@skullguise - haven't been online much but congrats to Andrew and you and your wife.  Can't imagine the weight lifted as a result, seriously.  

Just lost my shit talking to some poor lady who works for the power company.  I've been paying two sets of power bills since my father died in 2000.  One is for the house where I (duh) live.  The other is for his two barns, which were part of his business.  They use basically zero electricity.  In the 2000s, I paid less than a dollar a month to power them @ 0 KwH.  Now, thanks to the de-regulation of the MA energy market, it's over $10.  National Grid is after me because there's been zero usage on the barns for over 6 mos and they think there's something wrong with the meter.  After an, ahem, spirited conversation with two different reps I arranged to cut power to the fucking barns.  

My next goal is to switch power companies, which something we can do now in the dystopian future of scenic western MA.  I get a sea of junk mail from companies that offer deals that reek like cell phone providers.  "Introductory rates" "low payments for 6 months" blah blah blah.  I want to see the world burn.  I think actually it is.  It was nearly 70º in February.

In the UK we have a multi-supplier market for energy, both electricity and gas. You can buy them separately or as a joint duel fuel deal. The government has mandated that it should be trivially easy to change supplier, which we do every year. Example: for the last year we used OVO, which had a per month deal which added up to UKP1260 per annum for gas and electricity. At the end of year 1 they wanted to increase it by 45% to UKP1728. Bugger that, so we have changed to another company from 20th March which offers UKP1512. I phoned up OVO to haggle them down, but they absolutely cannot budge - so we swap.

Reputation counts for a lot - our Consumer Associate (called Which?) rated OVO at 78% and the new outfit at 76%, so comparable customer satisfaction. The worst ones are British Gas (who have a massive TV advert campaign) and Npower. There was a lady on BBC radio today, who was simultaneously sent three bills for differing amounts for the same time period by British Gas. She asked, not unreasonably which one was the correct one to pay. This simple request proved to be impossible to resolve, and after several months - she started getting aggressive mails from a debt collection company! Basically BG are a bunch of incompetent fuck heads. In frustration with absolutely nobody taking her seriously, she contacted the consumer program on the radio, and they got it rapidly sorted. BG have paid her a sum in recompense for the screw up. But that was only because the BBC took up her case.

Have had previous bad experiences with Scottish Power (confusing web site, you can pay them electronically, but they only issue refunds by cheque etc etc)

Then there's the looming UK "Energy Gap" (having less generation capacity then demand, and long lead times for new builds ... oops, too late)  ... Have fun, Craig

https://www.imeche.org/news/news-article/closure-of-uk-coal-and-nuclear-plants-to-create-electricity-supply-gap-of-up-to-55-by-2025

(pdf report https://www.imeche.org/docs/default-source/position-statements-energy/imeche-ps-electricity-gap.pdf?sfvrsn=0 )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom#UK_.27energy_gap.27

 

Family bike ride to the beach this morning. Then breakfast at the Beach Bagel Cafe. Then biked home. Good Sunday morning.

Edited March 5, 20179 yr by morphsci

Spent about $3500 for an AirBnB reservation.

Oh wait, no that wasn't ME, but someone using my CC number.  Cancelled card, new one coming tomorrow; charge will come off.  Think it is just this, not bigger fraud.  But will keep an eye out and check credit agencies.

Does anyone know how to "decode" an AirBnB charge reference on the Credit card?  It says: AIRBNB * #XXXXX  (where the #XXXXX is a number and 5 letters).  Want to see if I can at least find out a bit about where the thief is going.....

Edited March 7, 20179 yr by skullguise

man, that sucks.  I have no experience with Air BnB, but I hope you are able to resolve things quickly!  CC fraud is crap.

Thanks Jacob.  Hopefully nothing big.  Transaction is already marked for credit, new account generated and card on the way.  I have a few sites that store my card info, need to change those.  And one domain name due for renewal today!  I called the company, and I think they can do it via PayPal for me.....

Yeezh.  I hate when that happens.

I sold my MHDT Lab Atlantis, all tubes and Gustard U12 and bought Violectric V800.

The money I got from trade went to the 007 funds

Edited March 9, 20179 yr by Sechtdamon

Yesterday, I was on my way back from Monaco to Cayman, and sat next to this dude on the London-Miami flight in business class: http://www.johnsambataro.com/www.johnsambataro.com/Home.html

Interesting guy. He's 63 and has been touring for 30 years, mostly with Dave Mason's band, but with Firefall for a while as well. Kind of a dead giveaway. He was wearing a new looking jacket that had this really cool embroidery on the back that read Dave Mason World Tour 2007. I had noticed it when we were boarding, so I had to ask him about it when he sat right across the aisle from me. "Oh, we get all kinds of this stuff..." Just a pretty regular guy who has seen the world several times over and is happy to still be doing what he loves and getting paid for it.

 

 

While there are options to select electric generation suppliers in a deregulated market, the actual distribution network is usually owned by one company. That's who sends you the entire combined bill each month, which has a minimum "connect" fee ($10/mo is not bad).

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Sold the A3 back to VW today.  Now the search for a car for the kids begins in earnest.   I just sent a text about a 2002 Volvo V70 for $1000...

Sold the A3 back to VW today.  Now the search for a car for the kids begins in earnest.   I just sent a text about a 2002 Volvo V70 for $1000...

Joe has an e90 325xi that I'm sure he'd sell.

**BRENT**

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1 minute ago, grawk said:

... Volvo V70 for $1000...

Yeezh.  Are you punishing them, or teaching them how to deal with car mechanics?

4 minutes ago, MexicanDragon said:

Joe has an e90 325xi that I'm sure he'd sell.

**BRENT**

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I bet he wants more than $2000 for that.

3 minutes ago, Dusty Chalk said:

Yeezh.  Are you punishing them, or teaching them how to deal with car mechanics?

I thought Volvos had gotten reliable by 2000.

11 minutes ago, grawk said:

I thought Volvos had gotten reliable by 2000.

Monkey did pretty well with his 2001, in the first ep of this season's Top Gear.

Edited March 17, 20179 yr by EdipisReks1

5 hours ago, grawk said:

I thought Volvos had gotten reliable by 2000.

It's possible my information is pre-2K.

...probable, even...

I'm single again, as of tonight.  Yay.

Spent Friday and Saturday participating in this-

Fencing Dad Stuff

In order to represent your country in the Olympics you need to fence in these competitions to qualify based on world points, this is basically the qualification path to the Olympics. I assisted with the technical gear set up for the bouts and competitor escorts to the strips. I was fortunate to be able to hang with many Olympians and just talk about regular stuff which was a refreshing change. By some odd coincidence I found myself working with and chatting with the US Olympic team coaches, a few college fencing team coaches and even the Russian Federation team coach.  Wow, what a odd coincidence which had nothing tho do with Lance's fencing what so ever.

Unfortunately, I did have a small issue with the Guatemala women's team coach's protest that I was favoring one Italian hot, cute, sexy, world cup fencer. I am appalled, and may refer this to my West Cost Legal Counsel or Jeff for resolution. 

 

Edited March 20, 20179 yr by Augsburger

Visiting my son for his graduation as the honor graduate from SOCM at:



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Congratulations to both you and your son.  Well done!

That's great Mike! Fantastic achievement!

fuckin' eh, that's awesome

Bigly, yuge accomplishment. Congrat.


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