chasfh

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.

To your point, almost no one worth a darn is taking big money for short deals, so in practical terms, the option you'd rather see is not an option at all. Players are people, and people want as security that's as long-term as they can manage. Yeah, I know, Trevor Bauer. Obviously a freak. And in more ways than one. 😏

lol "10 AT&T executives"

Assuming people search on porn sites for things they see as taboo, I gotta chuckle at the idea of how exotic a librarian is to Montanans, and black people are to Kansans. Although I guess California would be the exception to prove that rule?

This is the summary statement of my last post, right here.

The risk at hand is that Jeimer, who has now established a baseline major league performance level, is pretty likely to be the clear best 3B option for us going into 2024, the year I assume the team is planning to finally contend for a ring. If that’s the case, then our decision at that point will be to give him however many years needed to keep him, for our best chance at the ring that year and beyond, or let him go and hope we have someone at least close who can replace him. This is why I don’t think a guaranteed three-year deal with an additional two team-options contract would be a bad risk. Sure, he could turn into a pumpkin in 2022 or ‘23 and we’d be on the hook for a third year in ‘24, but that would be it. Then we could audition his position for year three even, then be free of him after. But if he turns out for the next three years to be the player he was in 2021 (or even better), then we could gladly pick up the option for 2025, and if that works as well, for 2026, too. I think that’s a better risk than just taking the two arbs as they come, then having to decide whether we want to give him guarantees for through perhaps 2027 specifically because we need him for the push in 2024. I’ve talked myself into it: give Jeimer a 3+2 deal. If we don’t and take our chances on his arb instead, then we should plan on replacing him in 2024 no matter what.

A crucifix? Isn’t that a Catholic thing? Oh, the evangelicals won’t like that …

Cool. Thanks. Because I’d prefer not to re-sign him.

Speak for yourself.

With good folks.

Based on their crawl, this tweet would also be appropriate for Media Meltdowns and media Bias 101.

Why doesn’t Putin just direct them to lie about the population? Is he losing his grip? 😏

If the story is that AJ was against it, ripped TVs off the wall in protest of it, but it went on anyway despite him, how do you square that circle?

Fork yeah, benches!

Since Correa was one of the main public apologists of the incident afterwards so probably a clubhouse ringleader, and therefore one of the players AJ presumably couldn’t control, I have to wonder how that affects Correa’s chances of coming to play here.

How much better do you require a third baseman with a 125 OPS+ over his last 830 plate appearances to hit? Do you really think Jeimer’s defense is so bad that his level of offense can’t cover for it?

I think a three-year deal with two team options would be an acceptable risk, and a motivating factor for Jeimer. The alternatives to plan for, as I see them, are to get two more good years out of Jeimer and let him walk, or get two more good years out of him and pay him 3-4 more years to keep him around. Planning as of today, I don’t love either of those alternatives, necessarily. One might counter that the two years we get out of Jeimer may not be good at all, to which I might reply, why plan on keeping a not-good 3B around for two years, then? After all, we just got a 3.6-win season out of him following a shortened season that projected out to 5 wins. That should allow us to project nine or wins for the next three seasons, shouldn’t it? If that’s the case, it might be worth locking him down for the year we plan on contending, then having him earn the following two years through performance. After all, we just committed to two more years to 30- and 31-year-old Jonathan Schoop, who just had his first two-win season in three years. Why would committing three years to a younger, better player be nuts?

It’s that accent. That sexy-as-**** working-class accent waxing eloquently.