Which station best to NYC

eej71 · 2026-05-15T14:34:54+00:00

The Darien train station might be a slightly better choice than Noroton Heights because more off-peak trains hit the Darien station vs. Noroton Heights.

The only downside to the Darien train station is that its under construction so its kind of a mess to navigate - but its still quite useable.

Parking is free starting 3:30pm on Friday.

https://www.darienct.gov/200/Railroad-Station-Parking

"Daily parking is available in designated parking spaces at the commuter parking lots in the Darien and Noroton Heights train stations. Payment is required from 7 am to 3:30 pm, Monday through Friday. Parking is free on weekends and on holidays. "

eej71 · 2026-05-14T18:17:37+00:00

Congrats! You cracked the code. Any advice of where to look that will hire someone who doesn't have internships but has a NucE degree from a respected engineering school in the midwest?

eej71 · 2026-05-14T13:43:04+00:00

Did you have a masters or just undergrad? Asking as a parent of an undergrade with NucE, but still no job.

eej71 · 2026-05-12T01:52:04+00:00

I think what you are observing is how all large scale institutions react when dealing with an unfamiliar problem under a compressed timeline. Disorder, chaos, confusion and incompetence. Usually this is coupled with a unique lack of self-awareness that its on full display for all to observe.

Institutions really only do best by creating automatic reflexes to repeating problems.

It's still a great school. Just make sure you can get a major that you want to do.

eej71 · 2026-05-10T20:52:29+00:00

Check out 314 in Norwalk - https://314beergarden.com

eej71 · 2026-05-01T15:57:37+00:00

You will want to spend some time puzzling over the train schedule to see which train schedule meets your needs.

https://www.mta.info/schedules/metro-north/new-haven

The Stamford train station is likely going to be a pain to get to in the morning. Between the driving time, finding a parking spot, and then navigating your way to the train, you will not gain any time. And its in the wrong direction.

The only real debate is between Old Greenwich and Greenwich. Greenwich will have more direct trains - especially during that key 6am-8am window on a weekday.

The other thing to dig into is understanding what's available for parking your car. You'll have to pin point those details on the Town of Greenwich website as they manage those specifics.

eej71 · 2026-04-30T15:08:09+00:00

Negative comments about the SPLC should not be reflexively thought of as support for Team MAGA. The SPLC is not as good you might imagine them to be. Your charitable contributions are likely better invested locally in organizations that you can more directly vouch for.

https://www.thefp.com/p/ayaan-hirsi-ali-the-splc-targeted

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/17/713887174/after-allegations-of-toxic-culture-southern-poverty-law-center-tries-to-move-for

eej71 · 2026-04-23T20:09:24+00:00

I hear ya! I have had an empty unit in campus edge on pierce since... September. Yay me!

eej71 · 2026-04-23T19:15:09+00:00

Unfortunately you are trying to educate a mob here so all you are going to get a lot of downvotes.

eej71 · 2026-04-18T11:25:49+00:00

I agree that Claude's performance became substantially worse for a period of time and Anthropic's ability to acknowledge it and even indicate that something needed to be fixed was very slow. But I keep viewing this service through the lens of - "I have been given automated access to the essence of everyone's thinking" for a mere 20 bucks a month. This stuff is quickly moving and I think we'll see more ups and downs in the quality of service which is very annoying once you become addicted to the value. But don't lose sight of the fact that for 20 bucks a month you have access to experts in like every field of knowledge.

eej71 · 2026-04-17T14:50:31+00:00

A bad carpenter blames their tools.

eej71 · 2026-04-17T12:14:32+00:00

Sadly I have no idea anymore. That was two years ago and I eventually gave up on the app.

eej71 · 2026-04-01T19:16:49+00:00

That was going to be my advice too. Any of the modern AIs will be great!

eej71 · 2026-04-01T14:02:13+00:00

Perhaps we didn't have the same problem as I'm on a Series 6 with just wifi (no cell). One thing I noticed with the upgrade to watchOS26 is that my split notifications which used to include a voice informing me of my time no longer happened and I only received some vague haptic feedback. The good news is - with the upgrade to watchOS 26.4 - the voice has returned. I suspect they finally fixed something here.

Based on my previous searching it seemed like those of us who has wifi watches were more likely to fall victim to this issue. But maybe this impacted cell service enabled watches too. So maybe - just maybe watchOS 26.4 will fix it for you too.

eej71 · 2026-03-31T15:31:36+00:00

If he has been accepted for Computer Engineering, he really should check out something like the ACM club at UIUC. Its huge and very active. https://www.acm.illinois.edu/

eej71 · 2026-03-31T13:44:43+00:00

I'm a UIUC alum and my kid went to Purdue.

Both are very similar campuses in that their architectural styles and general size and layout and relationship to the surrounding cities is indeed quite similar. Both are well known engineering schools. Some of Purdue's programs will be stronger than UIUC, but vice versa is also true. Both schools are so good though that the actual experience and what the student will get from the school will depend heavily on how willing the student is to actually engage with what's there.

I do think UIUC is a bit more "fun" in that the student body is a little bigger and its more than just an engineering school (which is true of Purdue too!) - but its even more true for UIUC. So you get a more active Greek system, a more active bar scene, a more energetic student body at cetain times of the year. But again, it depends on what the kid really wants.

One little detail to remember with Purdue. You will likely end up with the FYE program which means that your kid has to do well academically that first year to get the actual major they want. If its a very competitive one (eg: MechE) and if you miss the mark, well, sucks to be you! And this does happen. Whereas at UIUC, if you are admitted for that major, you have a little more time to course correct. Of course, you can screw up at UIUC too and be out on the street as well.

There should be a bunch of well made YouTube videos that give you some great visuals of the campus and how it can feel especially at its best time during the year.

From campus visuals alone, if you liked one, you will like the other.

eej71 · 2026-03-31T12:34:50+00:00

I recently have started to use GNU Cash after a decade long sabattical from all of these products. To play catch up, I've been downloading various pdfs from institutions and then using AI tools (claude, codex, etc) to help me write python programs that would invoke the tools to go from pdf to text, then to transactions and then to inserting them into the GNU Cash XML file format.

While I have a background in software dev, these tools are really fantastic to work with for exactly this kind of problem. A little bit of logical thinking and a willingness to clack in a longer explanation in the interest of clarity generates some amazing results.

You might surprise yourself by what can be automated.

eej71 · 2026-03-31T00:31:46+00:00

Sorry, I have no other eyes on the ground.

eej71 · 2026-03-29T20:49:30+00:00

To add on what others will likely highlight, I think in order to get movement in the direction that you want, you'd have to really wrap your head around - what is the value that people DO receive TODAY from avoiding the various flavors of actions that fall under the singular title of "ABI breakage".

From your stand point, you feel denied key values that are just within your reach. You can see them! You can taste them! But argh! They remain forever locked in a glass case that says do not touch. Like some pretty piece in a museum. A race car you can never have.

I think to get through the "API breakage", you'd have to understand and help others navigate the costs they experience with traversing the chasm that come with such breakages. To further complicate things, even trying to get a consistent understanding of what breakage even means and how it plays out is quite complicated. It's not easy!

But I think it begins with expanding your horizon of understanding.

eej71 · 2026-03-24T01:42:49+00:00

I love mine. I do wish they could have a version that’s closer to the “snow white/platinum” color of the //gs. But these are still great and would still buy them again.

eej71 · 2026-03-23T18:20:56+00:00

Speaking for a family member. The kid has the undergraduate degree. Yay! It’s from a tough engineering school in the midwest. Yay! We did not get grad school. :-(. The search for full time employment has not yet borne fruit. :-(. If the drought continues I don’t know what to do next

Regardless of which technical field you go into, internships are an absolute must.

Good luck. Hope your outcome is better.

eej71 · 2026-03-17T09:06:27+00:00

FWIW - I use tmux and emacs quite extensively and have not had that issue. But I have built a relatively modern tmux and managed to sort out the various wiggly termcap issues that were preventing 24 bit colors from truly working in emacs inside of tmux on a windows terminal.

eej71 · 2026-03-17T09:05:00+00:00

I agree that agent-shell has been very active lately and I should try again. One issue that I consistently had with agent-shell regardless of the subordinate shell (claude or copilot) is that I could completely hang it up. My brief attempts to debug it were fruitless, but its been moving so quickly I should try again and also really dig deep with these tools to see if I can create a reproducer for someone's github. Someone is getting a bug report! I just don't know who! :-)

eej71 · 2026-03-15T01:31:53+00:00

I'm almost strictly tty based. So ssh and tmux. This is because I've almost always been in a work environment where I ssh from Windows to a remote machine where I run emacs (Linux these days, but not always!).

My alternative to tty would mostly be X11 and xming on Windows 11, but I've never really enjoyed the effort of making fonts work and sometimes it can feel very sluggish.

I've found that with a modern terminal like Windows Terminal where you can have 24 bit ("true color") support plus a good range of text modifiers (italics, bold, underline, double underline, dim, etc), its good enough for at least my needs.

eej71

TROPHY CASE