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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 20th, 2023

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  • We’re doing a major bathroom remodel at the moment and as part of the project are planning to replace the 15 year old electric water heater that came with the house when we bought it. Heat pumps work by exchanging heat from the air around to the water in the tank, which means that in addition to reducing humidity they also put out cool air. Usually they are installed in a garage or basement where that doesn’t matter as much, but we don’t have a basement and putting it in the garage would require a lot more work in terms of plumbing and electrical work, so we’re going to keep it where it is in the house but install vents that exchange air from the attic in the winter, then in the summer we can flip open the vents and cool/dehumidify our house.

    They’re expensive up front but there are federal tax credits through 2032 (I think) of up to 30% of the project cost ($2000 max) and on top of that our local electric company is offering rebates of $800 to replace an electric or gas heater with an air pump. So that will reduce the upfront cost by a pretty good amount.

    The only thing I’m at all concerned about is the noise of the motor, but the heater won’t be adjacent to any bedrooms so I don’t think it’ll be a big problem in any case.











  • My kids only have one set of grandparents active in their lives, my parents (who are fortunately very active and great with them). My wife’s mother died before we even met so of course the kids never knew her either. And her dad is just kind of an asshole, she put up with him for years but when he started being mean to me in front of the kids she decided she was done - she didn’t want to risk him being mean to them. It’s not even maliciously mean he just thinks it’s funny to insult people and gets butthurt when people “can’t take a joke”.

    The only person in either of our families who is a regular consumer of FOX news is her grandpa (her Dad’s stepfather), and he’s truly one of the sweetest and most loving people I’ve ever met. He just lives in rural Indiana and that’s what they watch there.


  • Re the video games, yes absolutely I’ve done this. I don’t think I’ve 100% finished a game, at least not in the last 20 years. Playing through the latest Zelda game I had to pick my moment when to go take on the final boss carefully, I know that once I beat a game I’m a lot less inclined to keep going on side quests and finding shrines/korok seeds/whatever collectibles that particular game has. So I wanted to do as much of that as I could before going after Ganondorf, but I also didn’t want to wait too long because if I make myself do ALL the side quests and get ALL the collectibles I’ll burn and not even bother finishing the game.