CheezWizHed

I would say you need to know yourself. If you grammer good, then maybe hire someone. . But that probably isn't why you are missing any call-backs on jobs either. A couple thoughts: 1) Call the HR department of the company of one job you missed and ask. Just tell them you are looking for feedback. Sometimes you resume just came in late or got "lost" in the system - not all recruiters are good. 2) Write a resume and cover letter for each job. That takes some time and effort, but I can normally tell as a hiring manager when someone looked at my company and figured out what we do, then wrote their resume. When I get two resumes and one is specific to our company and the other has a purpose statement like, "I want a job in engineering", I'll take the specific one every. single. time. 3) Knock on the door. I had one guy show up one day with his resume. I was called by the front desk to come meet the guy. Ultimately, it was a terrible idea to hire the guy (for other reasons), but he got a "free" 5 min discussion with me and made a good first impression. Kind of odd this day and age and some companies might not like it. But you can probably always apologize you're way out if they don't like your initiative. BTW, if there are any embedded software engineers out there looking for a job, please let me know. I'm hiring.

Weirdly... when I refinanced, I couldn't quite get to a 15-year loan, but the 20 year wasn't a better rate than the 30-year. So I just took the 30-year and paid the 20-year equivalent payment. If you plan to stay in your house for a while, take a look at paying points. I paid the max points they would let me, added the amount to what I financed and took my rate down to 2.25%. Payoff will take 39 months, but since I plan on being here for a while, I wasn't worried about that. Saved thousands over the life of the loan.

Just thought of another impact. When I spoke to my mortgage broker about cashing some money out of my house, she said that typically that is seen as a higher risk and I wouldn't get as low as a rate as a straight refinance.

Well, if the housing bubble bursts and you get upside down on your mortgage, you'd be stuck in the house and not able to sell it. Probably a pretty small risk and a zero risk if you don't want to move in the next 3-5 years. That is about all I could see as a drawback. I've heard people do an interest-only loan where they plan to pay off the mortgage with their investments. That has a bunch more risk to it, but that doesn't sound like what you are doing.

Excellent! Do you need to change your bf.net name now?

Sounds nice!

I was just looking into that this yesterday, but I'm not close enough to the 5G towers to be able to use it. Ironically, my local township just paid for the infrastructure to add a little satellite dish-looking device on your house and get internet access (http://www.netwavebroadband.net/), but I'm guessing it will be overcome by 5G shortly...

Goodbye binary! Hello tertiary or quaternary! One of my engineering professors told us that the person that could invent a computer that ran on more than two states would be very rich! I visited the four corners with my cel phone, does that count? Did it make you rich? No...probably not.

How much do you pay per month for Spectrum cable service, if you don't mind me asking? $180 plus change. Includes internet and a landline. This is easily over double the cost I pay for my steaming, internet, and phone. That is why people cut the cord. Maybe a bit more hassle but much cheaper. You are paying for the convenience. If you are so happy about your service, it makes me wonder why you are posting in the cutting the cord thread.

Goodbye binary! Hello tertiary or quaternary! One of my engineering professors told us that the person that could invent a computer that ran on more than two states would be very rich!

People still do hire COBOL programmers... (a language that was stopped being used on new products in the 80s) Python is a good general purpose language. Anyone using a computer daily should probably learn a little bit - even just to understand it. But you might be surprised how you can automate stuff. I'd say coding a ML algorithm can be rather tricky...training one is much easier. I've never done either myself, but have told my kids that AI/ML/CV are huge and growing fields and I'd probably go that direction if I were in college. Going to tour a factory with a friend of mine that does factory automation and Computer Vision. Very cool stuff.

Another idea is to get an ARDUINO or a raspberry pi if you haven't gotten one already. There are a lot of cool things you can do with both of them and even some of the basic younger kids stuff are rather fun to do. Google does have a summer camp for coding that is geared more towards high school aged people. https://buildyourfuture.withgoogle.com/programs/computer-science-summer-institute/ Thanks for the Google idea. I've not seen that one. We do have a Pi - part of the electronics/python course they did. He generally runs Minecraft on it...

While a degree in computer science would be good he should also do hackathons and other events depending on what he is interested in. A coding boot camp would also be beneficial if he hasn't had much in terms of coding experience. I've looked at a couple coding boot camps, but they tend to be for younger kids (he is 15). I've introduced him to Python in a home electronics/robotics/coding course and he will probably take Java next year in PSEO. I'm mainly trying to show him and his older brother (17 - looking more at engineering) the breadth of options in the field. I was completely lost when I started out going to college....

So very close, but not quite the right experience. But maybe I'll show this to my HS son. He is looking to go this direction (Computer Science) and it is always interesting to look at job options.

All I can think of when reading these posts is, "Your Nobody called today... She hung up when I asked her name. Well, I wonder if she thinks she's being clever? Oooo Oooo" This earworm provided to you today by Sylvia

Oh, I knew they'd get their cut as an investment. I was just wondering if they taxed it differently or more heavily than the standard short-term (<1 year) and long-term tax rates. Along those lines, do these currencies have any interest or dividends? Or is it just the value of the holding only?

I was helping my son do his taxes last night (his first time) and I noticed that TurboTax had a special question specifically asking if he invested in BitCoin (which he hadn't). Beyond normal investment rules, does anyone know if there is something unique about Bitcoin and taxes?

I used to live in Winona, MN (small college town with 30k residents including college students - less than 20k without). I was flying home one time and talking to the guy next to me. He said that he was a salesman for a flour company. Their biggest customer was Little Caesar's pizza. Odd facts that you find about your community without knowing... I have no point, except that it was my convergence of flour and pizza story. .

When did "proofing" become a US English term? I was watching a British cooking when I first heard it then suddenly it pops up everywhere.

Texas Roadhouse atmosphere is one of the worst, IMO. I guess if you don't want to speak to anyone you are sitting with, it is great (way too loud - and yes, I know it is a roadhouse). I do agree on the sides, however. Those tend to be hard to make in smaller batches. But I keep experimenting with those, too. I've looked into dry aging my own beef. There are some interesting traditional and new techniques (one-way plastic bags?). But I tend to purchase my beef by the 1/2 cow from a farmer I know. The butcher hangs it for 2-3 weeks - not quite the same as an aged steak process - but the results are way better than store-bought. I have a nice balance of effort and result that beat anything less than the linen restaurant experiences.

For the same reason you pick up food/drinks/etc. anywhere else....convenience and not needing to spend $50+ for all the supplies. You could cook up your own steak for a fraction of the cost versus what Texas Roadhouse charges (and make it taste way better), but there is a reason the Texas Roadhouse parking lot is always loaded when I drive by. Why pay $3 for a soda from McDonalds when you could almost buy a 12 pack for that at the store? I don't remember the last time I've ordered a steak at a restaurant as I'm always disappointed. On a business trip, I might do a very high end place, but never something like Texas Roadhouse. FYI, I have my own branding iron with my initials for my steaks (pretentious, yes, but it was a gift from my wife).

[sarcasm]Yeah, just what WI needed... more alcohol options... [/sarcasm]

If you mean you want to stay with Spectrum but buy your own hardware, I'd check with Spectrum first (their website might have the instructions too). Normally there are HW requirements for the modem you get and they will need to send a service person out to set it up for you. They might have instructions for how you can do it yourself, but either way the new HW must be setup in their system to allow the new HW to login. Personally, I would buy a separate modem and wifi for performance, but that does get more complicated for the tech setup. I ended up turning off the wifi from my DSL modem (which I still rent from them) and connecting my own. When my kids came home from school, we were always lagging on 20 mbps DSL. I ended up using Google WIFI. It has a main WIFI hub that you plug direct into the DSL modem ethernet port and two satellite extensions (mesh network technically) that allow better reception around my house. That actually allowed 4 kids, wife and myself (often with streaming TV on) to work on 20 mbps. Then when COVID hit, I had to bump up to 30 mbps since zoom calls where a bit more bandwidth hogish. But you can also purchase a simpler single WIFI setup that you would plug direct into the modem and follow their setup instructions. Replacing the WIFI alone won't save you the money, but it might fix the lag. Do you know what WIFI version your modem supports (802.11x where x is b, g, n, or other letters)?

Well, I'm paying $50/month for 30mb (DSL), so double the cost for 2.5-6x the speed...

Ordered it for my condo in Montana and we were told 80mb speeds initially, pushing towards 200 by the end of summer. Tech guy is hooking it up this week. I can report back then Can I ask how much that costs?