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On 2/6/2018 at 8:50 AM, Tabe said:

My first Rubik's Cube competition as an organizer, and not just a competitor, went off today without a hitch. We had an overflow crowd at one of the libraries here in Spokane and a good time was had by all.

On a personal level, I destroyed my personal best times in every event and could not be happier with how I performed.  All 5 of my solves in the standard 3x3 Rubik's Cube event were faster than my previous best time in a competition.  

Me: Peeling the stickers off back in the day ; )

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6 hours ago, The Natural said:

Me: Peeling the stickers off back in the day ; )

This is literally the first thing 90% of people say when they find out I can solve a cube. 

Even back in the day, I never did this :)

Modern Rubik's brand cubes have plastic tiles and are darn near impossible to take apart so you can't cheat. Other brands use stickers or the pieces themselves are colored. Hardly anyone besides Rubik's does tiles. 

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  • 1 month later...

Feeling pretty damn good today as my boss told me I got a raise.  Which is awesome and much-needed considering Uncle Sam decided to be a jackass to us this tax season.  But it'll be nice to not only take care of that but have a little fuck money on the side.  Woo-hoo!

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On 4/25/2018 at 4:40 PM, NikoBaltimore said:

Feeling pretty damn good today as my boss told me I got a raise.  Which is awesome and much-needed considering Uncle Sam decided to be a jackass to us this tax season.  But it'll be nice to not only take care of that but have a little fuck money on the side.  Woo-hoo!

Advice for you and anyone else getting fucked annually by the tax man (apologies to @Cliff Hanger).  If you don't own a home and don't have kids, you may want to claim zero on your W4 and put an extra bit (maybe $20 each) in federal and state each paycheck.  This is the advice my last company's CFO gave me when I bitched about owing money every year and asked him for advice.  He literally said to me, "you live in an apartment and don't have kids.  The tax code was not written for you."  You need to adjust for that.

I know there's the old adage "don't make the government your savings account; they don't pay interest!" but to me, I'd rather lose a bit in interest and get something back then get a shitty "surprise!  Send us $500!" the first quarter of every year.  Shit.  I own a home now and have a kid and, while I now claim the correct number of deductions, I still put an extra $25 to both state and federal just in case.

Heh.  That reminds me of  a shady company, who employed some shady-ass people, that I worked for like 20 years ago.  A new hire claimed like 10 or 12 on his W4.  Either he was trying fuck his way into fielding a baseball team or he knew he'd be dodging taxes anyway so he wanted to get as much of his paycheck as possible.  Amazing.

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Appreciate the advice, @Technico Support  In my case it was an issue with the insurance my wife put me on.  It was the localized version of Obamacare and nobody told us I could only make so much a year.  So with my job there was a disparity what I was making and the amount that would be cool with their insurance.  So it was pretty much paying that off, but all goes well the years after won't be bad since we switched to my work insurance (so far they haven't screwed me over yet)

Regarding the extra $20 that's a helluva idea and I'll get on that.  We don't have a kid yet, but are hoping to try for one at the end of the year.  So until then I'm cool with anything that helps when the taxman comes a-knockin'.

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On 4/25/2018 at 9:40 PM, NikoBaltimore said:

Feeling pretty damn good today as my boss told me I got a raise.  Which is awesome and much-needed considering Uncle Sam decided to be a jackass to us this tax season.  But it'll be nice to not only take care of that but have a little fuck money on the side.  Woo-hoo!

Congrats, matey!

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We celebrated our first wedding anniversary yesterday by having an offer accepted on a condo.  

I'm still in the "oh wow, we bought a place" phase but am rapidly moving into "oh my god there is so much to do."

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This actually happened late last week but...

Approximately 18 months ago, we had a severe windstorm here in Spokane that resulted a piece of fascia on my roof being pulled out, essentially creating a big funnel for water right into an interior wall.  When the insurance guy came out and inspected our damage, I repeatedly asked if we needed a new roof as it looked like we'd sustained some damage up there as well.  "No" was the answer.  The damage got fixed and life was good.

A couple months ago, my wife noticed new damage in the exact same place as before.  Called the insurance company, they came out, and said that the damage was the result of "wear and tear" and not covered.  I said wait a minute, it's in the exact same place as before, clearly it wasn't repaired properly.  Was told if that's the case, still not their problem, it's an issue for me and the contractor (who they recommended and vouched for, btw).  Called the contractor, they denied any issue and - literally - refused to come out and look at the damage.

Around that same time, I got a flyer in the mail from a roofing contractor extolling their success on getting people new roofs, covered by insurance.  Skeptical, but open to trying anything, I had those guys come out.  They looked around, marked a bunch of damage spots, took photos, and said, yep, you need a new roof and yours is wind-damaged (covered by insurance).  Another call to insurance, they come back out, and inspect again, this time with the roofing guy.  They come down from my roof, insurance guy leaves, roofing guy says "they're denying you a new roof.  I have no idea why.  They've approved new roofs with far less damage for me in the past."  Lovely.  Roofing guy says he's not done, he'll appeal the decision and ask for a new inspection by a different adjuster.

That all goes basically nowhere, with the insurance company they won't give me a new adjuster.  Can't blame them, they don't want people "adjuster shopping".  I said, well, my guy says I need a new roof, you guys say no.  They say "get us another estimate saying you need a new roof and we'll approve a roof".  So I call another company, they come out.  These guys are much more professional.  Guy says I need a new roof but thinks insurance won't cover it.  Lovely.  But he also says the one area where the new water damage was located was unlikely to be able to be repaired, it would have to replaced and "that's our in".  OK.  I ask him to send over a super-detailed estimate and explanation of why a new roof is in order. He comes back to take more photos.  This time he says "hey, you already have 3 layers - I *CAN'T* repair this." (2 layers is legal limit).  

So he sends over the detailed estimate and I wait.  Hear nothing from insurance company.  Then they actually call me to ask where the second estimate is?  I say, uh, you already have it.  Claims guy says oh, hey, yeah you're right.  I'll get back to you.  I hear nothing so I call again, leave a message.  Hear nothing.  Call again, get a customer service rep.  He leaves a message for claims guy, says claims guy will call next day.  Claims guy doesn't call, so I call again.  Customer service guy says "This is ridiculous.  I don't know why he's not calling you and he's ignoring me."  Lovely.  "I'll have him call you."  I say "OK, but just understand, if I don't hear from him, my next call will not be to you guys.  It'll be to the Insurance Commissioner."* That seemed to ring some bells on their end - I got a call 10 minutes later.  Claims guy says he's still evaluating estimates and to give him one more day.  He calls next day and says MY CLAIM IS APPROVED.  NEW ROOF BABY!  Woo-hoo!  Looks like I'll be getting a new set of gutters as well - that's a nice bonus since I was looking at having to replace them anyway.  And they're covering the interior damage that started this whole mess in the first place.  

So let that be a lesson - when you know you're right, stick to your guns.  It took me almost 3 months of fighting, and being ignored, but I didn't go away, which is what the insurance company was hoping for.  In the end, I'm getting the new roof I should have gotten 18 months ago (sucks having to pay a new deductible but I'll live with that).

 

* - The threat to call the insurance commissioner was not an empty one.  I've called before, when I was getting constant run-arounds and hassles when my wife was undergoing chemo.  Amazingly enough, after the call to the commissioner, who didn't do much (if anything), all the problems stopped.  Go figure.

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I don't know what can be done, but insurance is the worst industry.  The way they make a profit is by not doing the one thing you give them money to do and they're the ones in charge of determining whether they pay out or not.  They have no motivation at all to do the right thing and all the motivation to screw you over.  I guess threatening to call the insurance commissioner could keep them honest, but that's about it.

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34 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I don't know what can be done, but insurance is the worst industry.  The way they make a profit is by not doing the one thing you give them money to do and they're the ones in charge of determining whether they pay out or not.  They have no motivation at all to do the right thing and all the motivation to screw you over.  I guess threatening to call the insurance commissioner could keep them honest, but that's about it.

And if they do pay out, your premiums are going to go up, to the point that in X number of years, you may be down from where you started ultimately. 

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I've always liked Douglas Adams' take on insurance companies:

Trillian: The insurance business is completely screwy now. You know they've reintroduced the death penalty for insurance company directors?

Arthur: Really? No I didn't. For what offense?

Trillian: What do you mean, offence?

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On 5/2/2018 at 2:57 PM, Robert C said:

I work with a guy who legit claims 13 dependents.  He and his wife are both Stanford grads.  I figure they're creating an army of evil super geniuses.

 

Is this him?

tumblr_ni0kjrfWLm1s2wio8o1_500.gif

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nothing pisses me off more than insurance. it is THE biggest legalized scam going.

you are legally obligated to pay for it, but they will fuck you over every which way that they can and as often as possible.

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My latest insurance story:

Wife went in for a contact lens exam, comes home, tells me she pays $55. Since we have a $0 copay, I thought that odd. Called the provider, they pointed to my insurance. Called the insurance, they gave me some nonsense. I double checked their web site and, yep, it says $0 copay. Then, in fine print right under that, it says contact lens exams are not covered. Say what? When I challenged them about this, they gave me more nonsense and just pissed me off. I hung up and filed a formal complaint 27th the insurance commissioner. Got an immediate response from them and now the vision insurance people have 3 weeks to respond. 

I have half a mind to become a crusader. 

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We live a few miles from the Delaware River, so we're required by our mortgage company to have flood insurance (we're just barely inside the five-mile radius and I doubt we'll ever need it.) Since PNC bought our mortgage last year, we've received dozens of notices relating to getting gap coverage because they want our flood to be equal to our homeowners. This has been going on for close to six months, but they keep recalculating exactly how much more coverage we need, so they're routinely sending the same three notices over and over with different figures, and the customer service reps have no idea what's going on.

Meanwhile, I checked with my flood insurance company to see what the difference would be if I raised my coverage with them instead of letting PNC buy a gap plan that would just be charged to our escrow. It seems it would be cheaper up front to just let PNC buy the plan, but while the agent was looking into it she found out that we've been overcharged for coverage since we bought the house. They just transferred the previous owner's policy information over to our policy, and she had the house listed as a secondary occupancy, which they charge more for. So, I'm still getting these aggravating notices constantly about the gap plan with no end in sight, but I did get a nice refund for what we've overpaid the past two years. Although, I only found out about it quite by accident and otherwise would have continued getting fleeced because of a simple error. It's all twice as frustrating since it's insurance I'll almost definitely never need to use. 

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On the "insurance companies are the worst" tip: I got an alarm system for my home, and not some bullshit system, either.  It's one of the big names you pay for monthly and they actually call the cops.  I figured this would reduce my homeowner's insurance policy, so I called the provider to get the details.  They told me I'd need to fax them some sort of certified letter from the security company.  When told what my savings would be, it worked out to about $15 PER YEAR.  It wasn't even worth my time to get and fax the letter. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, Matt D said:

Too much Africa. Not enough Weezer. No reason not to just listen to the original. 

I thought the crunchy guitars made it different than the original *shrugs*

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36 years ago, I watched as Minh Thai set the Rubik's Cube speed solving world record on "That's Incredible". His time, which stood for 21 years, was a 22.95.

Tonight I beat that time with a 22.06.

22.95, or 22.06, isn't world class anymore - not even remotely close to it but it's still a big deal *TO ME* and I am super-pumped right now!

 

Home%20PB%20-%2022.06%20-%202018-06-03%2

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