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nsplayr

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Everything posted by nsplayr

  1. Not sure on how current UFT drops are working work, sorry. Having done the process twice previously though, here's how it went for me: Back when I went through Nav school with Magellan, we were a class early in the FY and my flight commander was quite gregarious and had made great relationships with the folks at AFPC, who happened to be co-located at Randolph. He apparently regularly went over there, brought candy, beers, told tall tales, charmed the ladies, etc.; god bless you Capt. Gerry. Long story short, when our drop came up he had us all fill out dream sheets a bit earlier than typical, and then went over to AFPC and tried to acquire the jets we wanted. He succeeded wildly! Everyone in our class got their first or second choice, understanding that folks who kinda knew they were near the bottom didn't ask for the moon. He then released the final class ranking and aircraft list the day before the drop and said, "Look, I got you all what you wanted, but you are free to change your minds. We'll pick in rank order from these airplanes. Good luck!" Our class held fast to our dream sheets and basically everyone walked away happy. It was a great night! I got hammered at the Auger Inn in volleyball shorts and a sports bra (Olympics themed drop night haha), eat your hearts out gents 😘. When I went through URT more recently I was a Guard guy so who cares how it went, right? I already had my assignment; problem solved. But for the active duty kids they got to rank MQ-9 or RQ-4 #1/#2, and for MQ-9 got to list I think a top three locations (e.g. Shaw, Creech, Cannon, etc.). My flight commander there (who was much less cool) then did some voodoo based on his judgement, what was available, class rank, etc. and we all just found out when we were called up in no particular order at drop night. He never even released our actual class rankings other than the DGs at graduation. Most people were fine, especially since the range of choices was much smaller to begin with, but the problem IMHO one of the dudes who was a DG (i.e. either #1 or #2 overall in our class of I think 23 studs) didn't even get his top aircraft. The flight commander in an executive decision assigned him to MQ-9s at Creech when what he really wanted was RQ-4s. Truly puzzling to (mildly) crush the dreams of a guy who worked his butt off and performed extremely well. OTOH another guy (not a DG but a top third performer) got the first-ever MQ-9s to Hurlburt so he could be close to his kids that his ex had anchored to NWFL. I got hammered at the Auger Inn once again dressed up as a woman (Captain Marvel for an Avengers theme), so there's a bit of a trend-line here... May the odds ever be in your favor!
  2. Look, Apple is only worth $3 trillion dollars, they can't afford world-class CGI here folks, come one!
  3. So what you're saying is you listened to a 14 minute podcast about three dudes fucking and liked it so much you wanted to share with all of the august members here on ole BO.net. You sure you're not an Eagle guy? 👀
  4. ^^ random embed of a podcast (static image vs a real video even, c'mon man!) of two random jabronies on a topic totally unrelated to anything else being discussed in the thread...care to give us a TL;DR? Also more on-topic, speaking as one of the very few resident liberals, the anti-semitism shown by those on the left since the Hamas attack on Israel has been disgusting. Truly WTF is up with the kids these days being outright pro-Hamas and skeptical of the veracity of the Holocaust. Tik Tok is melting brains man, delete that shit from any phone you can get your hands on, it's a CCP propaganda vector and I'm dead fucking serious, delete it from your phone, your kids' phones, etc. BLUF re: Israel...you can be pro-Israel and/or Jewish people and also anti-Bibi/Likud, and basically all people on the American left should be that IMHO.
  5. I have owned three EVs, all of which were/are great vehicles: One was made in Germany Plus production of that model now takes place in Tennessee One was made in Illinois One was made in California WTF are you talking about? China does make a lot of EVs (think BYD), but almost none of them are sold in the United States.
  6. Are you familiar with the region of the world known as "the Middle East?" Always buzzing with nefarious activity, we've fought a war or three over there, you might be able read about them in a book or newspaper or something. RIP to the three FKIA and speedy recovery to the FWIA. Fuck the IRGC and all their shitty friends. Y'all wanna play drone warfare? Fucking SEND IT, rip 2 airburst, 30 second TOF.
  7. Nope, just don't fuck it up and pay back the loan. The difference in interest can be your reward for being smart about it, there's really no tricks AFAIK.
  8. nsplayr

    USAA

    Their limitless cash back card was actually super legit, 2.5% cash back on everything with (as you might imagine) no limit. Best cash back card out there at the time by far. Then they nerfed it down to 1.5% and I stopped using it…industry best (at least that I can find) is 2%.
  9. https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/jetblue-spirit-airline-merger-blocked-4b2ba920 Spirit-Jet Blue rendezvous over for now it seems…
  10. For real man. There's an amazing little airport ~7 minutes from my house (KXNX) where I'd love to hangar a plane someday...but the hangar situation there is bleak. There are 23 port-a-ports and 40 t-hangars. The current waitlist has 53 guys ahead of me on it (!!!) and the dude that's #1 on the list, next to get a hangar, got on the list in February of 2016 😱 I am not smart on the economics of hangers - why is there such an acute shortage compared to the number of people who want a hangar? Why has the invisible hand not pushed through a shit load of t-hangar construction? It's not a lack of space at least at my local airport! #ThreadDerail
  11. Ya, not my first rodeo, just making a point that modern air travel at current prices (even Delta.com vs DTS prices) is awesome and people are wrong imagining there was a long-lost golden age of flying that was accessible to the same number of people as today. Better for pilots, way hotter FAs, great for the wealthy, yea sure. But today everyday people can fly to Europe or Asia for a week or two’s wages and that simply was not possible in that former era.
  12. I booked a flight in DTS from HDN to BNA (with a brief MSP layover) for $377 on Delta. Hot damn that’s a low price for a hell of a long flight! Air travel today is a modern miracle and people just love to bitch about things that even turn-of-the-century billionaires would kill to enjoy.
  13. Well sometimes the Feds lay down serious fines & convictions for Medicare fraud, but it’s not helpful when voters later put the lead perpetuator in the governor’s mansion of a large state and later the U.S. Senate 🙄 That likely puts a damper on serious enforcement efforts! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott
  14. I'm not screaming anything, in fact I rarely post here and overall am unsure why I'm wasting my time right this second. Trump admin started the trend, which I generally don't support, and Biden admin unfortunately continued it. I share your views that Mattis was good and Austin really hasn't been. I don't know her at all and so don't have a specific assessment there. My point was that as an opening argument, someone who is a real civilian is preferable to someone who is a recently retired flag officer. I hear you and agree not everyone is the same, there's just IMHO too many people who are "married to work" and too driven by fears, insecurities, greed, power, etc. and who cling on to top positions far too long. I hope to live my values when I get up to your ancient status and retire in a timely fashion both for my own life enjoyment and for the advancement and prospering of the subsequent generations. I have two numbers: "the number" and icing on the cake. I'll reach "the number" if I can TAFMS retire from the Guard, which is on track. Anything after that is for fun. Icing would be if my wife chooses to work again for a significant stretch and/or I make any money in my second hobby career, both of which seem somewhat likely. Icing on the cake to me means working approx. 0.5 FTE vs full-time, buying an airplane, and flying the (future) grandkids out for very expensive hamburgers. Hell, I might even build that canoe one day! Edit to add: for those having a hard time retiring, can't bring themselves to spend more than they're making just in investment returns, might be inheriting millions, or are planning on leaving their kids millions at death when the "kids" are in their 60s or 70s, I highly recommend the book Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. I liked the book a lot and got a lot out of it.
  15. As a bonafide elitist Dem who would not do anything to maintain power, I do care. I know some of y'all don't talk to many Dems these days it seems... I have never understood the Austin pick and don't know how you could possibly go to the ICU and not direct a member of your staff to inform the White House. In fact you would think he must have directed his staff not to say anything for this to have occured. If I was on Austin's staff, my first phone call would be to the WH Chief of Staff after the boss was admitted to give them a heads up. Specifics of this hospital stay aside, from the start I'm not a fan of waiving the requirement that flag officers should have been out of uniform for seven years. I didn't like the precedent set by approving a waiver for Mattis (even though liked Mattis, especially in a Trump admin), nor do I like that the traditional was continued when Congress approved a waiver for Austin. The SECDEF should be a straight-up civilian defense/security executive, not a very recently retired 4-star with all the active duty military political baggage that comes with it. Someone with a background like Kathleen Hicks, the current Deputy Secretary of Defense, should have been tapped for the top spot in the first place rather than a recently retired general or admiral. Also Austin is 70...for fucks sake Boomers, fucking retire already! Hand-build a canoe in your garage and let your grandchildren sleepover for the weekend. GTFO of high office and enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of labor. And I say this to all of you equally in the 65+ age range. When I am that age, I sure as hell won't be commuting to an office 6am-8pm, busting my hump flying around the world, dealing with Congress & pulling my hair our managing a gigantic organization. Screw that man - that could not possibly sound less appealing.
  16. HeloDude coming in defending the upstanding honor of 11Hs everywhere like...😂
  17. Truly a sign that there is not a loving, compassionate god that regularly intervenes in man’s affairs…
  18. Congress: Best I can do is 25 and a couple slicks for pilot pro 😆
  19. Booya! Proud of my former community. Very well deserved recognition that's long-overdue.
  20. I wish I had the drawing but one day during a long set of briefings I drew up a sketch for an AC-130S, the S stands for Shark. Holding tanks to keep the sharks alive, smaller breeds that fit in the common launch tubes already installed in the door, plunge the sharks out the ass of the airplane and of course you have frikin' laser beams on their foreheads. If I were king for a day we'd buy at least a dozen.
  21. YMMV of course, but I would not recommend a whole life insurance policy to nearly anyone. In terms of leaving money to heirs, is it going to be more than $12.92 million? If so, congrats, you have won at life. Or maybe not, IDK...personally I would spend more while I'm alive and not leave as much to my kids after I'm dead, but you can do what you'd like. If you're going to leave less than $12.92m, whole life shouldn't even be in the conversation. Almost regardless of your net worth, IMHO I'd rather just get market returns and pay long-term capital gains taxes in a regular-ass brokerage account vs suffer from below-market returns in a whole life insurance vehicle with a lot of added complexity & fees. BL: whole life insurance is really only a good deal if you sell whole life insurance.
  22. After 72 beers I'm pretty sure I'd be in the hospital, not a bonus hole 😂
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