It’s really nice when comparing quotes for buying down a rate, or looking at the impact of additional payments. It’s also incredibly easy to throw together. For anyone interested:

• payment = PMT(mortage rate/12, mortgage term * 12, -initial principle)
• interest = (mortgage rate/12) * remaining principle
• principle payment = payment - interest
• new principle = prev principle - principle payment

Throw that into a spreadsheet and drag down. Add a SUM() to figure out total interest paid or whatever. I have a VLOOKUP() to calculate interest for the current year for tax planning purposes, for example.

Maybe I’ll start an unofficial weekly post about various calculations I have in my spreadsheet. I have something like 30 tabs, so surely something there is interesting to others.

Not gonna 3d print a rake.

And sand/dirt after a windstorm, at least in my area. They’re really quite useful.

Yeah, I just think it’s kind of odd though. If a language only has lists and hash maps, my go-to is to use a hash map for uniqueness, and sort the list for ordered lists.

But in Python, it’s backwards where I use the hash map (dict) for ordered data and the set for uniqueness, because hash maps are unordered in most languages I’ve used.

Nope, sets are unordered.

Same, I dual booted for almost 10 years on 3 system machines and never once had it happen. But I’ve seen it reported before, so it’s something to be aware of.

A mitigation is to have a Linux live USB to boot into to reinstall your bootloader (GRUB, systemd-boot, etc, depending on distro). I haven’t heard of Windows actually destroying partitions or data, and perhaps it doesn’t do it if your boot partition doesn’t look like a Windows boot partition (e.g. it’s a different filesystem), IDK. But learning to reinstall the bootloader from a live CD isn’t that hard (usually just running one or two commands).

So, you’ll probably be fine, just do a little research first if you’re nervous.

Well, it’s certainly more interesting than an email client, consider yourself lucky.

sorted_sequence.index(item)

Shouldn’t this be O(n log n)? I guess Python doesn’t have a list that stays sorted.

As a workaround, just use dict keys with no values instead.

Instead of a movie, can we just get another game or two?

Hey, don’t spoil the plot!

And these days it’s young-ish people selling flowers, at least in my area.

Yup. I’m looking into buying an EV, which naturally leads me to looking into disabling all the smart crap.

I just need it to go from A to B, and play audio from my phone on the way. That’s it. I don’t need weather reports, cameras, auto pilot, etc, I just need a pedal and an aux jack or something to connect to speakers. Oh, and the speakers are optional, I can bring my own.

Yeah, with 3D printing, I can mostly download a 3D printer. If that tech gets good enough, I could conceivably download everything except the battery (FPGA for control logic).

I would totally love to download a car.

Nah, I don’t care too much about their reputation, I care about reviews. If it’s good, someone will have reviewed it.

IDK, I just buy the soundtrack or whatever if I really want to support it. But the game needs to be good enough to justify the price before buying.

Ikr? Where I grew up (near Seattle), there were tons of great Thai places, and it really didn’t matter which one I went to, it would be pretty good.

Where I’m at now (near SLC, Utah), it’s all sweetened, bland crap. It’s decently good, but it’s nothing like what I grew up with. The most popular places here are essentially franchised, and they all taste bland and sweet instead of properly spiced.

The good places are the small restaurants closer to downtown. The interior decoration is less fancy, but the food is way better.

Nah, it’s getting better every year. Adding crappy games doesn’t change the huge backlog of great games I have.

My response to the points:

1. Don’t buy games until reviews are good - don’t buy on release day, and certainly don’t preorder
2. See 1
3. See 1, but replace “games” with “PC hardware”
4. We probably need a law here, but until then, see 1
5. This is stupid. Buy indies, they don’t pull this crap.

I played around with some numbers, and it seems a lot of my concerns about RMDs are completely unfounded.

I’ve had a very basic Social Security and ACA calculator in my spreadsheet for a couple years now, but I think I was doing the math all wrong with inflation (nominal investment returns, and today’s tax, ACA, etc limits), so I’ll end up with plenty of time to convert my pretax accounts to Roth. I was concerned that I’d need to balance ACA reported income to optimize health care costs and converting enough pretax to not pay a ton when I take Social Security.

So I put everything together using today’s dollars and simulated what a withdrawal strategy would look like, and I’ll probably be more concerned with rationing my pretax space to not have to deal with Medicaid, rather than not being able to convert enough. It’s amazing what a few percent in the wrong places can do!

Anyway, what simulations do you do? Are there any simulations you’d like to do, but don’t know where to start?

That’s really dumb. Here in Utah, you sign up online, and you can get a mail ballot online too. I have never actually voted in person, I just fill out my ballot and drop it in one of the collection bins a few days before the election. We can even track our ballot to ensure it gets processed.

Why overcomplicate it? I don’t need to take time off to vote, and I can take my time researching the candidates. Voting should be easy.

IDK, coming from NYC to TX is probably a net upgrade in a lot of ways, especially if you’re a small business owner or work for one. The laws in NYC are just so bonkers.

Then again, I’m uninterested in moving to TX either. I’m pretty happy here in Utah, and I may move back home to Seattle, WA at some point, or maybe we’ll move to NC. But I’m not moving anywhere further south than NC.