Jenksismyhero

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 30, 2012 -> 12:05 PM) You ask: why should teachers have more protections than I do, where I can be fired today without notice and without compensation? I ask: why shouldn't you have the same protections that teachers have so that you can't be fired today without notice and without compensation? First, without notice and without compensation is not a tenure system. A tenure system is you basically have to really f*** up to be fired. That's crap. I don't want to live in a society where businesses are forced to keep s***ty employees just because they've been there a long time. Should businesses do that on their own? Probably, but that's up to the business owner. Second, you already have protection. You don't need notice, but you do get compensation in the form of unemployment benefits if you're fired. Moreover, if you're fired simply because you're old, you can sue. Sorry, I just don't buy your view of the world, especially the business world.

Airport bathrooms...for congressman anyway

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 30, 2012 -> 01:12 PM) You still havent showed me where I lied. I said "i dont try and avoid", taking a standard deduction isnt trying to avoid taxes in any way shape or form to a normal person. If you want to make it that way, you can, but its like arguing Im a liar because I said "Its hot out" when the temp was 90 and you say "No thats cold". Maybe in your mind that is a lie, but to no one else it is. You just cant get over how bad you look and are trying to obscure it. Im not talking about Romney. I have no clue about what he is doing. When I said "most rich people", that was republicans and democrats a like. The amazon issue isnt what Im talking about. There is a legitimate question whether the tax is owed (and an argument that the state of IL really has no right to it, but well save that for another day.) Im talking about setting up fake corps to run expenses through so you have very little income, then using the corp to buy things for you personally and pretend they are for the corp. There are just a ton of ways to really screw things up, most people dont have the type of money to make it work. But if you are talking about millions of tax liability, you can pay lawyers tens of thousands to get rid of it. That just isnt fair, and we all suffer. Fair and illegal are two separate things. You've been saying illegal acts, so I just wanted clarification. I'm confused as to how making as much money as possible is immoral. Having 3 kids you can't afford is just as immoral to me as creating dummy corps to dodge taxes. But in the case of the former we want to throw cash at the problem and feel sorry, in the latter we want to hang people in the public square. Makes no sense.

SB, how exactly is Romney doing something illegal? He's doing something that the federal government hasn't outlawed yet. That's not illegal, that's just smart. Hypothetically if I were to not pay Illinois sales tax on Amazon purchases, you'd be claiming that i'm doing something illegal even though the federal gov't hasn't mandated that I do that (ignore the state law that is in the courts right now). How is me not paying that tax until i'm told to shady/unethical/illegal?

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 30, 2012 -> 11:25 AM) Crabs in a bucket can't escape because they pull each other back down into the bucket. You lament that teachers have more protection from firings than you do, but your preferred solution is to eliminate those protections for teachers instead of working for them for yourself. Crab mentality. I'm not really lamenting that fact, i'm just pointing it out. Nor do I think we're all stuck in a bucket because the government doesn't guarantee everyone X amount in salary a year, regardless of their performance or skillset. I want my kids' school to be full of qualified teachers, not teachers that just happened to be average enough to make it through until they were tenured. I had that in my high school with numerous teachers and it sucked. I would have preferred a younger, more energetic teacher who was thrilled to teach kids over an old crotchety teacher just going through the motions.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 30, 2012 -> 11:09 AM) Sorry, I don't understand the reference.

QUOTE (kev211 @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 05:52 PM) Teacher's in the huge districts and around here make a good living. In other parts of the country the salaries teachers make is an absolute crime. Its only competitive because education got cut and thousands of teachers got RIFed not because a million people want to be a teachers. If you pay teachers what they're worth you'll eventually weed out the ones who game the system and don't give a f*** about their students. Your second two paragraphs are good though besides the tenure system. Tenure is in place to make sure a school district doesn't cut someone with 25 years of experience to bring in a college graduate at half their salary. Yeah it sucks about the grumpy old people gaming the system, but it's not fair to the 45 year olds with 20 years of experience if tenure didn't exist. This wouldn't be a problem if states were actually giving the districts the money they owe them, but they're not and any district worth anything would eliminate the older expensive teachers today if they could. So in other words, teachers are no different than an employee in every other industry. Some get paid well, some get paid s***. Welcome to life. Re: the tenure thing, why should teachers be given more protection than any other employee? I'm an attorney, I can get replaced any second. Where's my protection? Why do teachers deserve more than me? We all have the ADA to protect us, why isn't that enough?

QUOTE (G&T @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 06:44 PM) Just got back from an interview consisting of 3 fact patterns broken down into 10 hypos. I had 15 mins to review and then discuss. All dealing with ethics, evidence and criminal law. No other questions were asked. Can't have gone well for me. Lot of wasted preparation. Those interviews suck and just be glad you didn't get a job there. That's a pointless interview tactic. I had one once with a personal injury volume shop firm. I met with a couple of the associates and partners in a conference room for like 45 minutes. One of the best interviews i'd had up to that point. I had the experience they were looking for, a couple of young associates in the office in a similar position to me, good convos and all that. Then the owner of the firm walks in. A total asshole. He says something like "I have only one question. I hand you a potential file (with X fact pattern), what do you do?" I'm taken aback a little, but I lawyer my way through an answer - investigate the case, decide whether it's worth filing, take deps, evidence deps blah blah. Basically described to him the entire case if planned out. He just listens to me ramble on and then at the end says "ok, i'm sorry this won't work. you forgot the key question - is there insurance? thanks for stopping by." At the time I was really pissed off and upset, but now i'm happy I didn't get that job.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Aug 30, 2012 -> 09:19 AM) My question would then be what was your wife doing hacking into Jenks' account...or perhaps worse, what was she doing at Jenks' house!?!

OCZ sucks btw. When I built my computer I bought an OCZ SSD drive that had a $10 mail in rebate. I paid the dollar to get it within 3-5 business days as opposed to 6-8 weeks. Well, 4 weeks go by and I still didn't have it. After multiple email exchanges, OCZ kept telling me they had sent it out to AMEX (the form of the rebate was an AMEX card) so i need to contact them. I contact AMEX and they have no record of receiving the request from OCZ. Some more digging (thankfully AMEX customer service was competent) it turns out OCZ authorized an AMEX card for $9 CANADIAN. It took another 2 weeks for them to sort it out, reissue the card and send it to me. In the middle of it I had told someone from OCZ that at minimum I should get a "refund" of that dollar I spent for an expedited rebate, but of course they didn't give it to me. So... Yeah. f*** OCZ.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 02:32 PM) I bought an 128 GB OCZ Vortex 4 SSD for $80 today. Other than boot times, do any of you notice a great difference in performance with an SSD in comparison to a traditional hard drive? Not really.

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 12:28 PM) I like it so far. The second episode (from this past Sunday) was better than the pilot. The characters are slowly developing. Sometimes it's hard to figure out who is who. Some of them look the same. That was my main problem. The two cops look kind of similar, and then they look similar to the guy without the leg.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 01:03 PM) He gave the keynote speech. If you want to give that girl from Utah the keynote speech, go for it, shell get on tv. In my opinion the Democrats gave him that spot to help make sure he won that seat. You guys spend way to much time worrying about the media, who cares what they think? The real problem for the platform is their stance on most social issues. I think that in the future Republican's are going to be viewed as being on the wrong side of the fence. My thoughts are, no matter how right the South was on other issues, you just couldnt get on that bandwagon because of slavery. Social freedom trumps economy. (edit) I know this is the republican thread so delete this if you want, or I can put it in the democrat thread. It's a big deal because probably 80% of the electorate (being generous there) are morons who only follow the headlines (being generous again) and pick their candidate based on what tie they're wearing or whether they're wearing an American flag pendent. So yeah, how the media portrays a candidate is very important and making the RNC look like a get together of white folks in Florida just perpetuates a stereotype that minorities only vote democrat.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 12:03 PM) Without looking, can you name any of them? Nope! Doesn't mean it's not shady media coverage though.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 10:00 AM) Why should we eliminate any ability to determine whether you are teaching your kids anything? Maybe not eliminate them totally, but there shouldn't be as much emphasis on the results. Plenty of studies have shown that some intelligent kids just suck at taking standardized tests. Studies have also shown that when teacher/school evaluations are based on test scores, the teachers/schools basically just teach students to pass the test. At that point no one is learning, they're learning how to take a test. I never understood why those evaluations were based on test results or graduation rates. Seems to me one teacher can watch another teacher and determine if he/she is good enough to keep their job. If you get stuck in a s***ty school district with some s***ty kids that's not really your fault as the teacher.

Gave "Copper" a shot last night. It's...interesting. Not sure that I really liked it but I think I'll give it a few more episodes before I decide.

I'm starting to get sucked into the hype, as per usual. Is this version really different than the last few? Is that new physics engine just marketing crap or can you really see the difference. Also, the unfocused background seems like it would be annoying.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 06:23 AM) Fox & Friends has three in one show Don't watch it, i'm just talking about the "face" of the networks. I don't really find O'Reilly as annoying from the partisan side as I do Hannity, Matthews and Maddow. There might be others, but again, I don't watch either network. SPEAKING OF liberal bias, anyone see the Drudge links to how MSNBC and NBC didn't air any minority speakers at the RNC? Ya think that's just coincidence, or does that feed the "GOP is only full of racist white people" stereotype?

QUOTE (kev211 @ Aug 28, 2012 -> 11:31 PM) Every teacher should make 6 figures, and college standards should be raised(require all teacher's to have a masters or more). You do that and you eliminate the people who fall into teaching because they didn't know what to do with their lives. We also need to eliminate the importance on standardized testing. It's an absolute sin how much instruction time I have to lose this year in order to prepare students for standardized test. If we stop teaching to the test and start teaching the students, and we get the best people in the teaching profession education will turn around in this country. More money isn't the problem here. Teachers make a good living, especially with benefits. And money isn't stopping good teachers from coming through the system because it's (1) still an insanely competitive industry and (2) there a ton of amazing teachers. The problem is our society and parenting specifically. We now EXPECT teachers to provide for our kids, when in reality teachers are meant to teach kids some things that parents don't have the time or expertise to teach them. If a kid f***s up in school, it's not the parents fault, it's the teachers and that's f***ed. Also, I agree with getting rid of standardized testing, so long as you meet me halfway and get rid of the tenure system. An out of touch, grumpy old teacher working the last 5 years to get that nice pension bump screws up the system. Same with the bureaucracy behind school boards. There's no reason for those boards to have as much power and authority as they do. Running a school district isn't rocket science, and it's ridiculous how much school administrators make and how much authority they have. What's wrong with having the principal be the main authority figure at every school? Our system is stupid.

I'll also add that it's been a belief of mine for a long time that cable news is the worst thing to happen to the world in a really, really long time. No journalistic standards, made up stories (in the sense of creating something out of nothing just to fill air time), and the political system has used it like a late night infomercial. I really wish we could go back to one time a day news reports + the internet. That way you get news, not opinions, unless you want them.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 28, 2012 -> 10:47 AM) 1. Alan Colmes is no longer on Fox and hasn't been there for years. 2. CNN really doesn't have a partisan anchor by the standard of Fox or MSNBC. 3. Chris Matthews is on MSNBC (can't tell if you had them crossed with CNN or not). 4. The token conservative on MSNBC would be Joe Scarborough, who happens to have his name on their entire morning show for 3 hours. Alan Colmes sucked, but Hannity sucks just as much. I'd say Anderson Cooper, the dude from Britain and Wolf Blitzer are all partisan. Not to the degree of Fox and MSNBC. But IMO, Fox has one annoying partisan - Hannity, and MSNBC has two - Matthews and Maddow. And Scarborough used to be conservative, until he found out that he could have his own show on a liberal network, so he became much more moderate. But he's hardly a "conservative" anymore.

My wife and I laughed at Walter being Mr. Tough Guy to the cartel. That scene is just straight out of a bad mobster movie. I understand that's been going on for more than a season now, but it's still a little bit ridiculous. The rest of the episode was fantastic though.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 28, 2012 -> 08:31 AM) In case anyone missed it, we broke through the all-time recorded low for arctic sea ice extent over the weekend and we're still going (usually the yearly minimum is sometime in early september). Do take note of the fact that the bottom of this graph is not zero, however, we're clearly on a trend to threaten zero within a decade or less. "all-time" of 30 years doesn't seem like a lot.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Aug 25, 2012 -> 11:16 AM) My wife's sister is now pregnant with her 4th child from 3 different guys. Her only husband was a looser, but in general not a bad guy, he was the father of her first child. The father of her 2nd and 3rd children was a registered sex offender and seemingly has spent more time in jail the last 5 years than he has out of jail due to violating parole and a tendency for violence (oh, and he has a child with my wife's sister's best friend). The newest sperm donner is someone she's only been dating for a few months, has no job, and has 2 kids with another woman. Oh, and she lives in a trailer and barely keeps jobs for longer than a year. Yea, she's a classy lady. On a positive note, my wife's brother is very normal guy with a great wife and two kids. So, my in-laws got 2 of the 3 kids right. I guess 66.67% isnt too bad. America, f*** yeah!

QUOTE (IlliniKrush @ Aug 27, 2012 -> 12:17 PM) Um, what??? It's pretty much the opposite. Saying we're playing nobodies would imply we'll have an easy 4-0 start. Hardly. 2 non-conference teams that might combine for 20 wins and a late night road game, that's 3/4 games. Western Michigan is a solid team, Carder is outstanding, that is going to be a really tough game to start with (see: last year). Arizona State is down a bit from last year, but a night road game in the Pac 12? Probably a pick em game at best. Louisiana Tech...assuming you just saw the name and figured they suck. If the game was on a neutral field, La Tech would be favored (plus they have a vote in the poll). They'll probably win the WAC. Lost by 7 to TCU in their bowl game last year. 1/4 games is against a nobody, Charleston Southern. This is actually extremely far from an easy schedule, especially with a new coaching staff coming. All winnable, but easily could be 1-3 if they don't play well in every game. They're still not the quality of major conference teams. I'm not saying it's a guaranteed 4-0....God knows Illinois football can never make it easy. But those are four games they SHOULD win.