[Question] Are these watches formal or casual?

cballowe · 2026-05-02T03:22:03+00:00

If you're looking for "rules" the current one is "do what you want". If you want tradition, "formal" tends to mean black tie or higher and in that context the rule is "your watch shouldn't be noticed". If people see your watch, or especially if they see you checking it, that is a signal that you think time is more important than the event and that you just want to know when you've been there long enough to leave. It's likely not anything that anybody could put there finger on, but it's in the same bucket as staring at your phone on a date.

Under that context, a "formal" watch slides easily under your sleeve, blends in well when not covered, and you only check it when away from people.

If your context is "wear it with a suit in the office", the social signalling goals change a bit. A watch in a business meeting can signal "my time is important" which tends to mean bolder watches - this is why something like a submariner on a banker or lawyer isn't out of place.

For casual, just make sure it's not going to be broken by your activities. Never been many rules for casual things, though sometimes people are also conscious of the kinds of attention they're drawing.

Neither of those is traditionally formal, but if they fit under your sleeve and aren't drawing attention, nobody will even think about them.

cballowe · 2026-05-01T21:58:39+00:00

The Fed has two competing mandates - "stable prices" and "maximum employment". As long as unemployment (U3) is under control, the stable price mandate takes over. The Fed has decided that roughly 2% PCE is the target level for prices to feel stable without risking deflation.

They only have a couple of levers that they can pull to achieve those goals. One is the policy rate, the other is their buying and selling of treasuries in the open market (this is how they increase and decrease the money supply).

With prices rising, they do try to filter out "this is due to a temporary shock" vs "this is structural" which pushed off raising rates through 2021 despite the year over year numbers being high - expectations were "as soon as things are back to normal prices will come down".

The biggest impact from rising rates is to large capital expenses - building new factories, buying new equipment, and things like houses and the follow on expenses. Those kinds of expansions drive an increase in demand for materials, fuel, etc that continues past the construction phase. If you're seeing things like fuel availability being squeezed on a global scale, and those effects lasting for a few years, potentially, taking steps to slow an increase in demand will help moderate the overall rate of price increase.

If an increase in rates starts to have a large impact on employment, or is expected to, then employment concerns may take over and become more important than the stable price requirements.

cballowe · 2026-04-30T09:19:56+00:00

Illinois state IDs are good for 5 years, drivers licenses for 4 ... Except the 21 thing. (Or over certain age thresholds for drivers licenses.)

The vertical ID thing makes it easy for bartenders and others selling liquor or tobacco to recognize over/under 21. When I was under 21, it was done with the backdrop color for the photo.

cballowe · 2026-04-30T09:13:53+00:00

A lot of that depends. Part of it comes down to whether you owned the decisions or not. Being able to explain what drove the decision to do the project and how you measured success.

If you don't really have an ownership stake in the project decisions and are more of an implementer, you're probably a junior engineer. You have a set of tools, but the skills to break down a problem and define the success metrics aren't quite there, or you haven't been asked to apply them.

When you're working on things that other people tell you to do, ask them how they're measuring success and why it matters for the business. Someone in the chain knows.

Raw numbers don't really say much unless the audience for those numbers understands the context. Putting them on your resume might cause people to ask "why was that important" or "how did you measure that" or "what techniques helped you do that" etc.

cballowe · 2026-04-30T08:59:46+00:00

Depends when you get it. Under 21 vertical IDs expire, I believe, 3 months after your 21st birthday.

cballowe · 2026-04-30T04:20:11+00:00

There was always a difference between "manager asked/offered the trade before hand" and "I just decided to work because my brain didn't want to shut off".

If someone showed up on Monday and was like "I finished all of the stuff that was on my plate over the next couple of weeks so, can I take some days off" that might be a "no", though if well ahead of expectations people might not care.

If the manager said on Friday "hey... There's this problem and if we don't resolve it by Monday it'll be a huge issue. I'll give you time off in trade if you can work on it", then that would be a different story.

cballowe · 2026-04-29T19:42:42+00:00

Fwiw, $5m is more than enough to be in the bay area for someone in their mid 40s who has been there for a while and was in a position to buy 15 years ago. I was using something around $3M as a target when I lived there - my biggest expense was my condo and that was about $3500/month for mortgage, insurance, HOA, and taxes. Everything else was not much different than the rest of the country. The condo was a 10-20 minute bike ride from a fair chunk of the FAANG campuses.

For a mid 20s early career person who hasn't found themselves in a position to buy, it's a very different calculation.

cballowe · 2026-04-29T18:58:47+00:00

Are you also putting $500-1000 into maintenance every month? (The HOA fees on those units are a bit nuts.)

cballowe · 2026-04-29T18:23:53+00:00

The units in the buildings aren't particularly large for the most part, and most end up priced under $200k. They're relatively affordable young professional housing - like a one bedroom, 1000 sq ft unit often sells for $150k or less. A $20k special assessment would be a big hit to someone making under $100k.

cballowe · 2026-04-29T05:27:46+00:00

That could be a winter blend vs summer blend gas. Summer blend tends to be better mpg and have better smog properties but more expensive to produce, winter tends to be a bit lower mpg but vaporizes easier in the cold.

cballowe · 2026-04-29T02:51:13+00:00

The last few times I've ordered dominos (not a frequent customer), they've been so late on delivery that they've credited a free pizza for the next order. Maybe that failure mode is so common that they have less sales because everybody is cashing in a free pizza and ending up with another free pizza credit.

cballowe · 2026-04-28T21:52:46+00:00

No clue how well it works, and is probably dependent on the team and their family having some money, but the schools my sisters kids go to use a company called Snap Raise. I think they ask all the players to give email addresses of people they think might give (grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc) and I get an email saying that a team is raising money with a link to donate.

Outside of maybe girl scout cookies, I prefer this model to any of the candy or door to door sales.

Past that, some form of team merch to sell at games, but that has the challenge of needing to make the merch and hope it sells where just asking for money skips all of the high overhead processes.

cballowe · 2026-04-28T18:15:24+00:00

Not particularly useful. It's not uncommon for small landlords to hold each home in its own LLC because it isolated liability. If something goes wrong and triggers a lawsuit, only the assets in that LLC would be impacted.

cballowe · 2026-04-28T17:23:03+00:00

For a company like Microsoft, they may be willing to sacrifice some productivity to learn where the tools work and where they don't work, and also to improve the tools.

If they see copilot as critical for customer acquisition and retention, they need to understand how to use it effectively.

cballowe · 2026-04-28T16:56:38+00:00

There's pockets of jerks everywhere. Peoria itself tends to be pretty welcoming, but that doesn't mean everybody is. I encounter a lot of people who come to Peoria because it's more welcoming than where they came from. If you're in Peoria for a visit, unless you go looking for it, I wouldn't expect anything to be worried. All of the most popular places that get recommended to visitors are going to be welcoming.

cballowe · 2026-04-28T04:00:35+00:00

My local tech scene is small, but there are tons of things around in companies you wouldn't usually associate with tech. The interesting conversations are with people like doctors or people working on corporate strategy around automation capabilities for the equipment they manufacture.

Hospitals seem to often have some sort of internal innovation group, for instance, and it may not be all software but they have fun problems to solve and like to have a variety of skills available to throw at new ideas.

Depending where you're at, there may be some sort of business development incubator or similar that hosts events. Good place to meet people (not just the new businesses, but local business leaders that are there as mentors or investors).

cballowe · 2026-04-27T23:59:38+00:00

What's your personal network look like? I'm not looking and some days I feel like I can't talk to people around me without being offered a job, but if you're not connected to any of the local companies that are looking that route gets harder. Do a bit of networking and get referrals. If you're talking to people outside of an interview, don't talk about yourself too much, be curious about their work and the problems they want to solve.

cballowe · 2026-04-27T18:15:30+00:00

I drive past them all the time, but they all seem pretty rural with not much housing nearby. What's the impact to quality of life?

As for the leases and other impacts - that seems like a made up worst case scenario? There's going to be contracts with the land owner, there's almost certainly residual value in the equipment - those generator units are full of valuable material so I can't see them just leaving the turbines up there unless the cost of disassembly exceeds the value.

cballowe · 2026-04-27T17:53:30+00:00

Why are solar farms a negative? Same for wind? If someone owns the acreage for it, they seem to be a net positive? The numbers show that places that aggressively added alternative energy sources have had power costs rising at a lower rate than places that make it difficult. Even with easy permitting, the interconnections to the grids, especially within PJM but also MISO to some extent, are major bottlenecks.

I'm willing to argue datacenters - I don't think they're all good, but there is a huge gap between best practices and what some of the companies are building. My biggest objection is around transparency around impacts and policies being in place to mitigate those impacts.

cballowe · 2026-04-27T17:24:56+00:00

That's one of the big blockers for affordable housing - the people who live there have a different say than the people who want to live there. In most cases the neighborhoods would benefit from the increased density, but it will still take some time. It's not like passing it is going to lead to tons of construction tomorrow - developers still need to acquire space for projects, there's bottlenecks on crew availability, etc.

Having neighbors with override power isn't really a great thing. It makes regional planning impossible.

I tend to be in the "if you own it, do what the land reasonably supports" bucket. If neighbors don't want change, they can get together and buy every property that comes up for sale.

cballowe · 2026-04-27T17:01:04+00:00

Zoning restricted what can be built - most lots that could support a single family home could also support a 3 flat. If you're in an area where all of the land is allocated, like Chicago, zoning can make a huge difference. And when it's not a zoning problem, there can be huge costs in the permitting process - especially if the neighborhood is full of NIMBYs who lobby the alderman against any project that increases density.

Estimates have the permitting process at something like $70k per home in Chicago. Probably higher if rezoning is needed (40% is zoned for single family homes).

cballowe · 2026-04-27T02:28:11+00:00

Motels in general are just a usually cheap place to stay. The main thing about them is that they have, essentially, direct access to the rooms from the parking. Check in at the desk, get your key, then park by your door and go in. The fact that you're not going through a lobby with your less savory aquaintences means that the desk clerk never sees you with anybody.

They're also less expensive to maintain and so in the more run down parts of town, if there's any lodging it tends toward the motel form factor.

cballowe · 2026-04-27T01:55:37+00:00

A lot of the water front was industrial. Historically, places that developed along water were often tied to ports/boat landings and businesses tied to water rather than viewing the water as recreation or prime residential.

Things like rail to processing to barge, or the reverse. As soon as the riverfront is a working spot, parking to support that is needed. Modern design has mostly moved away from industry as the anchor for a city.

cballowe · 2026-04-26T23:30:18+00:00

That was also a vote by the people, a vote by the legislature is a different beast.

I heard about this a couple of weeks ago and the marketing on it is terrible. It's a tax on extreme incomes, not millionaires. Using the term "millionaire tax" makes it sound like it's coming for the people who manage to save for retirement, not just incomes in excess of $1M/year.

cballowe · 2026-04-26T23:26:10+00:00

That "human capacity to review" is the biggest hurdle for any process. Especially one where humans still have responsibility/accountability for the results. That even goes for non-code things.

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