Iwritecode

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Nov 13, 2013 -> 07:22 PM) Konerko returning next season is the biggest non-story with the Sox. Come the middle of May, if he's not producing he'll walk away. You seem pretty sure about this. It's not often you see a player retire in the middle of a season.

It's amazing how much volunteering to host Thanksgiving at our house inspires us to clean. The really deep once-a-year type cleaning where we just go through the house and start throwing out crap that we haven't seen or used in who knows how long. We are probably going to end up filling our suburban up with bags of stuff to take to the goodwill.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 16, 2013 -> 11:08 AM) How would changing the time save money? Less buses. Before they changed them, the school times would overlap.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 14, 2013 -> 01:42 PM) That is exactly what it is. Well in that case, Boras is just an ass. Although I think most of us knew that already...

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Nov 14, 2013 -> 12:21 PM) Oh he is perfectly qualified to do so. He probably knows them as well, or better than, the teams know their own fan bases. This is just tweeking teams who aren't spending right now. Yes but to what end? This sort of comes off as him saying "I need to make more money. You team owners need to spend more!" There are certainly reasons teams like the Cubs aren't spending a ton of money on player salaries. I can't say if their current approach is right or wrong but I don't think bumping their payroll up for no reason is the answer either.

QUOTE (Tex @ Nov 14, 2013 -> 07:29 AM) Having been on a bus route advisory committee there are a couple interesting factors at work in planning bus routes and they all revolve around time = money. More stops require more buses or having the first kids picked up ten, fifteen, or more minutes earlier. This costing more in drive salaries, more time (not miles) on the engines, increased fuel costs. We use the same buses for three runs each morning and evening. Middle School, followed by Elementary, then High School. Even that was planned out. H.S. kids didn't usually need their parents (who may be working) to get them to school, so they went last. We had more working middle school parents than anything else. So it worked for them to drop the kids off, or get them on the bus early. We also had early day programs at the Elementary for parents who could drop them off. I also wondered about safety. Isn't there also something for having more kids at one stop instead of dividing them up to the point where only two or three kids are at each stop. It really was an interesting process They changed our school times around a few years ago so that the HS kids started later than the younger kids. The excuse we were told was that "HS students need more sleep". This goes more towards my theory that it was to save money on the bus routes. It really screwed the parents that relied on the older kids being home to watch the younger ones after school as well as any students that wanted an after school job that started before 4:00.

Boras obviously doesn't understand the Cubs fan base very well.

Every single year when we get the bus routes for our kids, they try to make their bus stop down the street a couple of blocks where they would have to walk past the house of a registered sex offender. We always make them switch it to the corner that our house is on. Literally 50 feet from our front steps. The bus goes right past this corner anyway.

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Nov 12, 2013 -> 12:07 PM) You didn't get digital copies of everything? That was a must for us. Wasn't an option back then.

I think the problem is that 1B is traditionally a power-hitter position and Mauer isn't one except for that fluke year in 2009. So they are going to have to get power numbers from another position. It's funny because since they've moved to their new park, they've really struggled because they aren't a homerun hitting team.

QUOTE (iamshack @ Nov 11, 2013 -> 05:50 PM) So the most important thing for me in this whole wedding planning fiasco was to get great pictures. The night will come and go, the food will be eaten, the drinks consumed, the music danced to, and it will just be a memory...but the photos will last for the rest of our lives. I wanted to get an awesome photographer because my family just never took/kept that many photos and I always felt like I missed out on family heritage/history, especially considering my father passed away when I was only four. I was determined to have a LOT of photos taken...GOOD photos...of this time in my life. Not only for my fiancée and I, but for our parents, and any future children and their families. So bottom line, we paid a s***load of money for basically the best photographer in Vegas. As part of the package we purchased, we received an "engagement session" which included an hour or so of pictures around town and then back at our home. We did that a few weeks ago and got the photos back over the weekend...176 of them actually. I must say, I couldn't be happier with how they turned out. Not because of how either of us looked or anything, but rather because of the quality. These photos are ad agency quality and many of them will look great framed in our home. I would f***ing kill for photos like these of my parents together when they were young, and of my father in general. Hopefully my children (if I have any) and grandchildren will enjoy knowing who and where they came from. I would highly recommend any of you guys that are getting married to spend the money on the photos...IMHO it is very worth the expense. Second this. In fact, I said something similar earlier in this thread. QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Jun 26, 2013 -> 01:31 PM) I don't even think I knew that wedding planners existed when I got married. We did everything as inexpensively as we could (only spent a couple thousand total) and still had a really nice wedding with a wedding party of 14 people. Our biggest expense was the pictures and it was definitely money well spent. Those are what will stay long after the ceremony is over and the dancing, food and drinking is done. Plus our photographer pretty much planned out our entire day for us. We did separate pictures at the church before the wedding and then with everyone together after the ceremony. Then during the reception they planned out when everything would be done so they could get pictures. First dance, father/daughter dance, mother/son dance, cutting of the cake, throwing of the bouquet, etc... It all went really smoothly and after all the "formalities" at the reception were done, we were free to do whatever we wanted the rest of the night. My friend tried to save money by hiring one guy to do the pictures and be the DJ at the reception and they really regretted it. My wife has always said that if we ever had a house fire, our wedding album is the one thing she would run back in to grab after the kids and pets were out.

QUOTE (TaylorStSox @ Nov 12, 2013 -> 09:19 AM) Too bad we know how it ends. This is true but it would be interesting to finally see the back-stories of the different characters that we mostly only heard about in SOA. I had to look up who the first 9 even were because a few were barely referred to. The only ones I could name off the top of my head were John Teller, Clay Marrow, Piney, McGee and Lenny the Pimp. Wiki link I always thought Otto (Sutter's character) was first 9 as well. Guess not.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 12, 2013 -> 10:22 AM) Most insurance policies cover 90% (made up statistic) or the majority of problems you will ever encounter in life. Most employer-based policies also allow you to add certain coverages at a higher price on an annual basis. Having a kid for example. You shouldn't have to buy a policy to cover that cost every single year. However, if you and your wife decide you're going to have a kid, you can buy up the year before. That's what my wife and I did, and we saved a decent chunk of change by doing so. Insurance is based on family size. Of course covering 2 people is going to cost less than covering 3. Unless you are talking about pre-natal care. But even then there are people that don't plan pregnancies or don't realize they are pregnant for months.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 12, 2013 -> 10:19 AM) You buying full coverage is an option though. You're not legally required to have it. I'm required to have it because I have a loan. Although I'm not sure if that's a law or if it's the bank that requires it.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 12, 2013 -> 08:35 AM) Car insurance isn't to protect you against yourself, it's to protect other people. Not if you have full coverage. Because there are about a million other things that you can run into that will wreck your car besides another driver. A tree, a guardrail, a deer, a telephone pole, a ditch... You are basically paying for the insurance company to replace/repair your car if you hit one of those things. Not to mention medical coverage for your injuries. QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 12, 2013 -> 09:04 AM) If you get in a wreck that isn't your fault, your insurance doesn't pick up the tab. Actually, they might. I had a guy pull out of a parking lot and hit me while I was sitting in the turn-lane to go into the lot. It was totally his fault and he got the ticket, but he made up some BS story and his insurance company refused to pay for my damages. I had to actually pay my deducible and have my insurance company pay for the repairs and then they went after the other driver's insurance to get the money back. If I had to do that on my own, I would've been completely screwed.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Nov 8, 2013 -> 03:19 PM) This. I think the true embarrassment is that things like this do happen in our country which allegedly the "greatest" in the world. It's even more embarrassing when you talk to someone from another country. They just cannot believe that we basically allow people to die or go bankrupt if they can't get or afford medical care.

I thought 2008 was when they just started throwing money at players in an effort to try to win it all and up the value of the franchise before they sold it. I've heard about this from the players for years. The combination of out-dated facilities plus the constant schedule of day games makes it more difficult for them to play well. A friend of mine that is a die-hard Cubs fan has been saying for years that they'll never win unless they get out of that ballpark.

An interesting coincidence that I just read about yesterday (from Wiki):

I think I might have made 50K/year between my two jobs.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 01:52 PM) Jesus, 70 hours a week? That's close to having two jobs. I did that for about 3 years. I worked my main job M-F 8am - 4:30pm (plus an hour of driving each way) then I worked 7am - 4pm on Saturday and Sunday and 6pm - 10:30pm two nights a week (sometimes 3 nights). I did it so we could catch up with some bills but it really, really sucked. I was always tired.

I was one of the guys that played sports and then hung out with a completely different crowd when we weren't practicing or playing. I was pretty much the only guy that would hang out in the computer lab during the day and then go play baseball after school. I got along with my teammates well enough but we never really became more than acquaintances. Just enough to maybe say 'hi' while passing them in the hallways. They tried to come up with a nickname for me but none of them were clever enough to stick.

So my daughter brought a doll home last night that she had to take care of for her child development class in HS. It would literally cry like a real baby and she was supposed to hold it, rock it, burp it, feed it, change it's diaper, etc... It was very life like. It had sensors in it that would record her interactions with it and she would be graded based on how well she did. She had to wear a bracelet with a sensor in it. She was supposed to hold near different points on the doll, and it was supposed to "chime" meaning that the doll was ready to be taken care of. The problem was that we never heard the chime once the entire time we had it. There was literally no way to take care of it. It would just cry for a few minutes, stop, then start again 10 minutes later. It was very loud and annoying and was supposed to continue until 7AM this morning. We finally gave up, put a blanket over the speaker and stuck it in the basement. We also emailed the teacher telling her that it wasn't working properly. Got a response this morning from the teacher. She thinks the bracelets got switched somehow. So some other student/family went through the same hell we did last night as well. What ever happened to taking care of "egg babies"? That's what we did when I was in school.

I’ve started going through the site and filling in some of the info. It’s pretty tedious and some of the questions seem superfluous. For instance I entered an address for myself, my wife and all 3 of my kids. They are all the same address but it then it asked if my kids live with me. I had to answer this for each one of them. I also had to go through this 3 times: Does person X have any income? NO. So person X’s monthly income is 0. Is this correct? Yes. Person X’s yearly taxable income is 0. Click ok to continue.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:19 AM) I work for one of the largest employers in the world. Our group health plan does not depend on how much you make. I've honestly never heard of that anywhere. My previous employer did that. My wife and I worked there at the same time so we had the insurance under her name rather than mine because she made less.

The prices have been about the same for a few years now. If they'd drop back closer to what they were in 05 or 06 where the passes where included in the price of the hotel room, I might think about going again.