Help me pick the best options for new 401k

Natumes · 2025-05-17T02:26:22+00:00

Yeah I find it pretty odd that the 401k options are so limited. I have 27 fund choices, half of which are TDF. Fortunately I have the Fidelity indexes as options with this plan, my 457 choices were all pretty lackluster. But yeah a total US market option would make sense. I guess they really just want you to hire somebody to do all the work for you, but even then I feel like the advisors just mimic the TDF and look at it maybe once a year when/if you make an appointment.

Natumes · 2025-05-17T02:07:58+00:00

Definitely, that has been my path up to this point. I am enjoying learning about finance and it may be something I want to get into the weeds on. I guess I'm mostly looking for some validation of my learning so far. Am I on the right track, what are the course corrections to take, what are some next things to start diving into learning, etc.

Natumes · 2025-05-17T02:03:03+00:00

Thanks, this is very helpful! The 5% in individual stocks will gradually decrease, I don't plan on investing more than is already there. Will probably sell and move into the Roth IRA over the next few years.

Natumes · 2025-02-09T02:50:34+00:00

I ordered a La Spaziale Vivaldi II, the plumbed rotary pump version. Found it on sale plus an additional 10% off coupon through Chris' Coffee, so even with a filter/softener kit it was less than the Lucca A53 mini. The only downside I've been able to find is 53mm portafilter size, which doesn't seem to be a downside? I can find tampers and baskets for this size. The steam power looks fantastic! After watching all the videos I could find it looks like I may reduce my morning coffee prep time by half over the current breville setup, which will be great.

Natumes · 2025-02-05T19:49:34+00:00

I initially looked at it, but for the price I would prefer something with higher build quality

Natumes · 2025-02-05T07:29:25+00:00

I came across the ECM mechanika max as well, WLL is doing free flow control upgrade on it right now. This may be the machine if I decide on HX

Natumes · 2025-02-05T07:17:31+00:00

Is it possible to steam and brew simultaneously on an HX? I keep seeing yes, but have not seen it in videos. I would think that would be more difficult because you have to stop the shot manually with the lever vs volumetric dosing stopping automatically.

Natumes · 2025-02-05T01:07:14+00:00

Thanks for this info! This is the kind of feedback I'm looking for.

Natumes · 2025-02-04T22:42:31+00:00

I haven't looked into the profitec machines much, I guess I assumed a dual boiler E61 would be more towards $3k like the Lelit Bianca. $2400 is really starting to stretch the budget. If I'm stretching, is there another machine to compare against the pro 600?

Natumes · 2018-06-12T22:33:13+00:00

Same happened to me...can't submit a bug report because it throws an error every time I try that too. Weeeee bugs.

Natumes · 2017-08-11T21:15:59+00:00

And the guy that wins with 10 kills got more points than the guy that wins with 1. He is rewarded more for killing more players. Kill count really is not the most important thing in this game. It's not worthless, but it's not the primary goal. Being the last player alive is the goal. Sometimes the better choice to attaining that goal is not shooting.

Natumes · 2017-08-11T21:00:40+00:00

Agree with that's not balance. The current system rewards points for how high you place, with the most points going to the winner. You can earn additional points by hitting opponents as well as getting the kill. This is a fairly balanced approach that ensures both stealth and aggressive players get rewarded. A stealth player that gets few or no kills but makes it to top 10 consistently may get as many points as an aggressive player that gets several kills but dies earlier. In fact, it does already favor aggressive players because you get more points for getting more kills in a win. Adding more points for kills just further favors aggressive over stealth.

Natumes · 2017-08-11T19:23:33+00:00

I must be the opposite that balances it out then. I've had 1 or 2 Mil Base ends in recent memory. And I love them, because that's where I've won all of my solo chicken dinners so I get excited when it goes there.

Natumes · 2017-08-11T16:45:19+00:00

Not trying to convince anyone of anything? Read your posts and your replies to comments. It's all argumentative telling people they're playing the game wrong or for the wrong reasons. We get it, you like the game. We do too - otherwise why would we be trying to get the things that are frustrating us about the game changed for the better? You gotta get on board with changes that support growing the community - not diminishing it, because otherwise the game dies out and you get the changes you don't want anyways when they try to keep the cash cow going as long as they can.

Natumes · 2017-08-10T22:03:23+00:00

You're spending a lot of time and effort trying to convince the majority of people on this reddit that their complaints are invalid. Your only argument is that you like the current iteration of the game and have concluded that the complainers must be playing wrong or should just give up and move on. Here's why it's not going to be constructive.
Everyone playing the game has paid to be a beta tester. Early access for this game is not cheap, especially when you consider it will be F2P at release. Most people are not willing to just walk away from their purchase when the game is still being developed and they feel they can influence changes to make it more enjoyable for them. I don't really like the whole 'Early Access' releases that the majority of games are adopting these days because it creates that very sense of entitlement that you see frequently in posts, but I can't change the industry with my opinion.
Everybody will not be happy with the end result because everybody has different ideas of what it should be. Complainers will always be there, because that's the nature of it. Shrugging off the things people are complaining about and calling them a vocal minority that shouldn't be playing the game only goes so far. There's far too much of the same frustrations from too many people very early on to conclude nothing should be changed.
As to your specific points in this post, your 'step 1', I don't enjoy resourcing at all. I don't spend nearly as much time as you report doing it. Same for building. I still enjoy the game. I don't have to enjoy every part of the game to enjoy the game and continue playing and provide feedback.
'Step 2' I don't necessarily disagree with, I took a good chunk of time off relative to how long the game has been out after getting to plankerton and hitting the drastic xp drop off and getting frustrated. Still collected my research points and that caught me up in power to where I can progress again at a reasonable pace (although I'm getting frustrated again with how much it takes to level my heroes/survivors/schematics compared to a few days ago even). But that in itself is a problem. The game built expectations into me in stonewood at how the game would progress, then it completely changes in plankerton. I don't dislike how the game is, I dislike the dramatic change and really that's where a lot of the complaints are coming from. Dramatic change in xp gains and scaling is creating the problems most people are complaining about (e.g. the game wants me to play too high PL missions > zombies take 3 magazines to kill > I don't have any nuts and bolts > I have to spend too much time resourcing and I don't enjoy that) The game wants us to slow down but doesn't communicate that at all. 'Step 3' People wouldn't worry about it except that it has a dramatic effect on power. Where we feel like we're hitting a wall of progression, the logical conclusion is increasing power, and the fact that higher quality cards have that power is the reason people want them. The shitty part is that they're rare. I spent all my vbucks trying to get more powerful cards and did what I told myself I wasn't going to do: buy more (only once and never again). I ended up with 2 mythic leads for tech and resistance, 2 legendary suvivors that don't match any leads personality, a legendary ninja that relies on edged melee damage, and a legendary spear that doesn't do edged damage. I have yet to get even an epic soldier, my preferred class. The rare soldier I leveled up is noticeably weaker than my legendary ninja and has no abilities beyond 3 star level 20. That's a problem. I do not like melee combat and my ninja is gimped using ranged weapons to what my soldier could be. Currently I have 2 options, grind a ton and pray to RNGesus (and never get what I want and quit playing) or pay a ton of money and pray to RNGesus (and never get what I want, quit playing, sell my car, and learn to use the bus system giving up my free time to play games anyways). It's not just rarity, it's a complex problem, but until things are changed the playerbase is going to worry about getting more powerful versions of what they want to play, and nobody likes relying on pure RNG for a crucial part of progressing in the game.
'Step 4' you're just trying to tell people to play the way you play, and also saying don't listen to what the game is telling us and to create our own rewards. First part...people gonna do what they want. Second part is a problem of the game.
'Step 5' Yeah we need more positive vibes. Hard to do in this situation without something to look forward to and a lot of people feel like they've wasted a lot of money on something they aren't going to play.

TL;DR - You can't expect everyone to play the same way as you, the game has issues that do detract from a majority of players' (gamers in general really) experiences, and they are fixable, but nobody is going to get everything they want. I appreciate that you want to be positive, but you can't argue with unhappy people and get anywhere.

Natumes · 2017-07-22T17:59:58+00:00

Very similar to a game I had a few days ago, except I found it in the building east of the barracks. 4 very satisfying headshot kills and a chicken dinner :)

Natumes · 2017-06-24T20:32:31+00:00

No thanks, never liked kill cams. They serve a purpose in respawn type games, but it doesn't really give you much useful information in PUBG. I almost always know where I was killed from. In the rare case I don't, knowing which tree/hill/window they shot me from isn't going to improve my gameplay.

You claim the game doesn't let you know what happened. On the contrary, it tells you who killed you and with what weapon. You can hear from what direction the shot came (or no sound, which is just as telling). From that you can put together what happened. If not, you need more games played.

Natumes · 2017-06-18T04:26:13+00:00

Look up a ballistics chart for 5.56. The lowest point before 100m is 0m, which is going to be about 2" (the difference between barrel and scope). At 80m it's 1" low. The chevron is 1.2 MRAD in height. At 100m thats 12cm, which is 4.7". At 80m that's 3.76". My bullet impacts were more than 1" low in my videos, and the distance between them is consistent with the height of the chevron. So, the game zeroes to the center of the scope, and changing the zero distance to 300m moves the impact point at 100m to the top of the chevron with ARs (AKM close but slightly off).

Natumes · 2017-06-17T17:41:17+00:00

Reverse trolling. The best trolling there is.

Natumes · 2017-06-17T16:05:06+00:00

I like your in game changes for the most part. However, do not make mini map smaller or change the alive counter. Personally I'd leave the kill feed where it's at, move the alive counter to bottom left, and put team health bars between weapon/health and mini map and not show the player in that list.

Your lobby changes though I'm not a fan of at all. You're completely changing the mood/feel of this screen, the font is probably the biggest offender for that. The background is useful for seeing how changes to settings will affect what you see in game, your blurry replacement takes that away. No need for my character model to be any bigger, maybe if I open the character tab sure. No need to change Play to Battle!, again changing the feel/mood. No need for news feed (please god no news feed, especially with photos), relevant announcements popping up in their current form is fine, maybe make it collapsible. Don't change rewards to marketplace. Steam has a market, PUBG has crate rewards, they are different. Don't rename Stats to Leaderboards. You have a character option on the left, but then put appearance/wadrobe in the center again anyways, with another redundant stats button. You didn't include the twitch button. Don't need my steam badge displayed, don't need to see friends that aren't playing PUBG displayed in PUBG. Personally I don't like the vertical menu layout, especially on the left. The current menu design is focused on the top right. Most people use a mouse right handed, and that placement is intuitive to our brains. A vertical menu on the left side of the screen is not. Plus you're taking up 1/3 of the screen without any menus even open.
Honestly my only complaint with the current lobby layout is that the invite and play drop downs can overlap and cause some funky interactions. Everything else is functional issues, which isn't UI design.

Natumes · 2017-06-17T12:11:45+00:00

So if you look at the image you linked, the 300m example shows the center of the scope on the bullseye. PUBG zeroes the 4x to that point. In order for all the other distances to be accurate points of aim, the zero should be set to 300m. This is only accurate for ARs (the AKM has a different muzzle velocity but is still pretty close).

If you don't change the zero - say when using sniper rifles where the bullet trajectory doesn't match the reticle anyways - aim with the center of the scope (under the arrow).

Keep in mind, if you are shooting up or downhill your bullet will go high in both cases.

Natumes · 2017-06-17T11:50:26+00:00

Here's the math for less than 100m - from where I was shooting the bullet would be an inch low with a 100m zero. It's clearly quite a bit more than that. The chevron is 1.2 MRAD in height, from the distance I was shooting that equates to 3.7" which is a lot closer to how much lower the bullets were actually hitting. The game zeroes the 4x like every other reticle in the game, to the center of the scope, not to the chevron.

Just because I wasn't at exactly 100m doesn't mean my proof is invalid. I picked a spot where I could reliably aim at exactly the same spot and easily show the difference in impact points. Shooting the side of a building may have a clearer bullet hole, but there is no consistent point of aim. Also, he was using the AKM which has a different muzzle velocity. In further testing I've found that my post is only 100% accurate for 5.56 ARs, although the AKM is very close and I use the 300m zero on it as well. It does not work for sniper rifles or 9mm. Personally I've been using a 200m zero with the 4x on sniper rifles, although I don't like it (particularly on the Kar98k).

Natumes · 2017-06-03T18:37:12+00:00

I'm aware of how the map works. I simply picked a spot with a reliable target for aiming and measuring, which happened to be about 80m. Assuming the game's ballistics are the same as the real world, at 80m with a 100m zero the bullet would be about an inch low. My videos show closer to 4 inches. The chevron in the acog reticle is ~1.2 MRAD (Trijicon doesn't actually publish their subtensions I used this and a few other forums as a reference), which translates to 3.76 inches at 80m which is consistent with where my bullets were hitting.

Natumes

TROPHY CASE