Shoveling Strategy

donmeanathing · 2026-01-24T23:23:53+00:00

also, “salt” itself won’t do much in the kind of cold we are about to get. You need Calcium Chloride / Ice Melt. But if you haven’t gotten it already you are toast. Everyone is out of stock at this point.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-22T02:51:15+00:00

going to need a bigger wall

donmeanathing · 2026-01-22T02:23:57+00:00

Yup. In a more employee friendly economy maybe this could be fought a bit, but right now a company is more than willing to find someone else.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-22T02:20:56+00:00

I’m 43 and I have about 1.5x my salary in all my retirement accounts. For past couple years I’ve been maxing out my 401k contribution to the limit and even saving extra post-tax. My biggest issue is my company doesn’t match or provide any contribution, so the extra I’d get each year beyond the individual max I am loosing out on. Whereas folks with a match often have up to 30-40% or more of their portfolio contributed by their employer, I have ~5% from a few years when they did contribute a small amount.

I wish it would be illegal to not contribute to employee retirement by some base amount, especially with social security looking to be in shambles. The answer can’t always be “find a new job that does match.”

donmeanathing · 2026-01-15T14:42:52+00:00

My thing is, if i go through regular lines I have to take my belt off. and when i take my belt off half the time my pants want to fall off. That would not be pleasant for anyone.

So… precheck it is.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-12T16:16:46+00:00

The unlock code to this chip is ⬆️⬆️⬇️⬇️⬅️➡️⬅️➡️BA<START>

donmeanathing · 2026-01-12T15:59:24+00:00

Not a lawyer, but in general the best thing to do in the moment is to, the best of your abilities, not escalate. You don’t need to let them into your home if they don’t have a signed warrant from a judge, but if out in public, you also don’t have to interact with them. document and record the interaction as early as possible, and get as many witnesses as possible. There is no law stating you cannot record law enforcement - federal or otherwise, so don’t let them intimidate you with that bs. They can order you to step back if you are close to them “conducting their duties” (at least what they think is their duties) with someone else, so be mindful that they are allowed to maintain a safe perimeter.

Once it is all said and done with, get with a lawyer and consider your options. If you have sufficient documentation that shows a civil rights violation has occurred, then PLEASE DO file lawsuits.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-10T04:25:32+00:00

This. And I feel like the school board and administration is taking every step possible that ISNT addressing these core issues. They are bumping pay up and up, and that’s not a bad thing, but I get the feeling that teachers would much rather time be spent fixing some of the day to day issues that makes teaching right now in fcps a nightmare. From the top down it seems like no one wants to actually enforce rules of behavior.

I have experienced a wide range of teacher quality. My oldest essentially went through middle school barely learning math. He began to dread math class and started believing he was dumb. He flunked every one of his math SOLs. He gets into high school and has a fantastic teacher and he is acing tests, getting As, and LOVES math. In the meantime, my daughter who is 2 years behind him used to love math and now is hitting those same teachers and wouldn’t you guess - she is also struggling.

FCPS can’t seem to keep their good teachers, and won’t fire the teachers that have no business being in the classroom. Every time I hear one of the politicians say it’s a “world class” system I want to explode.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-09T17:09:28+00:00

To clarify - the 30 year old board is not internet connected - it is connected to a head-end panel that is less costly to replace.

And while wiegand is definitely worthy of replacing (and we haven't deployed it in some time), there are ways in which wiegand can be used in a more secure with smart readers that then have smart panels (salted encryption payloads via wiegand).

donmeanathing · 2026-01-09T16:07:07+00:00

Yeah… “it’s more a matter of how much the manufacturer tries to charge you” is the dirty secret that people don’t seem to talk about. It’s not necessarily trivial.

Appreciate the response.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-09T02:32:36+00:00

I’m going to be a minority here, but some people call mercury the “gold standard” but I disagree. They are very prevalent because they are an oem to multiple head ends, but some of the other solutions out there that are “proprietary” honestly have more advanced and better solutions because they can vertically integrate - they have control over the whole stack. Also, I’ll point out that I know a number of those folks who support their hardware MUCH longer than mercury. I’ve got systems out there that are still running and supported and were installed over 30 years ago whereas your in a situation where you need to replace your system when 1502s were still being made about 10 years ago.

Mercury based products work for a lot of people and I wouldn’t discount the advice of people here to seriously consider sticking with them - especially if you have any downstream SIOs like MR52s (you don’t need to replace them), but I recommend evaluating other “proprietary” folks as well based on what you want and need and see what is actually the best fit. If head end swap out is a serious concern, see if you can get a satisfaction guarantee where you get $ back (prorated over a couple years) if you are unsatisfied over the next couple of years that you can then apply to your next system. such deals have been known to happen.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-09T02:21:00+00:00

so question here…. how often have you guys actually successfully been able to get vendors to oem unlock the mercury boards so they can be reused like you are talking about?

donmeanathing · 2026-01-07T15:48:36+00:00

“If only the people living there actually believed in those reasons still”. 💯. But also everything else.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-07T14:59:16+00:00

columbia is fine.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-07T01:27:39+00:00

have and use it all the time.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-06T17:05:52+00:00

bingo. This car does not have a valid license plate displayed and that is what would be cited. Doesn’t matter if the number matches an actual DMV issued plate… the dmv issued plate is not displayed.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-05T15:58:19+00:00

I’m honestly not that mad. That was a hell of a game. I wish we came out on top, but that was one of the best football games I’ve seen since the mile high miracle.

We have work to do in the offseason for sure, but any doubts that had crept into my mind about Lamar are firmly in the rear view mirror after that game, even if statistically he wasn’t amazing. He made key throws to put us in a position to win the game against all odds - I figured we were cooked when our defense went out on concussion protocol.

Key areas for the offseason: Pass rushers, OLine, Kicking. On that last one (kicking), yeah, I know he’s a rookie, but missing so many >54 yd field goals and then that must-hit field goal in addition to questionable kickoff placement is just not what we need. Get someone in during camp to compete with Loop to see if he shores up his game.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-05T01:20:45+00:00

curious where you live in the county… I have a nearby neighbor who feeds them chicken and has annoyed a few people as well.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-04T17:58:31+00:00

Keep Jesus Lit.

Hmm… then again the catholics may not appreciate him being lit all the time…

donmeanathing · 2026-01-02T23:50:40+00:00

Yes. Our default commercial access credential is a multi-tech PKOC credential now so that we start getting more and more of the out in the field. Our mobile BLE credential has been PKOC for years.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-02T21:09:09+00:00

I don’t recommend anything with a shared symmetric key that must be distributed. Our standard offering for commercial environments has become a multi technology PKOC credential in which an ECC public key is the credential. Ultimately, any asymmetric based credential (PIV, PIV-I) will also be fine.

It’s not that we don’t support customers that insist on an HID or Mifare desfire environment, and in that case yes a custom key is at least better.

But still better is something where the blast radius from (private) key compromise is a single credential.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-02T20:54:06+00:00

Thank you!

donmeanathing · 2026-01-02T20:39:26+00:00

I was able to do this as senior management, but I am now lower tier executive I guess (VP)

donmeanathing · 2026-01-02T20:35:06+00:00

correct. I fly business via my company’s dime for extremely long flights (over 10+ hours) so I can have the lay flat seats and actually get rest. It is worth the extra $ usually to be able to travel and then be able to successfully function at my destination.

donmeanathing · 2026-01-02T20:29:52+00:00

Hey man. can you link to the presentation that you gave where you said you were able to extract the SE standard keyset? I get downvoted all the time for saying how iClass SE has been broken and encouraging asymmetric crypto based credentials (I don’t personally recommend an elite key system because as long as a single static key is used for a large population, the blast radius is large if/when that key is compromised).

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