346 karma · joined June 5, 2009
So history argues in favor of it being their fault. In fairness, they were apologetic and never tried to absolve themselves of responsibility.
Regarding "Costco should have had zero problems replacing a broken stud on the spot", I wish it were so (would have saved a bit of hassle), but which expert person at Costco is going to be capable of doing this? They seemed to have shop nearby that they farmed such work out to, but this problem occurred on a Sunday...
She called saying "they're saying 'the lug nut broke'"; I was thinking (and asking) "how is that possible (it can't possibly be a defective lug nut)?" 10 minutes later "the stud is broken"; 5 minutes later "they [Costco] admitted to breaking it".
The resolution was to have a local shop replace the lug stud and get reimbursed for the repair cost: $125 (the part might have cost $2)!
I chalk this episode up to them hiring warm bodies lacking any mechanical experience or aptitude (to the extent of not being aware of "righty tighty, lefty-loosey") and handing them an impact wrench.
Almost all of what we print is either outbound or transient (and shredded once its immediate purpose is fulfilled). 99% of what needs to be preserved long-term gets scanned (and shredded).
The above has been our operating mode for at least 10 years.
HP16C of similar vintage also.
edit: And an HP71B (1984) which is definitely programmable (assembly and BASIC; I don't have the FORTH module).
I consider 7 years to be many more than "a few years".
[0] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/questions/asus-17-3-chromebook-...
I make enough for 2 days and microwave the leftovers for 2nd days' coffee.
Is my current best-choice provider (TMO 5g Home internet) going to boost my speeds from current 10-100/1-10 Mbps dn/up to a solid floor of 100/20Mbs or lose Federal funding?
Or, will TMO receive more Federal funding to bring me up to a solid 100/20Mbs floor?
Or, will TMO classify my service as something other than "broadband" and continue to provide unchanged QoS?
Or, will TMo drop customers such as myself "on the performance margins" of their service (instead of boosting tower capacity)?
If BNSF is not already today 100% responsible for installing & maintaining maximal protection equipment at all RR/road crossings that were installed by government over its preexisting tracks,
then BNSF should have all of its property (tracks and right of way (RR track bearing real estate)) converted into "the commons" (i.e. BNSF should be nationalized)
and the owner of "the commons" (government) will then resolve all RR/road crossing safety issues (by RR closure, road closure, or deployment of crossing improvements sufficient to match safety levels attained in the country having the safest RR/road crossings in the world, at its prerogative) all while operating the new national RR (carrying freight and passengers) safely and efficiently to ensure supply line problems attributable to RR causes do not worsen.
Is this accurate?
Also, I don't know if you were applying the term to the road of the crossing involved in this crash, but this road is not one I would characterize as "well used"; more like "exceedingly rarely used" (thus the lack of active crossing protection).
Finally according to the previously referenced Trains Forum thread ("Posted by blue streak 1 on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 11:32 AM"), the railroad existed 60-70 years prior to the road in question. I believe it is this circumstance which places the onus on MODOT to defend the users of their later-arriving road from hazards associated with rail traffic on the preexisting BNSF line (with BNSF being an involved party).
I understand citing posts another public forum does not necessarily meet the gold standard of citations, but all of these facts align with my preexisting understanding of the situation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Transcon calls out Mendon, MO as a station on the Marceline subdivision
Any clarification of what's going on in this regard would be appreciated.
Given the costs involved, IMO it would probably be better to close at least half of the crossings in (e.g. relatively flat farmland) areas where the road grid incurs these crossings at a rate more than one per mile. But as with decisions to spend money, choosing which crossings to close (ostensibly so that the remainder may have automated protection added) becomes a political "hot potato" that can easily cause the process to stall.
[0] https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/292768.aspx
[1] https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article263049...
"Before 2008, San Diego County historically had been a Republican stronghold."[2]
[1] first sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_%22Bud%22_Lewis_Carlsba...
[2] first sentence of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_San_Diego_County
While technically true, this seems laughably inaccurate in practice. Government bureaucracies are almost entirely composed of unelected employees.
"There are 542 federal offices: President, Vice President, 100 U.S. Senators (two from each state), 435 U.S. Representatives, four delegates to the House of Representatives from U.S. territories and the District of Columbia, and one Resident Commissioner from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico."[0]
"Federal Civilian Employment ... Total, All Areas* 1,869,986"[1]
Yes, the latter number includes Dept of Defence civilian employees.
Examination of the situation in a state of your choosing is left as an exercise for the reader, however I suspect the ratios for state employees vs elected officeholders will be similar.
[0] https://www.fvap.gov/info/about-absentee-voting/elections#:~.... [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu...
"Russians in Israel or Russian Israelis are post-Soviet Russian citizens who immigrate to Israel and their descendants. As of 2022, Russian-speakers number around 1,300,000 people, or 15% of the Israeli population.[2][3]"
...
"Most Russians in Israel have full Israeli citizenship. Israeli Russians are involved in the country's economy on all levels."
I didn't mention earlier that a key component of my "leave DBG printfs in the source code and let the compiler both (a) type-check the trailing param types vs the format string, and (b) elide codegen (executable file footprint) for those same DBG printfs due to the compiler optimizing those calls out" approach is that I build with -O3 which (at least historically; I haven't checked recently) provides a poor gdb debugging experience because the optimizer frequently de-correlates source code lines from generated machine code; if I encounter a segfault, I must suss out a repeatable test case, clean rebuild with -O0 (no optimization), keep fingers crossed that the test case still fails (it usually does), and repro under gdb. The hassle associated with this gyration inhibits my debugger use in non-segfault cases (though these days a clean rebuild is a lot faster than it used to be).
I use GCC exclusively, and its type-checking of param types vs format string largely prevents me from spending time in gdb; pre-GCC adoption, the biggest source of segfaults in my world was printf type mismatches.
Addendum:
I'm sure it violates every coding convention ever created, but, in almost all cases, once I add a debug printf to my source code, for example,
ED && DBG( "%s", foostr ); // ED is usually a function-scoped enum normally ==0
As far as this practice injecting large amounts of comprehension-thwarting noise into my source code: all such `ED && DBG(...);` code sequences are positioned in their own column far to the right of the non-DBG code (needless to say, I don't subject myself to 80-column coding-convention limits; more like 160-column). That this results in multiple statements per line (another typical taboo) is a don't care, since I'm never using a debugger to single-step thru code, and in any case, by convention my DBG() calls never modify program state.
It works great for me, but probably not for anyone else.
50USD/month, T-Mobile Home Internet (5G-based).
max speed: 130/40 down/up (Mbps)
performance definitely varies (both by time of day, and past 3 weeks as T-Mobile seems to be running an aggressive ad campaign -> more network demand), recently has been pretty poor (and it seems like the "modem" wedges and has to be power-cycled on an almost daily basis).
edit: in addition to the expected pillows for my head, a triangular-cross-section firm-foam knee pillow was an essential component of this setup.
> But ... they won't know the libraries let alone their intricacies and idiosyncrasies etc
triggered a related thought (also closely related to recent "how do you learn effectively?" and "I'm exhausted/burned out, what do I do?" HN threads):
In my most recent job-search, I found this type of expectation/requirement (specifically regarding deep (down to idiosyncratic) library (aka framework) knowledge & experience) to be the most off-putting. The likelihood that I will have used a specific library in the ecosystem your team/company has chosen in its pursuit of "teh hotness" is (to put it mildly) low, but I'm certain that my resume will be discarded, or worse, an interview process spun up but doomed because I'll be unable to regurgitate library documentation chapter and verse (much less idiosyncrasies (many of which may be version specific).
The proliferation of libraries/frameworks seems to be exponential; how would I ever acquire deep knowledge of the complete set of same that are considered "today's hotness" (both today and of the past N years) in an language ecosystem which I have extensive experience and familiarity with? My current employer/team has made its language and framework choices, and I'm bound to them for (typically) years, and I focus (for years) on being productive in that context. Am I expected (in the context of my next job) to have spent my non-working hours gaining/maintaining knowledge of both the contemporaneous competing frameworks (which current employer/team didn't choose, but came in close second, etc.) as well as each "new hotness" that comes along? The alternative appears to be that my future employment possibilities are continually being reduced/narrowed as the set of libraries/frameworks in popular use expands (exponentially) while my knowledge remains tightly focused within the domain. Even if I was willing to make an investment in self-study to learn a new library/framework well, given the above-described circumstance, what would be my criteria to make a wise choice? And if presented with the same question 6 months later, what is the likelihood I would make the same choice? I'm pretty sure the answer is not "100%".
In practice, I simply did not apply to the vast majority of job listings which I would have considered myself otherwise a good fit (i.e. could immediately grow into), due to this factor.
So the idea that "shaving is getting expensive" strikes me as silly; I'm sure you could spend thousands if you wanted to, but that's a choice.
[1] I tried a Braun "wet or dry" shaver, but one drop in the shower was the end of that "upscale purchase".
IMO that's the only reason for employers to offer "unlimited PTO" schemes.
> Does explicitly saying "4 weeks" put them back in the hook for that, or does saying "expect" get them back off the hook again?
Hmm, at my most recent employer, I heard passdown from my manager that "the man above" (VP) had "guided" that 5 weeks was the ceiling for "unlimited" and that TPTB would look askance at anyone taking more. But this was all "off the record".
[1] https://www.bestbuy.com/site/asus-17-3-chromebook-intel-cele...
Is the Pi4 any different/better?