igor67

I do in fact have networking access to a rather diverse group of professionals as a teacher, but I've never heard any of my colleagues network in such a way and given my position I get 1 ask before everyone knows. Ultimately seeing some of the barriers was useful to be able to pass along to my students, and made me comfortable sticking with teaching.

Just to clarify my comment was about networking to find a job, not references.

We don't allow cell phones, do have discipline, and focus on academics. In short you are reminding me why I don't mind having left large district school 15 years ago. It cost me money, but I do get to enjoy doing my job and observing students actually learning. On the theme of the thread I have been a key part of a lot of that success over the years, but I find that translating that into resume language is rather challenging for a variety of reasons. I have done a variety of management type functions, but never been a manager as an example. Sat on the school board and reviewed, but never prepared financials... It's not a combination of skills others are expecting. So I have found switching careers (for reasons that have nothing to do with satisfaction or the pandemic) to be difficult at this stage. For example my network is almost entirely other educators or parents whom I can't really use to switch careers.

Andre won a Rumble I do believe

Somewhere in there you also have to have a big enough mortgage to make itemizing matter these days. A HELOC on a primary residence to lower the balance on a second home or investment property might have an angle for some savings though.

Lot's of good stuff here, I would add that I hope any passive readers are using some of the examples to help them think about what is most applicable. Homes are important but tricky assets. A co-worker of mine for example bought his first house midway through his second year of teaching, and sold it just over a year later out of sheer luck. He actually moved because of his wife to rural MN and needed to sell, but because they had looked originally in the middle of winter they had effectively bought the house at a discount, so even with the short turn around they more than made enough to cover closing costs and turn around and buy 80 acres. It worked out incredibly well, but I think it is way more common that moving forces people into suboptimal decisions on selling the home. So factoring in the smaller liquidity is important in how one approaches the mortgage. When we moved to MN 20+ years ago it was at the tail end of a housing boom, and we bought at 5% down, FHA and 7% interest. In a year we were able to refi, get rid of the PMI due to home value increase alone and borrow in a special low-income program for a bunch of repairs and kept the total payment the same. On the other hand our value had dropped off enough by 2008 that we were probably back to just 5-10% equity. By 2015 though we were hitting closer to peak earning years and we would have had the house paid off easily by now except we decided to invest in our retirement home. In many ways the big value in our first house has been that it's cost of ownership has been way less than inflation. My current payment is what we were paying 20 years ago so that's pretty huge. The point I'm hoping to get across is that when it comes to think about housing investment risk make sure you build in flexibility for changing circumstances or plans. We've changed our thinking at least 4 or 5 times over the years and flexibility is a tough thing to quantitate.

It's probably also worth pointing out that the BF crowd is also a lot more analytical in general which is makes a difference. Crunching stats and interest rates looking for advantages is all pretty similar.

Thanks I'll try that. The company in question is small enough that I'd rather not say. I was able to locate the listed transfer agent, though so far their website seems expertly crafted to avoid direct customer contact.

So perhaps a weird question, but since I don't normally sell individual stocks I'm looking for some insight. I'm helping a relative how owns a small number of shares purchased a long time ago. They have the original paper certificate, and the company is still in business. The share value is pretty modest so the total amount of money is pretty small. However the internet stories also indicate the company split and issued shares in a new company over a decade ago that my relative never received but should have, and both stocks having issued dividends for as many years as I can verify easily on the internet. My relative certainly hasn't gotten those at all for the last 10+ years, and may have never actually seen those. The stocks have been owned long enough I don't have easy access to a full picture of what happened to the stock that whole time. The relative does not have any unclaimed property records, so any other thoughts on how to pursue missing compensation and ultimately sell off the shares?

Are you in a poor spot for getting normal antenna reception for local channels? With the Air TV players you can grab antenna signal and send it with the rest of you Sling TV signal. For all the cabin folks I also just figured out that with the newest Air TV Anywhere. Since it converts the signal all the way to the internet you can literally set the Air TV Anywhere player in any location (like say WI) and get those local stations on a second Sling device (say MN). This works on the Sling AP if you download it on your phone for the second device as well.

Our family enjoys Bluebloods quite a bit and in many ways as a family drama where the family is reasonably healthy and not a dysfunctional wreck. We were big Numbers fans years ago and appreciated it for similar reasons.

With Air TV players you can pull in local stations on the same display as your sling and DVR on both now. The only significant issue I've had over the years with that combo is that I live in a urban TV reception pit, and I a few of my local stations I have some difficulty getting reception on reliably.

It tends to be noticeable right away, so I don't think overheating is an issue. OS is definitely up to date. My Network strength is high as well. I tested it the other night I could stream Disney+ just fine through my Xfinity box, but not without buffering on the firestick.

John's Pizza Cafe is a pretty good thicker crust style, Mamma's Pizza is probably our family favorite, they do a thin crust and an embarrassing amount of toppings. I rank both ahead of Pizza Luce

I just got a Firestick, and was wondering if anyone had any ideas on why it might be doing noticeably worse on a Speed Test than my laptop? I'm using it primarily to stream Sling and my over the air channels via an AirTV anywhere device. It definitely appears to be Firestick specific because I have an Xfinity box and it doesn't give me the buffering issues I first noticed. I'd just use that for Sling, but it's not compatible with the Over the Air parts. I tried restart it and clearing the cache, and It doesn't quite seem to make a difference. It's only 3-4 ft from my router.

I have unfortunately also encountered the HR attitude that CheezWhiz describes. I have helped do enough hiring that I do appreciate the amount of time it takes, but the way that evolves in certain HR circles toward being terrified of meritless employment lawsuits. I suspect the practical differences in how companies act are also heavily influenced by the average education level of their employees.

So I can't say that I've observed a whole lot of evidence that proactive hiring is all that common. I'm thrilled someone still bothers to do it because it is very old school, but my son couldn't sniff an interview in the Twin Cities as an entry level programmer a couple of years ago. At best companies seem to run way too much through temp services, and this was true even after he gave up on programming and switched to other entry level work. I got more sympathetic to his plight when I tried my own hand at a mid-career switch. A lot of the same type of run around frankly. Corporate trainer positions with oddly specific needs being one example where a posting is so specific I don't look qualified (given the age range and diversity of subjects I've taught it's crazy). I looked at other entry level type office jobs, acknowledging my skill gap and managed 2 phone interviews in about 20 applications. The kicker though for me having no sympathy and just believing that most companies hiring practices are ridiculous was my sons recent experience. He transitioned to manufacturing, has a couple of years experience, and applying to jobs in central WI he only heard back from 1 in 5. At least the once company actually acted like they were desperate for workers and called him back less than 24 hours after applying. Maybe if you'd call people back you wouldn't need to offer signing bonuses. So yep ghost away!

TDS was the only option I had for my cabin. I won't try and recount the entire process, but yes in general the customer service experience was not good. The actual local service guys were OK and cared but things were set-up in a very weird multitiered way. So it ended up taking 3 different appointments to actually get the service set-up. Since then it has been good generally the speed has been as advertised too. They were advertising a 3 year price guarantee and with some legwork I avoided getting stuck with one of their modems.

You should be including tax implications in thinking about your break even point. With the changes a couple of years ago most people no longer have a big enough mortgage to get any tax benefits from the mortgage payment, but your savings on paying off early are completely tax free. The tax situation on your investment is hard to say without more details. You also increase your closing costs on the refinance (in most cases) by taking more money out as the origination fee is usually a flat percentage of the total loan. I would guesstimate that your true break even point is probably closer to 4%, still pretty doable

To a certain extent I would say it is fairly encouraging that a number of the places where there have been price spikes have caused people to reconsider projects. If it seemed like there were no adjustments to the price hikes then we could be in some real trouble.

I like to recommend quantum computing for those who are really trying to be forward looking. The programming and coding is going to be just different enough I suspect there will be good opportunities for those who get into it early.

I would actually be really interested if homer wanted to expand on what a smart contract was. A link outlining a hack related to crypto Chu, Dennis. “BROKER-DEALERS FOR VIRTUAL CURRENCY: REGULATING CRYPTOCURRENCY WALLETS AND EXCHANGES.” Columbia Law Review, vol. 118, no. 8, 2018, pp. 2323–2360. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26542511 p.(16) and another "One of the main flaws with cryptocurrencies can be attributed to the “blockchains” that they are built on. Whenever a new coin is “mined” or sold, it is subject to a review by the community of miners. In other words, whenever a transaction occurs, the other people involved with mining the currency are notified and decide whether the transaction was legitimate or not. This sort of community verification requires 51% of the community to approve a transaction for it to occur" quoted from "51% Attack Explained." Mycryptopedia. January 08, 2019. Accessed March 20, 2019. https://www.mycryptopedia.com/51-percent-attack-explained/. and a 3rd one for good measure "Bitcoin Gold Hacked for $18 Million." Bitcoin News. May 24, 2018. Accessed March 20, 2019. https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-gold-hacked-for-18-million/ For some additional background I have both a low tolerance for risk, and a high threshold (generally) of evidence. On the investing side this usually means sticking to traditional investing principles (low fees and index funds go back to at least the mid 90's). I recognize that this particular combination has certain downsides, but given I don't have stacks of capital to be an angel investor I can live with that. My sentiments against cryptocurrencies though were rooted in the clear pattern of mid 2010's articles hyping in a very standard 'it will revolutionize', but not following through with a clear explanation of what was going to be solved. For some reference this was overlapping with the era when we were being told that Silicon Valley was also going to revolutionize education with MOOCs. We've all seen how well people actually like online education. At least those articles though were clear what was being proposed and sold. As a science generalist I read a wide diversity of secondary and primary sources across many disciplines (math, physics, chem, biology, and economics mostly), and I do not recall any of my range of sources ever jumping in and walking through how the blockchain was an important technology. That isn't 'proof' but it is enough for me to not want to waste time fully researching the topic myself. Particularly after one of my students (who was a huge crypto believer) did his thesis project a couple of years ago (those are his references above). From his abstract "Then the history of cryptocurrencies’ rise from 2008-2018 is analyzed. This analysis explains why the cryptocurrency market came into being, rose, and fell in such short succession. It describes how the market was exploited through fraudulent practices such as “pump and dump schemes”, hacks, and faulty brokers. These problems with the market are then compared to problems that the U.S. stock market experienced in the 1970’s." If the blockchain itself is going to be a significant technology going forward that would be interesting and as far as I can tell at the moment it would end up being a rather unique path for a legitimate technology to rise to utility. Last thought the economics side of crypto are somewhat analogous to gold, which I also loathe as an investment. It is way too useful as a material to use purely as a trade device.

I loathe crypto because it tried to argue it was the next great thing in tech without any actual use, and has now backtracked at best to accepting that its a pure electronic creation to be traded for the sake of trading. The pattern of moving goalposts around its existence is unsettling at best and when you uncover the older hacks to manipulate the blockchain part itself? So far hiding assets is the only understandable problem I've seen it solve, and if that's your problem well I'm not terribly sympathetic.

It's probably safer to eat with a mask on though

I'll shamelessly promote The North End and Como neighborhoods in St. Paul. When I moved in 20 years ago about the only thing I could say was that they were safer than North Minneapolis, but they got dramatically better in the early 2000's. Given the access with the light rail coming and the price dip during the housing crisis my area could have easily gentrified and become trendy, but it hasn't yet though there have been nice newer amenities. You won't get suburban size lots of course, but we eventually leveraged the housing savings into a great rural property while enjoying being close to everything.