I'm pleased to announce the #BOSMeltNow challenge has come to a close, as the pile officially melted today, July 14. (1/3)
— Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) July 14, 2015
The six entrants who guessed correctly won… the chance to meet Marty Walsh. But, hey, everyone who survived last winter here is a winner!
It’s official, the Snowpocalypse is over — even the tons of trash have been removed, finally. Nice that “we” finally figured out “dump it in the harbor, it’ll go away” isn’t a long-term environmental strategy.
On the other hand, just after this was announced on the local news, I saw my first Christie-for-Prez commercial. Speaking of giant piles of garbage — and no, that’s not a joke about his weight, just what’s coming out of his mouth.
Apart from vast piles of trash, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Baud
I know online radio is not new tech and there are a bunch of players, but I’m really digging Google’s new free radio streaming service. I’ve used Pandora in the past, but I never got into that service for some reason.
p.a.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/07/health-insurance-prices-take-off-worker-pay-stagnant.html
Paging R. Mayhew. Is this accurate?
BillinGlendaleCA
Upgrading my machines(2 virtual and one real) to the latest build of Win10. I’ve got the 2 virtual machines done and it looks nice.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I thinking of getting a new PC, but waiting for Win 10 to hit the OEMs.
Omnes Omnibus
@p.a.: Mayhew has touched on this before. Short version: Insurers always seek large rate increases. They seldom get them.
MomSense
@p.a.:
Insurance companies asking for 30% rate increases doesn’t mean they will be approved. I think he wrote about this topic recently.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: The upgrade is pretty painless, takes about a hour. It should hit the OEM’s in a month or so. RTM is supposed to be in 2 weeks(the lastest build seems to be RTM ready, it’s 10240 HT1).
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
We’re close enough to launch that I thought I’d save myself the trouble of upgrading and just wait. I’ll have to upgrade my Win 8.1 tablet computer as it is (although I never received the upgrade icon on that computer.)
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I’ve received the upgrade icon on both of my desktops, I upgraded the table to the win10 preview a few months ago.
ETA: table? Damnit, tablet.
Omnes Omnibus
Trump in Iowa.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Hmm. I received it on my old Win 7 laptop (the one I’d like to replace because it’s gotten really slow). I’ll worry about the tablet later, since we have a year to upgrade I think.
Mike in NC
Christie has a whopping 3% preference among likely GOP primary voters, behind 8 others in the Klown Kar. He’s going exactly nowhere.
Baud
@Mike in NC: It’ll be cool if he doesn’t make the cut for the first debate.
dmsilev
@Mike in NC: Ninth? If he can hold that position, he’ll qualify for the first debate and we’ll get to watch him hold a bluster-off contest with Trump.
Iowa Old Lady
@Omnes Omnibus: I love the Onion. You’d think Trump already does a good job of satirizing himself, but the Onion always comes through.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I upgraded my 10.1″ Unbranded(that’s the brand name, it’s from Best Buy) tablet(tablet damn it) a few months ago. It works really well, especially switching from desktop to tablet mode(sort of the win8.1 start screen)
Just for fun I played with Crapple’s El Capitan beta over the weekend. While there didn’t seem to be much difference in appearance, I seems to be much less laggy. Then again in both cases(Yosemite and El Capitan, I’m running on hachintosh VM’s).
Kropadope
Thinking about my course schedule for the Fall. To my graduate-level BJers, do you think it’s worth pursuing a minor that you want to study at the graduate level when you’re already 3/4 of the way through your Bachelor’s or is it better to just get your degree ASAP?
The way I have it figured; it will help me get through some of the coursework, but prospective jobs that would help me pay for it are often seeking the degree.
Richard mayhew
@p.a.: not really, baseline Silvers growing nationally @ nominal GDP growth +1℅. Some plans in some markets have very high price percentage increases, but Silver plans are available at or slightly above 2015 rates if you are willing to switch plans.
Lambert does not know what he is talking about esp as CBO has been consistently overestimating premium and CSR subsidy costs per policy for five years straight.
dmsilev
According to Pollster, the top ten clowns are currently:
Donald Trump 15.0%
Jeb Bush 13.9%
Scott Walker 7.8%
Ted Cruz 6.7%
Mike Huckabee 6.2%
Rand Paul 6.0%
Marco Rubio 6.0%
Ben Carson 5.1%
Chris Christie 3.1%
Rick Perry 1.8%
and the ones who aren’t making the cut are:
Bobby Jindal 1.7%
Rick Santorum 1.5%
Carly Fiorina 1.3%
John Kasich 1.2%
Lindsey Graham 0.3%
Jim Gilmore 0.0%
George Pataki 0.0%
different-church-lady
@dmsilev: If he doesn’t, he might still qualify for the play-in debate, and whoever wins that gets the lowest seed in the East Regional.
Davis X. Machina
DeBoer. Coates.
Pistols at dawn.
dmsilev
@Kropadope: The graduate schools I’m familiar with (in the sciences) tended not to just automatically accept graduate-level course credits. At best, they’d have you take a qualifying exam to see if you learned the material according to their specs. I had a couple of graduate level courses which I took as an undergrad; I still had to take the equivalent courses when I started grad school.
That wasn’t (entirely) the department being obnoxious for the sake of being obnoxious. Once you get up to that level, coursework is a lot less standardized, and it’s highly likely that the course you took as an undergrad doesn’t exactly match up with what your graduate school feels is most important for that particular subject.
Mary G
Campaign commercials already? Sorry you have to live so close to New Hampshire, AL. That’s one of the joys of California – our primary is so late we hardly ever get any commercials for it since the magic number has been met in the earlier states.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
raven
I was so thrilled to get the Dish. Last night it got knocked off by the storm. Tonite I spent an hour on chat tech support because I’m not getting the zillion sports channels I signed up for. It’s no big deal right now but I gotta get it straight before you know what season!
Richard mayhew
@Kropadope: depends…. How much longer would it take you, how much more debt to get it, and does your current major suit the grad level entrance/gatekeeper requirements?
If the minor helps you get a job to pay for grad school, then prob a god idea
NotMax
So…
An open question:
If each of the GOP candidates for prez was a cartoon character (I know, I know), which cartoon character would they be? Animation, comics books,. comic strips all fair game.
raven
@Kropadope: It also depends on your field. Some are into PLA (Prior Learning Assessments” that you might get credit for. Most of those are for experiences outside of the classroom but it’s worth a look.
jl
@dmsilev: Is there a way we can fix the polls to get Lindsay up in the top ten? We’ve already seen Perry’s act, and the new glasses is not enough new material.
Listen, any pollsters call you people, you say “I want Lindsay Graham, He is my man, he has a plan! Lindsay Lindsay Lindsay!’
Baud
@raven:
Why Dish? I thought DirecTV was better for sports.
dmsilev
@NotMax: Pretty much all of them are well-described as arising from a mating between Foghorn Leghorn and the Tasmanian Devil.
jl
@NotMax: I’ll look in later to see if anyone bites. I don’t have the heart to piss all over some defenseless cartoon characters, even ones I don’t like.
Maybe Mornin’ Joe will jump in. I think he looks like Jughead from Archie, but Jughead had some good points. That is the best I can do.
Edit: Trump, I guess a leaking Macy’s parade blimp, maybe that dumb cartoon cat marketing gimmick, whatever it’s called..,, Garfield. I don’t like Garfield, so it will do.
dmsilev
@jl: That’s probably asking a bit much considering how irrelevant Lindsey is right now. Will you accept Santorum as a substitute?
Kropadope
@raven: I’m majoring in computer science, considering a minor in physics. My undergrad physics consists of a single class I was acing prior to dropping out for unrelated reasons. I need two sciences of the same type to graduate. I can graduate with a single chemistry class, but I pretty much forgot chemistry 1 anyway, it was 5 years ago.
jl
@dmsilev: Tell ya what. I’ll trade you a Carly and a Lindsay for a Huck and a Rick. Deal?
Which brings to mind, GOP 2016 presidential primary candidate trading cards. Photos, game stats, records, quotes, minor league career summary. Some one does that right, could make a little money off it.
Kropadope
@dmsilev: All we need to do is find a role for Lindsey, like making the rest of the stage seem stern and sober by comparison.
dmsilev
@Kropadope: Are you thinking about grad school in comp. sci.? I’m not sure how much help a physics minor would be for that. More importantly, if you’ve only had one class in physics, a minor may take a fair amount of time, because the classes build on each other to a considerable extent, meaning that you really have to take them in series to a considerable extent rather than in parallel. Makes it hard to finish a minor in a year.
If you can tell me what courses are required for the physics minor, I can probably tell you which ones really depend on which predecessors, and hence how long it would take.
raven
@Baud: The Wireless Joey was the kicker. You get a hub and you can stick it in any tv you want. Direct has the NFL thing but I can live with just the Red Zone.
raven
@Kropadope: Sounds like dmsilev has much more specific knowledge of your path.
Baud
@raven:
Cool. Enjoy.
Joel
@Davis X. Machina: Freddie is proudly living the life of a 10 year graduate student.
dmsilev
@efgoldman: About the only thing which could make City Hall Plaza _less_ inviting would be a row of pikes with heads on them. It really captures that “Fortress overlooking windswept wasteland” look.
Kropadope
@dmsilev: I chose comp sci for it’s usefulness across many fields. I’m looking into physics because I want to work with energy and I’ve long been interested in nuclear.
I don’t see myself at any point as a top programmer; it seems so many younger people jumped into it so early so successfully that the competition there is real tight, so I don’t think graduate school in comp sci is for me. My goal is strong cross-disciplinary skills, so I can adjust with the job market. I’m also potentially interested in law and education for grad.
ETA: I’m looking for the requirements for minor on the website right now.
Joel
@efgoldman: If I were mayor of Boston, the first thing I would do is call a city holiday where every city resident gets a chance to whack a sledgehammer into Government Plaza, Berlin Wall-style.
Kropadope
@dmsilev: It’s not really possible for me to get through the comp sci classes quickly either, few sections on difficult days of the week for me. So I’m gonna be going for a few semesters either way, just eventually go to part time.
raven
@dmsilev: Walleye or Northern?
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman: Well, it’s a temporary deal, just for the summer. From the video on the local news, it’s at least more cheerful than the barren expanse of naked brick, and probably radiates a little less heat (although, as you know, we’ve been lucky temps-wise so far this summer).
It does have the sort of trailer-park (anti)chic that seems to attract tourists, so if they can lure some of the buskers & food trucks away from the Fanueil Marketplace across the street, it can only help the congestion problem.
dmsilev
@Kropadope: Law is a _really_ bad bet for grad school unless you can get in to the top tier of schools. I’ll refer you to the writings of Paul Campos over at Lawyers, Guns & Money; he’s done very in-depth work looking at the prospects of law students, and basically it’s very hard to get a job that (a) requires a law degree and (b) pays well enough to make the cost of law school worthwhile.
As far as the physics background goes, it depends on what you mean by energy. If you’re talking about, for instance, working in R&D for developing new types of solar cells, a physics, EE, or Mat. Sci. background is helpful. If you’re working on power-grid stuff, physics beyond the basic E&M won’t get you very much, but an EE background for hardware or CS for control algorithms would be very very useful.
ThresherK
@dmsilev: I said it before and I’ll sez it agin: Remember when a “three-way tie for third place*” was a “get your sorry ass out of the campaign” signal?
(*I’m forever indebted to Joe Blowmentum Lieberman for that turd-polish.)
schrodinger's cat
@Kropadope: I don’t think a physics minor is doable in two semesters. Two semesters would probably only cover the introductory physics sequence.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman: He could put down shredded carpet remnants soaked in coffee and it would still improve City Hall Plaza.
ThresherK
My FSM, the Gold Cup went from Mexico 1:0 Trinindad & Tobago, to 2-0, to 2-1, and now T&T have pulled even.
That’s end-to-end action for three goals in 10 minutes, and a couple near-misses.
Kropadope
@dmsilev: I was thinking R&D work. I’ll have to look into some of the things that were brought up, but you guys gave me good stuff to think about. Thank you.
ThresherK
T&T are ahead 3-2 now!
I have no idea why Mexico are wearing black with Seattle Sounder’s acid green. I, for one, blame this on the uniforms.
different-church-lady
@efgoldman: sponsorship deal with Dunkie’s, natch.
burnspbesq
@ThresherK:
The third T&T goal was an absolute bomb.
Mexico gets pretty badly screwed in the quarterfinal draw if this result holds, They get Costa Rica instead of Panama.
ThresherK
@burnspbesq: I have no idea if this will hold. After a pretty quiet first half, it’s been a barnburner.
And if it holds, I will never even jokingly call them “the Toboggans” again.
burnspbesq
Eight minutes plus stoppage time to go. Every bus in the state of North Carolina will now be parked in front of the T&T goal.
burnspbesq
Three-all. Guardado for Mexico.
burnspbesq
4-3 Mexico. Own goal. Ridiculous.
burnspbesq
Four-all. Yohance Marshall for T&T off a corner. No fucking way.
ThresherK
@burnspbesq: I’m watching Mr. Robot with my
android bedmatewife. Thanks for the updates!And, seconded: No f’ing way!
Steeplejack
Second prize: a whole day with Marty Walsh!
Steeplejack
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I’m signed up to download the upgrade on (or about), what, the 29th?
NotMax
@jl
No one wanted to play. :(
So I shall freely posit, for starters, Trump as Baron Greenback
How about Christie as Commander McBragg?
Ted Cruz as Snidely Whiplash.
Jeb as Major Hoople.
Lindsey Graham as Desslok.
Rick Perry as Major Hoople.
Jindal as Crabby Appleton. (Second choice: Mr. Mxyzptlk.)
Scott Walker as The Professor (from Felix the Cat toons)
Rick Santorum as Mumm-ra.
Huckabee as every carnival owner in Scooby-Doo.
Ben Carson as Fin Fang Foom.
Rubio as Morocco Mole (who wasn’t a villain, but what the heck).
And Carly Fiorina as Ursula.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Didn’t even noticed I’d doubled up on Hooples. :) Thanks for pointing that out.
What I intended to type was: Jeb as Cosmo Spacely.