Iwritecode

QUOTE (kjshoe04 @ Jan 9, 2012 -> 01:47 PM) Thanks for the input on King's new book. I think maybe I'll make that my new read since I've had it on my Kindle since it came out but haven't started it yet. I've noticed that some of his stories tend to start slow and pick up steam as you continue on. This one really hooked me from the first few pages. It also helps if you've read IT before this as some of the characters and places from that book make an appearance.

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ Jan 9, 2012 -> 10:03 AM) Best Buy will charge sales tax so Amazon will give you about a 7.75% discount. Note: Technically you are still responsible to pay the sales tax, however, 98% of the population does. I know about the sales tax but typically when we are purchasing a big-ticket item, it's because the one we had a home broke and we need a new one. TV, fridge, computer, washer/dryer, etc... We usually don't have the money to pay for it outright and don't want to put it on a credit card. The 12-month or 18-month no interest deals work out great for us.

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Jan 7, 2012 -> 01:39 PM) I haven't read Steven King in years, but I asked for "11/22/63" for Christmas, as it seemed to have an interesting premise. I'm not far enough into it to have an opinion yet. I've got about 40 pages left to read, but I pretty much know how it ends because I'm a sucker for spoilers. At 800+ pages it's one of his longer books but I've really enjoyed it. I've heard people complain that the middle part gets boring but it technically "starts" in 1958 and 5 years is a lot of time to cover. I can also see the reason he made the time span so long. I keep thinking of Back to the Future when I read it but even thinking of the time that's passed from when those movies were made until now is amazing. Marty McFly never missed not having a cell phone or the internet when he time travelled. I've also heard that it's one of his best endings and after I read it for myself, I think I will agree. QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Jan 7, 2012 -> 01:39 PM) And I feel like a real heathen for saying this, but "The Road" bored me silly. Ditto

I actually like Best Buy if only because they are the only place I know of that still offers 0% financing. I use that on nearly all my big-ticket purchases. As far as I know, that's not something I can get from Amazon. This doesn't sound right. I just returned a DVD to Best Buy last week with no problems at all.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jan 5, 2012 -> 08:11 AM) Did they finally change that? They were charging $70 per pass in addition to the $300+ for the room. Looking at the official website, no they didn't. Also, it's $75 per pass. Based on that last bolded line, you may not be able to get another weekend pass. A 2-day pass for Sat/Sun at $70 may be the best you can do.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jan 4, 2012 -> 12:47 PM) Well coming out of undergrad is a bit different too, the expectations are quite different. That's actually an interesting point though, the company I work for was having in depth discussions on how to market open positions, managers want to list every single program an employee may use as a requirement, thinking that in this economy they can atrract a specific candidate that does everything they want. That position is a little silly since IT unemployment was sitting under 4% last I heard (this past summer), and I work in IT security (Identity and Access Mgmt to be specific) and that was even lower. I know we scared away a ton of candidates from the amount of requirements we put on the job description. I've found that a lot of programming languages are fairly similar. Once you learn one, it's not all that difficult to pick up more. When I was unemployed I just started applying for anything that was even remotely close to my skill-set. I figured whatever I didn't know I'd figure out along the way. With my job now even though I'm using the same basic languages I used at my previous job things are just different enough that it took me a little while to get comfortable.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jan 4, 2012 -> 08:24 AM) I should've been a CS major instead of an IT major, because apparently if you're a CS major with an outgoing personality you can get a job anywhere. Depends on what languages you know. I've read the requirements for some programming positions and never even heard of some of it. Here's one for example that I just got in my email: I couldn't even start to tell you what half of that is much less have any experience with it.

We've been watching a lot of movies the past few weeks and have noticed a theme that we did completely by accident. First we watched Dolphin Tale, about the dolphin that had it's tale amputated and had to get an artificial one added. Then we watched Soul Surfer, about the girl that got her arm bitten off by a shark while surfing. Finally we watched 127 hours, about the hiker that got his hand stuck under a rock when he fell and had to cut it off to free himself. Not sure how we ended up watching three movies that envolved some sort of dismemberment and were based on real-life events. The first two movies were actually pretty good. 127 hours wasn't that great IMO. I knew it was mostly going to be the main character alone after he got stuck but they didn't do a very good job explaining what was happening to him. I guess he was having flashbacks and premonitions but it was pretty confusing. The first two also had a bunch of extra stuff on the DVD about the real-life people. The last one had no extra stuff at all. We also watched Zookeeper. Pretty horrible considering the actors involved.

QUOTE (WilliamTell @ Dec 29, 2011 -> 12:26 AM) About an hour later I check my facebook and saw that she took off her relationship status with me. I'm so glad Facebook wasn't around when I was dating. Breaking up with somebody by changing your status just seems odd to me. I acutally heard somebody say "He changed his status on FB to single. That means it's official now!"

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ Dec 22, 2011 -> 10:24 AM) "The manufactured insolvency crisis is the result of the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act (PAEA) passed in 2006, which requires that USPS pre-fund 75 years of retiree health benefits within a ten-year period beginning in 2007. Is there really any sane reason for funding retirement benefits for people that haven't even been born yet?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Dec 16, 2011 -> 02:38 PM) Other countries only claim to not like us, because it's fashionable to do so. In reality, they love us. They also have the very modern "short attention span syndrome", and people conveniently allow them to forget the past. I mean, after all, the excuse that "we've changed our wayward ways" only goes so far, in that not long ago these same countries that look down upon us did some of the most unforgivable/heinous s*** the likes of which we still haven't come close to touching. And the only reason many of them aren't still doing it, is because at some point in the past, they lost some rather important wars. And people have the right to be "ignorant about Islam", or the Quran, or Catholicism, etc. Far be it for me to say, but just because YOU decided to care about Islam and read up upon it, don't point fingers at others for "being ignorant". It's not ignorant to NOT read up on something that exists, because I have to tell you, there are religions out there that YOU'VE never heard of, thus you're ignorant, too, by your own definition. Look, we only have so much time in our lives, and just because a person doesn't decide to educate themselves on something (or EVERYTHING), that doesn't mean their ignorant. It just means they have different priorities than you. If you spent your ENTIRE LIFE studying religions, both past and presently existing, and lived to be 100, you'd die well before you got half way through knowing much about religions. I think the ignorant part is thinking something about a certain group of people without actually taking the time to learn about them. If you've never heard of a religion then you can't form an opinion about the people that practice it.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Dec 14, 2011 -> 03:16 PM) Use your debit card, hippy. I actually don't use cash much except when I buy gas. I can't pass up a 12 cent discount/gallon.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Dec 14, 2011 -> 11:36 AM) I actually find myself paying with my debit card even when I have enough cash, just to avoid getting pennies. ===== Eliminating pennies and dollar bills is a good start, but I'd go further. Eliminate dimes, half-dollars, ten dollar bills, and fifty dollar bills. All the currency you need are nickels, quarters, dollar coins, fives, twenties, and hundreds. Though unnecessary, I would keep the $2 bill around to appease the people who hate coins so much. Also may want to consider putting the $500 bill back into circulation due to inflation. So if I buy something for $4.30 and give the cashier a $20 I'll get 3 fives 2 quarters and 4 nickels. That's 1 extra bill and 2 extra coins than what I would get now.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Dec 9, 2011 -> 02:17 PM) Have a Rockford night/Peoria night/Champaign night/Indianapolis night/South Bend night, where you have packages that include round-trip bus ride plus ticket plus food. The local radio stations here in Rockford typically do Cubs bus trips during the summer. I don't remember hearing any for the Sox though. For some reason retailers think that everyone here is a Cubs fan. Almost every store I go into I'll see tons of Cubs stuff and maybe one rack with a few Sox shirts on it. We are also pretty evenly split with Bears/Packers fans so they sometimes do trips to each of those stadiums as well.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 9, 2011 -> 01:48 PM) They are indeed very similar. I suppose I could go to a nice restaurant quite often and order lettuce and water, and say I went to a nice restaurant. But instead I'll just cook at home for the majority of the time. That's the point. Indeed I don't do either of the things you mention terribly often, but when I do get to, I want to have more than just a basic level experience. But baseball games were not always such a luxury good. That would be an interesting study to see if the average cost of baseball tickets have increased in price comparably to movie tickets and restaurant prices over the years.

QUOTE (bmags @ Dec 9, 2011 -> 12:23 PM) I mean, once again, most affordable games are on weekdays, and I don't have the luxury of being able to leave work early to go tailgate...I also don't own a car. But I shouldn't have to go out of my way to make a game affordable and enjoyable. At some point it's just not worth it. That point has passed (and I went to 8 games last year...that won't happen this year) You can relate going to a game to pretty much anything you might "go out" for. Go to a movie and you have to spend $25 on a pair of tickets just to get in. Then another $20+ for popcorn and snacks. Go to a nice restaurant and have a couple of drinks with dinner and you'll probably spend $50+ What's the difference?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 8, 2011 -> 03:15 PM) Eh, Sox fans are major fair weather fans. Dress it up how you like, but it is true. I don't think we're really that much worse than other sports fans. It's just that we are always compared to the other baseball team in town who are the one exception to the rule. How many other teams can manage to draw 3 million fans to watch a team win 60 games?

QUOTE (SOXOBAMA @ Dec 7, 2011 -> 09:55 PM) I am so tired of Sox fans bashing Jerry Reinsdorf.. The Sox has been in the top 10 in payroll many times but the fans continue not to show up to the ballpark. I been to the ballpark many times while we were contending first place, on a warm sunny night and the stadium was still half full.. The only good way for attendance to go up a significant amount in a single season is to either build a new stadium or win the World Series. Since the Sox have done neither of these in quite some time, they have to build up the attendance gradually by winning consistently. Something they seem to have a problem doing. Typically attendance jumps a little during the season the team is winning and more the NEXT season depending on what they do in the playoffs. For example in 2005 it jumped +412,297 over 2004. The largest increase since they won the division in 2000 when we fans were still starved for a WS. Then in 2006 it went up by +614,580. The largest single year increase since they opened the new stadium. The problem is the team didn't continue with it's success and the attendance started to drop again. Even in 2008 the team was just barely good enough to make the playoffs and only won a single game when they got there. Since then the expectations for the team each year haven't been great and they've proved us right with a 2nd place finish and a couple of 3rd place finishes. Had the team not completely fallen on it's face in 2006 and 2007 and won the division 2, 3 or even 4 times instead of just once since 2005 the attendance would've been much better. Simply being a contending team and making the playoffs once every few years isn't enough to make 30,000+ show up at the park every night.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Dec 7, 2011 -> 07:10 PM) I said all along, just pay him what he wants. It's pretty obvious our team is a mess financially cause of the three guys everybody's tired of me mentioning. Dunn, Rios and Peavy?

QUOTE (southsideirish71 @ Dec 6, 2011 -> 07:12 PM) PFB was just on the radio talking about how sox fans should of come out in droves based on the fact that we started out 3-2. LOL How winning 72 games a year is better than a rebuild. Assuming you're talking about Laurence Holmes and Chris Rongey last night around 6:20 or so I heard some of this too. What's funny is that they touched on exactly what the problem is without realizing it. The team has to win and win consistently for the fans to show up. Winning the division once every few years with some 3rd and 4th place finishes mixed in-between just doesn't cut. Win the division 2 or 3 years in a row and you'll see the fans show up.

For many years my wife was told that she had an uncle that died in Pearl Harbor. Over the weekend while researching her family history she found out that he actually died 2 years AFTER. It's just one of those funny family legends that everyone repeated but nobody bothered to verify.

QUOTE (SoxFan1 @ Dec 7, 2011 -> 12:08 AM) I'm about to start working on my last ever homework assignment. I'm sure in the last few years there are a lot of people that had that same thought once before but ended up having to go back to school.

I can usually come up with a few things that I want simply because I never manage to actually go out and buy them for myself for some reason. This year I want the new Stephen King book that just came out, a new Sox hat, the Family Guy Star Wars Trilogy and a small hatchet to chop up firewood when we go camping. On BF I picked up a 72-piece drillbit set for $20 at Lowe's just because it was too good a deal to pass up. My wife is wrapping it up and putting it under the tree for me.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Dec 5, 2011 -> 07:49 PM) Until someone can give me a scenario where a team has quickly and successfully rebuilt after a complete tear down, I am considering it to be in the realm of BigFoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and Cubs World Series titles. The Florida Marlins between 1998 and 2003?

My daughter, who is in 4th grade, brought home a math worksheet last night for homework. It had about 10 problems on it and they were dealing with order of operations. Parenthesis first, then division/multiplication, then addition/subtraction. One of the problems she had looked something like this: 102 - (34+20) / 17 + 203. The answer comes out to 301.823529 in case anyone wondered. I just found it odd that the answer comes out as a decimal. It's the only problem on the sheet that did. Every other answer was a whole number. They could have just as easily made it (31+20) so that it divides out evenly. I told her to write down the number with the decimal. I'm interested to see how the teacher grades it.