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Brew

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Everything posted by Brew

  1. I’m pretty sure an early decision application can only be submitted to one college. Early action would be the application process for their other colleges. With early action you have until the normal commitment time frame (normally May) to decide where you want to go. If you didn’t get an ED acceptance, you‘re free to see who accepts them, who offers money, etc all the way up until the commitment deadline.
  2. Not old, don’t care. Changed out the bumper on my Bronco last week and blacked out the letters. Looks much better now. Still need to remove the front crash bars to clean it up and also give me the ability to go up in tire size on the next go round. They couldn’t have made it much easier to wire in the auxiliary lights than they did, just had to find the wire that went the amps I needed and then attach them with a connector. Bought an adapter to keep the clear on the fog light switch and put the yellow on auxiliary. I also have to say the guys at 4x4 truck LEDs were easy to work with. I sent them an email with what I was trying to wire into what, they sent me the part numbers to buy for the adapters and wiring along with the correct lights to use.
  3. Made a knock off Toscana soup tonight. This is one of my favorites soups with the sausage, kale, and potato’s.
  4. 7 months later and this guy still hasn’t gone to trial and has had virtually no hearings. He admitted sleeping with an underage individual in the church but apparently is going to fight the severity of the charge and the fact it got moved to federal court. They have put the girl through the wringer. They don’t make it easy for people that come forward and report these types of things even with when the guy from day one says he did it. It’s been difficult keeping our daughters engaged in church through everything. The youngest is friends with the girl and has had a hard time with it. The oldest has been in church since she was little, goes on mission trips every year, has been heavily involved, etc but now associates the college pastors at the new churches she has tried with her youth pastor. It’s terrible for the families directly involved but these assholes leave a wide swath of destruction behind them.
  5. I can tell you specifically for my daughter, involvement had to make some difference. She got into the colleges she got into over kids with much better standardized test scores and grades. She took 5 AP classes and a full honors load so that wasn’t even a big number, but she scored 4/5 on all of them. She was really involved (including leadership positions) in school activities, volunteered heavily, never worked, etc and got into schools with an ACT score 4 points below others. She also applied as an English major which isn’t high demand and went 34/35 on reading/English on the ACT but was terrible in math/science. I would also bet her essays were well ahead of average as well.
  6. We have always spent quite a bit of time in St Louis (split season tickets to the Cards), wife went to SEMO, older daughter looked hard at Washington, she wants to end up in Chicago, so it would work well for us/her. We’ll see what direction she goes. I prefer Mizzou over Ark, but am good with whatever as long as it doesn’t come with full boat out of state tuition.
  7. TN. Mizzou has really solid scholarship’s for neighboring states, similar to Arkansas but even better than them. They also have really good opportunities for anyone with decent GPA/test scores, but the neighboring state discounts require lower scores. The second kid hasn’t put in the effort our first kid did, but still wants a big school experience. We were surprised by the numbers with Mizzou and are touring there soon.
  8. There weren’t many that came off deferral last year at UGA from what admissions put out. They have a high acceptance rate of offers because of the amount of in state kids they pull and the fact it’s damn near free for a lot of them. Daughter is a freshman there and her best friends turned down UVA, Vandy, and a lot of top tier schools because coming out of Atlanta they are going to UGA for nothing. Coming from out of state, we’re on the write them a big ass check tuition plan but it’s what she wanted and we agreed it was the right decision. TN - housing is a bitch to forewarn you. Most of her friends there that aren’t getting hand me down housing from seniors are having a hard time working out housing anywhere within reason of campus. There are some new developments coming online downtown, but they are pricey. UK - great area to be in. Teacher - take the best deal that offers the best experience for the money. Our youngest is leaning that direction and we’re pushing her to Ark/Mizzou because as neighboring states she can get solid money from them.
  9. The cost of failure related to car maintenance is yours, not a shared cost or covered by anyone else. You can argue it leads to accidents, but maintenance related accidents aren’t a high percentage. The bulk of maintenance related issues just lead to expenses you have to deal with personally.
  10. As an employer, I 100% agree with royiv. Part of the benefit of HDHP is to incentivize people to take some ownership of their health care not disincentivize them from doing things that lead to a long term healthier workforce. You want people to go to the doctor routinely and get vaccinated to catch and deal with things at the earliest possible time. We give people a bonus for having a full physical including bloodwork annually, cover all flu/covid vaccines in the office for families, reimburse for other vaccines, cover generic prescriptions, etc. all to try and manage long-term costs. Your car analogy is ridiculous.
  11. Most insurance companies or at least the one I’m familiar with are still fighting coverage of those treatments for weight loss because of issues with FDA approval. It has started changing the last 12 months, but there are still coverage issues. Weight loss can also be an excluded coverage under plans. We did a specific exception for them last year and have a number of people on them (at a ridiculous cost per shot I will add), so we’ll see long-term if it is beneficial. As far as the second paragraph, they will find themselves getting sued if that’s the case. What you may see is people become more selective in their hiring especially if they are self-insured which will also get them sued if it ever comes out I guess.
  12. Yes and no, you are using one of the main insurance companies coverage structure and provider networks as the base for provider coverage. We use UMR because they tend to work better with these type plans and in our coverage area. We use their negotiated rates and provider network so we don’t have to negotiate our own and so it’s easy for the employee to understand. Within if we do things like heavily incentivize annual physicals, weight loss, choosing the high deductible plan, etc to help control future costs hopefully. The drug portion is different. We start with their base plan and tailor it from there. We heavily incentivize generic usage to the point of most are free and disincentivize name brand and drug of the day coverage. We also have nurse managers as part of the captive that work with providers on alternative medications and work with the insured on rebates, grants, and other things that are out there to offset drug costs. You have a mix of traditional coverage things and then tailored things that we have designed into the plan. We don’t generally cut much of anything out, we just try to reward people to make better decisions s with our dollars. Drugs are the killer right now. We have people into the 6 figures on individual drug costs. There are cancer drugs out now that exceed $60k-$70k a month. There are other more routine drugs that still exceed $10k a month. Short of someone having a major medical event or a long-term hospital stay, you just don’t see those kinds of numbers with the care side.
  13. At a certain size it can be a significant cost savings. The insurance company middle man is out of your pocket and they are making a lot of money in the middle. The downside risk is that with fully insured you get to smooth out the ups and downs. A captive is somewhat in the middle where we are self insured up to a point and then have coverage if we hit our stop loss. It worked great for 8-9 years, we’re trying to figure out drug costs now which have become significant almost overnight. We know what everyone has, what they are taking, what they cost, etc and typically people that don’t perform well cost you the most. Those things are hard to ignore although you have to. We also have to make decisions with plan designs and other things that can be difficult. The rage around weight loss shots has been a significant issue the last 18 months that we have had to deal with and you know you are dealing with people’s lives while also trying to manage costs.
  14. It’s not $8k to fight cancer. Someone else is just toting the note on it which is the problem with the system. People don’t understands what the costs really are. From running a semi-self insured plan (we’re in a captive so we do have some back end coverage) we’ve seen the costs of things changing. I have 3 employees on scripts that are more in total than my entire drug spend 3-4 years ago.
  15. It has worked well for us, but it is a captive and not a fully self insured. We are self insured up to a pretty large amount and then have back end coverage on the total plan. We’ve been virtually flat on costs per employee since preCovid up until the past year or two and haven’t raised premiums for employees in years. Drugs have been skyrocketing the last year or two, so that is all starting to change now. However, we would be paying it either way. The benefit to the self insurance program has been clarity in everything around our medical plan so we know what costs are. It also can be a downside because we know more than we probably should know about people. I can give you some more specifics if you’re interested in anything with it.
  16. Daughter and wife were supposed to be there with another friend and mom for the Sugar Bowl. They ended up canceling this weekend and coming back here to hang out with her friends from home. She’s up trying to check in with everyone she knows that was there for the game. Pretty terrible deal.
  17. Depends on the hotel and the way their system works as to where the cars are parked. Usually it’s a minimum $10, but if it’s a place that has close by parking and we’re going to be in and out it’s $20 which generally gets a better spot and faster service. We stay in a lot of the same places, for those it’s always $20 because everything moves faster and my wife’s vehicle usually stays right around the entrance so I can walk right out to it. The nicer hotels keep notes and things like that get paid attention to. Also, it doesn’t matter what the hotel charges for parking, the valet gets tipped. This isn’t a difficult concept.
  18. Just got back in from a few days with the kids in Chicago. We decided to try and eat places we have not eaten in the past for several of the meals. Sienna Tavern was an excellent meal, we were all surprised at how good it was and the fact that all 4 agreed on it. It’s in the rotation going forward. Pistores was also a really good small neighborhood spot. Pizza and brunch were both excellent.
  19. How many employees? You can PM if you prefer.
  20. He’s right, the roughing the passer is the only really bad one and even with it he got a shot on Beck on the head. If Simmons was on the line he would have been offsides but they never showed a down the line replay. You can bitch about no calls on GA (they have run a ton less plays which accounts for some of the difference), but TX has earned most of their penalties along with having shitty execution on their side of the field. Game should be out of hand by now, but blaming it all on the refs every game on this board is somewhat ridiculous. Execute and the refs wouldn’t have made a difference in the first half.
  21. Each single gender wing has its own community bathrooms. It’s not like there is much separating everyone though and again, floor common areas are for the entire floor. This isn’t some weird anomaly, we have toured multiple schools with similar setups in at least a couple of the freshman dorms.
  22. The floors have 4 wings basically in a plus sign, 2 wings for each gender. Each wing has a community bathroom for the single gender wing. The common areas are all in the middle. She thinks it’s great and has friends all over the dorm because they are forced to interact, so it’s right up her alley. She is highly social unlike her parents, she might have been traded out at the hospital.
  23. Don’t know whether you have a guy/girl, but coming from out of state to a SEC state school is tough going Greek. The primary ones pull from known instate schools, friend groups, legacy, etc so it’s hard to break through to a top tier from out of state. Daughter rushed UGA and she has 3 close friends that rushed Auburn. All had good experiences but all were focused on the mid/low tier sororities and were more interested in the experience than status. My daughter ended up where she needed to but it took a little while for her to come to that realization.
  24. It depends a lot on where they are at and also where they live. My oldest is in a coed dorm with community bathrooms and her experience is similar to mine. They have open doors, all hang out together, go out and travel together, and come and go in all the rooms, etc. She’s dead set on living in a 5 girl room at the sorority house next year. I think she’s nuts, but she’s enjoying the social aspect. The girls in the apartment style dorms that she knows aren’t having the same experience and are probably more like what you see.
  25. Federal income tax is not getting replaced, it’s a waste of time to even discuss it.
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