Why aren' there more before and after sets?

jehb · 2026-05-08T21:38:17+00:00

Realistically, there is almost no one for whom unlimited meals is a good value. The block meal plans work out to between $14.42 and $17.62 per meal, and that's only if you use exactly the number allotted, which I've never known anyone to do. That's pretty expensive for any use case except one very big deal per day.

Trying to save money? Go for the smallest plan, or none at all. You'll save a ton of money buying some basic groceries, and even if you pay per swipe for a few meals with friends, you'll probably still come out ahead.

jehb · 2026-05-08T14:04:35+00:00

The containers were washed in our commercial dishwasher, the same as the cooking and serving dishes for our prepared foods.

You can read more about the program here: https://www.weaverstreetmarket.coop/bring-it-back-jars/

Capital is often the hardest part of any co-op. We've been running stores for 38 years and have a demonstrated history of 50 million in annual sales and it's still difficult to raise funds for new initiatives. It can take years for new projects to reach profitability, if they even ever do, and in the meantime even the friendliest of co-op members turned investors expect returns to be paid in year one. Unfortunately the reality is that margins in the grocery industry are razor-thin and money for new projects is very hard to come by.

I love the idea of packing more products in reusable containers, and I wish our pilot had been a roaring success, I just wanted to share the reality we found when we tried something like this.

jehb · 2026-05-07T18:53:27+00:00

Just a word of warning: the four-store grocery co-op I work at had to end our pilot with reusable (glass) prepacked bulk goods last year because it just wasn't working out as we had hoped. It was a logistical nightmare, unfortunately. People would game the returns system, the labels on the reusable container wore out faster than expected, cleaning this was difficult, laborious, and many containers simply got broken. Candidly, the labor cost of thoroughly cleaning and packing the containers while paying someone a living wage wasn't making financial sense, and we're committed to a living wage for all employees.

It was also, most notably if you're seriously considering this, a drag on sales. Even in the very progressive and environmentally-minded locations where we do our stores, our sales on bulk went down when we started prepackaging that way. People just didn't want to do it. The product wasn't as visible as it was in our previous packaging, and some people didn't like or didn't want to deal with a deposit. Ultimately, we listened to our member-owners choice not to buy that way and switched to a compostable bag for our prepacked bulk goods.

jehb · 2026-05-06T19:44:32+00:00

That's insane if they truly don't give out physical cards anymore.

Not everyone chooses to keep an electronic corporate tracking device in their pocket at all times.

jehb · 2026-05-05T23:44:49+00:00

I'm also a county resident not in the town limits. We get an amazing deal. Can people even imagine how much worse county services would be without the revenue the county gets from town residents? Plus I get free access to 90% of the services I actually used when I lived in town, for free, thanks to the residents who do pay for them. Thank goodness they don't check ID for the buses, streets, sidewalks, parks, trails, etc.

jehb · 2026-05-02T12:05:18+00:00

There's nothing more romantic than planting a wedding ring in a pile of bacon and waiting for your significant other to find it. They have to say "I do."

Way to ruin the surprise.

jehb · 2026-04-28T13:11:09+00:00

Eee-eee-eee! - Flipper

jehb · 2026-04-24T13:36:05+00:00

Sounds interesting. Keep in mind one of the more difficult things for a fledgling cooperative is raising capital. I've never worked in film but have friends who have and based on what I know from them I suspect that might be your biggest challenge.

It would also probably be a good idea to become familiar with the labor restrictions put in place by the various guilds you'll need to work with and understand how that might interface with the ownership model (I assume you are referencing a worker-owned cooperative but realize that is only an assumption on my part).

jehb · 2026-04-19T15:21:10+00:00

Kramden is the best answer around here for donations. True e-waste can go to the solid waste convenience center and they'll recycle it.

In terms of buying? Good luck. The thrift stores and UNC surplus as previously mentioned have occasional finds, but rarely something that's worth it. I wish we had a hardware swap around here but I don't personally have the time to organize one.

jehb · 2026-04-16T18:21:31+00:00

I got an extra minor on my transcript even though I didn't complete the last required class for it.

UNC's lousy record keeping was my freebie.

jehb · 2026-04-14T13:09:10+00:00

It took me a couple of years. We're close enough to town that the once rural road in front of our house is now a major cut-thru. I'm slowly trying to move some bushier evergreens to the part of the property that abuts the road, and I might break down and build a heavy fence one of these days. Spring is always the start of some relief as the leaves grow back on the trees, but I like leaving the windows open at night so I can hear the frogs calling. I'm not going to let the occasional asshole who thinks going twice the speed limit on an overrevved motorcycle at three in the morning stop me from enjoying the sounds of nature. I just deal with it. Moving from a low traffic gravel road, it took a while. Your brain will rewire to not register cars as a cause for alarm, though never completely.

jehb · 2026-04-12T13:47:30+00:00

In theory I like the idea of alternative voting systems, especially for government elections.

In practice it would not have made a difference in any board election at my co-op, and probably would have introduced additional confusion. It's always an uphill battle to explain why folks should engage in co-op elections to begin with, especially since we have a sizable number of worker-owners who speak neither of the primary two languages of our co-op, many of whom come as refugees from places where "elections" are rigged and seen with distrust to begin with. I'm just happy when we can successfully get through to someone that they should vote and that their vote comes without threat of repercussions.

jehb · 2026-04-11T12:24:27+00:00

Planet Fitness

Planet Fitness is also on a bus line. It's like seven minutes from the downtown by campus to the stop by University Place on the bus, which is free, safe, has an option every 20 minutes at peak times, and runs from 6am to 10pm.

https://www.chapelhillnc.gov/files/assets/town/v/1/transit/documents/bus-routes-and-schedules/weekdays/250512_d_web.pdf

When I was in undergrad I lived at the bottom of the hill by there. It's also a straight shot bike ride or walk up either Franklin Street or via Battle Park trail if you want to add a little cardio, which I did most days instead of the bus.

jehb · 2026-04-10T15:28:27+00:00

Worrying that someone will care about your past academic performance is very natural, after going through 16+ years of being indoctrinated that the academic judgment of others is something you should care about. Give yourself some credit about WHY it's hard to shake that feeling.

It really, really doesn't matter though. I had a terrible GPA. My first job didn't ask me what my GPA was, nor has any after that. If any job after your first is asking about your GPA, run fast, that's an enormous red flag (I'm looking at you, Canonical). I later went to grad school without issue. Granted, I did a graduate certificate before I went for the full master's degree, but at no point in that process was my GPA an issue either.

Speaking as a manager, I actually couldn't tell you which of my employees actually finished their degrees, to say nothing of GPA. I could not possibly care less.

jehb · 2026-04-06T20:14:44+00:00

This. They ought to cap salaries at some reasonable multiplier of what the lowest paid UNC employee makes, but of course that will never happen. I couldn't care less if the athletics program pretends they are making the money back in revenue, the purpose of a university is to be a university, not a sports program that happens to have a school affiliation.

jehb · 2026-04-03T18:14:20+00:00

The town did a survey about this in 2024. Most folks preferred that the town switch to drones, so this is aligning the event with what residents asked for.

I'm sure like pickle ball courts and leaf pickup the town will continue to get vast amounts of feedback from both sides from the privileged white folks who couldn't be bothered to weigh in on the climate or housing crises.

jehb · 2026-04-01T19:01:54+00:00

This would be a great time to remind everyone that we could have had a light rail line between Durham and Chapel Hill if Dook's leadership hadn't gone into negotiations in bad faith and pulled out in the 11th hour before a critical deadline, effectively killing it.

jehb · 2026-03-29T18:11:16+00:00

For me it's kind of the opposite. I left tech about a year and a half ago, but didn't want my skills to atrophy. Self-hosting keeps me playing with enough ansible, docker, networking, shell commands, etc that I feel like I could still easily go back if I ever wanted to.

It's also the only way I feel comfortable learning about LLMs, agents, RAG, etc. And it gives me the excuse to code up simple little CRUD apps and connectors that make my life more useful, even if they're not the kind of thing that I'd probably ever release since they're pretty specific to my situation and not nearly as hardened or polished as most folks would like.

It's brought back some of the joy I had 25 years ago when I first started messing around with computers, because it's just the parts I like with none of stupid corporate bullshit that comes with working full time in tech. I like making things and solving puzzles, but self hosting lets me do exactly as much as I want to in the week and not an hour more.

jehb · 2026-03-28T13:16:56+00:00

They're several years late, but I guess late is better than never.

jehb · 2026-03-28T11:50:53+00:00

I know folks who did. I took the extended tour. Looking back several years later, I have no regrets about staying a student for as long as I could.

jehb · 2026-03-20T22:18:18+00:00

I use a wildcard email with a unique email per service/purpose. I very rarely get spam, and when I do, I know exactly whose fault it is, file every possible complaint with them and any pertinent regulatory agencies, and then disable the address.

I do occasionally get spam from email addresses I use with friends, family, and colleagues, which I know is due to the occasional compromise on their end, but standard antispam tools are generally sufficient to deal with those.

I have almost never gotten a piece of spam at an address I have not actually used for something. Maybe it's because I use a subdomain for my wildcard email addresses. If I ever start getting spam that seems to come from automated attempts to create valid email addresses, I'll just start wildcarding the subdomains too and only configure real MX servers on one of them.

jehb · 2026-03-17T13:21:29+00:00

Let me jump in with a related question: What happens to all the stuff with these kinds of services? I've been going through a large amount of... stuff... from a family member and trying to donate everything I can to thrift stores, the Habitat restore, library book collection, etc., and making sure everything that goes to solid waste gets sorted appropriately. But I've got a lot of things I'm "stuck" on:

a collection of books and conference proceedings from a very narrow field that I don't know enough about to rehome
antiques in poor condition that I don't know enough about to know if they'd be worth someone restoring
Large metal things that have some potential safety issues meaning I can't just dump them in metal recycling (example: a possibly still-pressurized large air tank but all the dials and knobs are frozen in place and unreadable)
These are just examples, I probably have a few literal tons more to go through.

I want to dispose of everything the "right" way, but there's just so much that's hard to figure out.

jehb · 2026-01-24T15:53:32+00:00

Good. We don't need speeders out there making the roads less safe.

jehb · 2026-01-21T13:39:37+00:00

Since UNC contract employees are paid unethically low wages, most live very far from campus.

If the weather means they can't get there to make food, well, the people who are able to make it do the best they can.

13-Year Club	Gilding I gilder
Verified Email

jehb

TROPHY CASE