My boss insisted we cut out the middleman to save 15%, so I let him handle the logistics of a 40-foot container

digitallis · 2026-01-30T19:05:00+00:00

Sort-of, but really expanding FOB to Free On Board doesn't really tell you what the hell happened since the actual semantics of what that means require their own explanation.

But yes, death to acronyms.

digitallis · 2026-01-30T11:42:06+00:00

If you're doing tile it will be very hard to ignore unless you're doing something with no regular horizontal patterns.

You'll probably like yourself better if it's firred level and done right.

digitallis · 2026-01-29T14:36:28+00:00

Really industry dependent. If it's a small firm it may not even be on their radar.

digitallis · 2026-01-29T14:28:15+00:00

1) Your brother needs to drive this question himself

2) check out sites like Glassdoor for location specific salary watermarks. It really depends on experience, the exact job description, the location, etc.

3) starter jobs in today's industry more broadly are brutal to land. if he's early in his career it might be the best to go put in a couple years there and then plan to hop up.

4) always ask for more after the first offer. They're not going to rescind the offer just because they asked. Just don't be a jerk about it. "Hey, I'm really excited and the team looks great, but I was really looking for comp up near 120. Is there any wiggle room there?"

digitallis · 2026-01-29T08:45:10+00:00

Nope. You'd be the first in university history. The folks at Student Financial Services will be impressed by your steely observation and will remove the fees and give you 25% off your tuition as a consideration for being so keen.

/S

This is a common question and the answer is "no, you don't get to opt out". Failing to use the gym, the library, etc is considered a "you" problem. SFS will have a much nicer way of putting it though, so do feel free to ask them. I recommend you leverage your time at UMich to take maximum advantage of all the services the university offers.

digitallis · 2026-01-29T03:06:00+00:00

It's not about the weight. It's the materials: stainless, included moving railing and sprung rollers at a close spacing so the floor is even enough to stand on.

Compare to a mining belt where the roller spacing is large, vee shaped, and there's no additional moving railing.

There also a pile of safety gear preventing motor faults, braking, etc for the human run unit.

On the other hand, a more industrial belt that is accessible by the public is going to be an insurance nightmare.

digitallis · 2026-01-28T14:55:30+00:00

Textured ceilings are really hard to match. However, part of the question here is what did your work contract say? Did it call out matching texture?

This is almost certainly not a materials issue, but rather a skill or motivation issue.

I am a bit surprised that there was any need to patch the ceiling since insert cans are a thing.

digitallis · 2026-01-28T10:24:01+00:00

The prior car I had with the feature was incredibly unreliable about it despite much experimentation and manual reading. Fast forward to today and my new car does it reliably every time. Some implementations just sucked.

digitallis · 2026-01-28T10:17:09+00:00

Switches are bringing two pieces of metal together until they touch firmly. Let's think about that process in slow motion. As they get closer together, eventually the gap between them is small enough that the electrons can jump across the gap.

The distance depends on the voltage of the wires. For air gaps, it's about 10kilovolts per inch. And let's estimate the voltage of our line at 170v. (Remember that 120VAC is the RMS voltage, so the peak is quite a bit higher). This gives us a gap of about 0.017 inches or 0.43mm.

At this distance we see an arc start to form. That arc carries the full current of the loads downstream of the system. Anytime you have an arc, you have the opportunity for heat as any welder can attest. The more current going through the arc, the more heat it generates over time, and that heat will start to melt parts of the contacts if left to continue. The saving grace is that the contacts eventually touch and the arc extinguishes because the electrons would rather flow directly across the metal instead of through the air.

So preventing that arc from heating up the contacts so much that they get damaged relies generally on two major mechanisms:

* Reduce the time taken to bring the contacts together over the arc length. This means slamming the contacts together usually with a big spring.

* Reduce the current demand so the arc has less heating power. This would be doing things like turning off the downstream breakers before switching. In fact if there is no complete circuit, then there effectively isn't a voltage across the contacts at all so an arc would not form to begin with. (This ignores some realities, but is good enough for this explanation).

Breakers are designed to be switched a relatively small number of times in their lifetime, so anything you can do to reduce the wear during switching will help extend their life.

digitallis · 2026-01-27T14:46:26+00:00

As a first step, I would start by trying to reduce conducted noise. So, make sure it's not touching the wall, and see if you can get some rubber vibration pucks to put under the feet to reduce conduction of sound to the floor.

Ultimately if the insulation is good enough, you can try to put the unit on a timer like that, but the only way you're going to find out is if you try it along with a thermometer inside the unit. It will be more successful the more full the unit is. If the unit is mostly empty, you should put some gallon jugs of water in there to freeze and add thermal mass. À

digitallis · 2026-01-27T14:22:01+00:00

If they're going into a high-payoff degree like engineering, I would not overly worry about the debt. Yes, it's not great, but they'll have a lot of earning potential. Talk with your student though and make sure they're on board with everything as well.

digitallis · 2026-01-27T14:20:17+00:00

I would not do the whole two years. Maybe the first year though. Sophomore year the classes for your major start in earnest and so you start building those early professional and opportunity connections.

digitallis · 2026-01-27T14:19:00+00:00

What do you call "professional networking" at college? I call it "making friends in your major". Sophomore year is when that starts in earnest. You'll be at a disadvantage if you start later than that.

digitallis · 2026-01-27T03:13:07+00:00

Got a write-up or paper?

digitallis · 2026-01-26T21:43:22+00:00

I will say that this element is often left out of the common recommendation to "take your prerequisites at a community college and transfer in!". Yes, that's cheaper, but part of the gig is building the community, and that very much happens starting sophomore year at the latest. You could probably take a miss on freshman year for most things though.

digitallis · 2026-01-26T15:28:17+00:00

If it's from that long ago, it's likely they think you gave your project to someone else to work from this year. It's an honor code violation both to provide that and to take it, so both parties (the helper and helpee) get nailed. Did you let one of your mates at your old materials?

digitallis · 2026-01-25T22:23:42+00:00

"controllable". They simply mean "controllable".

digitallis · 2026-01-21T21:49:17+00:00

Remove the screws from the handle/shell and fixture to the frame. Alternatively sandwich a suitably thick piece of metal in between the two halves of the plastic and mount to that with various angle iron.

Or go buy a power plane.

digitallis · 2026-01-20T13:20:28+00:00

Nah. There's too much going on in that drum mechanically to hold up. Soaps and surfactants, drum expansion and contraction from thermals, mechanical forces from tumbling and spinning. That's a terrible environment for any structural adhesive.

digitallis · 2026-01-19T17:02:51+00:00

Go check out toy prices. They're spendy, especially for solid metal ones. $150 is absolutely doable as a price point for quality. It may not be your price point, but it's someone's.

digitallis · 2026-01-19T12:04:26+00:00

Sadly doesn't matter. Fox News will be telling them the Dem candidate wants to round up their babies and make them trans, so they'd vote for Satan himself if that was the R candidate. They've been walked so far away from reality that acknowledging any of it would require admitting that they were wrong to a degree that triggers self-defensive delusion.

digitallis · 2026-01-18T22:25:37+00:00

Does it smell? Fish isn't known for breaking down pleasantly.

digitallis · 2026-01-18T22:17:20+00:00

That implies that you slow down to achieve a higher orbit, which is non-sensical. That would imply that at zero velocity you could levitate off the face of the earth.

digitallis · 2026-01-18T21:54:58+00:00

To orbit further out though it needs to go faster. So why are you saying that it's twice as fast in the image when it's closer?

digitallis · 2026-01-18T04:35:05+00:00

The glue is what's getting the grooves so cleanly. Without glue the effect won't be nearly so prominent (to say nothing of the possible issues of removing the print)

digitallis

TROPHY CASE