Tuesday, February 28, 2017

It's like this world stopped for 10 years.

Everyone should forget about the housing crisis. We have a much bigger crisis on the way and I swear to you Californians are on the verge of a freakout moment. They just don't quite know it yet. But something has to give and I'm betting it will sometime very soon.

It's a confluence of things really. A recession that lasted for about 9 years which sapped money from all corners of the earth. Housing took center stage and it sapped focus from everything. And now we are here almost 9 years later and it's abundantly clear the population continued to grow while almost nothing else did. Now real problems are starting to show. Lack of infrastructure, or just plain run down infrastructure is going to become a huge deal. Yuuuuge.

In the Bay Area now it is not uncommon at all to have a two hour commute one way. If there are accidents or road work, it could be three hours. Like my commute tonight because they decided to fix the road in the middle of the day. And I swear to you if I roll across another road crew just checking their cell phones I am going to freak out.

The city of Fremont has been literally breaking Waze lately. It's the main city for people to get to the burbs. There becomes a point where Waze just breaks down and becomes not effective. It sends people out into all corners of neighborhoods and just clogs everything. I'll upload pictures tomorrow.

Now this has become such a big deal all of a sudden because we've had record rainfall and it's ripped the roads to shreds. The whole State has. Yesterday I read it was flooding in San Diego, so I'm betting the whole State from tip to stern is on the verge of melting down. For instance, I think it would be more helpful for Waze to tell me when there is NOT a pothole in the road. (Who reports those anyway! They must spend all their time doing that) I even went to the store today and that was the small talk of the day. The checker told me that 52 tires were taken out on the Altamont pass. Can you imagine! 52 tires. And I hear of those stories ALL the time now. The roads are third world bad.

The time and money people are losing....... something is going to give. In a big way.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

The crazy combinations you will come up when you are home sick and don't have any food in the house and you don't want to go out for any.

Peanut butter
Butter
And maraschino cherries on fresh baked bread.

The first bite is weird but appealing. And then you can't believe how good it tastes.

I've tried peanut butter with a lot of different things, but maraschino cherries is a new one.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

I am ~somewhat~ reformed.

I think Kid Cudi said it best - "People told me slow me roll. I'm screaming out fuck that." Then I got a ticket for doing over 100mph coming back from San Diego. And honestly the first month I was more bummed at how lame my ticket was. If I was going to be forced to stop speeding at least I could have gotten pinched doing like 105 or 130! I was only doing 101. Lame. Mr S. was actually super mad about my attitude.

But then I found out that the law doesn't take lightly to people going over 100mph. It's as bad as drunk driving. Two points on your record. Two points! So I had to hire one of those Better Call Saul ticket lawyers. Who basically told me I was effed. Seriously! He said he was just going to try and not get my license suspended. Other than that? Effed.

Even then I didn't believe the guy so I started talking to everyone to see if he was right. I'd even go to car shows with Ferrari's and all type of performance car and ask the owners if they'd gotten "the big ticket". I was asking everyone. Everyone! They would usually tell me no, and their chuckle told me that guy was right. I was effed. Everyone would laugh at me, which wasn't helpful because I still kinda thought it was funny.

If you think this is bad when you are 20's though, try being older and having more cars. Plus I was going to lose my good driver discount. What?! Other than speeding I'm a good driver! And that ticket stays on your record for a super long time. Like drunk driving. Anyway....

The ticket lawyer was able to plead me down to one point on my record. And now that I know how expensive that potentially is... I'm going to try to keep it under a 100 from now on. I mean, for the next two years I can only normal speed until the ticket drops off my record.

I got super lucky and I'm going to try to be better. Even after I'm not under the threat of going to jail.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

It's finally sunny.



When I posted yesterday I didn't really think we were going to get much more rain. Then about 4:00, the sky just unloaded! And it rained so hard - it was biblical for about an hour and a half. Then it just stopped. Like a light switch went off.

I think people were fairly impressed because everyone poured out of their houses like ants and went down to the creek to see it. I've never seen that many people there, and they all were talking about the storm. Lot's of people who live by the creek were down there too.

I talked to a lady who lived in the mobile home park who said the night before was crazy. You can see they only had a few feet before things would have gotten real. Even the nice houses in the first shot above must have been freaking out. That night before the water was over the road to the right of the frame. When we first tried to get into the park the road was closed.

The further into the park we walked the more homeowners I talked to. They said the previous evening at about 10:00 the creek rose so high that it came within four feet of the road. The water was really down by the time I got there, but you can kinda see a bridge in the distance. I guess they were probably checking the creek all night.

I have to admit - I didn't think that was at all possible.  There is a depth guage on the bridge and I think it says 6 feet. But I think it's lying. The creek usually doesn't look like it's more than 3 feet deep.
One of the houses was so lucky. You can see the debris field.



The water got to the level between those boys and me. You can see from the debris.



On the other side the water came up to the debris field below.



They tried to block off the park, but pretty much no effs given by anyone.





This guy would have been under water probably to his waist.



I keep going back to this place because my neighborhood is on pretty high ground. I think about 70% the city is downhill from me. and my back yard got so flooded that when it stopped I was like thank gawd. I'm glad we have a break because the ground just can' not soak up any more water.

I really don't think we are out of the woods until the snow melt happens. I was laughing with Mr S. last night because the ski resorts have suffered so much the past four years and now they have mountains of snow, and people can barely get there. All the roads are so messed up.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Squirrels are evolving.



It's been a while since I've posted any videos where you could actually tell if I was the one talking or not. So here ya go. Now you don't have to wonder.

Mr S.'s old shoes usually get tossed outside for slippies. He's not crazy about it, but this is where I use them to mow the lawn or take things to the trash. But I guess the squirrels have figured out they can take stuff from them for their nests. And they aren't shy about it!

Yeah, it's a bit rainy.



We didn't get as much rain as what was predicted, but yesterday was still pretty wild.

They shut down 280 in both directions in San Jose. A tree fell over highway 17. But the cool thing is - someone just pulled a chainsaw out of their car and commuters went to town cutting up the tree. I think that is one of the most awesome Bay Area moments I've ever seen. I used to do that commute once,  and I'm sure they are fed up with the freeway being one lane in each direction. The highway 17 commute is brutal. And if something happens, there are no back roads.

Yesterday was the first time I've had to ever do flood control at my place. So of course we went down to the creek to see how things were going. What else ya gonna do?

At about noon things looked like the above video. Four hours later this is the same spot. That whirlpooly area is right in the middle of the frame.

Out of the last 21 days we have only had four of them with out rain. That is probably more than the last 4 years combined. Last year we only got like 4 inches of rain the whole year.



Who put this dumb ass road in the middle of the spillway?




For some reason only the weather channel has video of this and I can't inbed it. Video here. This is Don Pedro the other spillway that hasn't been used in 20 years. And only used twice in it's exististence.

It shows the kind of buffoonery we have in California. People here seriously thought we would never have to use these spillways again due to climate change. And I'm not even being sarcastic. Even after all the reservoirs were full the water agencies came out and said  - Don't start using water! It's going to take us decades to refill the ground water supply.

So when the rain unicorn came - they were like - just pile dirt up there. It will be fine right? And maybe it is fine - until it's not.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Oh wow. This is gonna be crazy.

By tomorrow night you are going to start seeing some crazy shit out of Silicon Valley. All the dams are releasing water. And the storm that is suppose to come in tonight is suppose to stall out over the Bay Area. They said it could rain for like 30 hours. Literally every single reservoir now is over 100% full. All that water is coming downstream like it or not.

In the East Bay I'm suppose to get like 4-5 inches of rain.  I think it's gonna feel a lot like being in a car wash. They were saying this storm would cause flooding even if we weren't fully saturated. It's crazy.

My favorite car trend.



It looks like bare metal is somewhat back . The funny thing is I hate silver cars, but for some reason I just love this to death. Although, I'm not a fan of the Deloreans' metalness. Maybe it's too angular.





Saturday, February 18, 2017

Never again can sometimes mean - maybe.




Today we drove up to Sacramento for the Autorama which I find to be a ~very~ mediocre car show. The ONLY reason I go is because of the stereos. None of the another car shows I've ever been to have a stereo competition. So I keep going just for that.


Last year I was so pissed I vowed to never go again for the second time in a row. The year before that also sucked. But I was curious how inland was looking with all the rain. So I decided to go with really low expectations. Thankfully the stereos were back and it scratched my tard itch. More later.



Friday, February 17, 2017

Here is to hoping this is all hype.

I guess we are going to get to test out all of our "softly used" spills ways. Don Pedro is next on the list. The spillway has only been activated one other time. In 1997.  They are required to open the spillway at 830 feet. They think it will be opened on Tuesday.

I believe this will cause a lot of downstream flooding. But this one only came onto my radar an hour ago.

The other issue with all these forecasts is - they initially thought this set of systems coming in would be a cold one. So rain would fall as snow and give them more time to cope. And exactly the opposite is happening. The storm is coming in from the South (L.A) via Hawaii.


VR will never go mainstream because of spouses.

Valve’s Gabe Newell: VR could “turn out to be a complete failure”.

It seems like a ridiculous idea but hear me out.

I'm in a somewhat unusual household because both my husband and I like to game. But that is generally not how things work out though. Usually when I talk to guys about gaming, the conversation always turns to how playing video games drives their girlfriends nuts. I mean, it can really create a lot of friction. But this is something girls put up with because while not completely present - they are still somewhat present. With VR gaming they are not really present at all. They are in another world. That is not gong to make girls happy at all. She might just break up with you over it. No foolies. I like games,  but if I was 20 - even I might break up with you, depending.

A few months ago I was talking to a guy I know who happens to be gay. He was talking about his software developer husband who comes home and sits right down to play video games. The guy I know wasn't happy with that at all. Which made me laugh because even gay guys have the same marital issues the rest of the world has. (well I mean, not me. My house is cool)

Guys play probably 95% of the video games. So I assumed that a gay couple might be more tolerant of the whole game playing thing. But apparently not. Do you know how many couples get in fights over video game play? Seriously.

That combined with my feeling that people don't really like to wear "glasses type" things make me sure VR will be nothing more than a fad. Again.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Advertising on the internet is such a waste of money.

Do advertisers really think we are seeing any of their stupid ads? I actually get advertising blindness. Two seconds after I see a pop up I couldn't tell you anything that was on it. I actually start to daydream the second an ad comes on while searching for the X button. I never even absorb anything in the ad. The only things ads do is slow me down.
Trumps press conferences are the BEST. He could spend the rest of his Presidency in a full out Roast Battle with the media and some of us would LOVE it.

Even Jeff Ross was like - Trump roast battled his way into the White House. And it's true.

Wooooow.

Storm headed to Oroville Dam area carries 10 inches of rain, revised forecast warns.

I pretty much expected this story to fall off the radar because the satellite presentation of the storms coming in didn't't seem too crazy. The storms in general were predicted to be not as strong as the ones that caused the overflow. It wasn't until last night that I thought drama was still on the table.

You see, when they first started talking about these new storms, they predicted that we would only get about three days of rain. Then all of a sudden last night they expanded it to seven days. And that is pretty much what happened the last time that caused all the dam drama. Every day you checked the weather, they added another day. When all done it had rained for about 10 days in a row. California can drain a lot of water if it doesn't rain for days and days.

Now these storms do seem less strong, but they are still carrying water from Hawaii. You can never tell what a storm that strafes Hawaii is going to bring.

Such complete financial hacks.



The US dollar is becoming a problem.

When I read this headline I was like - Oh really. The dollar was never a problem under the Obama administration. The media just couldn't figure out why out exports were struggling. It was all a giant mystery. They never even noticed as the dollar rose and rose and rose, and cratered oil.  For almost TWO YEARS! The dollar was never a problem then. Now? All of a sudden a problem. Now -everyone is an expert on the dollar and the economy.

"The dollar on a global trade-weighted basis has strengthened by about 20-25% over the course of the last year. In the weeks following Trump's presidential victory, the dollar had one of its sharpest rises ever against a basket of peers - and is now up more than 40% from its 2011 low."

Notice how they give a wide timeline to reinforce their stupid wrong point. The truth is that the dollar is right back to where it was when Trump took office. Most of the rise they cite is from the Obama administration. I mean, within like a penny. But everybody freak out over 1 or two cents. Not the 20 or so cents under the Obama administration.



Source.


Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Yes, your car will be watching you from the inside.

Self-Driving Cars Won’t Just Watch the World—They’ll Watch You.

However, right now the headlines are more hype than they should be. As with all technology the reasons behind it are slightly different than the public reaction.

I've been to a ton of these conferences and they don't really seem to be putting "cameras" but rather sensors. Probably lazer.  The reasons behind it I think stem more from speech recognition issues.

I guess no matter what your dialect, your face makes the same shapes when you talk. In car speech recognition is especially bad with cabin noise and everything. So they are looking for ways to improve that. Sensors that watch your face are one of them.

Now - technology does morph into other stuff. But for right now, they aren't really "trying" to spy on you. But, I'm sure eventually they will. It just isn't their initial motivation. (allegedly)

Self driving cars can't come fast enough.



I'm not sure why I live such a crazy life sometimes. Last night my property manager emailed me and said that one of my neighbors across the street crashed into my rental. Considering some of the damage I've seen when people get "pedal confusion" - I feel pretty lucky. Two times in the last year businesses in my city have suffered major damage after someone had literally driven all the way through their buildings. All the way to the back wall. One of the businesses a couple of people died.

Mr S. was like - How does that happen?! I'm like - how does that happen? It happens all the time. A couple of years ago my neighbor to the back told me that his neighbor went to pull out of this driveway and floored it. Drove through the neighbors fence and wound up in their pool! They had to have the pool drained with a hazmat crew because a car was in there.

Thankfully I think my fireplace helped stop the car. And double thankfully no one got hurt. This house was already a dead persons house. And that is a disclosure item. The reporting period just came off this house a couple of years ago. I can joke about this now because no one got hurt - but yeah - I'm dead inside. After you know people are safe, you can make jokes about a lot of dark stuff.



Monday, February 13, 2017

Its the dam talk of the whole town.

I mean, everyone is talking about it. The Oroville dam. So of course almost every conversation turns in that direction. But, one guy I talked to today said the following: We are next.

And it's the kind of thing that you laugh about and think - oh - you are so crazy. And then you stop short for a second kinda frozen inside with your eyes wide open. You see, we have a reservoir in our city. You kinda have to drive out of town to get to it, but the city sits on the backside. When I posted the pictures of that huge tree coming down it just so happened that the person who owns the house right next to  where it came down works in the park. As I was taking pictures the owners were out in front, so I yelled - what did that sound like coming down? And this sparked a conversation. She said she worked in the park and that they'd closed it because it was completely flooded. At the time she said she thought it would be closed for two weeks.

So, the first thing I asked this guy today was - is that park back open yet.? And he's like no. The parking lots are still flooded. It's going on close to three weeks now. He goes on to say that a few days ago someone hiked in and posted pictures and his "fishing rock" is still under 10 feet of water.

Now I don't think our dam could be compromised, but the earth is so saturated right now. I've never seen anything like it. And I grew up here. Even I'm surprised at how long the seepage keeps going and the draining isn't.

Maybe nothing happens, but April showers bring May flowers. Right? Really for California, this is time adjusted to March and April.

The next little period will be interesting. Shasta is like 7 feet from the brim and one of the other ones is like 5 feet from full. And I don't even know if any of these reservoirs have ever been completely full! All I know is there is really NO place for the water to go now.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Wow - This is intense. I thought they had dodged a bullet(For a few days).  Evacuation orders for low levels of Oroville.

We have sort of entered the world of the unknown. Oroville only has about 16 thousand people. But rain is suppose to come mid week. Four storms are coming. I'd be surprised if the dam could be compromised.... but?

Eye roll.



My city had a "rally for love' today. I really only expected like three people to show up because it's the burbs. We don't really have much controversy here.



The first ironic thing was a black lives matters booth with absolutely no black people in sight. Apparently they teamed up with NOW because at least we have some of those. (women) Our black population is pretty sparse.



Here you have black lives organizers trying to sign up more white people. Ya know - "for the cause".



They were really trying to tug the heartstrings today. I'm honestly not sure if this was Native American dress or Mexican. And I'm not ashamed. I only know the kid looked miserable. It seemed like one of those things your parents made you do, but you really didn't want to.



I was glad they included us atheists in their sign. Said in the most sarcastic way. We are "fully human" neighbors now.



I did take advantage of the free hugs though. Because if you don't like hugs you have to be a Nazi. Even if they come from the enemy team. She was a really good hugger too!



This was the special security detail. I walked up to them and said "this is the crowd you think is going to get out of hand? They are going to start throwing their canes and walkers"?. They laughed but not too much.



Well.... that's not exactly true. Lots of people are refugees for a lot of reasons.



I know I know - the religion of peace. Yada yada yada.



Isn't she so brave? Hurp.



I guess the sign guy at the top needed a break - so this girl took over. Sign carrying is such a huge burden.



Now the thing I found the most ironic is this seemed to be sponsored by mostly churches. A bunch of them had booth set up. But Muslims have to be the least tolerant of any other religion. Yet those religions bend over backwards for Muslims. It's crazy. All they have to do is stop trying to want to kill us. Problem solved. But they'd rather put up a huge stink.

The US is the only country in the world who doesn't think they need a border wall right now. If this wasn't my town I might have walked up with a no rapefugees sign. I mean, most of the old people can't walk so I think I have the advantage. In San Jose I might get knifed.

It's just mind boggling how these people have exactly no understanding of how this is tearing every country in Europe apart. Yet they feel morally righteous to guilt the rest of us for saying slow down cowboy.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Livin' on a prayer.

The Oroville dam got so lucky. If it would have rained for ONE more day. They are in somewhat of an unmanaged release situation going forward. Hopefully the storm stays out for the full 5 days they predict. Maybe they can get some patch work done.

So.... it looks like the plan right now is to hope the next storm moving in is a cold one. That way water falls as ice rather than rain. Fingers crossed. I guess while we are hoping - we should hope nowhere gets any hotter than it should be in the snow zone.

The bigger question comes next. Typically California doesn't like these reservoirs to be more than 70% full or so because we live in an earthquake zone. 99.9% is sort of outside of "the range" of acceptable.

I'm surprised they didn't start doing some releases sooner. But I'm sure there was a knee jerk reaction over the drought. After what we went through, I'm sure they didn't want to let any water go.

The burbs aka Green acres.



We finally got some sun today which was amazing. ~I'm solar powered.~ It's good the rain finally stopped because the hills are getting kinda sloppy. On my way over to The Valley there must have been a half dozen small slips.



This one has been going for a week or two. It was just a tiny line. It's hard to know how much earth under it wants to go.



This one is new.



Even offramps have small slips. That's how you really know the earth is really saturated. That is barely any elevation at all.



After we got back from The Valley we decided to go to one of our parks. We have a reservoir on the outskirts of town that feeds all the streams in town. I was curious what the outflow is now because everywhere is pretty much full. I knew they had closed the reservoir access down a couple of weeks ago because it got flooded out and they needed to make a lot of repairs. But I thought the parks in town would be open. But they weren't.





Normally you'd be able to walk across these streams. If there was any water in them at all.



Since we couldn't get into the park we decided to check out Hidden lake. That's not the name of it. They will probably call it something lame like Quarry lake. But you pretty much couldn't see it from most of the town unless you knew it was there. After all of the storms - it's sort of like a real lake. They could stock it with trout and it would be the cutest thing.



It hasn't rained in a day but you could still see water was flowing in.









We couldn't get all the way around the lake so we tried to see if we could get a higher vantage point to see the rivers. We then went up to the VA hospital where the source of all Turkeys are, and this set was having a shove match.





Friday, February 10, 2017

Finally - the Silicon Valley fight is back.

This morning I was at one of those automated car conferences. Which was filled with a lot of boring AI stuff. But the thing I did find interesting was - the car companies are sort of trying to gang up against Amazon, Google, and Apple for their future in car infotainment systems. They are trying to pick different companies for speech and gesture so they don't have those names branded on the inside of their cars. It seems like they feel if they chose them, they sort of lose their soul.

Now that's the Silicon Valley I used to know.

Thursday, February 09, 2017

What could go wrong?

As water climbs toward brim of Oroville Dam, state braces for first-ever use of emergency spillway.


Ari Levy. Winner of the laziest, most biased one sided reporting I've read today.

Step one - Take a story and make it about Trump when it has nothing to do with Trump AT ALL. Instead mold the story around the political narrative you are trying to push.

Step two - Completely disregard that the owners of the company in the article severely mismanaged the company. I mean, don't say ONE thing about it - because this is all Trumps fault.  GOT IT? Even though the problems started at least a year before Trump even came into office. Sounds like they basically ran it like a frat house. Which I don't care about - but frat houses are always dumps. Companies run that way turn into dumps. I can always tell which company are going to crash by how extravagant their Christmas parties are.

Zenefits shows the harsh reality behind Trump's effort to create more US jobs.

"Don't expect any joint press conferences between President Donald Trump and Zenefits executives anytime soon.


The maker of human resources software, whose outgoing CEO David Sacks is good friends with Trump adviser Peter Thiel (they co-founded PayPal and Thiel is a Zenefits board member), announced on Thursday that it's building engineering teams in Vancouver and Bangalore — while eliminating 430 jobs in the U.S.
The expansion in Canada and India will "better complement the already established and proven team we have in San Francisco," Zenefits wrote in an e-mail to employees."

Wednesday, February 08, 2017

California is going to need a LOT of money.



We are suppose to get another Yuuuuge storm tomorrow. And the weather guys are now saying that EVERYONE is on the table for flooding.  I totes believe them. Before the end of the day tomorrow all the burbs could have significant access problems. Niles canyon will probably flood again. Santa Cruz - who knows what might come down on the hill. Altamont Pass is now gutting vehicles and is half closed. Traffic is going to be chaos. Everyone will have to take the major freeways.

I live in the burbs, but everyone who works in the burbs comes from even farther inland like Tracy. Before the storm - the stories I would hear about the Pass were mind bending. People would say that cars would just be lined up with flat tires. It has needed work for a very long time now. The hole above took out at least 15 tires this morning allegedly.

The winter this year is just crushing our roads which is funny because when I drove across the country two years ago I was amazed at how much worse our roads were. Even States with routine snow! Then all of a sudden this fall it seemed like California came up with some money and started resurfacing tons of roads and we all were relieved. Until now. Because the rain has disappeared all that work. The roads are worse than ever. A couple of days ago there was a major backup on a freeway and I'm pretty sure they were just rolling hot patching the road. I never saw an accident.

The winter had been so rough this year that I'm shocked that people haven't started blaming the weather for anything. The ground is too wet for construction. Part of that oil inventory build might be due to that that. I mean, we all have pools now! Well, that's maybe a little dramatic. But still.

Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Water, water everywhere.

Just crazy stuff. Highway 17 had a major mud slide taking out the side of the freeway that heads towards Santa Cruz from San Jose. Some people may not be getting home tonight. I don't know if I ever remember that happening.  There are often lots of small slides. But that is a major traffic through fair, they try hard to make sure nothing shuts down the road down. Especially slides. I think right now SJCHP is diverting people to Half Moon Bay!@

Here is a video. I don't know why vimeo's don't format correctly. You can expand the video's size in the lower right corner with the arrows.

Then, in Fremont one of the arteries that helps you get into the East Bay is flooded - over - the - road. I have definitely never seen that. I even tried to look to see how long it's been since the last time it flooded and it might be since 1950. I guess that also means the ACE train that goes through there is pretty sketch right now. You have to go over to the weather reporters twitter feed to view the video. Here.

Traffic is gonna suck balls for a little while. And anyway - the roads that aren't closed to floods are being murdered by this rain. And It's suppose to rain till Saturday. This could get interesting. Some of the reservoirs are hitting the highest level ever recorded. That means they are going to have to start releasing everything.

This morning I woke up to a tiny lake in my backyard.  (very tiny)

Monday, February 06, 2017

All of a sudden the liberals care about the economy?



This was circulating on twitter over the weekend with the usual hysteria. It irritated me more than normal because the first two items were just completely false. The dollar hasn't even fallen to it's lowest level in 3 YEARS. And where was this asshole when mortgage apps were down over 9% in November?

I mean, it nice they've finally decided to take an interest in the economy - even if they are complete illiterate phony tards about it.



Source.



Source.

Sunday, February 05, 2017

I see this as very temporary.



Went into Lowe's today and noticed they had a new "smart home" area.

If I need to do some plumbing or electrical work, - there is a chance I can find someone in there that can help with a question.

Are they going to hire people to help you put things on your home network? I mean, most of the stuff doesn't need it right now.  But that doesn't really seem like a Lowe's kind of "thing".