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Certainly the B1G is going to represent a massive uphill climb in football. And yes, Edsall sucks. But using a game against the national championship-bound Seminoles as a presumptive yardstick for the B1G is the kind of thing that makes me say, "Welp, I can just go ahead and ignore that post." If Maryland fans continue to no-show a sucky product, then at least there will be revenue from Byrd takeovers by the likes of Michigan State, Ohio State, and Iowa. They'll show up to see their teams win and leave elevated levels of parking, admission, and concession dollars in Maryland's hands in the process. In the ACC, not even that money is in the offering. And that is worst case for the B1G, given where the football program is now. Attendance is already abysmal, second-worst among current B1G schools, beating only Northwestern. Short of dramatically improving the product on the field overnight, the key to improving home numbers is to draw in other teams' fans. Aside from the modest bump from Clemson, exactly zero home games did that last year in the ACC. This despite the fact that Maryland managed to beat exactly one ACC team at Byrd. So take a deep breath. Athletics will go from bad to solvent in the B1G, instead of continuing to hit every rung down the short ladder in the ACC.

My (supremely handy) wife is redoing her sister's deck with some kind of deck restore product while I do grade and drainage work on our own property. Divide and conquer. Not sure which product she chose for that deck, but her research indicated that you definitely can go wrong if you think they're all the same. Early reviews are that even with a relatively light color, the applied product retains noteworthy amounts of heat in the hot sun. She imagines the darker tints would make for an uncomfortable situation in bare feet. The stuff rolls on like wet concrete and dries ultra solid. Since it's a surface layer she suspects it will peel at least a bit within a few years, but this deck only gets light traffic so she's basically banking on it lasting a long time. I can't imagine it being easy to remove that product from a wood deck, so it's a calculated risk with a big downside. We built a 40' wheelchair ramp for her mother a couple of years ago, and simply coated the wood rolling surface with acrylic latex deck stain mixed with sand. That stuff hasn't given an inch despite being the wrong material for the job. Looks good too. It makes me wonder how much better the deck restore product ultimately will be. Sometimes good enough is good enough. We built a composite deck in 2009, but with TimberTech instead of Trex as we were warned to stay far away from the latter. Five years on, the TimberTech is marvelous and still looks fantastic. I scrub it once a year with mild soap and a push broom. Last year, for the first time, I pressure washed it on loooooow setting to freshen it up a bit. Kept the head far away from the deck surface for fear of ruining it. Turned out great. I am a TimberTech convert.

My advice is exactly the opposite. Go with asphalt. Concrete shows every oil drip, grease stain and blemish. It isn't black in color and therefore doesn't heat in the sun during the winter to give you that clutch "free" snow/ice melt after minor storms. So you'll be out there toiling away after each 3" squall, while the rest of the neighborhood is letting nature do that work for them. Clearing snow also can be a pain due to the shovel blade catching in the expansion joints, which over 20 years you likely will have to replace twice (at low cost and effort though, cheaper than topcoating asphalt). Snowblowers don't seem to catch those joints but a shovel will catch the damned things every time. Concrete's longevity means you're likely to get at least a little bit of cracking over the years, no matter how well the joints are laid out. Ever see a cracked or patched sidewalk? That's how your driveway could look someday. Asphalt takes a topcoat every so often to seal and refresh, but that's not done so frequently with concrete due to the higher cost and annoyance. So each little piece of tree crap and petroleum-based motorist lifestyle evidence that absorbs into your white driveway is going to be there for quite a while, even if you get out there for hours with the pressure washer every year or so to blast contaminants out of the concrete. This is just my opinion, but a nice dark asphalt driveway just makes a house look better too. Concrete driveways tend to be sterile, blotchy, and (despite the high initial cost) cheap looking. They also distract from the look of the home, either by being new-looking and bright white or by being old looking and yellowed/ugly. An asphalt driveway blends better visually and lets your home/landscaping be the elements of the property that really "pop" and draw the eye. I personally find it to be a very rare occurrence when a concrete driveway adds to a home's curb appeal instead of detracting from it. Something to think about for resale value, as the choice of driveway material is likely permanent. Asphalt definitely is cheaper to own, once you already own it. But let's be honest... assuming you have a competent installer, the initial cost is overwhelmingly the greatest driveway cost you will ever incur. Neither concrete nor asphalt are major annual cost drivers for home ownership.

Nice! Is it okay if I looked at your house and expected to see Biff Tannen in the driveway waxing George McFly's BMW?

LD wins. I'm happy to do electrical -- but unless it's PVC drain lines, I don't do plumbing. And I hope never to discover whether or not I do chimney tear-outs. I lived through one of those as a tenant in Boston... barely.

I'm currently about halfway through laying solid oak hardwood through most of my first floor, in preparation for sale. The only enemy here is tedium. I no longer even need the knee pads. My knees are just used to it now. That aspect of it is actually pretty great. Auto-synthesized titanium patellas. Didn't know I had those. Finding a good first line to lay flooring against, in a house full of slightly funny walls, is less great... lots of consideration of key sight lines vs. walls nobody will care about vs. splitting the difference when there's nowhere to hide. You can learn an awful lot about the construction of your house by putting down hardwood.

Still open to any suggestions from driveway experts, per post #447 above. (...Less open to suggestions from people who have never actually had to live with a crappy concrete driveway.)

Speaking of driveway rescues, the original owner of my house was a dumbass and decided to pour a white concrete driveway in a neighborhood filled with asphalt driveways. It was a mistake for so, so many reasons. Resealing asphalt every now and again is nothing in comparison with the various forms of daily sadness one suffers with concrete. But ripping out a 50' x 20' reinforced concrete driveway and starting over with asphalt isn't worth the money. I would happily settle for a black concrete driveway, however - were it at all possible to stain the existing concrete to a robust, lasting, consistent, relatively deep black shade. One which would stand up to the hot sun, frequent car parking, tree crap, etc. I'd be open to re-staining as necessary every 2-3 years. That would be better than what I've got currently, which drains nothing from the wallet but much from the soul. So for those who are interested in answering a question from a relative concrete ignoramus: Is my dream possible? I have seen some concrete stain products which advertise lasting, traffic-hardy results. Only a small subset offer a deep black color and/or any notion of durability in the presence of cars. I am wondering whether my local Home Depot and Sherwin-Williams are really the places to go in search of a take-no-prisoners concrete stain which will apply well to a high-pressure-blasted concrete driveway and then hold up to frequent vehicle parking and the elements of the mid-Atlantic. In terms of actually applying it... happy to do the grunt work myself, assuming I'm not going too Don Quixote with my wish list.

Nobody ever told me that. Not relative to present-day costs. Savings were always discussed in terms of what we would otherwise be paying years from now, had nothing been done. Which is not to say that our health care cost problems are all buttoned up and solved now. But nobody ever told me to expect average cost of health care premiums per person to go down today. In fact, I recall acknowledgements that the cost of health care would continue to increase no matter what we did, bill or no bill. It was always a matter of the down-the-line costs we would end up with if we did nothing, vs. how present-day action could help us to improve in comparison with that future disaster. Time will tell where the hospital's per-night cost goes, and that will be partially a function of how many unpaid visits hospitals must cover. We ought to shine as bright a light on this as we did on the more predatory practices of health care coverage providers. But certain legislators, now more than ever, will have theoretically limitless financial incentives to make sure that doesn't happen. We can't lay that at the feet of a new law which was designed to make the payment system more humane to those who need it most, and curb the most egregious excesses of the businesses who allow us to lay bets against our own good health.

Why, those damned dirty government-run HMOs...!

Bureaucrats are making coverage decisions on behalf of private insurers now? It's just funny to read that, because looking at a piece of legislation that guaranteed an additional 30 million customers to private health insurers, a reasonable reader might conclude exactly the opposite.

If that's the question you want to ask then you will be surprised to learn that for the past 200+ years, individual Americans have been taxed for things they themselves never purchased and never owned. Personally, I blame the liberal elite socialist George Washington for that.

I submit that you just did an excellent job of answering your own question.

But not corporate political spending, right? That has to be Federal? Of course.

Looking forward to House bill #666: Repeal The Job Killing Health Care Act Act.

That's a fair point, though it still leaves the question of why Kennedy would always jump to the opposite side of Roberts in the first place. Also, both are considered conservative justices (Roberts clearly, Kennedy leaning/swing), so if the two were guaranteed to fall on different sides of the decision then it would be more about just switching the order of two colors in the rainbow.

Unless he perceived some odd dynamic between himself and Kennedy, in which the grounds for his decision would always push Kennedy to the other side. Which would be quite peculiar. Otherwise, agreed.

LOL @ "liberal elite." I guess this ruling must sting a bit. Surely the conservative hordes will leave that condescending liberal egghead elite Justice Roberts alone, and respect the honor of the court. It will be interesting to watch... from afar.

Wow. Thought it would be struck down, but it seems to live... though not in original form. Interesting. Cursory yay! (Until more info comes in, perhaps?) Roberts forming part of the majority. Edit: I see I'm not the only one on Scotusblog right now. LOL!

Sure. Struck down 5-4, strictly along party lines.

He probably died of shock after scoring his first ever hole-in-zero at this weekend's Pyongyang Invitational.