Haven’t seen RTFM casually dropped in conversation online in… um… a while…

You’ve been hanging out on the intartoobz at least as long as I have. Circa the paleolithic era, or so…

Pharm tech licensing varies wiiiiidely across the states. Some require natl very, some require basically on job training IIRC.

RPh not so much, but tech also has responsibility not to kill you with a misfill and more eyes are always good for preventing deaths.

The shit wages they pay in relation to being responsible in part for safety and accuracy (in retail) is a big part of why most retail is dangerously understaffed.

Same for insurance agents and real estate agents in many (most?) of US. HS, a couple weeks of “teaching to the test,” and a test is all it takes. Rote memorisation. - lots of those younger folks in insurance couldn’t define what they may/may not say/promise, or who is an “Insured” under a given policy.

Seems like it would be a nightmare to purify. Perhaps useful for agricultural applications, but for drinking and household use…. Most water supplies don’t have e.g., human bodies floating in them.

Not a scientist, happy to be proven wrong here, but that’s my gut.

While that’s getting harder - RTO vibe is strong - I’m on same page.

I’ve had to pass on a few interesting opportunities, but Its served me well.

If I go out, it’s because I need something that can’t be shipped or door dashed, and/or it’s imprudent to pay the vig for delivery.

2x $4.99 bottles of wine? Yeah not paying $40 for that, I’ll take the risk.

Working on that POV, it’s basically always worth paying the vig to minimise my human interaction.

Edit: have WFH since c. 2012, so it makes zero sense to take the medical and driving risk to do otherwise, except for gig work in a pinch.

Demanding hybrid (“hybrid in Arizona”) is a clear sign the company is working towards RTO, and you’d have to wave a pretty big carrot to get me to move quickly anyway. OOP max met for the year, so…

Now that I’m $7k in on that stuff, why the hell would I make a move in May? I’ll suffer until the Sept deadline and peak season we suffer through, and then start looking.

Well, I’ll start looking before that, demo my loyalty by pushing out start date, and go from there. Like everyone else.

Wouldn’t cry if nothing else presents though, it’s not terrible company given that it’s non-union. Damn, I miss the CWA, but I was maybe twenty at the time and didn’t grasp the value fully.

Try it all. Keep good notes.

Some service names are marginally misleading, but understanding what it does and how it bills does two thing: Helps you avoid overbilling; and also ensures you “get” it.

Properly secured and understood, S3 + immutable saves my ass more than o once because could prove that as of x bi-hourly backup, PG reflected some given status.

In other words, “I did not fuck that specific thing up, and as of the last time I was in good faith awake, it looked like x. Let’s look at logs/code, bc last I saw it, it mapped perfectly to reality.”

The bit about “keep good notes,” above, is for future you.

“Oh yeah I played with that random AWS service a few years back, wish I could recall the outcome,” vs “Mind giving g me a sec to have a look at my notes, I’ve seen this before!”

That translates to execs as “Yep, I follow, and u have ref material from the last n times I solved this problem, so I’m your guy, I just need a sec to locate the details of the last round before I straight up commit to an answer.”

Gut feeling: Nope.

Further reflection, for those who remember a certain video game in the CGA error (not V, C)

“Here’s tae us, who’s like us, damn few, and they’re all dead. “

It just freakin’ works, which is a real benefit in our world.

I realized in fairly early adulthood that I have traits that would have gotten me an Asperger’s diagnosis pre DSM changes so I relate.

Spent years making quarterly trips from outside Indy to upstate NY - somehow the boss thought it was good for morale or something.

What it was good for was reminding me how much I disliked that individual as a human being in general, and why I needed to GTFO there.

Fountain pens. Such a simple and enjoyable process/hobby, and one that made real sense to me long before the entire world did…

I’m not where I want to be today, but I managed to find a few bucks and grab a Kaweco Lilliput in brass for my bday. Cheap af but legit makes me happy - even if I’m just doodling or trying to.

Course, that means I also need to spend money on good paper, but that’s a small expense relative to cost of pens and inks, and the feeling of laying down ink from a good pen, on straight up amazing paper, is nirvana.

Yes - you’ll be well-served by the ThinkPad line in general. My first permanently dedicated Linux machine was a T430 and true to form things largely “just worked.”

That was enough years ago that I might well have needed to seed the network drivers on the usb key, and that was the worst of it.

They’re tanks, and the hw is generally easy and fairly intuitive to swap out the usual memory and HDD.

IIRC my first distro on that was Debian, had plenty of docs about the intersection of the distro and ThinkPad line.

Mint should be perfectly fine given that.

I will say that I try not to do fresh installs on unfamiliar hardware w/o some other available form of connectivity, my phone mostly is quite sufficient for the purpose. It’s just easier not to risk putting myself in a difficult position in the first place.

You’re in for some fun.

Colorado tried a few years back. Vermont has made the effort over the years. Not aware of any successful ones, but like anything else it’s a process and requires raising awareness/changing understanding before you’ll get a ballot initiative through.

There were some elements of CO’s proposal that I really liked.

Edit: It’s not entirely dead but they’re definitely not there yet.

Can almost guarantee some of the cheap Asian manufactured ones are. Law of averages.

Nailed it. Debt paid down in your twenties is gone.

Debt you barely service until your forties…. Never goes away.

IWW comes to mind. They’re not aligned with any particular trade etc, unlike most unions.

Also…. See “You Deserve a Tech Union” recently published. If cost is an issue there is an arrangement that can be made, see author’s masto acct.

Personally, I was hired fully remote, and would fight like hell right beside you any attempt to drag me back. I’m fortunate to be four plus hours from the office I’d likely work in otherwise, so I do t expect to need to fight - I lived here when they hired me.

Whatever you learn and whatever options you find, please come back and post as it will help others.

Excellent word choice, I hear “modicum” so rarely.

So, it’s EOL but they’re still collecting as much data as possible, basically?

The local utility co tried to give me a free google thermostat. Nooooope.

Three decades ago, as a kid, the electric co-op put a device on our water heater that would limit energy to that specific device at times of high load. That was sensible, and had zero listening capabilities. It’s also as close as I want to get to (commercial) voice assistants.

When you could express the same sentiment in a few keystrokes? Nah, I’ll text lol

That’s actually kinda adorable.

All the damn time. If I’m I. The same room and we’re both awake, I speak, but if she’s asleep or I’m working and can’t escape from a vid meeting…. Signal it is.

For various reasons, my memory isn’t worth a damn, so there’s an added benefit of “yes, I told my wife that important thing” in the history

We live on one floor, with a bedroom, an office, a living room, and a kitchen. It’s definitely not that I’m too lazy to take the ten or twelve steps across the house lol

Boxes that physically live in my home are mostly Manjaro. They’re also not externally accessible from the internet.

Anything in the cloud I standardize on Debian. Two distros and consistency makes maintenance much easier.

Anything in a container runs whatever it was built on because porting a docker compose file from, say, Alpine to anything else is just not worth the time and energy.