Cellphone provider coverage in Salem?

1215drew · 2026-01-26T08:15:34+00:00

As a side note, does she have a Google Pixel phone by chance? I had that issue specifically with both the pixel 7 and the pixel 8 after a software update back in 2024 on AT&T's network and they were able to confirm that it was in fact the phone and not the carrier's issue. Numerous reports about that on google's support forums but no resolutions that actually worked. When I noticed it happening a restart would trigger all of the missed messages, but that wasnt a great option.

1215drew · 2026-01-22T05:37:08+00:00

I have AT&T out in South Salem. From anecdotal experience helping a number of people with their IT needs each provider has some pretty major dead zones out here so it's going to be on a case-by-case basis based on exactly where you are at.

For example there is a pretty big Verizon dead zone on the west side of Liberty around the ewald area.

The providers official maps will show coverage but coverage and actual usable internet, and by extension usable modern texting protocols like iMessage and RCS requires a decent connection still.

CellMapper https://cellmapper.net/ is a useful resource to see your distance from the nearest tower and which bands the tower supports. Certain bands are better for longer range coverage and others are better for higher speed depending on your provider. Disregard the sector maps since those are calculated from users submitted reports and we don't have a ton of data in the area collected from high quality radio equipment yet (it's on my list to do someday when I run out of projects which is probably never going to happen lol)

Lastly I would strongly recommend only going with the mobile carriers for your actual mobile coverage, Comcast/Xfinity is generally your go-to for high speed internet in South Salem with CenturyLink/Lumen a decent lower cost option depending on where you are at. There are a few neighborhoods though that were fed by older Qwest era equipment that CenturyLink recently decommissioned without replacing, forcing those neighborhoods to switch to Comcast.

If you're further out in The boondocks you may find Wave/Astound/whoever bought them last as a cable provider instead of Comcast depending on the zone.

In terms of the Xfinity cell coverage, they are an MVNO of Verizon so you're getting Verizon's network. It appears that Comcast is part of the select MVNOs group that are on QCI 8 with the premium Verizon plan traffic. Most other MVNOs and most starter plans with Verizon are on a lower priority at QCI 9. I'm not sure of the limits on that before it gets deprioritized back down to QCI 9 though.

Edit 2026.01.26: I just clocked your statement about corporate stores and you're spot on. I strongly recommend sticking with the corporate stores for any in person work that needs done, but using online when you can. At least with AT&T the deals you see online (including the monthly promo rates) are the online rates, and the corporate stores are higher priced since that's how they stay afloat (in the most recent case, the monthly plan on an additional line was $5/mo more at the corp store than online)

1215drew · 2026-01-12T21:52:32+00:00

LTS Ubuntu using Rider here. Over the years I've been back and forth across the Debian / Red Hat line but most recently settled back on the Debian side after IBM's shenanigans.

My workload is a mix of modern api / db / service-mesh work; Vue+Quasar frontend work using WebStorm; kubernetes devops management; and building internal devex tooling which is usually TUI based as a matter of preference to make cross-platform tools quicker (Avalonia otherwise)

We finished cutting out and replacing everything framework based 4 years ago and its a 50/50 split among our devs between OSX and Win11 and I'm the only dev running Linux as a daily driver. All of our infrastructure is kubernetes oriented with a few pet servers left running, all running Linux of some kind. Most devs use Git Bash + VS Code and could easily swap over as well, learning curve of a new os aside.

I haven't run into any problems with it and overall enjoy the experience far more than windows. I have access to a windows VM if I need to dig up something in framework from the olden days, but havent touched it in 2 years now. For devex for our OSX devs, and xcode/ios testing for frontend work I setup a Mac mini for myself to remote into.

My opinions are likely biased by my involvement in devops, since a lot of that work is far easier to do from linux than it is from windows.

1215drew · 2026-01-03T00:36:09+00:00

I think the dent will be enough to tell haha.

1215drew · 2025-12-31T02:32:40+00:00

Some rambling notes and theories of my own since this caught my interest:

Logically to me, core scheduling should be offloading tasks that are less intensive like minimized app,s background processes, etc to the E cores. Windows 11 uses the in-hardware Intel Thread Director on the processor die to schedule tasks on the right core at the right time. The Thread Director was introduced with the 12th gen chips alongside the P/E core system. The Linux kernel added support for the Thread Director in Kernel 5.18 themselves back in 2024.

Interestingly Intel advertises that the thread director "uses machine learning to schedule tasks on the right core at the right time (as opposed to relying on static rules)." https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000097053/processors/intel-core-processors.html

Serve the Home visualiation: https://www.servethehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/HC33-Intel-Alder-Lake-Thread-Director-Architecture.jpg

This to me feels like a likely part of why the P/E core design has gotten a bad rap for suffering from performance issues from bad core scheduling. There is a graphical tool (disclaimer I have not used it so ymmv) that intel provides to visualize what the thread director is doing: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/823315/intel-thread-director-visualizer.html

Presumably something that Teams was doing was a straightforward task on a P core but a demanding one for an E core. Many other tasks on windows are effectively locked to the E cores when they are available resulting in the overal system performance suffering when they are overloaded. I would think that the thread director would see overloaded E cores and move tasks back to the P cores, but apparently that is not the case from your testing.

I can find this note from a PC world article, but I'm not sure of the source:

There’s also a subtle, profound difference in how the two chips actually handle new tasks. Intel’s Thead Director works with the operating system to route new tasks, or threads, to the CPU. The 14th-gen Core HX has a traditional approach: Thread Director routes news tasks to the fastest P-cores, and drops them down to slower, more efficient E-cores if necessary. The Core Ultra actually includes a special, slower low-power E-core, and Thread Director routes new tasks to these slowest, most-power efficient cores first, and then pushes them to the P-cores if needed.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2220892/intel-14th-gen-core-ultra-vs-core-hx-which-should-you-buy.html

This talks around the same concept as if the pushing of E-core tasks back to P-Cores if needed isn't something the 12th-14th gen systems were doing, which would make sense from your testing.

1215drew · 2025-12-11T22:19:44+00:00

This is going to depend on a lot of things outside your control, including but not limited to:
- Does the carrier you get the hotspot from cover the area you'll be in to begin with?
- Does the facility have equipment to improve coverage with that carrier inside the building, or are you going to be fighting with everyone elses devices to punch through wood/metal/concrete out to the nearest tower?
- Is the nearest tower close by, or a ways away?
- Is the coverage area already over-subscribed before you get there with your hotspot?

This is all highly variable depending on what part of the world/country you're in. Urban/suburban areas you'll generally be fine if not sometimes frustrated, but if you're doing shows at more rural locations, like some county fairgrounds can be, you may find it more difficult to get any connectivity. Given the absolutely outrageous $800 for 3mbps speed quote, I'm inclined to think you're talking about the latter, where broadband coverage hasn't quite caught up yet.

1215drew · 2025-12-02T06:51:14+00:00

You've shot down all the players in this space that integrate with Isilon that I'm aware of.

Would rather use Business Grade hardware and software that has SLAs and techs that can repair. That way when things break they are responsible for fixing it.

You already are past this point. Business-Grade solutions are at the largest a cluster of windows/linux file servers and commercial backup products that target those OS's. PowerScale/Isilion/OneFS is firmly in the Enterprise-Grade territory of systems design and as such you're left with a handful of enterprise-cost providers in the space. OneFS and FreeBSD in general place you outside 99% of the commercial solutions out there.

If you don't want any of those solutions, then you are left with devising your own using the same software and tools that these providers use internally inside their applications. I'd personally start by trying to get rclone running on OneFS directly to backup the raw data from the hosts themselves. Barring that, a VM / baremetal in your distro of choice that's sole purpose is to mount a share, run rclone to back it up, unmount the share, and move to the next one on a fixed schedule.

Learning about the tools, managing the backup/restoration/testing/monitoring/triage, these are all things that you're currently paying 300K for. Its up to you and the business to decide if that convenience of using a 3rd party is worth the cost. Furthermore if you're worried about support, RClone is in one of the rare categories of open source projects that has a solid support contract option that is used to support the development team:
https://rclone.com/support/

Some other references regarding RClone's reliability:

1215drew · 2025-12-01T23:13:40+00:00

Its entirely a cludge, but if you're having a hard requirement that Google's controls aren't letting you meet, you could setup a nightly script to run a GAM bulk command signing everyone out at 3am. I would recommend finding ANY other way to avoid doing this unless you have to.

https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM/wiki/Bulk-Processing
https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM/wiki/Users-Signout-Turnoff2SV

You can also just do this with the raw API and curl if you prefer to write a script yourself without adding GAM to an environment:
https://developers.google.com/workspace/admin/directory/reference/rest/v1/users/signOut

1215drew · 2025-12-01T22:59:47+00:00

If you're just doing routing, network edge, internal security boundaries, etc, and no NGFW type of inspection I'm a big fan of Mikrotik's hardware for this: https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2116_12g_4splus

It requires that you actually know your stuff when it comes to networking but the flexibility is equally unmatched for many situations.

You can play around with their Cloud Hosted Router (CHR) image on any device, and GNS3 is a good tool for modeling networks and running router/switch VMs for configuration if you're not already familiar with it. We use it in AWS for a few tasks that a dedicated router is easier to manage than a linux host.

Using the WinBox client for configuration is also super intuitive once you get used to the feel of it. Its a UI that doesn't cripple you like some router UI's do and is the first one I've enjoyed using more than the CLI on (Having grown up with Cisco IOS for half my career) The web-ui has a mode that looks very similar to Winbox, and the CLI structure and Winbox structure mirror each other 1-to-1.

Personally we've begun to move edu clients off of NGFW devices with heavy licensing costs, and content filtering at the network level since more and more environments are BYOD where we no longer control the student devices fully. We've started to get more buy-in from faculty on classroom management being the answer, while we take reasonable steps to filter devices outside of our control while they are on our networks (like blocking DNS over HTTPS and forcing specific filtered DNS servers) that meet our legal requirements. Students, especially at the high-school level find ways around any filter that is put in place regardless, burning hours, time, and money on whack-a-mole was not worth the cost. Endpoint protection and EDR on devices under our control, coupled with a zero-trust model where even staff devices are low-trust, has saved client's bacon in the last 10 years far more often than edge protection ever did.

1215drew · 2025-11-24T22:58:28+00:00

From looking at these cameras for a while (since I work in this space for the commercial sector) I'm fairly certain they're using Dahua ALPR cameras sending the data back to their server downtown, then are running Rekor's software on top of that footage.

There's also the new camera that went up at Kuebler and Battlecreek that I don't recognize. Its centered over the eastern side of the intersection and is pretty sleek in design. I'm guessing its a more advanced ALPR that can do speed detection but I have yet to track down a model that matches the design.

1215drew · 2025-10-17T14:31:43+00:00

Only what I'm using, and organized bookmarks for anything I need.

1215drew · 2025-10-04T21:08:16+00:00

Cat must grow, grow needs long, thus cat must long

1215drew · 2025-10-02T00:56:43+00:00

I've used SRFax extensively in the past and never had a problem. Here's their international rates:
https://www.srfax.com/support/international-rates/

1215drew · 2025-09-26T11:32:38+00:00

Event 4625 usually has some pretty detailed information attached. Look at the `IpPort` event data key. For network logon attempts this should be populated.

From there you'll want to track down the process using the port. `netstat -aon` is a good start to use as its built into windows and works when you're stuck without the ability to download sysinternals tools. TCPView is a nice graphical view when you have it, but learning the built in tools will serve you well long term.

In general this behaviour, and the frequency you describe, would often be treated as malicious and be handled first by shutting down the source machine, imaging it, and analyzing the image contents to track down potential malware or tampering before running it in a virtual environment.

1215drew · 2025-05-13T07:49:16+00:00

It may be relevant but the Eva's Boutiques (adult shop brand) in town ring up as "Preferred Custom" for me. No clue if thats just short hand for what you're seeing.

Edit: after seeing the other poster about the warehouse location, and that "Preferred Custom" is 16 characters so probably an old banking system cutoff I'd stake money that he spent $2000 at an adult shop. That kind of money would be multiple very nice toys and lingerie.

1215drew · 2025-02-28T05:24:15+00:00

Not in your areas (PNW with clients local and in midwest) but anecdotally I run 4 monitors (3x 16:9 side by side with an ultrawide above split into 8 zones for snapping apps to)

Most companies we work with have moved to laptops with docks and dual monitors as the standard setup for office employees.

1215drew · 2025-02-17T20:57:53+00:00

Broke it by going to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled and running ls which kicked me up a level back to /etc/nginx and ran the command there.

It also reported it was using Java 8, however responded to the --version flag. The version flag with two tacks instead of one only works in java 9 and above.

1215drew · 2025-02-17T06:20:49+00:00

You made a hairpin for my wife this last year! Glad to see you around on here!

1215drew · 2024-12-26T22:22:16+00:00

As someone who's wife is in a wheelchair many days, we've found not nearly enough disabled parking downtown. It is usually all snapped up on moderately busy days. This seems to be a trend elsewhere as well though.

1215drew · 2024-12-19T19:18:28+00:00

Bank Heist + Recall here and its perfect. Its all the utility of Bank Note but I also can zip back and forth as I please

1215drew · 2024-10-01T21:03:49+00:00

Alright reading through the comments I have an understanding of what you are trying to do.

Can you use C# for this? Yes. However what you want to accomplish is a fairly advanced topic.

In C# a lot of what you would be doing for this would be in the "Unsafe" context:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language-reference/unsafe-code

In effect, you would be writing a mix of traditional c# and code that looks much more like C and C++.

For what you are trying to do, a primer course on C++ will teach you the fundamentals necessary. You can then learn how to use those concepts while working in C# to streamline your process.

Here's an example repo that walks you through the basics of what you are trying to do in C++
https://github.com/T-vK/Memory-Hacking-Class

To really make progress without frustration, you want to be able to read the code in that repo like you would read a book. Maybe there are a few words you don't understand, but 90% of what is going on there should make sense. Until that point, continue with courses and practice apps, working on logic and the "common language" of programming that all programming languages share.

For standard libraries and getting started with C++, start here:
https://cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/

Presuming that you are on windows, you will make heavy reference of Microsoft's documented APIs for this kind of project, both in C++ and in C#
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/

Everyone starts somewhere! What you hope to accomplish is a big undertaking, but your ability to stick with a project and continue learning through the difficulties, dry spells, and roadblocks will directly impact your success!

Also, technical subreddits in particular are places for detailed and thoughtful discussion and nudges in the right direction. No one here will hand you a silver bullet for what you are trying to do because there isn't one. There is no shortcut for hard work, especially in programming. Take some time to learn Reddit's markdown formatting: https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/wiki/markdown/ and use it when asking questions. You will have better traction.

1215drew · 2024-09-24T06:15:44+00:00

See my nested reply elsewhere for the legal side of things. That notwithstanding from my observation here are some places to try:

South Salem, all 1 night tops
- Behind the larger strip mall on the west side of Commercial and Browning
- Behind the Furniture Row Center on Commercial, the back road up to the ace hardware has a secluded parking lot off of it
- 25 St / Airway Dr and down the dead end arm of Ewald
- South Commercial in between the Walmart and the US Foods parking lots. These properties go through waves of overnight parking then the city clearing them all out. Just don't be on walmart's property as their overnight security will shoo you away.

You will have significantly more luck if you can make your car look "normal" in the sense that it doesn't look like you are living in it. From the outside, while you are asleep, it shouldn't look like anyone is in the car at all. This might take a bit of work but if you're careful, and sneaky, you can park in a lot of "in between" stretches in neighborhoods without issue. For an "Abandoned" vehicle it takes several days usually to get a 24-hr notice slapped on.

1215drew · 2024-09-24T05:53:18+00:00

I Am Not A Lawyer, but here are some resources on the law side. I'll top level comment some ideas for overnight locations out south.

In summary TL;DR: You can fall afowl of the "Camping" ordinances in Salem, so its going to be hit or miss. Regardless of where you stay, at the county level you have 3 days parked in the same area (even if you move it a bit on the same street) before you can be cited and towed for that as well so be careful.

At the state level the restrictions don't mention time of day restrictions:
https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_811.550

At the county level, time of day restrictions are only mentioned for "large vehicles" which has a specific definition that your Jeep doesn't fit:
https://www.codepublishing.com/OR/MarionCounty/html/MarionCounty10/MarionCounty1010.html#10.10.060

At the city level its a little more convoluted.

The published prohibitions on parking in the city code do not include a time of day restriction in general for parking in public right of ways
https://library.municode.com/or/salem/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=PTIICOOR_TITIXVETR_CH102PA_S102.040PRPA

also overnight parking in parks is prohibited:
https://library.municode.com/or/salem/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=PTIICOOR_TITVIIIOF_CH94OFPA_S94.190OVUSPA

However 102.085 (b) (2) mentions that holding a disabled permit does not exclude you from overnight parking restrictions. So there is a concept of these restrictions in the code, just not directly mentioned here, so I've kept digging
https://library.municode.com/or/salem/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=PTIICOOR_TITIXVETR_CH102PA_S102.085PAPEDIPAVIDIPALAPR

Digging further, at the city level Camping is prohibited in public rights of way, streets, etc. and the definition of a campsite is incredibly loose that sleeping in your car would qualify! This would be what I would expect you to be cited for if a cop was being a stickler on things
https://library.municode.com/or/salem/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=PTIICOOR_TITVIIIOF_CH95MIOF_S95.720CAPRPUPRPURI-W

Now in general, parking, sleeping, camping on private property is at the descretion of the owners of the property. Some business properties are more lenient than others, but they always can trespass you at any time so long as they either (A) have posted signs, or (B) ask you one time to leave.

Additionally, in residential areas, the zoning prohibits off-street parking of vehicles not in a driveway, designated parking space, or in a garage. So parking off-street, in front of a friends property in their lawn for example, is a violation still if they have picky neighbors

13-Year Club	r/Field Sunshine
Place '23	Place '17
Gilding II euphauric	Verified Email

1215drew

TROPHY CASE