What You've Done Today - Always You Must Meddle, Looking For Trouble Where None Exists.

[Malcador]

Damn Euros and their metric worship.

[LadyCrimson]

Don't worry, I bet next year the Bay Area will raise the Therm rate here another dollar and we'll be at least closer to your pain prices then.

...economically, I feel like the world is going to get (extra, really) FUBAR before too long. There are so many factors leading up to the possibility of a new long civil unrest/skirmish period it's not even funny.  Then again maybe I'm just saying what cynical old farts always say when they become old farts.

Edited February 1, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Gfted1]

29 minutes ago, majestic said:

Hold on a second. 3.32€ per "therm", convert to USD at current rate... we're at 3.74$ per therm, give or take a few cent.

Whoa thats astronomical! Do you have alternative means for heating your homes in Germany besides your furnace? What do you keep your thermostat temperature set to? Let me see if I can math that out... $190 / .63 = 301.58 therms used by me. Then multiplied by your therm price... 302 x 3.74 = $1,129.48. WHAT! That cant be right. Someone help me out here.

31 minutes ago, majestic said:

By the way, I know there are also a lot of practical reasons for keeping the regular measurements, but there have been attempts to change it and even swapping road signs lead to protests it really just comes across as "We 'Murica, so we do our own thing!" by now. Honestly though, I don't doubt you'd find a whole lot of people who would give a reason like that when asked why not to switch, next to claims that Imperial measurements are simply "natural" (maybe they once were or I have supremely long thumbs, but not one part of it is an inch... no way) or something. I think the last time a man's belt was a yard long was when the yard was devised.

Mostly good natured polemic.

No worries. I dont recall any protests but I may just not have noticed. Speed limit signs seems like it would be a good place to start considering the speedometers in our cars already have a km/h ring built in below the mph ring.

[majestic]

11 minutes ago, Gfted1 said:

Whoa thats astronomical! Do you have alternative means for heating your homes in Germany besides your furnace? What do you keep your thermostat temperature set to? Let me see if I can math that out... $190 / .63 = 301.58 therms used by me. Then multiplied by your therm price... 302 x 3.74 = $1,129.48. WHAT! That cant be right. Someone help me out here.

*mutters something about not being German*

Calculations are fine. Energy prices are pretty steep here, but that's nothing new. Fun fact, compared to the rest of Europe they're pretty mild too, like our gasoline price is a bit more than half of what it apparently is in Sweden. We do have natural gas central heating here, that's still cheaper than electric heating. There's alternatives too, of course, but a whole lot of appartment buildings have central gas heating.

The cheapest alternative is district heating, and that might become available sometime soon. My parents have a ****le stove that's working pretty well, and they do have a cheap source of firewood, so all in all it's not that bad. Thermostat is generally set to 24°C with a nightly cooldown period from 2200 to 0600. It's been a pretty mild winter so far, all in all it could be worse.

[Gromnir]

am part o' smud, the sacramento municipal utility district. ordinarily our most expensive bill o' the year is the one which covers december, which is curious 'cause january is usual the coldest month. *shrug*

our december bills (we do get a bit o' propane delivered which is just for our oven) were $213.42. ~2800sqft home. 

is a mistake to think o' a california rate. is massive differences 'tween what we pay compare to humboldt county v. san jose. 

we can't complain. the costs o' utilities is govt. subsidized, so places where is extreme cold often get a lower rate. am actual most surprised by how little, relative speaking, we pay in july and august compared to december january. am from the midwest, so winters don't feel particular cold to us in sacramento. summer is when we has had rolling blackouts, so you would assume sky-high rates. 

HA! Good Fun!

 

[LadyCrimson]

1 hour ago, Gfted1 said:

301.58 therms

We're typically 100 or less Therms per month and that's with an always-cold hubby. But we only have a single wall furnace in a fairly small house. We don't turn the thermostat on above 74F and that only for short periods. 70-72 is more average. At night it's turned down to 60F.  Gas stovetop, and the water heater is always cranked near max. That's about it I think.  Late edit: also, a mild climate, ofc

26 minutes ago, Gromnir said:

Is a mistake to think o' a california rate. is massive differences 'tween what we pay compare to humboldt county v. san jose. 

Oh, I know it varies, I was making a broad generalization. I think in my later post I did say Bay Area.
I looked at the the Sac. rate of the new house. It's the exact same as the house down here. Although I'm a little confused looking at that because I thought hubby said it wasn't PGE up there but it's included in the same PGE billing statement, with no other company name listed/visible - I know hubby arranged it that way for the moment (all on one bill mailing) but I'll have to ask him, I could be remembering wrong as I often do these days.

Edited February 1, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Azdeus]

30 minutes ago, majestic said:

*mutters something about not being German*

Calculations are fine. Energy prices are pretty steep here, but that's nothing new. Fun fact, compared to the rest of Europe they're pretty mild too, like our gasoline price is a bit more than half of what it apparently is in Sweden. We do have natural gas central heating here, that's still cheaper than electric heating. There's alternatives too, of course, but a whole lot of appartment buildings have central gas heating.

The cheapest alternative is district heating, and that might become available sometime soon. My parents have a ****le stove that's working pretty well, and they do have a cheap source of firewood, so all in all it's not that bad. Thermostat is generally set to 24°C with a nightly cooldown period from 2200 to 0600. It's been a pretty mild winter so far, all in all it could be worse.

*Jealousy intensifies*

Atleast I'm not driving a diesel car, it's even worse than petrol. E85 has taken a big hit aswell since they started mixing in more ethanol in the 95 petrol. I love how the politicians here kick the teeth in on the people that try to follow their guidelines to lower emissions.

[majestic]

2 minutes ago, Azdeus said:

*Jealousy intensifies*

Atleast I'm not driving a diesel car, it's even worse than petrol. E85 has taken a big hit aswell since they started mixing in more ethanol in the 95 petrol. I love how the politicians here kick the teeth in on the people that try to follow their guidelines to lower emissions.

Our diesel prices are at an almost all time high with 1.4€/l right now. The only time it was worse was back in 2008, and we all know how that crashed turned out.

[Azdeus]

6 minutes ago, majestic said:

Our diesel prices are at an almost all time high with 1.4€/l right now. The only time it was worse was back in 2008, and we all know how that crashed turned out.

The price of diesel was 22.6sek or something like that when I was at the gasstation today.

The last time I remember petrol being less than 10SEK was when I was 15 and driving my moped back in 2000. For a short, short time, I could fill my Yamaha DT50Rs tank for 100SEK.

[LadyCrimson]

Needless postscript: hubby came home from his errand. I guess it's the electric portion that is not PGE in Sac, but the gas still is.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Well it looks like there's another Arctic Blast headed towards me on Thursday and staying till Sunday. I hope the power grid doesn't fail again, but they still haven't fixed it since last time so uhhh yeah. **** is going to suck.

[Gromnir]

35 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

Although I'm a little confused looking at that because I thought hubby said it wasn't PGE up there but it's included in the same PGE billing statement, with no other company name listed/visible - I know hubby arranged it that way for the moment (all on one bill mailing) but I'll have to ask him, I could be remembering wrong as I often do these days.

both pg&e and smud serve sacramento county...

edit: we see you got clarification.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited February 1, 2022 by Gromnir

[Bartimaeus]

One of my new 14 TB hard drives started groaning and clicking constantly about an hour ago. Well, let's load up the SMART data real quick...

WARNING
Number of retired sectors: 400
Number of unstable sectors: 48

oh hell naw, dawg, that ain't cool. sigh, this is going to be a long night. always a good idea to let your drives run for at least about a month before you start trusting them, folks.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Bartimaeus

[LadyCrimson]

^ Yeah, that always sucks. I didn't have 14 but when I built a PC (the last one? My current one? I forget) one of the two initial storage HDD's acted all super flaky in days ... didn't know what was going on at first but it was just immediate failure I guess. had to replace it/get another one. I think that's the only drive I've had that was basically just a dud from the getgo vs. lasting years.

[Malcador]

Still backing up stuff on a new 5tb external drive I got.  I think I might need another one.

[LadyCrimson]

*rolls up sleeves, gets out the Scrub-Free, brushes, and a gasmask*
*scrubscrubscrubscrub..freakingtoomanyLayersOfSoapBuildUp..scrubscrubscrubscrub..myhands..gettingtoobroken-downforthis..scrubscrubscrubscrub*

...an hour later...

"Honey, I have decided. I know you're an Ivory-Man, but no more bar soap allowed in the shower."
"....ok....."

...was productive today, doing stuff needing to be done before staying at the other house. If we stay up there, I'll need to do more of course, but there's still an initial minimum regardless.

Edited February 3, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Gorth]

On 2/2/2022 at 7:36 AM, Malcador said:

Damn Euros and their metric worship.

[Malcador]

Spent so much time trying to debug something due to the IDE crashing when I try to debug something.

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Spent the day preparing for the freeze, looks like I'm going to be bunkered down for a couple of days. Hopefully the power doesn't fail again.

Glasses are ready for pickup, so I guess I'll join the bespectacled gang soon.

[LadyCrimson]

I think I could use to see the eyewear doc. again. I have two pairs of glasses - the newer pair is better for watching TV from couch distance (or driving) but gives me way more eyestrain at desktop-distance, so I use the older pair when computing. It's weird. Probably something to do with being both near and far sighted now with that inbetween zone fluctuating and giving me problems.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I am now in the glasses gang. Distant vision in my left eye is much better, but with both eyes stuff up close it distorted a bit like it's curved. Not a problem with individual eyes though. Maybe I just need to adjust.

[majestic]

20 minutes ago, KP the Torque Dork said:

I am now in the glasses gang. Distant vision in my left eye is much better, but with both eyes stuff up close it distorted a bit like it's curved. Not a problem with individual eyes though. Maybe I just need to adjust.

Yes, and you'll need to do that every time you get new glasses. It takes a bit, but eventually goes away, might experience some of the usual eye-strain symptoms (i.e. headaches, mostly, but also feeling a little more tired than usual), perhaps a feeling of a little imbalance.

 

[melkathi]

Welcome to the glasses gang!

Some say we have the best taste in games.

[Malcador]

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

1 hour ago, majestic said:

Yes, and you'll need to do that every time you get new glasses. It takes a bit, but eventually goes away, might experience some of the usual eye-strain symptoms (i.e. headaches, mostly, but also feeling a little more tired than usual), perhaps a feeling of a little imbalance.

 

NANI?

It's very weird and disorienting. But the glasses do really help with my left eye, now I can actually read stuff with it.

41 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Welcome to the glasses gang!

Some say we have the best taste in games.

Hmmm, I do feel myself getting a hankering for some weird cinema in the last few hours. Maybe that's the spectacles at work?