"100% of people who do not save money do not have any!"--Dave Ramsey

[JSH]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Whatever are they smoking? Don't want.

You are comparing two very different things and two different weights.

Gross vehicle weight is the maximum weight a vehicle is rated for when fully loaded with fuel, passengers, and cargo. The legal maximum it can weigh on a scale.

The trophy truck weight is the minimum a race truck with no actual bed or cargo capacity is allowed to weigh to qualify to race.


The rules I quoted are what the federal government uses to move a vehicle classification from a passenger car to a SUV. They are the justification for giving that vehicle different fuel economy standards because they are designed to do things that a regular passenger car cannot do - travel off road. In the case of a 2WD vehicle it must both have enough ground clearance to actually go off-road AND a GVW over 6,000 lbs.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by freebeard

What would you call this?

All wheels, no clearance.

[Isaac Zachary]

Originally Posted by Xist

All wheels, no clearance.

It only has about 36,037ft of clearance over the Mariana Trench.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Xist -- "I bet that I will occupy more bandwidth emit a larger word count. "

I may submit more images than you.

Definitely more GIFs.

[Xist]

Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary

What's wrong with foreign cars? Mine are all foreign.

The new Nissan Versa starting at $16,000 seems like a good deal to me. It also comes with a manual transmission, what more could a guy want?

The guy with two Toyotas wants a Nissan

Nissans were okay before Renault bought them in 2002.

Somehow Mitsubishi is involved, too.

The only domestic vehicles I ever bought I purchased from my father and I don't think that I would buy one from anyone else.

He isn't around anymore, so that will not happen again.

People always tell me to buy a new Dodge whenever I mention needing minor repairs or maintenance.

Someone told me they always want a Toyota, but they can only afford a [new] piece of Chevy, so they more than pay the difference in repairs.

They are only kind of self-aware?

I don't know what these annoying people would say if they told me to buy a Dodge and I bought a Ford or piece of Chevy?

"At least you didn't buy a reliable Japanese car?"

MotorBiscuit says the cheapest Dodge is a Hornet, but it doesn't say that is a rebadged Alfa Romeo Tonale.

How hard is this junk for repair departments?

Hornet is a historic name; it was affixed to a full-size Hudson in the 1950s, a small AMC car in the 1970s, and a boxy 2006 Dodge concept.

Except this is an Italian crossover.

MotorBiscuit says

2023 Dodge Hornet: $30,590 MSRP

Motortrend says the 5-Year Cost to Own is $44,409.

[JSH]

Originally Posted by Xist

T

MotorBiscuit says the cheapest Dodge is a Hornet, but it doesn't say that is a rebadged Alfa Romeo Tonale.

How hard is this junk for repair departments?Except this is an Italian crossover.

MotorBiscuit says

Motortrend says the 5-Year Cost to Own is $44,409.

Dodge got rid of their cheap cars years ago. That Hornet is not targeted at someone looking for a cheap car. It is for someone that wants 270 hp / 295 lb-ft in a sporty compact crossover.

I am a bit confused about how Motor Trend decides what is good or bad for their total cost to own. The Hornet is $44,409 and "Poor". The Jeep Compass is $40,485 and "Good". However most of the difference is depreciation which is expected for a higher priced car and then fuel cost - which one should expect to get a much more powerful vehicle.

It would seem to me that value is based on the class of car you are buying not absolute cost

[Xist]

I am finishing my application for my second on-line SLP program. It asks for 3 strengths, 3 weaknesses, and what I am doing about the latter. I studied like crazy, but still missed things that the professor only said once, weren't in the textbook, but were on the test. I tried retaking on-line classes through Eastern New Mexico University, but apparently there are downsides to choosing the cheapest school in the U.S. I started writing that if I am not accepted this year I will start retaking classes elsewhere, and then wondered what the second-cheapest school was, so I asked ChatGPT, and it responded with programs ranging from $20,000 annually at Columbia College in South Carolina to $32,000 at Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

I asked "How does this compare with ENMU?" and it responded that MUMU costs $17,000 per year.
I asked "Are there any other colleges offering on-line speech pathology classes for less than $20,000 annually?"
West Georgia, Arkansas at Little Rock, and South Dakota are around $10,000 yearly.

So, why the heck did it waste my time with schools that cost a couple times as much?!

I am pretty sure that someone said a school in Utah was second-cheapest, but I have not been able to find that, and I have not been impressed by the tuitions I see on-line.
I asked ChatGPT and it just told me which schools have undergraduate speech programs, but said it couldn't find any information on their tuition, so I started looking, and excuse my language, but Rocky Mountain University sucks.
I keep searching for speech therapy and it keeps trying to make me read about their Doctor of Nursing Practice Degree/Family Nurse Practitioner program.


It only took 5 minutes to find out that UOnline undergraduate tuition for 2022-2023 is $260 per credit hour for both Utah residents and non-residents., but it still seems like it should have been easier to find. I found it right away for ASU, $561–$661 per credit hour.

Excitingly, I asked "According to https://online.utah.edu/tuition-fees/index.php, how much is undergraduate tuition per year?" and it responded with contradictory information from 5 different sources than the one I gave it.

"Yes, but according to the link I gave you, `UOnline undergraduate tuition for 2022-2023 is $260 per credit hour for both Utah residents and non-residents.'"
"I apologize for the confusion. You are correct."

Curiously, Western Undergraduate Exchange does not simply list their tuition and fees, they have a simple table showing on-line tuition for residents and non-residents taking 6 or 12 credits for undergraduate or graduate, but it says to download a PDF for the actual table, page 5.

Page 5 says:

Students who live out-of-state
Online courses will be charged special tuition only rates as follows:
Undergraduate: $382 per credit

However, further down it says:

WESTERN UNDERGRADUATE EXCHANGE (WUE)
Non-resident students who qualify for this program pay 150% of resident tuition rates

It looks like in-state tuition is $729.20 + $285.27 per credit, but of course they don't come out and say so.

West Georgia charges $60 + $182.13 per credit.

Apparently, Little Rock charges over $10,000 more for out-of-state students.

South Dakota says they charge $354.75 per credit, no fees, but they charge $314.40 for residents, and $103.50 for Communication Disorder students.

Just not on-line or did they neglect to mention that?

I verified that MUMU charges $275 per credit.

West Georgia	$606.39
MUMU	$825
South Dakota	$1,064.25
ASU	$1,683
Utah State	$2,377.52

West Georgia is cheaper than MUMU?!

[freebeard]

Is there any daylight that far down the rabbit hole?

1. So, why the heck did it waste my time with schools that cost a couple times as much?!
   
2. keep searching for speech therapy and it keeps trying to make me read about their Doctor of Nursing Practice Degree/Family Nurse Practitioner program.
   
3. "I apologize for the confusion. You are correct."

Personally, my starting position is that it's a means of social control. It steers you in a particular direction, and if you resist it soothes you with apologies.

Given it's patience and cpu cycles to burn, it will be like a pre-schoolers persistent 'why?'s, but in this case it will be 'why not?'

Humanity is going to be gaslighted into extinction.

[Xist]

For once I made a mistake that worked out better. I confused when the application for the school in Mesa was due and when the first on-line program had a deadline.

For some reason I prioritize doing things in-person more.

On the one hand, it frustrates me that there aren't many more on-line programs in 2023, but I have a vastly easier time focusing when there aren't distracting classmates.

With all of my applications and retaking 4 classes I probably could have found somewhere that would take my money by now.

I found a list of the easiest to get into SLP programs.

The top five have at least a 90% acceptance rate!

None were on-line or in Arizona, though.

I had been trying to write the essay for the second on-line program, which was due last night, apparently at midnight Maryland time.

These things never specify!

Please upload your personal statement that describes professional goals as well as three strengths and three areas of growth related to your place in a graduate program for speech-language pathology

I remembered 500 words, but not that it was the maximum.

I need to be honest, but not too honest--casually honest?

I didn't think that mentioning my worst challenges would do me any good, so I mentioned real ones, just

Anyway, I went to work on it, but I had been trying to find out when the first two programs made their final decisions. I couldn't find anything on-line, so I asked, and the professor in Mesa asked where I was in the application that I submitted 2 weeks ago.

I went to check the date and it just said "Undelivered."

Like when my e-mail or text messes up and I need to send again?

Eventually I found that at some point they decided that I needed to list every class was clearly written on my transcripts that I completed over 15 years ago and didn't have anything to do with anything relevant.

Of course, entering an entire Bachelor's degree from 16+ years ago was a pain, but they didn't even have several subjects that I took--like Portuguese!

So, I worry that they will kick it back again because I marked the wrong subject, even though they didn't have the right one!

I absolutely could not get it to save the second semester--back in 2000. I hit the help button, but that was automated and useless.

Unfortunately, the human was equally useless, but I finally reloaded the page. I lost all of the data I entered for a semester, but I was able to start over.

I finally finished it and resubmitted my applications. The Mesa school application arrived hours before its bizarrely East coast deadline, if I recall correctly, but I doubt the on-line program will consider an application that was incomplete for 2 weeks.

I finally ate and got ready to see my client.

I worked on my essay, but kept getting distracted, although I was not happy with it.

The paragraphs listing things I was trying to improve was longer than I liked and the parts about what I did well was too short, but I mixed positives and negatives to make the bad points sound better.

I printed a copy, asked Mom to read it, and then checked where the school is located, in case it made a difference.

Maryland.

I showered and Mom was finishing reading the essay.

I made the few changes she indicated, changed it to mention that I lived in Maryland and D.C. from 1998 to 2000, went to upload it, and it was already midnight Maryland time and I was locked out.

[Xist]

I was already rejected by some random on-line program I hadn't heard of.

They just responded yesterday that they would make their final decisions when they got to it.

I keep thinking about responding like this, but who has the time? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/student...er-own-letter/

I am sure that something speech-related would be ideal, although mentioning that I failed to get into another program, so I retook some classes, and kept working in the field would work.

Maybe something like trying to take anatomy the summer I came home from the Army and four groupmates in my four-person group dropped out before I was simply unable to prepare flashcards for 90 muscles, with diagrams, names, insertions, origins, and functions. I couldn't find any alternative to dropping out and retaking it in the fall.

I am doing my usual deep dive, but I don't plan on sharing the rest with you guys.

You don't deserve it!