As far as I'm concerned, you're a sucker if you're not collecting credit card points. There's no paperwork, you just use the card and points accrue. If they're Chase points, you can use them at a penny a point at Amazon with no fuss, just register the card and click on "use my points" at checkout.
Every bill that I can put on that card goes on that card, and I never pay cash if I can pay credit. I wind up hundreds of dollars a year ahead and it's just free money.
Just to be clear, I never carry a balance, and therefore never pay interest, with one exception.
We (wife and I) bought a condo for her mother to live in. About a third of that went on a cash advance on one of the cards, and we've been shuffling it around between zero interest offers as the offers expire and someone else offers zero percent for 12+ months. That money's costing us a 4% transfer fee when we transfer it, typically every 12 - 14 months, which I view as good, since it's basically impossible to get a loan against the condo thanks to Fannie and Freddie's rules. There are very few real direct lenders left, and they're not interested in "investment" properties.
(Since you're Australian, I'll explain that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are pseudo-governmental organizations that effectively control the entire mortgage industry in the US. If your loan doesn't meet their guidelines you're not getting a loan.)
My total credit card limit (across multiple cards) is somewhere in excess of $100K.
That's a couple in the mid 30's then a few more in the 10 - 15 range.
The cards actually in my wallet total maybe $30K, not counting the company "green AmEx". I have no idea what limit might be on that. It hasn't been used in years.
Of course there's hardware. There's always hardware. Computer software runs on hardware. There isn't some magic Star Trek alien cloud of pure energy where it runs. It's chips and circuit boards.
Unless you are running applications directly on real actual hardware you have an OS. Just because you call the application isolation mechanism a "virtual machine running under a hypervisor" instead of a "program running under an operating system" doesn't mean they're fundamentally different things.
It's just a matter of semantics as to what you call it. Apparently the current fashion is to call a new OS a hypervisor instead of an OS. Probably because it's easier to sell people on a new hyervisor than it is to sell them on a new OS when we already have so many of those.
"teenaged" was generous. He's a few months shy of 12. The talk was more about how
* I'm sorry that the filtering software apparently broke and let him see all that stuff, because he really isn't ready for it (and he isn't. He's very immature.) * I can see everything he searches for and every web site he goes to. * the general internet isn't a good source for actual information about sex and bodies and so forth. * the filter WILL still let him do "safe" google image search, so he can probably still see scantily clad women and maybe the occasional body part that slips past, and I won't give him grief about those searches - in other words, go ahead and search for "hot ladies" but not "5th grade girls having lesbian sex" or "ladies shitting in the snow". * anything he wants to know he can ask me and I won't mock him and I will come up with a good answer * Don't do this sort of thing with his friends - he's a year behind in school, so he's older than his friends, so if they get caught he's going to get blamed. * and finally, the mechanics of the sex act (at the "tab A fits into slot B" level) which he claimed was news to him, despite clearly having seen more pornography than I saw before I was about 25.
It was generally hideous for all involved, which may be sufficient to keep him out of it for a while.
1. Install logmein (logmein.com) - the free edition is just fine. 2. Make your mom a standard user. Non-administrator. 3. Create an "Admin" account. Do NOT tell her the password.
It's working so far for my mother-in-law. Her old computer was so badly infested that I just gave up and gave her one of my spares. (She had no reload media.)
Now, even with her teen grandson surfing porn (yes, I caught him at it, yes, we had a long talk about it but I doubt he's stopped) it seems to be clean.
She has Windows 7. Maybe it won't work as well with XP.
When working from home, I work in the same general area of the house as where she and my wife are playing, watching TV, reading, and doing all that other stuff you do with a baby. I change most of her diapers while I'm there, and sometimes I take a meeting or do work with her sitting on my lap happily burbling away and grabbing at the keyboard.
And I'm still more productive than when stuck in my dismal, 1989 cubicle. (It really is that old; I found the manufacturer's sticker inside the cabinet.)
Some of it is workplace noise. Some of it is that I can wear t-shirt and jeans, or shorts if it's warm, and no socks or shoes. Some of it is that I'm just happier with my family than without them.
I'm trying to train my workplace that they don't need to see me more than once a week. I think I'm slowly getting there. My boss doesn't care so long as the work gets done, but higher up the food chain it gets stickier.
Your time is a cost in your business as well. It's usually paid for out of the business one way or another, whether by explicitly taking pay or by taking profits. It's just easier to talk about tangible stuff as expenses.
If they can get enough money at the scrap yard for it to matter to their life, you are wasting their time by not taking the scrap yourself and giving them money.
Only the working poor would put up with this shit. Do you think poor people have nothing better to do with their time? With their gasoline than drive to the scrap yard?
Sell the scrap yourself and give them a raise. Maybe even pay them a living wage so they don't have to fuck around trying to make ends meet.
Production of Bitcoin should be taxable just like anything else that you make. If you have a business making clothes, your taxable income is the difference between what you sell the clothes for and your cost of making them. In the case of mining Bitcoin, your expenses are primarily computer equipment, electricity and physical space to contain the computer equipment.
Getting paid in Bitcoin is either the same as getting paid in a foreign currency or the same as barter - an exchange of value.
I see a lot of posts saying that "bitcoin transactions aren't taxed" and "no payroll taxes if you're paid in bitcoin."
Huh?
If I'm working in the US but my employer pays me in GBP, they should still be sending an appropriate amount for FICA, Medicare, and withholding to Washington, and I should be declaring the income on my 1040. A different currency doesn't make it tax free.
Does Bitcoin make it easier to evade taxes? Sure, maybe it does. Doesn't make it legal.
That's actually how most things work, you know. If you buy 400 of something all at once, it's cheaper than buying 200 now and 200 later.
But it's also almost always cheaper to buy 200 total than to buy 400 total no matter how you order them. Just like everyone else, the military needs to figure out what they need when they place the order and they need to get it right or expect additional costs.
The people who agree with your argument to not cut the F22 think they know better than the military how many F22's the military needs. Seems kind of arrogant to me.
There are actually a good number on Dell and Lenovo (didn't look at HP) that list Windows 7 as the installed OS. Even under Home for Dell. I only looked at Small Business on Lenovo's site.
If you ask me someone didn't try very hard.
The vendors don't care who buys from the Small Business section. They may assign you an account rep and mail you an invoice (both of which seem weird for a one-off purchase) but they'll happily sell you their stuff.
According to the very article linked in the summary, car stereo theft is virtually nonexistent because aftermarket car stereos are virtually nonexistent. Auto manufacturers put in good enough radios that practically nobody replaces them, and the original equipment radios only fit in that make/model/year of car.
The cost of a radio has nothing to do with it. There's no market for a radio that only fits a couple years of (as an example) three models of Ford products. Thieves don't steal things that they can't sell.
In some cases, there isn't really even a separate radio to steal; it's deeply integrated into the car rather than being a discrete and easily aftermarket replacable component.
For a couple months I was buying stuff I usually never buy, because i was shopping for my mother-in-law, because she was having an especially hard time getting around.
She's getting around better now for around a year, but I still get coupons for frozen meals and store-brand applesauce popping out at the registers.
I also get coupons that are for a different brand of something I bought a couple trips ago.
No, I think they're doing it to generate the personalized post card coupons and coupons that spit out at the cash register, so when I stop buying Stouffer frozen food they can give me coupons to entice me back.
I don't really travel that much, but I have encountered TSA two or four times a year for most years since they've existed.
Some are friendly and as helpful as they are allowed to be. Others are clearly just tired of their job but doing it. Just like any other job.
If you read the blog in the summary, the author talks about letting little stuff go (and thereby breaking the rules) when it makes no sense. Like not confiscating the swiss army knife in the airline pilot's bag, or making up excuses to keep toddlers out of the scanners during the early days when they were not exempt.
Don't blame the guy at McDonald's making the burger if you don't like how the Mac sauce tastes, either. He didn't make it, he just squirted it on.
You definitely have to look at the "active" guns per capita.
I, for example, have what appears to be a nice semi-automatic pistol in my basement on the high, high shelf, behind some other stuff, in its original box. My grandfather was a Naval officer for a time, and it was his sidearm. He died in the early 1970's, and I doubt it's been fired since some time in the 1960's.
I have no bullets for it, and also no Firearm Owner ID in a state that requires it.
My mom has a rifle or two that were his in her basement. Once again, she has no FOID, but she might have some forty year old ammunition laying around.
The likelihood of any of these guns being used for a crime or other violent act is essentially zero. There's no point to even considering them for purposes of US gun statistics.
I don't know what the software architecture of these games looks like, but there is an alternative to faulty hardware tripping this test.
It's another execution unit (thread or similar) running rampant through memory.
I've "fixed" bugs in cooperative multitasking software by putting big buffers around variables that were getting stomped on. Usually the buffers got removed before the software was considered "done." But not always.
And they're cheaper. I don't ship a lot of stuff, but I usually check price between Fedex, USPS and UPS on packages.
USPS is consistent cheaper.
The thing where USPS does the "final mile" delivery for UPS sucks, by the way. The tracking is a mess and it's quite slow. I hope it's really cheap at least.
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As far as I'm concerned, you're a sucker if you're not collecting credit card points. There's no paperwork, you just use the card and points accrue. If they're Chase points, you can use them at a penny a point at Amazon with no fuss, just register the card and click on "use my points" at checkout.
Every bill that I can put on that card goes on that card, and I never pay cash if I can pay credit. I wind up hundreds of dollars a year ahead and it's just free money.
Just to be clear, I never carry a balance, and therefore never pay interest, with one exception.
We (wife and I) bought a condo for her mother to live in. About a third of that went on a cash advance on one of the cards, and we've been shuffling it around between zero interest offers as the offers expire and someone else offers zero percent for 12+ months. That money's costing us a 4% transfer fee when we transfer it, typically every 12 - 14 months, which I view as good, since it's basically impossible to get a loan against the condo thanks to Fannie and Freddie's rules. There are very few real direct lenders left, and they're not interested in "investment" properties.
(Since you're Australian, I'll explain that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are pseudo-governmental organizations that effectively control the entire mortgage industry in the US. If your loan doesn't meet their guidelines you're not getting a loan.)
For expenses of this sort, absolutely.
Minor use of the "Hey, can you pick this up at Staples?" sort isn't unreasonable.
My total credit card limit (across multiple cards) is somewhere in excess of $100K.
That's a couple in the mid 30's then a few more in the 10 - 15 range.
The cards actually in my wallet total maybe $30K, not counting the company "green AmEx". I have no idea what limit might be on that. It hasn't been used in years.
Of course there's hardware. There's always hardware. Computer software runs on hardware. There isn't some magic Star Trek alien cloud of pure energy where it runs. It's chips and circuit boards.
Unless you are running applications directly on real actual hardware you have an OS. Just because you call the application isolation mechanism a "virtual machine running under a hypervisor" instead of a "program running under an operating system" doesn't mean they're fundamentally different things.
It's just a matter of semantics as to what you call it. Apparently the current fashion is to call a new OS a hypervisor instead of an OS. Probably because it's easier to sell people on a new hyervisor than it is to sell them on a new OS when we already have so many of those.
I'm with you except maybe pull ups. Depending on arm length and body type that can take a LOT of strength.
Hahah.
True though. My daughter's around 30 pounds and I have visible arm muscles now that I never had in my life.
"teenaged" was generous. He's a few months shy of 12. The talk was more about how
* I'm sorry that the filtering software apparently broke and let him see all that stuff, because he really isn't ready for it (and he isn't. He's very immature.)
* I can see everything he searches for and every web site he goes to.
* the general internet isn't a good source for actual information about sex and bodies and so forth.
* the filter WILL still let him do "safe" google image search, so he can probably still see scantily clad women and maybe the occasional body part that slips past, and I won't give him grief about those searches - in other words, go ahead and search for "hot ladies" but not "5th grade girls having lesbian sex" or "ladies shitting in the snow".
* anything he wants to know he can ask me and I won't mock him and I will come up with a good answer
* Don't do this sort of thing with his friends - he's a year behind in school, so he's older than his friends, so if they get caught he's going to get blamed.
* and finally, the mechanics of the sex act (at the "tab A fits into slot B" level) which he claimed was news to him, despite clearly having seen more pornography than I saw before I was about 25.
It was generally hideous for all involved, which may be sufficient to keep him out of it for a while.
1. Install logmein (logmein.com) - the free edition is just fine.
2. Make your mom a standard user. Non-administrator.
3. Create an "Admin" account. Do NOT tell her the password.
It's working so far for my mother-in-law. Her old computer was so badly infested that I just gave up and gave her one of my spares. (She had no reload media.)
Now, even with her teen grandson surfing porn (yes, I caught him at it, yes, we had a long talk about it but I doubt he's stopped) it seems to be clean.
She has Windows 7. Maybe it won't work as well with XP.
Just the only child still living here, not the only child. Big brother is over 21.
I have one child (almost 10 months old.)
When working from home, I work in the same general area of the house as where she and my wife are playing, watching TV, reading, and doing all that other stuff you do with a baby. I change most of her diapers while I'm there, and sometimes I take a meeting or do work with her sitting on my lap happily burbling away and grabbing at the keyboard.
And I'm still more productive than when stuck in my dismal, 1989 cubicle. (It really is that old; I found the manufacturer's sticker inside the cabinet.)
Some of it is workplace noise. Some of it is that I can wear t-shirt and jeans, or shorts if it's warm, and no socks or shoes. Some of it is that I'm just happier with my family than without them.
I'm trying to train my workplace that they don't need to see me more than once a week. I think I'm slowly getting there. My boss doesn't care so long as the work gets done, but higher up the food chain it gets stickier.
Your time is a cost in your business as well. It's usually paid for out of the business one way or another, whether by explicitly taking pay or by taking profits. It's just easier to talk about tangible stuff as expenses.
Wow. You are a total asshole.
If they can get enough money at the scrap yard for it to matter to their life, you are wasting their time by not taking the scrap yourself and giving them money.
Only the working poor would put up with this shit. Do you think poor people have nothing better to do with their time? With their gasoline than drive to the scrap yard?
Sell the scrap yourself and give them a raise. Maybe even pay them a living wage so they don't have to fuck around trying to make ends meet.
And I say again, ASSHOLE.
Production of Bitcoin should be taxable just like anything else that you make. If you have a business making clothes, your taxable income is the difference between what you sell the clothes for and your cost of making them. In the case of mining Bitcoin, your expenses are primarily computer equipment, electricity and physical space to contain the computer equipment.
Getting paid in Bitcoin is either the same as getting paid in a foreign currency or the same as barter - an exchange of value.
IRS has procedures for barter.
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Bartering-Tax-Center
I see a lot of posts saying that "bitcoin transactions aren't taxed" and "no payroll taxes if you're paid in bitcoin."
Huh?
If I'm working in the US but my employer pays me in GBP, they should still be sending an appropriate amount for FICA, Medicare, and withholding to Washington, and I should be declaring the income on my 1040. A different currency doesn't make it tax free.
Does Bitcoin make it easier to evade taxes? Sure, maybe it does. Doesn't make it legal.
That's actually how most things work, you know. If you buy 400 of something all at once, it's cheaper than buying 200 now and 200 later.
But it's also almost always cheaper to buy 200 total than to buy 400 total no matter how you order them. Just like everyone else, the military needs to figure out what they need when they place the order and they need to get it right or expect additional costs.
The people who agree with your argument to not cut the F22 think they know better than the military how many F22's the military needs. Seems kind of arrogant to me.
There are actually a good number on Dell and Lenovo (didn't look at HP) that list Windows 7 as the installed OS. Even under Home for Dell. I only looked at Small Business on Lenovo's site.
If you ask me someone didn't try very hard.
The vendors don't care who buys from the Small Business section. They may assign you an account rep and mail you an invoice (both of which seem weird for a one-off purchase) but they'll happily sell you their stuff.
I've looked so far at dell.com and lenovo.com. Both have many laptops available for immediate purchase running Windows 7.
At Dell, under Small Business they start around $350. Under Home/Consumer they are a bit more expensive.
At Lenovo, ThinkPad E-Series under small business all seem to list Windows 7.
So basically the whole question is bogus and merely an excuse to start up another Windows 8 bash-fest.
Either that or Sagan's Pie thinks "everywhere" is logically equivalent to "Best Buy" and "Walmart".
She's infant sized.
Wikipedia says she's 30 inches tall, 16 pounds.
My almost nine month old daughter is 26 pounds, around 30 inches. That's like 99th percentile in size, but still infant sized.
An average 5 year old is 40 inches, 40 pounds.
According to the very article linked in the summary, car stereo theft is virtually nonexistent because aftermarket car stereos are virtually nonexistent. Auto manufacturers put in good enough radios that practically nobody replaces them, and the original equipment radios only fit in that make/model/year of car.
The cost of a radio has nothing to do with it. There's no market for a radio that only fits a couple years of (as an example) three models of Ford products. Thieves don't steal things that they can't sell.
In some cases, there isn't really even a separate radio to steal; it's deeply integrated into the car rather than being a discrete and easily aftermarket replacable component.
For a couple months I was buying stuff I usually never buy, because i was shopping for my mother-in-law, because she was having an especially hard time getting around.
She's getting around better now for around a year, but I still get coupons for frozen meals and store-brand applesauce popping out at the registers.
I also get coupons that are for a different brand of something I bought a couple trips ago.
No, I think they're doing it to generate the personalized post card coupons and coupons that spit out at the cash register, so when I stop buying Stouffer frozen food they can give me coupons to entice me back.
It varies a lot.
I don't really travel that much, but I have encountered TSA two or four times a year for most years since they've existed.
Some are friendly and as helpful as they are allowed to be. Others are clearly just tired of their job but doing it. Just like any other job.
If you read the blog in the summary, the author talks about letting little stuff go (and thereby breaking the rules) when it makes no sense. Like not confiscating the swiss army knife in the airline pilot's bag, or making up excuses to keep toddlers out of the scanners during the early days when they were not exempt.
Don't blame the guy at McDonald's making the burger if you don't like how the Mac sauce tastes, either. He didn't make it, he just squirted it on.
You definitely have to look at the "active" guns per capita.
I, for example, have what appears to be a nice semi-automatic pistol in my basement on the high, high shelf, behind some other stuff, in its original box. My grandfather was a Naval officer for a time, and it was his sidearm. He died in the early 1970's, and I doubt it's been fired since some time in the 1960's.
I have no bullets for it, and also no Firearm Owner ID in a state that requires it.
My mom has a rifle or two that were his in her basement. Once again, she has no FOID, but she might have some forty year old ammunition laying around.
The likelihood of any of these guns being used for a crime or other violent act is essentially zero. There's no point to even considering them for purposes of US gun statistics.
I don't know what the software architecture of these games looks like, but there is an alternative to faulty hardware tripping this test.
It's another execution unit (thread or similar) running rampant through memory.
I've "fixed" bugs in cooperative multitasking software by putting big buffers around variables that were getting stomped on. Usually the buffers got removed before the software was considered "done." But not always.
And they're cheaper. I don't ship a lot of stuff, but I usually check price between Fedex, USPS and UPS on packages.
USPS is consistent cheaper.
The thing where USPS does the "final mile" delivery for UPS sucks, by the way. The tracking is a mess and it's quite slow. I hope it's really cheap at least.