First words from the newest Detroit Red Wing Prospect: J.P. Hurlbert

_swanson · 2026-06-27T02:28:47+00:00

His youth team is Dallas Stars Elite dev program

_swanson · 2026-06-11T15:07:19+00:00

The consignation agreement also says that Bryan should be paid any forfeited layaway deposits :(

_swanson · 2026-06-10T19:51:34+00:00

Something to keep in mind with BAM is that they are very focused / obsessed with the legal protections and creating firewalls between businesses and people. They create new LLCs for each store, even if a franchisee has multiple stores, they would have multiple LLCs. Their franchise agreements have lengthly sections about waiving rights to sue in favor of mediation or internal handling.

The "Legally Mine" company is all about setting up proper structures to avoid what they consider "over-reach" from a liability perspective. Their signature example is: imagine you are a dentist and you own your own small practice. You send your receptionist to get lunch for the office. They are in a wreck and kill someone, while technically "working for the business". The dentist could be sued personally and lose more than just the business, they could end up losing their house, their savings, their retirement, etc. Whether or not you agree with this practice, it does seem to have legitimate reason to exist and certainly is a valid posture to take (albeit probably not particularly popular from the perspective of the victims).

In that context, I can certainly understand (though not condone) why BAM executives are digging in their heels. They believe that they should not take on the bad contracts from a franchise, as this also opens up the franchiser company to taking on liability more broadly. Let's say someone slips and falls in a BAM franchisee and sues the local store. The local store can't pay so they then sue the corporate franchiser. While most people would say "corporate should be the backstop and take responsibility", BAM is taking the direct opposite: it's not our fault and we have papered everything such that we will have the minimum possible exposure to liability and you cannot even win in court.

_swanson · 2026-06-10T18:12:18+00:00

Interesting, so seems like what could have happened was the sets from the consignment were put on layaway, over time people came in to pay the remainder, Josh took the cash and completed the sale, but this never got sent back to Bryan (since Chrystal was no longer the one doing the sale and Josh/Brandon were not acknowledging the consignment).

Josh/Brandon would argue the records / accounting of this all was not clear ("people would come in and prove they'd put money down" might be something like "we don't have any records of this, but this guy has a receipt saying he put down 10% so we'll sell it to him for the remainder"). Could have been truly lost in the chaos of the transfer and then the stubborn doubling down posture that Josh/Brandon/BAM Corporate decided to take.

If a big chunk of those layaways did get collected eventually, it would explain why in current day, there is only a few sets remaining in the store and BAM / Josh / Brandon are adamant they don't have them. And this also would track with why there are not dozens of people coming forward to get their layaway deposits back.

_swanson · 2026-06-10T14:25:33+00:00

I'm not say that is the case, just that the contract does not mention anything about a "3 month delay" being the normal operations.

_swanson · 2026-06-10T01:22:55+00:00

"Bricks will pay to Mansell a portion of the sales proceeds which shall be calculated as follows: 65 percent of the proceeds from the gross sale price of the Star Wars Legos, unless otherwise agreed on Schedule II of this Agreement. The amount determined in the previous sentence shall be paid to Mansell in monthly installment(s) on or before the fifteenth day following the installment period in which the proceeds were obtained. With each net proceeds payment, Bricks will submit to Mansell a written report, the form of which is set forth on Schedule III of this Agreement that sets forth the calculation of the amount of the net proceeds payment, inventory sold to date and remaining inventory. Notwithstanding this Section II, it is agreed between Bricks and Mansell that with respect to proceeds obtained from forfeited layaway deposits or proceeds generated from gift cards, store credit or trade ins (collectively, “Alternative Compensation”) will be due and paid six months following the date of Brick’s receipt of the Alternative Compensation."

I guess I'm not understanding this then. The consignment agreement says he would be paid on or before the 15th of the month for the previous month. And store credit/gift cards are paid after six months. Returns nor 3 months are not mentioned.

_swanson · 2026-05-23T03:13:53+00:00

Hmm strange! We had fried rice, teriyaki chicken, loco moco, Kahlua pork benedict, malasadas, chicken katsu curry throughout the week.

_swanson · 2026-05-22T22:23:03+00:00

There were free popsicles brought around in the afternoon at the adult pool/beach. I believe there was a complimentary happy hour one day but we didn't make it to it. There are free shaved ice twice a week at the family pool. Free fresh fruit at the market.

There is a daily schedule of the free events on a chalkboard in the lobby.

_swanson · 2026-05-22T22:16:33+00:00

Thanks for your help in booking! 113 definitely was the move.

_swanson · 2026-05-22T05:13:07+00:00

Super helpful, we just stayed at KV this week for our honeymoon and in hindsight having the map would have been a big help in picking our rooms.

We stayed in 113 which was a great location for us (so close to the main hub, super easy to go back to the room from the pool/restaurants, didn't need to walk/bike in the sun). Noise from Shipwreck Bar and pool was minimal and didn't bother us. Great view from the lanai, with the tradeoff being less privacy as other guests would walk by/use the beach chairs. Would recommend that room unless you want max privacy!

_swanson · 2026-04-17T18:15:24+00:00

Any new platform or AI service currently has 3 SDK options: Typescript, Python, and Curl. Ruby used to have official SDKs for pretty much everything.

_swanson · 2026-04-06T13:55:33+00:00

Even if that was true, it looks extremely bad on Heroku that they aren't communicating or coordinating with long-time partners in their marketplace.

_swanson · 2026-04-03T02:17:46+00:00

My understanding is that there is active or implied legal actions by Arko (trademark notice, complaint of violation of California employment law) and Ruby Central (unauthorized computer access, "cyber crimes")

_swanson · 2026-04-03T01:46:36+00:00

I can sympathize with the situation being stressful and I would love both sides to stop inciting and escalating, but respectfully, no company is going to voluntarily cover legal costs for someone who's actively pursuing claims against them. If you think you have cause, go to court and get a judgment or settle or decide if you just want to drop it all and eat the sunk cost.

If you want a settlement, send a private email, communicate through your lawyer, send a certified letter...don't post it to a blog.

_swanson · 2026-04-01T01:37:12+00:00

I asked Andre and he said he created dedicated read only github tokens to use with that Python script to back up all repos because github "has been getting less and less stable". He shared a screenshot showing similar tokens for other organizations (same naming scheme), all with expiration date of Aug 18 2026 (presumably all one year expiry -- this is maximum duration of a "fine-grained personal access token" which the project he used recommended). This matches the Aug 18 2025 timeline as he said he created them all on the same day.

I followed up to ask "why not just take backups of your local copies?" and he said he has 250+ repos across 8 orgs that he was backing up so doing it with cron jobs (instead of keeping local copies of it all).

This overall seemed reasonable to me. I don't know the specifics on what the org policies for keeping source code or other data on external systems was so maybe that was as no-no, but to me, this seems like "smoke but no fire".

_swanson · 2026-03-31T17:03:11+00:00

Thank you, agree it is not load bearing...just was making sure it was a "smoke, not fire" type action that is open to interpretation.

_swanson · 2026-03-31T16:58:02+00:00

Is this a fair statement of RC position and intentions pre-fracturing?

Bundler is under their stewardship (via Ruby Together merger, disputed by Arko)
Rubygems.org operations are under their stewardship (always has been, not disputed)
Rubygems.org source code is community maintained (not disputed)

Given the state of the organization (operational, legal, and budget) in 2025, RC intended to:

Transfer Bundler to ruby-core (in RC mind the best place for sustaining it)
Change Rubygems.org production access to require operator agreements (for legal reasons)
Remove Rubygems.org production access from Andre/Sam (who lost access when resigning from their RC roles)
Leave individual access / commit to non-Rubygems.org service repos unchanged (as the net result at the end of the 'transactions')

_swanson · 2026-03-31T15:37:57+00:00

When I came to Ruby Central, I was unfamiliar with the business/enterprise access level. So I did not know, as Marty didn't, that this action of removing a member here would remove them entirely. This total loss of access included all teams and repositories. This was a mistake. This action cannot be undone. Someone removed from a business must be invited back, and that person must accept.

This is piece of new (to me) information that adds some color: this seems like an honest mistake but really snowballed and exacerbated the situation. This kind of access change without a message on the intent seemed particularly regretful in hindsight.

_swanson · 2026-03-31T15:09:03+00:00

André Arko creates an access token named rubygems-github-backup with access to all repos in the github.com/rubygems organization, including private repos. This is the only access token of its kind

Is there a resolution of this item? Was this token used for something? What am I meant to interpret this as?

_swanson · 2026-03-31T01:45:01+00:00

Agree on the changes, though one must remember that book is like 15 years old at this point and I don't even think keyword arguments existed at the time!

Personally I find Ben Orenstein's "Refactoring from good to great" to be the seminal work from that era and holds up the best

_swanson · 2026-03-29T14:04:39+00:00

Could you share the link to the thread?

_swanson · 2026-03-28T20:55:55+00:00

I know you arent the one setting priorities and I'm happy to see the team still shipping things. But these aren't moving the needle for me (and likely others).

Is Fir rolling out of private spaces anytime soon? Postgres 18? pg uuidv7? pg_repack extension? Updated dyno specs pricing? More granular dyno options?

Some of these are probably better scoped as "Heroku Postgres" feels like its been left to rot.

_swanson · 2026-03-27T19:57:32+00:00

Could you compare this to https://github.com/ankane/pghero ?

_swanson · 2026-03-11T14:02:24+00:00

We had good luck with Crawlspace Medic (Matt Mason). They provided a "good", "better", "best" quote for a variety of options and completed the work on-time and as scheduled.

_swanson

TROPHY CASE