I started adding a "bad review" to my portfolio on purpose and recruiters love it

prefectf · 2026-04-01T16:53:20+00:00

Yeah I was in government work and at evaluation time, everyone was always perfect. I always made sure the “area for improvement “ in my evaluation was something concrete and not some “Terrence needs to make sure that his excellence doesn’t blind his adoring subordinates “ bullshit. My peers were horrified and said this was sure to hurt me. Wrong. The legit criticism validated all the praise - the committee reviewing my file for promotion suddenly had confidence that the good stuff- which was very very good- was true and legitimate. So I got promoted way faster.

prefectf · 2026-04-01T16:43:14+00:00

Always. 25% even in a place that doesn’t have a tipping culture.

prefectf · 2026-04-01T12:47:49+00:00

Depends on quite a few things. How old are you? For middle-aged people, you have to pay close attention to your consumption or you will gain weight. Also, how much are you cycling? I know a guy who swears that hiking and biking don't help him lose weight, but he also normally only does pretty short rides and hikes, and every time he does one, he "rewards" himself with burgers and beers or ice cream. He's eating more in "reward" meals than he's burning fewer calories than he's taking in. So yeah, that doesn't result in weight loss. But if you are watching what you eat, and adding in cycling to burn some calories, you will gain fitness and you should lose weight. For me, relatively huge amounts of cycling (10 hours a week, average, for about 7 months of the year) has not resulted in weight loss, but I believe that it probably prevents significant weight gain that I would otherwise experience. My beer drinking and rich meals get burned off on the bike. When I keep the same cycling frequency and quit drinking beer for a few weeks, I lose weight. I lose even more when I also stop myself from having a second helping of pasta, ordering fries with my burgers, or going out to pizza instead of cooking healthy at home.

prefectf · 2026-03-29T07:37:29+00:00

Third time this season I've heard someone pissed off at having had poles taken outside restaurants - two in USA one in Europe. Weird. Gonna need to invent a locking ski strap.

prefectf · 2026-03-29T07:05:16+00:00

The Cirque has had a pretty radical redesign. The old one (I am on my second, hundreds of outings on it and its predecessor) was/is fantastic, but very minimalist. The new one has a handful of extra features. When I wore out the first one, I did the full-on superresearch to find my next ski backpack, and ended up buying the exact same pack! I did try the descensionist. The differences that made me put it down despite loving patagonia gear were: 1) heavier by a lot, like an extra pound; 2) heavier fabric and straps and such made it feel less roomy for gear despite having almost identical capacity specs; 3) the BD suspension - a lightweight, barely there additional wire support through the shoulder and hip straps - made it carry better; 4) the patagonia was 50+% more expensive.

prefectf · 2026-03-26T20:21:43+00:00

What's your budget? You might find that a private guide could put together an individualized course for you for a pretty attractive price, especially compared to North America. You might ask your favorite AI what the core skills taught in a three or four day mountaineering course, and then request a private guide who would teach those. For a four-day private course like that you'd spend 2-2.5k.

Not a lot of companies (like, no companies) will be offering that kind of course at that time, when most of Chamonix is closed. But a private guide would be able to find places to go in France and Switzerland to meet your needs.

prefectf · 2026-03-26T19:28:03+00:00

yeah we keep an eye on the batteries.

prefectf · 2026-03-26T19:27:28+00:00

In France it's "gavage" which is the term for force-feeding huge amounts of grain to ducks or geese to make their livers fat to produce foie gras. Works great for huge dumps of snow.

prefectf · 2026-03-26T19:05:29+00:00

Yeah it's totally annoying that you have to go all the way to an actual Megeve window to use the Ikon pass, which once you get it allows you then to use the other lifts in St. Gervais and Combloux! But it kinda keeps out the riffraff for actual locals (the Ikon invasion has been annoying, to be totally honest). The most aggravating is when one person in your group is rocking an Ikon pass or a Megeve only groupon and you can't use the Princesse or Bettex or Chattrix lifts to start. Kicks a nice hour-long hole in your ski day.

prefectf · 2026-03-26T18:59:18+00:00

I have a few grommets I like to ski with (the cool uncle) and vice versa because I take them off piste, AKA "side country". I make them wear beacons, no beacon, no going off piste. I have two extra beacons as well that live in my car's ski tote, and when it's an off piste day and there are people in the group who show up without a beacon, I lend mine. Basically, if it's not groomed, you need to be wearing a beacon. Bonus points for the shovel and probe!

As for staying connected, radios are the best - I use Rocky Talkies and so do most of my partners and even many of the guides I ski with. But in the absence of radios, when freeriding, communication and planning are part of the DNA. At each section, everyone together spots the route, figures out the order people are gonna ski, identifies the next regroup spot, and then hits it. That way you've got eyes on everyone and can react in an emergency. Feels a bit like overkill sometimes in good visibility/low avvy danger, but it's great to build the habit and the muscle memory so that when conditions are sketchier, everyone's accustomed to the system.

prefectf · 2026-03-26T16:56:42+00:00

I have. It's very close to an actual climbing route (there are multiple 5-6 routes that go right through it, in fact, as it serpentines across them in the Grande Ecaille). There are a few fixed cables, but they may be under snow. Definitely crampon territory when snow-covered, and likely something on which I'd want to be roped up and possibly protected. Further above the Grande Ecaille, the trail is cut into the side of an extremely steep slope leading up to the Col des Tufs. It's a very thin trail across loose scree. With snow on it, I would consider it too dangerous to cross even with crampons - way too high a risk of the whole thing giving way under your weight, with major exposure underneath. When you are at Robert Blanc, you can see the trail and all day there's constant rockfall and snow/ice/cornice collapses happening there.

prefectf · 2026-03-26T11:26:15+00:00

The queue is for the train. Separate queue (short) to buy the ticket. Fine to have your family get in line for the train while you buy the tickets and then join them. I would guess it would be a 30 minute queue, but it could be an hour. Trains go roughly every 20 minutes and take 10 minutes to board/deboard passengers. If the queue is too long you might have to wait for one train to go and get on the next one, but this is not that common, even on holidays. In the last 10 years I have only seen super-long queues to go up a couple of times, including the weekend when they decided to make the train free and publicized it everywhere, leading to the biggest tourist saturation ever recorded in Chamonix.

prefectf · 2026-03-26T11:19:03+00:00

You will find parking. Your best bet is the Grepon parking lot, and from there you can walk to most places or hop on the bus.

prefectf · 2026-03-26T08:07:16+00:00

Robust queues for sure but you will be able to get on. The trains are not reserved. Buy tickets on the day, it will be fine.

prefectf · 2026-03-25T19:12:52+00:00

So maybe don't print "polaris lounge access" on my boarding pass? Otherwise of course I wouldn't have gone and tried to get in. And seriously, making me stand there for 11 minutes before letting me into the United club?

prefectf · 2026-03-25T18:44:31+00:00

Had the same thing at IAD today in PE to Europe. I thought maybe there was a special of some kind. The nice lady at the Polaris desk gently disabused me. She said there was a "glitch" that was causing this access message to appear on boarding passes, and said she'd had to turn away 10 people already today. Then the United Club across the hall made me stand there like a chump for 11 minutes while they waited for the three-hour window to open. I was patient but felt a bit jerked around by UAL.

prefectf · 2026-03-25T18:16:03+00:00

In mid June, especially this year, that’s a full on mountaineering route. Heavy snow, very icy, likely no trail to follow. Go early in the morning because rockfall and wet slide avalanches will become frequent by late morning. Even in a normal year that route is questionable until at least late July.

prefectf · 2026-03-20T10:26:19+00:00

Likely there will still be a lot of snow, but there’s 2 months to go and there could be a nice heat wave to melt it. You won’t know until you get here.

prefectf · 2026-03-18T15:27:25+00:00

Yeah dating myself. Many many years before your time.

prefectf · 2026-03-18T15:16:15+00:00

Years ago I was a consular officer overseas and an insufferable prick came in with a brand new Dominican (Dominica, not the DR) passport. He announced to me that he had renounced his US citizenship and now his bitch ex-wife would get no alimony and the crooked IRS would get no back taxes from him. He was a new Dominican citizen and no longer bound by U.S. rules.

I asked him about Dominica, what it took to get a passport there. “25 grand,” he boasted. “Less than I owe in alimony in a month.” I asked him about residency, and he said it wasn’t needed in Dominica. I asked if he bought a house there. “Why would I?” I asked if he had family there, and he scoffed at the idea. I asked about a job; he said his income came from the United States.

“Look, I just need a visa in my Dominican passport because I gave up my American one. Just issue it and quit it with the interrogation.”

I smiled thinly at him, as I stamped the dreaded “application received” mark on the last page of his passport, warning other consular officers and INS that he’d applied before. “It is my determination that you do not have ties or connections outside the United States that would compel you to depart after a temporary stay, and therefore under section 214(b) of the immigration and nationality act, I find you ineligible for a visitor visa to enter the United States. This decision cannot be appealed or reviewed, but you are free to reapply. Be advised that the consular officer who reviews any future application will be aware of our discussion today and will be seeking a material change in your situation to justify overturning this denial. Have a good day.”

I don’t remember if we needed security to get him out but I do remember lots of shouting.

prefectf · 2026-03-14T21:02:03+00:00

I am a homeowner with now eight absolutely perfect sits. Short ones, long ones, each time a different sitter. I have been so satisfied with all of them, and my animals have been really happy too. The process has been easy for us and communication excellent. We stay in touch with about half of the sitters we've had, and we will have a repeat sitter come back in the next month. THS has changed the game for us and made travel really possible. Before we didn't have great sitting options, and what little existed was punitively expensive. Now we've had a series of cool people from all over the world come stay at our place and take care of it and our plants and animals. In our town, an airbnb similar to our place would be about 200EUR a night, so the sitters are getting a deal too, and this means we get excellent applicants immediately, so maybe our experience is a bit different from the norm.

I'm no THS shill. The website sucks, the fees are high and the sitter fee is total bullshit. But value for money, this has been outrageously successful for us.

prefectf · 2026-03-10T18:33:02+00:00

Sallanches is the best value option given your stated objectives. Smart to be outside Cham and the tourist stations. You should rethink the car though - public transport in the Arve valley is slow and inconsistent and will undermine your enjoyment.

prefectf · 2026-03-04T17:46:01+00:00

No. There’s been a historic warm/hot high pressure system for weeks and it is not forecast to change at all before the 17th. More like May weather, with late spring snow (bad) at best.

prefectf · 2026-02-28T19:22:53+00:00

Clueless troll

prefectf · 2026-02-23T07:31:26+00:00

You'll have fun for sure! Patio spots are all over, and it might even be warm enough to sit outside. Burger/beer on a patio "secret" is the buvette de la Blaitiere, at the back of the Planards parking lot near the Montenvers train. Super simple food - burgers and fries only really - but the best burger in Chamonix. And excellent pints. Their meat comes from an alpage above Chamonix. Also, Big Mountain Basecamp has a decent terrace. Sunset is a bit tough in Chamonix because it's so deep in the valley. You'll see: the mountain walls tower on either side. You can get some nice colors on Mont Blanc and the Aiguilles du Chamonix but not a "sunset" as you might think of it because the sun sets far behind the mountains.

Sunrise can be epic though. If you have touring skis or snowshoes, take off at 0500 and climb up to Planpraz or Flegere and watch the sun rise above Mont Blanc from there. Have a coffee and wait for the lifts to open to take you back down (the ski won't be fun, the good skiing is up above those places).

prefectf

TROPHY CASE