Y2HH

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Feb 21, 2013 -> 11:05 PM) We're trying to iron out the details and get players at the moment so the process is slow. We're shooting for once to twice a month on a weekend night. My previous post should have said where and when do you guys play, not where and wow...I've corrected it.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Feb 21, 2013 -> 04:54 PM) Does anyone here play Dungeons and Dragons 3.5E that is interesting in joining a campaign? I play, but right now I'm involved in a Vampire WOD game. Yes, I'm that much of a nerd...but I work out and do outdoors stuff, so you'd never know it. Where and when do you guys play?

QUOTE (chw42 @ Feb 21, 2013 -> 03:02 PM) If you can clean an iPad, you can clean a 13 inch monitor. The shape of the ipad is what makes it easy to clean, not simply the size. I have a 13" laptop now, and I already hate having to clean the screen.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 21, 2013 -> 01:47 PM) From what I understand, Apple doesn't believe touch screens on desktops or laptops are ergonomically-sound features....and I think they are right...who wants to hold their arm at that angle for any period of time when you could just use the keyboard/mouse/trackpad? I think touchscreens are brilliant for a device that is handheld or meant to be laid parallel to the floor/desk, but not a screen that is perpendicular to the surface...gravity doesn't agree with that very well. To me that has more to do with not wanting to clean a monitor or screen of that size/shape...wiping down a phone or tablet is pretty simple, not only because of their relatively small screen size, but the shape of the device makes it easy...but a computer monitor or a laptop screen? No thanks. I don't like when people even come close to touching my monitors, including myself.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Feb 21, 2013 -> 01:04 PM) WOW! Google announces Chromebook Pixel: a premium Chrome OS laptop ships next week for $1,299 1300$ for a web browser that requires 24/7 access to the net? I don't care how high quality it is, you may as well buy a full on laptop.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Feb 21, 2013 -> 10:11 AM) 600 hz is crazy! I went and looked last night at Best Buy...I figure if I buy the 70 inch, I may as well just spring for the 80 inch, but the 70 inch seems much more impressive form a spec standpoint...240 hz and 3d for $1200 less than the 80 inch 120 hz without 3d...I really, really want it... 600hz means plasma. It's not the same sort of 600hz you're reading from LCD.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 05:52 PM) Thats amazing, although who knows how practical. Something I would probably waste my money on though for sure cause im a f***ing nerd. Concept videos are always awesome, though...but actual real world use always ends up being a different experience. Anyone remember Microsofts tablet concept for the Courier?

QUOTE (Jake @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:44 AM) Activator biteSMS Bolt Browser Changer (don't know how this one works...) Chromizer Dashboard X f.lux FakeCarrier FiveIconDock FiveColumn Springboard IconBounce LowPowerBanner ShowCase Unfold WeeFlashlight WinterBoard IconBounce and Unfold are pretty, but they're resource intensive and unnecessary. Browser Changer lets you select an alternate web browser as you default...for example, I use Chrome...so if I click on links, they open in Chrome, not Safari. Also allows you to install Google Maps and make it your default. If you use a ton of themes in Winterboard, you can slow down your phone because it loads a lot of stuff into memory. Dashboard X is probably sucking down a ton of memory on you. Try to uninstall or disable them one at a time and see if you notice a difference. You're using a lot of resource/memory intensive tweaks, however...try getting rid of a few. Keep in mind a 4S/4 have only 512 megs of ram.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:35 AM) The words "best buy" are skewing my opinions. They are just horrific people. Costco I agree with. Their return policy and experience is fantastic. However for most items I still save a ton of money and time with Amazon. Even if they someday add taxes ill still be a power user. Just better grab another TV or two before that happens. I just mean brick and mortar in general...Best Buy does suck. And most local places are price matching Amazon these days, so Amazon isnt really beating them on price anymore...just tax (and that's ending).

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:28 AM) They actually shipped the replacement and the delivery guys put the dead unit in The replacements box so it was all one process. Like I said 4 business days. No reason to lie about it, maybe your experience was different, but mine has always been positive. Oh, I'm not saying you're lying...I'm simply saying that not all mail order experiences are the same. Sometimes I've had good luck, and the turnaround was quick...other times, not so much. With brick and mortar, the experience is same day...all you have to do is bring it back and get a new one...less than 1 day turnaround with a little work. Mail order will never be that fast...at least not anytime soon.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:29 AM) OTOH, you can get way, way better tech support from mail order companies sometimes. Crutchfield's installation guides and actually knowledgeable techs are way better than what you'd get from Best Buy. Heh, I don't let others install any of my electronics. I do it all myself. I do all my own wiring, etc...but yes, Crutchfield is good. I just don't need them.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:26 AM) If you work with Amazon directly their policy generally supersedes the vendor. I've been through it too and it was awesome. Trying to fit a 50 in plasma into my g37 coupe would have been hilarious. You always have to work with Amazon to do this, but in some cases it's not as cut and dried, nor as it as easy as you're leading on here. For some items/circumstances, it is that easy, for others, it's not...and it has nothing to do with Amazon in general, it's a drawback to mailorder.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:24 AM) Took about 4 business days in total. I didn't mind since I have other tvs. I guess if you really don't mind lugging the thing all across town and then want to unbox and reinstall your tv again you can have it quickly if its in stock. I don't find that to be more convenient at all. You take a lot of facts and dismiss them. First, they sent out a repair guy -- took 2 days -- couldn't fix it. Now, I have to return it. More days. Now I have to wait for them to ship a return. More days. It's WAY more than the easy 4 days you're quoting here. I went through this, and it took about 3.5 weeks in all.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:22 AM) They fix it or replace it. Very easy actually. Again, not easy. Went through it. And this also depends on where it was actually bought from. Different shippers have different repair/return policies. Some of them don't handle all of that for you simply because it went through Amazon.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:20 AM) Generally the vendor sets up a repair first, if that doesn't work they come and box it up and return it for you. Then come back and set up the replacement. I've actually had to do this once. Greeeeattt...so you're without a tv for weeks on end, when if you had bought it at Best Buy, you could have returned it for a replacement within 30 minutes.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:18 AM) They deliver, unbox, set up and test and dispose of the garbage. Incredibly easy. And if it breaks a month later...not incredibly easy. Let's put it this way, happened to me before...and it's a massive f***ing pain in the ass. And you'll be without a tv for about 3-4 weeks while your doing all of this crap. Sure, so long as everything goes according to plan and never breaks/works fine, it's a wonderful experience. The second you have to go through any sort of store warranty/repair, good luck with that "rebox it and ship it off" crap.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:03 AM) Seriously, I order stuff like windshield wiper blades on amazon. They'll be at my door in two days whereas I might put off going to the auto parts store for a week or two. I rarely return anything, though. For that type of thing, sure...but I'm talking bigger appliances and tv's/electronics.

QUOTE (Jake @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 11:00 AM) Ever since jailbreaking my iPhone 4, it has been hopelessly slow. Suggestions as to what sorts of things to remove to speed it back up? Give me a list of tweaks you are running...the 4 and the 4S have ram limitations that 5 doesn't suffer from. There are probably a few tweaks you are running that are slowing you down.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 10:51 AM) Printing out a label and leaving it downstairs is supremely easy. Much easier than driving, Parking and waiting. You have to make sure the right people pick up that package your leaving downstairs. It's much more of a pain in the ass than you're leading onto here...highly glossed over issues with mail order. It's more than just printing out a label. It's boxing it up securely, then it's waiting for it get shipped...then it's waiting for it to get looked at...then it's waiting for a return shipment...and hoping that return shipment isn't broken, too. I could have been to the store and back again with a full replacement in that amount of time 50 times over...if not more. The advantage to Amazon was the pricing and the tax evasion. Now that they're losing those advantages via price matching at local stores and taxes being charged, I find it far less convenient. The rest of it's nothing but disadvantages no matter how much you gloss it over here.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 10:42 AM) The age of no internet sales tax appears to be coming to an end for Amazon. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns...,0,495573.story We all knew they'd eventually run out of states they could run too and ship out of. It was one of the main advantages of using them. I love Amazon, but I hate mail order. I really hate it. It's so much easier to go to a local Best Buy/H.H. and return a broken or malfunctioning item than it is to box it up and ship it back.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 10:19 AM) I think you might be focusing on the individuals again and not the aggregate. Yeah, over your life, your salary will grow like that. But that's not looking at any one individual's income over their life but the collective incomes of the entire country in any given year. We don't see any exponential growth in the data. We see plenty of flat or linear growth. Probably...but that's why I tend to not like these types of comparisons that lump massive groups together in order to make a point. I don't think it's surprising that the rich get richer...since they're the ones with money to invest. Just as I don't think it's surprising that the poor get poorer, when everything they buy/need gets more and more expensive. From phone bills to electricity...and phony "tax cuts". My taxes never dropped over the past decade. They were simply shifted around from federal the local...but the amount of money I was paying out in taxes, whether that be in the form of sales, income, property, etc...never changed...if anything it rose quite a bit. So while tax cuts are nice, if they're actual tax cuts (which they never are), they didn't really help anyone, since they were really just tax shifts.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 10:12 AM) We're talking about percentages here, so the absolute difference doesn't matter. The % rises exponentially with those absolute numbers, so again, it's not quite that easy to dismiss it.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 10:01 AM) Income and wealth disparities have been increasing over the years. You can look at Saez and Piketty's work for the breakdowns you're looking for, or Edward Wolff's work. That's probably a result in simple numbers and how much they've grown over that time, a fact that often completely ignored when these types of comparisons are made. When my parents were kids, it costs 10cents to go to the movies. It costs 9$-20$ now, however, when my parents were kids, people made 1$ an hour. Today, they make almost 8$...at minimum. But, the buying power of money has dwindled. So, if I can compare it in the same regard, income disparty may have looked smaller back in the day simply because the smaller numbers, but those smaller numbers had more purchasing power...so the disparty always existed...it's just mathematically more glaring now that were talking billions and trillions instead of thousands and hundreds of thousands...MAYBE millions in some cases...but not billions or trillions.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 09:54 AM) Wealth/Net Worth vs. Income. You're not drawing any income from your IRA's or 401k's. Plus we're talking aggregate here over tens of millions of people, so you or me getting a promotion and raise is counterbalanced by a whole lot of people who lost their jobs, got pay cuts, had to take lower-paying jobs, have not seen raises in years (lost ground relative to inflation), etc. The top 1% has seen most of the wealth gains in the post-2008 recovery, but not over 100%. I can't find a good cite for this at the moment, but consider that for most people, if they have positive net worth, their home is their biggest asset. Housing values haven't recovered nearly the way that equities have. It's probably fair to say the top 1% have seen the most wealth gains over all of time, too. These are way too broad/generalized numbers to actually mean anything. To find actual meaning in these numbers, it would have to be broken down far more than 1% vs 99%. As these numbers have and probably always will apply if you break it down to simply the top 1% vs the rest of us.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Feb 20, 2013 -> 09:47 AM) I don't see how this can be true. My wife and I's retirement accounts and investment accounts all made money in that period and we're not anywhere close to the 1%. I suspect just about anyone with investments would have made money in those years as well. Am I missing something? Yes, you're missing all the assumptions and bad math that took place to reach these conclusions. I'm not in the 1%, but my wages have increased every year for the past 10 years. I'm doing better than than I ever have before. My investments have also made money over that span, in spite of the recession. According to that entire study, I don't exist at all. Only I do. This is typical of modern "economists" that are more invested in their ideology than they are about economic reality. Some of these numbers may apply to some people some of the time...but it doesn't apply to everyone. And it sure as hell doesn't apply to nearly everyone that's not in the top 1%. Simplify our problems, to simplify our solutions, I guess...it's the way of the future.