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Post by denisdman on Sept 27, 2016 10:48:42 GMT -6
Limiting transactions is strange. Our league just moved to an auction waiver wire because it was a race every Tuesday morning to pick up free agents. But the larger problem in our league is the lack of available talent if your guys get hurt. It is a 10 team league, and it can be difficult to find two healthy starting RB's that will get a fair number of carries. And bye weeks are hell.
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Post by denisdman on Sept 27, 2016 10:13:08 GMT -6
Yeah, that's a rough stretch three weeks in.
My co-owner is a pure genius. Our team always ends up better by the end of the year due to shrewd, timely pick-ups. He started Christine Michael this week. When I saw the guy go off on Fantasy Cast, I texted him and said "who is Christine Michael?" He dead panned, "our RB from Seattle."
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Post by denisdman on Sept 27, 2016 7:40:09 GMT -6
Is it possible that JDC is the 400 LB DNC hacker?
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Post by denisdman on Sept 26, 2016 12:41:54 GMT -6
No doubt, you are spot on. We try to get to Bellagio early for that reason. I merely meant it's the nicest and best place to watch, but of course that assumes you get a seat. Worse yet, they started charging for their drinks a few years back and are using silly high prices. I still can't believe they used to give away drinks for free.
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Post by denisdman on Sept 26, 2016 10:33:36 GMT -6
That's the best sports book. I'll be down there the weekend before Thanksgiving. Staying at Mirage, but we usually head to Bellagio to watch the Sunday NFL games. The Mirage is a decent enough book though.
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Post by denisdman on Sept 22, 2016 15:09:18 GMT -6
I am so glad I gave up on this after like three episodes.
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Post by denisdman on Sept 22, 2016 12:25:30 GMT -6
Wow, I could go in so many directions. Thanks for your well thought out arguments. I am going to just respond to a small slice. Rich school districts vs poor ones. Yes money is a factor because the rich districts are more desirable to teachers and pay more to attract better talent. But there is another large underlying difference that is a big part of the correlation between money and outcomes.
In Wilmette you have the following on average: - A stable family structure for children, - Above average educated parents, - Parents with a higher than average IQ (which is genetic) For a reference see the book Coming Apart, - No issues with basic needs like nutrition.
Honestly, kids from well off families are far ahead by the time they hit Kindergarten. Most have had preschool and were read to in their early years. The better school system just reinforces all the advantages that are ingrained from Wilmette's other advantages.
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Post by denisdman on Sept 22, 2016 11:09:56 GMT -6
Totally fair point. People have such a distrust of government that no one is willing to trust it to spend our tax money appropriately. So folks like me wish to starve it of revenue to prevent it from growing into an even bigger beast.
So I guess it is chicken and egg.
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Post by denisdman on Sept 22, 2016 9:24:28 GMT -6
I am no fan of government as my posting history on the Internet will attest. I often wonder how other countries administer government, which is a necessary function in a civil society. It appears that the best model for good government is Singapore. It is stated that government employees are highly paid professionals, which means it is a viable career path for students. As such, government jobs draw well qualified people who are expected to provide a high level of service to "customers".
In our current system that would never work because we have made government jobs into a union led lifetime right instead of something that needs to be earned and performed against a high standard.
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Post by denisdman on Sept 22, 2016 8:31:46 GMT -6
Metra conductors that grasp power like a college RA. It's stunning to watch. I took Metra on Monday and Tuesday for a conference downtown. I came back on a late train Tuesday night. A guy in my train car fell asleep and missed his stop. He woke up as the train was about to pull away from his stop, and he begged the conductor to stop the train and open the doors. The Metra guy just absolutely berated this guy and told him to keep his eyes open. I thought it was pretty funny as I have fallen asleep many times on the hour plus ride back after a long day of work downtown.
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Post by denisdman on Aug 15, 2016 18:31:06 GMT -6
Holy chit show. I haven't turned on pro wrestling since like 1990. That is bad. I'll go back to the Olympics Greco Roman stuff.
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CFMB
Aug 15, 2016 17:47:18 GMT -6
Post by denisdman on Aug 15, 2016 17:47:18 GMT -6
Hmm board outage. Weird.
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Post by denisdman on Aug 10, 2016 11:44:51 GMT -6
I took one exam last Tuesday. I'm on the fence on how well I did. I find out Aug 23 if I passed. If I don't I'll have to retake it in October as you can't retake it in the same testing window. If I pass it's 3 more tests to go. I didn't know you were taking the CPA exams. Finished mine several years back. Hey hey I still show up when you search my name: www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/illinois-cpa-society-honors-individuals-for-outstanding-achievement-on-cpa-exam-56558942.htmlBest of luck. Try to squeeze two different ones into each window because your passes only last for 18 months. If you get stuck on one of them, you start losing ones you already completed.
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Post by denisdman on Aug 2, 2016 10:58:12 GMT -6
I used to love the Good Humor ones. The others are fine, but the cake part tends to be sub par.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 29, 2016 14:23:13 GMT -6
Fade Away baseball podcasts are supposed to be good. I found the website for them but it doesn't appear on my iphone podcast list. I may give them a listen.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 25, 2016 12:03:33 GMT -6
I heard Finfer on Sunday. It was almost comical to hear him talk about Sale because all I could think about was his on air work place blow up when he found out the Game was being shut down.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 21, 2016 13:13:17 GMT -6
Hawger was saved:
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Post by denisdman on Jul 21, 2016 10:21:19 GMT -6
They're all fairly bland. And it seems like a lot of misdirection, meaning you see a scene and can't tell whether it's in their head or if it's reality. Way too much thinking for me.
For instance, you have that scene last night with the younger blond girl talking to the boss (Price?) in his office. He wants to book Fox over Bloomberg. That entire scene was vanilla and uninteresting. Then fast forward to the restaurant with those same characters. Really no purpose. It's all weird and unnecessary. Other shows would have had her back in an apartment getting gang banged or something.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 21, 2016 10:08:07 GMT -6
I didn't, and I recognize that's a problem. It just doesn't grab me in anyway.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 21, 2016 9:37:58 GMT -6
I gave the first two episodes of season two a watch despite my earlier comment about avoiding it. Well, it will be the last time I watch it. There is literally nothing I like about the show. I don't have any feelings for the characters. The plot moves along slow. I don't find any of the drama compelling. Some of the dialogue is ok (for instance the black ex-con talking about the history of the arcade building), but nothing to hold me to the show. I am sure I am missing the big picture, but I won't commit another minute to the show to figure it out.
If everyone on the show died, I wouldn't care.....
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Post by denisdman on Jul 19, 2016 6:59:10 GMT -6
The entire thing is the train wreck we all expected. I saw Rudy up there, and he seems like such an angry person. I kept trying to stick with it, but who can take that garbage?
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Post by denisdman on Jul 15, 2016 12:42:11 GMT -6
It's me again. Hello. Ten days ago I promised a 19th birthday story from down in Champaign. This little story will have some holes in it given the volume of alcohol consumed in one evening. I am not proud of these events, but it was a right of passage for me.
So I started down at U of I at 18 years old, a typical freshman albeit with a lot of college credits upon entry. I come to find out that you only need to be 19 to go to the local bars. Once inside, the alcohol flows freely to all because most of the folks were of legal drinking age. During my first semester down there, I had a cheap ID and never had trouble getting into campus bars. But after winter break, I came back to Champaign as a mature 19 old, now fully legal to enter any bar on my own ID.
My friends from the dorm decided to take me out to the bar for my birthday after winter break. The deal was, they paid for all drinks, I had to drink whatever they bought, and whoever paid for the drink would drink the same thing for himself. It sounded fair- no cost to me and no chance of ordering something nasty because they would have to drink the same thing. However, I think I forgot basic math (even though I was in high level differential calculus) as there were three of them to just me. As such, they could order shots all night, and I was at a 3-1 disadvantage. And as you might expect to happen, I got incredibly drunk. The faint memories that I have as to what happened next were confirmed by lots of laughter from my friends in the morning.
So at some point at this bar, I was sitting up on a counter and began to puke. I puked. I puked again. And again. The entire bar started chanting, "one more time...one more time....one more time." Apparently I obliged many more times. I recall being carried back to the dorm afterwards.
I basically dry heaved all night in my dorm room. I woke about in the morning feeling as bad as one could after a night like that. And there was one last birthday insult to be had. On the dorm floor I was known as the Dominoes Pizza guy. The other boys liked Papa Dells, Gumby's, or Grogs. But I always ordered a large pepperoni pizza with a large drink from Dominoes. It cost an extra buck or two, but it was high class relative to Grogs and the others. Well these dipshits had saved about 20 Dominoes pizza boxes. When I opened my dorm door, the entire doorway was covered in these pizza boxes, so I couldn't get out.
Happy 19th Dman.
Next up: Peoria Bachelor Party
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Post by denisdman on Jul 13, 2016 9:34:18 GMT -6
I ate at Perkins in the Dells this summer on a baseball trip. I didn't particularly care for it. Worse, the waitress was annoying as she proceed to regale me with stories of her eight year's baseball trophy collection. I wanted to remind her that every kid gets a trophy in youth baseball.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 11, 2016 15:10:15 GMT -6
I need to avoid these shows because I get wrapped up in them. Luckily, I started on Wayward, and it veered too far for me early in the series. So I quit it quickly.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 11, 2016 9:20:44 GMT -6
I roller blade up and down the Fox River Trail. I start in West Dundee and go up to Algonquin. The total journey is about 15 miles which I complete in under an hour. So I keep a very good pace, and I pass most of the leisurely bicycle riders. I always ride on the right and pass on the left. As I come up on all other traffic, I always shout ahead "coming on your left".
Well two weekends ago, I was riding on the path and passing a group of about 10 cyclers. All but one person was teenage boys. The person in front was an older man. Every boy moved over to the right and acknowledged my presence. Well, the last guy, the old man, not only moved over to the left, he stopped in the middle of the path. So as I came up on him, I screamed "coming on your left". He was all pissed and asked me what my problem was. I said my blades don't have brakes, you didn't hear me the first time (apparently), and you dead stopped in the middle of a heavily trafficked path.
This was my first bad experience in over 10 years of using the path. But yes, some cyclers are tempting death with their rules of the road.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 8, 2016 6:38:20 GMT -6
Twitter keeps suggesting that I follow Julie. I'm not coming back, Jules!! Good call on that. Her tweets have such little value that I think you become dumber by reading them.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 5, 2016 11:33:55 GMT -6
You raise awareness by hijacking someone else's cause?
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Post by denisdman on Jul 5, 2016 11:30:56 GMT -6
Next up- we'll continue the UIUC theme with my 19th Birthday celebration. While not the milestone that is 21, 19 is (was?) the legal age to get into bars in Champaign.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 5, 2016 11:18:59 GMT -6
Installment #3. Keeping in mind that these tales are things that I have seen (not necessarily that I have personally done), we'll proceed to a tale of my freshman year at U of I in Champaign (UIUC). I lived on a co-ed floor in the freshman dorms affectionately known as the Six Pack. Specifically I was on Garner's top floor, the 4th. The guys were on one side of the floor, and the girls on the other separated by security doors. It was a lively place. The vast majority of the students were from the Chicago suburbs. In fact, I was always surprised by how many suburban kids went to the school leading to my belief that it was a settle school for many kids. I bring up the suburban comment because the place had the feel of a bunch of young adults that were so sheltered that they did not know how to react in an environment where there is minimal supervision. I was certainly in that camp. I had perfect attendance in high school and missed about 1/3 of my classes the first year at UIUC.
I hung around with a guy from Niles, one from Bolingbrook, and another that was from Oak Park. We did stupid things like seeing who could get the best "souvenir" from the bar. Notably I acquired one of those giants plastic Miller Light banners that advertise a beer special. The plastic banner was 20 feet long. How the people in the bar didn't see us take it down, roll it up, and walk out with it is something of a mystery to me. I had a real stop sign in my dorm room. Someone else had one of those orange and white construction horses with the orange light on top.
As the year went on, there was an increasing number of property damage incidents on our floor. The cost to repair the damages was split among the residents of the floor. I walked into the bathroom one night to see a urinal ripped off the wall. Soon after, a sink also laid in waste on the floor. The final attack on said bathroom was a tear out of the electrical system, which had the effect of us showering in the dark.
Someone decided to attempt to burn down my dorm door. I was at the end of the hallway near the girl's side of the floor, so it was a convenient target. Our common area furniture repeatedly ended up on the ground below. Yes dressers drawers, cushions, chairs, etc. The bulletin board was destroyed by fire. On the day I moved out in May, there was so much unwanted goods on the hallway floor, that you couldn't even see the tiles on the ground. Everything from Cheetos to term papers to clothing lay in waste. The look on the janitor's face is something I will never forget.
And I thought these incidents were unique to our floor. But in a February 1993 Daily Illini article titled "Trash and Burn", I realized that this stuff happened all over campus. The centerfold pictures were telling. Underneath our buildings was a connected set of hallways for the six pack that had pool tables, ping pong, and vending machines. The newspaper article showed pictures of the vending machines being smashed and the candy looted from them. I found it funny at the time.
In any case, the residents would get charges for these damages on their statements. The guys on our floor were incensed because the girls were not getting charged nor were the other floors in the building. Even though you would have nothing to do with the incident, you would have to pay for the repairs. This caused Garner 4 male residents to take matters into their own hands. I can tell you that the logic seemed reasonable at the time- basically, the residents were out to prove that people from outside the building or from other floors could cause damage on our floor. These disaffected youths proceeded to the third floor common area room above the Resident Director's first floor room. The sofa in that room ended up in the bush outside his window, so when he woke up he saw it laying there. These folks were not done. Knowing that the entire building had security doors at each corner entrance, on each floor, and in each area where the girls lived, they decided to create a lock down. The resident broke off tiny pieces of metal paper clips and put them in each lock requiring a key to get in. They told me it took 30 pieces of tiny metal. When someone would stick there key into the lock, it would not go all the way in. Chaos ensued.
The link to the original article no longer works.
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Post by denisdman on Jul 1, 2016 10:53:18 GMT -6
I understand the economics of offering more money to attract higher quality talent. It's a great point. Unfortunately, government does not have the necessary resources to pay like New Trier does. I think the bigger issue with our education system is low standards from both parents and schools. Culturally, we set expectations very low and engage in social promotion. It is exactly the reason why Asians thrive going to the same schools as the rest of the population. Culturally, they expect their children to perform well.
If you ever followed my posts on CSFMB, you would know I am a Libertarian. And I have said the only place where I think this country needs to spend additional dollars is on education. It is the great equalizer. As someone who came from a single parent family and went to all public schools, my current lifestyle and earnings is a testament to the value of education.
So I think we probably agree more than we disagree. It's just that our government does not have the money for its current commitments let alone more for education. My children attend private school, and those schools provide a better outcome at half the per pupil cost.
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