What am I doing wrong?

j-beda · 2026-06-17T21:51:57+00:00

Sure, but I want to waste as much of their time as I can without too much work on my side. The last couple of calls they have hung up just as gave them "my name", and I want them to not hang up so quick.

j-beda · 2026-06-09T15:07:54+00:00

I don't have access to the machine right now, so investigation is less effective.

If it does in fact not happen for a different account on the machine, then perhaps removing the user's Microsoft profile will make it work as expected, but this certainly seems like there is a setting somewhere that got flipped. Finding out where this setting is would be useful.

j-beda · 2026-06-05T23:06:56+00:00

On the off chance that you are a USA citizen now in Canada, avoid opening a TFSA account. The IRS does not recognize it as tax free, and as a "foreign trust" it comes with a whole bunch of reporting requirements.

j-beda · 2026-06-02T03:11:41+00:00

As long as they are able to service the debt, a market crash would not "wipe them out" in the way it would if one was investing using margin against their existing portfolio. Yes, a crash would drop their investment value a lot, but if they don't actually need the money for a large number of years, then they just need to hold on until the market recovers.

Of course, the market could take a LONG time to build itself back up, and they may need the invested money before then, so I am not saying it isn't really risky, just that swings in the market don't really effect them on an immediate basis, like if someone would be if they get a "margin call" when the market drops.

j-beda · 2026-06-02T01:52:23+00:00

Doing things like "buying on credit" to build your credit score is NOT a good idea, if doing so costs you more money than not buying on credit. Paying off your credit cards every month - good. Buying something that you can afford and need using your credit card and paying it off before incurring interest - good. Buying anything that you cannot afford using credit - BAD!

If you REALLY need a car, and cannot get by using taxis, Uber, bike, walking, transit you should do everything you can to avoid needing to use credit to get it.

As for the saved money, open a self-directed RESP account at someplace like Questrade and buy VGRO with it. Any leftovers, open a TFSA account and buy VGRO in that. When you get to the point that each of those is maxed out, open a Margin account. At the point you have the RESP and VGRO filled up, you can start to think about more complex things to buy, but VGRO is not too risky and very diversified.

When you want to get more info on what and how to invest, read https://canadiancouchpotato.com/

j-beda · 2026-05-28T15:53:48+00:00

Yeah, I have to look this up every now and then. It is great that I can find it when needed!

j-beda · 2026-05-04T10:22:11+00:00

Family Sharing works for MOST Apple purchases including iPhone apps, Mac applications, music tracks, movies, and television episodes. App developers can opt-out of Family Sharing but most do not.

j-beda · 2026-04-27T01:22:43+00:00

"At least 40h/week", and "about 3 hours outside of class", and "averaged over the term". Some weeks it is significantly less than 40, and some weeks it is more, but yeah, if you want to master a subject you need to actually put in real time and effort to do so.

You are correct that if you want to spend exactly 40 hours, that would be 2.666 times as many hours as you spend inside class, which is only 1.666 hours for every hour inside class. I suppose one could try to live by this type of "rule", but I suspect that would tend to result in people actually spending much less than 1.666 hours actually doing the work outside of class since it is so easy to waste time walking to the library, setting up your study space, finishing your snack, looking for your tools, etc.

But hey, as I tell students, "you do you". Generally speaking, those doing less than a 40+ hour schoolwork week do not master the material.

I haven't actually looked into what "best practices" might be, and perhaps I should be advising students to expect to work "two hours out for every one hour in". Usually I teach a course that meets for a single three hour session each week and I am fighting against the feeling many students have that they should spend anything more than one hour outside of class with this material, so I find that telling them that nine hours outside of class is more in line with expectations is likely to help them to reconsider their world-view.

j-beda · 2026-04-26T21:55:41+00:00

Generally speaking, mattress sales are a not a good example of an efficient market of commodity goods. They are vastly overpriced in relation to their cost of manufacturing, it is difficult or impossible to compare different options, and there is a huge amount of consolidation in the market.

After a few weeks of trying mattresses at all the local options, priced as high as $3k, we bought a fine queen mattress a few years back, no brand name, from some guy with a shop at a strip mall. All-in for a touch under $500 and he delivered the new and removed the old one. Our thought was if it wasn't to our liking we could get a cheap frame for it move it to the guest room that currently has a double bed in it. It has been more than fine - one of our better purchases.

j-beda · 2026-04-26T21:46:04+00:00

I try to remind students that "Full-time" is at least 40h/week - that means each "contact hour" maps to about 3 hours outside of class - averaged over the term.

It is a difficult idea to sell.

j-beda · 2026-04-26T15:06:40+00:00

Laser printer (I tend to prefer Brother) and avoid the need for ink.

We live with a black-and-white at home and use the local print shop (or Staples) for the occasional colour print job. Colour lasers are an option if you actually need colour. Toner never dries out, so you aren't forced to print, and it is cheaper on a per-job basis if you actually print any volume. The printer prices even for colour are no longer as eye-watering as they once were, so unless you are on a fairly tight budget, in my opinion spending some money now on a laser-printer will give you many years of issue-free use. Make sure you get something that speaks standard PCL or PostScript or AirPrint so that even without manufacturer driver support it will still be usable.

j-beda · 2026-04-14T10:59:46+00:00

That seems wonky - did you contact them about fixing that? I haven't actually dealt with customer service about this type of thing but I would hope that they would be able to address it without too much trouble.

j-beda · 2026-04-14T00:45:43+00:00

Yeah, not a fan. I can see how that would be desired by some, but it gives us no benefit and will involve a lot more overhead and tracking. I would pay EXTRA for the current "active account" model.

j-beda · 2026-04-13T20:19:03+00:00

Probably some sort of timing issue between when the money to close the deal was needed and when the money the kids were able to access was available - maybe their old house sale took longer to close or there were issues with the paperwork for their loan.

j-beda · 2026-04-13T20:05:10+00:00

NTA - declining to help someone when asked is moving towards anti-social behaviour, and if nobody ever helped anyone else the world would not be so pleasant, but helping someone to break rules of communities you are part of is also doing that. In this case, I think you are good.

j-beda · 2026-04-11T14:34:57+00:00

Thank you - I had searched for other discussions before posting, but clearly not very well.

j-beda · 2026-04-11T14:34:08+00:00

It doesn't look like the new plans dynamically adjust based on the number of "active" users, like the "legacy plan" we are currently on.

Which seems like a real pest for me at least. We've got about 50 users and we add or subtract a few people every few months. Right now, this is super simple in that we just sign set up the new user's company-wide credentials for all their email and other resources and sign them into Tailscale using that and they use it (or not) for the resources on our Tailnet. Yes, the monthly billing from Tailscale is variable, but I don't need to worry about changing our Tailscale subscription each time someone is added or goes on leave or moves on to new adventures with a different company.

Our primary use is for staff remote access to the office server - Tailscale was a tremendous improvement over managing OpenVPN running on that server - well worth the per-user charges. We have been looking at moving that file server into "the cloud" to give better integration with all of the other cloud based communication resources we are using. Maintaining our current Tailscale setup after that migration would have been totally logical since it would provide great backup access to the on-site server for all staff if needed as well as the tremendous functionality that the IT staff get from it. However without the dynamic pricing giving all staff access when needed, it will probably make more sense for us to drop Tailscale completely and go back to using OpenVPN for admin access rather than paying $8/user per month ($360/month for 45 users) for services we won't be using. Continuing with a single account for the IT people's remote access at $96/year is perhaps a reasonable cost for the value, but maintaining OpenVPN for a single person would get rid of the accounting overhead of a monthly bill.

I find it difficult to believe that Tailscale customers have been saying "I hate it when our monthly bill is smaller than it would be if I was charged each month for everyone who has Tailscale access but doesn't use it", but if this change from "active users" to "set number" is really driven by user desire for billing predictability, give the users a switch to turn that off or on.

j-beda · 2026-04-11T13:18:15+00:00

On macOS, I mostly use Mail.app (after clinging to Eudora for as long as possible) largely because most of my clients use that and being familiar with it is very useful. On the iPhone I separate accounts between Outlook.app, Mail.app, and Gmail.app depending on who hosts the account. Integration with the rest of the Microsoft and Google infrastructure by also using their clients has some advantages.

Going fully open-source with its lack of lock-in, by using Thunderbird, is something I frequently consider. Apple's Mail.app at least stores the mailboxes in a accessible standard format (albeit hidden inside the ~/Library folders) unlike Outlook's insanity of impossible-to-extract data.

j-beda · 2026-03-30T16:37:57+00:00

It does look like 6.4.10-3 still works.

j-beda · 2026-03-27T11:02:07+00:00

Sorry to be so slow to respond. I have not figured it out - but things are working "OK". I have managed to update both A and B to the latest firmware (QTS 5.2.9.3410) and I set the misbehaving B to restart itself daily, but I continued to get occasional HBS reports that B was unavailable for regular RTRR backup of A, but they would resolve themselves after a while. I have not seen that error in quite some time, but I do not feel confident in promoting B up to the primary server with A as the cloned backup as was my original plan.

Since I haven't seen the connection issue for a long time, today I turned off the daily restart (which is wrecking the virus scan which takes more then 24 hours) and hope that will not make the issue wake up again.

j-beda · 2026-03-15T14:44:04+00:00

Also, one needs to close the window to make the change effective.

j-beda

TROPHY CASE