StatisticalOutlier
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Posts posted by StatisticalOutlier
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4 hours ago, peacheslatour said:
Get yourself one of these. They're under $20.00 usually. I love mine.
When I say there's no place to put a new roll of toilet paper, I'm serious. The little room where the toilet is measures 29" x 38". Fortunately there's a cabinet on the wall that holds rolls of toilet paper (if you mash them flat). But I don't like running out of toilet paper and having to maneuver around in there to get a new roll--that's why I deploy a new one before it's strictly necessary.
2 hours ago, Laura Holt said:I had assumed by unisex that single use bathrooms were what was meant. The kind at places like Starbucks where there may be two bathrooms but they are for anyone to use.
Yes, that's what I meant. At places like Starbucks and Five Guys and Potbelly. Bathrooms where you lock the door, and the place was built with one for men and one for women but they've changed to both being available to either sex, and the one for men has a urinal in it.
If I encounter that, I'm always stopped in my tracks trying to figure out which one is more likely to have been the men's room, so I can avoid it.
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I haven't been in a hurry to try to see this, but that may have been a mistake. It's not being held over into next week in a lot of theaters in my area west of Chicago--it's ending in at least half the theaters, including the one a couple of miles from me. I'm going to have to go to one 25 miles away. I think Past Lives may be showing in more theaters than Asteroid City around here next week.
So if you're wanting to see it, you may need to hustle up. Much to my surprise.
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On 7/4/2023 at 7:33 AM, chitowngirl said:
My peeve? When the roll of toilet paper is running low, I will sometimes get the new one out and put it nearby since the area it is stored is not near the toilet. SOMEONE in the house will start using the new roll instead of using the existing roll, all to avoid changing it.
In my bathroom there's no place to put a new roll of toilet paper out, so when the current one is low, I install a new roll on the holder, and set the old one on top--it nestles into the groove between the roll and the wall. I wonder if that might work for you, because it would take more effort to use the new roll than the old one, especially if it is still kind of glued down at the end.
19 hours ago, annzeepark914 said:I've seen these portajohns perched on medians on 4 lane roads and thought..."what can that be like, sitting on the throne as traffic is whizzing (no pun intended...well, maybe) by, wondering if one of the vehicles might slam into the john".
Sitting on the throne reminds me--when it comes to men peeing standing up, my opinion is: "Just because you can doesn't mean you should."
I hate this new push to have unisex bathrooms. For one, I hate looking at urinals--they just gross me out. So if I'm some place that has clearly been converted to having two unisex bathrooms, I try to predict which one doesn't have a urinal, and if I pick wrong I'll use the other one if available, but the only way I know I picked wrong is because I saw the urinal. I hate urinals.
AND, before we had men using the women's bathroom, nobody ever left the toilet seat up. So some guy comes in there and pees standing up, spraying all over the place, and leaves the toilet seat up, and someone else will have to be the one to put the toilet seat down.
And it reminds me of the horror people express when they see a bathroom with carpet in it. Maybe if penised people would sit down to pee, there wouldn't be urine all over the floor.
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On 7/4/2023 at 4:41 PM, SeanC said:
I thought this was some beautiful filmmaking.
Literally. She shot it on film, which is a plus in my book.
I saw it again yesterday and was able to concentrate on the filmmaking more, since I knew what was going on. I'm amazed at what a sure hand Song had. I never would have guessed it was her first feature.
The conversation in the bar at the end just blew me away all over again.
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2 hours ago, amarante said:
Presumably since there is a sewage lagoon, they have no other indicia of modern civilization so they are drinking well water. No way would I want to drink water from a source that was close to untreated sewage.
They didn't mention whether there was a septic tank the waste goes through before being discharged into the lagoon. According to the Missouri article, the state doesn't require a septic tank but some counties do. FWIW, I gather that sewer lagoons without septic tanks are prevalent in Australia. The things you learn...
If a property has a septic tank and a sewage lagoon, then it's no different from a property with a septic tank and a leach field when it comes to having "untreated" sewage on the property--in one case it's contained in a pond and in the other case it's contained in the ground. And actually, it's not untreated sewage--it's the effluent that comes out of a septic tank. The contents of a septic tank are in layers, where the solids fall to the bottom, the soap floats to the top, and what goes into the leach field or lagoon comes from the middle, after being munched on (treated) by bacteria.
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On 7/1/2023 at 12:38 AM, Teafortwo said:
Dutton
How depressing. I've kind of held hope that publishing would be our salvation--I think gatekeepers and editors are a good thing. But apparently not even that is going to survive?
I found the book and you can take comfort in one reviewer's complaint about typos and text repeated on another page. It's one thing to use a style of prose that isn't to everyone's liking, but there's no excuse for typos or using the wrong word (reprieve vs. relief, catch fire vs. set fire). This is the sort of thing I (sadly) expect from self-published books, not "real" publishing houses.
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On 6/20/2023 at 9:55 PM, Teafortwo said:
The problem? The book is absolutely terrible. I was appalled. The subject matter was unobjectionable, the characters a bit overdramatic - but the real issue was that it seemed completely unedited.
This is scary. Who published it?
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Well that was sudden. Yesterday was an episode about fighting city hall, where Jody's friend distractingly had a bit of a mustache going on, and then today was the very first episode.
Man, was that first episode dark. Aunt Fran dropped Buffy off and sneaked out! What a terrible woman.
And I was confused about why Mr. French came back...until he opened his suitcase. So sweet.
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2 hours ago, chediavolo said:
They sure have lax rules about open Sh** pits on your property in Kansas😬 and it’s going to smell 🤢
Actually, the rules about sewage lagoons are quite strict. Thanks to this show, I now know about Pittsburgh toilets AND sewage lagoons. That University of Missouri article on residential sewage lagoons, linked to upthread, is really interesting.
Millions of people live on property with septic tanks, which have to release the treated water somewhere. I've always known about leach fields, but apparently in areas where the soil isn't appropriate for a leach field, a lagoon is an alternative.
I'm guessing the HH didn't know much about lagoons, either, when he threw out the idea of a 20-foot fence around it. Sunlight and breezes are essential to the operation of the lagoon, so you don't want anything that will block that--even vegetation around the edge of the water. It's actually a pretty cool system--using sunlight and air to break down household effluent.
Leach fields from septic tanks have the advantage of being out of sight and therefore out of mind, but to me there's something to be said for a lagoon being out there in the open so you can see what's going on. Then again, I've always preferred to DOS to Windows. 😀
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12 hours ago, Lantern7 said:
I'm a nice guy. Minimum, I like to think I'm nice. But there always comes a time where you might not be as nice as you'd think. And I know "I'm a nice guy" is something assholes might say.
Simple solution: "I identify as a nice guy." Q.E.D.
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18 hours ago, Crashcourse said:
The kids of the goats and chickens mom didn't look that happy out on the balcony eating those burgers.
I noticed that, too. I don't think they had enough chairs for all of them, and I noticed an older one standing there holding his burger loosely in one hand just kind of teething at it. "All right...you can make me stand on this deck eating a burger but you can't make me do it right."
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On 6/25/2023 at 7:57 PM, BooksRule said:
'Harold and Lillian: a Hollywood love story. TCM is airing it on Wednesday evening. It gives a good look at Hollywood of the 40s (and later) as well as what goes into researching for a film (costume looks, sets, etc.)
This was fantastic. It reminded me that every single thing you see in a movie was thought up and put there by somebody. I didn't know movies had researchers who told them what a Jewish girl's underwear looked like in 1905 (Fiddler on the Roof). And that there wouldn't be a lot of photos of these garments, so Lillian went to Fairfax Avenue to look for women who would have been girls in 1905, to ask them what the underwear looked like. Turns out the bloomers have scalloped edges.
I knew what storyboards are, but I never really thought about who drew them, and it never occurred to me that the person who put the storyboard together might not be the director. The correlation they showed between some of Harold's storyboards and the eventual films was amazing. He "directed" The Graduate; Mike Nichols put it on film. And Harold didn't even like the script!
Lillian is a doll, and I would gladly spend many hours listening to her stories. She had a lot of heartbreak in her life (spending her childhood in orphanages, for starters), but looked at everything in such a matter of fact way.
I loved how casually she told the story about the drug kingpin who offered to fly her to South America on his private jet so she could tell the people making Scarface what a cocaine cutting room looks like, and the big fight she and Harold had when he said she was out of her mind to even think about going.
I can see how her library became the hangout place for all the people at the studio, including Tom Waits. Didn't see that coming.
Her Rolodex is something to behold. It's nice that her library is digitized and on the internet for all to use (at her insistence), but I think there's something lost with the demise of a Rolodex of sources and a library of books and articles with pictures. And a bunch of people hanging around there.
I can't get over how much I enjoyed this documentary.
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On 6/24/2023 at 11:01 PM, Kimboweena said:
First one, in Tampa, was new. Wife lost her apartment because of a stove fire. ... Anyway, they weren't too picky and so positive about each place. They were likable.
They definitely had modest desires. Good thing, because I thought all three choices were pretty awful.
My ears perked up when they looked in Lakeland. I spent last winter east of Tampa and went over to Lakeland about once a week. I kind of like it, and at one point I actually said I could see myself living there if I had to live somewhere in Florida, and the very next day I heard a story on the radio about how Lakeland is one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. Sigh. I have a knack.
The "single family house" in Lakeland with the really low ceiling on the first floor looked like it started life as a garage, and actually still looks like a garage apartment, although I can't figure out where the house it belonged to was. I couldn't tell for sure but it looked like it might be a block from one of the several lakes in the city (a pretty cool feature, along with the college campus that was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright).
In the second house, I noticed a window unit and a cord for a window unit. Ugh.
And on the townhouse they bought with the screened in porch in back, the good news is it had central air. The bad news is that there are three air conditioner condensers right next to the porch--the neighbors on both sides had their units on the line between their units and the HHs' unit, and the HHs' air conditioner was of course on their own property. That's a lot of whirring air conditioners in close proximity to the screened-in porch.
Plus each apartment had an electric meter right next to the front door. Yuck.
1 hour ago, chessiegal said:I don't think people who aren't married buying real estate together is a big deal. I'm sure there are boiler plate contracts. We have parents buying with children.
Beware boiler plate contracts. There's a significant capital gains tax issue that can present itself when a parent puts a kid on a deed, whether upon the initial purchase or later, if it's possible that otherwise the parent owns the property and the kid inherits it when the parent dies. When it comes to capital gains taxes on the sale of real estate, it's better to have inherited it than to have owned it all along, because inherited real estate gets a step-up in basis, which reduces capital gains tax.
The current exemption is $250,000, and with real estate markets these days, it's not hard to have a $250,000 increase in the value of a house someone has owned for a while. But I bet the vast majority of people don't understand the benefit of inheriting real estate over co-owning it.
As for unmarried couples owning property together, Mr. Outlier and I have been together for 25 years and aren't married. We don't own real estate, but we're co-owners of the motorhome we live and travel in, and when we stop traveling we'll probably buy a house somewhere.
But we're careful about how we do things. Unlike a friend of mine who bought a duplex (2-residence house) with her sister; my friend lived in one side and her sister and her sister's husband lived in the other side. All three of their names were on the deed, and when the sister and her husband inevitably divorced, the husband claimed he owned 1/3 of the duplex, which was not my friend's or my friend's sister's intention. Or probably his, even...until he got divorced.
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3 hours ago, Browncoat said:
I saw this last night, and had a blast.
I'm pissed off because tried to see it today but the closed caption machine didn't work. I'd noticed in the previews I saw that I had trouble understanding the dialogue, but that's not always indicative of the movie, since dialogue in previews generally doesn't have any context and can be harder to piece together than dialogue in a cohesive movie. So I fucked with the machine for a little bit and then tried watch without it and I had to give up.
But from what I saw, it does look like Wes is trying to out-Wes himself. It probably won't bother me because I'm a fan, but I agree with you that from the ten minutes I saw, it's probably not a good starting point for non-fans.
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This is getting a wider release starting this Friday. It delivers what the trailer promises (including the "woah" instead of "whoa" in the subtitles, more than once--grrrrr).
I was taken by the guy who plays her husband, and looked him up and realized he's the same guy I was so taken with in Kelly Reichardt's First Cow. He's perfect in both movies.
I'll be seeing it again, and this time won't have to drive to a theater 50 miles away (I didn't want to risk having it vanish into the night). And maybe this time I won't have a woman sitting in my reserved seat, although I figured out she had reserved the seat I really did want, so I got to sit there after all, BUT she answered her phone in the middle of the movie. Good god, what is wrong with people? A loud "Hey!" did nothing; "TURN YOUR PHONE OFF!" did. But it was definitely NOT what a movie like this needs.
ETA: Here's a link to where it's showing: https://tickets.pastlives.movie/
ETA2: The first scene of the movie is amazing. It amazes me how creative people can be.
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13 hours ago, Kimboweena said:
Did wonder about his biking to school, thought Oregon was really rainy like Washington.
It is. Or not really rainy, more like always drizzling.
People ride there regardless, and might even consider it a badge of honor. Bike fenders are very popular, as are dry bags to carry your stuff. I remember my first taste of this insanity when I walked across the Hawthorne Bridge in Portland at about 5:00 p.m. in the winter. It was full dark already and cold and drizzling and I could not believe how many bikers went by me. It was a constant stream, presumably of commuters on their way home. I had no idea that sort of thing went on.
Then I was in Eugene, and again it was dark and drizzling and there were bike riders all over the streets near downtown and the college, going to the grocery store and things like that. I thought it was miserable just being in my car.
I guess they follow the advice to dance with who brung ya when it comes to weather and biking, but for me...no thanks.
As for coyotes, they look greasy to me. And they always have this look on their face. Foxes have a pleasant visage, but those coyotes--they look sneaky, like they're up to no good.
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16 hours ago, Kimboweena said:
Third episode, North Padre Island, TX, rerun from 2019. Such a cute couple and family, really likable! Again, not too picky
Good thing, because a week ago Corpus Christi had a heat index of 125 degrees, its highest ever.
https://twitter.com/NWSCorpus/status/1670782231386681344
If they're on the island it's slightly cooler, but the incessant wind blowing in from the Gulf of Mexico feels like a wet rag slapping you in the face.
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On 6/23/2023 at 7:17 AM, snarts said:
The Hague: I adored her, the city and the house she chose.
Me, too, on all three counts.
I also liked it when they went to the third house, down that alley in the back of the property, and her co-worker said, "I've heard about these houses." Because yeah, you can't actually see one unless you know somebody who lives in one. And you might not even realize they exist.
That's actually the main reason I watch HHI--find out about quirks that various places have. Well, and HH in the U.S., too--the Pittsburgh toilet, for example.
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I figured it out! The woman in the photo I posted is Gabby, who was a combatant on The Bachelor and lost and became the bachelorette.
As far as I know, she went to college in Colorado Springs and moved to Denver after that, working as a nurse and a Broncos cheerleader. So which season was she applying for?
I smell bogosity.
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10 hours ago, edie3 said:
I'm just glad they didn't buy house 3, with the junk yard next door! And house 3 seemed like a cheap flip to me.
The girl HH even mentioned the mattresses in that yard. I've had the notion that if I were interested in a house, I'd go by there at all hours of the day and night for a little while to see if a neighbor does something that would drive me bats. And then I realized all it takes is one new neighbor to ruin an idyllic situation, or that dog that barks all day could die the day after I buy the house. So you can never be sure.
I wonder how much a privacy fence along that back yard would cost, because having the hoard so visible has got to hurt House 3's sales price.
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21 hours ago, debbie311 said:
She allowed him to put the pool table in the dining room of the house they chose. Really? I guess people have their priorities.
Our family did that! Or, we didn't even have a separate dining room, but a dining room table in 1/3 of the big living area (open concept in the 1960s!). When the youngest of the kids were in high school, two of whom were boys, my parents replaced the eating table with a pool table.
One nice thing about it being in the open instead of an enclosed room was that you had to use the shorty cue only on one side. But now I'm thinking my folks must have been off in the head to do that--letting their living area, where they watched TV and sat around, be full of clacking pool balls and teenage boys yakking and going in and out of the house at all hours of the day and night.
Surely unrelatedly, when they built a new house when all five of their children were grown, it had one guest room. Basta!
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On 6/17/2023 at 5:20 AM, Browncoat said:
I really hate it when I wake up within about 30 minutes of my alarm going off. It's not enough time for me to get back to sleep (especially if I need to pee), but it's too early to actually get up for real.
I know people are entitled to their peeves, so I'm not diminishing your peeve, but when I wake up before the alarm, I like to think about how I get to lie there all snug and comfortable for 30 minutes before having to get up.
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7 minutes ago, SpecialKay said:
THANK-YOU! It drives me crazy when people use cement instead of concrete. Cement is like sand, water and gravel; it is an ingratiate of concrete. <Stepping off soapbox now.>
Ingratiate? Maybe ingredient? (Those on glass soapboxes... 😀)
I blame the Beverly Hillbillies and their "cement pond." But I get it. CEE-ment pond is much funnier than concrete pond.
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On 6/18/2023 at 6:01 PM, ABay said:
Does anyone have a recommendation for noise canceling headphones? Due to asshole neighbors, I really need headphones that cancel other peoples' bass noise.
Shop real carefully if you're wanting to reduce bass sounds. I wanted some for neighbor-type noise like slamming doors and barking dogs, but found out they don't really work well for noise like that. They're good at reducing a consistent sound, I guess you'd call it--like the noise in an airplane.
After talking to several people who know about this sort of thing, I decided not to even try any, because of the particular noise I want to block. Maybe they would work okay if had music going through them when a dog barks, but I'm not confident they would, plus I don't want to have music--I just want silence.
Here's my simplistic (and simple-minded) understanding: Noise canceling relies on the headphones detecting a sound and emitting a selected different sound that cancels that particular sound out. They can do that in a "rough" way, like with the constant roar inside an airplane, but can't do it quickly and precisely enough to work on punctuated or staccato sounds.
It's the same problem with hearing aids that claim to make conversation clear in loud environments--it's simply impossible to effectively do that in real time.
I'm not sure what kind of bass you're hearing. It might be a dull roar type that noise-canceling headphones would work on. That would be great, obviously. But at least be aware that not all sounds are the same, and products make all sorts of promises but technology can only do so much.
Something else you might try: I was once getting a mold fitted for a hearing aid, where they inject that putty that fills up your ear canal. Mr. Outlier and the audiologist were sitting there three feet from me talking while it set up and I could hear absolutely nothing. So I bought some silicone ear plugs at the drug store and they work pretty darn well. Vastly better than foam ear plugs. Although I push the silicone ones way farther into my ear canal than they recommend, for the best blockage possible. But I'm a pro--my audiologist even said she trusts me to use q-tips way down in my ears. 😀
But something else with bass sounds--I wonder if it's possible you're hearing the sound through feeling it as well as through your ears, which is definitely possible with bass. If that's the case it's probably gonna be real hard to combat.
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Pet Peeves: Aka Things That Make You Go "Gah!"
in Everything Else
Au contraire! I make a dish we call chili spaghetti and the oily chili slings all over the place when twirling or slurping the spaghetti, and I finally figured out to wear a white shirt because I can use an eyedropper with bleach to treat all the spots.