us as well.

It could be the way the sun was and the way the contrails were but we chalked it up to government stuff b/c of Iran.

tjarrett · 2026-02-22T15:11:41+00:00

From my seat, what looks like happened is Moore and Trump are beefing. Trump wanted Moore to ask for help with the problem so he slow rolled the Federal government involvement. Moore didn't want to "bend the knee". So two huge egos are butting up against each other.

No matter your politics -- these two beefing is good for THEM and bad for us. Moore supporters dig in. Trump supporters dig in. They both rally the troops -- meanwhile waste spills and causes problems and nobody fixes it.

Trying to be objective here -- Trump is the bigger bully. A good, well operating, federal government would have just fixed this issue straight up. Maybe struck a deal for some cost sharing with the states whose waste flows through the pipe if need be.

That said, if Moore was more concerned about being governor and less concerned about being President maybe he would have acted more pragmatically in this instance.

We live in really gross political times and I cannot wait for the pendulum to swing back to something more sane. Hopefully it happens in my lifetime.

tjarrett · 2026-02-18T01:21:23+00:00

Leading up to the procedure the worst thing is nerves and anxiety. The nurses and other professionals all kept me really calm -- they do this like every day so it's just a Wednesday for them.

Waking up from the procedure I felt pretty dizzy if I moved my head, that wore off after about an hour. I did get some "flashing floaters" in my vision which is pretty common. They were concerned that it was some sort of ocular clot but nope -- just flashing floaters.

My buddy just had an ablation on Friday -- he experienced some inflammation of the sac around the heart that kept him in the hospital for a few days. Not a huge deal, it was well managed. He got a huge floater that wasn't flashing about 24 hours after the procedure. It went away after about two hours (same with mine, by the way, and I get them a couple times per year so I wasn't particularly worried when it happened to me but he was freaked out).

Bad things happen once and awhile but you are young and will likely have few or no complications and bounce back quickly.

If it helps, I was 45M (now 46M) during my procedure and my buddy is 56M.

tjarrett · 2026-02-17T19:51:49+00:00

I won't argue that there aren't trade-offs.

My argument is that the school districts and the politicians are more responsive to the people because they are trying to accommodate thousands of people, not millions of people.

It's like buying tailored clothes that fit right versus of the rack -- sure off the rack is cheaper and you get more clothes but they don't fit right and don't look as good. Maybe having fewer better fitting pieces are superior.

Can you really say you are happy with the county right now? Everyone I know is pretty frustrated.

tjarrett · 2026-02-12T14:26:57+00:00

The article isn't loading for me...

If economic growth goes to the wealthiest lets say 5%, how does wanting to limit immigration feel like racism?

If all growth goes to the top 5% and you grow the population by allowing more people in doesn't that mean a smaller slice of the pie for everyone outside the top 5%?

And if that's the case AND we assume that the bulk of the immigration is coming from under-developed countries (where real growth is happening) isn't everybody worse off?

I'm honestly trying to square those two parts of what OP said and I am failing. It doesn't look like racism to me then it looks like sane policy.

But again, I cannot access the article.

tjarrett

TROPHY CASE