I would agree if I could get a reasonable digital signal from the broadcasters in my region. Since they cut back the braodcast power when they went to digital I can't count on watching anything when it's originally broadcast. I end up watching almost all of the shows I like over the internet. And that's not because I am picky about the quality of the picture or sound. We have a large exterior antenna mounted on the chimney and live in a city with a population of around 1/3 a million, and the signals are so bad that commonly the tuner won't even try showing the channel.
I can't wait for it to die either.
In my market the "local" channels all actually broadcast from about thirty miles outside of town in several different cardinal directions. This was annoying in times past when this meant that the reception was fuzzy. But ever since the digital transition they cut the broadcast power so severly that my household ends up watching 80% of our shows online because at the time of it's regular broadcast the channel is unwatchable. We even have a big fat external antenna setup and reception is still horrible.
My Grandfather's approach worked well against a gang of kids. He simply jumped on the biggest one and went for the neck with his teeth. The others were so freaked out by the threat of being bitten that they ran faster than the kid that had to struggle to keep from being bit.
I never had to resort to that as the only times I can remember being physically bullied I immediately fought back and never ended up a regular target. I had brothers near my age growing up though so by the time I faced a bully I had plenty of experience and wasn't trying to figure it all out in the moment.
Except when was the last time you bought a sedan that fit those kind of specifications for $20,000 brand new? Considering that the Model S is a luxury car the price tag is pretty reasonable. And judging by the number of people that I see driving luxury sedans every day I don't think their market is really all that small. Look at how many people have bought Prius's, it's not like those are a good bargain.
Ya know, maybe we are looking at this all wrong. People have for years said that lotteries are a tax on the poor or those with bad math skills. Maybe we should realize that many Apple products are a tax on the technologically innept, ignorant, or social climbing folks who have disposable income. Or that choose to forgo necessities to feed their egos. There's nothing really wrong with that.
From the Wiki page on the six day war the Israeli's only lost 46 aircraft during the entire conflict. I couldn't determine if those were all fighters or not but even so that would be less than one quarter of their operational fighters. Considering they managed to win in such a crushing manner it's hard to understand how that's considered a high rate of attrition, especially for the time period. Additionally Eqypt alone had twice the fighter aircraft they did.
Yes I am fat. I did not get forced out in anyway. I did receive an LoR at one point for not passing the PT test after my first three months on the fat kid program. I did keep an accurate food diary for those three months, and the three months until I did eventually pass. I was always under the my calorie budget by several hundred calories. I worked out aerobically for at least 45 minutes five times a week, three of those days I would also participate in regular group PT after my own aerobic period.
After six months of that I finally passed by cheating the system a bit. I wrapped my gut with a neoprene belt and a wide leather weight lifters belt for the 14 hours prior to my testing. That allowed me to get my gut from 42 inches to 40 just long enough to get measured before doing the rest of the test. I maxed out pushups and situps and ran the mile and a half in twelve minutes flat.
The only derogatory comment on my record ever was that LoR for the PT test. I deployed once and all I was allowed to do was watch TCN's construct a 35,000 cubic meter cement pad in a resort air base. When I volunteered for deployment to Iraq my bosses boss talked the chief out of letting me go because they "needed" me to sit on my ass for six months at the office instead. I did manage to qualify as expert all four or five times I shot the M16, the last time I got 49/50 because the instructor made it a specific challenge. And I got to play as an SF augmentee a few times because the Chair Forces idea of 100% manned in a career field is running every thing on a skeleton crew.
I don't know where you were stationed but the commisary here is almost always cheaper for anything than a local store. We have 10% sales taxes on everything including food, off base. And the displayed prices for meats here were usually 30% cheaper than at even Walmart. BX/PX was always pretty much a waste though.
Yes, everyone thinks they are better than they in reality are. But in an organization that supposedly cares foremost about accomplishing the mission I found the concern about whether or not I looked pretty in a blues uniform to be retarded. Ultimately the pay, benefits and working environment is better as a civilian, even working just one building over from my old office.
Some of those codes are mandated by the government. Most of them are not though and without jumping through a half dozen hoops and or paying a lot of money as a regular consumer you can't find out what they mean.
Just because it started, or you first heard it, ten years ago doesn't mean it isn't still accurate and hence funny.
Not that they haven't been trying to eliminate from the service those members that fit the stereotype. In fact their campaign against people that didn't look dashing in their rediculous uniforms was a major contributor to me not re-enlisting. Pretty much the only thing I really miss about the military was the prices of groceries at the Commisary.
One of the things I'd argue though is that the vast majority of business that gas stations currently do is for people that are driving locally. And if they are just doing local driving then their car would have charged up over night while it was plugged in at their house. So those people won't be taking up space and pump time at gas or recharging stations. The only people that would need to use such stations would be those doing long haul driving trips.
Haha yeah that's why I got my Security+ cert. Which of course is of no significance to my job as a database guy. And this year they want an Operating Environment Cert for everyone. So the contractor company is having me attend a MCP course. Not that it's relevant to my position, it's just faster and cheaper than sending me for something like an OCA.
I've known plenty of individuals that disprove the idea of college grads not being dumb. And in many cases it hasn't demonstrated willingness to spend their money to establish a career path. It has often though demonstrated their willingness to rack up large debts or spend lots of money from a benefactor to either start a career or to just spend a few more years not being productive to society.
I'm glad that my wife and I agree that our kids can fund their own college adventures. Neither of us had any help in that regard. My wife has her Masters in Social Work from one of the top schools in that field. And I never bothered with college. I enlisted and got my experience while being employed along with a security clearance. The combination of experience and clearance has so far trumped any degree requirements in finding a job.
I'd be interested in a citation for that. Or at least seeing the math worked out. Not that I am trying to be skeptical or anything. Mainly I'd like to see who is counted in that population figure. Are we talking the number of people who currently earn an income of any sort? Or are dependants, like children too young to work, being added into that figure.
I just did a search and wikipedia says the proposed federal budget for 2009 was $3.1 trillion I don't know if that took into account all the bailouts or if we even came close to staying within that number.
I couldn't find anything good so far as work force numbers. I did see some estimates for years around 2009 but nothing factual about that year. So I'd guess maybe 160 million, and I feel that's being generous.
Anyways if the tax burden were placed on those people for that year the individual burden would be just over $19,000. Which for me sounds pretty hard to swallow, and we're just talking federal taxes there, not state or local taxes. I know a lot of people for whom that amount would be close to their current yearly gross.
I would think that you should be able to count the insurance premiums you paid as being your cost base for the stocks. Justification would be that you invested your premiums with an insurance company, that company instead of providing the promised life insurance provided you with the stocks. So in a way you purchased the stocks with your premiums.
I'm one of those sad faced contractors who is a contractor and not GS for 'efficiency' reasons. I know to the cent how much the DoD pays for me to do my job, and I of course also know how much I get paid. The DoD installation provides my work space and all of my equipment, which is typically a very large part of an employers expense. The contract company handles my paycheck, associated taxes and insurance, and as little training as they can get by with. For those services the company takes 60% of the contract's value, I would estimate that they are making as much profit on my position as I net every year.
I would be very happy to transition to a GS position doing my job if for no other reason than to give them the finger.
For most people reading this it's probably already too late for the path I took.
I joined the military and enlisted to be a programmer. At the time the rule was that every programmer was evaluated for and given a TS SCI clearance if they were eligible. Since I was I got my clearance and never needed it in the service. When I got out I used my experience and contacts to find a contract position at a DoD facility that required an active clearance. $60k salary in an area where that's the average household income, all for a couple years experience and a clearance.
That depends one your job site I suppose. I work as a contractor in a DoD office. Probably about half the people here are contractors and the other half Civil Service. Other than Management always being Civil Service, there isn't much job stereo typing between the two.
Pay wise I would rather be GS than contractor here. The contracting company is very misery about pay such that we get less pay and benefits than the GS folks we work with. On the upside I never did earn my degree and had about 2 years of experience in my specific job field, the biggest factor was probably that I still had a valid clearance from being in the military. The pay is still very good for the area, I'm the sole earner for my household of three.
From what I have heard and read a lot of movies don't make a profit because of Hollywood style accounting. That is the main studio pays some other company to promote the movie and such. The promoting company makes huge profits on the film instead of the main studio in order to essentially hide profits. The promoting company is a shell company that is owned by the same people as the main studio.
That's what led to Jackson sueing over the Lord of the Rings series. Part of his contract was that he got a significant cut of the movies profits. The studio used at least one shell company that they overpaid for services rendered. Since the same people owned the studio and the shell company they still get all their money, but Jackson gets ripped off because the profits are artificially lowered through the payments to the shell company. All of this is still alledged at this point I think, but it's pretty commonly believed to be what's going on in regards to so many movies apparently failing to make a profit.
I bought it when it first came out. I played it for maybe two days before giving up on it. The game play was so radically different from MOO2 that I just couldn't figure out how to make it work the way I wanted. I guess it was closer to MOO than MOO2, but I was really hoping for a more refined version of the sequel not the original.
Things I would have liked as improvements of MOO2: Better AI for space battles, both on the enemies part and when you told it to fight for you. Better build que management, longer build que so I didn't have to update it every dozen cycles or whatever and or being able to save a given que and apply it to other colonies. Making ground combat more interactive, sending your troops and just having them land to duke it out was lame. Remove some of the broken things like combinations of equipment on ships that granted infinite turns. Add more technologies rather than half the possible research being minor improvements of existing stuff en mass.
I think I might actually be willign to pony up some money for a mod of MOO2 that offered most of that.
One EA game of series that I remember that I really liked is the original Bard's Tale games. In fact that's probably the first EA game that I ever played. And I remmeber it was an EA game because there was an unremarkable house that if you entered would show a Logo for them and play the credits for the game.
Five years??? EA has been in the business of producing the same product with new names and faces for at least ten years now, if not longer. How long have their various NBA/NFL games been selling a new version every year?
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Many of the gas stations in my area actually advertise that they sell gas with 0% Ethanol, personally I love it.
Sounds like South Park to me.
I would agree if I could get a reasonable digital signal from the broadcasters in my region. Since they cut back the braodcast power when they went to digital I can't count on watching anything when it's originally broadcast. I end up watching almost all of the shows I like over the internet. And that's not because I am picky about the quality of the picture or sound. We have a large exterior antenna mounted on the chimney and live in a city with a population of around 1/3 a million, and the signals are so bad that commonly the tuner won't even try showing the channel.
I can't wait for it to die either. In my market the "local" channels all actually broadcast from about thirty miles outside of town in several different cardinal directions. This was annoying in times past when this meant that the reception was fuzzy. But ever since the digital transition they cut the broadcast power so severly that my household ends up watching 80% of our shows online because at the time of it's regular broadcast the channel is unwatchable. We even have a big fat external antenna setup and reception is still horrible.
My Grandfather's approach worked well against a gang of kids. He simply jumped on the biggest one and went for the neck with his teeth. The others were so freaked out by the threat of being bitten that they ran faster than the kid that had to struggle to keep from being bit.
I never had to resort to that as the only times I can remember being physically bullied I immediately fought back and never ended up a regular target. I had brothers near my age growing up though so by the time I faced a bully I had plenty of experience and wasn't trying to figure it all out in the moment.
Except when was the last time you bought a sedan that fit those kind of specifications for $20,000 brand new? Considering that the Model S is a luxury car the price tag is pretty reasonable. And judging by the number of people that I see driving luxury sedans every day I don't think their market is really all that small. Look at how many people have bought Prius's, it's not like those are a good bargain.
Ya know, maybe we are looking at this all wrong. People have for years said that lotteries are a tax on the poor or those with bad math skills. Maybe we should realize that many Apple products are a tax on the technologically innept, ignorant, or social climbing folks who have disposable income. Or that choose to forgo necessities to feed their egos. There's nothing really wrong with that.
From the Wiki page on the six day war the Israeli's only lost 46 aircraft during the entire conflict. I couldn't determine if those were all fighters or not but even so that would be less than one quarter of their operational fighters. Considering they managed to win in such a crushing manner it's hard to understand how that's considered a high rate of attrition, especially for the time period. Additionally Eqypt alone had twice the fighter aircraft they did.
Troll is troll but it's a topic I love.
Yes I am fat. I did not get forced out in anyway. I did receive an LoR at one point for not passing the PT test after my first three months on the fat kid program. I did keep an accurate food diary for those three months, and the three months until I did eventually pass. I was always under the my calorie budget by several hundred calories. I worked out aerobically for at least 45 minutes five times a week, three of those days I would also participate in regular group PT after my own aerobic period.
After six months of that I finally passed by cheating the system a bit. I wrapped my gut with a neoprene belt and a wide leather weight lifters belt for the 14 hours prior to my testing. That allowed me to get my gut from 42 inches to 40 just long enough to get measured before doing the rest of the test. I maxed out pushups and situps and ran the mile and a half in twelve minutes flat.
The only derogatory comment on my record ever was that LoR for the PT test. I deployed once and all I was allowed to do was watch TCN's construct a 35,000 cubic meter cement pad in a resort air base. When I volunteered for deployment to Iraq my bosses boss talked the chief out of letting me go because they "needed" me to sit on my ass for six months at the office instead. I did manage to qualify as expert all four or five times I shot the M16, the last time I got 49/50 because the instructor made it a specific challenge. And I got to play as an SF augmentee a few times because the Chair Forces idea of 100% manned in a career field is running every thing on a skeleton crew.
I don't know where you were stationed but the commisary here is almost always cheaper for anything than a local store. We have 10% sales taxes on everything including food, off base. And the displayed prices for meats here were usually 30% cheaper than at even Walmart. BX/PX was always pretty much a waste though.
Yes, everyone thinks they are better than they in reality are. But in an organization that supposedly cares foremost about accomplishing the mission I found the concern about whether or not I looked pretty in a blues uniform to be retarded. Ultimately the pay, benefits and working environment is better as a civilian, even working just one building over from my old office.
Some of those codes are mandated by the government. Most of them are not though and without jumping through a half dozen hoops and or paying a lot of money as a regular consumer you can't find out what they mean.
Just because it started, or you first heard it, ten years ago doesn't mean it isn't still accurate and hence funny.
Not that they haven't been trying to eliminate from the service those members that fit the stereotype. In fact their campaign against people that didn't look dashing in their rediculous uniforms was a major contributor to me not re-enlisting. Pretty much the only thing I really miss about the military was the prices of groceries at the Commisary.
One of the things I'd argue though is that the vast majority of business that gas stations currently do is for people that are driving locally. And if they are just doing local driving then their car would have charged up over night while it was plugged in at their house. So those people won't be taking up space and pump time at gas or recharging stations. The only people that would need to use such stations would be those doing long haul driving trips.
Haha yeah that's why I got my Security+ cert. Which of course is of no significance to my job as a database guy. And this year they want an Operating Environment Cert for everyone. So the contractor company is having me attend a MCP course. Not that it's relevant to my position, it's just faster and cheaper than sending me for something like an OCA.
I've known plenty of individuals that disprove the idea of college grads not being dumb. And in many cases it hasn't demonstrated willingness to spend their money to establish a career path. It has often though demonstrated their willingness to rack up large debts or spend lots of money from a benefactor to either start a career or to just spend a few more years not being productive to society.
I'm glad that my wife and I agree that our kids can fund their own college adventures. Neither of us had any help in that regard. My wife has her Masters in Social Work from one of the top schools in that field. And I never bothered with college. I enlisted and got my experience while being employed along with a security clearance. The combination of experience and clearance has so far trumped any degree requirements in finding a job.
But, but... I really enjoyed the earth shattering kabooms.
I'd be interested in a citation for that. Or at least seeing the math worked out. Not that I am trying to be skeptical or anything. Mainly I'd like to see who is counted in that population figure. Are we talking the number of people who currently earn an income of any sort? Or are dependants, like children too young to work, being added into that figure.
I just did a search and wikipedia says the proposed federal budget for 2009 was $3.1 trillion I don't know if that took into account all the bailouts or if we even came close to staying within that number.
I couldn't find anything good so far as work force numbers. I did see some estimates for years around 2009 but nothing factual about that year. So I'd guess maybe 160 million, and I feel that's being generous.
Anyways if the tax burden were placed on those people for that year the individual burden would be just over $19,000. Which for me sounds pretty hard to swallow, and we're just talking federal taxes there, not state or local taxes. I know a lot of people for whom that amount would be close to their current yearly gross.
I would think that you should be able to count the insurance premiums you paid as being your cost base for the stocks. Justification would be that you invested your premiums with an insurance company, that company instead of providing the promised life insurance provided you with the stocks. So in a way you purchased the stocks with your premiums.
I'm one of those sad faced contractors who is a contractor and not GS for 'efficiency' reasons. I know to the cent how much the DoD pays for me to do my job, and I of course also know how much I get paid. The DoD installation provides my work space and all of my equipment, which is typically a very large part of an employers expense. The contract company handles my paycheck, associated taxes and insurance, and as little training as they can get by with. For those services the company takes 60% of the contract's value, I would estimate that they are making as much profit on my position as I net every year.
I would be very happy to transition to a GS position doing my job if for no other reason than to give them the finger.
For most people reading this it's probably already too late for the path I took.
I joined the military and enlisted to be a programmer. At the time the rule was that every programmer was evaluated for and given a TS SCI clearance if they were eligible. Since I was I got my clearance and never needed it in the service. When I got out I used my experience and contacts to find a contract position at a DoD facility that required an active clearance. $60k salary in an area where that's the average household income, all for a couple years experience and a clearance.
That depends one your job site I suppose. I work as a contractor in a DoD office. Probably about half the people here are contractors and the other half Civil Service. Other than Management always being Civil Service, there isn't much job stereo typing between the two.
Pay wise I would rather be GS than contractor here. The contracting company is very misery about pay such that we get less pay and benefits than the GS folks we work with. On the upside I never did earn my degree and had about 2 years of experience in my specific job field, the biggest factor was probably that I still had a valid clearance from being in the military. The pay is still very good for the area, I'm the sole earner for my household of three.
Well that may be, but I'll bet they have been unfairly avoiding their civic duty of Jury Duty!
From what I have heard and read a lot of movies don't make a profit because of Hollywood style accounting. That is the main studio pays some other company to promote the movie and such. The promoting company makes huge profits on the film instead of the main studio in order to essentially hide profits. The promoting company is a shell company that is owned by the same people as the main studio.
That's what led to Jackson sueing over the Lord of the Rings series. Part of his contract was that he got a significant cut of the movies profits. The studio used at least one shell company that they overpaid for services rendered. Since the same people owned the studio and the shell company they still get all their money, but Jackson gets ripped off because the profits are artificially lowered through the payments to the shell company. All of this is still alledged at this point I think, but it's pretty commonly believed to be what's going on in regards to so many movies apparently failing to make a profit.
I bought it when it first came out. I played it for maybe two days before giving up on it. The game play was so radically different from MOO2 that I just couldn't figure out how to make it work the way I wanted. I guess it was closer to MOO than MOO2, but I was really hoping for a more refined version of the sequel not the original.
Things I would have liked as improvements of MOO2:
Better AI for space battles, both on the enemies part and when you told it to fight for you.
Better build que management, longer build que so I didn't have to update it every dozen cycles or whatever and or being able to save a given que and apply it to other colonies.
Making ground combat more interactive, sending your troops and just having them land to duke it out was lame.
Remove some of the broken things like combinations of equipment on ships that granted infinite turns.
Add more technologies rather than half the possible research being minor improvements of existing stuff en mass.
I think I might actually be willign to pony up some money for a mod of MOO2 that offered most of that.
One EA game of series that I remember that I really liked is the original Bard's Tale games. In fact that's probably the first EA game that I ever played. And I remmeber it was an EA game because there was an unremarkable house that if you entered would show a Logo for them and play the credits for the game.
Five years??? EA has been in the business of producing the same product with new names and faces for at least ten years now, if not longer. How long have their various NBA/NFL games been selling a new version every year?