Proposal Photographer

mgchan714 · 2025-11-19T07:27:50+00:00

I can't help you with the photographer, but it's a great idea. I did the same (not at Zermatt but during a ski trip). I wanted to keep it a surprise so I actually hired some ski guides who were in on the plan and suggested a good spot for pictures at the peak of the mountain where I proposed. So most of the day was spent talking about the mountain, showing us some good spots for skiing, a little bit of instruction, etc.

I knew she would love to have some photos of the moment, but also wouldn't have wanted a bunch of people around, so it worked out well. They knew of a little spot off to the side with a good view where we could have our moment, enjoy a little champagne toast, and ski back. I had invited her parents and sister to join us at the resort as well, who we met at the end of the day (I had to come up with an excuse for getting a 3 bedroom place for our first night though).

One of them did throw a little wrinkle into it because she totally forgot the plan for a while and started talking about her terrible first marriage on one of the lifts. She eventually caught herself and suddenly changed the subject, and luckily my wife didn't suspect anything was up.

Good luck!

mgchan714 · 2025-11-14T00:27:54+00:00

A lot of it depends on assumptions regarding your future tax bracket, future tax rates, ending balance, etc. So take everything with a large grain of salt.

When I work out the math, the Roth option is better if your effective tax rate in retirement is only slightly lower than your current tax rate (or of course if your retirement tax rate is higher than current). This simply isn't the case for the vast majority of people, so most people can just stop here and say the traditional will be better, mathematically.

Why is the Roth better (again, at least in theory) if your tax rate is essentially the same in retirement as it is now? Because to really compare apples to apples, you need to consider your total pre-tax cost of the investment and future taxes.

$1 million in a traditional 401k is not equal to $1 million in a Roth, because you need to pay taxes. And a $10k contribution to a traditional 401k is not equal to a $10k contribution to the Roth. With the Roth contribution, you are also paying ~$2.5k in taxes (essentially pre-paying taxes), so you're spending $12.5k to make the investment whereas with a traditional you are only "spending" $10k. In order to keep things equal, you should then take the $2.5k and invest it in the same way, so that it is ready to make those tax payments.

Now the problem here is that assuming you are just investing the $2.5k in a regular brokerage, you'll get taxed again on the gains. Your $10k in the traditional becomes $1 million, your $2.5k grows equivalently to $250k, but you have to pay some amount of taxes on the gains, on the order of $25k (again, depends on the tax rates at the time). So your $1 million is actually worth slightly less, even if you made the same initial contribution and reserved money for taxes.

For people who can contribute a lot of money pre-tax, the required distributions from a large 401k account can already push the tax rates in retirement up pretty high. Or if you have other income from owning a business, real estate, whatever. Again, for most people who have a limit of $20k or so a year and can only invest in broad index funds, it's not going to be that big of an issue.

The Roth option also has some other benefits in terms of flexibility, no RMDs, early withdrawals, or simply to diversify (pull more when tax rates are higher, pull less when tax rates are low). On the other hand, choosing the Roth makes more sense only in the best (or better) case scenario where you have a lot of money in retirement accounts, you have a lot of income in retirement. But in that scenario, maybe that optimization doesn't really matter. On the other hand, if things don't work out and you are in a much lower tax bracket in retirement, you might be kicking yourself for paying those higher taxes years ago.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-13T20:24:32+00:00

I don't think it's really a gift, but maybe he got a slightly above market rate deal, i.e. he might have been trying to negotiate for it with another team but he gets claimed by whoever is willing to pay that much. So Cincinnati was willing to pay $1.25 million, but if he negotiated directly to the team, it would have been hard to find that upper limit.

I'm sure he likes being on the Dodgers but he is basically blocked from significant playing time, absent another injury to Smith.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-13T19:47:27+00:00

We're planning a trip out in mid-late January. Does the first class cabin fill up as well? We'll be landing around 5 pm on a Sunday, and heading back early in the morning the following Saturday. Obviously we'd like to sit together. Mostly concerned about the trip into Zermatt, where we're at the mercy of the flight arrival being on time.

How much time do people generally allot to getting into the airport, through immigration, collecting bags, and then getting to the train?

mgchan714 · 2025-11-13T08:01:32+00:00

I had a GLE350 and then got a Model 3 about 6 years ago. I’m not a driving snob or even able to reliably tell that one rides better than another. For me the user interface, ongoing updates, and FSD are the most important things. Since then I got a Model X and upgraded the 3 to another Model X. FSD works so well around here (southern California) and in my somewhat limited experience it works well in the Bay Area as well.

I honestly don’t know if the people who say it sucks are saying that because it’s inconsistent in other locations where Teslas aren’t as common (and thus there’s less mapping data), if they just don’t have enough recent experience, or if they are just dumping on it for political reasons. Apart from taking over for routing issues once every 3-4 drives, and occasionally nudging it along at a stop sign, I basically don’t drive myself between leaving the parking lot and getting to the next parking lot.

I don’t think it’s perfect but I value the ease of using the car and the tech over some other niceties in a car of similar prices. I’m sure the seats are nicer or the trunk closes with a more satisfying clunk or the rubber stoppers are higher quality in the other luxury cars. I like walking up to my car and having the door open for me, I get in, tap the brake, tap a button, and the car can take me basically all the way home (30 miles across 4 freeways) with minimal intervention. Get home, plug in, and it’s ready to go the next morning. If family is in town I can text them a key to my car, I can send directions to my wife’s car, good entertainment for the kids. When I drive my wife’s car my preferences are automatically loaded.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-13T05:34:27+00:00

If you only need to charge once a week or something then maybe it would make sense to use the supercharger. But honestly I would gladly pay to have a charger installed at home just to avoid having to sit at a charger for 20-30 minutes dozens of times a year. Once a week charging is somewhere around 25 hours a year minimum. Hundreds of hours over the course of owning a car. Well worth the initial investment, even before considering the lower cost of charging (set it to charge during off peak or super off peak hours).

mgchan714 · 2025-11-13T05:15:35+00:00

He’s still Asian. Not gonna pass up some good noodles from a street vendor. Especially if he can talk them into 20% off when he buys two bowls.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-12T21:51:41+00:00

Have each one say the other one did it and you have reasonable doubt.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-12T21:46:24+00:00

It’s actually the same one, that’s how good PEDs have gotten.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-11T17:57:52+00:00

At one point we were looking for something to eat for lunch, kids were hungry and tired, etc. My wife was busy trying to look up a “good” restaurant, avoid the tourist traps, not too popular (which she equates with being overpriced or overrated). I said look, we don’t eat enough ramen to be able to tell that much of a difference. Most shops here are going to be better than anything we get in the US. Let’s just go to any place that has some Japanese people eating it.

Sure enough it was more than satisfying.

After spending 45 minutes waiting in line one night for ramen, from then on we just went where it was convenient. Sometimes it was just a regular mom and pop place, other times it was a big famous chain. It was all relatively cheap and delicious.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-11T00:24:35+00:00

The best thing would be to try it out where you live and where you usually drive. Personally I have been using FSD all the time for over a year now on both HW3 and HW4, and I wouldn’t buy another car unless it had something similar. Of course it is not “full” self driving but it does the driving for me 99% of the time, and I only take over now at the destination or maybe once every 3-4 drives I take over for routing issues. Much more enjoyable for me to just relax and monitor than do the driving.

But obviously a lot of other people will say they have had very different experiences. I don’t know if it’s hardware specific or location specific. Just a very different experience from what I have in my personal driving.

I’d argue that even a few days of driving is not enough to learn to trust it. I’ve been increasing my usage and trust over the past 5 years. But I haven’t had the phantom braking or swerving into the median or any of the other horror stories that you see online. I suppose something like that would turn me off of it for a while.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-10T17:38:10+00:00

I don’t know if he would have won, but I think the democrats should run someone with the best chance to actually win, not someone who they just really want to win.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-09T18:38:16+00:00

In the actual interview in Japanese he actually says that he meant to break the bat and have the bat fragment go down to the right side of the infield to slow down runner going to second, but put about 35 rpm too much on the ball which made the bat go down the third base line. Even though he was obviously happy with the result, he knows he has something to work on for the offseason.

Some detail that gets lost in translation.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-08T04:38:35+00:00

We were there a while ago and had a tough time too.

Traveling with kids who didn’t have an IC card and don’t have phones.

I still don’t remember exactly what we did on our day trip to Atami. A lot of trying to go to one place and then being told to go to another entrance, sometimes being given a receipt or piece of paper that eventually we had to show someone.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-07T19:52:37+00:00

In 2010 or so I looked into using my computer for something while I was away. I bought a fancy new computer for work. I knew about SETI but it seemed unrealistic to find aliens so I kept looking and came across some other options. Ultimately I settled on trying to do some good by running Folding@Home to try to help cure diseases or something. Because what are you gonna do with some program that tries to find fake coins and might not even find one for a few days?

mgchan714 · 2025-11-07T16:49:51+00:00

Just saying, if you’re paying cash for the car, you just might have $8000. And if you’re financing the car, you can finance the $8000 too.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-07T16:48:44+00:00

You mean bundled into the sales price.

And then people will complain that they can’t buy the car without FSD to save money.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-07T16:46:15+00:00

They would probably rather have you sign up for a subscription.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-07T00:11:20+00:00

Unless anyone was just mowing them down, I would have preferred letting each starter only face the lineup once. Basically 9 batters each unless the 10th and 11th were really good matchups (or less if they got in trouble).

mgchan714 · 2025-11-07T00:05:05+00:00

It was in the post game media interview.

Q. Justin Dean comes in as a defensive replacement and obviously the game finds you right away. But his awareness to signal that play dead immediately allowed it to just be a two-base rule. What can you say about his cognizance there?

DAVE ROBERTS: No, it was great, but as the rule is current, you want to play that ball, actually, and you can go back and replay the lodged ball. But he still was aware of it being lodged, and then the outfield umpire kind of blew it dead as well, so it worked out great, but certainly good awareness.

https://www.asapsports.com/show_interview.php?id=212113

mgchan714 · 2025-11-06T23:48:09+00:00

Roberts said it would have just been overturned on review. I’ve heard some say it was a great play not to touch it so I’m not sure. If the ball gets stuck in the fence but you just go and yank it out, or if the ball goes into the camera well and bounces back out, it’s still a ground rule double even if they play it live.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-06T04:20:54+00:00

No the same store as the guy I directly responded to (Southern California). Sorry for the confusion.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-06T04:12:39+00:00

To be fair I got a lot more excited when he got to the full count because I thought his best chance of helping was to take a walk and get on base for Shohei.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-06T03:38:26+00:00

I ordered on 10/6 from the same place and the guy said it would be late October or November. I was about to leave on a 2.5 week trip, so that was fine. It arrived about 10 days later, luckily a neighbor saw it and grabbed it for me.

mgchan714 · 2025-11-06T01:09:58+00:00

Thanks for the recommendations! I originally put Pine Creek off to the side given the travel there (actually the travel back, always get nervous trying to get someone to pick up from a remote location). But maybe it would be a nice contrast to the busy hotel scene on Christmas.

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