It’s always the successful who give the advice to just do what they did. There isn’t a successful super-company out there that wasn’t bankrolled by millionaire investors, and there’s not a successful person out there who wasn’t lucky enough at the right place at the right time.
I often visit Gasbuddy to locate the cheapest gas in my area. On balance it has proven to be a valuable resource for me…but…
I have several Shell stations near me-since I need premium in my car, and I don’t want any of the El Cheapo gas available around here, without the beneficial additives that the name brand stations put into theirs, it is usually there that I will go. Them, or Mobil, which tends to be even cheaper.
So, go and check for the local premium prices yesterday-the one right down the street had premium at 3.07, which is as cheap as it has been in weeks. In I go…and find that it is actually 3.14. I knew there was another one down the road, went there, and filled up with 3.06. Rechecked the posting times when I got back home, and it was allegedly updated only 15 minutes before I visited the station in question.
Which means that the local volunteers AREN’T bothering to drive up to the pump to, you know, find out what the actual plus and premium prices are (the road sign only has the regular price at that station, but they are all there on the other one I went to). This has been an issue for months-you see, they have this cute “points” system, so the more times that you post new prices, the more points you get. This, of course, will reward people who will post frequent updates, but there is no checks and balances to ensure that they are accurate. And apparently the system will default to the old prices for plus/premium/diesel if you only report regular-either that or the volunteers are just carrying over the old prices without actually checking them at the pump, or, even worse, are updating them all FROM HOME, never having seen the actual prices, just to get more of these bogus points. :dubious:
Well, that all is bad enough, but when I tried updating them myself, it kept saying that someone else had just beaten me to the punch, and that my report won’t be what will be shown. But the last report was actually from 4 hours earlier, and had not trumped mine at all. 
So, not only do they have a system set up that will explicitly reward abuses of this sort, if I, as a conscientious citizen, actually try to keep the prices accurate and updated correctly, it won’t even let me do it. :mad:
What if I want to sit around watching “3rd Rock From The Sun” re-runs all day? What if I want to go on a bender? What if I want to give VISA the finger and take my paycheck to some remote off-grid hideaway?
I’m sitting here at work, sober and productive, being all responsible and shit. Guess I don’t love myself all that much.
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Anaamika, but I am 68 years old and I have a large blackhead on my forehead at this very moment.
You know, I never had acne as a teenager. I think this is nature’s way of saying no one misses anything; it will catch up with you sooner or later. Sigh.
I had a lot of acne as a teen, too. For some reason, Indian teens don’t get acne at the same rate as we do, so when I was visiting India at 15, my biji (great aunt) was genuinely puzzled. “What are all the bumps on her face? Are they mosquito bites?” I was sad. 
But now I have gray hair AND acne. Joy.
The dog, or my shadow as he’s known, ingested something horrible. And then it died inside him. And now it’s leaking out somewhere and it is the most god awful stench I’ve ever had the displeasure of smelling. Worse than dead mouse under the frig. Worse than cat diarrhea. Just unbelievably awful. If it doesn’t stop by tomorrow I’m taking him to the vet.
1 - Both I-5 and SR99 are being widened or otherwise improved for long stretches. The stretches have been chopped into sections, partly because it’s easier to only coordinate with one city for one project, but it’s for fairly long stretches, really.
The widening was decided upon due to the existing Level of Service (LOS). When the LOS is D or worse, you’re getting slowed by traffic anyway. Scheduling construction so that some areas get widened while other areas don’t will create bottlenecks.
2 - Big projects take years to bring to construction. As an example, the99 widening in south Stockton was in design (which includes environmental documentation, public outreach, and right of way acquisition) from 2008 to 2012. I don’t work for Caltrans, so I don’t know how many years it took for planning and funding before the design phase started. But I do know that the design team was sprinting to get the design complete before part of their funding evaporated. (See 3.)
**3 - Funding by proposition **- most of the 99 widening and some of the I-5 projects were funded by proposition. The proposition funded a group of projects AND had a very stern deadline for starting construction, “for accountability.” So partly there are so many projects because people voted for that proposition. That decision was made in 2006. Now the choice is use it of lose it.
This is not a bad thing, necessarily, assuming that all of the projects need to be done. Spreading the projects out into the future would mean that more of the money would go to administration and that by the time the later projects were ready for construction the costs would be higher due to inflation.
4 (possibly) - When you widen a highway, you have to widen all of the overcrossings and you have to rebuild all of the interchanges and structures to current standards. So you’re probably not seeing 200 separate projects. The project linked above, for instance, is basically widening 4 miles of highway. But that includes: rebuilding 5 overcrossings (one for a railroad), rebuilding 2 interchanges, closing 2 outdated interchanges, and other improvements. It might look like many projects during the rebuild structures phase, but it’s not.
That said, I understand that it’s completely annoying to have so much construction going on.
That is perfectly described.
Sorry to say that some have more trouble with acne in later years. I assume from your username that you’re female? I’ve had more problems with acne in my 40s (I suspect certain hormonal matters are de-stabilizing) than I ever did in my teens.
Minirant? I’m very tired and way too hot and DH’s attempt to be all organized and thoughtful fell through by no fault of his, so he’ll be all unhappy when he gets home. I also have not yet gotten that refund check from the public transit system from when they double-charged me (accidentally, I’m quite sure, I don’t think it was malicious) for this month’s pass.
And a follow-up. Took said dog for a walk where he pooped. It must have been impressive because within half a minute there was a vulture circling directly overhead.
Hopefully, he’s gotten whatever he ate evacuated from his system, poor pooch.
Please give him some extra affection on my behalf.
My friend I was complaining about before just posted a poem she wrote about the joys of travel, and how she could travel even though she doesn’t have much money.
Umm, first of all, her parents pay for her travels. Second of all, most travel, even inexpensive travel, does require more money than some people have. Third of all, there are people who probably could get together enough money to travel, but their jobs and/or lives don’t leave them with enough time to travel.
I’m not against traveling or anything (in fact, I’ll be away next week,) but I understand it’s not something everyone is in the position to be able to do.
I swear, well-off people, or people whose parents are well-off, sometimes just don’t know how the world looks from a different point of view.
Bought a SF hard-back at a Convention in Chattanooga a couple of weeks ago for $25.00. Also got several of the authors (it was a short-story collection) to sign it for me.
Been reading it off and on since then, and got to the last story (more like a novelette) and was getting to the climax when…after page 356, it went directly to page 392.
Yep, about 36 pages of book were missing–not misplaced or out of order, not torn out, just missing.
Now I don’t know if I should be pissed at the book dealers who sold it to me or the printing company who sent it out without the pages in the first place.
But I’m pretty sure I’m psissed at somebody…
My crazy sister came for a visit. We were discussing swimming and she mentioned that she taught her 3 kids to swim. She has 5 kids.
But you see, 2 of them were adopted so they don’t really count. They were raised in a house where it was always pointed out that they were adopted and how lucky they were. Now that they have grown up they want nothing to do with her so she won’t even acknowledge that they exist.
Of all her kids the 2 adopted ones were the only ones I liked. The others were always self-entitled assholes.
Mom fell this morning, she’s OK, bruised and freaked out but OK.
I’m also freaked out, I was home when it happened and I heard her fall. Thank goodness it wasn’t down the stairs. I’m supposed to go camping this weekend with brother and father, but I’m wondering if I’m going now. Probably not, though BF might have been staying home anyway because his back is bothering him after some renos but I don’t want to leave it on him.
Someone is supposed to come by from the home care people and check on her and help with lunch when I’m at work but I haven’t put the key code lock on and yesterday they rang the bell like mad about half an hour before she expected them so she was upstairs. By the time she made it down they were gone, I need to call a bunch of people and have a shit stirring talk and get that damn new lock on the door tonight.
I really hate being the sandwich generation. This year is just being shitty.
Aww, please reach out to the other two, if you know how to find them. Sounds like a miserable upbringing.
We are lucky enough to have 20k in an emergency fund we don’t need to touch. The fucking idiots at Capital One have sent us a certified letter warning that either I continue to remain on hold until they feel like answering the fucking phone or they will call the account abandoned and steal our fucking money. Rat bastards. Since when I am required to do anything to any emergency fund other than keep it around and let it accumulate the miniscule rate of interest they deign to pay us? It’s not as if we’ve moved. I even reported the pennies they paid us last year on our income tax forms.
Stupid fucking assholes.
Hmm, can’t you transfer it to another account?
I’d fucking close the account if they pulled that on me.
My bank warned me of potential problems over an inactive account. They blamed the government. I withdrew $5.00, making it no longer inactive and resetting the clock.
Just being devils advocate - they may not want to hear from **Kelevra **as that may (a) remind them of said miserable upbringing that they’ve happily moved on from, or (b) depending on their level of maturity and anger, blame **Kelevra **for not doing more to spare them from as their adoptive aunt/uncle who was aware of crazy-sisters treatment of them.
I’m not saying that (b) would be justified, but it may be their knee-jerk reaction.