ajtaylor

I was there in January and you're absolutely right - they are far, far larger than I ever imagined! Standing beside one, you basically disappear compared to the tree.

My coworker has type 1 and she said that life for her using the immunosuppressive drugs would be much worse since she has hers under control with a pump & continuous monitoring. But she also said that she knew someone who had gone blind, had kidneys shutdown, etc because they couldn't control it. This study seems to be targeted more at this class of type 1 diabetics.

I'm not a musician and I've never heard of a Kemper before, but that's one amazing piece of kit!

This could be very useful in LA, where the traffic NEVER goes at a single speed for more than about 30 seconds.

The only question that matters right now is: did stage 1 land successfully on the barge???

What about support for Roku? I love my Roku 3.

Beyond being annoying in the extreme, this surely must run afoul of the advertising source's rules. I couldn't even finish reading the page because the ads kept popping up and distracting me!

I've got the 20/200 package as well and I can consistently max the connection on both speedtests as well as actual downloading. No beefs with TW's service here.

No, the visa holder is required to provide proof of private medical insurance (which costs more than your standard private insurance). My employer did not pay for this policy.

The local middle school in my suburb was mediocre (north of Hornsby). I'm sure there are others that are much better. (One of) the final straws was when her math teacher gave her a calculator when she continued to ask for help with math. The other was when the principal embarrassed her in front of the entire school assembly because of an technical issue with her uniform.

At the time, I couldn't find any information on withholding exceptions for Medicare tax. It worked out in the end though because we got a large refund for the un-refunded amount as we prepared to leave the country.

We loved our time in Australia, so please don't construe my comments as disparaging the country in general. It was a sad day as we flew away to the US.

A co-worker recently moved from France to the US after living for decades over there so I'll have to ask his opinion ;)

I'm in the opposite situation - recently moved back to the US after many years living abroad. Not having Chip & Pin or those neat wireless card terminals is weird. Signing for everything just feels so archaic!

The CEO's comments about 457 requirements reminded me of my recent experience working in Sydney on a 457. Not having access to the public health system was annoying (though luckily not too expensive because my family was generally healthy). What really annoyed me was having to pay the Medicare tax every fortnight, then claiming it back at the end of the year when I filed taxes. I don't like giving an interest-free loan to the government. Either give me access to the system, or don't tax me because you know I can't use Medicare!

The changes to LAFHA policy would have affected me very dramatically had my employer not given me a large raise to cover the difference. It completely boggles my mind that while I was paying the same tax as an Australian citizen, I had to pay out-of-pocket for my daughter's education (this was a NSW thing but is slowly spreading to other states). The mediocre local public school was $5k per child, so I spent $10k instead and sent her to a great private school.

It is clear to me that the Australian government is only interested in soaking foreign workers for as much as they could get away with. They clearly are not interested in anything other than digging stuff up out of the ground and selling it.

I worked in Chatswood for 4 years and the amount of development that went up (or finished) was incredible! Right around the Chatswood station there are 3 or 4 new high rise apartment buildings. All the new shops that opened up were a boon for lunch time offerings :)

I loved Stargate Universe! It was just getting really good when the series was cancelled. :(

The weather is most definitely consistent - consistently cool and very, very rarely hot.

Having lived in Ireland for 4 years, I can say that the physical environment was a mixed bag. Yes, it's beautifully green everywhere, but at the cost of tons of rain and cold, clammy days.

Or maybe you were referring to the political climate?

The sound of the engine made me drool. And being able to do it hands off... that's some damn fine engineering and software!

The IRS has no say in the tax code. Their only job is to enforce the law as it is currently written. If you want the tax code to change, talk to your Congressman.

For one thing, it helps when googling for more information.

Completely agree about Spotify radio. It sucks enough (repeats primarily) that I haven't used it in a long time. Fixing it to work more like Pandora would be awesome.

To be more precise, Apple Music has a bunch of people on the free trial. The more interesting metric will to see how many of those people convert to active, paying accounts after 3 months.

I've been pleasantly surprised at my Discover Weekly picks, the existence of which was pointed out to me by my 12 yr old daughter. Now I'll have to look at the Fresh Finds playlist to see if I can find new bands that tickle my fancy. The continual stream of new playlists is one of the main reasons why I have no plans to switch from Spotify to a competitor.

For instance, Feelin' Good [1] has been my commute playlist this week. It's gems like these that make Spotify so useful for me and well worth the $20/mo for a Family plan.

[1] https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify/playlist/1B9o7mER9kfxb...

Any settlement which allows the company to only pay a fine and not admit wrongdoing is not a deterrent against future wrongdoing. The fine nearly always is far outweighed by the profit. It wouldn't surprise me to discover that the potential for fines are part of the product planning process.

According to the car computer over the last few days, my e-Golf got between 3.5 and 4.1 miles/kWh so your estimate is pretty close.

Take a look at the VW e-Golf. It retails for $34k, seats 5, is still VERY fun to drive with great performance. However, it will fail on your range and charging time requirements. For a shorter commute I think it might work pretty well for you.

I just leased a 2015 VW e-Golf last week so this is particularly relevant to me. It will be a commuter car and from the few days of driving it so far, this will be perfect for me. The amazing thing is getting into the car and having it be perfectly silent. The next thing that astonished me was just how fast it could be from a standstill. Plus it's a Golf and my love of Golfs can be found by looking through my comment history here.

I'll admit that I'm still dealing with a bit of range anxiety, but I haven't come close to being truly scared of running out of juice. I generally run it in Eco mode w/ the regenerative braking in mode 1 or 2 so I often make back 10-20 miles of range during hilly drives.

There is plenty of evidence to conclude that fines and DPA don't work to change behavior. From my perspective, the only thing that stands a chance of affecting bank's (and other large corporation's) conduct is jail-time for executives. By all means put the little guys away who pushed the buttons, but make sure some higher ups also go to jail because ultimately they are responsible for the conduct of their business unit.

Also, Congress should put together a law which forbids use of fines/sanctions as tax write offs. Not only are the fines not big enough, but they reduce taxable income! IIRC the Bank of America fines last year were used to write off hundreds of millions of dollars. It's inconceivable how corrupt the whole system has become.

You beat me to it. While you can "avoid" the debt by working around it, you're still paying by having to implement the workarounds rather than being able to do it in a more straightforward manner. All you're doing is swapping interest costs with opportunity costs. The piper has to be paid, one way or the other.

As a soon-to-be resident of LA I'm very glad to hear that the smog situation is much improved.

Couldn't agree more about how much fun the TDI's are to drive! Simply a blast on tight, curvy roads.

Your note about the Tiguan makes me sad. I'm moving back to the US next week and was seriously thinking about getting a Tiguan (and hoping for a diesel). I'll add the Sportwagen TDI to my list.