Ghost of Igloi wrote:
I had a client invest in binary options overseas. The set-up was you open up an account, you fund it, and an advisor tells you how to invest. The account goes up, but to access the profits you first have to pay the Eurozone excise tax, and that cannot be paid from profits. Basically lost $50,000. But hey, as they say in cool cat country “it’s all good.”
Was this before, or after, s/he became your client?
agip wrote:
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
“The wind-dependent Texas grid is experiencing rolling blackouts, prices the equivalent of $900 per Tesla charge, and an expected supply shortage of 10 GW--the amount of electricity needed to power 5 million homes,” Alex Epstein, Founder of Center for Industrial Progress, tweeted today.
Igy come on the texas grid stopped working because its gummint didn't take measures to keep its gear from freezing. Everything froze. Not just wind stuff.
calling it 'wind-dependent' is just propaganda.
agip is correct. Wind supplies only a fraction of Texas’ energy. Oil, gas, and nuclear have also had problems here.
wondering wrote:
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
I had a client invest in binary options overseas. The set-up was you open up an account, you fund it, and an advisor tells you how to invest. The account goes up, but to access the profits you first have to pay the Eurozone excise tax, and that cannot be paid from profits. Basically lost $50,000. But hey, as they say in cool cat country “it’s all good.”
Was this before, or after, s/he became your client?
Shortly after she refused to take my advice not to do it I told her: "I don't believe we are a good fit, perhaps you would be better off finding another advisor." And she did, not insignificant assets by the way.
wondering wrote:
agip wrote:
Igy come on the texas grid stopped working because its gummint didn't take measures to keep its gear from freezing. Everything froze. Not just wind stuff.
calling it 'wind-dependent' is just propaganda.
agip is correct. Wind supplies only a fraction of Texas’ energy. Oil, gas, and nuclear have also had problems here.
I don't believe I said anything contrary; just in case you misread.
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
Hope Gente is OK. Getting hit pretty hard. Much of South Texas is electricity dependent, since air conditioning needed a good part of the year. When I lived there, naturally no significant wind or solar, and much came from a nuclear plant.
Thanks GoI, we're getting by. When Sandy hit in 2012 we were out of power for almost 7 days. Where I am, Georgetown ( not Sun City, that's like Stepford Grandparents ), they've been doing rolling blackouts of about 3 hours off, 5 hours or more on. The problem is my house is at the cutoff, when our power comes back on, the rest of the street goes down. This means our internet connection is still off until their power come backs on. There are also boil water alerts. So far we're not affected but I've got my bathtub filled just in case.
For someone who lived in NJ and NY for almost 68 years it's shocking that a 6 inch snowfall can paralyze a whole state.
Glad you are OK. Having lived in Texas I understand the panic. We would get irritated in the Valley when they kept our kids inside when the temperature cracked 50 degrees. “The cold will freeze their lungs.”
Looks like a couple of more tough days.
Good luck.
Looking forward to this tomorrow.
https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=111207
la gente esta muy loca wrote:
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
Hope Gente is OK. Getting hit pretty hard. Much of South Texas is electricity dependent, since air conditioning needed a good part of the year. When I lived there, naturally no significant wind or solar, and much came from a nuclear plant.
Thanks GoI, we're getting by. When Sandy hit in 2012 we were out of power for almost 7 days. Where I am, Georgetown ( not Sun City, that's like Stepford Grandparents ), they've been doing rolling blackouts of about 3 hours off, 5 hours or more on. The problem is my house is at the cutoff, when our power comes back on, the rest of the street goes down. This means our internet connection is still off until their power come backs on. There are also boil water alerts. So far we're not affected but I've got my bathtub filled just in case.
For someone who lived in NJ and NY for almost 68 years it's shocking that a 6 inch snowfall can paralyze a whole state.
Hang in there (not that you have any choice....)
Why don't you pick up a little generator?
I did that a few years ago and it's all i need to fire up a few lights, a microwave, the refrigerator, and an electric heater, even the internet.
I should be able to plug my furnace into it, but I got some high-tech super energy efficient model that somehow detects an ungrounded energy source and it won't work on the generator. I think i have to get some crazy type of receptacle for it, which i have never gotten around to.
But hey, why not pick up a generator for about $300 or $400?
cheers gente
seattle prattle wrote:Why don't you pick up a little generator?
We lived through a massive ice storm in the late 90s and were then living in a rural subdivision with overhead powerlines that came down. Being a low density area, we were way down on the priority list to re-establish power, and went without for 9.5 days. I ended up buying a generator after about 4 days, and I hard-wired it to the central electrical panel (after first disconnecting from the grid). I was able to run some lights, the water (we were on a well), sewer (we had septic with a raised tile bed needing pumping from the tank) and the sump pumps (the basement would flood if they were out for many hours; we had only recently settled a basement flooding insurance claim, desperate to not have to issue another one). The house, which was pretty big, had an electric furnace so there was no way to heat the house off a small 5kW generator.
We had one wood fireplace (the mainly decorative kind, that burns wood without throwing a lot of heat into the house), plus a wood stove in the basement. I slept next to the wood stove, which was the only warm part of the house. Little did I know that the previous owners had not cleaned the chimney. I woke up in the middle of the night to an awful roar, and the stove pipe was red hot. A chimney fire! Holy hell, batman, I managed to jimmy the dampers and get the fire down, but I've never been that scared in my life. Damn near died in a fire!
Plenty of other people also bought generators, and there were a lot of safety issues. A generator spews exhaust, so if you run it inside your garage without adequate ventilation you can die of carbon monoxide poisoning. So if you do get a generator, please do be careful...
Postscript... four years later, we moved away to another town. I didn't want to move the big, bulky generator, and figured I'd likely never need one again, so I sold it. Sure enough, two years later, in our new town, we lived through the blizzard of the century and lost power again for 4 days. Off I went, driving 3 hours to the nearest town not sold out of generators and bought another.
You'd think I would have learned from those experiences, but I gave the second generator away to my father-in-law. I have not yet needed it again. Fingers crossed... :-)
All the best to y'all fighting it out through this winter power outage. It will bring out the best and the worst in people, if my experience is a guide.
VS-SJW-IR-TS idiot wrote:
seattle prattle wrote:Why don't you pick up a little generator?
We lived through a massive ice storm in the late 90s and were then living in a rural subdivision with overhead powerlines that came down. Being a low density area, we were way down on the priority list to re-establish power, and went without for 9.5 days. I ended up buying a generator after about 4 days, and I hard-wired it to the central electrical panel (after first disconnecting from the grid). I was able to run some lights, the water (we were on a well), sewer (we had septic with a raised tile bed needing pumping from the tank) and the sump pumps (the basement would flood if they were out for many hours; we had only recently settled a basement flooding insurance claim, desperate to not have to issue another one). The house, which was pretty big, had an electric furnace so there was no way to heat the house off a small 5kW generator.
We had one wood fireplace (the mainly decorative kind, that burns wood without throwing a lot of heat into the house), plus a wood stove in the basement. I slept next to the wood stove, which was the only warm part of the house. Little did I know that the previous owners had not cleaned the chimney. I woke up in the middle of the night to an awful roar, and the stove pipe was red hot. A chimney fire! Holy hell, batman, I managed to jimmy the dampers and get the fire down, but I've never been that scared in my life. Damn near died in a fire!
Plenty of other people also bought generators, and there were a lot of safety issues. A generator spews exhaust, so if you run it inside your garage without adequate ventilation you can die of carbon monoxide poisoning. So if you do get a generator, please do be careful...
Postscript... four years later, we moved away to another town. I didn't want to move the big, bulky generator, and figured I'd likely never need one again, so I sold it. Sure enough, two years later, in our new town, we lived through the blizzard of the century and lost power again for 4 days. Off I went, driving 3 hours to the nearest town not sold out of generators and bought another.
You'd think I would have learned from those experiences, but I gave the second generator away to my father-in-law. I have not yet needed it again. Fingers crossed... :-)
All the best to y'all fighting it out through this winter power outage. It will bring out the best and the worst in people, if my experience is a guide.
Yikes!
I've had the same little generator for many years and had to use it only a few times but it came in handy. I'm something of a tool guy so i'm not going to get hurt, and would only run it outside.
I would be a little nervous running it into the electrical panel - heard of some bad stories of generators backfeeding into power lines and frying utility workers....
I just run a 100 foot extension cord into the house and run a few appliances off it. Pretty simple.
Damn thing isn't any bigger than a push mower.
Last time i think i took an electric baseboard heater out of my woodshop and ran it upstairs and fired that thing up to heat us.
Around here, though, about the worst we ever get is a half day blackout. Rural areas are worse, i know, but it just doesn't happen here in the city much.
I've got quite a few machines, most a lot more interesting than that generator, and with the markets having been as good as they have been, i am going to be passing my time using them when i pick my retirement date.
Looking forward to it, actually.
G night!
seattle prattle wrote:I'm something of a tool guy so i'm not going to get hurt, and would only run it outside. I would be a little nervous running it into the electrical panel - heard of some bad stories of generators backfeeding into power lines and frying utility workers....
I'm fairly handy myself, and I have relevant educational background (there's a healthy dose of electrical engineering way back in my early university education) and a certain amount of pertinent work experience (I've helped wire a number of buildings, and also helped re-establish high-voltage electrical transmission across a war-damaged Yugoslav army base when serving abroad a few years earlier, mind you under close supervision...), but I probably really only knew enough to be dangerous to myself, and hopefully not to others. :-)
[quote]agip wrote:
Hey Igy is that your Porsche I hear revving up or is it the US economy?
//
Consumers flocked to spend their stimulus checks in January, sending retail sales for the month up 5.3% in a blockbuster start to 2021, according to a government report Wednesday.
Right.
People out of work for a year get a $600 check and can just run out and spend it.
The Unkle wrote:
Right.
People out of work for a year get a $600 check and can just run out and spend it.
Those are the most likely people to spend it.
VS-SJW-IR-TS idiot wrote:
seattle prattle wrote:I'm something of a tool guy so i'm not going to get hurt, and would only run it outside. I would be a little nervous running it into the electrical panel - heard of some bad stories of generators backfeeding into power lines and frying utility workers....
I'm fairly handy myself, and I have relevant educational background (there's a healthy dose of electrical engineering way back in my early university education) and a certain amount of pertinent work experience (I've helped wire a number of buildings, and also helped re-establish high-voltage electrical transmission across a war-damaged Yugoslav army base when serving abroad a few years earlier, mind you under close supervision...), but I probably really only knew enough to be dangerous to myself, and hopefully not to others. :-)
I am comfortable added an outlet, or lights to an existing circuit, or rewiring a lamp. When it came to adding a 220 outlet to support a garage heater I called an electrician. I watched him, and it was straightforward, but probably would always call in someone at that level. I could see how wiring in a generator to your electrical panel could expose one to multiple hazards to person and property, if you were not experienced.
What’s up hommie? I thought a bad jobs number would be good for the market.
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
VS-SJW-IR-TS idiot wrote:
I'm fairly handy myself, and I have relevant educational background (there's a healthy dose of electrical engineering way back in my early university education) and a certain amount of pertinent work experience (I've helped wire a number of buildings, and also helped re-establish high-voltage electrical transmission across a war-damaged Yugoslav army base when serving abroad a few years earlier, mind you under close supervision...), but I probably really only knew enough to be dangerous to myself, and hopefully not to others. :-)
I am comfortable added an outlet, or lights to an existing circuit, or rewiring a lamp. When it came to adding a 220 outlet to support a garage heater I called an electrician. I watched him, and it was straightforward, but probably would always call in someone at that level. I could see how wiring in a generator to your electrical panel could expose one to multiple hazards to person and property, if you were not experienced.
Sounds like a good place to draw the line.
I've done the complete electrical wiring on a couple of houses, including my own. I feel comfortable with anything from the main panel downstream and even installed a sub-panel when my main panel was filled to capacity. I wouldn't touch anything from the panel to the electrical meter, though.
Likewise, i've done all my plumbing and gas lines, etc.,, but my real area of experience in with wood, carpentry, framing, finish carpentry, drywall, etc.
Funny, though, it struck me how similar that is to managing one's finances. Some people just get comfortable doing it themselves, and i fell into that camp, mostly because i learned slowly along the way when less was at stake. But i certainly encourage others to turn to the services of professionals like yourselves under most circumstances.
seattle prattle wrote:
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
I am comfortable added an outlet, or lights to an existing circuit, or rewiring a lamp. When it came to adding a 220 outlet to support a garage heater I called an electrician. I watched him, and it was straightforward, but probably would always call in someone at that level. I could see how wiring in a generator to your electrical panel could expose one to multiple hazards to person and property, if you were not experienced.
Sounds like a good place to draw the line.
I've done the complete electrical wiring on a couple of houses, including my own. I feel comfortable with anything from the main panel downstream and even installed a sub-panel when my main panel was filled to capacity. I wouldn't touch anything from the panel to the electrical meter, though.
Likewise, i've done all my plumbing and gas lines, etc.,, but my real area of experience in with wood, carpentry, framing, finish carpentry, drywall, etc.
Funny, though, it struck me how similar that is to managing one's finances. Some people just get comfortable doing it themselves, and i fell into that camp, mostly because i learned slowly along the way when less was at stake. But i certainly encourage others to turn to the services of professionals like yourselves under most circumstances.
Similar here, but you and “the SJW/idiot” appear more advanced. I painted the interior of my current house in 2013, while contracting the exterior. I was simply too busy to handle both. The exterior is ready for a repaint and considering doing it myself. It is two story, and I am 70, so need to give that more thought.
Igy, why don't you get an early start on painting the exterior this spring, and see how much you can get done. Just do the lower portions and save the higher stuff and eaves for a pro.
Or just do the sides of the house that aren't fully two-story.
If you can get half of it done yourself, that cuts the price down to probably a commensurate amount.
Whatever's left, hire out. Most painters are going to give you a price based on square footage so they aren't going to care one bit if you did some of it yourself.
I mention the early start part because lining up a painter is often challenging the further you get into the season.
Seattle,
That is what I thinking. There are a couple of tricky spots, high roof pitch, sided chimney, etc. I would say about 3/4s of the house easily accessible. During graduate school, and in my early coaching years I painted houses/apartments; all using rollers. Painted my previous house and father-in-laws with a paint sprayer. I am thinking using a roller, like I did on my interior walls. I can put on more paint, plus it will be easier to work in sections.
Igy