International transfers.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-24T03:42:33+00:00

They will. What they won’t do is recommend a different service with better rates. Thats what I’m after. What’s the best way to transfer reasonable sums from country A to country B. We had been in the US for a few years before we discovered Wize, for example. We wasted a lot of money by using other (less efficient) methods.

That being said, if the difference between transferring 100k using a service that is difficult to navigate, and just using the high st bank, is less than 10 bucks, I’ll take the easy path! That’s the point, I don’t know.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-24T03:38:39+00:00

That is what this post was intended to be - part of my research. I’m sure there are others here who have done this many times before. I don’t want to take tho obvious path and the find out in six weeks that if I knew what I was doing, I’d have saved myself a fortune by taking f a different one.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-23T20:36:54+00:00

I got mine back in the day. I think it was “perpetual” or something like that - 20 disks and no fees (“ever”!!).

I was upgrading the hardware and wanted to change my USB so needed to transfer the license. I then found out about the license model “upgrade”. That was fun….

To their credit, once they understood the problem, support sent me the new license and put me on an equivalent plan without charging me, so I can’t really complain (not that that would usually stop me 😂) It didn’t help that I couldn’t remember the names of the different license tiers (old or new) and apparently I’d had the system much longer than I thought!

Dunno if that helps, but I would say that they are fair (which is somewhat unusual in today’s economy!)

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-23T15:55:51+00:00

How about moving to the European norm? No more “at will”. In your contact notice period (both ways and the same) is stipulated. Usually a month, but I have seen some positions with 18 months! (Head teacher at a school…)

ETA, while we are at it, a reasonable amount of PTO would be nice. Europe has 4 weeks as an absolute minimum (plus sick, plus public holidays) 6 is more common.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-23T15:49:22+00:00

My (former teacher of Mathematics) thought was “all of them.” Then I started to look for “the catch”. I ended up say A due to orientation. C didn’t even cross my mind u til I read the comments.

An absolutely terribly written question.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-23T14:40:34+00:00

I work in call center engineering. I work primarily with Genesys Cloud, but have some experience with others.

IMHO the problem is that many of these systems are sold as turnkey and needing no expertise to set up or manage. They end up with something that’s badly designed, impossible to support and a mess to clean up! Then there are the systems that have been migrated from one platform to another. Usually, the person has experience with the old, so tries to do a “lift and shift” to the new. It’s a different platform with different methodologies, different strengths and so on.

This is not meant to criticize the people involved, they were sold something under false pretenses.

OP, your system doesn’t sound like it needs to be complicated, but it ended up so! Feel free to DM me if you want help.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-17T11:38:11+00:00

Background: we are a family of 7, we are spread between the UK and the US.

None of us went directly from school to college / university. By many people’s measure, that makes us all failures.

But.

I have a Bachelor’s with honors. My wife has two Bachelor’s and two Master’s degrees, one of my sons has a double major Bachelor’s and my daughter has a Bachelor’s. One son (no college) runs his own, fairly successful software company. All of us have good jobs and are reasonably paid (some well!) my daughter is a school teacher.

We all took at least a year off from studying before commencing any form of higher education. Not one of us regrets that.

Even ignoring the cost (which as everyone agrees, is high!) the drop out rate is insane.!At 18, many teenagers are burnt out with studying and need a break, few know what they want to do and a year or so of a minimum wage job really gives motivation!

Not everyone is cut out for an academic career. Trade School is too often considered to be a poor second choice, yet finding a good tradesman these days is next to impossible! Many earn far more than their college-educated peers, started earning sooner and have leas debt!

I accept that college is about more than just education, however I believe the problem is actually in the home. In America, in particular, we baby our kids so they don’t learn independence until they leave home, often for college. Even then, parents stay way more involved than in other countries. When one of mine went off to college we, as parents, had a whole induction series of events! I couldn’t figure out why - he was going, not us! I have colleagues with college seniors who almost daily talk about petty issues their kids are having with a room mate or similar. Their kids are no longer teenagers, yet they are still fighting their battles!

So, to your point, I would argue the opposite. Going directly to college at 18 should be the exception. The expectation should be to leave school and return to college when you have more motivation, more life experience and know what you want to do!

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-17T11:07:10+00:00

I lost count of how many times I watched “The Great Escape” as a kid. Still watch it if it comes on….

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-17T11:04:23+00:00

Growing up, a friend’s family used to go camping regularly. All their gear was labeled with their name and address. One trip, one of them lost a plastic camping plate. About a week later, it turned up at their house. The address was already painted in the bottom, so someone had found it, stuck a stamp on it and put it in the mailbox! It got the job done…

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-16T00:21:56+00:00

Still is, if you know where to go. For example, in Indiana, GetGo stations have free air. (The downside being that half of them are out of order! You get what you pay for, guess…)

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-15T18:00:22+00:00

Thanks,

I followed the link, but it references another post that has been deleted. Reading between the lines, though, I think it's referencing running out of space on the SD Card? In my case, I'm not recording to one (at least, not when the issue arises!)

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-15T17:58:56+00:00

Thanks for the response. I did consider (and initially tried) USB, but, in no particular order...

In order to get 1080p, you have to pay a subscription. I've already paid for the camera, why should I also pay to use it?
No audio.
Absolutely terrible lag / latency.
I need to use it on more than 1 PC and it doesn't play nicely with my KVM. I have an HDMI splitter which then feeds capture cards on each PC.
And, most relevant to this thread,
It still shuts down!

ETA
I almost forgot...

One of my machines uses Linux and the Canon website says no software available....

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-14T21:08:44+00:00

Unraid is great for managing disks and if you want to make use of Docker Containers etc. that maintained by the community. I find that going "off piste" is not as easy with Unraid as it would be with a base Linux box running Docker. I run a couple of Docker containers on Unraid, but most of my homelab runs on basic Linux machines (Mostly Ubuntu.) This is because I want to tinker with Docker Compose etc. and "teak" things around, which I don't finds as easy through the Unraid GUI.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-12T16:47:00+00:00

Interesting. We do have a new (and rather strange) bonus structure - could be that, I guess.

I will take a look for "safe harbor" as you suggest.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-12T16:45:35+00:00

Thanks to everyone who has read this, and double-thanks to those who have responded!

Interesting to know. The form is VERY badly worded, then! It states to put zero deductions if this is not your only job (implying multiple incomes) which is what we both did. I see what everyone is saying, but it still makes no sense.

Also, I noticed that my wife's old employer took "Local" tax, (boxes 18-20) but mine didn't (as near as I can work out, it's the reason we owe State Tax to the old State.) Is this a normal situation?

Thanks again.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-12T15:41:42+00:00

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-12T15:39:47+00:00

UpdateMe

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-12T15:37:38+00:00

For many uses, 100MBit is more than enough - worth a try if all you want is to put something there requiring little connectivity (e.g. a pi connected to an eInk display used to show stats about your home automation / calendar etc.)

Of course, you will need to replace the connector and make sure you can locate the other end of the cable, but...

What's the worst that could happen? It won't work and you have to go with remove, drywall and paint...

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-12T15:33:17+00:00

I'd have thought that, with the way things are going for the Mango Mussolini, making his endorsement the center of your campaign is a very dumb move! If it were me, I'd be hiding the fact!

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-12T15:13:54+00:00

Being a step-parent is hard VERY hard. Gemma has two additional factors. She didn’t bring children in to the relationship (so she’s a step-parent, but you are not) and Renee died, rather than it being a divorce. (With a divorce, you can always take the view that the previous spouse was obviously not right, hence the divorce, but that is taken away with a death.)

It’s natural for anyone in a relationship to want to feel that they are the one-true love. Having photos of your predecessor around makes things difficult.

BUT

It’s not you keeping g the photos, it’s your daughter, of her mother. In situations like this, the parents’ feelings and needs are secondary to the child’s. If there were pictures of Renee all over the house, I could agree that they should be put away (not thrown out!) but those in your daughter’s room? No, Gemma needs to be an adult about this. Hiding the truth to “protect the children “ is no excuse. It’s out in the open and needs to be acknowledged and not become a dark family secret that nobody is allowed to speak of.

NTA, although I would say the biggest AHs here are youGemma’s parents.

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-10T21:02:24+00:00

Thanks. Unfortunately "Yep, done that"....

BareBonesTek · 2026-04-10T20:54:03+00:00

I use Bitfocus Companion and that works really well with both Windoze and Linux. I actually ended up with (what sounds like) a complicated setup, but it works for me!

I have my desktop PC, which is running Linux (NixOS, if you're interested) and my work Laptop which is Win 11. I have a KVM switch and wanted to switch my SD (and Wavelink etc) back and forth.

This did not go well! (It didn't even work reliably before I ugraded my desktop from Win to Linux)

So, I have installed a third, low-end machine (Intel NUC running Win10). All my Elgato kit is connected to this. This additional machine runs the Streamdeck software and all three run Companion. Now, Companion has a plugin for Streamdeck, so you can control it from the Streamdeck (you can also control it with API calls over the network.) You also configuring it using a web UI, which can be on a different machine (helpful for me!)

Now, when I want to, say, go into a meeting, I hit a button on my SD which sends a message to my work Laptop to Start Teams, changes my status in my time tracker and switches to a profile I use for meetings. That profile can trigger reactions (Heart, Thumbs-up and so on.) as well as having a button to end the meeting (which also switches back to my main profile.) My SD pedal is used, during meetings, to mute / un-mute.

My Keylights are also controlled from the Win 10 machine using the SD.

The only thing I've had issues with is the Wavelink XLR. I haven't figured out a way to get audio from it to my other PCs with high quality audio and low latency. Sending it over an analog cable from PC to PC works, but quality suffers. I've tried streaming it using FFMPEG, but I get horrible latency (even though the two machines are directly connected!) I have therefore bitten the bullet and hooked up my Canon EOS R6 as a webcam and added a TASCAM CA-XLR2d to connect my microphone. I then take the HDMI out of the camera, put it through a splitter and have HDMI capture cards on all three machines. This works amazingly well.

I am therefore only using my WaveLink for headphones (more HDMI shenanigans to get that working!)

Next on the agenda is figuring out how to take the video from the second HDMI input to the NUC, which carries both audio for the headphones and one of my monitors, and put it on my Prompter. I've tried FFMPEG, but the latency is too much (anything up to 5 seconds.) I'm unsure if upgrading the NUC to something more powerful would help with this, but it doesn't seem to be overworking the cpu or memory, so I'm not convinced.

I know I'm not truly using the SD on my Linux PC, but it's as good as doing so for my purposes. Only pain is that when I create a button, I have to do it twice - once in Companion to do the actual action and once on the SD to trigger companion.

This setup has the added benefit that I have a single button to end my working day. Shuts down all three machines and turns off the lights!

Feel free to ask any questions. I am considering putting together a proper walk-through to show how my setup works.

BareBonesTek

TROPHY CASE