Costco has been jacking prices up at a higher rate than our other area stores. 

I use Eargasm high fidelity earplugs. They do a great job of reducing noise but still allow me to hear music from my helmet speakers without having them be loud. Nice for concerts and indoor sports events as well. Mine came with a little metal case that I keep clipped to my motorcycle keys. 

They tend to stay perky and shapely more easily over time compared to large ones

Carbon steel can work with induction provided that the hob size matches the size of the pan bottom. Otherwise, you wind up with uneven heating which warps the pan (temporarily), which makes it stop working on an induction stove. If you have a fancy dynamic-size burner setup like your Bosch, perhaps this is less of an issue.

But I didn't really want to spend $4k on a stove for our cabin, and I wanted one with physical knobs instead of capacitive touch which they didn't offer anyway. The only 3 we found at the time with knobs was Samsung (never in my life), GE (their Cafe line which was $5k) and LG so we went with that.

My wife and I have been together for 10 years, married for 5. We have a wonderful life together, and neither of us are interested in non-monogamy. 

When we met (she was 23 and I was 25), she was actually a fence-sitter. But I made it clear from the beginning that I didn't want children, and that my previous relationship of 5 years ended over that issue. She eventually hopped off the fence as we built our life together.  Shortly after we got married, I had a vasectomy so there's no more worry about pregnancy scares and my wife was able to come off of birth control. 

Your experience with most CF couples being in open relationships is interesting. I have not observed that as a trend at all. I think there are plenty of men out there who are childfree but also interested in marriage/monogamy. 

We bought and then upgraded. It was easier to build equity that way, but it was also an lifestyle choice of not wanting to live in a building where we had to share walls and such. We took 100% of the equity from our first house and rolled it into the second so that we could sustain a 15 year mortgage. 

Like anything, you tend to hear the bad stories the loudest. I've lived in 3 HOAs over the past 15 years and the only issue I've ever had was one period of time where it was run by someone who took lawn rules too seriously. Everyone quickly became sick of getting letters when their lawn was reasonably fine, and he earned the nickname "yard nazi". It lasted a year before everyone voted him out. 

Other than that, living in an HOA hasn't negatively affected me in the slightest. 

We switched to induction at our cabin because I wanted to get rid of the giant propane tank and the contract that came with it. It's better than electric coil, but I still prefer cooking over gas (which we have at our primary home) with the exception of boiling water (this is where induction shines, IMO). Induction just has too many limitations in terms of the types of cookware you have to use (no aluminum, no round-bottom woks, and carbon steel isn't great either), and size of the pans relative to the size of the induction hobs. Induction also doesn't really have a good "low heat" mode. At low settings, it pulses on and off instead of being steadily low. Also, forget about roasting peppers or corn over a flame.

I had heard enough stories about people having difficulty with most induction ranges being operated by capacitive touch instead of physical knobs so I bought an LG with knobs and I'm glad I did.

If you wanted something that specific, an exact cake with exact wording, why didn't you just buy it yourself? Maybe if all you wanted was for him to pay for it and put zero actual thought into how to celebrate your birthday, he should've just given you money so you could have the Instagram-perfecy birthday you wanted?

Honestly, I'd be put off if my wife were this demanding and micromanaging about how we celebrate her birthday. I put time and effort into celebrating her, and she's always appreciative no matter what I do. I'd feel pretty shitty if I got my wife a cake, and she rejected it because she wanted some super specific other cake. And if she pulled this shit before we got married, there would've been no marriage. 

Yeah absolutely. My job is fine as a job. If it didn't pay as well as it does, I would do something else. But I don't hate my job. I don't dread going to work, so I go to work every day and do it for the paycheck. 

I don't have kids so I don't do this, but growing up this was normal. We've had nieces and nephews stay over with their friends though. I don't have any problem with it. 

A hypochondriac. I have an ex who made up all sorts of allergies and mental health problems because it made her feel special and gave her an excuse for shitty behavior. It was a carousel of issues over 5 years. 

We have a cabin in a rural area and our best option was AT&T business wireless internet. The tower is line of sight and we get 50mbps for $75/month and "unlimited" data (they say they'll deprioritize it after 175GB or something but we've never hit that). You don't have to have a registered business, you can say it's a sole proprietarship and give your SSN as the tax ID.  We did buy a 4g modem which was like $300 instead of leasing a hotspot/modem from them. 

I hope you're right about that. I'm here planning what my next career would be if tech is no longer lucrative.

There are men who like curvy women. I'm not one of them, but there is a vocal contingent that does. 

Their produce section beats the pants off of Costco, and that makes a large portion of our weekly grocery purchases. But yeah, the customer service leaves a lot to be desired. 

On the upside, they also have scan-and-go so you can use the app to scan your stuff and pay through the app and not have to go through normal checkout. It also allows you to apply the coupons that way. Sam's has this too, Costco technology is behind the times. 

That's not the suburbs, that's rural. I'd still rather have that over living in an urban setting. 

As someone who works and hires into this field, I know for certain that there are more applicants than jobs, especially at entry-level. And it's even worse because of all of the tech layoffs that have happened over the past 1-2 years. You have IT workers who have been looking for jobs for 6 months and sometimes over a year. Mid-level and senior-level workers have been nocked down a peg, forced to accept something below their previous position just to find employment. This has a trickle-down effect on applicants with no experience who are losing out on job opportunities to those who have experience and have been laid off.

I mean, you don't have to. My wife and I prefer to sleep together, but I have an aunt and uncle who have been married for nearly 60 years and have spent more than half of it sleeping in separate beds. It's not that arrangement that I'd want in a relationship, but there's no law or rule that says it needs to be one way or the other. It's just personal preference.

I wonder how long it will be until these little moves drive members away? Over the past couple years, we've shifted more and more of our shopping to BJ's because their pricing has been better and their produce selection is way better. I'm questioning whether it's going to remain worth it to keep a Costco membership at full price in the future (and it seems that they'll be raising it soon).

Costco old muffins: $0.14/oz

Costco new muffins: $0.23/oz - $0.27/oz (assuming $7-$8 per pack)

Sam's Club: $0.15/oz

BJ's: $0.14/oz

And Costco's muffins are NOT better than BJ's (haven't tried Sam's)

This is where I am on this topic. I seem to be part of the minority on Reddit that actually likes the suburbs. Yeah, gotta drive 3 minutes to the grocery store and 15 minutes to get into the city or to work, but when I get to my home that I own with a private backyard, and shares no walls, ceiling or floors with anyone else, I get to enjoy the peace and quiet. It's worth the tradeoff to me.

14 years in IT. Different titles along the way, but all technical and all at the same company.

This is what people who attended bootcamps, and the corporations who are selling them like to think. Our company did a shift away from requiring degrees and allowed bootcamps instead, and it was a disaster. After 6 months, it was reverted because the success rate of hiring someone competent was very low.

Bootcamps teach you syntax, and good software engineers need to fully understand what's going on behind the scenes.

Interesting, when did they start doing that? I bought two smart thermostats through their program about 6 or 7 years ago and they didn't require this. I get emails and the app asking me if I want to opt, in but it's optional

I'd have a little more sympathy for them if they were not a monopolistic corporation that made $2.8B in net profit last year and have continued to substantially raise our rates, and still insufficiently fund their infrastructure to the point of relying on programs like this, where they pay you a minuscule amount of money to sweat your ass off in your own house.