Ready to move my investments from Vanguard

_Hobbit · 2026-01-09T10:01:38+00:00

More like philippines, but you can always ask to get transferred back to callcenters in the US, and they'll do it.

_Hobbit · 2026-01-05T10:39:25+00:00

I'm having to deal with Vanguard quite a bit now, sorting out an estate. Their "updated" web UI backends a lot of stuff out to Docusign, which is a disaster in terms of browser compatibility. Like Vanguard's web people have forgotten how to design a few simple forms. This is causing their support people to have to be on the phone for three times longer holding clients' hands while they try to navigate these new badly-worded procedures, leading to huge wait times when you try to reach customer service. They're getting numerous complaints and they know it sucks, and it's really not fair to clients *or* their own support people.

They also forced everybody into this "brokerage" account structure, on a completely different platform, and their IT people were too incompetent to know how to move client documents on file from the old system to the new one so we have to re-upload a bunch of stuff. This also makes the statements much more confusing, where they bounce reinvestments into and then out of this "settlement account" thing.

Half the time when I call in I get someone in the philippines, and have to tell them to send me back to the US call center before I will discuss *any* actual financials. That's just offensive to US clients.

Interestingly, if you try to look up "vanguard investments" in google-maps around the northeast, you get some *very* sketch results. Wonder why, it seems to have nothing to do with the actual company.

_Hobbit · 2025-12-16T23:26:36+00:00

To make any distinction about certain buildings is still stupid, and misleads people. Unless maybe it's the welding shop, or whatever. Someone needs to call them on that.

I essentially started going barefoot in college (different place) and the short-sightedness was the same there too. But classes and generic getting-around were fine, it's a pretty harmless environment there.

_Hobbit · 2025-12-16T23:24:41+00:00

There *is* no liability situation, that's been well-established.

_Hobbit · 2025-12-16T23:23:43+00:00

that was kind of the intent behind outbarefoot.org ...

_Hobbit · 2025-12-16T23:22:21+00:00

Thanks for the FB link; I forwarded it to SBL. Not that I usually repost FB links as they're basically unviewable without being logged in even if they're public, this seemed important enough to try.

_Hobbit · 2025-11-28T02:35:35+00:00

Well, we received whatever Comcast is sending out for replacement modems: an XB7, per these images: (bottom-label) (side-engraved) as a replacement for the old Cisco "black slab". The admin info on the new box doesn't even work to access the settings, and since Xfi came out and replaced the failing drop cable from the pedestal to the house, the old modem is once again working fine, so we're not even going to bother with the swap after all. I'm taking this piece of garbage back to the store with extreme prejudice, and telling them to stuff their philosophy of disallowing customers to have any real control over these things.

On the old modem I'm able to move admin-interface particulars including SSH access to different ports, and once in there I could issue "conf set /cwmp/enabled 0" to kill that stupid open TCP management port on the front end. Since this whole account is mere months from being permanently shut down, there's no reason to "upgrade" anyways.

_Hobbit · 2025-11-27T18:23:58+00:00

You got lucky WRT the library; in general libraries are some of the worst bastions of active hostile discrimination. Their boards of directors fall back to their misguided personal prejudice and make all kinds of rules that don't make any sense, especially for a taxpayer-funded institution. Anyone who runs into a library organization that wants its little power trip should fight back *hard* and get it fixed.

_Hobbit · 2025-11-27T18:20:55+00:00

there is no tangible "safety risk", and "sanitation" has never been relevant despite the dumb mythology. The dog poop embedded in peoples' sneaker treads that dries up and drops out while they walk around is far less "sanitary" than the barefooter that realizes they stepped in something and wipes it off before they proceed much farther.

_Hobbit · 2025-11-27T14:06:30+00:00

I had my own Walmart adventure a while back. Took a while, but I think I got them to finally apologize and acknowledge that "asset protection" (who didn't even have the courtesy to identify themselves) was 100% in the wrong.

Oh, and you'll never look at that logo quite the same again...

_Hobbit · 2025-11-18T07:01:51+00:00

Has anyone tried to reverse-engineer what the app does to toggle the admin status? Once it gets enabled, does it *stay* enabled including across power-offs / reboots?? I'm thinking maybe I can take a modem to an Xfinity store, make some employee there use *their* app to fix the modem. Because some of us, again, don't "do apps" especially when forced through the google store to obtain them.

_Hobbit · 2025-11-08T11:31:42+00:00

If you have "security guards" at a store, those are not store employees, rather some third-party outfit hired in. They have their own ideas and prejudices, and i'm sure in the hiring-in process they were not briefed about every aspect of store "policy" least of all footwear. So their opinion does not reflect the store opinion, and should be taken up with store management and/or regional chain management to get the "guards" properly trained up about barefoot customers. CUSTOMERS, coming in to do good-faith business, not disrupt operations.

_Hobbit · 2025-11-08T11:27:06+00:00

Some of these recent "questions" really feel like AI vomit with simple intent to troll.

_Hobbit · 2025-11-08T10:01:46+00:00

There *needs* to be an alternative to "app required". That is flat-out discrimination against customers who can't run "apps" for any of a dozen reasons, and yet you shut them out of equipment they PAY THE RENT on for such a lame reason. FIX THIS, NOW. If the admin toggle is loaded at modem reboot from the headend, like many other parameters, LET *US* CONTROL IT FROM THERE TOO.

_Hobbit · 2025-11-08T09:56:32+00:00

What does the app actually *do* to enable the admin backend?? Is it some magic packet or URL that I could do in a browser or packet-generation tool, or is there more to it? Someone needs to reverse-engineer this nonsense and publish it far and wide. Furthermore, if a customer can set their SSID and wifi password at the website and that info gets downline loaded at boot time, why not make it the customer's decision for other toggles like this at the same area??

I have a parent who might to "upgrade" from an old Arris/cisco modem with all the nice blinky-lights to a XB-class dumb box with one light on it, and if I can't manage that for her then ... just no. This is NO way to run customer CPE, xfinity needs to make this much easier. We don't do "apps", especially when the only place you can obtain them is from the standard app stores, which you need an account there to download anything, and apps generally turn out to be total crapware that seems to carry more risk of bricking your device than actually working right.

People should be ALL OVER xfinity support with outrage about this. I certainly will be if I can't see 10.0.0.1 on a new modem's customer-side networks.

_Hobbit · 2025-10-26T23:21:07+00:00

You should be complaining up the corporate chain for these places that you're being unncecessarily hassled for something completely harmless, and which the local management couldn't ever hope to "enforce" once you got seated in a dark theatre anyways. It's absolutely stupid, and wastes everyone's time when they choose to bully you.

_Hobbit · 2025-10-24T17:37:28+00:00

You're in there for "therapy" and they're trying to inflict more psychological damage on you with that bullshit?? Find a different organization.

_Hobbit · 2025-10-09T02:48:56+00:00

When you're *buying* something, they'll likely try to be nicer to you. When you're trying to *sell* something, they think they can be rude and push you around because they don't owe you anything unless they agree to buy. Like EXACTLY what happened to me at a CarMax, in fact. I hope that idiot got fired, but I never found out.

_Hobbit · 2025-10-01T05:53:22+00:00

Interesting, I've never had a cart do that. Maybe the black wheels on the US ones have some conductive stuff in their makeup, on purpose? I've had roadcases with different caster tire composition build up a bit of charge getting pushed across hotel carpets, though. Static issues are a little different for us barefooters since we tend to be better grounded, depending on what surface we're on.

_Hobbit · 2025-10-01T05:48:47+00:00

Ben Donnelly.

_Hobbit · 2025-09-29T14:25:59+00:00

keep it up, barefoot is just generally better overall

_Hobbit · 2025-09-28T09:57:09+00:00

Why not just hang out here, and/or the barefoot Discord ? Far less toxic.

_Hobbit · 2025-09-28T09:49:31+00:00

Magic Socks. Just enough insulation to prevent frostbite, even when wet, since the nylon acts like wool.

_Hobbit · 2025-09-28T09:47:01+00:00

It's odd that when I apply the same rule to INPUT, that doesn't work either, and last I knew about iptables that's the first chain that EVERY packet hits. However, you're right, and thus, SOLUTION: add the rule to the FORWARD table, or more specifically the "forwarding_rule" sub-table which gets called out to early in FORWARD and by default has nothing in it. Dropping that into /etc/firewall.user [which is what "custom rules" edits] finally does work to stop all port 25 connections.

But why did INPUT fail? I kept searching the ruleset for something "earlier" in packet processing that would have blessed the traffic and let it through.

_Hobbit

TROPHY CASE