Contentious C

I'm very much in camp "Own if you can". I think leases are basically the car industry's worst contribution to late-stage capitalism. And it's not like it makes a difference to you with respect to "where do I put this?" when you're in the city; it's going to be a fucking headache either way. The only good thing is if it turns out you don't like it, you can cut bait with the lease and go back to no car at all. Then again, you might be able to sell the used car in the same window and get a tiny bit of your money back. It's worth asking yourself whether you can shell out 10K-plus (either in repairs or finding something else) if it shits itself and dies in 2 years. I just quickly Googled your trip distance and it looks like 250+ miles round-trip, so yeah, the lease mileage limits would stand some chance of being eaten through within the usual 3-year time frame of a lease. The only real benefit to a lease, at the end of the day, is that it is/should be more or less perpetually under warranty by virtue of being a lease. I have a Hyundai, which was very much bought with the 10-year powertrain/hybrid system warranty in mind. And nothing used is going to come with *that* good of a warranty; the only manufacturer that transfers its warranties to new owners (within its initial 10-year window) is Mitsubishi. That said, I don't know whether an extended warranty is necessarily a good thing; my gut says there's a pretty good reason why *those* calls specifically are so often phone spam/scam calls. I guess it depends on what the dealership offers and whether you have any flexibility there. Mine was completely new, so I have the ability to take it to any Hyundai dealership, and you probably won't have that option if it breaks down on you upstate. Also depends on the brand. Those surveys about which brands are most reliable are fairly accurate, but you could always dip to the library and leaf through a few Consumer Reports if you have time. Check the difference between the '22/'23/'24 models for instance. Usually it doesn't matter; sometimes there are big improvements or losses in quality. Your insurance rates are going to be potentially monstrous, but it largely depends on (I think) the Blue Book value of the car and (for a fact) your location. So yours are probably not fun regardless just due to location. But I traded in an '02 Saturn for my '19 Hyundai and the rates doubled instantly in the DC area. Get whatever your insurance company's "Drive Safe" app is and maybe you can shave some off, as long as you don't drive like a fucking maniac. Otherwise I agree with BP - it's hard to get away with bare-minimum insurance if it's the only vehicle you own. They have to make the assumption you could use it for just about anything. It's not like having a Corvette that sits in the garage 95% of the time and is just used for fun. It sounds like the lease might make more sense to you, even if it is consumerism at its worst. I would 100% go with your bank loan or wave that in their faces if that's the better deal for you. Use absolutely every bit of leverage you have, because there are no worse people to deal with on a regular basis than people in car sales. Look for really anything that sounds hinky in the price description, ask them to describe what literally everything means if that's what gets at a real answer: if it sounds like nonsense, it's probably just an attempt at mark-up. If you don't drive with regularity in snow and know exactly how to handle a 4WD vehicle in those conditions, you want the AWD. Also, right now isn't a great time to buy something anyway: not because of interest rates, but because, like a lot of companies, car dealerships and manufacturers base things off the Fiscal Year beginning in October. If you can wait 4 months, you might be able to get an even better deal as they try to get rid of stock (i.e., picking up a '24 model for less, or a '23 for even less than that if one sat that long). Then again, that might be why the lease is whatever cost you're seeing: they're trying to avoid it becoming old stock once this October rolls around.

FIFY.

And Bronny "Not Even Good by Summer League Standards" James is evidently drawing a bunch of prop bets for ROY. I wish I could find somewhere to place one of those "take the field" bets in this instance.

LOL, the decline of Covid. We're stuck with it, forever. And currently on an upswing going by wastewater detection levels.

They usually have a series of questions that can get you disqualified by the lawyers during the selection process (things like, have you been convicted of something, has your life been affected by violence or the crime in question, etc.), which should be well before the rest. I just sat in a room and read Ender's Game front to back before they called me in and tossed me off the list the last time. Or, look up jury nullification! If I were fabulously wealthy, I'd run a billboard campaign across the country to get people to learn about it.

Maybe only a little? My gym used to have signs up about not *directly* spraying the equipment for the reasons outlined and others. And I think that's more or less best practice: carry a towel that's just for spraying sanitizer on it, spray *the towel and not the bench*, and then wipe it off after. I mean, I don't want to baste in someone else's sweat, and frankly, not cleaning things off is how ringworm spreads in gyms, too.

Well, I'm betting one of the biggest reasons Steam doesn't have a lot of refunds on Baldur's Gate is that it takes you more than 2 hours to do just about anything. If it had a Sandwich Tutorial, it would take you 85 minutes thanks to scrolling on condiments. I've barely made it anywhere and like it so far, but it's...good, not great? Maybe I'm just hitting a wall on having consumed a lot of D&D-based content in a short time, or maybe I just feel like 20% off wasn't enough of a discount. Something like that. But they patched one of the loopholes I heard about that I was really interested in exploiting, especially since exploiting it seems 100% in keeping with the spirit of the quest, so I'm bummed about having to do that one way or the other.

I've been having quite a lot of lumbar spine pain that's relatively new (it's already bad near the sacral area thanks to the arthritis; this is 5-6" higher). I'm nearly certain at this point that the running I'm doing is just finding a different way to fuck me up. Yesterday I was able to get over the nagging things that made me want to not run at all - sore knee, sore groin, sore tibia - and got it done with meaningful progress, but I don't know if I can keep doing it 1x a week for the foreseeable future. I really don't want to go back to biking - it's frankly too easy for me, and I'd rather be *able* to run in some capacity than feel like I'm losing that as I'm getting older and more broken-down.

The team motto writes itself: "The Utah Hockey Club: Not the Worst UHC You Know!"

Can we call you "No Fun Tbarrie" now?

I'm enough of a nerd that I'd probably get some graph paper and make myself a cheat sheet of what got planted where as it happened. Doesn't do you much good now, but, one idea to avoid confusion if it bugged you enough. Doesn't sound like it did. Plus, that's also assuming the labels are correct anyway. A few years ago, my mother tried to buy some slicing tomatoes as well as cherries at a farmer's market, got them home and planted them, but they were all big'uns. The pin must have been swapped or misplaced from the start, but I guess that'll happen when you're handling 2-3000 plants at a time.

Take heart, neither is he.

Not the worst idea.

Glenn Frey? Eeuhhgghgh. Were the slippers warm because they were full of dog vomit?

The Time of Contempt is a Hell of a lot better than the other, earlier Witcher books, but it certainly raises the question of why Netflix had to suck so hard at adapting the whole Reince plot and the Yen/Ciri relationship.