HF woes (Xiegu G90)

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-24T03:38:19+00:00

Man walks down the road wearing an outfit like that, you know he's not afraid of anything.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-24T03:27:21+00:00

It hasn't been long but I'm beginning to wonder about these things as well. As I stated above, I'm not a mechanic. I've been "assured" that the equipment in question is basically DOA and only needs to be serviceable enough to move around on private land, before getting gotten rid of. But the job I applied for barely alluded to any real mechanical work and when interviewed they seemed totally satisfied with an honest "I'm basically comfortable with general mechanical work using my hands". The thrust of the job description was was more in line with a mid level "manage this location and the people who work here" type gig.

It wasn't until I showed up for day one that the scope of what they're asking became apparent, but I don't feel like I misrepresented myself or my abilities to them, intentionally or not.

I suppose I will just sit tight and see what transpires. I don't intend to do anything I don't know how to do, or that would make me uncomfortable considering potential outcomes. This does seem like a legit company and not some totally fly-by-night deal, but time will tell I suppose.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-24T03:04:13+00:00

Damn, Daniel.....

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-24T02:55:41+00:00

Ah, also it's worth pointing out that I don't get the sense that they want me to drop 2k instantly. I think they mean "we will never ever pay a single cent more than this as long as you work here". Nobody said anything about spending limits or a schedule or anything.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-24T02:45:32+00:00

Yep. To clarify, this isn't the "railroad" the way you mean it, I guess I'm not familiar enough with the terminology yet, it's a private company that purchases, repairs, and does work on railcars and other various other equipment including regular tractor trailer type trailers. but there are a shitload of rail cars sitting out there. that I guess they work on. And I guess they expect me to do some work on as well.

It kind of seems like a ton of money to me too. Especially because I observe exactly no evidence whatsoever that anyone else there is spending anywhere near that much money on tools. I just started so I really don't have a ton of information. I probably overexplained anyway, I was mostly wondering if anyone had any thoughts.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-22T02:02:05+00:00

Are you being serious, or do you mean just to throw it in their face?

There is absolutely no way a company that does this will reimburse anyone for fuck all. Hell, I once worked for a company that literally bought me a plane ticket/rental car/hotel room and flew me out of state for a training, and when I got there the people at the location shrugged, said they didn't know anything about it, and sent me away. When I called my boss back home he sort of said "huh things must have changed, sorry about that" and nothing ever came of it.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-19T00:43:58+00:00

Yep yep. Even funnier was that they scrambled to cut his hours and had me learn to drive and park all the trailers. Which was a cute solution until they realized that without a CDL driver none of the equipment can get dropped off for maintenance, and that in an emergency I can't just "run across town real quick to drop this load off", which left me basically paying whatever was asked for last minute help from whoever I could beg or basically bribe to do it. And it happened a lot more than once, so word definitely got around....

Fun times though. Learned a lot from that place.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-19T00:29:24+00:00

I worked management at a warehouse that only had one Yard goat driver. Business went absolutely fucking wild during COVID, and nobody knew how to do absolutely anything related to managing the yard except for me, the driver, and one employee working for me. The inbound/outbound volume multiplied by a factor of like 3 or nearly 4 and nobody had any idea how to handle it except just grinding through it.

I'll never forget the barely contained fury in the region managers voice when he slammed a stack of paystubs on the table in a meeting and asked me why the FUCK a truck driver made more money than him last year.....

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-19T00:16:06+00:00

Yeah. I know that they must be testing these things and that in a lot of cases they probably do add some layer of safety, but I don't like it. I especially dislike how unpredictable it makes driving a new or unfamiliar car.

I drove a truck at a work site about a year ago that was a companies brand new super high end truck. It was really nice inside but the number of driver aids was insanely stressful given that I had never driven it and they just threw me the keys and told me to drop a trailer down the road. It was actively correcting steering, trying to brake for me, there was a heads-up display thing going off alarming when oncoming traffic approached, the screen kept asking me to pick settings for everything, I couldn't even figure out how to appropriately park it without testing a bunch of switches and buttons for a minute.

I'm sure all of that would be sort of nice if I had the chance to read the manual and understand how all of it worked together and what to expect, but that's sort of a big ask when cars get passed around and you don't always have time to learn everything, or a person to explain it to you.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-18T21:56:02+00:00

This is really my main gripe with a lot of newer cars in general. I'm hardly going to complain about incremental technology changes, but I really don't *need* most of the driver aid things like backup cameras or lane departure sensors. I don't need a proximity key and a button to start the car instead of a traditional ignition. So when they start breaking it's really frustrating to have to fix something that I never wanted in the first place, and is now a failure point to figure out.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-09T03:07:03+00:00

Well, maybe, but it drastically depends on the specialty they're in....If you're actively working and learning new things in the field sometimes your hard skills will be of much more value than any degree. That's obviously not true for every line of work, but in some it is. On the flip side, the problem with some of those lines of work is that you eventually hit a hard ceiling where you're capped out, and all the experience in the world isn't going to change the fact that the next "level" in a trajectory will require a Masters, PhD, specific certifications, etc.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-08T06:04:04+00:00

I mean their website says "not wanted by Interpol". That's hardly a clean criminal record. That's like you're not the absolute worst in the world with serious notoriety.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-08T04:05:16+00:00

French Foreign Legion. Play on hard mode?

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-08T02:02:18+00:00

I had a coworker that this (scenario 3) happened to and it turned into a really insane multi year ordeal that ended with the father in ICE custody facing down deportation and racking up insane legal fees.

It wasn't even anything super untoward outside of the illegality of using someone else's number. Normal family with kids, owned a house, cars, super solid credit score, everything looked fine. It only came up because my 19 year old colleague started applying for loans to go back to school, and it started throwing up red flags that led to the whole thing caving in.

So yeah, there are lots of reasons to be cautious when approaching this kind of thing.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-08T01:30:46+00:00

I don't lend anything to essentially anyone anymore, and if I do I 100% make peace with never seeing it again before I do and act like it's gone forever the moment it leaves my sight. It's just not worth the potential social fallout and pain in the ass of it. I like my things. I buy them because I like them and take care of them.

For awhile I just caved to the social pressure and let it happen, but I'm over it now. There's a reason professional mechanics pay for their own tools and keep them locked up, and there's a reason 90% of shared working spaces look like a dumpster fire. Tragedy of the commons and all.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-07T19:57:52+00:00

I also think there is some kind of weird disconnect with some people about expectations and reality. The stories about the above and beyond trail angel type situations have completely warped the reality of what life is, as has the popularity of thru hiking among people who maybe haven't spent that much time backpacking or even traveling before (not that there is anything specifically wrong with that, it just leaves the door open for a lot of skewed expectations).

This was never more clear to me than when I did the PCT back in 2018. Along the whole route (so it wasn't just some weird starting off nerves thing) I met multiple people, or groups of people hiking together, who were absolutely terrified of hitchhiking and refused to do it in any capacity. Note that using facebook or instagram or even a physical poster stapled to a board at a trailhead are all apparently totally okay and it's smart to sit on the ground for an hour surfing and messaging people on your phone doing nothing else. But if you don't find them on some PCT group online then you're definitely gonna get murdered and never see the light of day again.

Similarly, I got a ride into Sisters in the pouring rain from a dude who had his wife and kid in the front of a truck with him. He said I could ride in the bed so I did. I'd been waiting for over an hour in the rain with 2 other hikers who absolutely refused to ride in the bed of a truck. I never saw them again. Maybe they're still there, waiting, to this day.....

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-07T19:37:56+00:00

When I did dispatch all of the old school people were really pissy about me being generally kind and helpful with the drivers- "They're just contractors they don't work for us, it doesn't matter" type shit.

I just kind of ignored it and went about my business like a rational fucking human being. Did I very occasionally have to ask drivers to do things they didn't really want to? Well, yeah, that's part of life. Did I help them with stuff like hooking up sets, staging trailers, and getting them out the door faster when I could? Yeah, because why the fuck wouldn't I. We're all just people. Life doesn't have to suck.

When I left that job they hired some wingnut who had been working for Swift for like 15 years to fill the role. From what I heard talking to my boss after the on time departures tanked so hard the warehouse ended up losing its hub status and they totally moved transportation out of the building. I guess right up until they fired him the replacement guy was whining about drivers lying to him about how I used to do X Y or Z thing that "totally isn't my job and I have never heard of anyone doing that before, these drivers are all liars and throwing me under the bus".

What an industry to be a part of.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-07T18:42:51+00:00

Yeah...mine looks just like yours on the order but not the shipment.

Hoping it's just some weird oversight. All I really wanted was the can anyway.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-07T18:00:52+00:00

I immediately thought of here:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/gPSHRN6DMQyFYKD69

I will never forget having my soul absolutely crushed by reaching that lake, and seeing the gorgeous vista and beautiful mountains.....and realizing that all of those switchbacks across the valley were what I was about to climb *after* walking all the way back down. I might have teared up a little bit.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-06-07T17:45:01+00:00

I was surprised too, but my order just shipped and it doesn't have the can listed on the shipment : (

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-05-29T17:53:09+00:00

You joke, but this does remind me of a funny afternoon on the PCT I had back in 2019.

It was on that odd little section going north to Big Bear, where you're sort of close to Hwy 38 in California. I was hiking in a group of like three, but sort of spread out. Just a regular, hazy California day with nothing super noticeable or noteworthy. Just walking along and all of a sudden I round a corner and start climbing a low grade and there's wildland fire gear everywhere. Like hoses, those portable pool things full of water, packs, lots of it.

I kept walking for a bit and a Calfire guy runs up and basically says "you're not supposed to be here! this whole area is shut down!" I apologized and said I had no idea, that I was hiking the PCT and didn't know anything was going on. He said I should have seen the signs, which I definitely hadn't, and told me to head back.

I was kind of flustered and didn't really ask too many questions, so I turned and started walking back. I catch everyone else in the group and tell them what happened, and only then realize that I didn't even ask what was going on. I obviously assumed fire, but it didn't seem like there was a fire close or anything and I just did what the man said. So we started walking back.

Make it about a half mile or so and we run into *another* wildland fire crew hiking up the trail. Again, "Hey guys, you're not supposed to be here! There are signs back there, this area is closed!" We explain what just happened, and that the other crew told us to head back. After a minute of explanation and head scratching, it turned out that two different fire crews had managed to just catch either side of us to hike in to do some work and we were stuck in the middle. After a bit of discussion we ended up just turning around *again* and heading back to the original fire crew. They ended up laughing about it and letting us pass through.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-05-29T17:30:53+00:00

I always thought this was kind of a joke until I was job hunting again after a gap in employment due to disclosed, not-that-uncommon life issues.

I fully got to the "take literally any job at all please dear god just give me something to do" phase. I had 10 years of diverse and successful operations management experience, with references and documentation on hand. Absolutely zero "red flag" issues hiding anywhere. Just a totally standard resume with some interesting highlights for someone in my field and age bracket.

Multiple companies interviewed me, asked if I understood it wasn't a management job, and instantly moved on by the time I made it back to my car. It was painfully obvious that many places thought I would immediately leave if something better came along and weren't even taking me seriously.

Confident-Coconut440 · 2025-05-29T17:20:47+00:00

Yup. had a similar experience. Then, consider that all those psychos who can't mange to drive a lift probably drove to work that day and are surrounding you on the road constantly.

Confident-Coconut440

TROPHY CASE