chasfh

FWIW, in a chat, Kevin Goldstein said he thought that the AJ connection in Detroit might help bring Correa here. Flip side, Goldstein was neck deep in the scandal down there, so I'm not sure how much salt to put on that assessment.

And since when can't you measure thickness with a caliper? Is that a controversy, too?

You want video? OK. Same video they showed during the game. There is no controversy because literally no one is claiming that he swung after all. The umpire botched it. I'm not blaming him for the loss, because the Giants made their share of fatal mistakes (Doval in the ninth?). But the umpire's botched call sealed the loss and robbed the Giants of overcoming their own mistakes.

Seems like a thing that could be solved perfectly with a robot.

Are we seriously litigating what a check swing is? Regardless that a check swing is not defined in the rule book, it is not left up to umpire discretion, either. It's been long accepted that the check swing line goes directly out from the batter, perpendicular from the line running from the pitcher's plate on the mound to home plate. If the bat crosses that line, it's a swing. If it doesn't, it's not. The photo of the swing showed that Flores's bat fell short of that line, and in no baseball world is the point at which he stopped the bat considered a swing. The umpire made a mistake.

So are we. 😁

I was at the Stones show in 2019 when they played the song, and I was a little surprised at that moment that they played it.

Purrrrty much.

FOP is simply the worst.

Gotta hand it to him, though: he knows his base.

Thought popped into my head upon seeing this: when will we see a lawsuit charging that the prohibition against carrying firearms on airplanes is a violation of Second Amendment rights? At least on domestic flights.

I’m afraid you’re right. I’m also afraid Democrats and their voters may not be up to that task, since Republicans are active working on rigging the system in state after state right now, as we speak, and Democrats are behaving as though elections will always be business as usual.

Good question. Are they?

Bunker’s not “falling for” anything. He’s an infantryman in the disinformation war. The “I’m not a fan of Trump” thing was his first line of disinformation, and everything proceeds from that. It’s the exact same thing as when anyone says, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body”, and then try to convince you of that by telling you they don’t discriminate against green or purple people.

Until Trump and his circle are truly held to account, the committee will forever be a waste of time.

Good thing I have a long weekend to work on that! 😝

Yeah, we’re here now, so we good.

That would be for replacing the whole wall, exactly because of the color match issue. I think I was expecting maybe five-ish. But I have no sense of proper scale when it comes to this kind of thing. Your comment on lack of multiple quotes may be on point.

Now, here’s some advice I will ask for here—more like, does this look right to you? We’ve been getting water damage in the first floor ceiling near the back door. After some investigation, it turns out that the flashing behind the vinyl siding, which is supposed to be the last line of defense against moisture getting into the house, was likely improperly installed toward the area near the bottom of the second floor, off where a balcony had been installed when the house was built. The company who discovered this don’t work with house siding, so we had to find another company who does to look into it. After a couple companies going dark on us after an initial consult (probably because they’re slammed with business during COVID times and the job is too small potatoes for them), we found a company through the old Angie’s List who were willing to give us an estimate to fix the problem. Their solution: remove existing siding from the rear wall of house only; install TYVEK housewrap; tape all seams with TYVEK seam tape; install DOW high performance underlayment insulation; install CertainTeed Monogram vinyl siding; all work to be hand nailed; trim patio door. Cost: $14,969, not including any replacement lumber and labor needed if they have to remove and replace any of the balcony permanently to complete the job. Setting aside that there was no mention of replacing the flashing (which was identified as the problem in the first place, and which I am following up with them on), 15 large seems like a lot-a lot of money to pay for this kind of remove-and-replace job for just one side of the house, and the smallest side, by a long shot, to boot. So my question is: does anyone have a feel for whether this is a fair price? I’m not saying this is a simple job by any means, but … wow, that’s a lot of money for what they've described.

OK, I’ll start with some proactive advice. Don’t you just love going to a dealer to buy a new car, seeing one you want, and then spending hours or even days wrestling with any number of salespeople and their managers for the adversarial purpose of trying to wring every last dollar out of each other? Yeah, me neither. Last time I did that was over, of all things, a Honda Accord. I remember it taking over an hour at the end trying to get the guy under $19,000, they’re trying to keep me well above that, managers are shuttling in and out of the room to combat me, and we settle on $19,050. I walked away with my stomach in knots. One of my worst purchase experiences ever. The next time I bought a car, I decided that rather than going through that nonsense again, instead of working in person with a dealer on a car I see on the lot, I decided to determine the exact car I want first, then bid that car out to multiple dealers. First step: “build” the car you want, down to each individual option, then determine the MSRP and Invoice cost on the car. You can do that fairly easily online at a few different websites. Next, develop a list of dealers to bid the car out to. You should probably plan to contact at least ten to start; more depending on how ambitious you are. Make an initial phone call (not email) to the new car sales manager and tell them, I am definitely buying a car in the next few weeks, I’m contacting several dealers and will go with the one that gives me the best price, and do you want to participate? At least 80% of them will say yes, many of them eagerly. Then ask for their email address. After you have the list of participants in hand, email an identical letter to each one: I am ready to buy a car, I’m asking for proposals from a number of dealers, and I will buy from the dealer who gives me the best price. Here’s the car I want, and list out every option, all with their Invoice and MSRP, along with the totals for the whole car, so they know that you know what their costs are. Also tell them you’re aware of whatever buyer incentives there are, and to NOT factor those into the final price. Also, if you can afford to, tell them you are NOT offering them a trade-in, since they can manipulate their bid based on that. Try to keep the trade-in part separate from the purchase part. Then tell them that after you get all the first bids from everyone, you will report the best bid to all participants and give them just one shot at beating that price. Tell them that second-round bid will be final, and that you will contact the winner at that point to finalize the deal, discuss financing, and arrange to sign paperwork. You don't want to go back to the well more than twice, because that's unseemly and leaves a bad taste with them. (When you do move into the second round, start with the highest bid dealer and work backwards to the best bid dealer, so that the best bid gets better as you move toward the initial first round best bid.) Then, and this is important: be sure to follow through exactly on this plan. Do this only if you are 100% certain you are buying car. Otherwise, they’ll remember you next time you try this and it might not work so well. I’ve bought my last four cars using this method and not only have I saved thousands of dollars each time, but as importantly, I’ve avoided the knots in my stomach from the angst of going back and forth with an adversary much better trained and more experienced to do so than I could ever be. After all, you negotiate with a dealer only once every few years—they do it as their job every single day. Try this next time you buy a car. You won't regret it.

Looking back, I’m surprised that there was never a thread established in which we MTSers (or MTFers, if you prefer) could share general advice with each other about any number of things. There were a few one-off threads for specific instances, but no general catch-all thread. So, I thought I would take a hack at establishing such a thread right here, right now. I figure this thread could manifest itself in two ways: (1) people who need advice and want to ask it of people they know only from an online forum, which is valuable in its own right under certain circumstances; and (2) people who have useful advice they want to proactively share, simply because they are bursting with love and concern for their fellow MTFer. (Yup, that’s the one I’m going with here.) I’m thinking the advice could cover basically any topic, really: life, love, money, home, career, leisure, products, etc., etc., etc. Anything that affects our daily lives. (Except sex. Please, no sex advice! 😜) JK on that last one. No I’m not. Whatever.

Ex-Tiger reliever is the opener for LA tonight.

I will stop short of exclaiming "FINALLY!", since referral for criminal contempt is just the first step and the Democrats aren't past the point of no return for caving yet. But, come on, they have to show some balls and go for this without being paralyzed into inaction by fears that Republicans will do the same to them. This is not a politics-as-usual issue at hand here. This is treason of the highest order at hand, and it must be dealt with decisively, because given what we all know about what will happen when Republicans take control, in which democracy dies and Democratic Party will lose everything anyway, Democrats literally have nothing to lose and everything to gain here.

I loved moving to Central Time when I went to Milwaukee in 1992, not just for the sports (ABC MNF at 8pm!), but also for the 7pm-10pm prime time schedule, which was an actual factor in early-cable pre-DVR days. News at 10pm, Carson at 1030pm, Letterman at 1130pm, SNL also at 1030pm—just better all around. When I moved to Columbus, then Baltimore, I missed Central time hugely. When the Chicago job came through, returning to Central Time was not a small reason I couldn't wait to get there.