Iwritecode

QUOTE (Tex @ Apr 8, 2012 -> 10:24 AM) About 5 to 10% of my kids just do not care about school. They do not turn in assignments that we do in class, forget about homework, abuse school equipment, talk constantly in class, etc. Out of curiosity, what is your suggestion to correct these problems? What should the parents be doing to make sure they turn in their assignments, do their homework, pay attention in class and care about school?

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Apr 5, 2012 -> 10:14 AM) Girl on the left has a job whenever someone decides to do a live-action Popeye flick. Shelly Duvall beat her to it.

I don’t know the answer for the OP but I’ll add my own story in here. I have a 2003 Grand Prix and the brake lights quit working in it one day. I replaced all the bulbs and it didn’t help. The turn signals worked, the backup lights worked and the running lights worked. The only brake light that worked was the one in the back window. Also my hazard button was stuck. I researched it and found that both problems were related and it was a pretty common problem for that car, but I never found a way to fix it. So I took it in and it turned out the entire turn signal lever had to be replaced. Since it controls so many different things (wipers, turn signals, cruise control) it wasn’t a cheap part to replace. It ended up costing me $700 for the part plus the labor. After I took it home I found out that the cruise control no longer worked. So I took it back in assuming either the switch they put in was bad or it wasn’t hooked up right. They called and said the switch was fine but it was the cruise control module that wasn’t working. I’m debating on taking it to another shop to get a second opinion. I’m just not sure it’s worth the trouble since I’ve passed the car onto my daughter and I doubt she’ll be using the cruise control all that much

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 31, 2012 -> 03:01 PM) @MDGonzales Ventura, on breaking the news to Escobar that he made the opening day roster: "I told him to get a suit." Kinda reminds me of the scene in The Rookie where he calls his wife and tells her to bring his jacket to Arlington. Then he gets to tell his son that he's going to be a major league baseball player. That scene always gets to me.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Apr 1, 2012 -> 10:51 AM) I'm with you guys. Kinda funny in some parts, but not the knock down drag out funny that it was made out to be. I was very disappointed Same with me. I watched it and kept waiting for the funny parts to show up, but they never really did. There were a few chuckles here and there but that was about it.

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Mar 29, 2012 -> 02:13 PM) Forget office pools. I'm a greedy bastard, I want it to myself! Ok, but seriously, $12.5 million is a nice return on $2. Yea, it would be nice to have it all for myself but it would really suck to be the one guy that didn't get in on it when everyone else in the office is taking an early retirement.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Mar 29, 2012 -> 12:48 PM) Cash option is $389 million, meaning you would come into the neighborhood of $250 million in cash after taxes. I joined in with a pool at work. It cost me $2 and we got $40 worth of tickets. $250 million / 20 = $12.5 million. Yea, I can live with that.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Mar 28, 2012 -> 10:36 AM) There are 176 million possible combinations. The cash payout will pay $341 million. A ticket costs $1. That could be the easiest $165 million you will ever make. I wonder how long it would take to sit and figure all 176 million different combinations by hand? They can print up to 10 combinations on one ticket. That's 17.6 million tickets. Maybe not so easy...

We couldn't wait anymore. Picked it up last night. We got tired of our old car nickle and diming us to death with small repairs. It's so nice to drive a car where everything works and it's quiet.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 26, 2012 -> 11:22 AM) Can you back that first claim up? He's been generally described as having been a neighborhood watch person. No, I just keep reading different things on whether he was or wasn't. Apparently it comes from the fact that they never registered with USAonWatch. Link

QUOTE (Cali @ Mar 23, 2012 -> 11:39 AM) I'm know I'm late (probably LAST) to the party. But thinking about the Cubs futility (and giggling about it) I realized that the Cubs have never won a World Series while playing at Wrigley Field. Every playoff series they've ever played while having home games at Wrigley they've been eliminated. That kinda feeds more to the theory that Wrigley is a contributing to the Cubs futility. So my question after trying to find this info on B-R.com, is what is the Cubs' all time home record at Wrigley Field? You must have missed the running joke in 2006 then. What's the difference between the Cardinals and the Cubs? The Cardinals have won a World Series in their new stadium.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Mar 24, 2012 -> 03:30 PM) The guy was: 1. a neighborhood watch captain, and thus had every legal right to follow around and approach people who were deemed "Suspicious" by him in any way. I've read a couple of places that he wasn't actually part of any neighborhood watch. Also the 911 operator specifically told him to not follow and approach the kid.

QUOTE (Iwritecode @ Mar 14, 2012 -> 12:53 PM) I signed up for an adult/youth tournament with my daughter. It'll be the first time I've bowled in a few years. Well, we bowled for the tourney yesterday and I was pretty horrible. My daughter did well though. She has a 73 average and her games were 83, 76 and 108. I, on the other hand, rolled a 161, 141 and 224. The first two games I was all over the place. I had a big hook working but just couldn't seem to consistently hit the pocket. I kept going through the middle and leaving some awful splits. The third game my arm was tired and I couldn't get any lift, so I just starting going down the middle of the lane with very minimal hook and it seemed to work. I actually finished the game with 6 strikes in a row. Today my right arm and left leg are sore because I used muscles that I hadn't used in years. I really need to get back to bowling regularly. The last league I bowled on was in 2008. Anyway we had fun. We'll find out in a few days if we did well enough to advance to the next round.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Mar 23, 2012 -> 02:11 PM) Which you might lose...even though you shouldn't? No thanks. I've sat on jury duty, and trust me when I say you NEVER want to leave it up to a modern jury via testimony and evidence. You're better off having a law that's clearly written you can hide behind than to leave it in the hands of a bunch of people that don't give a s*** about anything other than going home. It was one of the most disappointing and infuriating times of my life how much none of them gave a s***. This is probably a different discussion entirely but you touched on a definite problem. When I got called last year I so badly wanted to just say that my whole motivation was to get out of there as quickly as possible. Luckily I was able to come up with a different excuse and they didn't pick me. If I was able to receive my regular day's pay I would have been more inclined to stay.

As best as I can tell, yep that's pretty much it. Also the fact that it was placed in the "young adult" section of bookstores right next to Harry Potter and Twilight.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Mar 23, 2012 -> 09:07 AM) I read the first book and i'm half way through the second and I agree, i'm not sure what the appeal is. They're fun reads and entertaining, but they remind me of those condensed stories you'd read in high school literature courses. Not sure how a movie, especially a pg-13 rated movie, has that much appeal. Don't underestimate the power teenage girls have to make something extremely popular. Just look at Hanna Montana, Justin Bieber, Twilight, etc...

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Mar 22, 2012 -> 06:09 AM) My daughter came home yesterday with a copy of Catching Fire. She still has about 90 pages to go in The Hunger Games, so I said "yoink" and promptly began reading it. Can't put it down. I'm probably going to end up reading these books eventually since it seems to be all I've heard about the past couple of weeks. I know very little about the story but I heard it described as The Long Walk combined with The Running Man. Those are two of my favorite Richard Bachman (a.k.a. Stephen King) books, so I'm interested.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Mar 20, 2012 -> 02:44 PM) I think the first movie still holds up. I'm 28 and watch it about once a year. I think when you watch it as an adult you realize how much it really wasn't a movie made for kids. I just realized that the actress that played April O'Neil in the original movie was in Armageddon, which was directed by Michael Bay. She was the mom to the kid that said "Mommy, that salesman is on TV!"

QUOTE (dasox24 @ Mar 19, 2012 -> 10:37 AM) All of my loans have the same interest rate. And I've only been paying back for 4 months. Given that knowledge, consolidating would seem to make sense, right? It just seems easier to pay one lender instead of two. As long as you're consolidating into a lower interest rate, then yes.

Amazon tax fails to raise one cent

That's funny because Guillen always talked about doing exactly that. Maybe he was just all talk?

QUOTE (Brian @ Mar 16, 2012 -> 09:39 AM) Not Irish. No need to celebrate. Same here. It's just another day to me.

I signed up for an adult/youth tournament with my daughter. It'll be the first time I've bowled in a few years.

I went to the dealership to talk to my salesman friend who's selling us the car so we could set a date to finalize everything and sign the paperwork. I had originally hoped to get the car this weekend but when we found out how much our insurance is going to go up, we had to push it back a couple of months. We are set for May 5th unless they offer something like 0% financing that we'll obviously want to jump on sooner. We are only waiting so long so we can make our final payments to another unsecured loan we had to take out a few years ago. While there, the sales manager happened to mention they have the exact car we want sitting on the lot. Exact color, trim level and everything. So they were trying to convince us to get the car right then and there. They even offered to cut us a check to pay off the loan and just roll the amount into our financing. Plus they can defer the first payment out 90 days which would bring us to the beginning of June. It's really, really tempting but if we wait we'll have a slightly better credit score and might even be able to scrounge up a down payment.

This is a difficult question to answer because it depends on how you set up the rules. Assuming this money was given to me with no guarantee of future employment it would have to be enough for me to retire with. I would guess at least 1 million. Enough for me to pay off all my current debt, get a bigger house and a newer car and then pay for all the usual monthly expenses for the next 40 or 50 years. Insurance, taxes, groceries, utilities, schooling for kids, etc… If it was just enough to survive for one year the amount would be a lot lower. I guess my annual salary would be enough but I’d save a ton of money on gas, tolls and general car maintenance by not commuting to work everyday. I’d still want to bump it up to pay off some of my debt and maybe take a vacation or two, so make it an even 200K I guess. After the year is up, assuming all my debt is gone, I’d still have to find some sort of work to maintain our day-to-day expenses. I have no idea what though. Maybe I’d take a shot at joining the PBA tour.