StrangeSox

QUOTE (Chisoxfn @ May 3, 2016 -> 01:16 PM) We don't agree on much, but we absolutely agree on this point. My exception is I view CEO pay of people who founded a company much different vs. those who become stewards of a long-time, solid company. Relatedly, last week the founder of Chobani announced to his workers that he was giving them a 10% stake in the company. My friend works for a major engineering firm that's employee-owned. Works a ton, but from what I gather great pay and fantastic benefits.

Apple's really only the super-profitable one right now, capturing as much as 92% of all smartphone profits as of last year. http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-share-o...o-92-1436727458 A lot of the smartphone manufacturers are really struggling these days.

the National Museum of the American Indian has a really good cafe, but it's a little pricey. The Air and Space annex at Dulles is better than the one on the Mall imo. They have the Enola Gay, one of the shuttles, an SR-71 and a bunch of other interesting planes there.

I have no idea how people aren't routinely maimed or killed by their forklift drivers. They fly around with no spotters especially through the garden center. Compare that to HD who will shut down an entire aisle. They also take part in some pretty dangerous activities for themselves: "I need the lift to get some beams down" "Hey, there's a bunch of 2x's stacked on the fork lift, let me set those down first" "Nah, I'll just hop on top" this was the day that the winds were blowing like 40 MPH back in early April.

I just came across this resource. They're aggregating all of the state-level GE polls to come up with Electoral Vote projects. Still fairly early for GE polls at this point, but should be a useful site going forward: http://www.electionprojection.com/presidential-elections.php You can scroll down to see the "state of the states" chart and then click through to the polls for each state. edit: noticed a weird glitch in the forum software. HH's financial thread post is more recent than mine in this sub-forum, but on the main page this post was shown as "most recent" for SLaM

Menards lumber selection is pretty awesome, but the quality of a lot of their other stuff is a step below HD or Lowers. Tools comparable to Harbor Freight etc.

just want to say thanks to everyone who puts start times and channels in game thread titles

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 3, 2016 -> 10:19 AM) Think about it. People pay more for a 20 oz coke, than they do for a 2 liter of coke, where there is literally no reason at all for that to happen. Convenience and portability.

QUOTE (Tex @ May 3, 2016 -> 10:11 AM) Just pointing out additional costly items that are included. A laptop streams movies and can hold multiple HD res movies and TV shows, plus play them back on larger (more costly) displays. I've been meaning to call one of my old buddies from my components days to see what processors are selling for nowadays. But unless something has dramatically changed the margins on cell phones are 5x other consumer electronics. SS2k5 hit the nail on the head. Demand. People will shell out $800 for a new cell phone. Watch demand slip and prices will fall in a hurry. The costs aren't hundreds of dollars more to build a cell phone. Shipping costs are less. How much is a flagship-level laptop though? A MacBook starts at double the price of an iPhone. A bargin-bin laptop is comparable in cost to a bargin-bin smartphone.

QUOTE (Tex @ May 3, 2016 -> 10:04 AM) We are going at the end of June. Hiking, biking, microbreweries, Crater Lake, heading to the coast. We were in Acadia a couple summers ago. Bar Harbor is a great tourist town. We loved driving through the small coastal towns. Sailing on the bay. Whale watch. Bahr and Lahbsta every day. We actually drove around Bar Harbor at the end of March (my work trip to the area overlapped with her spring break), but it was very much still winter there. My wife had to work really, really hard to convince me to go back. Any specific spots/areas/trails you're looking at around Bend? I'm finding it a little hard to know where to start looking since it's not just a "go to National Park X and find the best trails there" trip. QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ May 3, 2016 -> 10:10 AM) If you are lucky, the aspens will be changing in Breck over Labor Day. If you have time for a hike while you are there, Mohawk Lakes is a good one. Thanks for the recommendation. I think that was one of the ones I saw while briefly looking at some hikes in the area. A small group of us including the bride and groom are planning on doing at least some hiking one of the days.

I can't say I've noticed Menards remodeling? The stores in Bolingbrook, Homer Glen and Crest Hill or Romeoville are all laid out identically and the CH/R store is pretty new. Sports Authorities/Dick's etc could try to mimick something like Bass Pro but on a smaller scale instead of just being a big box.

Sports Authority is going under

lol edit: I hope you've been checking every single day for months/years

Ha, are you actually a delegate to the convention?

QUOTE (Pods70Rowand33 @ May 2, 2016 -> 08:32 PM) Visiting home (Chicago) and going to San Francisco. Looking forward to both. San Francisco is a great town. I was just there again for a night last week and stayed in the heart of the downtown area. If you want to do the Alcatraz tours, make sure you book it in advance because they do fill up. If you're staying completely in the city or areas accessible by public transportation (BART), avoid getting a rental car because driving there is a nightmare and parking is $$$ ($70/night for hotel parking). Pier 39 is okay but there are some better restaurants just a short stroll down to Fisherman's Wharf in my opinion. Golden Gate park is huge and you could spend the better part of a day just wandering around there.

QUOTE (Tex @ May 2, 2016 -> 08:38 AM) So far we have a week scheduled in Bend, Oregon. A week in New Mexico that will be part work. And a couple weeks in Chicago and Eagle River / St. Germain area of Wisconsin. I also need to complete a 2 week training program on literacy and another week at a College Board AP Workshop. It's looking like a very busy summer. When are you going to be in Bend, and what are you planning on checking out in the area? We've got a tentatively planned trip to Oregon for late July, and I think our route took us through Bend for a night. We were flying into Portland and basically doing a big loop of the state, hitting the coast first before dropping down to Crater Lake. Then we wind our way east to the Wallowas before heading back down the Columbia River Gorge to the Mt. Hood area and eventually back to Portland for a night or two. edit other than that, we're going to Maine/Acadia for a long weekend in a month and to Breckenridge for a friend's wedding over Labor Day weekend.

Took about two months, but we're finally *almost* finished with the master bedroom remodel that started with "well, let's replace the carpet" and turned into doing everything short of ripping out the drywall. Nice to actually be able to set up our bedroom for the first time in our new house. Now on to the hallway (same flooring project plus replacing four doors) and then the stairs (replacing handrails, sanding and painting all the trim, but thankfully actually paying someone to install the flooring on that). One of these days this summer we'll actually get around to cleaning up the overgrown forest in our backyard.

QUOTE (Tex @ May 3, 2016 -> 06:04 AM) Demand is also what drove cell phone prices from over a $1000 installed to free with a two year commitment. (Which we know the price of the phone was rolled into the contract). Demand also increases volume and increasing the volume of production drives down the cost. Margins on cell phones must be unbelievable compared to other electronic devices. It's several years old, but the mark-ups on an iPhone 5 were estimated to be about 300%. I'd imagine flagship phones of today (S7, Iphone 6 etc) follow this same path. http://www.forbes.com/sites/benzingainsigh...0/#13c8668e252f Still got nothing on the markups in fashion, though.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 2, 2016 -> 08:56 PM) Thanks to SOX for fixing that with CEO pay disclosure. That was happening before that, but the trend has accelerated in the last couple of decades I think. This is sort of along the lines of what I was driving at a couple of weeks ago about boards. At these big companies, they can be very incestuous in nature. You also have a messed up incentive structure where you need to make sure you're paying well for the best talent to send a strong message even if it turns out that the correlation between executive pay and performance is weak if not negative.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 2, 2016 -> 06:54 PM) 10's of millions? No, of course not. It is very different to give stock to one person, versus thousands. You also have to keep in mind that this didn't happen in a vaccuum. What the left wing is leaving out in their reporting is that Meyer was a very early google employee, and had a ton of money wrapped up in options for them. In order to lure her to leave that, they had to pay up, much like trying to get a free agent to leave for a town other than their home. Noted commie rag the USA Today... They are paying their ceo enormous sums of money to be the latest in a string of people riding the company into the ground. She hasn't been very good at this job, so luring her away with dump trucks of money wasn't actually a good idea. CEO pay in this country is ridiculous and this is just another example of how it gets to this point.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 2, 2016 -> 06:24 PM) Being a dot com company, I would bet they have a fairly impressive options plan for their employees. Maybe 25 years ago, isn't "we'll pay you in equity!" more of a startup thing? Either way I guarantee they are not giving each of their employees tens of millions in stock options when they are fired. Eta beaten by Jason who is obviously much more knowledgeable than I am!

Well gee if it doesn't cost yahoo anything maybe they could throw a few million in shares and options my way? Or give this to every one of their employees?

Hey, nice work if you can get it. I'll take 10% of that to continue riding Yahoo! into the ground for a few years.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ May 2, 2016 -> 01:47 PM) Sanders supporters keep saying Hillary is a moderate Republican masquerading as a Democrat. Well that much is true, some left-liberals have been saying "the Democratic party is the same as the Republican party of 40 years ago!" for years. But it's not the way Sanders himself has structured his campaign or what his central message has been. Sanders instead has explicitly referenced a political revolution rather than trying to claim that he's really the true Democrat. I don't really think there's an analog on the Demcrat side to the "if we only ran a True Conservative, we woulda won!" that conservatives have been clamoring for since Taft in the 40's and 50's. Besides, you end up having to shift between party identification and ideology to make that comparison.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ May 2, 2016 -> 12:12 PM) Bernie Sanders is running the same campaign style at a high level. He keeps running on the idea that he is the one true Democrat, and that people like Hillary even with their "mistakes" and "changes" are not the true Dems. FWIW, this is actually the opposite of what has happened. Sanders hasn't pulled the shenanigans and gained universal hatred in Congress like Cruz has, and it's been Clinton supporters making the argument that Sanders isn't a "real" Democrat (technically probably not, he was an independent until he ran for the Democratic nomination) and that his supporters aren't "real" Democrats (partially true in that he's gotten support from both inside and outside the party).