Useless Conversation

[Yegolev]

Fucking AC crapped out on me sometime. On Easter.

Give it three days.

[RhyssaFireheart]

the Canucks playoff game 6 

 

Happy Easter all.  We ventured out to fine a grocery store in order to buy hot dogs and buns to grill.  Yay for no frills holidays and no relatives within 300 miles.

[Paelos]

Shit's about to get real with the Chicago game starting. This one's for America!

[Sand]

Happy Easter. Its flooding in our local area. ie the entire fucking mid-west.
Took the dog to the lake and let her swim to her heart's content.

Thats all.

[Engels]

Fucking AC crapped out on me sometime. On Easter.

Give it three days.

Bless you!   

[Morat20]

Fucking AC crapped out on me sometime. On Easter.

Give it three days.

Bravo. :)

[Paelos]

Fucking AC crapped out on me sometime. On Easter.

Give it three days.

Alright you got a smile from me with that one.

[Ironwood]

Fucking AC crapped out on me sometime. On Easter.

Give it three days.

 

[Paelos]

Technically, it would have had to crap out on Friday for that to work, though.

[Minvaren]

In irony news, I have a salesperson who keeps wanting to have a "con call" with me.   

Discovering the Ramones' version of "Spiderman" on the GH:WoR playlist last night was quite amusing, though.   

[Yegolev]

Technically, it would have had to crap out on Friday for that to work, though.

HVAC Jesus was late to his appointment.

[Polysorbate80]

I keep forgetting it's a 'holiday'. It's my least favorite, just so inconvenient.

Have a couple kids, they'll never let you forget.

Easter is one of my favorites, for one reason:  the wife buys up chocolate bunnies cheap right after the holiday, melts them down and uses them as frosting on devil's food cake.  That, sir, is some seriously tasty cake 

[Murgos]

So, I'm married now.   

[ghost]

So, I'm married now.   

Congratulations?

[Morat20]

So, I'm married now.   

You seem surprised. Was this one of those ambush weddings, where you'd just walking down the street when a woman in white plants one on your lips while a priest shouts "MAN AND WIFE! MAN AND WIFE!"?

:) Congratulations. Also, I'd like to go ahead and copyright my "When WannaBe Brides Attack" TV show idea.

[Murgos]

So, I'm married now.   

Congratulations?

Thanks?

No, actually I am very happy.  It's just surprising to be married at 39.  I had kind of written it off a while back.

[Sky]

I was pretty surprised to be engaged at 37, I had also written it off. But I think I called her bluff, still engaged 

[ghost]

I saw the  and wondered if you were actually happy about it. 

Being married is pretty cool sometimes.  I think you'll enjoy it.  But it can be a lot of hard work, too. 

[Mosesandstick]

Never too old, congrats!

[Yegolev]

I'm not sure how marriage could not be hard work.

[ghost]

I'm not sure how marriage could not be hard work.

Mine's actually not bad.  But my wife and I get along really, really well most of the time.  

Edit:  Whoohoo!  With this post Politics is now number three on my list of most posted boards.  Going to keep driving that bitch down. 

[Sand]

I'm not sure how marriage could not be hard work.

Traveling for work
Separate vacations
Girl friend on the side
 

[Merusk]

I'm not sure how marriage could not be hard work.

It's a lot easier when you're the one with the stronger personality.

[Ingmar]

Personally all my relationships that ever felt like 'work' ended well before getting married.

[Sjofn]

Congrats, Murgos!

[JWIV]

Congratulations Murgos!

[ghost]

When it really becomes work is when you have that little bundle of joy....

[Sjofn]

It'll never be work for us, then. 

[Morat20]

So I notice on my electric bill that my price dropped -- apparently my one-year contract expired and the month-to-month rate is about a penny cheaper per Kw/h.

So I go to their website and the first thing I notice -- despite me being on a 100% wind plan, there are no 100% renewable plans to choose from for a 12 month contract.

Weird, I think. Second, I notice that the prices range from about a penny a kw/h cheaper to a bit higher than my current price for the fixed-price, 12 month contracts. Doubly weird, I think. So I go to a lovely website that shows ALL the offers from ALL the electricity providers in Texas.

I find my company has, in fact, a 12 month 100% wind plan for 3 cents a kw/h cheaper than my current month to month. But it's for new customers only.

So, let us recap my electricity provider's business plan: Take a long-term customer (about 5 years now) and charge them more. In fact, make it worth their while to QUIT USING YOUR SERVICE for a year and then maybe come back. Because I can drop my bill by 20% by doing so.

Yeah. Their "new customer fixed rate" plan is like 20 to 25% cheaper than their "Existing customer fkxed rate" plan. And I can't even get a 100% renewable plan. The only way I can beat their "new customer price" at ALL is to take a variable price plan that is, currently, slightly less than that.

I can only imagine that the marketing and business geniuses responsible for the "fuck your current customers" plan all received massive bonuses this year, which probably went to hookers and blow. Needless to say, I plan to call them tomorrow and give them one chance to qualify me for the plan I want. 

[Merusk]

Cable and Cell Phone companies do the same thing so it's not all that surprising.

[climbjtree]

Well, looks like I met my future ex-wife. Damn it.

[Sky]

Cable and Cell Phone companies do the same thing so it's not all that surprising.

Time-Warner finally pulled the 'we absolutely cannot give you any deals' the last time I called for my annual 'what deals can you give me this year because this bill is obscene'. They've been eroding my services for more money over the last several years, five years ago I had the movie channels, RR and phone for around $130/mo. This month (our last) would've been $190 for no movie channels, RR and phone...if I hadn't dumped the phone portion for a tracfone ($100/yr? Yes, please).

Fuck cable, I'm done with it. It's going to hurt, most of the shows I watch are starting their new seasons right now (screw you BBC for not letting me watch Dr Who from my region online). But four months of no tv will pay for my half of our annual vacation. Looking forward to the summer of spending time hiking, painting and playing guitar. Thanks, Time-Warner!

[Morat20]

Cable and Cell Phone companies do the same thing so it's not all that surprising.

Problem for electricity providers in Texas is this: For all the things Texas has fucked up, the way they handled deregulating electricity (specifically, what regulations they KEPT and added) was very well done.

For consumers. There are some 30+ providers servicing my area, and the grid is completely severed from providers. (There's a few other things, some contributing the boom in wind energy and such).

In short, it takes about two minutes to get a nice table of everyone I can buy power from and compare their plans. It takes about 30 to switch to a new provider, which is done seamlessly. I just send the bills to a different company. The follks maintaining my power lines and responding to outages? Same guys as before.

If Time Warner had 30 competitors that you could switch to with a phone call, and the next day you'd be using your new cable with the same box and remotes, absolutely transparent to you -- the fuckers wouldn't dick with your bill so much. Which is what's confusing me about this "fuck your existing customers" plan.

It's not a hassle at all to change providers. The worst possible thing I might have to deal with is not having balanced billing for the summer months. It's a really dumb-ass move on their parts.

Shit, it's basically like car insurance. It's about that easy to switch. Can you imagine State Farm deciding it's business model was to charge loyal customers more?

[Sky]

Forgot to mention...the day I got my jacked T-W bill there was an article in the paper about how Time-Warner was shedding subscribers like crazy...and their profits were up 20%. Monopoly ftw.

[Sjofn]

Every time we think about rejoining civilization and getting cable, we see how much it costs and go "fuck cable!" For what little I'd want to watch, it is so not worth it, and I guess Ingmar feels similarly, since he's usually the first to announce cable can go fuck itself.