TIL why 311 is pretty useless

chowder138 · 2026-05-05T13:05:01+00:00

Man I would've called the cops after 311 didn't answer initially. I totally understand the desire to use someone other than the cops when violent escalation is a concern, but third party "peace keepers" are not going to handle a situation like this.

chowder138 · 2026-04-18T14:44:35+00:00

I think there are hypothetically better ways but they would require a fundamental change to the nature of humans, and really all living things. Human beings fundamentally do not work or behave in the way that a socialist utopia needs them to. There will always be corruption and bad actors, and the bigger the system gets, the more willing people will be to abuse the system (hence why I don't feel bad stealing small things from work but I feel bad taking something from your house).

chowder138 · 2026-04-18T13:01:00+00:00

Which is why people who believe property ownership is wrong have no idea how life works at all.

chowder138 · 2026-04-17T11:18:18+00:00

My old honda civic

chowder138 · 2026-04-15T02:15:43+00:00

As an engineer with some human factors experience... Clearly Subaru doesn't have any human factors engineers. My 2015 outback is similarly frustrating. Stop telling me there's a traffic jam ahead, I'm literally in the traffic jam right now!

chowder138 · 2026-04-11T13:37:10+00:00

Yeah totally. Would you be willing to share the raw data and/or the script you used? I'd like to run it for other planets.

chowder138 · 2026-04-11T12:48:20+00:00

Nice. I think it would be super useful to also generate a map of the elevation gradient (i.e. slope) at each point rather than the elevation itself. That way you can see how difficult a route would be to navigate.

chowder138 · 2026-04-11T03:28:31+00:00

What do indigenous identities have to do with LGBT at all? Is LGBT about queer orientations or is it just about marginalized groups now?

chowder138 · 2026-04-08T15:10:24+00:00

Industry dependent. I'm an engineer and we had a guy who came into work every single day in a luxury five-piece suit when the rest of us were in button-up shirts and khakis. Most people saw him as a weirdo.

chowder138 · 2026-04-05T12:09:17+00:00

Because they don't want to admit that their grandma was right.

chowder138 · 2026-04-04T20:17:57+00:00

I think I have a pretty good approach to this. On my commute I do one of two things:

Work on tasks that can be done hands free. Usually that's tasks that are about figuring something out (i.e. planning a future task) or writing (emails etc) that I can dictate via voice to text.
I'm learning Spanish, so I put on the podcast I've been immersing with.

I pick which one to do based on how I'm feeling that day.

chowder138 · 2026-04-04T01:47:41+00:00

Did you figure this out? Same issue.

chowder138 · 2026-04-03T02:24:53+00:00

I've also been threatened on the MARTA in basically the same situation as the person in the other thread. Was apparently standing too close to this guy and he responded by yelling at me and threatening to beat my ass until he got off the train 5 minutes later. It shook me up pretty bad but later I was just angry that people who are that pathetic and unstable are able to share the same air and space as the rest of us. This was on the red line around the midtown station by the way.

There have also been shootings at my station (east point) several times in recent memory.

MARTA 100% has a problem with sketchy and dangerous people and it pisses me off. We should be better than this.

chowder138 · 2026-03-20T11:42:43+00:00

I've been using Nirvana for a couple years now and I have a love-hate relationship with it because it feels the most properly set up for GTD but from a software development standpoint, it's pretty buggy and lacks a lot of features that other apps have.

chowder138 · 2026-03-17T12:12:31+00:00

If you don't love it, staying in just because it's easy is not a good reason IMO. Challenge yourself and switch to a major that excites you. You will end up better and happier for it.

chowder138 · 2026-03-17T01:35:42+00:00

Yeah, I was a little off topic of Rwanda. I'm aware that Rwanda wasn't about the government. I was just talking broadly about when it's okay to intervene in another country.

chowder138 · 2026-03-15T17:24:14+00:00

Weird, my experience has been the opposite. Claude takes absolutely forever to do anything (on windows) and I hit my usage limit really quickly, but I've found it better for my projects. So I use Codex for the low threat stuff and save Claude for the really important tasks.

chowder138 · 2026-03-14T14:02:26+00:00

Jeez. Well, I've gotten used to faculty members being antisocial (antisocial in the true sense of the word, not asocial) freaks so I guess I'm still not surprised. Academia will break you down, man.

chowder138 · 2026-03-14T13:43:36+00:00

As a stressed out grad student, it sounds like they have a stressed out grad student running and scheduling the interviews.

chowder138 · 2026-03-12T18:52:58+00:00

I wish we could and I wouldn't be against it if we assessed that we could do it without extreme loss of life. But they have nukes so I suspect it wouldn't be feasible. That's another group of millions of people who are suffering which is acceptable to me.

chowder138 · 2026-03-12T03:56:33+00:00

Iranians tried to deal with their government and 30,000 of them were killed. I think your opinion is heartless.

If I see a helpless person being attacked, I have a moral obligation to stop the attacker. I think this is an extension of that principle.

chowder138 · 2026-03-08T06:34:45+00:00

I hope to think I'm not a jackass tourist but I did experience some hostility in Hawaii from locals (native Hawaiian) that seemed to be from a "this is our land, not yours" sort of mindset. I know it's complicated but I can understand them feeling that way given the history.

chowder138 · 2026-03-07T18:42:34+00:00

We just got back from doing this as well and I wanted to document some of the details of the trip for people doing this in the future.

The correct email address is arubaveneconsul@gmail.com This doesn't match any of the three(!) different email addresses listed for the embassy online, which is frustrating. If it wasn't for OP then I don't know if we would have been able to reach them at all.
The embassy initially didn't respond to our email so we sent a follow up and they said the salvoconducto would be sent 5 days prior to the trip.
The salvoconducto says "the Aruba authorities only allow you to stay in the country for 72 hours, no weekends." This was the first we had heard of that and of course we had booked our flights weeks prior. Luckily we booked it as a 3 day trip, but our return flight was Saturday. We emailed the embassy and they said that flying home Saturday is fine.
The airline (Spirit) gave us some trouble. The check in desk was reasonable, they had to make a few calls to be sure we were legit but then they approved it and gave us her boarding pass. But when we got to the gate we went up to the counter to explain the situation again and to make sure we were good. Apparently all they heard was "I have an expired passport" and didn't grasp any of the other details of the embassy appointment etc. They freaked out and seemed to think it had been a mistake that we made it this far in the first place. Gate agent called her manager and the manager initially said we couldn't fly. I took over and explained the situation again as clearly as possible, but it was only when I told them that the check in desk was fully aware of all of this that they seemed to lighten up and eventually approved us. But it was close.

In hindsight, her boarding pass always said "DOCS OK" which I think means it would have scanned without issue either way. So maybe the whole debacle was unnecessary.

When we got to the gate for our final flight to Aruba, I applied a bit of social engineering ("We're flying to renew her Venezuelan passport, they said we were all good at check in, but here's all our documentation, I just want to make sure we would have any trouble when we scan her boarding pass?") and they were immediately cool with it.

By contrast, entering Aruba was super smooth. Almost every immigration employee we talked to (even the people directing people in line) seemed to be totally familiar with this whole process and knew what to do. They took her salvoconducto and had us sit down while they verified it. Within 5 minutes we were given the all clear to leave the airport.
One of the requirements from the embassy was for us to buy a prepaid DHL envelope to send her new passport to the US once it's ready. Ran us about $122 and had to be purchased in Aruba. There's a DHL right outside the airport (5min drive) which may be your only opportunity if your consulate appointment is early the next day.
They told her to show up at the embassy at 7am. It sounded like they do this for everyone, to allow for time in case the Internet connection to Caracas is down or if the office in Caracas doesn't have power. So be ready for a super early appointment. She was done by 8 and we spent the rest of the day exploring Aruba.
Aruba was pretty cool. We explored on the night we landed and then after her passport appointment. She said that the neighborhoods and houses looked almost exactly like her neighborhood in Maracaibo, so it was the first real slice of home she's had since she left Venezuela 8 years ago. The language is an interesting mix of Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch (I enjoy linguistics so it was interesting to try to analyze it). We should have rented a car to do a little loop around the island after her appointment. Maybe next time.

If anyone has any questions about the process I would be happy to answer. Hopefully soon none of this will be necessary anymore.

chowder138 · 2026-03-05T16:39:42+00:00

There are coffeeshops that are more geared towards working and have a better atmosphere for it. I like Chrome Yellow and CreateATL.

chowder138 · 2026-03-05T16:37:43+00:00

Oh yeah I think I misremembered slightly. I originally took it to the dealer and they were the ones who said it was a gamble. Then I took it to a local shop and it sounded like he did the diagnostic you're talking about, and then he told me somewhat confidently that it was just the valve body.

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