I agree. Unless he lives in an igloo.

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I want to know his secret

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Be well

GO BEARS!!!

I think it's a great thing to stay at home and raise children......it's not an easy job. That said I would do it in a heartbeat if I could...

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This is my signature...

Probably a one bedroom apartment with gas appliances. CFL bulbs and or florescent overhead lighting in the bathroom. He doesn't cook much or run his AC (but when the AC is on that bill is over 40 but he won't because he's a cheap bastard). No hair dryer. No curling iron. Probably a smallerish LED TV. Plenty of masturbation.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Mine was always well over $100 until Arlington got a deal on electricity from another supplier. Now I'm in the 80's.

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/2014 ... 140318940/

Two kids away at school much of the year these days probably helps too.

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."

Spanky hit it out of the park. Well said on all accounts.

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When the kids were younger it was difficult patience wise. Now that they are older it's easier except I'm feeling less purposeful and less valuable to the household. I also have a tough time navigating the stay at home mom social network. Sometimes I have to make decisions based on outcomes rather than values. It's a lot of work for me and not particularly rewarding. I also feel guilt about spending money while not making any. This is all my personal experience so take that for what it's worth.

The utility market has to be one of the most complicated our country has- localized monopolies lower costs due to equities of scale, but lack of competition encourages profit taking. Individual customers want to pay prices as part of a huge group and demand service like they are the only customer. My employer, a large utility company not ComEd, is battling deregulation in Ohio- we have been told that, depending on the outcome, 2016 budgets will be vastly different than current. Add in the more recent environmental challenges of burning coal to generate electricity, the increased costs of nuclear, negative returns to date from wind and solar, and things could be changing faster than we can imagine.

You're our scapegoat! Gentlemen, torches! Tar, feathers, rope!

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

i live alone, have a 3 bedroom ranch w/ no basement (i.e. small) and am gone during the week 11 hours a day....and my bill is usually 60-70/month

in the summer w/ the AC its ~100-120

(gas appliances of course)

historians will look back on these last few decades and realize we are getting absolutely raped on energy costs. e=mc2, in other words, matter equals energy. there is unlimited amounts of it. and we seem to pay unlimited prices for it. the financial equation doesnt make sense, especially with the amount of natural gas this country is now pulling up. it has to stop, it shouldnt cost $150 a month just to keep warm in the winter.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

says the cubs season ticket holder in a fit of inadvertant parallelism... =D

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it's called a "peasant tax", ike. just like gasoline and the future carbon tax aka the "thanks for fucking the world up you suburban shithead" tax.

it's like george carlin said... the world is a very exclusive club that you're not a part of. or it's like simon pegg said on doctor who:

The Editor: It may interest you to know that this isn't actually the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. It's merely a place where humans happen to live...
[a loud alien growling interrupts]
The Editor: Sorry... It's a place where humans are allowed to live by kind permission of my client.
[the Editor points upwards. Rose and The Doctor look up to see a gigantic mass on the ceiling, which screams, showing large pointed teeth]
Rose Tyler: What is that?
The Doctor: You mean that thing's in charge of Satellite Five?
The Editor: 'That thing', as you put it, is in charge of the human race. For almost a hundred years, mankind has been shaped and guided, his knowledge and ambitions strictly controlled by its broadcast news, edited by my superior, your master and humanity's guiding light, The Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe.
[pause]
The Editor: I call him Max.

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April bill arrived today. 3/14 through 4/14.

3 bedroom house. Gas furnace, stove and water heater but electric dryer. Son home 3/14-3/16. Otherwise it is just the wife and me.

$78.31 total.

Supply: Integrys Energy Services Inc. 627 kWh x 0.05631: $35.31

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"I honestly don't see a good bet on the board here."

neil degrass tyson says we might all be slaves to aliens and not even know it. just like salamanders living in a cage, we are so stupid we dont even know we are being controlled by a higher intelligence. this world might just be someones pet aquarium.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

He fixes the cable?

I live in a two bedroom apartment and in the past year our electric supplier was changed. our bill is usually 22-25 dollars a month compared to 35-40 in previous years. What also helped is our fridge died and the landlord put in a new energy efficient fridge. In the summer it goes up to 60-70 because I leave the air unit on all the time. Id rather pay the extra money and be comfortable then save the 10-20 dollars and be miserable.

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We're all living in an autistic child's snow globe. Which would explain the recent weather.

BUMP


I am still without power some 34 hours after these storms hit. Obviously I'm not the only one, and losing power due to the storms is clearly not ComEd's fault. I'm sure their crews are working 16-18+ hour shifts trying to fix everything. That fact is the power is still out is not my issue with them.

The issue is that I still do not have any sort of information as to when power may be restored. Up until about 10pm last nite, it was just automated responses of "crews are out working assessing the damage, and estimated restore times are not available at this time." I'm sorry, that is pure and utter bullshit. 24 hours later and you can't even give me an update on anything? Their estimated time now for everybody is 11:59pm tomorrow, but some in the hardest hit pockets may take days to be restored.

Fuck you. Seriously, fuck the fuck off. "Oh, it might be today, it might be tomorrow, but it still could take days" is what you give me? Unacceptable. When my next bill comes maybe I'll just send ComEd a letter that says I hope to have my check in the mail tomorrow, but it still could take days before I send it. To keep people waiting like this with no real information is just way below anything that is considered acceptable at the poorest level of customer service.

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its pretty crazy, there are people who live just a mile or two from me in the same situation, but i somehow managed to escape it

walking around my neighborhood yesterday i saw quite a few tree limbs down, someones entire fence caved in when a tree fell on it

has to be due to all the good karma i've built up over the years

Yesterday at about 10 AM, they estimated my power would be back at 8:30 PM. At about 8:10 the power came on. At 8:20 I got a text message from ComEd saying there was more damage than they thought and they would re-estimate the time that my power would come online. They definitely have some issues with that. Plus they are still listing "Probable Cause" as "Under Evaluation" -- here's a hint ComEd, a GIANT STORM came through and knocked out hundreds of thousands of homes -- guessing you can safely assign probable cause at this point.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

Yeah really. I don't care if it was a tree, or a power pole that fell over, or somebody's roof that blew off and hit the lines. Just get me a reasonable estimate as to when the power will be back. As of now I don't know if the power will be turned back on in 4 hours or 4 days.

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So Frank is getting no communication and Newper is getting text messages?

how does that work

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"He is a loathsome, offensive brute
--yet I can't look away."

I'm getting communication, but there is really no info. All day yesterday it was "restoration estimates are not available." Today its, "we hope to have most customers restored by 11:59pm on July 3rd, but a few zip codes in the hardest hit pockets could take longer" and my zip code is in that list.

So as I said, could be 4 hours or 4 days. Nobody knows at this point which is just terrible.

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i completely understand your point and would want to get updates as well....that being said, do you think they honestly know ? i guess what i'm saying is if they said 'yeah it will be back in 5 hours ' just to placate you, what good would that do when it turns out to be 5 days

Buy a generator.

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I did yesterday to clean out my basement.

I'm sure they are told to not give any times until they are 100% sure of whats wrong, that said I think they could give a little more information than 'pockets hardest hit may take days to restore'. 2 days, 4 days, 10 days? Again yesterday all we had was "estimated times are not available" for the entire day.

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I got a guy...

We were able to finally afford a whole house unit last fall. We are in a cul de sac that used to lose power all of the time. And at times, there was only 14 houses out, making us always the last folks to get turned on. 4 days was the longest we ever had to wait.

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I don't understand the complaints about power loss after major widespread disasters. This wasn't a transformer blowing in the area. Often, they can't give times because they don't know how many people they will have working and how much they need to repair or replace. When the hurricane hit here, which had a lot more warning so they could plan better, they still had trouble doing estimates because they were literally running out of materials needed.

I understand it's frustrating but it's also not shocking that a storm that causes widespread damage can't be estimated like a local power outage based on a raccoon chewing on some wires.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!