- I am old and thankfully out of the getting hired game. I was cleaning out some files (paper!) recently and ran across correspondence from old job searches. As you said, single visit and decision. I was also struck by the number of letters from companies thanking me for my resume and politely telling me they were passing but would keep me in mind for future openings. It was not uncommon to receive a letter directly from the hiring manager thanking me for coming to an interview.
- In the US the quality has varied widely over the few houses I’ve purchased over the years. I’m also skeptical of their aligned interests. In the US most home purchases take place with a real estate agent involved. An inspector that adds friction to the process won’t get recommendations from agents.
- High demand in Iran (if it was a 405): https://www.theautopian.com/why-tuner-cars-in-iran-have-rear...
- In the US we don’t have a single DMV, but rather 50 separate DMV’s with varying degrees of efficiency and online capabilities. But in my state most routine things no longer require a physical visit. Licensing is pretty tightly controlled because in the US the card serves as a primary source of identification in the absence of a national ID card.
- We had the variety that was able to grab onto the edges exposed by the seams in our vertical cedar siding and so had holes at random places in the wall, far away from perching locations. Owl and crow decoys plus reflective discs dangling in the wind seemed to help but it’s hard to do A/B testing for this. The house was due for another coat of stain and after that they’ve stayed away - the new color is less tree-like so maybe that helps.
- Well, my replacement cycle is > 1 year and I have found that the suppliers on Amazon have a shorter life than that. I've ordered a full set of replacements twice and the last was from a seller named CMYBabee. After about a year the magenta started transferring toner to whatever I was printing. I was in the middle of printing tax returns and just went to the nearest Best Buy and bought an HP replacement.
I should add that I sent a note to the vendor about the problem and they were eager to send a replacement. I didn't bother since I was already set.
- Back in the 90’s Perl was about the only scripting platform that gave you access to host commands and info as well as the ability to connect to databases running on that host. Part of bringing up a Solaris host for Oracle always started with a visit to sunfreeware.com to get a version of Perl compatible with the latest DBI/DBD and enhanced email CPAN modules. I abused the backtick feature heavily.
- “Flipping burgers…”. This made me laugh because it is so true. My last involvement in interviewing candidates was for a position for an ETL developer. One of the other team members who was part of the interviewer schedule proudly announced that he had discovered a great source of tricky SQL puzzles that he intended to use. My comments were along the lines of “you do you, but I’m more interested in how someone would generally approach the 3 or 4 categories of tasks they will be routinely doing day-to-day”.
- Years ago I decided to take the Lake Shore Limited from Albany to Chicago for a business trip just to have a different experience. Two things I didn’t expect: 1. It was very difficult to get pre-approved for the expense because my employer’s process had to make sure I wasn’t costing them extra money. Somehow this was not an issue with plane tickets. 2. Overnight stops interrupted my sleep (in seat) as boarders banged luggage around and discussed seat selection when groups were involved.
Interesting, but would book a room if traveling this way next time.
- This brought back some memories. Back in the day I couldn't afford the Aztec compiler (or it wouldn't fit onto my dual floppy 48K Heathkit H89, can't remember which). I ended up buying Leor Zolman's BDS C compiler. Just looked him up and it looks like he's still around!
- A year ago I had a spring fail in my old/cheap system with tension springs. I was surprised to see the level of scamminess present in this particular area of repair.
After seeing that a set of replacement springs from a big box store was under $100 and wouldn't be that hard to do myself, I figured that it would be reasonable to pay an extra $100-200 just to have it done while I was busy with other things.
One guy over the phone tried to convince me that he would need to replace the entire cable system as well and lost any interest after I told him the cables were fine and the spring had failed from fatigue in the hook section where the cable was attached.
Someone else was "dispatched" from a local-sounding number and showed up with out-of-state license plates on his van. He quoted me $800 for the repair. I tried not to be a jerk and told him thanks, but I'll be looking around some more. He then dropped the price to $400, saying he'd do the job for that if he could replace only one spring. After another thanks, but no thanks he became aggressive and said that was a special one-time price that ended when he left my driveway. He later texted me with a $200 dollar price, but by then I had already arranged for someone to do a full conversion to a torsion system for about $500.
- I have had similar thoughts, but I suspect this sort of accidental discovery will be less interesting to future generations because of the competing volume of online content. I remember stumbling across a supply of second hand amateur radio magazines (QST and 73) as an 11 year old in the mid-60’s that started me down the tech path. These days I would probably be in front of some sort of screen instead of poking around in my grandparent’s basement or a used bookstore.
- Another vote for freetaxusa.com. The only complexity for my Federal returns is accounting for both refunds and taxes due to filing state returns in two states (as well as some 1099 income), but they handle those exceptions well.
For years I kept a Windows VM around just to run whatever the cheapest tax return software was for that particular year.
For some reason the cable service entry is on the third floor in the laundry room. Ethernet and the TV signal cable runs from there to exactly one place, where the TV is expected to be mounted. Nothing in the nice office area on the other side of the wall.
My guess is that the thinking these days is that everyone's on laptops with wifi and hardwired network connections are only of interest for video streaming. Probably right for 99% of purchasers.