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mmrmnhrm

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Posts posted by mmrmnhrm

  1. Waiting to see what Andy says ('cause I recruited him :D) But yer... it so totally depends on the day, what I'm up to, what my managers are up to.... that sort of thing, which I suppose is really true no matter what your job. Three projects currently on my plate...

     

    - Major update to our DCIM package... lots of awesome new features that'll make a lot of people's lives better, but with organic growth and standards changing over the past 10 years, it's not uncommon for as much as half our gear to not transfer on the first (entirely script-driven) pass, which requires the vendor and I to identify what's missing and then repair. The work is tedious (tons of mouse clicking followed by partial string search-and-replace), but the guys are already loving it at the two sites where it's complete.

     

    - Security overhaul... This sucks. Anybody who has worked IT knows what a nightmare security can be, especially when people have the best of intentions but don't fully understand the ramifications of what they're proposing (or, in some cases, have already done and I'm just now finding out). When you add in the fact that network security in the industrial sector has always been an afterthought (if it was ever spared a brain cell to begin with!!), industrial best practice grinds so horribly against the majority of IT best practice, that you just want to go back to the caveman era.

     

    - Total replacement of our wireless sensor network... Now this is fun :) I'm testing prototypes of an as-yet unannounced product that is a serious contender to replace all the little environmental sensors attached to our racks. The current product is EOL, and the incumbent's replacement is a "known" value. Question is, can this new thing be ready for deployment in a time-frame acceptable to management? The hardware's definitely ready (and definitely better than the incumbent's), now it's just a question of software.

  2. Not likely... Ohio's 529 has been consistently rated one of the best, and last year (2018) was pretty much a lost year in terms of returns (but at least it wasn't negative). Frustrating yes, but unless you're invested solely in purely defensive/preservation stuff like CDs or money markets, there's not a whole lot you can do to juice your returns in the current climate.
  3. Everyone's tax rate in this thread is around 13%, mine included.

    Are you including state/local in that? I'm at 8-and-change effective (if TT is to be believed), and I'm about as plain boring as you can get. If it weren't for having itemized last year, it's very likely I could have used 1040A this year, maybe even 1040EZ.

  4. Still waiting on a pair of daycare reports w/ EIN numbers, but it looks like my refund will also be about half, though when all is said and done, my effective tax rate (according to TurboTax, anyway) is basically unchanged... -0.02bps compared to last year, even after losing itemized deductions, cutting the child credit, and all that other crap.
  5. After a little more looking into it, I may be able to go with Simplisafe for the doorbell. Seems like it only needs to get power, per this vid. Please watch it and tell me I'm not misunderstanding this. He talks about it at the 3:10 mark in the vid.

     

    I don't think he could have made it any clearer... "This doorbell needs to be wired to your existing doorbell wires." (Of course, if you don't already have a traditional doorbell, you could always hire a sparky to pull what you need)

  6. Would need to add a breaker and don't have room.

     

    Check with your local inspector on this... it's very common (and rather expected, if you have a modern panelboard) to double-up the doorbell's transformer with a regular 120v circuit.

  7. Still have my SimpliSafe v1 system active. Just had my first low battery warning in a sensor... the control keypad identified which one was low by serial (made it easy to find), and swapping it was also very simple. The only problems I've had with it in the 2.5 years I've had it are one instance of the base station's cell chip scrambling its brains after an extended power outage (went through an interesting reset procedure with tech support, but it came right back up once we finished), and the key fob took a static shock while in my pocket and doesn't work anymore. The alarm itself is brain-scramblingly loud, even without a second siren (one afternoon the little one confused a glass-break sensor by fishing with a beaded necklace off the couch, onto a wood floor).
  8. I'm not quite sure how Dewine and Brown each won.

     

    Name recognition... I think if more people knew that Cordray had been director of the CFPB under Obama, and had played a significant role in pissing off all manner of bankster scum, he'd have won by an even larger margin than Brown did.

  9. Local political office - Has the guy currently there voted/acted in a way I agree with? If yes, keep. If no, toss him out. Sometimes it's easy, but not always (my rep voted 'NO' on repeal and.. well... the GOP still doesn't have a replace option, but he's pretty much been a Trump stooge otherwise, and hasn't said shit about his antics).

     

    Local/State issues - Who's pushing the issue? If it's big money or some out-of-town developer who doesn't respect the local way of doing things, they get a big fat NO. Schools almost always get a YES from me (my taxes are freakin' high because of it, but we get what we pay for... #1 public school system on the state "report card"). Past that (like with this year's non-violent drug offender reclassification), I try to sit down and read the thing, and do a "What would Bill and Ted say?" on it.

     

    Courts - There are a couple of websites out there to help make sense of them (https://www.judge4yourself.com/ is one), but since not all candidates participate in those kinds of Q&A forums, local newspaper endorsements (or in one Cleveland case, a resounding anti-endorsement) are also key in helping me pick.

  10. I'm a little surprised the seller didn't swap them out before putting the house on the market, unless they expected this to be mentioned as part of the offer. Unfortunately I've already deleted the emails from when I sold my place in C'bus, but I don't remember it being nearly as expensive as I thought it was going to be... maybe $100-150 each for double-pane, gas-filled).
  11. If you've had the cash for less than a year or two (I forget exactly how far back Marc needed me to go), as long as you can show where the money came from (wages, gifts, inheritance, etc.) and how it shifted around, there shouldn't be any problem. If you've had it longer than that, then just existing on the initial statements and moving from shit checking, to savings, and back, will be sufficient.
  12. I imagine that there isn't enough light being reflected off the bottom of the ocean to show color, so all you would see is the dark silhouette.

     

    Rather, the sunlight coming down from the top quickly filters out. My diving instructor once commented how he loved putting people into colors like "Yum yum yellow," just to see who was paying attention during that part of class (reds and yellows are among the first wavelengths of light to be filtered out).

  13. Right now with wired vs wireless it is much cheaper to go with a wireless system unless you know all your network gear, router ports, wiring, NIC cards are already Cat 6 compliant. If thats the case you can achieve around 1,000mbps with your network. If any routers or switches in that system are still Cat 5 or Cat 5e rated you'll be slowed down to 100mbps and in this case you could at least get the important data traveling at higher speeds using Wi-Fi where needed. Cat 6 stuff is still pretty expensive.

    Dafuq you smoking? I don't normally shit on other people's posts, but this was pretty damned clueless. Pushing gigabit (1000mbps) over CAT5e isn't particularly hard for most chips as long as the person doing the terminations isn't an idiot (and even then, they're pretty forgiving). The cost differential in wire between 5/5e/6 is is negligible (hell, I just did my house in shielded 6A for 10-gig compatibility, and even that wasn't much of a jump). Gig switches and network cards are about all you can buy anymore without intentionally looking for the downgrade. Even saw an Asus 10-gig card for half (from $250 to $100 @Microcenter) what it ran last summer. Gigabit over wifi?? Maybe in a lab. Inside a Faraday cage. On a sunspot-free day. With transmitter and receiver about ten feet away from each other. Maybe.

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