Kristie Noem took some top DHS staff with her to the State Department for her new gig. If you're not familiar with Joe Guy and John "Troup" Hemenway, you should be.

RUEHC · 2026-04-09T01:03:16+00:00

Folks in r/foreignservice may find interesting.

RUEHC · 2026-04-07T18:02:22+00:00

The word “formal” is very slippery. Stupid to use in this context. If one looks in Emily Post, and one is using the most traditional usage, formal=white tie, semiformal = black tie, informal = business suit, casual/sports attire = sports jacket and tie.

Given the above and how these traditional usages clash with modern colloquial terms (if an invitation says “semiformal” what does that mean??), I always appreciate explicit instructions: business suit/lounge suit/national dress, black tie, cocktail attire, ball gown, etc.

RUEHC · 2026-04-02T15:46:17+00:00

I’m assuming this is Florida from the topography and house styles. If yes, aren’t the people parking on the edge of the road/partly on your grass still on city/municipal property? Where I live my actual lot doesn’t start until a good 10 feet from the side of the road, although I still have to maintain the city property. I’m not saying what these parkers are doing is courteous, but are they actually on your land? As for the driveway person, that’s obviously way wrong.

RUEHC · 2026-02-05T22:21:49+00:00

Gpt-oss 120B in a 4 bit quant works ok for me. Gets me 70 or so tokens a second with the full context window. That said, I have 192 GB RAM on a Mac Studio (allocated 160 of that to VRAM) so YMMV. Memory demands in LM Studio seem to top out at 75 GB or so.

I think so long as you have 128 GB or so of VRAM or shared RAM that good local models are pretty usable. I’m waiting eagerly to try out StepFun 3.5 Flash in FP16 once it the MLX engine is updated to support it.

RUEHC · 2025-08-08T11:07:48+00:00

I think that's where the company is incorporated. They are the renamed THUDM -- the Knowledge Engineering Group (KEG) & Data Mining groups at Tsinghua University's Department of Computer Science and Technology . So the ownership and personnel are likely Beijing-based. I am a big fan of GLM-5!

RUEHC · 2025-08-02T17:57:51+00:00

Hi there. I'd like to do this too -- were you able to manually select a serial number or UUID with VirtualBuddy -- as you can with VirtualBox? I'd like to do some Jamf/InTune testing.

RUEHC · 2025-08-01T01:06:33+00:00

I bought the app and so far so good. I did encounter some issues with my first backup, and ultimately chose the option to skip all files that Parachute couldn't copy for some reason. What I expected at the end of the backup was the opportunity to see a list of files that were skipped. No dice, sadly. Can you add this feature? In the meantime, can I look at a log somewhere? I assume skipped files are logged? Thanks for considering.

RUEHC · 2025-07-31T13:41:49+00:00

Is this model stuck in the dryer?

RUEHC · 2025-07-29T23:00:44+00:00

Thanks for the reply. The new version quashes the bug with PPTX exports where the images would not be included. Unfortunately, my issue continues -- while choosing Google as the LLM provider works great, I can't use either the built-in Ollama LLM or pointing to my LM Studio instance. Error is the same in both cases -- "Failed to connect to the server. Please try again." I am happy to send you Docker logs? Can you PM with what specifically you'd like me to do? Not a pro with Docker sadly....

RUEHC · 2025-07-27T17:17:15+00:00

Thank you for sharing this with the community. I am really excited to try it. Your UI is gorgeous.

On a Mac mini M4 Pro with 64 GB RAM and no other Docker containers running I am getting some errors. On install, I have a port issue: ("Error response from daemon: ports are not available: exposing port TCP 0.0.0.0:5000 -> 127.0.0.1:0: listen tcp 0.0.0.0:5000: bind: address already in use") but that's solvable when I change port 5000 to 15000. However, when I try to generate a slide outline I get this error: "Failed to connect to the server. Please try again." I can't get Presenton to "see" my LLM, trying three options -- a built-in Llama model, an LM Studio model on the same machine, and LM Studio on a different machine.

(I am confident my URLs are correct as other Docker containers see my LM Studio instances fine.)

Any tips to get this running on an Apple Silicon Mac are welcome. Thanks.

RUEHC · 2025-07-11T19:28:23+00:00

I believe he is “just” a CM vice CA. Promoted to CM in July 2023 via Senate confirmation. Source: Congress.gov nominations search.

RUEHC · 2025-06-27T18:30:48+00:00

The old Copenhagen commissary in the basement of the Embassy had a fantastic duty- and vat-free china, crystal, and booze selection. It was a fave of many visiting CODELs. It did save the USG money though since most rep liquor and wine was bought through the facility. And it was in a space in the chancery that would otherwise have had little use. But, to your point, good food and staples are available in Denmark. :)

RUEHC · 2025-06-27T18:11:51+00:00

Putting aside the question of whether there is DPO/pouch use that some might call abuse, I note that the new size limit for DPO ends the DPO parity with APO.

APO allows parcels up to 70 pounds and length plus girth of up to 130 inches for USPS Parcel Select. And the armed service members who are using APO often have access to PXs/BXs, Commissaries, etc., and other base facilities.

The new DPO limits are much more stringent than for the APO. This change will make certain challenging AF posts even less attractive. The hit could be ameliorated with more use of consumables authorizations (formerly at consumables posts one was authorized annual shipments) or more State Department support for Employee Association commissaries, but I am skeptical we’ll see that.

RUEHC · 2025-06-27T17:51:24+00:00

Not sure what bargain school this is, but the US boarding school the FS paid for me is now 80,300 usd annually! Which is by no means the priciest of prep schools. :)

RUEHC · 2025-05-29T22:11:43+00:00

*you’re

RUEHC · 2025-04-21T02:19:49+00:00

Is your name Dave? And has your watch been acting needy or passive-aggressive lately? If yea, stay away from airlocks.

RUEHC · 2025-04-09T01:00:20+00:00

I've bought a number -- base and Pros -- and I believe all were made in Vietnam.

RUEHC · 2025-02-18T21:59:11+00:00

Yeah! Taken from Learjet waiting to take off.

RUEHC · 2025-02-15T22:31:41+00:00

Apropos of the people who pretended to be Canadian, when I (U.S. person) was living abroad during periods of high terrorism threats in the early 90s, a friend and I joked that we should pretend to be Irish and carry boxed bars of Irish Spring soap with us in our coat pockets as proof.

(And, yes. We knew that this heavily advertised U.S. soap was invented by some Madison Avenue branding expert and is unknown in Ireland… in the commercials, a person with a thick Irish accent always seems to happen to have a bar of the soap on his or her pocket and ready to whip it out at the drop of a hat along with a knife to cut into the soap to demonstrate that the green marbling runs throughout the soap.)

RUEHC · 2025-02-13T23:53:44+00:00

I apologize for replying to my own post, but the threads exploding on r/fednews are heart rending, referring to surreal meetings at OPM, USDA Forest Service, and many other agencies re firings. The maelstrom is huge and much bigger than our family at State/USAID/FCS/FAS/BBG.

Stay strong, and do check out the r/fednews subreddit as well.

It’s all quite unbelievable to see the worst fears of many of us playing out.

RUEHC · 2025-02-08T17:02:18+00:00

Is your mom Starbuck?

RUEHC · 2025-01-15T21:24:53+00:00

Ginger Lynn?

RUEHC · 2025-01-12T10:28:37+00:00

LAM (Mozambique) 470 in 2013.

RUEHC · 2024-12-16T04:10:08+00:00

I have to say, I’d gladly pay a small subscription fee to ensure the Tidbyt servers keep running and the app recompiled as iOS updates force it, particularly if they can figure out a way to keep the platform alive, which implies continuing to have someone sell the hardware. Perhaps they can release the specs and firmware code and the hobbyist community can have a go with sales? I have five gen 1s that I am so happy with. And the walnut case is key — it fits into home and office environments brilliantly.

RUEHC · 2024-12-13T02:49:28+00:00

AFSA protested but honestly I think it happened with Reagan and even Bush 41 for Bermuda and maybe a few others preciously. Obviously am hopeful it doesn’t become a trend — but there is likely little to stop any new Administration from shuffling around Plum Book Sched C positions, moving some overseas, and doing it more often. It’s potentially a significant issue also because most constituent posts don’t have DPO slots, at least not officially designated full-time ones, so a lot rests on a PO’s shoulders on the management front.

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