StrangeSox

Thanks for the thread though, shipps. Prompted me to go back and review what my plan actually is.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Nov 20, 2015 -> 11:17 AM) What I don't get is the whole insurance "discount" or reduction. A doctor or hospital charges $10,000 for something, and the insurance just says, nope, you will take $6k and you will like it. How does that even happen on both ends? Uninsured people have to pay double, besides not having any coverage? It's all a scam I tell ya. Volume. Insurance companies can supply tons of patients, as an individual you can't. No different than getting a better price on a computer from Dell because I'm ordering 1000 than you could get ordering 1.

Yeah, I know what my copays are for the regular doctor visits and prescriptions, not much beyond that.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 19, 2015 -> 09:59 AM) Wow. yeah

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 19, 2015 -> 09:57 AM) The police have a lot more to lose by lying than a civilian. Okay. They still sometimes lie to try to cover things up. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south...mans-death.html http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/20...s_his_side.html http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/cincinnati-poli...ck-man-the-head I'm done with this conversation if we're getting into blanket condemnations/statements about entire racial groups.

Okay, but it's pretty easy to turn around your earlier post: Of course the police are going to try to claim some sort of a justification for the shooting. When do they ever come out and say "oh, yeah, that was totally our mistake! sorry!"

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 19, 2015 -> 09:45 AM) Ha, I'm with you. My wife and I cook, but not gourmet style meals. So long as the temp stays constant and the unit looks ok, that's all I care about. Yeah but you're also okay with pink showers or toilets or whatever so...

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 19, 2015 -> 09:41 AM) I think we're going to end up a shade over $70k. That was to completely gut the kitchen, as well as the floors in our dining room and laundry room and 1/2 bath. I think we ended up having about 650 sq ft of flooring installed. Porcelain tile floors (we had little choice because of our dogs). We had to upgrade all the electrical, move ventilation and install some additional ventilation for the new downdraft vent. Had stainless steel floor registers fabricated because we had to live with floor vents. Custom cabinets in the kitchen and laundry room, as well as one in the dining room. Sugatsune stainless steel pulls. Quartz countertops. Kohler sink and Grohe faucet. Inhabit architectural concrete tiles for the backsplash (the jury is still out a bit on how bright a choice this was). New kitchen table and chairs from Restoration Hardware. I busted my butt to find the best pricing on everything without compromising. But to keep things on a reasonable timeline, I am sure I overpaid some contractors due to not being able to get several quotes or because I had to select them based on their availability on not always price. All in all, we'll end up about 10% over budget but that was almost all driven by a huge overage caused by what we found when we started tearing up the floors. The appliances were the big splurge. Something I talked my wife into. She loves to cook and bake, and I wanted her to have the best we could afford. The last two years have included us buying our home, paying for a good portion of our wedding, having a child, moving my parents here (to a house which I purchased), and now this renovation. We haven't had time to take any vacations other than our honeymoon, and a lot of things have been sort of pushed to the back burner to accomplish these goals in a short matter of time. So I really wanted her to have something she could really enjoy. The other consideration was our property and location. As I mentioned a few weeks back, for the long-term value of our property, we felt we had to put in a "top of the line" type of kitchen. I understand that appliances don't necessarily add value to a property in and of themselves, but I do believe they help sell properties. We both work for a company which offers many opportunities elsewhere (Berkshire Hathaway), and so we always have to be on the ready in case something comes up. Having our house in order (literally) so we can maximize the value and minimize the time on the market is important to us retaining flexibility in our careers. Additionally, the type of buyer our property would cater to sort of demands these sort of upgrades. So...in the end, yes, we could have gone with GE Monogram, or even something like Thermadore, but I convinced her to splurge and so we did. And damn, are they nice Yeah, there's a reason why our house had 13 showings in 3 days and had an offer for almost full asking price (which we thought was way too high!) with minimal contingencies in less than 5 days. Plus, you'll get to enjoy what I'm sure is a beautiful kitchen in the mean time. edit: it also sounds like you got some pretty good prices for having all of that work done. Custom cabinets, the electrical, flooring, appliances etc. You know, when we re-did our kitchen, we were looking at some more expensive SS hardware from a couple of kitchen places. We ended up getting SS hardware that looked nearly identical and has held up perfectly fine for four years now for about 10% of the price from Ikea.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 19, 2015 -> 09:16 AM) Struggling to keep up with the response this week. Where was the main plotter killed? In the apartment raid in a Paris suburb yesterday, the one where the female suspect blew herself up during the assault.

It's not like they had a choice in the matter.

I'm guessing your budget is pushing six figures? Those are not cheap appliances. I'm hesitant to buy the $2500 set for our new house.

French President Francois Hollande Welcomes Refugees Despite Paris Attack

Alleged Paris Attack Mastermind Abdelhamid Abbaoud Confirmed Dead by French Officials

http://www.cafe.com/compassionate-refugee-cause/

"If you see something, say something" shouldn't need to come with an asterisk of "a middle eastern guy watching the news on his phone isn't 'something'." Terrorism is effective when it inspires hysteria and panic, especially when said panic drives policy changes. That's really its whole point. Reporting someone for watching the news on their phone isn't being aware of your surroundings and it's not being safe rather than sorry-it's being irrationally afraid.

Your concern for your safety should be rational and reasonable. Just by getting on a plane, getting into your car this morning or walking down the street, you're taking a far greater risk than your potential to be killed by Islamic terrorists. If you have a gun in your house, the risk that poses is exponentially higher than the risk of being killed by ISIS. There are so many bigger risk factors in your life that you accept on a daily basis. Jumping at every shadow or every possibly middle eastern person is terrible both for yourself and for the targets of your paranoia. It is reacting exactly how ISIS wants people to react, and it makes for very poor decision-making, policy and strategy. We shouldn't accept, as a society, that any middle eastern person can be singled out as a "potential terrorist" every time someone else wets their pants with unfounded fear. We should not all have the mentality that merely looking middle eastern is cause enough for suspicion. That's stupid and paranoid, not safe.

I wonder how long you'd appreciate that "extra citizen-response" if you were the one being dragged off of your flight for questioning because you were watching the news on your phone. The best course of action is to stop the collective pants-wetting. Having a plane brought back to the gate because someone was watching TV while being brown is not "being overly cautious," it's being hysterically paranoid.

All middle-eastern men watching things on their phones are obviously suspicious and possible terrorists.

It just brought in another annoying inventory management aspect, though.

KEYRINGS. WHY DID THEY REMOVE THE KEYRING?! And dumping notes and holotapes into one giant "Misc" mess sucks, too. That stuff was broken out separately in FO3 and in Skyrim (Skyrim had separate tabs for books and for keys). Some bizarre decisions by Bethesda there that hopefully the modding community will fix shortly.

The NHL All-Star Game Is Moving To 3-On-3

7 hours into Fallout and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. Gonna keep me busy for months.

Scalia reaffirms that he is a terrible person http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/scal...ople-pedophiles