Erik88

Keep a watch on the trees around you if the ice starts to build up. Maybe reconsider where you normally park your vehicles if they are in the path of falling tree branches. Unless you hate your vehicle. In that case just leave it under the tree. Be safe out there guys.

I saw this on Reddit earlier. Picture taken in Bellevue. I'd say stay home if you can.

I had no idea my generaton was the first one in history to enjoy owning nice things. This is fascinating.

How many years? I'm seeing 2.75% for 30 years. Lower if you can do 15-20 years.

You must be thinking of another state. We can carry in UT and all western states except for the left coast. ND and NE require the enhanced permit though.

Nice job Utah. I wish TN would do the same.

What do you listen to while driving? That's when I get my podcasts in.

My bad ya'll. Rubio sucks. Please continue.

How many people here would still punch the Rubio ticket if given the choice between him and (insert any Democrat)? My guess, 95%. That's why I'll preach for having more than 2 parties until I die.

Home depot sells masks that don't fog up my glasses. They have flexible metal band that hugs the nose so you aren't blowing air up on your glasses.

Man the headlines the past week have been insane. I swear we are actually getting less intelligent as a species. I will be watching to see if people demand they charge the shooter. Hopefully that doesn't happen.

I think everyone that has seen it agrees. I've never seen a coup de grâce in real life before... I don't understand why they didn't react when he first started shooting. I can hear a few shots in the video and it appears they all missed and the married couple didn't even react.

I'm not sure if anyone caught this headline earlier this week but there is now a video out that shows what happened. I will warn you it is very disturbing. John explains it all in the video. This is a great lesson on the importance of not being a jerk and knowing when to de-escalate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id9pd8zfQcs&bpctr=1612638414

The Fellini Kroger is the only grocery store I've ever been to where they have an off duty cop working inside. I asked him if it was really that bad and he laughed and said "sometimes". I currently live within walking distance of it. Always an interesting experience going there.

Was I the Defender? Those are supposed to last forever from what I hear.

That's essentially what happened. My wife basically doubled her income last year but we only paid in an additional $1,500 in taxes over the previous year. I assumed the payroll software would account for this but apparently not. Prior to this, we had it just about perfect where we got back a very small amount. I'm modifying our W4's to have additional money taken out each paycheck. It was a good life lesson I guess.

I assume you are able to itemize your taxes and write off much of those expenses? I just determined I have to pay $5,000 this year. First time I've ever had to pay. I about fell out of my chair when Turbotax finished calculating.

The police are not idiots. They will be able to tell pretty quickly if the gun story is a lie.

Same. I had a set of 60-70K Michelin tires that only lasted 40K. I filed a warranty claim with Michelin and got a prorated replacement set. Now these are dry rotted after 3 years. Even the tire salesman said he's having to constantly file claims for Michelin. I'll never buy another set of their tires again.

No joke. That is really sad though.

I'm not sure but I damn sure don't trust the National File. How do you know any of that is true? Looks like a great source of unbiased news with some interesting polls.

This is exactly what I was talking about in the tires thread. The rumor mill is cranking out new material at an amazing rate the past few weeks. The bill hasn't even been voted on yet.

Anytime I hear this sort of speculation I remind myself that it's just that. People love to throw out predictions and spread gossip about topics they really have no actual knowledge about. It's why a large percentage of the country still thinks the vaccine is more dangerous than COVID. I'm sure they read some compelling data on Facebook that makes it true. Jimbo heard from his cousin the price of tires is going up 10%. Jimbo then told his friend Curtis. Curtis posted on Facebook tire prices were going up 20%. Eventually it makes it's way up to 25%. It's like fish getting bigger each time you tell the story of catching it. According to Goodyear, they raised prices 5% this year. Michelin and Bridgestone did 8%. https://www.moderntiredealer.com/articles/31204-goodyear-consumer-tire-prices-are-on-their-way-up

No but I did get in on AMC last week. Not enough to really hurt me if it drops but if it soars like GME I would be happy. The reddit guys are convinced that GME isn't done climbing yet. I've enjoyed their commentary. Several of them have used their earnings from GME to do charity work.

We're starting to see more promising data from the vaccine and how it's working on the new strains of COVID-19 we're seeing. I get a daily news update from the NY Times and here is what they sent me this morning. All five vaccines with public results have eliminated Covid-19 deaths. They have also drastically reduced hospitalizations. “They’re all good trial results,” Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, told me. “It’s great news. In the official language of research science, a vaccine is typically considered effective only if it prevents people from coming down with any degree of illness. With a disease that’s always or usually horrible, like ebola or rabies, that definition is also the most meaningful one. But it’s not the most meaningful definition for most coronavirus infections. Whether you realize it or not, you have almost certainly had a coronavirus. Coronaviruses have been circulating for decades if not centuries, and they’re often mild. The common cold can be a coronavirus. The world isn’t going to eliminate coronaviruses — or this particular one, known as SARS-CoV-2 — anytime soon. Yet we don’t need to eliminate it for life to return to normal. We instead need to downgrade it from a deadly pandemic to a normal virus. Once that happens, adults can go back to work, and children back to school. Grandparents can nuzzle their grandchildren, and you can meet your friends at a restaurant. As Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told me this weekend: “I don’t actually care about infections. I care about hospitalizations and deaths and long-term complications.” By those measures, all five of the vaccines — from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Novavax and Johnson & Johnson — look extremely good. Of the roughly 75,000 people who have received one of the five in a research trial, not a single person has died from Covid, and only a few people appear to have been hospitalized. None have remained hospitalized 28 days after receiving a shot. To put that in perspective, it helps to think about what Covid has done so far to a representative group of 75,000 American adults: It has killed roughly 150 of them and sent several hundred more to the hospital. The vaccines reduce those numbers to zero and nearly zero, based on the research trials. Zero isn’t even the most relevant benchmark. A typical U.S. flu season kills between five and 15 out of every 75,000 adults and hospitalizes more than 100 of them. I assume you would agree that any vaccine that transforms Covid into something much milder than a typical flu deserves to be called effective. But that is not the scientific definition. When you read that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was 66 percent effective or that the Novavax vaccine was 89 percent effective, those numbers are referring to the prevention of all illness. They count mild symptoms as a failure. “In terms of the severe outcomes, which is what we really care about, the news is fantastic,” Dr. Aaron Richterman, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, said. What about the highly contagious new virus variants that have emerged in Britain, Brazil and South Africa? The South African variant does appear to make the vaccines less effective at eliminating infections. Fortunately, there is no evidence yet that it increases deaths among vaccinated people. Two of the five vaccines — from Johnson & Johnson and Novavax — have reported some results from South Africa, and none of the people there who received a vaccine died of Covid. “People are still not getting serious illness. They’re still not dying,” Dr. Rebecca Wurtz of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health told me. The most likely reason, epidemiologists say, is that the vaccines still provide considerable protection against the variant, albeit not quite as much as against the original version. Some protection appears to be enough to turn this coronavirus into a fairly normal disease in the vast majority of cases. “This variant is clearly making it a little tougher to get the most vigorous response that you would want to have,” Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said. “But still, for severe disease, it’s looking really good.”