Iwritecode

You'd be shocked at the number of companies that still use it. It's the old "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" mentality. And it's different companies in all different industries. Not really software companies. My first job was a company that handled magazine subscriptions. Second job was a large factory that bought and sold metal. I know I've seen job openings for credit card companies, candy companies, the company that makes Rubbermaid products. I also know a guy that told me about a friend of his that made a damn good living traveling around the country converting old programs to newer languages.

When I first got into coding the first language I learned was COBOL. It's an older language but fairly easy to learn and gave me a good base to learn other languages. Then when I graduated I spent the first 15 years of my career writing it. All the way up to 2015. You'd be shocked at the number of companies that still use it. My last company was desperate to find coders that knew it because the average age of their IT department was 55+. A lot of companies have literally 100s or 1000s of programs written in COBOL but very few places even teach it anymore. The companies don't want to spend the time/effort it would take to re-write them all either. So a suggestion... learn COBOL.

Lynda.com is another website that we used for training. But again I think you have to pay for membership.

Check out Coursera. There are tons of free courses on there. I took one on Python programming a few years ago and it was completely free. The way it worked for me was that I sat and watched a video and they would teach you some specific thing. Then they would assign you a project to utilize the skill that you learned. You had a week to complete and submit it. Then you would grade the project of 3 other randomly selected students and 3 other randomly selected people would grade your project. Basically making sure the program ran the way it was supposed to, check out your code, etc... The videos were created by a couple of professors from a college in Texas (don't remember exactly which one) and each week they would build upon the skills that you learned previously. I remember the very last project was to build a working Pong game. One of the other projects was to build an electronic version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock (Big Bang Theory reference there). IIRC, you get a certificate at the end saying you completed the course. I wouldn't say I'm an expert in the language, but at least I know the basics. Of course I've been programming for 20+ years now so I was already familiar with how coding in general works. Also at my current job I took a training course on Learning Tree. Although I think those classes you have to pay for.

So I just recently found out that if you have a PS4 that's no longer operable (like it won't even boot up or turn on or whatever) and you don't have any of your game data saved anywhere else, you are completely and utterly fucked. If you take the HDD out of the old PS4 and put it into a new PS4, it will format it. You can't plug it into a computer and copy the data that way either because it's encrypted. Literally the only way to get the data is through the PS4 itself. So, as a PSA to any fellow gamers out there, back up your data to an external drive or to the cloud (via the PSN) on a regular basis.

JR can be a wonderful human being and family man who treats his employees and people in general really well, be an extremely smart businessman AND also be a really bad baseball owner. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. I think that's what Stone is missing here.

The attendance was only up in 2007 because it started so high in 2006. It consistently went down every single year between 2006 to 2014 despite winning a division title and finishing 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 2nd in the few years following. Not surprisingly, it closed matched the attendance totals in the late 90's when they finished 2nd 4 years in a row. Meanwhile the Indians set historic attendance records in that same time frame by winning the division 5 times in a row. Finishing second doesn't excite anyone. Finishing in first and/or making the playoffs does. It's just too bad this team doesn't do either of those things often enough.

That seems completely opposite to me. They had the highest attendance in team history in 2006 because people were finally interested. Then they kept not winning in the years after and interest started to taper off. People aren't going to lose interest in a team that wins all the time. That's just insane. I keep hearing people say this but AFAIK, his kids have no interest in taking over his role once he is gone. Also, I don't know that anyone knows for sure what will happen with the team since the last I knew, he's still a minority owner.

Theo took over in 2011. It's arguable their rebuild started before that but under him it really only lasted 3 years. In 2015 they won 97 games, yet still finished 3rd in their division. That would've been good enough for a division title in any other division that year. Their payroll that year was 13th overall. The next year, when they won the WS, their payroll was 14th overall. Its gone up every year since then and as mentioned previously, resulted in 4 straight playoff appearances, which is typically the goal of most teams. Once you in, it takes a little bit of luck to win it all. Greg has moved the goalposts about 4 times now trying to justify whatever point he was making but I think one thing to remember is that high payrolll =/= success. It's certainly possible but not the only way. The Astros and even his beloved Royals should be proof that rebuilds can and do work.

If 4 straight years worth of playoff appearances including one WS championship is a failure, I'd hate to see what you consider success.

I haven't read probably 90% of the posts in this forum but I don't remember anyone predicting or expecting multiple WS appearances. I've always assumed that multiple playoff appearances was the goal. Hell, getting 2 in back to back years would be a first for this franchise.

I was in an entrepreneurship class in HS and one of the main projects for the class was starting up a fake business. We had to do all the paperwork for it, explain how/where we would get the money for everything, etc... Well apparently one of the guys in the class was already into some MLM business and was trying to explain it to us. Although throughout all his presentations he kept telling us "it's not a pyramid scheme!" even though the way it was explaining it, it totally was.

I get my credit score for free with my Discover bill every month. My wife and I just recently bought a car so we got to see our credit scores then and they seem to match up with what Discover told us, so they are pretty accurate.

IIRC, everyone is entitled to one free credit check per year from each of the 3 major companies. If you ever have to pay to check your credit, you're doing it wrong. https://www.ftc.gov/faq/consumer-protection/get-my-free-credit-report

On Friday my wife and I traded in our 2003 Suburban for a 2014 Traverse. We had been searching for about a year or so and just on a whim, decided to go talk to my foster brother who is a car salesman. We looked at one but it didn't have all the features we wanted and had over 100,000 miles. Then we looked at a Ford Explorer. It was ok but I really didn't want another V8 that would suck up a ton of gas, plus it also had over 100,000 miles. Then we looked at the only other Traverse they had and it had literally every single feature we were looking for. AWD, towing package, remote start, heated seats and it was an 8 passenger while the first one was only a 7 passenger. Plus it had under 50,000 miles and was priced under $20,000. One-owner and obviously garage-kept because it is exceptionally clean. After going back and forth with the financials we finally got it where we were comfortable and drove it home that night. Only got $1000 for trade-in value on the Suburban but it needed a bunch of repairs including the A/C system not working and more than likely 4 new tires. So I figured that was about fair. My youngest daughter will be driving soon so we figure she can have the car and I'll make this my daily driver. The color was listed as champagne silver metallic.