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Nice Guy Eddie

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by Nice Guy Eddie

  1. Given how long it takes to execute someone, I imagine that many loved ones, of a murder victim, have passed away not seeing the perp executed. And sure you can complain that we take too long but that’s the system.

    Odds are that the families unanswered questions would have remained unanswered even with a trial. And perhaps the prosecution had some holes in their evidence that possibly could have allowed him to walk. Someone can be guilty but the evidence can be weak.

    in a perfect world, the DA or judge could have added some condition that the guy had to explain more about why he chose the deceased but that has nothing to do with admitting to doing it. 

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  2. On 6/30/2025 at 9:55 PM, TwiceHorn said:

    Discount Tire will sell and install a TPMS sensor for ~$62 plus tax.  https://www.discounttire.com/accessories/tpms/tpms-sensors-catalog

     

    Went this route.

    Discount Tire suggested that I fix all 4, I countered to only fix the broken one. They then offered to replace all 4 for the price of 1. Ok, I guess. Odd business model to give away free parts and labor.

    They replaced all 4, and showed me that the tire pressure was transmitting to their handheld tool but the Explorer is now throwing errors with all 4 tires. Going back Saturday.

    @TwiceHorn you meant well but this didn’t work out for me. I may be back to the Ford dealer and instead of $250 to fix 1 tire valve, I might be looking at $1000 for 4. Why did I let them replace all 4. Fuck. 

  3. 2 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

    I am in the minority, but I think a terrible recession or depression is the only thing that will make many people realize that we are all in this together. You have a huge part of the country thinking that the only reason you are poor and down and out is because you are lazy and stupid. Our bubble of domestic prosperity supports this lie in many peoples minds.   When they lose their job and their homeless and hungry and their family breaks up,  those idiots then realize that bad things can happen that have nothing to do with your work ethic or education or devotion to God.    

    I don’t think you can reach these people unless things go really really south.   When people are standing in the same bread line and hoping to get a new deal type job so they can feed their family -we may get a reset to a time when most of America realized we needed a living wage, healthcare, unions, and to unite against the monied class and the politicians supporting them who make it difficult for us to have a decent life.

     

    2 hours ago, VABuckeye said:

    As I am nearing retirement age I cannot get behind a recession, let alone a depression.  Nope.

    I can't hope for a recession, depression or war but one of those is the only thing that will change what some people believe. We already know that they don't care about others, so something would have to happen to them personally before they would want a change.

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  4. Dems are great about fighting at the last minute to delay a bill that will pass regardless of their protests. The problem is when they lost the battles months or years ago when they failed to respectfully tell older Dems/liberals to retire from Congress, the WH or even SCOTUS. And when they have a dynamic, younger (relatively) senator like Franken, they oust him when a censure or other penalty would have sufficed.

    And the cycle keeps repeating itself. Sotomayor should have stepped down in 2023 or 24. Yes, she's "only" 71 now but we could easily be looking at a long term GOP rule of the Senate if not WH. We may turn around tomorrow and she's 80+. You might think that she just got to the Supreme Court but this year she exceeded the average tenure (15 yrs) of a justice. Just imagine another justice, like Jackson who is 54 instead of 71.  Damn, there are 2 justices younger than me now.

  5. On 7/1/2025 at 4:54 PM, jimmyjazz said:

    Man, those sensors are a money grab.  They alert when a tire is a half psi out of range, and they generally crap out over time anyway.

    Build the habit of looking at your tires before you jump in the car.  It's really not that hard to spot one that is struggling.

    It's hard to not believe that many vehicle accessories don't have planned obsolescence and they are making it more and more difficult to work on cars yourself. Now most DIYers don't have the equipment to remove tires from the wheel to install these devices so the repair shops have a monopoly on these devices. 

    I understand the idea of letting a few repairs go unrepaired because of the cost but I also see that going down the road to eventually driving a POS. 

  6. 2 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    This.

    Here's the TLDR version: stop trying to appeal to smart, informed people.  They are too small a voting bloc to make a difference.  You MUST win the absolute mouth-breathing idiot vote.  That is the biggest voting bloc there is, and right now, they are under the spell of Trumpism.

    Promise them free shit.  Promise you'll hurt their enemies.  Send them free tit pics by text.  Whatever it takes.  Oh, and run a charismatic candidate that is willing to say all of those magic words at a middle-school vocab level, and/or use some Hollywood catch phrases.  I'm dead serious, the most serious threats to Trump and Trumpism are people like The Rock, and McConaughey, and folks like that.  

    I don't agree with everything you wrote but you're spot on with a more successful tactic. Appeal to people's emotions and then give them 1 or 2 simple talking points. The GOP has become very disciplined on their messaging. They hammer it home so even a casual viewer of news is aware of it.

    Let's say Dems want to raise taxes on billionaires. The tactic should be to repeat over and over that billionaires cheat on their taxes and the IRS is understaffed to enforce laws enacted by both sides. Say Bezos spent more on his wedding than he's ever paid in taxes for his entire life. Is Bezos going to produce his tax returns to refute that statement?

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  7. 3 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

     

    I have a very low opinion of Maine just due to her. Her lack of convictions does nothing but create chaos. The only time she ever goes through with her concerns is when her vote doesn't matter? "You have enough votes to pass, cool, I will vote against you so I can look independent to my voters."

    And if others have a low opinion of Texas because of our senators, I agree with them. I think less of Texas due to Cruz and Cornyn, among others.

     

     

    Surprise surprise surprise.  Collins voted against the bill but only because the gop didn’t need her vote with JD’s tie breaking vote.

  8. Texas needs a major event or crisis to go blue.

    One example could be if Paxton and Cornyn both decided to run in the general election, with one being the independent. That could split the GOP vote enough to let a Dem win. However would Paxton and Cornyn's hatred of each other be enough, and could both raise enough money to stay in the race. Also the independent in that example would have tremendous positive and negative pressure to drop out.  John - drop out, and you can join this law firm as a partner with a $20m signing bonus, and you never have to actually work a single day.

  9. 2 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

    So, I've been researching this every single day for going on two weeks.  I'll eat crow and admit I am changing my tune.  My MIL recently passed away and my wife inherited all her assets.  Since we want to minimize taxes on the inherited retirement funds, she is moving her mom's retirement to an inherited IRA.  You have to drain it completely within 10 years but can do it on any schedule you like.  We are putting a nice chunk in SPYI so that we can enjoy that dividend income.  We will use it to offset my daughter's out of state tuition, which aligns perfectly with what my MIL would like since she was an instructor at ACC.  SPYI dividends are also qualified so they're at the 15% rate which is also nice.  When we retire in 6-7 years, we will not draw our own retirement until she cashes in the inherited IRA to minimize our total income and taxes those first couple of years. 

    Don't get me wrong in that I'm completely opposed to someone putting everything in dividend stocks. If you do then you miss out on growth stocks. Diversification of growth and dividends is the right idea and its fair that someone can determine their best mix.

    You can find dividend investing "experts" who will demonstrate the strategy of going with >10% yield stocks. This is a great idea until it's not. You can argue it's superior to growth stocks. Who doesn't want a 20% yield with 15% tax rates after 2 months of ownership, but when that company eventually lowers or suspends their dividend, the price will tank and you're left with low value stock and no dividend. I like companies who have consistently raised their net income and dividends. But I also love growth companies that don't pay dividends.

     

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  10. On 6/24/2025 at 2:40 PM, Michael Knight said:

     

     

    On 6/24/2025 at 3:43 PM, mchookem said:

    🙄 how does she not know what a meme she's become? i know she's old but surely she has younger staff that would be plugged in...??

    just a fucking joke 😝

    I have a very low opinion of Maine just due to her. Her lack of convictions does nothing but create chaos. The only time she ever goes through with her concerns is when her vote doesn't matter? "You have enough votes to pass, cool, I will vote against you so I can look independent to my voters."

    And if others have a low opinion of Texas because of our senators, I agree with them. I think less of Texas due to Cruz and Cornyn, among others.

     

     

  11. Remember when Rick Perry had the audacity to suggest the idea that all Texas children should have the Gardasil vaccine to prevent HPV and future cancers. Since the virus is usually spread by sexual contact, the church going crowd cannot let their children have the vaccine since they believe it promotes sex. 

    I give Perry credit that he saw this is a healthcare issue to prevent cancer, and not the ridiculous idea that it promotes underage sex. However even he had to retract the idea because conservatives look at the future cancer as a result of low morals and most likely they think the victims deserve it.

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  12. 1 hour ago, Jerry Callo said:

    Unfortunately, the light won't tell you which sensor is out - almost like they make more money if you replace all five.  Luckily, its not really that hard to determine if you have a flat tire.

    The vehicle is telling me it's the right rear tire that has a fault.  No idea if that is right or not.

    16 minutes ago, blacklab said:

    I've bought a set of 5 sensors for around $50 off amazon and had discount tire install them. I think they charged around $15 to install each one.

    They wanted $75 for each one.

    Ford is selling the sensor for ~$80 each but I assume that cheaper alternatives are out there. Sucks that I just bought new tires a few months ago and didn't even think of this at the time. This is the first time in my 55 years that I've had a TPMS error. most of me vehicles in those years didn't have TPMS.

  13. OpenAI could easily start to price their non-base ChatGPT models at a per transaction (token) level. that's how it works with agents. You can set it up to auto-refill your balance, along with a monthly maximums.

    Heavy ChatGPT users will complain. However if their ChatGPT usage is creating a work product, tough that their workforce will cost them more than $200 per month. 

    not to mention that OpenAI can keep going back to the private markets to raise more funds. I imagine that we won't see OpenAI come close to an IPO until they're out of their heavy growth phases. The IPO era is over but that's a separate topic.

  14. 3 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

    Honest question - why would you trade bitcoin, which is going to the moon eventually, for a cheeseburger which is literally going into the shitter in a couple of hours?

    Say that someone is sitting on a large (or small) capital gain on crypto. If Sen. Lummis' language is kept, it would exempt <$200 transactions from reporting the sale as a capital gain.  Now if you have $2m in capital gains, that's a long haul to not report the capital gains across many many transactions but it legally eliminates the tax owed.

    Of course if someone thinks that BTC is going to 10x, you don't want to spend $15 on a burger that will eventually effectively cost you $150.

     

  15. 6 minutes ago, Asithappens said:

    Same thing happened to my 2019 Chevy Suburban. My quote for a fix was $100. I think $250 is a bit high but don't know the particulars. 

    There's some kind of $10 tool that allows one to reset/relearn the sensor. That might be worth a try. Just google it and see if it may help. 

    Or, you can just ignore it. Which is what I've done before.

    Thanks. 

    I will check out the tool, or see if AutoZones offer its usage for free. I'm a fan of seeing the tire pressure on my dashboard so it would eventually bother me not seeing it especially on road trips. 

  16. Ford Explorer 2017. One of the wheels is throwing a warning that the tire pressure monitoring system has failed on one wheel. It's definitely not working according to the dashboard. Ford Quicklane quoted me $250 over the phone. I'm completely unfamiliar with these systems. Is $250 reasonable? 

  17. Been screwing around more and more with AI agents. Basic training classes that mainly demonstrate the potential. I know we mostly hear hype regarding them but they're the real deal. As soon as more major software packages and email systems embrace them, corp America is going be transformed. Given that I've never known a VP or CFO to not want to lower headcount/cost, they will quickly grab onto tech that will increase productivity per worker.

    If someone's main role is working with transactions and/or dealing with customers via email/chat, start learning a new skill ASAP.

  18. 14 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

    Screenshot2025-06-29at9_16_32PM.thumb.png.549594b67fe7204afc26bd4f869b42ac.png

    Was a bill really required to allow Texans to spend gold and silver? I'm assuming this doesn't require companies, stores, vendors, whatever accept gold. Hell, some places don't even accept cash these days.

    Greg Abbott has morphed from entertaining the ideas of the fringes to mainly focusing on the fringes. Crazy how he's surpassed Rick Perry.

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  19. 1 hour ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

    He had another throw to 3B to gun down Jim Rice in the same game.  The two OF assists helped him win 1979 ASG MVP. 

    Those throws, Ichiro's laser, Vlad Guerrero's famous throw, and Bo Jackson gunning down Harold Reynolds at home plate are the most iconic OF assists I can think of off the top of my head. 

     

    Maybe I was blinded because I was a kid, but those game seemed to mean more then. At a minimum they meant more to me. Can’t recall when I last watched or even checked out an all star game box score. If I had a ticket, I would go for the first few innings.

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