SteveGerencser

Almonds too. They are a terrible use of water and can literally kill people.

Very much this. We were in the middle of designing and installing a total solar array for our farm when the state ended every single subsidy and electricity buyback plan. We could install all the solar panels we want, but any electricity we pump into the grid is done for free (we don't get paid) and any power we take from the grid we pay 100% for with no credit for any power we pushed upstream.

This forced us to increase the panel array size by another 25% to 30% to make sure we had more coverage, increase the battery storage we needed, and increased the breakeven point to more than 30 years.

We decided to not do it. For a world that needs more renewable energy (I sort of hate that term) politicians work awful hard to make it not happen.

I have had multiple experiences with CPS over the years through friends and family. Over time I have developed a pretty dramatic hatred of them. We took in our niece for a few months years ago and the way they ran their 'system' was mind blowing. The rules that make their life hard were freely broken whenever they wanted and the rules that made our lives hard were written on stone tablets.

I'm involved in a case now where they took a 5 year old boy from the family and refused all contact for over 3 months. All with never filing a charge against the family or even telling anyone WHY they took him. It wasn't until we started writing large checks to good lawyers that we got their attention.

You could be 2 cups and a long string and beat most of those providers. I've been trapped in their horrible world for over a decade and can't wait for "any" other option. I don't even care how much it costs anymore.

That would seriously depend on 'what part' of California you are talking about. In the cities and down south where parking and traffic are huge factors, you bet. But the farther north you go the more trucks and large SUVs you will see on the road. California is far too big to be treated as a single entity when it comes to anything.

Radio Shack missed a whole fleet of boats over the years.

I have to agree with your take on this. We were recently sent an 'offer' by the local water district to buy 15' of frontage along our property for a new water line that will be a major service upgrade for about 8 homes.

My issue came when I discovered that the current water line and easement is on the other side of the road, but they would have to cut down quite a few tree while it was a lot easier to dig in front of my farm. So far, I get it. Then I could out that they offered us 3 cents per square foot of frontage but the home next to us was offered 4x as much at 4 cents per square foot. And someone else offer 4 cents, and they didn't even know about the 3 new houses on our road before they even started planning.

I'm all for improving infrastructure, but it needs to be in a fair, and well planned, way. Neither of which is common with this sort of thing.

Take a look at 'just' almonds. Almonds are a "non-native" plant that came from the Mediterranean.

Some 1.6 million acres of almond trees in California. That produces just about 2.8 billion pounds of almonds. It takes around 1900 GALLONS of water to grow one pound of almonds. That works out to about 16 million acre feet of water per year. More than is used by people in Los Angeles.

When you take into account all the new things that they keep making out of almonds, everything from "milk" (I prefer the term nut juice) to cleaning supplies (specifically the shells are used in soaps, cutting back on water intense farm products during a 2 decade draught, rather than continuing to expand, makes sense

PE firms have a horrible track record at doing anything other than maximizing revenue and profit without regard to any other issue. A quick look at what they have done to the motorized wheelchair industry makes that very clear. Wait times for service in DRM enabled wheelchairs can be 4 weeks or more. The thought of your only means of mobility being taken from you for a month because profit comes before service is terrifying.

Where I live we are already limited in our vet options and this will make it worse as they continue to gobble up small clinics.

The internal track isn't that uncommon. when I was at Domino's Pizza it was the same thing. The path to management and franchisee was through the hourly funnel. There is a lot to be said for having management that started in the trenches as hourly staff and had to do and learn "all the jobs" before they become the boss telling other people what to do.

The jewelry store I worked at for a decade still sponsors a hole in one at the annual golf tournament next door. Get a hole-in-one on a specific hole and you get a Rolex. We had our own insurance policy for that to cover the cost of the Rolex should someone hit it. Which they did once every few years.

When I was a kid I moved into my grandparents house and my uncle showed me a tunnel in his basement bedroom that he had started when he was a kid so he could sneak out. He turned 18 and moved out before he finished it, so it was my turn after that. By the time we moved out the tunnel was almost to the alley behind the house/backyard. Probably 60 to 70 feet long.

I always wondered what they thought when they tore the house down 15 years later.

What I find funny is that low level support at Google can't do anything at all to help you, unless it's a low level Google Ads rep. Then they ask for carte blanche access to make any and all changes to your Ads account to 'help you'.

It all comes down to which direction, and how much, the money is flowing with them.

I stopped doing dishes and generally cleaning around the house years ago. To start, I started in the restaurant business as a kid and my idea of cleaning a kitchen is wildly different than hers. While I was in restaurants she was in the USAF having other people do things like clean.

After many years of me watching her take everything I washed or put away out and redo it, even emptying the dishwasher just to reload it and wash the dishes became a 'normal' thing. I gave up trying and just leave dishes in the sink or next to it because no matter what I do, she will redo it.

I wait till she's out of town and do a deep clean on the kitchen just so I know it's finally cleaned the way it should be.

Is there really such a thing as putting fields into play quickly when crops take a year to come in and can be lost in a single bad weather event?

I remember my first $900 phone bill because I had never heard of thing call "local long distance" until I moved to California.

These are usually lead gen sites. Done well they can take over smaller areas outside of major metro areas and drive sales leads to those larger companies that can travel vs the small local guy. I live in a small community and it has always been a problem usually started by the fact that the small local guy already has more work than he can handle and doesn't see the need to be online.

So very much this. I went through 4 30 minutes meetings with a vendor for a client of mine before I had enough with them and told them either give me a price or I'm forever done with them. 4 meetings just to get a price! Then they threw a price at us and we understood why they needed so many meetings. We ended up building the software we needed in house for 25% of what it would have cost to license theirs. And that includes creating an IT department that had not existed at that company before.

Over a month wasted on pointless meetings just because they were afraid to share their price.

From the IRS: The highway use tax applies to highway motor vehicles with a taxable gross weight of 55,000 pounds or more. This generally includes large trucks, truck tractors and buses. The tax is based on the weight of the vehicle and a variety of special rules apply. These special rules are explained in the instructions to Form 2290.

So yes, trucks do pay more in taxes, but that doesn't help the "roads are free" or the "you didn't pay for that" mantra.

We use golf tees as vent plugs. Easier to remove and replace quickly.

As someone that lived there, and drank their coffee, everyone knew it was hot. It was served that way because of the huge number of university students that grabbed a cup before class and it was still warm after walking across campus. The exit of that parking lot is also a known issue. It has/had a steep dip out of the lot and onto the road because that's how the roads were built down there rather than putting in sewers. Finally, there is a traffic light right next to that McDonalds. A LOT of people hit that dip hard trying to get onto the road before that light changes.

All of these things contributed to the issue. Sticking a hot cup of coffee between your legs while someone is driving is stupid, especially in that parking lot. Serving coffee so hot that it stays warm while you walk to class is also pretty stupid. The way McDonalds handled the issue is what made them the bad guys here. They could have easily helped this woman with her medical bills and it would have cost them far less money than the amount they spent on the their PR campaign and lawyers.

We do this in our house. We have intentionally done this based on the use of the room. Laundry room/kitchen/bathroom, light that sucker up. Living room or bedroom, not so much.

I grew up flying a homebuilt Taylorcraft. There is no way I would have gotten out of that plane at that altitude. Those things will glide forever and can land on almost nothing. One of the biggest problems they have for new pilots is that they really want to just float and you end up using far more runway than you actually need.

It's possible he's just a new pilot and panicked when the engine went out and would have rather relied on his skill as a skydiver rather than his skill as a pilot. But even the plane looks like it circled and tried to land in the river without him.

Just bad all the way around. At the very least he needs to lose his license.

That's because most of them had leather wrapped hilts and after all these years the leather is long gone leaving just the tang and any decorative embellishments that it had.

You just described my road here in Henderson County,TN. We bought 100 acres and built a dream home. In the last years (ish) 4 new single wides went in and a couple of new smaller homes. We were told during the entire build that we will never get out of it what we are putting into it and we don't care. We aren't building for resale, selling it is our kid's problem.

But there are so many abandoned places out here. People have just walked away and never looked back. We had one across the road that over the last 10 years the woods has reclaimed and unless you knew that it was there, you would drive right past it.

Or a house full of cats. I had a 'cat lady' friend who struggled to sell her home because she had 13 cats. 13 'indoor' cats. Even at a great price the house would not sell. Enter the wonderful folks at Zillow that bought her house based purely on the numbers. Last I heard they still hadn't been able to move that house at any price.

You just described nearly every parking lot in downtown Nashville.

Not to be outdone, they've taken it to a new level where three different companies own the same lot and you can only tell which company owns the lot by looking to see what color lines you are parked in. Park in the lot, but pay at the wrong kiosk or use the wrong app, you get an extra $50 boot added to your car.

I worked at Pepsi in the 80s when we were still doing glass bottles. There was an entire line of guys that stood there all day and sorted glass bottle by soda. A 24 bottle tray with random bottles was grabbed at the head of the line and as it went down the line you grabbed the bottles for your stack, Pepsi, Mt. Dew, Diet Pepsi, and so on and put them in a 24 bottle tray of just that flavor. Once you had a full pallet of trays you hit a buzzer and fork lift guy would swing by and grab that whole pallet.

This went on all day, every day. If I recall there were 5 or 6 guys on the line plus forklift guy. And life sucked if one guy was sick.

Then, once all the bottles were sorted they were all put on the bottling line and washed, sterilized and refilled with soda.

Plastic did away with a lot of jobs at the bottling plants. Maybe 20 people per plant? Then the lack of a need to wash and refill glass did away with all the "local" plants that were scattered all over the country to just a handful these days.

No, it isn't. Most, or at least a very high percentage of independent truckers bid for cargo runs. Your cargo needs to get from point A to point B and weighs X amount and needs pickup and delivery at certain times. Truckers bid on the those routes and the the winning bidder gets the route.

If you don't want a delivery you don't bid on it or you set your bid high enough to make you want to take it. If no one bids on a delivery then the shipper raises the maximum they will pay and the process starts all over. Delivery location or pickup location a horrible place? Again, don't bid or bid high.

This is exactly the definition of a free market. Telling an independent that they must take the next load available without letting them decide if they even want it is not. That's being an employee. And shipping companies have spent years getting rid of their own fleets and drivers to push the cost to the individual drivers. And yes, there are a LOT of apps for this.

Not only do containers not pay the same, but containers to the same location often don't pay the same. So many variables and often the driver is the one that ends up getting screwed in the process. I completely understand why so many simply refuse certain loads. And getting assigned a load you know nothing about before it's on your truck is a no go for most drivers.