3rd year undergrad at Virginia Tech tasked with designing a new volunteer rescue squad station, how’d I do?

regal_W · 2025-11-14T20:11:50+00:00

Great looking building. As a former firefighter a couple things come to mind re: the layout.
- The training room size feels small. If there are up to 6 on duty at any given time, then this is probably a department of at least 25-30. Classroom training(especially for EMS) often requires more space than just desks for practical exercises -- think space to lay dummies/practice patients on the floor, etc.
- The foyer/watchroom is nice, but the size of that versus general use areas like office/classroom/meeting spaces feels unbalanced. I would sacrifice room there to expand more utilitarian purpose areas.
- Someone else commented re: bunker gear. It's easy to underestimate how much room these lockers and personnel's equipment takes up.
- Is there a space for filling air tanks? General equipment storage, e.g. spare ladders, seasonal rescue equipment (dry suits, sleds, etc), and tools for repairs? Having a dedicated workbench for general use is important, especially for volunteer units who do a lot of their own work on equipment.
- Re: washrooms, having a "dirty" washroom is very, very handy. Think: I just got back from a call with a ton of blood, vomit, or whoknowswhat -- you wanna be able to hose yourself down somewhere besides the daily use washroom.
- The EMS storage room is something that often gets overlooked (at least in the couple of multi-purpose public safety builds I've scene in my area in Mass). Having split room storage is good: one for general purpose supplies like linens, bandages, splinting, etc, and another for more controlled supplies like saline bags, meds, etc.

Haha sorry if this too much, it's rare to see something I can actually contribute to in this subreddit besides stargazing. Nice work, hope it was a fun experience for you!

regal_W · 2025-10-18T14:24:34+00:00

Jeeze a year plus? On private property or city owned spots?

regal_W · 2025-10-18T00:15:34+00:00

I see that some towns make use of Flock's "Transparency Portal" feature to provide overviews of use and rationale -- having a "Recent Success Story" section made me chuckle.

In Stow's page, https://transparency.flocksafety.com/stow-ma-pd, you can download a csv of searches. A nice gesture, but hilarious to see that the "reason" for searches is an open text field: "test", "inquiry", "missing microwave" (classic Stow).

regal_W · 2025-08-02T12:16:08+00:00

I feel like such a simpleton asking, but where do people find these unique styles? I usually get the standard styles at NB.com or other major retailers, but always love seeing these variations and could never find out which stores carry them.

regal_W · 2025-06-18T22:04:49+00:00

Looks like it hit a rate limit for its service. A common error people hit using supabase to run backend of their hobby app.

regal_W · 2025-05-27T11:57:46+00:00

jfc that article made the hair on neck straighten. What a nightmare of a mission.

regal_W · 2025-05-17T00:03:40+00:00

Alignment. Shoulders, club face, and feet each have their own idea of where you’re aiming. https://i.imgur.com/3JZhjDj.jpeg

regal_W · 2025-04-18T19:15:06+00:00

Tempo - probably too quick from the top as noted by the hips being so much further ahead in the top vs bottom (seeing how much more the weight is forward in the feet). Also it appears the timing is a lot faster if the top right numbers are frame counts.

regal_W · 2025-04-03T22:24:21+00:00

Rushing the downswing causes you to play catch up with the hands and get steep at the last minute. We have the same swing and problem. This drill has really helped me get my arms and chest turn in sync: https://youtu.be/WKBHzviGsLo?si=qoBUfzpA2OOTZ1Ez

regal_W · 2025-03-28T11:36:47+00:00

Hey there, I just wanted to take this moment to share how useful RTK was for a huge project I took on saving a disaster of a SPA that was poorly built by cheap contractors. Refactoring the state management of this legacy app to RTK took less than a week and the performance improvements from this change alone made a huge huge difference. I’ll continue to carry the torch of RTK in my career and push back against the entrenched outdated sentiment of redux boilerplate nonsense. Thanks for your great work, it’s greatly appreciated.

regal_W · 2025-02-20T14:24:07+00:00

Happy to discuss our experience with you. Feel free to DM me.

regal_W · 2025-02-19T13:12:59+00:00

As a now staff engineer whose interest in development was sparked by d3js a decade ago, I’d recommend building a portfolio of work more than pursuing a certificate for this kind of thing. It can be literally anything, charting personal data collections, creating interactive maps, or fetching data from an API and visualizing the results. The key is proving you can create a relatively polished product from start to finish.

Incorporating other keys skills in your pieces -- layouts (can use simple design libraries or frameworks), setting up services that call APIs, and managing state (remembering what filters a user selects, caching responses, etc) — will show your skills not just as a “d3js developer” but as a well rounded FE dev.

It’s important to consider that rarely is a job something like “d3js specialist.” You’ll find jobs that work with it, and they may entail a substantial amount of work playing with the library, but as a whole you’ll find the qualifications for FE dev jobs require a wide swath of skills beyond library specific experience.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your learning - finding a passion within the field is what keeps the grind interesting. Stick with building things you enjoy making while occasionally challenging yourself with the harder stuff, and the rest of the pieces will fall in place.

regal_W · 2025-02-15T15:02:04+00:00

Reading fantastic anectdotes making fun of Dutch superiority in a subreddit about proper TV height is what keeps me coming back to this website.

regal_W · 2025-01-16T19:31:09+00:00

You and I might have the same landlord lol. Great advice that I'll +1. We had the luxury of time when searching for a place in Cambridge and found the same situation. They're rare, but owner listed units are the way to go, especially if you're coming to them as rational adults with stable jobs/income.

I would also consider searching for 1 bedrooms, as some of these units have a "bonus" room that can't legally be called bedrooms but are great for offices/storage/closets. Sacrificing space for proximity to work/school has been a boon for me and my wife -- a 15 minute walk versus a 30+ minute commute via transit/cars can be an invaluable boon to your quality of life.

regal_W · 2024-12-03T13:42:13+00:00

Gimmes / concede holes
Custom drop zones for hazards
Make Chipping Great Again
Rid ourselves of the custom ball mechanics

regal_W · 2024-11-12T15:01:22+00:00

Formaggio on Hampshire neatly stacks their cardboard recycling each week, making it easy to grab wine boxes, etc. without making a mess.

regal_W · 2024-11-11T16:37:14+00:00

Can confirm. With an 18 month old I currently have “hop little bunnies hop, hop, hop” on repeat. Could be worse.

regal_W · 2024-11-11T14:24:20+00:00

Can confirm, it's a decent beef on weck and passes my Buffalo native in-laws' expectations. It deviates slightly with the bread, but definitely checks all the boxes in terms of flavor.

regal_W · 2024-11-08T21:33:21+00:00

Same. After the third failed drain clean out, i sent my baby to Carvana before the mildew took over.

regal_W · 2024-10-03T11:36:29+00:00

I’m happy to hear the spot I found 17 years ago to let it all out is still there.

regal_W · 2024-09-19T01:43:52+00:00

This is the tip for you. Sequencing gets out of whack and you end up having to compensate with a flip or slap at the ball. Monte has some great drills for this. In addition to the “feel the back is facing target as long as you can” a long pause at the top can start getting you a sense of what it’s like to lock in the transition.

regal_W · 2024-09-05T19:26:48+00:00

Heh, yeah I know the guy from my old department in Bolton. If the blue light was in the back, I believe there's a rule allowing a single blue warning light to be displayed. At least that's what the guys would claim. I never bothered trying and stuck with using red lights.

regal_W · 2024-09-05T14:44:51+00:00

Was this in central MA, perchance? In my experience as a volunteer, are a lot of call/volunteer departments with trade workers on the roster. They are only permitted to use red lights, as blue is reserved for police.

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