I'm looking at getting a laptop, what's the listing?
Oh hey, two rants for the price of one.
A) the bulging disc in my neck is acting up again.
B) the local grocery industry is seriously pissing me off. There are two brands that recently colluded to drive a third out of the marketplace. While I'm all for healthy competition, it's another thing altogether to have Kroger and Albertsons (who isn't part of the Kroger family but has mysteriously been selling an awful lot of Kroger product lately) team up, drop all of their dairy and meat prices until the other guy goes under, and then jack the prices up so high that you're forced to drive out-of-market to get groceries or pay a ridiculous premium for substandard food. I absolutely refuse to pay $6.49 for a loaf of bread or pay frenched rack of lamb prices for thin, slimy pork chops or chicken that's - literally - rotting in the butcher case. And all of that leaves out the continual sale of expired food. The third option was a smaller regional chain with much higher quality meat for reasonable prices and produce that didn't rot on the way home from the store.
A) the bulging disc in my neck is acting up again.
B) the local grocery industry is seriously pissing me off. There are two brands that recently colluded to drive a third out of the marketplace. While I'm all for healthy competition, it's another thing altogether to have Kroger and Albertsons (who isn't part of the Kroger family but has mysteriously been selling an awful lot of Kroger product lately) team up, drop all of their dairy and meat prices until the other guy goes under, and then jack the prices up so high that you're forced to drive out-of-market to get groceries or pay a ridiculous premium for substandard food. I absolutely refuse to pay $6.49 for a loaf of bread or pay frenched rack of lamb prices for thin, slimy pork chops or chicken that's - literally - rotting in the butcher case. And all of that leaves out the continual sale of expired food. The third option was a smaller regional chain with much higher quality meat for reasonable prices and produce that didn't rot on the way home from the store.
See, that's interesting because Kroger here in Columbus, OH has always been THE place to go for high quality meat, cheese, and dairy that was produced locally. It would cost a little more than Meijer or Walmart, but you were getting way better stuff. That might be because Kroger is HQed in Cincinnati though and they actually keep an eye on the stores here.
I can't fathom why your Albertsons is selling Kroger stuff. It's Kroger's most direct competitor in the US.
I can't fathom why your Albertsons is selling Kroger stuff. It's Kroger's most direct competitor in the US.
This isn't entirely true. Kroger's ATTEMPTED a buy-out of Albertsons but it fell through, only acquiring them a few hundred stores. Albertsons is still independently owned and HQed in Boise, Idaho and competes with Kroger basically everywhere west of Chicago but only effectively in the Pacific Northwest.
Local Kroger here is pretty amazing since they re-opened 2-3 years ago. It went from worse-than-Walmart to best store in town (for me). I definitely think that having a Publix, Target, Walmart, Ingles, Food Depot, and Aldis nearby does keep them competing, though 
And they just merged with Safeway recently too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertsons#Safeway_acquisition
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Staff member
It was weird last time I went through there to see the Albertson's at University and East 29th out of business. That place was all trendy and busy when I lived there. That whole little area was, and it's all dead now.
Albertson's and Safeway had to sell a bunch of stores to Haggen as part of an anti-trust agreement when they merged. Haggen promptly closed a bunch of the stores they purchased in the deal.
GasBandit
Staff member
Well, the north side of the street is. The south side of the street seems to be doing fairly well, against all common sense. But I'll tell ya, the HEB has really revitalized the old dead mall that was at Texas and Villa Maria. Now it's "The Tejas Center" and is one of the busier shopping centers in Bryan (which I realize isn't really saying much).
But yeah, the CS commerce seems to be moving away from University close to 6 and is mushrooming up all along Texas Ave, south of University. Another bigass HEB opened there a few years ago, too.
And freakin' Bryan just got another Wal-Mart on Villa Maria, but this one is out west of 2818 where there used to be NOTHING but scrub brush and gnarled trees.
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GasBandit
Staff member
Hah, yeah, remember when 2818 was a road to nowhere?
I think you mean Wellborn/Finfeather, though, College Ave is still a regular intersection with Villa Maria
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Staff member
Right Finfeather. It's been a while.
Man when I moved to CS for grad school, 6 and University was a farm. By the time I left, it was a strip mall.
I've also observed the vacant lots around Northgate get turned into more overpriced student housing. I live just off Boyett and they're demolishing a lot of the dilapidated hovels. They bulldozed the ghetto across the street from me and are now putting in a parking garage. That means I won't be seeing the cops responding to a domestic every other week, but instead might have to deal with drunk college students throwing bottles on my lawn.
GasBandit
Staff member
That close to Northgate, I'm surprised you don't already!
Sadly, Haggen was the third option I was talking about. The stores they didn't immediately shut down when they took over have been steadily going out of business, until most of Haggen is dead. The Haggen location near me was originally an Albertson's before their acquisition of Safeway, which had a bigger, better store right across the street. Once the Haggen went out Albertson's moved right back in - even though it was one of the stores they were required to sell in the anti-trust agreement. Regardless, today I drove 40 minutes to the nearest Whole Foods and paid $50 less than I usually pay for two weeks worth of groceries (we eat a bit expensive, but it's worth it), at Safeway - and when Whole Paycheck is the low-cost alternative, you know someone at Safewaybertson's has lost their fucking mind.
Franz Buttermilk bread. Even the store brand knock offs of what used to be Wonder Bread are $3.99 a loaf around here - though they're frequently on sale for $2.49 a loaf. I'm giving serious thought to just making my own french bread every weekend and calling it good. Flour is at least still cheap.
Yeah, something is seriously fucky about the pricing in this area, and I haven't quite been able to figure out what the hell is going on. I don't know if it's the national chains trying to bolster their profits or trying to raise prices to keep up because of all of the business they lose to the base PX. Bread, we've already discussed. Store brand milk runs $4.00 a gallon, but is usually on sale for $2.50 a gallon. Lunch meat is hilariously overpriced for anything other than the Land-O-Lakes bags of chopped, reformed, and processed meat (in 3 delicious flavors! Ham, Turkey, and Bologna!). Even the Oscar Mayer olive loaf* runs $6.99 for an 8oz package, on sale for $4.99. At regular price, that's $1 per slice of olive loaf.
There's always the ongoing national discussion about how it's only affordable for a family to eat the stuff that we should be trying to stay away from, like all of the pre-processed, high sodium, high carb foods - but around here it seems like they've ratcheted things up to 11.
* Bologna with pimento stuffed green olives pressed into it.
There's always the ongoing national discussion about how it's only affordable for a family to eat the stuff that we should be trying to stay away from, like all of the pre-processed, high sodium, high carb foods - but around here it seems like they've ratcheted things up to 11.
* Bologna with pimento stuffed green olives pressed into it.
You mean stuff like this? ELI5: Why are groceries more expensive in poorer neighborhoods? (reddit)
(Oh, that's reddit and just opinions, you say? Would you like to read an academic paper on the subject?)
Interesting how they call out WA specifically.
--Patrick
(Oh, that's reddit and just opinions, you say? Would you like to read an academic paper on the subject?)
Interesting how they call out WA specifically.
--Patrick
I took my medication a little while ago and I'm not feeling great as a result. My daughter just came by with a bucket and a thermometer. I must look great....
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Staff member
It's a macbook pro, early 2011.
She knows the drill.
Has it already been tested for a potentially failing GPU?
If so, you will want to include that in your listing.
If not, you probably want to get it tested so you can include that in your listing.
--Patrick
It's the only way to get decent bread anywhere in the Anglo-Saxon world, honestly. The French, the Germans, the Belgians, and, to a lesser extent, the Dutch, are apparently the only people in the world who know what decent bread is supposed to look like and taste like. It's not a sponge.
Thanks for the links. Guess I'll just have to keep driving to the richest neighborhood in the metro for a while.
Yeah, it's stupid.
Almost as stupid as what we're running into with our cable company.
Oh, you want to watch this television show online? Please sign in with your cable TV account (we don't have cable TV, only Internet). Hmph. Part of the reason I got better Internet was so I wouldn't HAVE to get a TV plan.
--Patrick
When I cut back the TV options a couple years ago, I lost some of the online streams because they weren't part of my TV package anymore. I wound up putting them back so I could be sure I could get the last of Mad Men last year.
I think Ralph's is the one that Kroger owns out here. They've closed down a couple of them recently, though.
Friday: HOO-boy, got a cheap hostel, and my own panel and booth! THIS WEEKEND SHALL RULE!
One Hostel Rejection, dead audience, 10 people who said they liked me and my stuff but wouldn't buy a book, and a bout of food poisoning later.
I've...had better weekends. To be fair to the looky-loos, it WAS more a video game convention than comics.
One Hostel Rejection, dead audience, 10 people who said they liked me and my stuff but wouldn't buy a book, and a bout of food poisoning later.
I've...had better weekends. To be fair to the looky-loos, it WAS more a video game convention than comics.
I am feeling a strong sense of "you can't make this shit up" right now.
Notice that I am quoting a rant of mine from October 2014. After the last email exchange between my company and this particular translator, there was no contact between us for... let's see... 17 months. And then today she emails back again, basically saying, "I AM STILL WAITING FOR AN EXPLANATION FOR WHY YOU THINK I USED MACHINE TRANSLATION! I CHALLENGE YOU TO FIND A TRANSLATION PROGRAM THAT CAN MATCH THE QUALITY OF THE TRANSLATION I GAVE YOU!"
For anyone curious, here is a snippet of her translation, completely unedited, in its NDA-risking glory (I may delete this part of this post in the near future):
(On second thought, snipped removed. Just trust me, it's really bad, like "all your base are belong to us" level of bad)
I want to email her back and say, "Show your translation to a native English speaker. Go ahead. I guarantee they will say it looked like you had a stroke halfway through every sentence." But instead, my supervisor says we're just going to ignore her.
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