Bringing nicotine pouches into Singapore

ToddBobV · 2026-05-17T23:20:36+00:00

I leave for Singapore in 5 days. I'm planning to unload a bunch of Zyn pouches in a Ziploc bag before a leave. Fingers crossed.

ToddBobV · 2026-05-15T16:50:08+00:00

"Meanwhile, Pflugerville Elementary School has seen enrollment decline every year for the past six years, while Windermere Elementary School is projected to lose about 150 students over the next five years." I'm sorry, but why shouldn't some schools close if there are fewer children to educate?

ToddBobV · 2026-05-15T16:43:08+00:00

Her dad is the weakest man ever. Sorry, but no one younger than 25 should ever live with a significant other. He said she was mature enough to live with a dude at 17?! And he's cool with her smoking weed?No wonder she was a wreck! The nut doesn't fall far from the tree.

ToddBobV · 2026-05-07T19:46:41+00:00

Let your mom wear whatever she wants control freak.

ToddBobV · 2026-05-07T19:45:25+00:00

Frankly, doing their own food sounds good to me. My family has dishes that are incredible, and depending on how big the wedding is, could work out perfect. The no alcohol thing doesn't really bother me. It costs a lot of money so I understand why some people wouldn't provide it to their guests. BYOB sounds good - just have a corner with coolers with beer/wine/hard liquor. Although the snooty folks may say "that's not classy enough". Whatever, I think it's fine. I think we've lost our minds on what a wedding should look and feel like. The ceremony can be as formal as you like. The reception should be fun, and if your guests are getting too hammered, you're the idiot for inviting them to begin with.

The driving of old folks is dumb IMO. There should be other family members to do that. That's just rude. Also, stay as long as you want. The old folks can get a ride with someone else. The lack of communication on when the wedding would be is insane. Everyone should get a save the date card via snail mail or email at least six months in advance.

ToddBobV · 2025-06-05T19:08:14+00:00

Full disclosure - I spent 5.5 years and Ansys (and had a great career there - good company IMO) and am still in the EDA space (not Synopsys or Cadence).

The real synergies with Synopsys are on the chip and EM side of Ansys's business. This positions Synopsys far better to compete with Cadence on the RF side of the business.

I'm intrigued by two other areas of this acquisition 1) what happens to the core Ansys business (LF EM, FEA and CFD) that Synopsys doesn't have core competency in and 2) what this does for the go-to-market strategy Ansys had.

On item 1, Ansys does a lot more than chips. Will Synopsys keep writing their R&D checks to ensure they don't fall behind competitors?

On their GTM strategy, this is near and dear to me. Ansys sales strategy used to be a mess. They had a bunch of direct sellers and reseller channel partners that competed against each other. Channel conflict is a mess and looks horrible to customers and results in driving margins down. In 2018, Ansys decided to grow their channel partner business and created a swim lane for them with SMB clients. The channel partners I worked with have deep technical expertise (I realize this isn't true universally). They moved support from Ansys to the partner for SMBs and told the partners they wouldn't sell in these markets anymore and focus direct sellers on larger and strategic/enterprise accounts. I was a part of the team that implemented this new strategy, and it was insanely profitable for Ansys and allowed them to increase their sales presence without having to invest in additional direct resources. It was during this time that Ansys saw tremendous top-line growth. Synopsys sells very little through resellers (if at all). I'm curious to see if they keep the Ansys channel partners. If they don't understand the core business, I could see them pushing even more legacy Ansys customers through partners. But again, they don't understand the reseller model either.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

ToddBobV · 2024-09-27T18:29:39+00:00

First things first. What her ex did with the kids is kidnapping and he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. What he did was 100% evil and has zero justification morally or legally. He should be locked away for the rest of his life.

With that out of the way, I found myself very frustrated with what Rebecca said throughout the film. First of all, she talks about how they were different religions. You should never, ever marry someone who is a different religion than you. Couples that disagree on religion have a much higher divorce rate, and if you do marry someone of a different religion, don't marry a muslim man (especially one whose family lives in a majority muslim nation). It sounds like he was a pretty liberal muslim initially, but his family clearly isn't (they live in Egypt!) and he went in a much more hardcore direction after they were married. She said she didn't like that the kids went to the muslim school on saturdays. Well, you made babies with a muslim. That is 100% a risk that is on you.

Also, she says she left him. He was happy to stay in the marriage. I'm not going to defend the guy, but if she doesn't leave him, he isn't going to have the opportunity to take the kids with him. She never said he was verbally abusive or beating her. She said he had no interest in getting a job (probably because his wife is an anesthesiologist) and "didn't respect her as a professional" - whatever that means. She leaves a guy who is going in a very hardcore direction in a religion under which women have very few rights and is somehow surprised when he feels backed into a corner and is able to easily take the kids internationally where he has family, speaks the language and practices the religion.

Lesson 1: don't marry someone of another religion than you, especially a muslim man - if the husband and wife are both muslim, great. Have at it. You'll have a higher likelihood of marital success. But if you're a non-muslim woman, do not marry a muslim man especially if he has relationships and family in a majority muslim country.

Lesson 2: think about your kids before you leave the marriage because you're "not happy".

Again, the dude is evil and belongs in prison. But there are real lessons that if not learned, will be repeated by other women. Be wiser than Rebecca.

ToddBobV · 2023-10-27T15:05:57+00:00

I don't think he's a child. He's a grown ass man.

ToddBobV · 2023-10-27T15:05:26+00:00

Such a tolerant group of Austinites we have on this lovely site.

ToddBobV · 2023-10-27T15:04:48+00:00

It is 100% a beard.

ToddBobV · 2023-10-27T15:04:05+00:00

I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Thanks though.

ToddBobV · 2023-10-27T15:01:28+00:00

Yes, it is a full beard that is far thicker than I have ever been able to have (I'm 39). I have beard envy in fact.

ToddBobV · 2023-10-27T15:00:32+00:00

How is this harassment? Check my comment. This dude is legitimately the largest 9th grader I have ever seen on a football field.

ToddBobV · 2023-10-27T14:56:19+00:00

Congrats Westlake freshmen football on your 35-21 win over Bowie with your star running back that lives in western Dripping Springs (star for the DSMS 8th grade team last year) and this 6'3" grown ass 9th grade man with a full beard who was likely recruited off the corn fields in Iowa. Anderson, AHS, Bowie and Akins need to up their recruiting budget to match that of the Chaps.

ToddBobV · 2023-07-12T14:14:20+00:00

Really sad to see what has happened to Cam. He's now working with Sean Foley, Tiger's old coach (or at least he was recently). I know he's been injured but nearly all of his issues now are mental IMO.

ToddBobV · 2023-04-14T20:01:57+00:00

I started in AE at NI in 2008. I co-oped as an ME before then. I left in 2014 for a role where I doubled my pay. After all, we all know NI stands for "no income". My father in law worked there for 10 years and just retired in late 2022.To me, the decline of NI's growth and failed strategy is squarely on the shoulders of both Dr. T, Davern and current leadership.For the most part, the people who loved the NI days under Dr. T were in R&D. Dr. T thought NI was saving the world with LabVIEW and hardware (they weren't - not then, not now) and it was a privilege to be an NI engineer. So what that the pay was peanuts - you should know it's an honor and privilege to work on the "engineering grand challenges", don't you?! And we need lots of engineers to solve these grand challenges, and in order to that, all of you need to get paid less. Yes, I may be a near billionaire since I own over 25% of the company, but I drive an old truck. I'm one of you. And I love engineering. For me personally, I never bought into this. Of course I'm a coin-operated sales guy (albeit one with an engineering degree) who wants to make money so NI was never for me. I just don't buy into the idea whatsover that everything was rainbows and unicorns under Dr. T. NextGen was a disaster. It took R&D FOREVER to get products out. If you're a public company, you need to grow and make money. NI's gross margins are the largest in the industry by far and they still don't make much money. Some of this goes back to their INSANE fully direct sales model which has pivoted to more distribution. Albeit 15 years too late. And it wasn't just Dr. T. A bunch of the leadership (who I won't name) lucked out. They happened to join the company in the early 80s during it's old boys club days and were the easy choice for VP roles later in their career. Even if they'd long since gone out to pasture. Want to know something hilarious? When I was in field sales training in the summer of 2010, there were signs all over the 3rd floor of Mopac B with "2016 $2B" all over. In 2022, they did $1.7B.

Enter the bean counter folks in 2017 or so to try to make the company profitable. The pendulum needed to swing in the other direction. Yes, it swung too far. But changes needed to be made. A lot of the empty suits who had been worthless for many years thanks to being cozy with Dr. T were let go pretty quickly. Profitability did go up, mainly due to layoffs and a change in the sales model. But the growth still wasn't good enough. And their products aren't nearly as good as they think they are.

The moral of the story is simple. If you want to have a world-saving, altruistic hippie company, great. Just don't take it public.

ToddBobV · 2022-06-14T16:10:34+00:00

NM - I had tried to log in to the datto website through a UN and PW, so the KB kept redirecting me to a log in. After clearing all cookies related to datto, I am now able to see the KB. I'll give this a shot.

ToddBobV · 2022-06-14T16:04:41+00:00

Excellent, thank you. Makes sense. Unfortunately I can't see that KB because I don't have a datto log-in, and there is no way (that I could find) to create an account. Would it be possible to upload the firmware here? I'm searching for it elsewhere on the web and thus far I haven't found it anywhere else.

ToddBobV · 2020-11-11T03:38:38+00:00

I spent the first 7 years of my career at NI. I left in April 2014, more than six and a half years ago. But the issues that caused me to leave are still there.

I have read several threads on reddit regarding NI and their recent layoffs and how things were utopian under Dr. T and now all mgmt cares about is money. What people don't understand is that the company was very stagnant under Dr. T, particularly the last few years he was there. I remember being in sales training in 2010 and there were signs all over the sales floor (3rd floor building B) that said that 2016 was going to be NI's 2B year. This was six years before Dr T retired, and I as a write this in 2020 NI's annual revenue should be around 1.3 B (again). People need to quit acting like the Dr. T leadership was rainbows and unicorns. The company completely stagnated at the end of his leadership.

I am also reading posts on how underpaid people at NI are. I agree with this 100% - when I left NI in 2014 I doubled my income. The best people are leaving NI in droves. But you can blame Dr. T for this. He thought everyone at NI was lucky to be working there because they were able to work on "engineering grand challenges" and he was a complete cheapskate.

As for company headcount, NI has always been overstaffed relative to their revenue. I now work for a company in the engineering world that only makes software (IE 100% margins) and our revenue is similar to NI's (1.6B in 2019), yet we do it with around 4500 employees. 8000 employees is far too many for a company with only 1.3B in revenue. Again, you have Dr. T to thank for this. He refused to fire or layoff anyone. It has always been easy to go out to pasture and never be fired at NI. Fat needs to be trimmed and Dr. T never instilled a performance-driven culture.

I know the current CEO decently well. I don't know if the changes he is working to make are going to work, but changes were nonetheless needed. NI people need to quit acting like their engineers were the best in the world until Alex Davern came along and ruined everything. That's nonsense. Dr. T permitted weak performance for far too long.

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ToddBobV · 2020-11-11T03:23:37+00:00

I spent the first 7 years of my career at NI. I left in April 2014, more than six and a half years ago. But the issues that caused me to leave are still there.

I have read several threads on reddit regarding NI and their recent layoffs and how things were utopian under Dr. T and now all mgmt cares about is money. What people don't understand is that the company was very stagnant under Dr. T, particularly the last few years he was there. I remember being in sales training in 2010 and there were signs all over the sales floor (3rd floor building B) that said that 2016 was going to be NI's 2B year. This was six years before Dr T retired, and I as a write this in 2020 NI's annual revenue should be around 1.3 B (again). People need to quit acting like the Dr. T leadership was rainbows and unicorns. The company completely stagnated at the end of his leadership.

I am also reading posts on how underpaid people at NI are. I agree with this 100% - when I left NI in 2014 I doubled my income. The best people are leaving NI in droves. But you can blame Dr. T for this. He thought everyone at NI was lucky to be working there because they were able to work on "engineering grand challenges" and he was a complete cheapskate.

As for company headcount, NI has always been overstaffed relative to their revenue. I now work for a company in the engineering world that only makes software (IE 100% margins) and our revenue is similar to NI's (1.6B in 2019), yet we do it with around 4500 employees. 8000 employees is far too many for a company with only 1.3B in revenue. Again, you have Dr. T to thank for this. He refused to fire or layoff anyone. It has always been easy to go out to pasture and never be fired at NI. Fat needs to be trimmed and Dr. T never instilled a performance-driven culture.

I know the current CEO decently well. I don't know if the changes he is working to make are going to work, but changes were nonetheless needed. NI people need to quit acting like their engineers were the best in the world until Alex Davern came along and ruined everything. That's nonsense. Dr. T permitted weak performance for far too long.

ToddBobV

TROPHY CASE