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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: March 30th, 2024

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  • The best move for management in this situation is to “promote” him, into a new role that segregates him from the rest of the team. No office space work in the basement thing, but something that makes him distinctly a different role/title, and physically gives him a small office down the hall.

    It doesn’t sound like much, but any physical distance will be nice for you and others like you. It also removes depression when you know he’s the same role but not held to the same standards. Eventually all that crap takes its toll, and good people quit…or worse, they stop caring and don’t quit.

    The saying one bad apple can ruin the bunch is very true in work situations.



  • This sounds like something I would do. So don’t be too scared of losing it, there are others like you out there that would carry on just like you.

    I must say though, the romantic in me sees this as a movie or book. Story of your life’s struggles and ups and downs, but the wallet keeps you grounded. You finally make it to visit his grave and a woman walks up, daughter of Arnold. Ends up being the love of your life.





  • I agree that there is survivorship bias, but I disagree that its “just” that.

    Things are made cheaper today, regardless. There are $400 toasters, but I guarantee that one wouldn’t last as long as a 1950s toaster.

    Plumbing fixtures are a better example, as essentially you can’t find one that is equivalent of a 50 year old faucet, no matter the price. They just don’t make them like that.

    Electronic components are another factor. First off, we stopped using lead in solder which results in weaker, more brittle connections. They just don’t last as long. True, we have advancements that make components run hotter in certain scenarios (so those connections get more stress) but even disregarding that the fact still stands it’s not as good.

    Then we added those electronics into everything to make them “better”. Old washing machines were essentially all mechanical so they would run forever, and be easy to maintain or fix. Now they have computers running them that are designed to not be fixed.

    Its hard to find a company today that wants to make a good product. They just want to make one that is good enough. Our culture has shifted to that mindset. Things don’t last as long, so we switched to a disposable mindset.







  • GOS play services are sandboxed by default, it’s how they implement it. The sandbox just keeps it from having full system root integration so its not in everything by default like normal android. It still is full play services though.

    What I’m saying is that if you don’t want that on your phone but you do want to use apps that rely on it then you can set up a secondary profile. On the second profile install play services and any apps that need it. That way its segregated from your main activity. Other profiles are essentially viewed as their own phone installation so they dont talk to each other.



  • Hotspots work well. They are hotspots though, so you have trade offs. For instance, you probably don’t want to leave it on all day (because it won’t last all day, probably 8 hours). You can set it to turn off if there’s no connected devices for x minutes to save battery. When you turn it on you need to wait for it to actually turn on and connect, then have your phone connect. It takes a while, relatively speaking (not long but longer than turning on your phone).

    The Mifi X Pro also has an Ethernet port which is convenient for hard wiring a laptop.

    The service is solid. Overall there’s no issues. I’ve had issues in hotels, but it’s a T-Mobile network so I’d presume a standard sim card would equally have issues.

    Privacy is an interesting take. I’ll go ahead and trust them to not share my data (which you can sign up anonymously if you wish). The number is still trackable though, and I’d suspect stands out more because it’s in a specific spectrum range. But the sim isn’t in your phone, so it’s not technically tracking your phone (and a side benefit is you can’t get sim jacked) and I use a VPN to connect to it as well. I don’t think the sim card tracks the same way because there’s no GPS in the hotspot, but of course it still calls out to cell towers. I don’t know if it does this when off like a phone does (I’ve always presumed it does).

    Overall my experience has been a positive one. Choosing a phone service has been a harder issue for me. But that’s another story.


  • Absolutely. And particularly it was is “batches” especially as you get to Shadow.

    Collecting stuff as you go along playing is fine (I mean, I’d argue not because it’s lazy game making but its normal). But going along and hitting a village that has 50 side quests in it just interrupts flow.

    Plus, they made nested fetch quests so I felt trapped in a loop. OK I’ll just do this one quest…“hey, now that I see that you are good at fetching arbitrary items, I want you to go get this for me too”


  • Privacy is important because it gives you control over your life; details, info, thoughts, emotions…

    I recently met a guy out of town at a trade show. We were both in the same show, grabbing some snacks, and I complimented his hat. We started talking, a little this, a little that. Eventually we parted ways. On the outro we introduced ourselves by first name only, more as a BTW side note because we might run into each other again. Why am I telling this story?

    Because I forgot his name almost instantly and really only remember his hat. I know nothing about the guy. He knows nothing about me. But wouldn’t it be weird if I didn’t just remember his first name, but I knew his last name too? Where he lived, worked, shopped for groceries, sexual orientation, he last time he ordered pizza and what toppings were on it, how he voted last election, etc… If I knew all that about him, I could have a much more in depth conversation with him. And even if I had no mal intent and simply wanted to give him better experiences in life…that’s not my decision to make. He didn’t ask for that. And it’s freaking weird.

    But that’s what has been made normal in our lives. Privacy helps keep your life…well, private.

    Then the rabbit hole goes deep on nefarious uses. And it’s not “its possible” to do this, but rather “it’s being done” (with absolutely no doubt or argument).



  • The presumption is that the brick and mortar store is not bad. Yes, they are bad too. Maybe just as bad, maybe not as bad, but they are no saints.

    Options are limited for shopping, so we don’t have much choice. The reason I buy from Amazon is that essentially I didn’t want to shop at any local store any longer, they have bad polices AND they treat me like crap - not a valued customer.

    Along came Amazon and I started buying from them. Then there was a big boo-hoo that ecommerce was killing their brick and mortar store sales. No sir, you were killing the sales but now I have somewhere else to go.

    Amazon is horrible for many reasons, but pricing and customer service is not one of them. There’s a silver lining to that storm cloud.