What are you thinking about?

[ramssuperbowl99]

8 hours ago, FinneasGage said:

been rehabbing from breaking my spine in october, so i go on like 2 - 2 1/2 hour walks every night. like once a week i get stuck in a level ten thunder/lightning storm. usually when i'm like three miles away from my house. there's a lotta obvious solutions, but i always forget until it happens again. it just happened again. 

I had a setback in my rehab last week man. Sucks, but you just gotta keep at it. Walking makes such a huge difference.

[naptownskinsfan]

On 12/7/2023 at 11:58 PM, AkronsWitness said:

Had this convo in the Browns subforum.

My conclusion: niche message boards while ultra popular 15 years ago, are slowly dying and losing users to Reddit (because its a all encompassing message board with an app) and the birth of Social Media. Message boards were social media before social media and once that got rolling in the mid-late 2000's, social media became a asteroid heading directly towards message boards.

They will always have a place in the lives of die hards and the 30+ year old crowd who typically uses less social media, but I dont think they will be growing its user count anytime soon.

At this point its a dated form of communication only used by elder Millennials and GenX who grew up with them. You have more tight knit communities of people rather than a bunch of random strangers screaming into the abyss like with social apps.

I have been using message boards since I was a teen and never really adopted social media (mostly because I dont care about what people are doing that I know)--so I at least will be staying here 😎

This is pretty much it.  Reddit was a big blow, but even in 2012-2014 message boards were still trucking.  Discord, GroupMe and other instant forms of communication accelerated it after that, and the current stage of social media has cemented that forums likely won’t be making a comeback.  

Though I will say, this is one of the most active communities around, at least in the sports realm.  

[FinneasGage]

6 hours ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

I had a setback in my rehab last week man. Sucks, but you just gotta keep at it. Walking makes such a huge difference.

what'd you have done again man? procedure i mean

setback with just pain or did you actually re-injure it? there's been a couple times where i've done some stupid **** and then spent the rest of the day thinking i ****ed up the fusion lol. my PT lady has been telling me if you **** up the fusion you'll definitely know because the pain will be super prominent, so i think i'm good though.  

[D82]

Just passed my last final with an A 

Ended the semester with an A in all four classes, so I'll be graduating *** laude with a 3.6 GPA.

Finally a college grad 🥳

[ramssuperbowl99]

On 12/11/2023 at 12:34 PM, FinneasGage said:

what'd you have done again man? procedure i mean

setback with just pain or did you actually re-injure it? there's been a couple times where i've done some stupid **** and then spent the rest of the day thinking i ****ed up the fusion lol. my PT lady has been telling me if you **** up the fusion you'll definitely know because the pain will be super prominent, so i think i'm good though.  

Discectomy L4/L5

 

And that's the feedback I'm getting, "if you reherniate, you'd know", but I'm about a week into it still getting numbness, pain, etc.

 

EDIT: @FinneasGage, sorry missed the "would you have done it again" question.

Yes. And it's looking more likely that I did reherniate, so I'm probably headed to an L4/L5 fusion. MRI is pending.

I knew the risk when I did it, and even though it sucks that I'm literally in the bottom 0.1% of outcomes, I knew that was a possibility. Sometimes taking a worthwhile risk burns you, and it sucks, but you gotta keep going.

Edited December 13, 2023 by ramssuperbowl99

[burlow]

12 hours ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Utility gifts are the best.

My best friend is due to have his first kid soon, and they don't live near family. I'm only writing him a check this year, but it's so they can hire a housekeeper to clean their place top to bottom once the kid is here, since it would be weird to hire someone they don't know who would go in their house and through their stuff. I've got a coupon for it all printed out and a note about how I hope they enjoy the time as a family.

 

My take is listen to your wife and get the stuff she wants. If you want to get her something else that feels more 'gifty' to you, make that an extra surprise, not the main thing.

Gotta listen when wisdom comes from a Rams fan, it would otherwise be like wasting rain in the desert.    The problem with my wife is it is hard to get her to say what it is that she would enjoy even on the ultility side.  I tried to make it easy for me with a coffee grinder and hopefully Meditations from Marcus Aurilios.  

 

[Tugboat]

20 hours ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

Utility gifts are the best.

My best friend is due to have his first kid soon, and they don't live near family. I'm only writing him a check this year, but it's so they can hire a housekeeper to clean their place top to bottom once the kid is here, since it would be weird to hire someone they don't know who would go in their house and through their stuff. I've got a coupon for it all printed out and a note about how I hope they enjoy the time as a family.

 

My take is listen to your wife and get the stuff she wants. If you want to get her something else that feels more 'gifty' to you, make that an extra surprise, not the main thing.

 

Yeah.  This is the real challenge with "utility" gifts.  It's one thing to divine what they want or need...it's another thing altogether to somehow make it a surprise.  Particularly because...when it comes to utility stuff, people tend to have done some research and/or have some very strong, detailed preferences in what exactly that item is going to be and how it will work.  So you can't really make it a surprise.  You'll get the wrong one, unless you're super adept at spycraft.

But they're still the best gifts.  They're far less frivolous.

 

I like when that's the bulk of it...and then i get some total "surprise" little item on the side, as a sentimental thing, or novelty or whatever.  Something cheap but thoughtful, where it doesn't matter if it's "the exact one i had in mind".  I think that's the most fun when giving gifts too.  Something they really want or need, plus something little they weren't expecting.  Good formula.

 

I even used to go the "handcrafted" route when i had a setup for painting.  Doing like little plaques of personalized stuff that they can stuff in a closet if they don't like it or whatever.  My Grandpa always comes up with some sort of little small woodworking thing.  Like one year it was a set of nice wood coasters and i'm using one right now lol.  My sister even decided to copy it, taking a chainsaw out back at my parents place and making them a set from one of the Aspens out there...which i ended up helping with, and it's very hard to be sneaky with a chainsaw lmao.  That stuff's cool though.  Even if all of it comes out kinda iffy.  My paintings suck, i'm not an real artist.  The coasters i'm using had bits ripped off the plywood grain and some of them are super warped and tippy dangerous to use.  The ones my sister made are...inconsistent at best, but there's enough good ones they still get used. The thought that counts gifts.  lol.

[Tugboat]

On 12/10/2023 at 8:37 PM, FinneasGage said:

been rehabbing from breaking my spine in october, so i go on like 2 - 2 1/2 hour walks every night. like once a week i get stuck in a level ten thunder/lightning storm. usually when i'm like three miles away from my house. there's a lotta obvious solutions, but i always forget until it happens again. it just happened again. 

 

Very valid answer to my curious musings about people walking on treadmills at the gym as i walked past a while back.  😆

 

But still, respect for just wanting to go for a walk to...actually somewhere.  Even if maybe it's not ideal sometimes when Thunderstorms.

[MacReady]

Lol. I paid off my house and my credit score goes down 28 points.

If the entire credit score thing isn't the dumbest thing I've ever seen in practice I don't know what is.

 

[AkronsWitness]

13 hours ago, MacReady said:

Lol. I paid off my house and my credit score goes down 28 points.

If the entire credit score thing isn't the dumbest thing I've ever seen in practice I don't know what is.

 

After getting my loan for my house, I agree. My credit score did extremely little to help me.

Its a dinosaur system that only exists to hurt you, not to help you. If you have a bad score you get penalized with higher rates but if you have a great score you simply just get the rates at what they should be at. Maybe like a half percent better. From my experience.

Edited December 13, 2023 by AkronsWitness

[ramssuperbowl99]

13 hours ago, MacReady said:

Lol. I paid off my house and my credit score goes down 28 points.

If the entire credit score thing isn't the dumbest thing I've ever seen in practice I don't know what is.

 

Congrats! Big milestone!

 

To be devil's advocate: this makes sense to me if I was lending. That's a major financial change, and even though it means you're probably just going to have extra cash if your expenses don't change, if there's a subgroup of people who pay their house off and decide that means hookers/cocaine/hey boss go eff yourself time, the net risk for the overall group would go up.

Your credit score dropping doesn't mean banks think it's a bad idea to loan you money, just that it's a slightly worse (but probably still very good) idea than it was pre-house payoff where they felt like they had an extra measure of control/regularity that no longer exists.

[Sugashane]

Well I just got my notice that I was accepted into the doctoral program I applied to.

I'm already tired. lol

[DreamKid]

Does anyone have a current men's magazine subscription that they enjoy/recommend? If you do, why? 

[MacReady]

2 hours ago, AkronsWitness said:

After getting my loan for my house, I agree. My credit score did extremely little to help me.

Its a dinosaur system that only exists to hurt you, not to help you. If you have a bad score you get penalized with higher rates but if you have a great score you simply just get the rates at what they should be at. Maybe like a half percent better. From my experience.

It’s absolutely absurd. The more debt you’re in increases your score as long as you make payments on debt?

It’s just antiquated. And I’m glad I ignored everybody saying I needed to get credit scores if I ever wanted to buy a house. Like screw them, screw credit, I own my house I don’t need you.

[AkronsWitness]

6 minutes ago, MacReady said:

It’s absolutely absurd. The more debt you’re in increases your score as long as you make payments on debt?

It’s just antiquated. And I’m glad I ignored everybody saying I needed to get credit scores if I ever wanted to buy a house. Like screw them, screw credit, I own my house I don’t need you.

Yeah in my experience, having bad credit hurts more when buying a vehicle than it does a house. I once had a friend that was paying $900/mo for a used old Pontiac Grand Prix absolute **** box because his credit was horrible and he had a subprime loan.

However, little benefit seems to be had for people with great credit with homes--you just don't get preyed on by banks. I guess that's the benefit. A wise musical artist once said "crooked banks around the world will gladly give a loan today because if you ever miss a payment they can take your home away"

Either way, congrats on paying it off thats big time