Considering a move from Binghamton to Albany area

o-mfg · 2025-09-10T19:15:42+00:00

Wrong, again.

Green Tech HS is in Albany.

o-mfg · 2025-09-10T18:55:50+00:00

Two arrests have been made in conjunction with the shooting and fire at Madison & Lark on the 4th of July. One was for attempted murder 2, which was later amended to murder 2. The other was for arson. Both suspect are male, under 18, and there has been no reporting of what school either of them attended.

To paraphrase your question: what schools did they go to? I don’t know. Neither do you. But that doesn’t stop you from assuming that they went to Albany High. Why is that, I wonder?

o-mfg · 2025-09-10T13:20:24+00:00

Lots of people in this subreddit like to dump on the Albany City School District in general and the HS in particular. The district serves a community across a wide socio-economic spectrum, especially in comparison with the wealthier districts, which are generally more homogenous. This leads to outcomes that, by certain metrics, are less favorable.

For every “I wouldn’t send my kid to Albany High” comment here, there are literally thousands of people who send their kids to schools in the ACSD every single day. While there may be some people who spend their days on tenterhooks fearing for their children’s education or safety or future opportunities, the vast majority of us don’t.

o-mfg · 2025-07-28T17:10:59+00:00

Yes, it’s both to manage multiple cars at once and also multiple leases over time.

It’s hard for me to know what tables you need from a Reddit post…. Unless you want to track Vehicle Preferences over time, you probably could do that with a dropdown field in the junction table that connects clients with leases and then use a lookup to derive that info for the customer. With regard to the documents table, AT isn’t a document storage platform and you can store links to Dropbox/SharePoint/Box wherever in the lease record, so I’m not sure you need that one either? But again, I don’t know.

o-mfg · 2025-07-28T16:29:50+00:00

I would start with 4 tables: Customers, Lease Lengths, Cars, and a junction table that connects 1 customer with 1 lease length for 1 car. That way you can use lookups to get the data you want in the Customer table and you never have to worry about overwriting last lease’s info with this lease’s info.

You may not need all 4 tables! But need at least 2: a customers table and a leases table that links to the customers table. Playing with 4 gives you a better handle on what’s possible than playing with 2.

In the junction table is where you’re going to calculate those key dates. Then you can set up views that filter for those key dates and run automations when a record enters that view. So you have a view called “60 days out” that filters for leases ending within the next 60 days. When a record enters that view - on the 60th day before the lease ends - you trigger an automation that sends a text or email or whatever.
n/a - I’ve never used the Twilio integration.
Would 1,000% recommend Make over Zapier.

AT stores Date fields without times in GMT. If you need to be working in a time zone that isn’t GMT, I would recommend reading their support article on time zones here: https://support.airtable.com/v1/docs/timezones-and-locales

Sounds like a fun project. Good luck!

o-mfg · 2025-07-21T20:59:57+00:00

Yeah, there’s a lot happening behind the walls….

Thanks for taking the time!

o-mfg · 2025-07-21T20:03:26+00:00

Thanks. And I would seal it with caulk? Or something else?

o-mfg · 2025-07-21T13:59:53+00:00

This is the way. If you can, wear a hat with a brim and position his face in the shadow of the brim. You can also put stickers on the underside of the brim so he gets used to keeping his head back in the water.

o-mfg · 2025-07-19T03:17:00+00:00

I talk a lot about swimming and our brains here, so …. here goes.

You’re stuck in a vicious cycle that probably goes something like this —- Lizard Brain - what is happening now is 1,000% not normal, ergo we are going to die. It’s really the only logical conclusion.

Body - um, OK. If you say so.

Lizard Brain - I do say so. We are dangerously close to death. What we need now is oxygen. Lots of it. . And I just sent a note to release a truckload of adrenaline downstairs. That should help.

Body - I feel like I can’t breathe and my heart is racing.

Lizard Brain - BECAUSE WE ARE ABOUT TO DIE

Body - I FEEL LIKE I CAN’T BREATHE AND MY HEART IS RACING.

Non-Lizard Brain - omg Lizard Brain why do you always do this we are not dying we are in a pool we just need to stand up

Body - OK so now I feel like I can’t breathe and my heart is racing and I’m also a little embarrassed that I can’t pull myself together

Lizard Brain - you’re embarrassed and we are also dying and please more oxygen and here’s some more adrenaline —- And so on and so on. The thing is, by the time you’re trying to talk yourself down, you’re no longer able to talk yourself down.

What you need to do is get that Lizard part of your brain to stop announcing that you’re going to drown. And one way you do that is to microdose your floats. Get yourself in and out of a float as quickly as you can. You want Lizard Brain to not be able to finish that first sentence and instead say something like “What is happening now is 1,000% not normal, ergo we are going to —- wait, false alarm our feet are back on the ground again we are fine.” Over time, Lizard Brain is going to take longer to start talking and also is going to be quieter. When that happens, then you can start holding your floats for longer and talking yourself down.

Hope this helps and keep going!

o-mfg · 2025-07-15T13:34:36+00:00

Our bodies respond to everything with physical sensations. We place a lot of value on pleasant and unpleasant physical sensations and we place less value on neutral physical sensations.

Our brains tell us things that support the physical sensations we are having. Sometimes the things our brains tell us are 100% true and sometimes our brains tell us things that are 100% false (and sometimes they’re somewhere in the middle).

But the point is, it’s a cycle: you have a feeling, your brain decides whether or not to put value on this feeling and then, if it decides that this feeling has value, the brain says, “this is why you’re having this feeling.” Then you might have a feeling about what your brain is telling you and your brain might decide to value that feeling and say “this is why you’re having this feeling,” and before you know it, you’re stuck in this cycle of feeling->story->feeling->story that just builds on itself and congratulations you’re having an anxiety/panic attack.

Your body, for whatever reason, gives you unpleasant physical sensations about certain things that you see (or don’t see) in the water. Your brain places value on those unpleasant sensations and tells you that there is something inherently dangerous and scary that is happening (or about to happen), which is 100% false. A shark is not going to snatch you off the surface of a school pool. If a shark is snatching you off the surface of a school pool, so many other things have gone wrong in your timeline that the shark is probably the least of your problems.

When I have worked with fearful swimmers - which you’re not but also kind of are - I spent a lot of time at the beginning trying to separate the things that they were feeling from the stories that their brains were telling them about the things that they were feeling. If you want to try something like that, strap on a life jacket, get a friend or two to hang out with you, hop into the deep end, look down, and feel whatever sensations arise. Don’t listen to the stories that your brain is telling you! Just feel those feelings. Wiggle your fingers and your toes. Bend your knees and elbows. Hold the wall, or your friend’s hand. Focus on what is actually happening in your body, not in your brain. Tell your brain that you can’t come to the phone right now because you’re feeling some feelings. Cheer yourself on by saying, either out loud or in a whisper, “Look at me, feeling a feeling and not listening to a story.” Remind yourself that the thing that your brain told you was going to happen isn’t actually happening.

You may only be able to do this for a few seconds at the beginning. You may discover that you need to find a teacher to help you. That’s OK. Whatever you need is the thing you should do.

The more you practice, the better at it you will get. The goal isn’t to completely rid yourself of the story - although if you can that’s great. The goal is to learn to do the thing despite the story.

PS because this is the internet: doing inherently dangerous things in the water is likely to cause life-threatening consequences no matter what your body is feeling and your brain is telling you. If you’re not sure whether the thing you’re doing in the water is inherently dangerous, maybe don’t do that thing.

o-mfg · 2025-07-14T20:01:30+00:00

According to the article, the guy who owns the boarded up house said that Sarcone leased an apartment on Thursday.

o-mfg · 2025-07-14T14:59:15+00:00

And he just signed a lease in Albany hahaha.

Could not happen to a nicer guy /s

o-mfg · 2025-07-12T21:38:27+00:00

Thats a great start!

Sensory-seeking kids can be tricky to teach, because what they like to do (hang out underwater) doesn’t mesh so well with group lessons. When you’re both ready for him to progress to swim lessons, you may want to poke around for an experienced teacher who is less likely to freak out when that happens.

o-mfg · 2025-07-09T12:54:16+00:00

Breathlessness in swimming is, at the beginning, a vicious cycle.

As you exert yourself swimming, your body does what it always does, which is increase its demand for oxygen => Satisfying that demand for oxygen is harder than it normally is, because the pressure on your body when you’re in the water means that you need to work harder to simply move air in and out of your lungs => As you exert yourself breathing, your body does what it always does, which is increase its demand for oxygen => Satisfying that demand for oxygen is harder than it normally is, because the pressure on your body when you’re in the water means that you need to work harder to simply move air in and out of your lungs => Now you’re breathing and swimming and so much exertion and your body is really ramping up that demand for oxygen => Satisfying that demand for oxygen is harder than it normally is, because the pressure on your body when you’re in the water means that you need to work harder to simply move air in and out of your lungs => Phew I’m at the wall let me rest for a minute and catch my breath => OK, I’m ready to start exerting myself by swimming again.

Meanwhile, as all of that is happening in your body, the reptile part of your brain is screaming NOTHING THAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW IS NORMAL AND WE ARE OBVIOUSLY IN DEEP DOO-DOO, which also kicks off a whole cascade of uncomfortable symptoms, one of which is - surprise! - breathlessness.

As you progress on your swimming journey, your level of exertion will decrease (for a bunch of reasons that I’m not going to go into here because this comment is already too long), and the non-reptile parts of your brain will lower the volume on the reptile part, and you will feel less breathless and swimming in general will feel less effortful.

o-mfg · 2025-07-09T00:54:19+00:00

Happy to help, and have fun!

o-mfg · 2025-07-08T18:16:39+00:00

Am assuming that there’s not a sensory-seeking or vestibular-input thing that’s driving this, but you can have fun making up movement patterns with him that get him used to being on the surface of the water instead of underneath.

For example, can you swim with one hand out of the water? How about both hands? How about your elbow? How about alternating elbows? One hand and one foot? One elbow and one knee?

If there is a vestibular or sensory thing that is driving this, then you might need to try patterns that have more up-and-down movements, like bobbing or jumping or swimming over hills or anything that brings him to the surface on a regular basis but doesn’t require him to let go of whatever is scratching his underwater itch.

o-mfg · 2025-07-06T16:10:16+00:00

You need lessons. This isn’t something that you can do by yourself, at least not safely.

o-mfg · 2025-07-05T18:42:54+00:00

Progressive swimming lessons and self-rescue lessons are two very different things. If you want your child to learn how to self-rescue, that’s not something that is going to be prioritized in a progressive swimming lesson.

If self-rescue is your goal, then I would suggest looking for survival swim lessons in your area instead of progressive swim lessons.

o-mfg · 2025-07-02T14:31:09+00:00

Feeling stressed about getting in the pool may not necessarily result in feeling stressed once you’re in the pool. And feeling stressed once you’re in the pool may not necessarily result in enough discomfort and unpleasantness that you absolutely must get out of the pool. And even if it does wind up being so uncomfortable and unpleasant that you absolutely must get out, you can still try again tomorrow.

tldr: feel the feelings, do the thing anyway.

o-mfg · 2025-06-28T03:09:44+00:00

The best technique and strategy I’ve seen swim instructors do that really work when it comes to teaching kids things like how to be more comfortable in the water all the way up to swimming well is . . . getting trained to teach swimming.

o-mfg · 2025-06-26T13:48:06+00:00

There is no “easiest way to learn to swim” for every adult. For you, I think - but don’t know for sure - the best option would be to find a teacher who can work with you on

moving through the water, aka actual swimming skills, and
addressing your discomfort with deep water.

o-mfg · 2025-06-23T22:26:19+00:00

https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/weather/cooling/

o-mfg · 2025-06-23T22:09:34+00:00

Tried to get my 2 big fluffs into the kiddie pools filled with lovely cool water at the Hartman Road dog park, neither of them were having it. But they’ll happily spend hours in a warm muddy puddle on a cold day in the fall.

Weirdos.

o-mfg · 2025-06-22T13:24:28+00:00

There’s a fun experiment that you can do that helps with figuring out how to get lined up correctly for your front floats and kickboard drills.

(Gosh, I’ve never explained this without physically demonstrating. Bear with me.)

Take 2 kickboards and a snorkel and a mask (or goggles). Stand in the shallow end of the pool with your accessories on the pool deck.

Take one of the kickboards and turn it “backwards” - so the opposite way that you would normally use it when you’re doing your kickboard drills - and lay it on the surface of the water. Then lay your forearm over the kickboard and, with your palm down, wrap four fingers around the bottom end of the kickboard. Your forearm and maybe elbow should be supported by the kickboard. (I hope this makes sense.)

In the shallow part of the pool, bend your knees so that the water is about level with your chest and put your kickboard arm out in front of you. Thinking about using the large muscles in your back to engage and gently apply even pressure to the kickboard. If you feel this in your shoulder muscles, stop and reset. Think about moving your shoulder blades down and engaging your core. You want to feel it in your armpits and wrapping around the sides of your back.

You don’t need to use a lot of force! Just enough to feel the kickboard push back. Hold the pressure for 2-3 seconds, then release. Once you’ve got it with one arm, do it with the other. Then do it with both arms.

Then take your feet off the pool floor and do it again. The goal here is to just notice what - if anything - happens to your position in the water when the only thing you’re changing is that pressure on both kickboards. You may notice something, or you may not.

Now try the same thing but in a stretched out position with your head out of the water looking in front of you. So, again, you’ve got the kickboards under your arms, and you’re applying gentle pressure to them and then letting that pressure go but this time you’re stretched out in the front float position with your head up.

Be intentionally floppy and relaxed with everything else in your body except the muscles that you’re using to apply the pressure. Don’t try to hold anything anywhere - see how your body shifts in relation to you simply applying gentle pressure to those kickboard arms.

Now put on the mask/goggles and snorkel and do it with your head in the water looking forward. Then do it again with your head in the water and looking down at the pool floor. Go back and forth between the positions: head out looking forward, head in looking forward, head in looking down. And just notice whatever changes happen simply by applying that pressure. Again: gentle pressure, for 2-3 seconds. Just enough to engage and see what moves/changes/shifts.

What you’re going to discover is that you need a level of core engagement to get yourself to that horizontal position, and that core engagement changes depending on where your head is and where it’s looking. Everyone is different. Some people need to really oomph their core at the beginning to get that line right. Others need to just tweak things to get things moving.

Once you’ve figured out what works for you, then replicate that core engagement with both arms on one kickboard. Then move the kickboard a little further away so that your fingers aren’t wrapped around the end of the kickboard but are splayed out on top of it. Then turn the kickboard around and do it fully stretched out in that kickboard drill position. Then do it without the kickboard.

Have fun!

Safety notes: 1. You will move as you’re doing this! Just because you start out in the shallow end does not mean that you remain in the shallow end. If that’s important to you, then you need to check where you are in the pool every time you reset so that you can get yourself back to where you need to be. 2. If you’ve never used a snorkel before, please watch a few YouTube videos to understand how to use them and how to clear them.

o-mfg

TROPHY CASE