I only use unlocked phones and prepaid plans, T-Mobile, PagePlus mostly. It can be done. There are plenty of unlocked phones available on NewEgg, Dell, Amazon, and Craigslist.
Yes, knowing that rent, people, and insurance aren't cheap, I think $1.50 is reasonable. I'm not sure what goes into your calculation that the coffee costs 20 cents. I don't even think straight coffee orders keeps Starbucks thriving. It's probably the specialty drinks and the food.
I can do it at home for less, but not $.20/cup cheap. The problem with coffee is it has a limited shelf life. A good brewer or brewing method takes money and time to prepare also. I don't like to compare to soda as I can buy it on sale and store it for weeks or months without degradation.
However, my frame of reference is what I pay for a decent cup of coffee dispensed on demand at a retail store. Those prices from Starbucks are reasonable. I pay more at local places like Coffee Society (Cupertino, CA) or Orchard Valley (Campbell, CA). Granted, it's slightly better coffee. Peet's is about the same in price and quality, IMO.
I've never understood the slam on Starbucks about their coffee being expensive. Where I live (California), the prices for coffee are:
small/tall: $1.50
med/grande: $1.85
lg/venti: $2.00
What price should the coffee be? As a daily coffee drinker, I go back and forth whether it makes more sense for me to spend $2 a day at Starbucks or a similar place (all the prices are about the same), or spend $10-12 plus $1.50 for pint of cream and brew at home which lasts about a week.
I don't buy lattes or mochas that often, and that isn't coffee; it's a specialty drink. I think they run in the low to mid $3 range as it requires a paid employee to make it for me. Again, what should it cost?
I'm going through the stages of Twitter: it's stupid, it's funny, it's useful, it's too much information. This Slashdot page was loaded via a Twitter link. The thing is, I do get useful nuggets of information from Twitter: breaking news, tech links, sports scores. And while most of the time I don't care where you are are what you're doing, once in awhile I have hooked up with folks having a beer who posted on Twitter.
Until it gets easier to parse the feeds (sorry, lists just aren't working for me), I've had to get past that feeling that I'm missing out on something if I don't check the feed, or I go through a long history. So at this point I've learned to let missed items just go and move on with my life.
The vasectomy fright is so overblown. I had it done 2 months ago. Go to a urologist who has experience (say 1000+ procedures) and does is regularly. The doctor I went to does them all day on Fridays. It's done in 15 minutes. Put an icepack on your nuts and watch some movies and sports for the weekend. Keep the kids away from your midsection. By the following weekend it's pretty much forgotten.
"Married people don't have sex" is such a tired cliche. If you're in that situation, sorry, that sucks, but it's not supposed to be that way. At age 40 with elementary school kids, I'm glad we made the decision. Plan ahead and put an extra $500 (or whatever your out-of-pocket expense might be) on your company Flex Plan to get it subsidized tax free.
That's how I was able to justify to my employer to issue me a Verizon MiFi. It pays for itself in lieu of charging hotel wifi plus has so many more uses.
5) Plan to remove the dead weight. There's always a lot of dead weight in these near-abandoned projects. Get an idea how to simplify things and plan your work in phases.
There's a lot of anti-IDE rhetoric going on, but I rely heavily on mine, Eclipse (for Java programming). I also rely on Vim, TextPad, less, and so on depending on the task. But for this particular question and the point about dead weight, leverage your IDE to clean house. You can play with compiler and static analysis flags to remove things like unused: private methods, imports, variables or whatever is applicable to your language. If the formatting is inconsistent, run a formatter that pleases your eye (assuming there isn't a group standard for that... another religious programmer's topic).
Other parts of Eclipse that I rely on especially when I'm in another team's code (we have about 2m real LOCs): * Call hierarchy [ctl-alt-H] * References [ctl-shift-G] * Class hierarchy [f4]
Where I am, some of these conveniences are becoming more difficult to leverage as Spring and its XML configurations define object relationships.
Look at execs from AOL, Yahoo, now Sun... hell, Carly Fiorina is running a campaign to do to California what she did to HP. Ask anybody who worked at HP while she was there, or any stockholder, how that works out. At least the citizens of California will have some say over whether she is taken on. Hard to believe such a tech-savvy state would fall for her, but..
And that's depressing, yet, I'll be checking the box next to her name. As is usually the case, I'm not voting "for" someone. I'm voting against Senator Boxer.
I haven't been skiing in many years, but I've thought that something like this could do well in Tahoe, for people who come up just to ski.. Come up, ski, go to casinos or whatever for a while, then sleep in one of these capsules, cheaper than a regular hotel..
Oh, the smell of post skiing multiple layers of sweat crammed into a kennel (that what these things really are). I'd just sleep in my car given the choice.
Do a little research on prepaid cellular and MVNOs. You would be surprised how cheap barebones cellular can be. Look at PagePlus cellular. I know geeks who game that with discount prepaid cards to take small use cellular to a few bucks a month.
I've used T-Mobile prepaid for years averaging about $10 a month.
I, too, have been using T-Mobile TOGO for many years. It's simple and cheap.
Another alternative is PagePlus which uses the Verizon network. Some of their recent plans are awesome - $40 for unlimited phone/text, $30 for 1200 mins + 1200 texts.
They even have the decency to bundle all the tax bullshit in the price. (Same goes for T-Mobile, 10c a minute, period.)
Yes, you still need to own or borrow wifi from somewhere as the Wikipedia app for Touch/iPhone doesn't store the whole thing locally. Still, the device sounds like too much of a niche product for $99.
Solar and wind are still underexploited resources in this country. Combine them with better use of the energy we currently make and we will be energy independent and cleaner.
And will continue to be underexploited. There's just no winning this battle. It obstructs my view of Mars, I don't want transmission lines. We can't put them in the middle of the freaking Mojave or Carriso Plain. NIMBY
If the members are shareholders, then shouldn't they be the ones who dictate the CU's policy? Or did the majority of the members agree to these policy changes because they felt it would allow them to provide better benefits to members (higher interest rates on deposits, more ATMs, etc.)?
Interestingly enough, it looks like the legislation limiting CU membership was the result of lobbying by banks. But I guess once membership restrictions were lifted and some CUs started getting as big as banks, it was inevitable that they became more like banks. It's harder to get directly involved in policy-making in large organizations. So a CU with 1000 members will be more impersonal than a CU with 100 members, where each member has a greater say in CU policy.
The members dictate the policies of the credit union via the Board of Directors. Some facts about the boards and the directors:
Must be members; mine requires 5 years min.
Unpaid; you do get to travel to conferences, but a reputable CU will be very careful to stay within the rules, no reimbursement for your golf outings or room upgrades, etc.
Must have the member's interests at the forefront, not the executive staff
It's hard work if you take it seriously
My credit union in California is over 50 years old and incredibly well run; I've learned a ton in 2 years with the board
Memberships come in many flavors. It can be geographical, tied to a company or industry, or some combination.
About some earlier comments regarding executive pay, that's in the eye of the beholder. Typical pay for a largish CU (500 million in assets or higher) is low to mid six figures. Make of it what you will, it's not exhorbitant. CUs are under a huge burden of regulation and requires competent and experienced execs.
Are CUs interested in profit? Yes, absolutely. But ROI (return on income) is not the key measure. That's a shareholder-centric measure. Instead ROA (return on assets) is key along with net worth ratios. If a CU gets flooded with deposits, profit needs to be generated, and loans are the best avenue and serve the members best. Otherwise, net worth (your capital ratio) drops. In California, if that ratio drops below 5%, the regulators are in the building to explore how you are going to get that ratio up to 8% or merge or go out of business.
That's some detail in a nutshell regarding various comments about credit unions made in this thread.
Aren't there about for zillion great free IM applications out there already? Why would someone use this one? What is the specific draw?
I used it to combine my Yahoo IM and Twitter feeds (yes, I follow certain people/things in Twitter). Also, it notified me about emails. Alas, I speak of it in the past tense. It was a nice program, but I was always a little leery about whether Digsby was doing something I didn't like. I noticed on IE, which I rarely use, that the search said "Google Search powered by Digsby." I knew that meant I missed a checkbox during the annoying install process.
I uninstalled using Revo. The Digsby uninstaller left a bunch of crap leftover. I've tried different IM clients and I still end up back at Yahoo's default IM with its flaws. For Twitter feeds, I have moved to Thwirl which uses Adobe AIR. I'm not sure if AIR has any negative issues yet. For email notifications, I've fallen back to Gmail Manager as a Firefox add-on.
I'm one of those who likes to try the next popular shiny object, e.g. Digsby, but I often fall back to some old reliable source.
Still, this is a simple solution. Kids don't need cell-phones in class.
Thank you for telling me what my child needs and where. Without people like you, and people like you in the government to create laws, I would certainly never have made it this far in life.
I agree with your statement. I also agree with the parent if it's said this way: "Classes don't need kids with cell phones." IANAT(eacher), but I think it might be reasonable to say cell phones must be off or silent, no vibrate, so to not disturb the class, just the same way the kid shouldn't have a DS or other toy/gadget. Treat the phone as any other potential disturbance.
Between periods, during break, or at lunch, do as you wish. Check your messages from mom, dad, or friends.
I just look at the caller ID and then call the person on a wired phone which is free-of-charge.
Doesn't that basically make your cell phone into an expensive pager?
Not if you are on a prepaid plan. Personally, I tend to answer the call and if it's going to be a long conversation, I'll tell the person I'll call them back. I'll pay the 10 to 20 cents to acknowledge the caller.
I work for an asset management company. The math behind the portfolio construction and forecasting is very advanced and intensive (Ph.D.'s in Math, Finance, Physics, etc.). The research and quality testing is all Matlab. The production financial code is all Java (same as the overall product line).
Slashdot Mirror
I only use unlocked phones and prepaid plans, T-Mobile, PagePlus mostly. It can be done. There are plenty of unlocked phones available on NewEgg, Dell, Amazon, and Craigslist.
Yes, knowing that rent, people, and insurance aren't cheap, I think $1.50 is reasonable. I'm not sure what goes into your calculation that the coffee costs 20 cents. I don't even think straight coffee orders keeps Starbucks thriving. It's probably the specialty drinks and the food.
I can do it at home for less, but not $.20/cup cheap. The problem with coffee is it has a limited shelf life. A good brewer or brewing method takes money and time to prepare also. I don't like to compare to soda as I can buy it on sale and store it for weeks or months without degradation.
However, my frame of reference is what I pay for a decent cup of coffee dispensed on demand at a retail store. Those prices from Starbucks are reasonable. I pay more at local places like Coffee Society (Cupertino, CA) or Orchard Valley (Campbell, CA). Granted, it's slightly better coffee. Peet's is about the same in price and quality, IMO.
I've never understood the slam on Starbucks about their coffee being expensive. Where I live (California), the prices for coffee are:
What price should the coffee be? As a daily coffee drinker, I go back and forth whether it makes more sense for me to spend $2 a day at Starbucks or a similar place (all the prices are about the same), or spend $10-12 plus $1.50 for pint of cream and brew at home which lasts about a week.
I don't buy lattes or mochas that often, and that isn't coffee; it's a specialty drink. I think they run in the low to mid $3 range as it requires a paid employee to make it for me. Again, what should it cost?
I'm going through the stages of Twitter: it's stupid, it's funny, it's useful, it's too much information. This Slashdot page was loaded via a Twitter link. The thing is, I do get useful nuggets of information from Twitter: breaking news, tech links, sports scores. And while most of the time I don't care where you are are what you're doing, once in awhile I have hooked up with folks having a beer who posted on Twitter.
Until it gets easier to parse the feeds (sorry, lists just aren't working for me), I've had to get past that feeling that I'm missing out on something if I don't check the feed, or I go through a long history. So at this point I've learned to let missed items just go and move on with my life.
-- MV, a software engineer
The vasectomy fright is so overblown. I had it done 2 months ago. Go to a urologist who has experience (say 1000+ procedures) and does is regularly. The doctor I went to does them all day on Fridays. It's done in 15 minutes. Put an icepack on your nuts and watch some movies and sports for the weekend. Keep the kids away from your midsection. By the following weekend it's pretty much forgotten.
"Married people don't have sex" is such a tired cliche. If you're in that situation, sorry, that sucks, but it's not supposed to be that way. At age 40 with elementary school kids, I'm glad we made the decision. Plan ahead and put an extra $500 (or whatever your out-of-pocket expense might be) on your company Flex Plan to get it subsidized tax free.
That's how I was able to justify to my employer to issue me a Verizon MiFi. It pays for itself in lieu of charging hotel wifi plus has so many more uses.
5) Plan to remove the dead weight. There's always a lot of dead weight in these near-abandoned projects. Get an idea how to simplify things and plan your work in phases.
There's a lot of anti-IDE rhetoric going on, but I rely heavily on mine, Eclipse (for Java programming). I also rely on Vim, TextPad, less, and so on depending on the task. But for this particular question and the point about dead weight, leverage your IDE to clean house. You can play with compiler and static analysis flags to remove things like unused: private methods, imports, variables or whatever is applicable to your language. If the formatting is inconsistent, run a formatter that pleases your eye (assuming there isn't a group standard for that ... another religious programmer's topic).
Other parts of Eclipse that I rely on especially when I'm in another team's code (we have about 2m real LOCs):
* Call hierarchy [ctl-alt-H]
* References [ctl-shift-G]
* Class hierarchy [f4]
Where I am, some of these conveniences are becoming more difficult to leverage as Spring and its XML configurations define object relationships.
Look at execs from AOL, Yahoo, now Sun... hell, Carly Fiorina is running a campaign to do to California what she did to HP. Ask anybody who worked at HP while she was there, or any stockholder, how that works out. At least the citizens of California will have some say over whether she is taken on. Hard to believe such a tech-savvy state would fall for her, but..
And that's depressing, yet, I'll be checking the box next to her name. As is usually the case, I'm not voting "for" someone. I'm voting against Senator Boxer.
That's what babies do. Put some headphones on and deal with it.
I haven't been skiing in many years, but I've thought that something like this could do well in Tahoe, for people who come up just to ski.. Come up, ski, go to casinos or whatever for a while, then sleep in one of these capsules, cheaper than a regular hotel..
Oh, the smell of post skiing multiple layers of sweat crammed into a kennel (that what these things really are). I'd just sleep in my car given the choice.
When was the last time you thought about your municipal water and sewer service?
Hot, hot, hot ... off the presses at the New York Times.
Many sewer systems are overwhelmed, spilling excrement, medical waste and chemicals into waterways
Do a little research on prepaid cellular and MVNOs. You would be surprised how cheap barebones cellular can be. Look at PagePlus cellular. I know geeks who game that with discount prepaid cards to take small use cellular to a few bucks a month.
I've used T-Mobile prepaid for years averaging about $10 a month.
No termination fees:
Each has its pros and cons. There are choices out there if you try a little.
It reminds me of people complaining that B of A cranked up their credit card but, for some reason, won't check a local bank or credit union.
Sometimes, it's just easier to complain.
I, too, have been using T-Mobile TOGO for many years. It's simple and cheap.
Another alternative is PagePlus which uses the Verizon network. Some of their recent plans are awesome - $40 for unlimited phone/text, $30 for 1200 mins + 1200 texts.
They even have the decency to bundle all the tax bullshit in the price. (Same goes for T-Mobile, 10c a minute, period.)
How about a refurbished iPod Touch for $139.00?
Yes, you still need to own or borrow wifi from somewhere as the Wikipedia app for Touch/iPhone doesn't store the whole thing locally. Still, the device sounds like too much of a niche product for $99.
I got hung up on wondering who the hell buys canned meatballs in gravy and canned mackerel in brine.
Solar and wind are still underexploited resources in this country. Combine them with better use of the energy we currently make and we will be energy independent and cleaner.
And will continue to be underexploited. There's just no winning this battle. It obstructs my view of Mars, I don't want transmission lines. We can't put them in the middle of the freaking Mojave or Carriso Plain. NIMBY
Pretty impressive list if you did that without looking. You forgot one ... Herman's Head.
If the members are shareholders, then shouldn't they be the ones who dictate the CU's policy? Or did the majority of the members agree to these policy changes because they felt it would allow them to provide better benefits to members (higher interest rates on deposits, more ATMs, etc.)?
Interestingly enough, it looks like the legislation limiting CU membership was the result of lobbying by banks. But I guess once membership restrictions were lifted and some CUs started getting as big as banks, it was inevitable that they became more like banks. It's harder to get directly involved in policy-making in large organizations. So a CU with 1000 members will be more impersonal than a CU with 100 members, where each member has a greater say in CU policy.
The members dictate the policies of the credit union via the Board of Directors. Some facts about the boards and the directors:
Memberships come in many flavors. It can be geographical, tied to a company or industry, or some combination.
About some earlier comments regarding executive pay, that's in the eye of the beholder. Typical pay for a largish CU (500 million in assets or higher) is low to mid six figures. Make of it what you will, it's not exhorbitant. CUs are under a huge burden of regulation and requires competent and experienced execs.
Are CUs interested in profit? Yes, absolutely. But ROI (return on income) is not the key measure. That's a shareholder-centric measure. Instead ROA (return on assets) is key along with net worth ratios. If a CU gets flooded with deposits, profit needs to be generated, and loans are the best avenue and serve the members best. Otherwise, net worth (your capital ratio) drops. In California, if that ratio drops below 5%, the regulators are in the building to explore how you are going to get that ratio up to 8% or merge or go out of business.
That's some detail in a nutshell regarding various comments about credit unions made in this thread.
Here ya go
Aren't there about for zillion great free IM applications out there already? Why would someone use this one? What is the specific draw?
I used it to combine my Yahoo IM and Twitter feeds (yes, I follow certain people/things in Twitter). Also, it notified me about emails. Alas, I speak of it in the past tense. It was a nice program, but I was always a little leery about whether Digsby was doing something I didn't like. I noticed on IE, which I rarely use, that the search said "Google Search powered by Digsby." I knew that meant I missed a checkbox during the annoying install process.
I uninstalled using Revo. The Digsby uninstaller left a bunch of crap leftover. I've tried different IM clients and I still end up back at Yahoo's default IM with its flaws. For Twitter feeds, I have moved to Thwirl which uses Adobe AIR. I'm not sure if AIR has any negative issues yet. For email notifications, I've fallen back to Gmail Manager as a Firefox add-on.
I'm one of those who likes to try the next popular shiny object, e.g. Digsby, but I often fall back to some old reliable source.
Still, this is a simple solution. Kids don't need cell-phones in class.
Thank you for telling me what my child needs and where. Without people like you, and people like you in the government to create laws, I would certainly never have made it this far in life.
I agree with your statement. I also agree with the parent if it's said this way: "Classes don't need kids with cell phones." IANAT(eacher), but I think it might be reasonable to say cell phones must be off or silent, no vibrate, so to not disturb the class, just the same way the kid shouldn't have a DS or other toy/gadget. Treat the phone as any other potential disturbance.
Between periods, during break, or at lunch, do as you wish. Check your messages from mom, dad, or friends.
That's hardly useful to the vast majority of people who already have a lot of friends, coworkers and family that have their existing phone number.
Google Voice (formerly Grand Central) solves that problem. It's my "cell phone number". My real cell phone has changed a few times.
I just look at the caller ID and then call the person on a wired phone which is free-of-charge.
Doesn't that basically make your cell phone into an expensive pager?
Not if you are on a prepaid plan. Personally, I tend to answer the call and if it's going to be a long conversation, I'll tell the person I'll call them back. I'll pay the 10 to 20 cents to acknowledge the caller.
I work for an asset management company. The math behind the portfolio construction and forecasting is very advanced and intensive (Ph.D.'s in Math, Finance, Physics, etc.). The research and quality testing is all Matlab. The production financial code is all Java (same as the overall product line).