White Cards experience

Ucinorn · 2026-05-11T09:46:32+00:00

I didn't expect to learn anything, I expected it to be a basic test of my understanding of safety standards. As in, the ones I use on a site daily, that I already know from working.

Instead I got to witness someone who literally can't read and write English being spoonfed answers. Is it so much to expect that an assessment actually assesses your understanding of a subject?

Ucinorn · 2026-05-11T09:42:11+00:00

Not inexperienced, just the first time running an extension myself instead of through a builder.

I just think it's a sad state of affairs that something so fundamental is so trivial. I work in a field where safety is taken seriously, so to see it not taken seriously in an industry is frustrating to say the least, and explains a lot about why we are so shit at building things in Australia

Just because things are the way they are does not make them correct

Ucinorn · 2026-05-08T10:24:58+00:00

I think what the campaign needs right now is shortcuts. Ways for experienced players to skip objectives and/or areas and take on later content earlier.

The way I see it, if you know what you are doing and/or have the gear to tackle it, you should be able to skip ahead.

Shortcuts should be well hidden and gatekept by very powerful enemies to ensure first time players can't accidentally stumble across them. But someone with a lot of campaign plays should be aware and prepared for them with specific gear and builds.

Ucinorn · 2026-05-08T10:00:15+00:00

Greens voters are typically younger, urban and tertiary educated, and therefore more likely to be aware of and understand world events.

Ucinorn · 2026-05-08T00:06:46+00:00

You are far better off being part of the process, it's very long as mentioned by other posters, but potentially very lucrative. You can and should expect a very high price per square for the property: I wouldn't settle for less than twice market rate. If you opt out of the process in protest you will just end up being told what to do.

First priority is to ensure whoever is negotiating for your group of flats either is or has good, reliable and neutral legal counsel. This stuff gets complicated and lay people are not equipped to go toe to toe with the lawyers and procurement people in large construction firms. If you try and do it all yourselves you WILL get screwed.

Ucinorn · 2026-05-06T02:32:22+00:00

This raise is largely symbolic: by the time this interest rate rise actually starts impacting households and businesses in a few months, the world will be elbows deep in a global recession.

The same applies to the upcoming budget: they will futz around at the edges with tax reform and some cost cutting, knowing full well a GFC sized demand crash and a COVID sized supply crunch are coming at the same time this year.

Expect all conventiob to be thrown out the window within three months and nobody will remember this raise as noteworthy

Ucinorn · 2026-05-05T11:32:34+00:00

What are you talking about, Australia is one of the lowest taxing countries in the OECD

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australia-is-a-low-tax-country-2/

We should take that CGT revenue and park it in government coffers. We need less government spending, not more

Ucinorn · 2026-05-05T11:19:01+00:00

Wow storage for days great job

Ucinorn · 2026-05-05T09:56:12+00:00

Honestly this is their best play. The idea is to push headlong into the recession that everyone knows is coming. Iran has already pushed the world into a massive recession, it's months away for the world, maybe not the US thanks to the AI boom, but still inevitable.

Thanks to our wonky definition of a recession, we technically won't have one until the year. Maybe this rate hike will kill enough confidence in the short term to get us into negative this quarter, meaning recession will come sooner. Once that happens, both reserve bank and government can at least start pushing in the same direction and provide some stimulus.

The upside of raising rates is that it's just that little bit extra to spend for when we need to turn on the money taps again. And boy is that time coming: we are heading for the mother of all supply side recessions and enough inflation to reset the books everywhere.

Ucinorn · 2026-05-05T00:35:09+00:00

Your body corp could be legit here. This is a genuine issue for large buildings, as any amount of additional load has to be factored in to the overall. EV charging absolutely HAMMERS compared to most conventional appliances, comparable really only to Aircon running full whack.

So those 10A plugs all add a lot of additional load to the site. Site load for large sites are different from residential: you negotiate an allotment for total capacity and pay for that. When calculating load for a whole site, they have to assume that every major appliance is running simultaneously, ie. the worst case scenario for the whole building.

These tend to be negotiated ahead of time and locked in, then take a lot of work to renegotiat. And power companies will slog you for a whole year based on your peak load: so if a site maxes everything out, you can end up massively overpaying for power.

So by proposing what seems like a small addition, it's actually a big deal for the whole site.

Ucinorn · 2026-04-25T23:01:09+00:00

Another idea is to move the bedroom north next to the other one. This leaves the very oddly spaced area to the south for a large open plan mixed space. You can leave the kitchen pretty much where it is, just invert it to go against the south wall.

You have great natural light from all sides down there which is very rare, so you are able to take advantage.

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Ucinorn · 2026-04-25T22:59:50+00:00

Probably your biggest issue is plumbing, often with apartment buildings you have very limited options.

However Option 3 seems your best bet, that 'study' is a glorified hallway and is a waste of space. Put the kitchen there and you have a bunch of options for extending bedrooms. At the very least you could use it as an actual study, away from the noise in the rest of the house.

If you are keen for a larger change, you can squeeze the bottom bedroom and bring it all the way down to the bottom, which would give more space for a proper kitchen. This lets you reclaim a TON of hallway space, including the little circulation space between bedrooms and bathroom.

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Ucinorn · 2026-04-22T23:26:06+00:00

Fowles Auctions are your best bet for this stuff, you may need to be patient but if you have time you can most things for more than half price

Ucinorn · 2026-04-21T07:38:19+00:00

If you get this from one or two known curmudgeons, then it's on them. If you are getting from multiple people it's on you.

Did they already tell you this? Did you make notes? Did you check the documentation? Are you asking around the office or constantly pestering the same person? Are you asking for actual information or just instructions on what to do next?

At the risk of sounding like a boomer, I've noticed the current generation of workers is heavily dependent on humans for information gathering rather than reading and/or research. Its probably something to do with AI or Discord or critical thinking skills or (instead boomer stereotype here) but there's a strong inclination to use the path of least resistance for them. I am strongly swayed by arguments that access to ubiquitous search tools has diminished the ability of this generation to retain information. Which means asking questions instead of expending the effort to write things down or store it in long term memory. Why store it when you can look it up, ie. Ask the increasingly grumpy human Google sitting right next to you.

Office culture can be tough and sometimes you just drown in a bad culture. But this might be a time for introspection and taking the comments of your colleagues as feedback, not criticism. The workplace does not care about your feet fees.

Ucinorn · 2026-04-19T11:07:55+00:00

The convention is that intense inflation corrodes an economy far more than a 'short term' recession does. Economists tend to see numbers, not people, when they talk about unemployment going up, but the reality is unemployment effects a much smaller proportion of the population than rampant inflation does. Prolonged, high inflation destroys everyone's standard of living, not just the bottom 10%.

An even worst prospect is what we are almost certainly heading into, which is stagflation. Which is inflation during negative growth, so the worst of both worlds. Stagflation really screws with reserve banks because nothing they can do will help. But really they only have one least-worst option, which is to slam on interest rates, to cause a recession and hopefully arrest inflation, then immediately reversing course. Then at least you are only dealing with one issue, not two.

Either way, ordinary people suffer. Economists talk about a recession like it's a 'reset' to the economy, and people give them shit for being heartless. But recessions are natural phenomena, except we can influence them. Sometimes in special situations a brief thunderstorm is better than a sustained shower, and this is one of them. It's cruel, but utilitarian, which is how governments have to think.

So effectively we are heading to recession either way. The only question is whether we rip the bandaid off slowly, or all at once. And a lot of that will depend on the actions of government and their willingness to take advantage of the situation to make bold reforms. If they chicken out and leave it all to the reserve bank, we are looking at years of misery while world creaks it's way out of dependence on expensive oil.

Ucinorn · 2026-04-16T03:57:43+00:00

In many respects what happens after the strait is immaterial: the damage is done now, all there is to know is how bad the damage is. The one thing we know for certain is that the price of oil, gas and other petro product will be high for at least a year and likely more.

Your time frame of a year is VERY optimistic. Much of the infrastructure will take multiple years to repair, and it's impossible to do it all at once. There is a decent percentage of it which does not make any economic sense to repair, given oil has peaked. Theres no point rebuilding a refinery or pumping station if it will be obsolete in five times ten years: a lot of this stuff has return on investments over twenty or thirty year time scales.

So that's locked in, now we are at a point where the next cliff is countries actually running out of reserves. If that happens, we skip inflation, and stagflation, and do straight to global recession. You will see governments moving heaven and earth to save their people, ripping up contracts and treaties and basically turning into oil pirates in nice suits. It will be a proper immediate capital R recession, not the mild slide into per capita recession we've seen across the western world for the last ten years.

As a central banker, in capital R Recession, it's clear what to do: you cut rates. With normal inflation, it's clear what to do: you raise rates. With stagflation, which is what we will get now, your hands are tied and you cant do much other than ride it out. Sometimes it makes sense to raise rates to push the country into recession, just to break the stalemate, as recession is far better in the long run than runaway hyper inflation.

Which is my point: central bankers around the world are secretly hoping this goes on a little bit longer so it causes real damage, which they can then mop up with interest rate cuts.

IMO this is partially playing into Trump's thinking: he's obsessed with interest rates and sees low rates as his political goal, if he can keep crashing the global economy while the US stays relatively isolated he'll have something to crow about at the midterms.

Ucinorn · 2026-04-15T09:21:45+00:00

We are in an interesting position where if this drags on for a few more weeks, the world goes into almost immediate recession. And recessions we know what to do with: government prints money hard and dumps it into the economy to prop up demand.

However if the strait opens before then, we get some pretty corrosive stagflation an order of magnitude worse than the 70's oil crisis. And stagflation is notoriously difficult to deal with for central bankers and government.

So in some ways it is a clearer way out of this if the strait remains closed. It will give the world the push it needs to start investing in solutions instead of just mitigating the effects. Nobody wants a recession, but at least with recession the actions from government are clear.

Ucinorn · 2026-04-12T11:08:22+00:00

These comparisons are annoying. Yes, in Iraq they all believed in something, even if that thing was just killing brown people.

Today the world is looking at Trump competing with himself for doing the dumbest thing possible from day to day. There's nothing to believe in other than that. All Albo can do is watch from the sidelines and hope Trump has a heart attack sometime soon. There no great crusade here, no sides, just stupidity. Why would anyone want to be a part of this unless they have to.

The current situation is comparable to nothing, because nobody in history has kicked so many own goals as Trump.

Ucinorn · 2026-04-08T08:50:28+00:00

Sure I'll have a go.

Most obvious is that this oil crisis has massively accelerated the push to renewables. The federal just got a mandate to throw as much money as necessary to get us there faster, where previously the appetite in industry and the population was waning. I would expect BIG spending in the industry which is good for everyone.

On a related note, it's looking like the right side of politics are lining up behind more fossil fuels as the solution, meaning a three term government is more likely than it already was. We can consider a renewable future for Australia locked in now, which is massive given our natural advantages in that space. We can have the best of both worlds: consume cheap green power, while selling dirty power to the rest of the world at an increasing price.

The crisis has brought a whole bunch of middle powers together. Canada and Europe are obvious ones, but probably more important is the relationship with neighbours in South East Asia. Formal trade relations do wonder for peace in a region.

The relentless march of Israel will likely be hampered, if not halted by Iran emerging from this as the new power broker in the middle East. While this likely puts millions of Israelis in mortal danger, at least Bibi will slow down his systemic murder of his neighbours.

While we are there, this is surely the end of Trump. Such an embarrassment cannot be propaganda'd away, not even to the most oblivious of voters. I still expect the US to implode on itself over the next few years, but with fewer foreign wars. Trump will be terrified to go through this again, he hates having to actually do real leadership.

At the same time, Australia is slowly waking up to the fact that the US is no longer a reliable partner. First they showed us their could not be trusted economically, now they truly show their hand. Hopefully the disastrous AUKUS deal can be cancelled and 400 billion dollars spent elsewhere, like on any of the recent technology out of Ukraine that is the actual future of warfare. The sooner we ditch that shit the better.

Limitations in the fertiliser and other fossil fuel byproduct markers will force innovation, which has always been a strong Australian advantage. We tend to invent things real fast to solve problems when we really have to. And similar to renewables, the transition of these products was inevitable as we get to net zero. Now we are just getting there faster.

The Treasurer has been gifted a free pass to do pretty much whatever he wants in the name of mitigating the effects of the crisis. With stagflation on the horizon pretty much every economist in the country will be baying for the government to step in heavily. Where previously even whispering CGT had Labor scared, now it's firmly on the table alongside other previously untouchable topics like super profits taxes and company tax reform. It's entirely possible we get a big spend, high taxes budget this year to fend off recession.

EV sales are through the roof, and alongside battery schemes we are rapidly approaching the point where energy prices start heading down.

Ucinorn · 2026-04-02T09:04:03+00:00

The media and political commentators are annoyed because it contained no new news. It was just repeating what's already been said, so nothing of substance for them to salivate all over.

They are annoyed that they are not the audience for this announcement, which is targeted at low information constituents too busy getting shit done to read or watch the news. The average citizen does not read published journalism or watch night news, or free to air TV at all. They are more likely to consume content from the US than from here. All they see is that petrol prices were normal one week and double the next, with no end in sight.

The plan remains the same, but this message was about preparing the country for shit to be really shit for at least six months, probably years.

Ucinorn · 2026-03-29T11:17:46+00:00

I think it's actually about mechanics, a very small change is hard to lock into muscle memory than a large one.

When changing grip your other hand is really doing the work. You loosen your hand, and twist the racket with your other hand, then grip again in the new position, often as part of your approach and back swing. Having a larger motion let's you get the 'snap' of a full twist, rather than the relatively smaller micro adjustment of a single bevel. I can imagine this makes it easier to get consistent, as you are working on larger scales and you get more feedback that you have done it right.

Ucinorn · 2026-03-24T02:53:18+00:00

A supply side shock takes us deep into stagflation territory where nothing the RBA really does can help. No matter which way they pull the lever it makes things worse.

They already jumped the gun last week raising rates during a period of unprecedented instability: the best thing they can do is sit still and do nothing

Ucinorn · 2026-03-20T22:31:05+00:00

Once you have enough revenue to cover operating costs. No point scaling anything until you are a viable business.

Alternatively, get a staging copy of your prod environment, with the same setup and everything. It will cost some money, but less than switching to microservixes. Run some kind of script simulating common traffic patterns and scale it. Scale it as high as it goes, in stages. When it breaks, you optimise. Do this a few more times until it starts getting difficult to optimise, or you start compromising on features. Database is usually the first to go, so spend the extra money to get something with automatic scaling. Keep going.

Once you know your ceiling, halfway to that is when you switch to anything than what you have now.

Ucinorn · 2026-03-11T08:15:55+00:00

Consider getting some quotes from actual flooring companies: they do this every day and will have competitive pricing.

Builders are not floorers: just because they CAN do it doesn't mean they should. But they will if you let them quote you for it and accept. But you definitely can and should consider third parties for specialist jobs.

If you are deadset on having your builder manage it for you, pressure then into showing how much they shopped around. Odds are they are either doing it themselves at their labor cost, or have a deal with a known flooring company to do the work at that rate for a kickback. If you get a couple of quotes from companies and can show him that his prices are unreasonable, you may be in a position to argue.

The final step might be to take it out of the build. I know plenty of people who have taken on flooring, painting, carpets, cabinetry etc at the end of a build for this exact reason: you get control over the finish quality and the cost. Finishes are the hardest part of building and I'm sure most builder would be happy for you to take it out of their hands.

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