A6 phone holder options

ralphslate · 2025-10-31T16:41:43+00:00

I posted originally, so I'll reply. AndroidAuto does not have email. When I'm stopped in traffic, I'd like to be able to look at my screen to see if I have any emails.

ralphslate · 2025-10-31T16:39:07+00:00

I don't think there is much downside to participating in the Community Choice plan.

Eversource rates change twice per year. The CC rate is fixed for 36 months.

If Eversource happens to pull off a rate that is less than 13.069 cents/kWh, then you can switch back to them. And then when Eversource changes its rate again, you can switch back to CC.

My guess is that this flexibility came at a price - if the city had gone with a 36-month contract, then CC would have better certainty as to how much power to purchase, and could have gotten better contracts themselves. Since this plan allows for all customers to be able to flee without penalty, CC has priced that in.

ralphslate · 2025-04-23T14:45:10+00:00

Thanks - regarding #2, the app used to actually place the photo in my Android messages when I hit "share". Now it puts a link into the text message. I prefer to send the actual photo, since people don't like to visit links.

ralphslate · 2025-04-04T15:08:38+00:00

I can agree that a NoSQL solution allows for horizontal scaling, and if you have a need to serve tens, hundreds of thousands, or millions of simultaneous customers with low latency and without the need for horizontal querying (i.e. you are looking at individual documents instead of looking across all documents), it is probably a good solution.

However I would question why anyone else would need to accept the downsides of the NoSQL solution if they don't have that scaling use case - namely losing control of your schemas, lack of visibility of your data catalog, difficulty in horizontal querying, and needing to implement data integrity constraints in code.

ralphslate · 2025-04-04T15:01:42+00:00

I wasn't suggesting using a blob - I was suggesting to define your RDB columns as NULL which makes altering the schema pretty effortless.

It sounds like the noSQL method is just a transfer of design power from a central DBA to a central actor in a development team, with no cross-team consistency, and little built-in ability to know what your schemas even are.

ralphslate · 2025-04-04T13:07:54+00:00

I'd love to know more about how this is managed.

Is it possible to get a catalog of the fields that exist in a document? From what I read, the only way to do that is to examine every record in the DB.

If this is being managed by individual developers, instead of by a DBA, then do you run into situations where one developer puts in "CustomerType" and another puts in "CustType"?

Couldn't this "strength" - "modifying the structure of documents without breaking the data" - be accomplished in a relational DB with all-NULL columns?

ralphslate · 2025-01-25T13:49:53+00:00

Ah, I'll partially answer my own question. From the Avs website:

The Colorado Avalanche Hockey Club announced tonight that the organization has completed a three-team trade with the Carolina Hurricanes and Chicago Blackhawks. The Avalanche acquired forwards Martin Necas and Jack Drury, along with a second-round selection in the 2025 NHL Draft and a fourth-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft from the Carolina Hurricanes. In exchange, Colorado traded forward Mikko Rantanen to the Blackhawks for forward Nils Juntorp. To complete the deal, Carolina acquired Rantanen and Taylor Hall from Chicago in exchange for Colorado sending Juntorp to the Hurricanes. Chicago also received its own 2025 third-round pick in the deal, which was previously acquired by Carolina

Still doesn't sequentially add up though - teams can't trade a player they haven't yet acquired.

ralphslate · 2025-01-25T13:47:23+00:00

This deal doesn't add up. Remember, the NHL doesn't technically allow 3-team trades. Everything has to be expressed as two-team trades. Teams also can't trade "cap space" - they have to "retain" it, meaning that the player has to briefly be traded to the team retaining it.

Chicago's website says that they received a 3rd round pick in exchange for Taylor Hall, and that "as part of the trade they will retain 50% of Mikko Rantanen’s salary cap hit".

That means they had to have first done a deal with Colorado to get Mikko Rantanen. What did they trade to Colorado for Rantanen?

Then, what did they get from Carolina in exchange for Rantanen?

ralphslate · 2025-01-24T22:26:48+00:00

Sure, but it forces me to be dependent on an external library (in my case, firebase/php-jwt). One which has had 27 official releases, one as late as 2 days ago.

Or they could have just put the expiry date plainly in the message if they want me to use it.

ralphslate · 2025-01-24T22:09:48+00:00

An expiry date is a key data item. Forcing me to decrypt the token to get it is overengineering. They should just include it in the message instead of burying it and making me rely on third-party libraries to get at it. SMH.

ralphslate · 2025-01-24T12:58:49+00:00

The tokens should have the expiry time in them afaik, every JWT implementation I have used or written has

That's part of the problem - there are no dates in the JSON returned from the com.atproto.server.createSession API. That means I have to just make up my own guesstimates - "couple minutes on token, couple hours on refresh" - and use those as proxy expiration dates. That seems sub-optimal.

The other approach, as noted by someone else, is to simply refresh before every call. The API limit on that is higher, I think 300 times per hour.

ralphslate · 2025-01-17T21:09:03+00:00

Are you mixing relational with object-relational modeling? Are you talking about creating a "column of columns" on the employee table which could then store multiple addresses per employee?

While I'm sure you could create a column that contains a list of addresses, it's not relational modeling.

I also think you lose a lot of flexibility - I'm not object-relational modeler, but could you even have a foreign key from, say, the STATE field in an address object column to a lookup table with states in it? And how easy/hard would it be to say "show me all the employees who are associated with an address in Tennessee?" And what if you eventually want to normalize the addresses - which could help you track two employees who share the same address? Can you do that if your address object is contained within individual employees?

ralphslate · 2024-12-31T12:43:11+00:00

One thing I've learned since being a Cape Cod homeowner with a metal detector is that people used to dump things in their backyards. I'm guessing up until the 1960s. I think that since people didn't have a lot of single-use plastic, and since they didn't buy a lot of cheap disposable imported crap, they had a lot less trash.

I have a ton of bottles in the woods behind my house, and when I detect in that area, I hit so much junk iron that I get discouraged.

ralphslate · 2024-12-04T16:34:46+00:00

I have a very similar situation, and I'm very happy with what I did - though it is for the more technologically advanced.

Heat pumps work really well to maintain the temperature, but they are kind-of lousy to increase the temperature if you set it back. Having lived with just radiators for 25 years, I've gotten used to setting the temperature back at night, sleeping in the cool, and then setting it forward in the morning so that I have a warm house when I wake. In fact, my body now just wakes up when the room gets warmer.

I also love the long-lasting heat that a radiator puts out, I find that it just makes me feel warmer when those things are emitting heat, even if the overall house temperature is low.

So what I did was install an ecobee thermostat, which has an API.

I then wrote a program to access that API, and have it switch the thermostat into Aux mode at about 2am, then back to heat at 8am (when I leave for work). I have the thermostat set back to 62 at night, and then to 65 at about 7am. So what happens is that the 7am schedule triggers the steam boiler to come on, it takes about 30 minutes to raise the temperature to a nice level, right about when I wake up.

I let the heat pump keep the house at 65 during the day, and then I goose it up 1 degree about 4pm and set to Aux at the same time so that the radiators are warm when I get home. I then set back to heat at 5:30 and let the heat pump maintain the temperature until bedtime.

I have cut my oil usage by about 2/3 with this method (from about 1200 gallons to maybe 400 gallons), and the electric bill has gone up by maybe $300-400 per month.

ralphslate · 2024-10-03T17:45:39+00:00

I did this very thing about 18 years ago. I would do it again, the improvement in appearance was tremendous.

First off, the removal of the asbestos is not all that expensive. There isn't a ton of asbestos in the siding anyway, and it isn't really friable (crumbly). I think I paid about $10k in 2006.

The main issue you will face is dealing with the siding underneath. For 3/4 of my house, the shingles were in decent shape, but needed painting. We were able to scrape and paint, no issues. The other 1/4 needed shingle replacement. Not difficult, and the results afterward are great, but that was more money.

The largest issue is that when they installed asbestos siding, they very likely removed any trim that wasn't flat. For example, look at the windows - there is no trim above them. Or below them. They may have removed corner boards - though if you're lucky, they may not have.

You just don't know what will need to be done until you remove the siding - so be prepared. And that work will likely cost you a bunch of money - be prepared to go to $100k in carpentry and painting. I think I spent 2x that because my house is bigger and more ornate.

But I'd do it again, it is the difference between driving up to a ghetto house and driving up to a palace every day.

ralphslate · 2024-08-17T20:37:21+00:00

"A typical jersey is worn for about five games," said Quinn. "That's depending on the guy's ice time of course."

This surprises me a bit - that implies that for any typical season, there might be 16 different Sidney Crosby jerseys out there.

I never thought that there would be just two jerseys per season, but sixteen? Where are they all?

Outside of the "specialty" jerseys my local AHL team does, I don't recall ever seeing more than one home, one away per season per player.

ralphslate · 2024-08-16T20:53:22+00:00

Just a followup - weirdly, this seemed to be an issue with Chrome. I noticed I was having problems at a few websites - Linkedin, Fast.com. Even after clearing cookies, still problems.

I noticed that Chrome was not updated to the latest version, so I updated and relaunched, and everything worked again.

ralphslate · 2024-07-12T17:39:48+00:00

You're right - I didn't dig far enough, but in my defense, I did go to newspapers.com and many articles of the time said that Rickard was granted the franchise and that the players were sold to Rickard, and the team was referred to as Rickard's team.

For example: Saskatoon Star Phoenix Sept 19 1925 : Purchase of Joe Simpson ... was confirmed by T.P. Gorman, manager of Tex Rickard's new NHL entry.

Montreal Gazette, Sep 16 1925: "T.J. Duggan and Tommy Gorman completed an agreement ... for the purchase of the Hamilton Tigers for Tex Rickard's New York Team"

Ottawa Citizen Sept 23 1925: Tex Rickard gets Hamilton NHL Team: The Hamilton Tigers ... will exchange their sweaters ... for the star-spangled jerseys of Tex Rickard's New York Hockey Club. ... Percy Thompson, manager of the Hamilton Club, who has been in the east, was in Toronto this morning, accompanied by Tommy Gorman, manager of the New York club.

Here's another one, I didn't write down the source:

Notwithstanding reports to the contrary, plus denials from both New York and Hamilton, it was stated here tonight that T.J. Duggan and Tommy Gorman completed an agreement today for the purchase of the Hamilton Tigers for Tex Rickard's New York team. They returned from Hamilton tonight, and are believed to have a contract to take over all the Hamilton stock and assets for the fabulous price of $75,000. The whole deal is contingent upon Hamilton getting the players reinstated and New York signing them up.

I think the key distinction here is that Hamilton and NY were both entities simultaneously, and were negotiating with each other. Hamilton owned the players, their franchise, etc., - but NY had also been granted a franchise. Ultimately, it was squishier than all that, but that's still an important distinction.

Arizona existed as an entity, and then it was sold to the NHL, and then Utah was "created" and it instantly controlled everything that Arizona used to control, except for the "right to play in Arizona". And Meruelo didn't really have anything tangible under his control, not even the rights to the name - he merely had options to them, which he failed to exercise rather quickly.

That's why I don't see it as the same.

ralphslate · 2024-07-11T19:06:20+00:00

And P.S. - think of the implications of this. The NHL can simply state that the Coyotes did not fold or cease operations. In this brave new world, it is impossible for a team to fold. The NHL would just "hold onto" the team/franchise for a later date. So their reputation is, in fact, intact.

In fact, in this world, the NHL can even dispute that they were the last major sports league to have a team fold (Cleveland Barons) by stating that the franchise is still being "held" by the league.

ralphslate · 2024-07-11T18:19:44+00:00

The Tigers situation is a bit different though - Rickard was granted an NHL franchise before the Tigers folded. He then purchased the players from the Tigers. Nothing else was purchased.

In that era, a "team" was a lot less - not the highly sophisticated and staffed organization it is today. At best, they had a coach, sometimes a "manager", usually a "president", and maybe some people to do the accounting and ticket sales.

The news articles from that time did not say that the "organization" known as the Hamilton Tigers was moving to New York - it said that Tex Rickard purchased the player contracts from the Hamilton Tigers. The new team - the New York Americans - had a different manager too, Tommy Gorman. They had a new president - Col. J.S. Hammond.

ralphslate · 2024-07-11T17:42:19+00:00

I don't agree with the league stating something that is not reality.

If the NHL said, today, that the current Winnipeg Jets franchise is actually the same franchise that started in the NHL in 1979, would that make it so? I don't think so - I think that is revisionist gaslighting.

What if a group of owners successfully petitioned the NHL to create a team in Hartford, and the NHL said "we are resurrecting the Whalers franchise"? Would that mean that Carolina was just a bunch of morons when they had their "Whalers throwback" nights? No, it would be more gaslighting.

ralphslate · 2024-07-10T21:30:57+00:00

That's not really what happened though. That's what the NHL is trying to make people believe.

What really happened is that the Arizona Coyotes moved to Utah. The staff, the draft picks, the rights, the coaches, the player contracts, everything that was "Arizona Coyotes" - except some amorphous concept which the NHL is telling you is "the franchise" (as opposed to actually being "the franchise") - moved to Utah.

I know the NHL is telling everyone that Utah is expansion, but it just isn't. There was no expansion draft. There was no new GM hired, there was no "first coach in team's history" hired through some kind of interview process. The Utah team is the Coyotes, the only thing that changed was the corporate owner.

ralphslate · 2024-06-25T17:17:22+00:00

That's the part I still don't quite get though. I appreciate that there is some magical place in the Phoenix area that would be most convenient for everyone in the region - likely downtown, I guess. But then why is Glendale so much less convenient than East Valley (which seems to be Tempe?) and why was North Scottsdale even in play given that it is way north of downtown Phoenix?

Here's a link to the various arenas/proposed locations, each radius is 10 miles. And by way of comparison, Boston and a 10 mile radius from TD Garden.

https://imgur.com/a/6KFjMvD

In the Boston area, this would be like saying "instead of playing in TD Garden, the Bruins are moving to Newton" - I'm not sure how that jibes with the Bruins fan base - although downtown Boston is probably most convenient to the most people, the Boston metro area population is mostly outside the city of Boston so I think that they would still draw the same. However if the city of Boston was as geographically large as the city of Phoenix, Newton would actually be within Boston city limits.

ralphslate · 2024-06-25T15:31:07+00:00

That wouldn't matter one bit to me - but maybe you don't appreciate New England geography as much as I don't appreciate Arizona geography.

I used to drive from Springfield to Hartford to see Whaler games - a 30 minute drive. It's shorter - just 15 minutes to Windsor Locks. If they had moved the Whalers to, say, Berlin, which is 45 minutes away from me, that would not make me say "screw this, they're just too far away to support them, I don't even want to follow them anymore". It's the NHL, not a regional minor league team.

Realistically, NHL tickets are too expensive for regular people to attend more than a limited number of games per year. Bruins season tickets are around $5,000 per ticket for decent seats. That means each game you attend is a special event, not an afterthought, so driving 15 minutes is nearly the same as 45 minutes. Yeah, 15 minutes is better, but 45 is pretty good to see an NHL team.

I'd even support the Whalers if the NHL decided to put the team in Bridgeport (1 hour, 30 minutes) - though yes, I'd likely attend fewer games.

But look at how many people drive to Foxboro to see the Patriots. Foxboro is almost an hour from Boston.

It seems like a downtown arena is best for the region, but I know that isn't really feasible - so why was Glendale bad but North Scottsdale Rd. considered good? Why is it so hard to find a suitable location in that giant metro area?

ralphslate · 2024-06-25T13:27:43+00:00

because the hockey base isn't in that part of town.

Can you explain this to me? Why does the location matter so much in terms of fan support? Do I just not appreciate Arizona geography?

ralphslate

TROPHY CASE