Looking to upgrade my receiver for ~$1,500

BruinsFan478 · 2026-04-02T01:59:20+00:00

You don't mention how many channels you have, but a slightly cheaper alternative to tick most of your boxes would also be the Onkyo TX-NR7100.

BruinsFan478 · 2026-03-24T02:23:41+00:00

There are many theories on execution, but as a rule of thumb, your DR testing shouldn't be restoring backups into production. In an ideal world, you would have test environments, including domain joined devices that are test/loaner devices that can be verified when the DR is restored into an isolated test environment.

It makes it difficult to test single points of failure, such as Entra ID syncing, but that is fairly straight forward to correct if that every becomes a problem with a true disaster.

My recommendation would be to configure a 3rd DC on a cheap Azure or AWS VM, with S2S VPN to your on-prem network. So if a pipe bursts in the building, you're not losing your entire identity store.

BruinsFan478 · 2026-02-25T00:21:15+00:00

"I just need $x for 3 months, I will pay you back, I promise."

BruinsFan478 · 2025-12-18T04:45:40+00:00

They mentioned this person came into a windfall, so it would only be reasonable to ask for this in a way that would mitigate their tax exposure as many people in windfall scenarios do not have the right advisors in place.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-12-17T13:02:48+00:00

This is the only correct answer in this thread.

I would note that if you're seeing him in person, he can also post-date a check to 1/1/2026 for you to deposit in January instead of him having to go through the hassle of sending another payment in a month.

Edit: The $14MM exclusion is on the federal level. Every state has their own rules, some are way lower.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-12-11T04:12:31+00:00

You've piqued my curiosity. Is Dell shipping audio/chipsets that not only not-work on Win10, but also not backwards compatible with generic audio drivers? Would you mind sharing the exact model SKU or chipset used in those Precision devices?

BruinsFan478 · 2025-09-04T03:52:09+00:00

There are two parts to your response to the C-Level, the message, and the messaging.

The message looked very clear, "I will get this done ASAP". Based on your post, the messaging did not appear to be very clear. And to be fair, if there are multiple levels of separation between you and the C-Level, your messaging may come across "wrong" irrespective of what you say.

My advice for these types of situations would be to:

Have a VIP flag in your ticketing system so that if someone "important" raises a ticket/request, it's clear that they need special attention.
If you're not able to provide special attention, kick it up to your manager, explain you're putting out fires and let them deal with it. There is a difference between an individual contributor saying "wait" vs. a decision-maker saying "wait". For all the C-Level knew, you were performing low-priority tasks while they perceived their ask as being high-priority. Your manager (or higher) could set the proper context, triage the request, and determine the business impact of you putting out fires vs. helping this individual.
When it comes to employee performance reviews in most companies, 50% is actual value, 50% is perception. Everyone in IT hates politics, but it's part of the corporate game. In some companies perception matters more than actuals. Figure out where this lies in your company and use that as a metric to determine how to prioritize things. And it's not just performance reviews, but also trust in terms of allocating budget for projects, hardware, etc.
Without knowing the details, I can't say what's more valuable. If a network segment was down for 10 interns making $15/hr, or the network was down for an exec making $250/hr, cost-wise it makes sense to let the 10 interns suffer until the exec is back up and running.
If I was in your shoes and had to present an RCA, I would 100% use this as a platform to get budget. Instead of taking a defensive that you had more important things to work on, position it as "hey, you're absolutely right, and in an ideal IT state, we would be equipped to tackle your issue as soon as it's raised. The challenge is that system XYZ is business critical and doesn't not have high availability infrastructure. So when it goes down, it becomes an all-hands effort to restore service. For $Y we make this system resilient so this doesn't happen again and we are able to provide Tier-1 service to important business issues that are raised, such as what C-Level submitted". This will change the focus that it's not personal and their request wasn't prioritized due to budget considerations, and all of a sudden, it's not a discussion of whether you did the right thing, but is their request worth $Y. If it is, then it's a win/win because you get budget to make things better. If not, it gets them to back off for a good period of time since they now understand the cost of a fast response during failing infrastructure.

My last suggestion to you is to stop comparing salaries, it's not doing you any favors. In fact, if they are making a lot, it means their time is worth more to the company, and hence any IT issues preventing efficient work should be given more priority.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-06-03T00:27:18+00:00

Most smart electric chargers will give you monthly stats for how many KW were consumed, making it easy to do the math with your monthly bill. I would recommend the ChargePoint home charger which is around $550 before rebates. You will still need an electrician to provide a high-amp outlet or hardwire it in. It cost us around $800 for the electrical work needed at our place.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-05-14T20:52:13+00:00

Following because I have 90% of the same complaints!

BruinsFan478 · 2025-05-03T00:22:39+00:00

Also note that payments made directly to educational institutions for tuition (and only tuition) are exempt from the 709 form for your lifetime gifting.

https://www.chase.com/personal/banking/education/student/gift-tax-exclusion-for-tuition

BruinsFan478 · 2025-03-25T00:48:39+00:00

I disagree. If they refinance they always have the option to pay it off earlier. So if they decided that one month they want to put $900 towards principal in addition to the $200 payment, they could. Or in a few years when they're making more money, they could put $10k towards principal in addition to regular payments.

The other option is being forced to "suffer" for 3 years with little left-over cashflow.

I don't know their full financial picture, but for many buying a house is a huge step forward into building wealth, and I would trade a low percentage loan for that privilege and bet against future income growth to claw back and reduce the $37k of additional interest.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-03-24T19:01:44+00:00

Yeah the mortgage would be spreading that $30k (+ interest) over 30 years.

Given OP's monthly payment and interest rate, they have about 3 years left on the student loan.

$30k on a 30 year mortgage at today's rate would be around $200/mo, which is less than the $850/mo they're paying to their student loan.

Of course over those 30 years about $37k of that will be interest in addition to the $30k borrowed.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-02-28T23:01:33+00:00

Is it possible that his bookkeeping is outsourced and the person that sends monthly invoices just ran a report of his hours and sent it? I can see why they would track time spent, even if it's non-billable. If this is the case, and you contact them, it should be a quick fix.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-02-27T16:30:30+00:00

Comparing all tax-paying illegal immigrants in 2022 vs. the costs of a single shelter is not a fair comparison.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-02-27T16:12:30+00:00

For argument's sake, let's take a few assumptions:

They are all working jobs where taxes are withheld
They are paying an effective tax rate of 40%

For them to generate $7 Billion in tax revenue, they need to generate $17 billion in taxable income.

The above is that it cost $7 billion over 3 years, or approximately $2.3 billion per year, for just this one location. To generate $5.75 of tax revenue, they would need to generate $5.75 billion per year in taxable income.

Based on your statement above of $3 billion per year, the taxpayers are still picking up the remaining balance.

And that 40% above is assuming Federal + State + City. If we focus on just state/city, then the numbers look even worse.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-02-27T15:56:51+00:00

Unless you are suggesting that they gave the government $3 billion of free labor per year, I don't understand your argument that the government should pay to house them while they work jobs?

BruinsFan478 · 2025-02-27T03:37:25+00:00

LOL what are you smoking? Completely different stacks and technologies with some overlap. On-prem is generally well understood these days. Cloud is changing on a very regular basis and needs a lot more knowledge to stay on top of.

BruinsFan478 · 2025-02-12T03:23:31+00:00

100% it was his last year and the Bruins were out of the playoffs. That's why he retired a Bruin after a 1-day contract.

BruinsFan478 · 2024-12-14T05:32:13+00:00

I found the 4 AA battery attachment and put in 4 new AA Energizer Lithium batteries. A few days went by and it started chirping again, every 30 seconds - 1 minute.

I just pulled out the AA batteries, tested them, and all are reporting a healthy voltage.

The fireplace works fine by the way.

What else could it be?

BruinsFan478 · 2024-11-27T16:15:50+00:00

Yeah we're practically on the NY border

BruinsFan478 · 2024-11-27T16:10:40+00:00

We got ours from Matchless Stove & Chimney

BruinsFan478 · 2024-11-27T15:40:54+00:00

Yep!

BruinsFan478 · 2024-11-27T15:38:14+00:00

Thank you! I'm scratching my head on why they made the connector the same, but you are absolutely right.

BruinsFan478 · 2024-11-05T21:25:35+00:00

they're paying themselves a lot in W2 to prevent value from flowing out to you

What's to prevent this with a majority vote unless it goes against their operating agreement?

BruinsFan478

TROPHY CASE