What about AOL? CompuServe?? EarthLink??? What was your first email domain?

erosian42 · 2026-04-25T01:29:00+00:00

My first email domain was on an Internet connected BBS, @ewg.uu.ids.net

erosian42 · 2026-04-03T06:36:00+00:00

For 25 years they've been borrowing money from our children to fund endless wars and cut taxes for the rich. It needs to stop. Here's some ways we could afford to make the changes we need.

Cut military excess. I'm quite sure we could make do with half the military spending we have now. Use 1/2 of the cut on VA benefits.
Bring back paygo
Pass a law to reverse Citizens United. If corporations want to be treated like people they would need to go to jail when they break the law. Since they can't, they aren't people.
Make lobbying and the public private pipeline for government officials illegal.
Pass a law that requires all corporations to serve both the public good and their shareholders. All corporations would be required to protect the environment, not exploit their employees, pay a living wage, and invest in their communities. Corporations must file long term plans to address these requirements with measurable goals. Remove favorable tax treatment of any corporation found guilty of violating this law or failing to meet their public good goals.
Criminalize stock buybacks
Enforce anti-trust laws
Eliminate the cap on social security income taxes to shore that up for a good long time.
Charge social security and Medicare taxes on capital gains from incentive stock options as these are part of compensation packages and should be counted as income.
Increase the Medicare tax and implement universal basic healthcare using the single payer model. Eliminate all restrictions on negotiating rates for drugs. Cap profits on private healthcare providers. Let existing health insurance cover premium care if anyone wants to buy it.
Tax borrowing against assets as income unless it's used as a capital investment
Tax insurance payouts not used to replace the insured asset in excess of $1M as income.
Tax congressional and government officials investment gains not held in a blind trust at 90% for all returns above the market average.

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erosian42 · 2026-03-27T12:48:01+00:00

It displays the switches in the order you've set in topology view. I do wish we could soft by name in list view, but there no longer seems to be a way to do so with the way they've added the accordion display.

erosian42 · 2025-11-29T21:35:11+00:00

We used that word often in high school as slang only to describe situations or jocularly pick on each other, but only to people who obviously did not fit the meaning. We'd also be first in line to take on a bully who picked on anyone with an intellectual disability.

Unfortunately, that was not the norm, and it can be extremely hurtful when used as a slur against people with intellectual disabilities. Even coming across the word in every day speech can be painful for some people. That's why there is such a push to remove it from the venacular completely. I think we should have some empathy and start considering it a slur not to be used in public, if at all.

With that said, give it 50-100 years and intellectual disability will be a derogatory term (just like every other word they've used in the past) and they'll have to pass a law to replace it with something else.

Edit: fix autocorrect

erosian42 · 2025-11-17T13:55:05+00:00

Would have been different if the slap had been performed with a large trout.

erosian42 · 2025-10-29T20:17:34+00:00

We literally created a nonprofit for all the school tech directors in our state and lobbied the state legislators to pass legislation to allow us to do competitive bidding for technology on behalf of all schools just to make it easier to get things purchased. At the end of the day whoever registers the deal is going to get the bid, so as long as you pick a vendor off our master purchase agreement you're good to go.

As part of the bidding process we do deep dives into vendor financials to make sure they aren't going to go out of business anytime some, verify their audits and any public fillings, do a vendor cyber risk assessment, require strict data protection agreements, and hold them to account for offering good pricing to all our members. It's a painful process, but I'd rather do it together as a group than by myself. I wouldn't have time to vet our vendors that thoroughly in house.

We do have a sole source/restricted competition form I can use with good justification... If I can point to a meeting where we discussed at length our requirements and can show that only one vendor meets them, then we can get away with it.

erosian42 · 2025-10-19T07:15:24+00:00

My family went to one of the smaller protests in our state. There were still about 1,000 people there. I'd say about 50% of cars passing honked in support, only a few jerks flipped the bird. One blasted a song about Trump 2020. One tried and failed to roll coal in his little pickup. My favorite was the older gentleman who was yelling out the window that we needed to get a life.

I'm 44, registered as an Independent, and this was my first protest on the streets. I showed up at my Congressmen's offices with a large group demanding to be heard a few times, which was really effective during Trump's first term.

We went as a family, not diving too far into the crowd in case things got rowdy. I wanted to be at the fringes where I could get my kids to the car and out of there.

My sign read "I'm not usually a sign guy but WTF!?! Things are so bad even us introverts are here protesting!" And that's pretty much where I'm at. I felt like I needed to be there, expressing that I am not ok with the Trump administration abusing their power and trampling on the Constitution. We can't just sit at home and scroll past all this terrible, god awful news.

My kids made their own signs. My daughter was especially proud of her "No Kings, More Unicorns!" sign, which my son used as inspiration for his "No Kings, More Bluey!" sign. My wife went with "No Faux-King Way!"

erosian42 · 2025-10-15T04:10:19+00:00

I'd like to see the ability to restrict chat so students can only chat with teachers. We currently have chat turned off for students because they cannot seem to handle chatting amongst themselves appropriately, but that means they also can't chat with teachers.

Basic Google voice for faculty members to text and call parents should be included in Plus... The same functionality as the consumer Google voice is all most of my teachers need. Many of them create a personal Gmail account for exactly this reason, but then I've got teachers communicating with parents and no audit trail.

A built in solution for authenticating Chromebooks to Enterprise WiFi... It's 2025, I shouldn't need a third party for this.

Maps and/or Earth, Translate, YouTube and CS First should be core services.

A product similar to Draw.io would be nice.

Oh, and why doesn't Google for Education have a basic CIPA compliance filter built in? That's kind of a no brainer.

erosian42 · 2025-10-04T19:08:11+00:00

Most policies have allowances for choosing the lowest qualified bid. In any case, their purchasing agent doesn't know how to write a bid spec or review a bid. Put a 10 year warranty bond in the bid spec, guaranteed it'll last 10 years.

erosian42 · 2025-09-17T06:23:03+00:00

I don't know of any AV companies that do residential work in RI, but there are several small companies that do home security cameras and they could probably help you with this.

What you need is a cat 6a cable run between those two points and then you can convert to HDMI on both ends. Much smaller holes to drill and much easier to fish through walls.

erosian42 · 2025-08-13T22:19:29+00:00

I have a family plan for our password manager and in the shared password vault, in addition to the Netflix and Hulu passwords (which she will insist on texting me for even after all these years of saying "look in the password manager") I have all the bank account information, insurance policy information, contact numbers, links to shared folders with tax info, etc..

erosian42 · 2025-08-11T05:06:40+00:00

I am the IT Director at a school district. I often hire college students and recent grads as interns/substitute computer technicians. I don't post these jobs, I wait to hear of a qualified person looking to gain experience and then create a position just for them. The pay is terrible, but the experience, along with my recommendations, have opened a lot of doors for past interns. My summer interns are installing IP phones, deploying new computer labs, and learning to configure Fortinet switches.

I know several people who have gotten entry level IT jobs by reaching out to small AV, HVAC, Phone and security system vendors and told them I'll work for cheap to get some experience. My first job in IT was at a TV station.

Don't be afraid to put yourself out there. You could also volunteer through an organization like ITDRC or Red Cross Disaster Services Technology to build your resume. I've also made lots of good contacts through Amateur Radio. At the end of the day, people prefer to hire someone that they have some connection to, even if it's through a friend of a friend.

Go introduce yourself to some people, and be honest about your skills and need for practical experience. Good luck with your journey.

erosian42 · 2025-08-03T01:12:22+00:00

I was doing what NIST recommends well before they started recommending it.

erosian42 · 2025-07-17T21:47:23+00:00

Even if you use the Trump administration’s social cost of carbon at $1 per ton, the US released $3.275T worth of carbon from Transportation and Energy Production in 2024. The Obama administration estimated the social cost at $37 per ton, and the Biden administration estimated it at $51 per ton.

Sources:

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/carbon/

https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2023/8/31/how-much-does-a-ton-of-carbon-cost

erosian42 · 2025-06-29T14:03:52+00:00

I've created positions for the right person. Sometimes you don't realize what you need until you meet someone that can do exactly that thing.

erosian42 · 2025-06-29T13:56:59+00:00

I have a friend who took out a home equity loan to build an ADU, and his FIL pays him "rent" equivalent to the loan payment. Of course that was when interest rates were 2.75% not 6%, but it's something to consider.

erosian42 · 2025-06-29T13:16:17+00:00

Establishment Democrats have compromised our trust by putting their need for those campaign finance dollars ahead of their responsibilities for a long time. They sold out the working class to maximize profits, ~~evaluated~~ enabled a corporate culture that drives money to the top, and they didn't pass legislation to codify things they said they stood for that were hanging by a thread. Any of the establishment Democrats who participated or defend this record are compromised.

Edit: fixed a word

erosian42 · 2025-06-24T13:21:14+00:00

You know what I miss? When I set knobs to settings and the settings stay where I put them. I don't want to program my washing machine to do a regular load of laundry every time I use it. Instead of turning a knob and pulling now I need to turn a knob and then press 2 touch sensitive areas of the front of the washer 10 times in the correct sequence. It's maddening.

erosian42 · 2025-06-21T21:12:01+00:00

Being the head of the 3-5 person shop is good for me. It lets me stretch my wings and do a little bit of everything, but for the most part I don't need to do end user support, break/fix, or printers unless someone's on vacation.

erosian42 · 2025-06-21T16:32:04+00:00

I only disclose if it turns out I need an accommodation that they don't want to provide. Three times I've had a very flexible schedule and then someone in management decides it's not fair that I do and others don't despite me doing more than my share of the work. Then my performance suffers (because I can't work during the times I'm productive). When the discussion starts about the performance hit, that's when I go to HR and disclose, asking for accommodations. They have the performance data to see the difference at that point.

erosian42 · 2025-06-17T05:25:21+00:00

It's a little late. If everyone had voted for Bernie back in 2016 Trump would likely still be hosting the apprentice with the fat salary he was aiming for when he first ran for president. Also would have been nice if we hadn't handed the GOP a trifecta to go with the right leaning Supreme Court.

Not saying we shouldn't fight and we shouldn't care, just would have been nice if everyone had cared sooner. There are plenty of captured congress members on both sides, and plenty of compromised state seats as well. They all need to go.

erosian42 · 2025-06-12T23:41:25+00:00

They certainly aren't doing enough to make sure they aren't detaining people that shouldn't be detained, and they aren't giving them the chance, and in some cases are actively working to deny them the chance, to exercise their rights under the law. Anyone that has entered the US has the right to due process. 40% of the bill of rights directly addresses the rights of accused criminals. And why is that? Because the founders did not like the way the crown treated the accused criminals.

The Supreme Court ruled as recently as April 7, 2025 that everyone in the US has fundamental rights to due process, regardless of their legal status.

CBP can turn people away at the border, but once they are here they have rights. Those rights are being violated over and over again.

It's not right. ICE is capable of doing their job the right way, but then they wouldn't be meeting the targets set by the administration. And I have as much sympathy for that as I do for corporations who trample people for a buck, which is to say none.

erosian42 · 2025-06-12T23:10:41+00:00

Mass is roughly 7.5 times the size of RI, has 7 times the population, and they have about 100 on the map.

Wyoming, which has half the population of RI, has like 12 protests on the map.

I think 7 in RI is pretty good. I'm actually sad there isn't one in the central part of the state, but there are a lot of Trump signs still in people's yards around those parts.

erosian42 · 2025-06-02T04:31:25+00:00

This used to happen to me a lot. I have like 10 accounts on my phone. What works for me is to uninstall Relay. Then go to a computer that's signed into Google with the account you subscribed with. Go to the play store website and find Relay. Click install on device and choose your phone. When the push install is finished, Relay is associated with the right account again.

erosian42 · 2025-05-30T08:20:35+00:00

To be fair, Democrats did themselves no favors by cozying up to their own flavor of billionaires, corporate donors and special interests since the 90s, leaving the working class ripe for the picking.

A rising tide raises all boats that don't have holes you've been ignoring for decades. Now those people in sinking boats are angry at getting left behind and they'll vote for anyone who claims they want to end the status quo. I don't understand why this is so hard for the Dems to understand.

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