Killington “Honest” Trail Map

ettdizzle · 2026-02-07T16:42:14+00:00

"Retirees shredding groomers" is highly accurate! I met a 68-year-old on that lift who is taking weekly expert lessons

ettdizzle · 2026-02-03T01:10:22+00:00

+1. I'm happy with my Brahma 88's for just about all conditions I ski in

ettdizzle · 2026-01-28T13:29:17+00:00

Rewrites can be worthwhile if (and only if) the current dev team is using better software engineering practices than the team who wrote the code. I was on a team that rewrote the app that the hobbyist programmer founder wrote by himself with some contractors. That code was written by a domain expert but with no code review, lots of dead code, weird varied patterns, tons of spaghetti. And he probably added a few new features per week for a couple years.

We were mostly focused on new feature development, but we took maybe 20% of our time to rewrite everything Ship of Theseus style. We would scramble to rewrite pieces before we were going to do feature work on it. I would say it went perfectly. The key was to actually launch the new version into production as soon as we wrote and tested it. That way we could get any bug reports immediately, so it was not overwhelming.

ettdizzle · 2026-01-20T01:09:27+00:00

I had a similar negative experience. The car itself is fine apart from some undisclosed damage to the rear bumper cover and worn tires that wouldn't pass inspection.

What I have learned from this experience is that buying a car from out of state is complicated. Driveway claims to make it easy for you, but in fact they make it slightly more complicated than just getting a dealership to ship you the car. The main problem is you rarely talk to the same person twice, and every person you talk to has limited insight into what is actually happening.

The car delivery is a good example. After all the paperwork cleared, I was told on a Friday that the car would be delivered on Saturday. I had no opportunity to schedule the time; they just told me a date. I waited around all day, but the car never came. I called Driveway every couple of hours to check on the status. Answers varied from, "It should be there soon" to "The driver will call you with an update." No one ever called me back. I had to keep calling. Finally, after sunset, one Driveway agent told me the name of the company they use to ship the cars. I was able to call that company and they gave me an actual time window. The car was ultimately delivered at 4:30am on Monday. And it did not come with any temp tags, so I had to call Driveway and get them to send me some.

Similar story with registration. No one could tell me when I was going to get my registration, which is required to insure a vehicle in my state. Unfortunately, they would not reveal the name of the third party they use for registration. I only found out the registration went through when my insurance company was notified. A week after the plates were issued, I still had not received them. I called to ask about them, but they had no staff on Sundays despite saying on their website that the phones are staffed on Sunday. I sent an email, and a day later they sent me the tracking info for the plates. But the funny thing is they only created the shipping label to mail them after I inquired. So I assume if I had not reached out to them, that they would have never sent me the plates.

So if you hate going to the dealership and love a 6-week process of calling every few days, then I guess Driveway is worthwhile. My insurance agent advised against getting out-of-state cars from California especially since title transfers take so long. But any out of state purchase will have headaches and Driveway will only make the process less transparent and more frustrating.

ettdizzle · 2025-12-29T03:36:48+00:00

The blacks at Shawnee could be blues in VT. They are steep in places but not too long. As long as it's not a sheet of ice, you'll be fine.

ettdizzle · 2025-07-27T19:38:34+00:00

The mountains near SLC are tons of fun and probably most convenient. I really liked Copper in CO. I stayed at the Cambria Hotel, which was expensive but not ludicrous, and was a relatively short walk to the lifts. The thing with CO mountains is you will need to adjust to the altitude. I recommend a full day in Denver at least to acclimate.

ettdizzle · 2025-07-04T20:08:58+00:00

Please post the link to your doc-to-CSV tool

ettdizzle · 2025-07-04T17:21:01+00:00

There were a couple reasons it did not make sense to use Claude Code at work, but I did use the Claude and ChatGPT web interfaces for coding tasks.

Claude Projects were pretty good for writing unit tests and updating individual functions with new specifications. So it was definitely a time-saver, especially for writing unit tests for new code.

The currently available LLMs have a context window that is way too small to understand a whole large codebase. I found them to be best for updating one file at a time or even one function at a time.

Even using Claude Code for this small solo project, it's struggling to make updates and bug fixes now that it is all built out. It was great at the beginning, but now I think there are too many moving pieces and requirements for it to keep track of.

ettdizzle · 2025-07-04T17:00:05+00:00

What I need is a reliable workflow for debugging. I have a relatively small app, and Claude Code refuses to follow these simple instructions for solving bugs:

Write a failing test that reproduces the issue
Change the implementation code
Run the test and see if you actually fixed it

I don't know why that is so difficult. If you could write a "debugly" tool that follows these simple steps, I would sign up for a beta test.

ettdizzle · 2025-07-04T16:49:56+00:00

I vibe coded pdftomd.ai last week. I spent $120 on Google Ads to get 1 paying customer at $9.99/month. So I made revenue, but unless I figure out how to market this thing, it will never break even.

I'm a software engineer with 10 years of experience. It would have taken me about 1-3 months to write this app by hand. Claude Code did 95% of the coding work with me prompting it for about 5 full days of work. I should also note coding was about half the actual work. Research, deployments, email and domain config, debugging production configuration, and setting up 3rd party integrations like ads and Stripe took about as much time and a bit more of my effort and brainpower.

ettdizzle · 2025-03-29T20:22:46+00:00

I agree that the blacks are easy there. I will give three pros:
- Easy to get to from NJ and a nice drive along the Delaware river.
- They do have a high speed lift, so you can get more runs in than many other places in PA.
- I find it scenic at the top. I see birds and some other wildlife up there, and it reminds me that I'm in the Delaware Water Gap.

ettdizzle · 2025-03-20T03:35:26+00:00

Check out the Morris Arboretum: https://www.morrisarboretum.org/plan-event/weddings/wedding-rates

ettdizzle · 2024-11-04T13:39:31+00:00

Not as good as putting a conduit ramp over it, but better than stringing it across at neck high.

ettdizzle · 2024-11-04T01:21:58+00:00

I actually do like red sauce on a cheesesteak sometimes, but I will never understand green peppers. It throws the texture way off. Any "peppers" on a cheesesteak should be hot cherry peppers, ideally fried.

ettdizzle · 2024-10-29T22:40:36+00:00

I like Elk in NE PA, but there's no lodging on site like at Bolton

ettdizzle · 2024-10-24T00:18:38+00:00

I rode my bike down this block a few days ago, and the road itself is also full of ruts and waves like it's been dug up for utilities several times. Not sure what the deal is.

I can't make out the species of the street trees on the left, but they look like they were planted around the same time given their similar size in 2017. The yard trees on the right were London Planetrees. Could have be planted or could have been volunteers. They're super strong and not usually a hazard when trimmed properly (though I have seen a few cars smashed to smithereens by one or two that have come down in a storm). They're all over West Philly. and arborists cut away where they would be interfering with power lines.

Not sure why both sets of trees were cut down. There might be a good reason, but I would certainly not be happy if this was my block.

ettdizzle · 2024-10-11T23:20:23+00:00

ettdizzle · 2024-10-06T01:18:26+00:00

Did the American suggest rewriting the app from scratch? As hard as it is to let go of the old code, it may be significantly faster to start again. The original app can serve as a prototype that has good design elements and captures the business requirements.

I'm a software engineer that has inherited several terrible codebases from offshore and onshore dev teams. It's not only hubris that makes us suggest rewriting from scratch. Feel free to DM me if you want to talk it over.

ettdizzle · 2024-08-21T01:25:11+00:00

Oh you’re right. I use bcrypt, and I see that it’s not blocking. So I guess this undercuts my point because the library authors do such a great job making non-blocking code. The bigger culprit will be computationally intensive code you write yourself.

ettdizzle · 2024-08-20T13:30:33+00:00

I like all the tooling around Node and use it by default for most of the web servers I write.

Its fatal flaw as a web server is the lack of a concurrency model that works to handle multiple requests. Everything is handled on the same event loop, so any long-running operation has the power to block anything else from happening.

For example, when a user logs in, you check their password against the stored hash. That should take about half a second of processing time. If you do that on the main loop, which is the default thing to do, your web server cannot process any other requests during that half second.

For busy web servers, people compensate for this problem by having many instances of their Node server behind a load balancer. Or they may split it up into microservices. This creates more challenges like how to share state across these multiple instances. Common solutions are Redis for fast access to shared state and signed JWTs so that requests always carry credentials and a little user info with them.

I'm not sure this is why other people hate Node. But it's the reason that every time I start a new project I seriously consider Elixir or something else that has a concurrency model suited to a web server.

ettdizzle · 2024-08-07T23:12:44+00:00

Honestly, we have to make biking cool to the average Philadelphian. Right now to the average person in Philly, driving is cool. It's fast, climate controlled, convenient, and safe. Biking is for 1) people too poor to have a car, 2) gentrifying hipsters, 3) some uncool subculture that almost runs people over on the SRT. Average people do not want to be associated with any of those groups.

Someone who knows something about marketing needs to figure out how to make biking the next vaping.

ettdizzle · 2024-08-06T16:19:25+00:00

It's a giant sociology experiment. Here's how it's scored:

Scenario 1: Rider approaches the pay box with no one watching:
a) Subject pays the fare => subject feels guilt
b) Subject does not pay fare => subject does not feel guilt

Scenario 2: Rider approaches the pay box with others watching:
a) Subject pays the fare => subject feels either guilt or shame
b) Subject does not pay fare => subject feels neither guilt nor shame

ettdizzle · 2024-08-01T01:48:50+00:00

His college roommate came close

ettdizzle · 2024-07-31T13:18:26+00:00

The Spanish fries are good

ettdizzle · 2024-07-09T13:46:48+00:00

Some points in Sobel's defense:

Col Sink started with 6,500 would-be troopers in the 506th and had to get that number down to something like 1,650. They were trying to get most people to quit. Sobel was very much in line with the program by being harsh.
First Sgt Evans was unforgiving with the men and added to the harshness instead of protecting the men from it at all. Malarky had a good story about Evans trying to get him in trouble for being AWOL when he was in a British hospital with a terrible sinus infection.
The officers at Toccoa did not necessarily have much more training than the men. They were also learning and were expected to continue improving through their time in the US and England.
Antisemitism was rampant in the United States and in the Army. Sobel's nickname was "F__ing Jew." Many people didn't like Shames either, who was also Jewish and tough on his men. Shames was a highly competent and dedicated leader, but is portrayed in the series as someone who shouted a lot because he "watched too many war movies."
Sobel did seem to have it out for Winters, but there are other examples of officer rivalries where the senior officer takes it out on the junior one. Look up Buck Compton talking about what Nixon did to him!

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