Y2HH

I think WWE is feeling the heat, from the newfound competition from AEW to the ever sinking ratings -- WWE officially announced Paul Heyman as executive director of RAW and Eric Bischoff as executive director of Smackdown. Hard not to be excited about the state of wrestling ... it just feels like another golden era is upon us.

On this topic, I think the WORST thing a manager can do is make their employees feel like prisoners at the workplace. All that does is create turnover and give people incentive to move on when they gain the skills necessary to do so. Building a solid team is much like building a baseball team -- you need those core players, but then you need to fill in the gaps around them. If you ride your core players into the ground, they'll burn out and move on, the idea is to continually elevate people -- and fight for them for things such as raises or promotions -- in order to keep the team together for as long as possible. Yelling at someone for clocking in 5 minutes late despite the fact they always get their work done is a good way of telling everyone that works for you to get the hell out the second they can. And they will.

I've never understood that sort of "set schedule" mentality in most jobs outside of retail or places with set "open" hours. I mean, when it comes to a job where an office or store is only open certain hours, it makes sense you'd have to be there during those hours -- but for other jobs where there is no official "open/close" time, I don't get the point of micro managing people. The bottom line is, are they getting their work done? If yes, then leave them alone. If not, okay, there is a discussion to be had and expectations to be reset. One of the advantages (and disadvantages) of IT work is for most jobs, there doesn't tend to be a start/stop time. It's an advantage in that you tend to come and go as you please, so long as the work is done, however, on the downside, it could potentially mean working long off hours during times of maintenance, etc.

I've worked in IT Security for years, and I'm not sure if it's just our area of the IT business, but we kind of come and go as we please. Lunch is never timed nor are arrival or departure times. Remote work is okay once or twice a week, etc. It was like this even when I worked at my previous jobs, such as at Blue Cross Blue Shield and Hinda Incentives. In the past fifteen years or so, I've not had one manager breathing down my neck about when I show up, leave, or how long I take lunch for...and I'm not sure I'd be able to accept that anymore. I recently took a position at Coyote, which seems pretty damn fun so far. :D

Sorry for your/their loss, Tex. I personally keep a printout of all important accounts (account #'s), my master password to my phone, life insurance policies, credit cards, etc. in a safety deposit box, just in case something like this were to occur. It's hard enough for loved ones you leave behind to deal with devastating loss, adding the burden of them having to track down everything you own or owe is the last thing they need at such a time.

/me personally attacks southsider2k5

It's still within the confines of a regulated industry (banking/loans), and I think there should be caps on interest rates. I'm all for capitalism, but I think things like predatory lenders should be outright criminalized because they prey on the neediest among us.

I rarely actually buy the grocery bags, I do use reusables that are in the trunk of the car. I think I may have bought 2 or 3 since it's been enacted. I commonly waddle out to the car carrying 12 items in my arms and just dump them into the passenger seat because I refuse to pay seven cents. I'm merely highlighting how many differing and often double dipping taxes we have in this state, yet they can't fix fucking potholes in a timely fashion. It's annoying. And when I have to actually cut them a check for an additional 300+$ that I know will disappear into a "black hole" of bureaucracy and IL corruption, it makes me ill.

I don't know enough about student loans, I guess. But on its surface, for what are guaranteed loans which a person cannot bankrupt themselves out of, anything over 3% seems astoundingly high, bordering on outright greed to me.

Any credit score over 750 is excellent -- doesn't matter if it's 750 or 850, it's the same exact "rank". Also, those student loan interest rates seem astoundingly high.

I sold some stock I own at like a 18k long term gain. That's how I owe. I didn't get hosed. I just hate giving them even more of my money and then having to drive over potholes that haven't been fixed for WEEKS. I already pay 7 fucking cents for god damn grocery bags. FIX THE FUCKING POTHOLES.

Or I can just put the blame where it belongs, which is on an insane flat tax in an already heavily taxed state. My employer did the deductions just fine. It's not a big deal, I have the money, it's just annoying to owe more when I already paid upwards of 5k + my property taxes and then I get to drive over potholes. 🤣😂

Did my return yesterday, was fully expecting to owe money, but ended up with a decent federal refund. The State of IL, however, I wound up owing 330$ to the damn state, despite claiming single/0 when I'm fucking married with 2 kids on a single income. And people wonder why I think the democrats in control of IL can go fuck themselves. No, I don't care that this is a politics free zone, this has to do with taxes, so it should be allowed.

You suspended me for *no reason whatsoever*.

In the programming world, they call this sort of thing a nested, "If, Then, Else". In short, IF this happens, THEN you do X, ELSEwise you do Y, ELSEwise you do Z, ELSEwise you do XyZ, etc., etc. There are an almost infinite number of variables and circumstances you could find yourself in when it comes to gun violence, so it's pointless to speculate which would be beneficial if armed or not. The reality is, legal or not, there are hundreds of millions of them in circulation across the United States, and since we can't just snap our fingers and magically make them all disappear, talking about that as a solution is a complete waste of time. Here is what I do know, gun free zones don't work, and never have ... and almost every mass shooting takes place in one. Is the solution arming everybody? I have no idea. Wouldn't that just make things worse? Probably, yeah. I'm not a pro-gun person, so if they banned guns tomorrow, I wouldn't care. But the reality is, that's not happening anytime soon. Also to your point about automatic weapons, those are actually already banned/illegal -- yet people still have them, modified or otherwise. Here is what I do know, I'm not a thoughts and prayers person, but to those of you that are, you should be all out of them by now.

There wasn't one. But this is the recurring problem with all debates political, and probably the main reason why Soxtalk killed off the 'Buster. They all eventually devolve into shouting matches, whataboutism, and "gotcha" moments when talking with anyone outside of their own echo chambers. If there was any discussion to be had in this thread, there isn't anymore, and it's because of things like this. You did it proper, you pointed out that it IS legal, which he may not have known -- and then someone else had to take his possibly uninformed statement, and instead of educating, turned it into reductio ad absurdum, and mocked him with it, instead.

They call this reductio ad absurdum.

Fixed that for you.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-tim-cook-bloomberg-retraction It's stuff like this that makes "fake news" a thing.

This. I lol’d at the “most important election in history line”. #BRINGBACKTHEBUSTER

Meh. Sometimes true sometimes not. I’ve held plenty of good discussions there, and yes, others weren’t so productive ... but in the end it was worth it.

Says everyone trying to convince themselves this would be a good idea. In all seriousness, it depends on what you're both looking for. First and foremost, let's start with the fact she's 22. Therefore she's not very mature. Especially today. That aside, if you're both just looking for fun, whatever ... but if you're looking for one thing and she's looking for another? I'd just make sure you're both on the same page. My opinion? I personally couldn't get along in an actual relationship with a person that young -- we'd have nothing in common. We didn't watch the same cartoons or movies growing up, we wouldn't like most of the same music, or anything...hell, she was like 9 when the Sox won the world series. lol

I just want to add that there will be no civility. YOU WILL NOT SILENCE US, EVILDOERS! If you see a Soxtalk admin at a restaurant, I encourage you to yell and scream at them until they #BRINGBACKTHEBUSTER! LOL Sorry, this was like a hanging curve.

I'll make this simple for you -- put 75-80% of your funds into the S&P500 Index, and put 20-25% into a Foreign Index ... this will cover all your bases. Don't bother with Bonds until you're much older. These recommendations should be cheap in terms of management costs (the foreign index will be a bit more expensive, but I recommend it to cover your bases), and they also cover you in terms of diversity. You shouldn't buy them in "one giant lump sum", either. If you're putting 4,500$ into this account yearly, you should buy up these indexes on a quarterly basis ... this will cover you in terms of ebbs and flows of the market. If you buy all at once, you may end up buying VERY HIGH, but if you buy consistently over time, you'll buy both lows and highs and it'll even itself out for you. NOTE: The S&P500 isn't "one stock", it's the top 500 American Companies sold in a bundle, so while this guarantees you will not beat the market, you will also not "lose" to the market, either. It's important to understand that just buying the S&P 500 is, in and of itself, diversified. I also suggest the "foreign index" simply because there are a lot of worthwhile emerging markets and viable companies based in other nations. Also, these are quite cheap right now...and this plan covers you on a global basis. Don't bother toying with a lot of the other stuff, you'll find high managerial fees that don't sound like very much now, but over time they really ding you. Thank you, that is all.