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blacklab

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Posts posted by blacklab

  1. I have a few bond funds and over the last few years they've dropped >20% in value. I really don't see how the low returns make any sense if they can drop in value just like a stock.

    I'm slowly selling those off and just putting it all in the stock market and high interest savings. My plan is to have about 5 years of spending money in liquid and sell off stock to replenish as needed. If stocks shit the bed I won't sell till I really need to.

    I'm really curious what you guys are going to be doing on your retirement. Doing blow off stripper's asses? $1k bottle service at the club? I figure I won't have any debt and currently my bills and food total up around $3-4k per month. Social security should be somewhere in the 2-3k range for me so I'm just going to need to come up with a few grand a month to cover bills and money for vacations and a new car every 10 years or so. If present trends continue with savings and 401k contributions that should be around 1-2% of my invested money per year.

  2. It was really bizarre.

    I've never been under before, no surgeries, no broken bones. Even when they put the stent in my heart I was awake and watching them do it.

    Watched her put shot in IV, tasted something, woke up in recovery room.

    Didn't even have a chance to say, "thanks for the one price on this, usually I have to pay $200 extra for butt stuff"

  3. Same boat, very similar to you.

    Over the last year or so I'd gone from around 210 to 180. I wasn't sure why. I attributed it to intermittent fasting and not eating as much, but it really didn't make much sense as I was not eating very healthy and drinking a ton of soft drinks.

    Finally got around to going to the doctor and had some blood work done. Mystery solved, I was well into type 2 diabetus with an A1C of 11.2 and blood sugar around 300 and triglycerides off  the chart at >400. I got caught in a vicious circle. The diabetes would make me thirsty, which would cause me to drink a coke, which would make me more thirsty. The other sign was having to pee about 10 times a day.

    Dropped from 4-5 cokes a day to 1 every 2-3 days, switched to sparkling water, fast food several times a week to once a week, sandwiches from several a week to once every two weeks, pizza weekly to once a month, and pasta multiple times a week to none, breakfast sandwiches and tacos to eggs and meat, lunch from crap to a salad most days. I also got on medicine for the triglycerides and blood sugar.

    In a month my blood sugar dropped from 300 to 111, triglycerides from off chart to 202 (<150 is good), A1C from 11.2 to 9. (It's a 3 month average so will take another month or two to get down), down to peeing 3-4 times a day and dropped 4 pounds to 176, which at 6'2 seems like a good weight. Going to start some exercise of some sort to help push the sugar, tri and good cholesterol in the right direction.

    If you've lost some unexpected weight, are thirsty all the time, and peeing more often than usual you should get your blood checked and make sure you're not on a bad path. My ex-MIL just ignored the signs for years and ended up losing toes and was about to lose a foot but died before she did.

    Main culprit is carbs. Get a food tracker like MyFitnessPal and keep below 40 carbs per meal and around 100 per day and you should be moving in the right direction.

  4. Sitting at the bar at Maudie's in Bee Cave next to two old ladies.

    I ordered the grandpa special, two tortillas filled with beans and taco meat, covered in gravy and cheese.

    One of the ladies asks me if it's ok to take a picture of it, and I tell her to go ahead. She explains the other lady is from out of town and doesn't know what Mexican food looks like so she's taking a picture.

    I tell them what it is and then she says her husband always gets that and adds a fried egg on top, and a couple of weeks ago when he got his colonoscopy they came here at 9am and that's what he got. I tell them that I had a colonoscopy last Thursday and came here and ate chips and queso, 2 pete's, and  migas. 

    The lady from out of town exclaims "Is this what you do in Austin? Sit around and discuss your colonoscopies with total strangers at a bar?"

    Me: "Yep, that's Austin"

     

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  5. Worst part of the whole thing for me was drinking that nasty drink at 5pm and 2am.

    Second worst was spending the next hour or so on the shitter after drinking said drink.

    This morning was easy. put on gown, get an IV, rolled into other room, turn on my side, shot into IV drip, weird taste in mouth from shot, wake up in original room stoned as hell. Completely clean, no polyps of any kind, come back in 10 years.

    Went to maudie's and ate chips and queso, two pete's tacos and sausage migas with a mexican coke. May have been the most enjoyable meal of my life. 

    If you're over 45 and haven't had it done you need to go do it. It's really not that bad of a procedure.

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  6. It’s handled blowing up all 4 tires from 10 psi to 35 psi after a day of off-roading. I have considered getting a small hand held that uses the same battery as my impact wrench as a back up. 
     

    Yes, pretty desolate out there without many trees. I can’t imagine how much dirt/rocks you’d need to pile up to use for a winch. I have seen matt’s off road recovery us big rocks to tie off with various levels of success. They have moved around some big rocks they were using for anchors. Maybe some spikes you can hammer into the ground? 

    Huh, Learned something new today. 
    searched on google and sure enough “land anchors” are a thing

    IMG_2568.jpeg

  7. That’s probably my biggest worry.
    Bought two 2.5 gallon rotopax gas cans. I thought I’d try to figure out the half way point of the trip and if I hit half a tank before I get there I’d turn around. 

  8. TCH typically has a plo double board bomb pot only game going. When I want to gamble it up I go play it. At most there will be one other white boy at the table, with Asians being the biggest group represented followed by Indians and African Americans.

    I know the most money I've lost is when I hit a boat and someone gets a bigger one. I had 8432 on time, flop was 882 and I remember distinctly that I should fold when someone potted after the flop. I stupidly stuck around and a T and J came out and I lost to 8T.

    The only way I might call with your hand is if I had at least 2 pair on the other board so it would be an emergency hand in case someone had a bigger boat.

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  9. Anyone else into overlanding? I know there's a few sprinter folks here.

    Going to take the FJ to someplace in June. Built a bed last weekend, ordered a mattress, spare gas cans, some locks to lock the various stuff that will be on the roof rack down.

    Found this site:

    https://www.overlandtrailguides.com/

    that has a bunch of routes to try along with downloadable maps that you can put in an app. Planning on joining so I can download all the maps.

    Deciding between the area around Guadalupe Peak/Southern NM

    https://www.overlandtrailguides.com/post/guadalupe-mountains-adventure-trail

    image.png

    or this one, taking dirt roads from just outside Santa Fe to the Colorado border:

    https://www.overlandtrailguides.com/post/carson-santafe-backcountry-discovery-trail

    image.png

     

    Have downloaded two different apps for mapping, Gaia GPS and onX offroad. I think I like Gaia better.

    Anyone else do this?

    What am I forgetting?

    I have full size spare, shovel, pick axe, traction boards, big jack, winch, spare gas cans, tire patch kit, 12v air compressor, first aid kit, tow rope, emergency jump starter, crow bar, tools, 

     

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  10. Yeah, it's not very accurate.

    Going in tomorrow morning.

    Only had some sprite today, trying to finish phase one of this nasty drink right now. 

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  11. 1 hour ago, sidis said:

    i do every year.  why wouldn't i? wtf do the idiots whose lives are so shitty they have to work for a property tax protest company know that i don't know?

    This year, they raised my house by 6% despite no changes to the house.  I pulled 27 properties within 700 feet of mine and literally every one of them went down except mine...by a mean of 33% and a median of 39%.  not some of them, all of them.  all in improvements because everyone's land stayed the exact same as the previous year.  i provided this evidence as inequity to neighbors in my informal hearing yesterday with some absolute dipshit reading off a script to describe to me why the three properties that they picked as comps for inequitable treatment to neighbors that averaged over three times larger a lot size and were an average of 2.5 miles away from me were more relevant than the 27 contiguous properties bordering my house.

    that was amusing.  next up, explaining this to three octogenarians that tcad provides lubys for who will just sleep through my explanation of this to do absolutely nothing of value and then i get to go to court. hooray.

    My experience was very similar. My house was $5–$10 more a square foot than the 20 houses closest to mine, some of which were brand new while mine was 65 years old. Had a realtor buddy pull 10 houses that were sold within a mile that were in similar age and condition, all of which sold $2-$10 less a square foot. They said they could only compare to houses that were a couple of miles from mine, in a nicer neighborhood, 40 years newer and around 1.5x the size of mine.  

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  12. 4 hours ago, crash_davis said:

    Travis CAD election results. Zimm loses again.

    https://www.kut.org/politics/2024-05-05/austin-travis-county-property-taxes-tcad-may-4-2024-election-results

    Three candidates backed by the local Democratic Party won seats to the Travis Central Appraisal District’s board of directors, who help manage property appraisals.

    Jett Hanna, Shenghao 'Daniel' Wang and Dick Lavine soundly defeated three others backed by the local Republican Party on Saturday, including Matt Mackowiak, chair of the party in Travis County, and Don Zimmerman, a former Austin City Council member.

    Great. We got a Dick and a Wang on the board. Expect to get fucked on your appraisals.

     

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  13. 1 hour ago, Mikey4 said:

    The problem is that people chant "from the river to the sea," which basically rules out a two-state solution, but do not explain what will happen to the Jewish people who have inhabited that land for 3+ generations now. It sure sounds like a masked call at best for subjugation of Jews, and at worst for genocide. 

     

    On 4/30/2024 at 10:06 AM, Make em eat Taco Bell said:

    there is nothing antisemitic about being against Israel, shouting at Jewish students, or even wanting to destroy Israel. 

    I’m with Mikey on this one. Sure we could argue semantics on whether or not wanting the destruction of Israel is anti semetic or not, but it certainly implies you want to kill every resident of the country. I’m sure you’ll argue you don’t but it sure sounds like it to me. 

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