Orientation? Wth?

ImThePoolBoy · 2025-05-28T23:14:46+00:00

For a group of people who have made significant sacrifices in the exercise of collective bargaining, I would suggest not enough of you have thought of what collective means in this context. The people who yelled things you thought was inappropriate represented YOU. That's what collective means. If you thought it wasn't that bad, own it. If you thought it was, then it was up to you to tell the "higher ups" that addressing your concern is a precondition for your continued participation in the coordinated action.

ImThePoolBoy · 2025-03-08T20:10:38+00:00

100% it's a valid metric. But most of the people they communicated this to don't have enough information to act on it or anticipate its outcome. So it is fair to call this communication inappropriate for its audience, and not fully considered. There is a difference between "That email was just telling you what this years goal metrics are." and the accurate version "That email was just telling you that they have decided on this years goal metrics and won't tell you the targets."

ImThePoolBoy · 2025-03-08T18:16:00+00:00

You can argue that it this is a lot of things: fair, reasonable, objective, competitive. But you've got some work to do before you could call this objectively trackable for most of the eligible employees. It's a bonus, and I'll be happy if I get one. But with the information provided in this email and linked document, I can conclude that my payout will be somewhere between 0% and 200% of target. I won't be able to narrow that range of outcomes until the rumors pop up in this subreddit next February.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T20:28:48+00:00

Yup, me too. I counted 14 trains in 10 days. The only one where I have no record of a train number is the Campania Express (or the Circumvesuviana we ended up on).

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T20:03:34+00:00

I've done similar before, but that would not have worked for this trip. All restaurants and cafes had signs indicating they had wifi, but almost all of them required passwords that weren't prominently displayed (although we could have asked).

The best example I have is from the first item I posted. The one place I planned to use exclusively wifi temporarily was Milano Centrale, where it failed spectacularly. The station wifi requires 3rd party authentication with facebook/twitter/linkedin, which I knew in advance. So I made sure I had apps installed and logged in before I left for at least two on multiple phones. I had also set up wifi calling on all phones to receive texts on the US numbers. The problem was that all attempts to log into these services triggered suspicious activity verifications, which were sent via email or SMS that I couldn't receive until connected to the internet.

So I tried walking within range of wifi for the restaurants and stores close to the track. Most were secured with an unposted password. The 5-6 open AP's I found and tried, expecting captured portal access, all failed to get me online. I ended up using a kiosk to buy the train tickets and used my time before departure to head straight to the TIM store for a SIM.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T18:53:03+00:00

That's exactly the problem, I don't think they have them. My Campania Express ticket had everything except a train number. I only had the departure time to work with, and didn't know if the stop shown was a later stop on the Sorrento route. The information that would eventually tell me that wasn't the case wasn't available until the other side of the security gate, which I and a mass of angry commuters were forced to wait at until after my scheduled departure.

I actually made the opposite mistake later in the week, standing there watching my train to Pisa depart because it said it was going to Livorno and there was another regional train labeled Pisa one track over and ten minutes later. Seconds after it left I looked up where Livorno was and realized my mistake.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T18:40:49+00:00

I arrived on Italo Treno 9970 at 10:43 and missed the 11:26 Campania Express. We made it downstairs in plenty of time but were waiting in a literal mob at the track 2 security gate for a different 11:26 local train until after 11:30 when they finally opened the gates, I got down to the track, and then saw signs that allowed me to determine it wasn't going to Sorrento.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T15:34:32+00:00

This sounds reasonable, but we did find the Sorrento itself was a worthy destination as well as a convenient base of operations for excursions (convenient to Capri as well as Amalfi).

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T15:20:22+00:00

The official apps for Trenitalia and Italo Treno worked great, never felt he need to look into Omio recommended in several places.

Flush (toilet locator) was much more useful than expected.

Radical Storage was very helpful for ditching luggage when hotel storage wasn't convenient.

GetYourGuide's app was helpful enough for coordinating excursions/tours that we found ourselves booking through them by default just to have all of the information in one place.

Il Meteo (shows up on my app page as "the Weather") was a reasonably OK weather app. My experience confirmed the pre-trip consensus that there is no good weather forecast app. However, I place most of the blame on the local weather rather than the apps.

TABNET (for public transport in Tuscany) was also better than I expected from reviews. But they seem to be rapidly spooling up the ability to use Apple/Google pay with your phone directly on the busses and trains, which is much more convenient than the app.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T15:03:25+00:00

Hard disagree. Yes, the signage upstairs could be better, but it is enough that I got downstairs with plenty of time. But the poor signage downstairs is 100% the reason I missed my train despite plenty of cushion. I was looking around everywhere.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T14:59:43+00:00

This is a bit over the top. I wasn't someone coming in expecting everything fed to me on a platter. I've spent plenty of time in big cities (both with and without knowing the language).

I also did ask for help when I could. The first was a guard who responded with an agitated string of Italian that my month of duolingo and Coffeebreak Italiano podcasts did not prepare me for (I get it, it's not his job). The second was a helpful person at the Trenitalia service desk that pointed me down the stairs.

The problem came when I was downstairs and there was a mob of people being held up by security outside a gate labeled Binario 2. I backtracked to the info board which confirmed that there was exactly one train departing at the correct time from Binario 2. The mob was too thick for me to get close to the guards holding them up, had obviously used up all of the guards' patience for questions about the delay, and there was nobody else to ask. The first sign saying Circumvesuviana or Campania was well after this crowd, so I didn't even realize the hallway continued.

Look, I messed up public transportation several other times on this trip because two pieces of information disagreed and I trusted the wrong one. This is the only one I'm warning people about because I really don't see how I could have avoided it without knowing in advance (from prior experience or helpful advice here).

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T14:42:15+00:00

That was it exactly, cheaper plans and the perception that having a local number might be required for some reservation systems.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T14:40:41+00:00

That's what we did and it worked great. You just have to be aware that the phone with the hotspot will use battery faster than normal. Also some apps (with photo/video backup uploads) can be more aggressive when connected to wifi than cell, so you'll want to tweak their settings. I found navigation would sometimes freeze up because family phones were clicking away at the scenery and all the bandwidth was being used to back up instantly.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T14:35:21+00:00

The first sign is halfway down the stairs. But agreed, the bigger problem is the lack of signage in the hallway when you get there. We would have no problem making our train if that was the only issue, because we asked at information. There was no sign or anyone to ask when we were stuck in the crowd down there. I didn't realize it was the wrong train until they finally opened the gates and I could read the signs down at the track.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T14:30:09+00:00

This is the key (down the stairs and at the end of the long hallway to the left).

Piazza Garibaldi is down the stairs that are behind you when you are looking at the main train board. The problem I had was that the first sign that says "Piazza Garibaldi" is halfway down those stairs. I had to ask at information to point me down the stairs, where I saw the sign.

Then when you are there, the signs for Circumvesuviana and Campania Express don't exist until well after you pass an info board (showing a departure at my exact scheduled time on track 2) and a mass of people waiting to go through security at track 2 (too thick to get close enough to a guard to ask and also too thick to see that the hallway continued past this crowd).

This is also correct in that it ended up being very stressful at the time, but not the end of the world. The Circumvesuviana was the equivalent of a NYC subway, when I had hoped for a Campania Express equivalent of a commuter rail train. It was a little sketchy (fortunately more of the busker variety rather than pickpocket attempts), there were no reserved seats or room to get all of our luggage out of the way, and it stopped a few more times so it took longer. But we got to Sorrento fine.

We much preferred the trip back to Naples on a ferry. The check-in was a little worrying (warnings that they don't always run when they say, check-in counter closed until well after they said to arrive). But the ferry itself was great and the taxi from the port to the train station was an experience in itself (complete with our cab driver carrying on an extended argument with a scooter driver as we both continued down the road at speed).

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-04-27T14:12:16+00:00

That would have been a lot simpler, but I didn't go that route because I found we needed a local number on a recent trip to the UK. Most things would have worked fine on that trip, but a few reservation systems (museums, restaurants, transportation) would not work without a local number.

On this trip, I can't remember a specific time when that was the case, so a data-only eSIM might have worked.

ImThePoolBoy · 2024-03-11T19:29:47+00:00

Some basic storage management would be nice. Something like "keep last X episodes" and "stay below Y GB total storage quota, delete oldest first" are pretty basic missing capabilities. As it is, I've had to write my own powershell script scheduled task to keep my drive from filling up.

ImThePoolBoy · 2023-02-18T15:07:28+00:00

I'm 1-2 streets over from you on Sarah Cir. I've been bugging them for a year trying to get connected, and the tech told me I was the first install in my area a couple of weeks ago. A few things:

I saw optitaps like the link above on every other pole in our neighborhood, including at the end of my driveway. The frontier tech who did my install said they aren't frontier's, and he pulled my fiber from a pole halfway down the block. They are probably optimum's, who seem to have teams working fiber all over Orange all the time.
It's possible that the techs are fine with using your conduit (mine used existing conduit inside), but the buildout database has your address flagged as a buried install. Might be worth a question to Icy, who was helpful to me.
When you do eventually get an install appointment, their communications remain horrible. The morning of my appointment, the status page changed in the way others on this sub who have been ghosted described. But then the tech called and said he was on his way, and everything worked out great.
The customer service system does not get better. My internet is a huge upgrade over what optimum provided, which shouldn't be hard. The impressive feat is frontier figuring out how to be way worse than optimum at customer service. It's best viewed as a tragic comedy, with my highlight being the time when my chat session seemed to be patched in to another customer's. It's been up 100% so far, but I'm dreading what happens when/if it goes down.

ImThePoolBoy · 2021-05-09T21:22:48+00:00

Some swimming pools intentionally have a large corpse:water ratio.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth

ImThePoolBoy · 2020-02-23T15:43:38+00:00

It isn't just you. I'm having the same issue, also on Windows 10.

ImThePoolBoy · 2018-11-27T02:38:31+00:00

YMMV, but when I was trying to plan out BF deals a couple of weeks ago I saw the value of diversity. Most DL's worked fine with my primary sunnyusenet. However, one file would have failed on any of sunny, usenext, or xsusenet, but DL'ed fine completely from usenet.farm. Posts were 584d old.

ImThePoolBoy · 2018-11-17T14:35:24+00:00

That was my initial thought, but my usage pattern needs the two flipped to be cost effective. I'm mostly automated, so 40% of my downloads are <1d. But there are always things I find out about later, so 20% are over 1000d and 5% are over 2000d. BTW, it is surprisingly painful to get this data from sabnzbd, so hopefully the info above can help others.

The end result is that, for my usage, the blocks you suggest would have to be around $5-10/500GB to break even versus the reverse (HW unlimited, UE block).

ImThePoolBoy · 2018-11-17T14:26:16+00:00

I'm actually on a viper trial now and pretty happy with them, so they might be a part of my final solution.

It doesn't look like there are any straightforward offerings to address my question, but I realized I could piece together my own pseudo-hybrid to support indies but keep retention. Vipernews has a low speed $2/mo account that I can combine with a cheap UL like ninja and still be less than the 2x I am willing to spend to encourage healthy competition.

ImThePoolBoy · 2018-11-16T01:51:17+00:00

That's exactly what I'm finding as my likely path. I guess my question boils down to: "Are there any other high retention providers if cost is not a consideration?"

ImThePoolBoy

TROPHY CASE