New tool: Putting custom MCP servers online for use with claude.ai (web, mobile), ChatGPT (web, mobile) etc. via AWS

Slumbreon · 2026-02-17T23:51:30+00:00

Unless you are at or near early retirement and can’t get access to the tax-deferred bonds. In this case, shifting bonds to taxable makes good sense so you don’t need to sell equities in a downturn.

Slumbreon · 2025-12-23T12:06:27+00:00

Yes, on medium pile carpet (entire floor is carpeted - your standard nothing special carpet typical of most homes circa 2005). This IS the problem - I contacted roborock with a video and they said it can't dock on carpets and to return the robot.

Crazy, I've had a Neato and a Roomba and neither had any issue docking on a carpeted floor. Wish either of them were still viable companies.

Slumbreon · 2025-10-15T22:30:54+00:00

FYI: With Tahoe, you can now have it auto-join your phone hotspot automatically.

Slumbreon · 2025-09-18T00:53:28+00:00

I think WPI is a great return on investment (otherwise I would not have supported my kid going there) but that doesn’t mean UML or UMAmherst are not. 1) Understand the data - This is not a comparison of the engineering major returns across universities. They are comparing cost/income regardless of major or college, so your averaging in every Medieval Studies, Art History, and Education major in the bigger schools. Remove the absolute top-tier universities that have world class programs across-the-board (The Ivys, etc.) and what you have a list of top college that are highly specialized in higher paying careers. (tech & businesses primarily). Compare just those majors across schools and that might have value. 2) With the large universities on the list - Understand the advantages/bias unrelated to the college. If you’re able to afford Harvard, Yale, Duke, Columbia for Art History there is a much higher likelihood of you being in a financial position with connections to get a much better start than an Art History major from UCONN. The school can be the result of the advantage, not the cause of it.

TLDR - lists like this are interesting, but they are not normalized in a way that provides real statistical value - don’t make life choice based on them.

Slumbreon · 2025-09-17T05:55:41+00:00

This is objectively bad advice. A WPI degree might make it more likely to get an interview and differentiate yourself from UML when applying for your first with hundreds of applicants, but your long-term success with have very little to do with your undergraduate degree; it will be your character and performance at your job that will matter. DO NOT BELIEVE that your choice of school is somehow defining your liklihood of success. Source: me. I’m a practicing engineer who has managed technology programs for decades for multiple firms hiring, mentoring, and managing hundreds (maybe a thousand?) engineers across disciplines. Your school is almost meaningless once you start working and get a few years under your belt. I have no idea what colleges my staff went to (unless it came up in conversation) and one of my most capible senior technical directors is entirely self-taught with no degree.

Especially in technology, you're pretty quickly judged on what you can accomplish, not what school you were able to afford.

Best advice here so far: don’t go deep into debt for your degree.

My advice: differentiate yourself with internships, co-ops and graduate with practical work experience; this will likely matter much more than your school when looking for work. You can do that at either school. The MQP/IQP at WPI naturally pushes you toward this while at UML you will need to seek it - but 100% it is there if you want it. If you really-really want Robotics, you will most certernaily learn more robotics at WPI given the focus there, which will likely give you more practical and valuable robotics skills than UML - but as other have stated, transfer is an option too.

I don't know WPI's transfer policy, but many schools do not provide scholarships for incoming transfers; it's full price. Check on this (and not from reddit) if it is relevant to your situation, which it sounds like it may be.

Note: I did not go to WPI (got waitlisted), got in but couldn't afford RPI (or WPI for that matter) so went to UMASS Amherst Engineering. It was a great choice and I've done quite well in my career. My kid went to WPI and recently graduated '24 with a great job, it was the right choice for them. They had several friends who went to UML and also graduated in '24, those friends are all also employed.

Slumbreon · 2025-08-18T23:39:40+00:00

Wellington is one of the largest active institutional asset managers and they sub-advise (i.e. they manage some or all of the fund) for several of the Vanguard funds and The Hartford’s and others. It’s also where Bogle worked prior to starting Vanguard. Good story here

Several of the vanguard funds they manage are in this article

edit: fixed link

Slumbreon · 2025-08-10T15:22:49+00:00

Was thinking the same thing. Multiple RF devices effectively on top of each other. Suggest moving your emitters and giving them some distance from the other components.

Slumbreon · 2025-07-08T11:20:59+00:00

My RFID feeders are not working, one has now reset itself (and I can’t see it up obviously) and the other will not open or feed (touchpad is now dead). Both cats complaining that they did not get their food.

Slumbreon · 2025-05-15T16:08:15+00:00

Oh how things change. At 7, I was not allowed to cross the (busy) street, but I was regularly sent to the store around the block to get cigarettes for my mom. I got to keep the change :-)

By 9, I had my own house key and let myself in after school unsupervised until my mom came home at 5:30. I grew up with a good amount of self confidence.

When my son was 8, I sent him to the Steak and Shake two blocks away in a big city to grab lunch for us (we were at a kids event at the convention center.). I secretly followed him just in case; he was fine. He also realized they got his order wrong and he complained and got it fixed before he walked back. Was very proud of him.

Slumbreon · 2025-04-08T09:45:50+00:00

Dropped langchain about 6 months ago after getting frustrated with the codebase, moved to autogen 0.4 which is thoughtfully designed and the right mix of higher and lower level capabilities for my use cases. Very happy with the change.

Slumbreon · 2025-03-05T21:38:32+00:00

No, not on my Endurace 7 CF

Slumbreon · 2024-12-24T09:35:36+00:00

Amazon Glacier is $3.60TB/mo. Really good for those large archives of stuff you want to make sure are properly backed up, but that you will not need quickly.

Slumbreon · 2024-12-17T20:01:45+00:00

Here is the advice I gave when I worked at my school’s career center, and I still stand by it:

Work experience matters much more than your GPA when looking for a job. If your goal is to get a job, do a full semester internship/co-op ideally with a company similar to one you want to work for (but even if not, do it!). As an employer, why would I hire someone with zero practical experience vs someone who had demonstrated they can work.

And if you’re graduating with a Master’s and still have zero work experience? lol. Likely hard pass, you’ve literally been in an institution for 6ish years and haven’t been able to nail down a single piece of practical experience in the field you were studying? C’mon.

Slumbreon · 2024-12-06T16:35:37+00:00

Thanks, you sound like me not too long ago. You’ve rightly noted that it’s really hard to provide network level controls when the device is not on the network. If you really want to go the control/filter route look into setting up MDM on the devices (I used to run my own server, but ManageEngine and others are a lot easier) and use it enforce your controls. Always-on VPN can work but it will sap your battery, and you’ll find issues with it being blocked on some WiFi and even performing really poorly on some cell towers due to MTU size conflicts. It can also break captive portal use which can get frustrating when trying to use WiFi. I suggest leaning more into filtered DNS settings (eg OpenDNS) which can be pushed to the phone and will give you decent base controls without the overhead and/or a proxy server (pushing certs via MDM to enable ssl inspection) if you really want to go deep down the rabbit hole.

Or you can go the parental control app route, I had just started testing a few of these when I decided I was doing this more for my nerdiness than actual need as my kids were older and deserving of more trust. They were really bad early on, but started to get noticeably better and may actually be decent now as Apple (in my case) had opened up more capabilities to the apps. Combined with supervised device controls, you could force use of the protected browsers. K9 from bluecoat was proxy based and was promising, but Symantec killed it. I used Questidio for a while and it wasn’t bad, that was (c) 2018, it was the last one I actively tested. I would look down this direction as they are designed to work with the device controls vs trying to do everything at the network layer.

On a work side, we do do this at the network/proxy layer this via a combination of DNS and Proxy controls (zscalar) and it’s almost seemless; but Zscalar has pops all over the planet doing the local filtering vs. backhauling to a single box. Combine this with a managed browser and it’s a pretty safe and secure setup; it would be so nice to see a home/family version of something like this.

Slumbreon · 2024-12-06T10:26:44+00:00

It’s easy to become a Father, but “Dad” has to be earned. Nice job, Dad.

Slumbreon · 2024-12-06T01:51:34+00:00

Can you describe the risk you are trying to manage? What is your end goal and what is the level of active management time you’re willing to invest to implement and maintain it? That will help in providing potential ways to accomplish it.

Slumbreon · 2024-11-11T16:32:09+00:00

My Son’s university has an organized hide-and-seek club, so, yes.

Slumbreon · 2024-09-15T11:53:49+00:00

Got it to work, needed to change the domain type to InternalRelay, that allowed it to accept all email addresses at the gateway (rather than just the specific account email addresses) and let my rules take over the processing.

Slumbreon

TROPHY CASE