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MattE

Omsbudsman moment: Cornell doesn't actually have an elevated suicide rate relative to other colleges, it's just the high visibility, makes-the-news nature of suicides at the gorges that makes it seem so.

MattE

I see Cardhu, Glenfiddich 12-yr, Glenmorangie 10-yr, Laphroaig 10-year, and Glenlivet 12-yr in that $40-45 range (tax included). Yet I know not enough whether any of these are the MD 20/20 of Scotch... Pretty much everything you listed is firmly in the "this is perfectly acceptable but not particul...

MattE

Once a brand becomes "the latest and the greatest" the quality is sure to suffer. A recent example in my experience is Angel's Envy bourbon, which is aged in port wine barrels. I received a bottle as a gift a few years ago and found it to be a pleasant bourbon to drink neat. According to my local l...

MattE

I got my B.S. in Aerospace and worked as a satellite operations and systems engineer for a Fortune 100 company as a NASA contractor for 5.5 years out of college before completing my Master's (in Systems Engineering) and moving on to better position in a different field at a non-profit research lab. ...

MattE

I replace mine probably once a year because I wear my every-day, beat-'em-up Nikes to my office 'cause I couldn't possibly concur more vigorously with FlyAF. Any day that doesn't involve customer interaction has no need for a dress code.

MattE

It sounds like you got a text from a legitimate fraud prevention system and the most likely explanation is that the phone number on file for the person that card actually belongs to is wrong.

MattE

My manager's boss stopped by and said he is working on something for me, but I'm going to go ahead and accept the other offer unless I have something official in writing today. I've never been in this situation before, what happens if I accept the offer from the other company and afterwards my curr...

MattE

They are willing to pay more because of perceived value. The OP has to deliver. Higher pay comes with higher expectations. That’s just the way it is. And higher performance comes with higher expectations in terms of pay, and it's absolutely not true that (most) employers will elevate that amount to...

MattE

Personally, I'd push in that situation as well. In software remote work isn't exactly a rare extravagance and most STEM firms offer some level of reimbursement for continuing education including graduate school, so they're not really separating themselves from the pack there. If you're an above-aver...

MattE

The eclipse is only going to last for 2 to 3 minutes. To me, it seems excessive to travel and rent hotel rooms for 2 to 3 minutes. To each her own. It's a celestial event creating irreproducible natural phenomena (360 degree sunsets, visible solar corona and chromosphere, fauna going totally silent...

MattE

Are you working in the city proper? Is commuting from one of the bedroom communities just not a plausible option? $350K total \ $2400 per month gets you goodish schools, great communities, and 2000+ square feet, 3+ BR, 2+ BA with land up the Red Line or out in Howard County....even up the Silver Lin...

MattE

Sitting at the top of an uncrowded ski slope, strapped in and ready to drop on my snowboard, but taking a minute or so to just look out over the vista before doing so.

MattE

Strong second\third\however-th to the people that also said to do the spark plugs and brake pads yourself. You can do them yourself in an afternoon with absolutely zero prior car knowledge, YouTube, and a socket wrench set, and save yourself probably close to $500 in the process. I'm not a car guy a...

MattE

The extent to which people on this board are willing to eat **** with a smile is totally baffling to me. A large portion of a manager's job is to facilitate ways to make those under them more effective\productive. If there's something about them that's causing that to be not true, then they're now a...

MattE

My wife and I are looking at having our first spawn in the next year-ish, so I made a concerted effort to knock out at least one true bucket list-type trip before that happens. Spent two weeks in Japan this past February: 4 days sightseeing in Tokyo, 1 day sightseeing in Sapporo during Yuki Matsuri,...

MattE

I've done a half dozen Carnival and one Norwegian cruise, and on every single trip my wife and I stashed at least one 1.75L bottle of a "utility liquor" like vodka that can be mixed with just about anything in our bags and had them pass through security without any issues. Several friends have done ...

MattE

I travel frequently for work, and several times a year provide engineering support for field tests that last up to a month. During that time I might be staying in field quarters where the space provided for personal items is at an absolute minimum (think: a single drawer under a bed) for up to two w...

MattE

Depending on when in August and where in the park you're at, be prepared for cold weather. In late August there's a very real chance Logan Pass and part of the park east of the Divide can be in the highs 30s\low 40s with snow at the higher elevations, even on days where the west side may be in the 6...

MattE

I spent a week backpacking in Glacier late last August and thought it was the most breathtaking place I've ever been even with the haze from the historic fire season the northwest had last year, which is saying something because I've backpacked and snowboarded some pretty awesome places.

MattE

My parents were\are uneducated blue collar workers and were\are fiscally irresponsible dolts on top of that. At 27 I make more than both of them combined at any point in their lives and I'm pretty sure I passed their peak net worth within a year or two of graduating college. I'm the oldest of four, ...

MattE

The grime is really stuck on my driveway, so it's really tough to pressure wash evenly (much tougher than my vinyl siding). I was thinking a solution could help loosen up the really tough stuff. Or I may need a gas power pressure washer or pro to do the whole driveway evenly without it taking forev...

MattE

I've always had great success with just regular dish soap, hot water, and a scrub brush on the end of a pole (I got a 10 foot telescoping one from Home Depot that works great and lets me reach all the way to my roof from the top of a 10 foot ladder). Doesn't even take that much force\pressure, comes...

MattE

When my wife and I got married in 2011, we did a 7-day Carnival cruise of the southern Caribbean that left out of\returned to San Juan, PR and stopped in St. Kitts, St. Thomas, St. Maarten, St. Lucia, and Barbados. Cruise + airfare (round trip from PHL) + ground transportation ended up something lik...

MattE

+1 to all the comments about it not being a big deal and how peers\colleagues keeping that information secret does nothing but shortchange them at their employers' benefit. I'm a government contractor and work with two other guys that were hired within a month of me right after we all got out of col...

MattE

I drive a 2001 Saturn SL that was the first car I ever purchased on my own ($4300 in 2008 after my sophomore year of college). It had 109K on it when I bought it and is about to roll 170K now. I drive it because it still gets 32 MPG combined and runs like a champ with minimal maintenance, though it ...

MattE

When making larger purchases, vendors will sometimes give you a discount for paying with cash\debit as opposed to credit if you ask since they no longer have to pay the 2-3% processing fee on the credit card charge. This was the case when my wife and I got a new living room set from a local furnitur...

MattE

If you're going to own a single piece of equipment and rent the rest, boots are definitely what you want to have. Properly fitting boots with the right amount of flex completely dominate your control of your skis and can make okay skis seem pretty good, and vice versa bad boots can make great skis s...

MattE

When we were mortgage hunting last year, we found that AimLoan and National Mortgage Alliance offered the best rates, and it wasn't even close between them and anyone else (including PenFed and NASA's FCU). AimLoan had the lower rates initially, but we were able to bid them against each other and NM...

MattE

My wife and I were married in October 2011; she was 24, I was 22. Her parents wanted to pay for the entire thing, but I was extremely opposed to the idea of them paying for much of it at all and wanted to fund it ourselves (I'm estranged from my side of the family, so nothing was coming from there)....

MattE

I paid my own way through college with grants, scholarships, and state\federal loans, but late in my sophomore year it was looking very, very doubtful that I was going to be able to continue to afford going to the school I was (Penn State). Right as that was coming to a crisis point with my first ju...

MattE

Agree with the last several posts. At some arbitrary but reasonable point you establish "We're comfortable and happy living on this much," and from there on out income increases are translated largely into savings increases rather than lifestyle cost increases. My wife and I have seen our take home ...

MattE

If I could be bothered to take the time to respond to everything in this topic, my posts would read like Jack's almost verbatim. There's a huge amount of fear-mongering in this topic that's not grounded in facts or reality. My wife and I purchased a home last year that during our inspection was foun...

MattE

Regarding the advice to book your own excursions, be aware of one risk. If an unapproved excursion operator doesn't get you back to the ship on time, you're on your own. The ship can leave without you and it's up to you to get yourself to the next port of call or back home. I've never seen that hap...

MattE

There's a Carnival Cruise that leaves out of Baltimore every weekend that does a 7-day trip to Port Canaveral (Orlando\Cocoa Beach Florida), and then Nassau\Freeport in the Bahamas. It's typically loaded with college spring breakers (matching whatever major regional school is out that week) for the ...

MattE

50% match up to 8% of your pay, so the equivalent is 4%. It historically had been 100% up to 8% but the company halved it just before I started working there in 2010 as a cost control measure.

MattE

I second the Saturn suggestion. They're very bare-bones cars, but the early 2000s manual SLs get 30-40 MPG (depending on driving type and condition of the car), will generally run you $3000-$4500, and run for forever with minimal maintenance. I drive a 2001 SL that I bought in 2008 with 109K on it; ...

MattE

The wife and I just bought a 2013 Mazda 6 last summer and couldn't be happier with it. It gets decent gas mileage in real-world driving (~30 MPG combined), drives very smooth, and is deceptively roomy - plenty of passenger space and the trunk is huge. They've got a good manufacturer's warranty (5 ye...

MattE

Renter's insurance is one of those things that's so cheap for the level of protection it provides that not having it is borderline negligent.

MattE

My wife and I are younger (mid-20s) and have done several Carnival cruises and always enjoyed them a lot. They're certainly more of a "for the masses" cruise and their clientele varies pretty drastically throughout the year - during the spring you get tons of college students, summer is almost all f...

MattE

How long have you been at your current position? Almost four years. Secondly, you may be able to negotiate a hiring bonus to cover the remaining tuition. When I was hiring engineers, HR always had hard salary caps that we couldn't exceed in an offer but were generally much more flexible about bonus...

MattE

My wife and I used National Mortgage Alliance this past summer when we bought our first home and had a pretty good experience, though their paperwork requirements are substantial and they required wet ink signatures on every single page of the closing documents, though those are hassles rather than ...

MattE

I appreciate the opinions. After mulling it over some more, I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with my initial reaction and just sit tight for a while unless one of the applications I've already put out there in the past couple of weeks comes back with an offer I can't refuse.

MattE

I currently work as an engineer for a Fortune 100 company doing satellite operations and analysis work. I'm paid pretty well for the work I do and my level of experience, but the benefits (aside from a pretty good 401k) and corporate culture are terrible, and it's kind of a dead-end job in that ther...

MattE

I'm in the boat with people that just have general purpose "savings." My wife and I keep a savings account with an amount that covers our insurance deductibles in it (which would also cover about 1.5 months of expenses) for instant-access, and a much larger (and regularly contributed to) amount in a...

MattE

That would make sense. Thanks for the responses!

MattE

I work full-time as an engineer and am finishing up my Master's part-time on the side. My current employer reimburses my tuition expenses. However, I am looking to leave my current job within the next several months for better opportunities elsewhere, and my tuition reimbursement from my employer ha...

MattE

I lived in a rural area with very limited job opportunities for minors outside of the winter (ski resort region). I spent a summer working groundskeeping and maintenance at a summer camp 20 miles from home working minimum wage because it was pretty much the only thing available, and was more or less...

MattE

I'll also vouch for PagePlus - we swapped my wife's Droid 3 over to their $55 plan (unlimited talk\text + 2 GB data) and my old Motorola Q9 to their $12 plan (250 minutes\250 texts) last year and have had no problems at all with it.

MattE

I've been wearing G-Shocks for 20 years and have nothing but good things to say about them. The only reason I don't have the same one from childhood is because it was stolen in college, and the one I bought to replace it has been trucking 7 years since. Get one of the Tough Solars and you'll never n...

MattE

I'm probably close to the age of most everyone else in this topic's children (or younger, in some cases), so for what it's worth: I attended Penn State from '06 - '10, with my tuition + room & board varying from ~$20K my freshman year to ~$25K my senior year. My family provided nothing towards my ed...

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