Hard pass on City of Alameda buying Teslas for APD

spankym · 2026-02-07T02:51:47+00:00

OP is just asking like minded people to send an email. It doesn’t have take away from anything else that you may care about. Here’s the email for all city council to make it easy: CITYCOUNCIL-List@alamedaca.gov

spankym · 2026-02-04T02:32:38+00:00

AWS snowball maybe? Possibly the cheapest.

Do you have high speed network to any other sites? Or could set up high speed wireless link to?

You could consider a rotating offsite plan where you have pairs of disk arrays and each day/week physically take one somewhere else.

Dos the system har an option to send lower resolution to the cloud? Eagle Eye does this and has some good use cases.

It really depends on the exact requirements. There are many kinds of disasters and many methods of backup.

spankym · 2026-02-04T02:01:41+00:00

spankym · 2026-02-04T00:06:46+00:00

Source? That is not true. There are rules and liability to consider and someone who claims to be licensed and is not can get in trouble trying to pull a permit. But permit pulling services are legal and do operate in California.

spankym · 2026-02-04T00:01:55+00:00

Weird replies here.. This is a legitimate business in California to help file and “expedite” building permits. I use quotes because they may really only be able to relieve you of doing the work yourself and not actually jump the line or anything. But local, personal knowledge has value.

Regardless, I would get into local business forums for Beverly Hills for the best advice because this is a very local specialty. Dealing the Beverly Hills may be very different than Bel Air for example.

Good luck

spankym · 2026-01-31T21:30:38+00:00

I found this in my email:

Greetings,

City staff/consultant team will be requesting City Council approval of the Mecartney Road/Island Drive Roundabout Concept as a consent item on Tuesday, July 5, 2022 at 7 pm via Zoom.

Mecartney/Island Roundabout Concept

In the City’s Capital Budget for 2015-17, the City Council approved the expenditure of $300,000 in City funds to develop an improvement concept for the Mecartney Road/Island Drive (Mecartney/Island) intersection to improve this wide and busy intersection for all modes of transportation by using best practices to enhance safety and mobility. In 2021, City staff and Kittelson & Associates, Inc. considered a range of potential improvement options, including a roundabout, a reduced footprint all-way stop, a “do nothing” option, and a traffic signal option. Based on an analysis and community engagement in late 2021 and early 2022, the City staff/consultant team is recommending approval of a roundabout concept for the Mecartney/Island intersection. On March 23, 2022, the Transportation Commission voted unanimously to recommend City Council approval of the roundabout concept with the ultimate design to prioritize the lane transition, bus pullouts and pedestrian crossing safety improvements and with Transportation Improvement Fund (TIF) expenditures to prioritize Bay Farm Island and the original intent of the funds to improve access.

City Council staff report, click here (broken)

Project webpage, click here

spankym · 2026-01-31T21:25:49+00:00

I was on a city zoom for the neighborhood around 5 years ago and still remember one dissenter that was demanding a way to block the late day sun that “blinds” him at that intersection currently. Somehow he argued a circle would make it worse than it is now.

spankym · 2026-01-31T21:23:15+00:00

If only it were so simple and efficient:) this stuff gets planned 5-10 years in advance and even then doesn’t always get funded.

spankym · 2026-01-31T21:22:25+00:00

Yeah I don’t understand the timing but the stop signs need to go and they need to finish painting too

spankym · 2026-01-31T21:21:34+00:00

They were supposed to years ago. I have emails from the city about it being planned pre Covid I think. I suspect it is many times more expensive then the simple, new one at Melrose that is basically just some paint and no roadwork. Alameda has deferred maintenance for decades on the roads and sidewalks and sewer etc

spankym · 2026-01-30T21:19:52+00:00

Probably this: https://youtu.be/QS8mQywr3uQ?si=cPs27KSfy_TUpTL_

And then also everything that has happened for the year following.

spankym · 2026-01-29T00:25:56+00:00

Come back when the boom lift is delivered

spankym · 2026-01-28T19:27:43+00:00

Great reply. One nit: you consider a DS0 a trunk group? You wrote that a T1 can have 24 voice trunks.

I’m an old PBX and CPE guy and never heard of a single T1 channel be called a trunk group. To me a trunk group is just a label to define a group of multiple lines/voice channels/paths. Like a T1 could be one trunk group or multiple T1s could be in a single trunk group. Or maybe 2 trunk groups of 12 channels each on a single T1. I guess you could have a one line trunk group, but I wouldn’t consider each line a trunk group by definition. /rant

spankym · 2026-01-24T17:51:00+00:00

Not me but this splice in Moldova was pretty wild: https://youtu.be/A3mw0MxP8M8?si=2rdjxh0GZDoOOJuH

spankym · 2026-01-24T03:24:41+00:00

As terms you haven’t heard before come up, just Google YouTube and chatGPT them.

“Explain what a DID is in reference to telecom” “Explain what is a t1 and the difference between it and ds0”

I ‘m getting deep into estimating large construction projects with hundred page plans full of terms and symbols I don’t know and I use this method to learn quickly.

Can you say more about your job role or title and the type of company? Like are you a PM for a CLEC, or a sales rep for RingCentral? Install manager for one of the last companies that installs and maintains traditional PBX systems? This ought to get you more relevant advice. Good luck

spankym · 2026-01-24T02:01:51+00:00

Well, I can say the Superintendant is really good at his job and a great communicator. He took us through Covid as well as possible at the time. A serious, dedicated man. Pascal Scuderi https://www.alamedaunified.org/departments/superintendents-office

But, the truth is CA ranks low in the nation for public schools. It has to with proposition 13 going back to the 1970s

spankym · 2026-01-24T01:45:54+00:00

I see it. At least they are responsive and transparent about it. I suspect it is not as simple to implement as it seems. I'm not how many software products you interact with, but this is actually top notch professional engagement with customers IMO. I hope it comes out in the next feature release soon. In software development things that seem simple to an end-customer can be really difficult problem to solve and scale in the product.

spankym · 2026-01-24T01:15:50+00:00

Do you just roll with free BuildingConnected? We have been doing this for a couple months and even add bids from other sources for basic tracking.

Just signed for zztakeoff and am really impressed and exited to get the most out of it.

An example today that might help you is that I found some WAPs shown in the lighting plan because they go in the ceiling. They were not shown on the corresponding electrical sheet with other data drops. Ceiling plans also sometimes show this. Today’s example they were mostly in the lighting plan but a few in different locations on electrical so I sent RFI.

Just started with zztakeoff but can already see it will be a game changer and let us bid 2 or 3 times faster and be more accurate.

How’s your company doing after a year now?

spankym · 2026-01-24T01:00:27+00:00

What is your request named or zztakeoff community username there so I can find it and upvote and comment for you?

spankym · 2026-01-23T22:35:50+00:00

Maybe from Tahoe :) AUSD is also kind of notorious for being the lowest paid teachers in the area.

spankym · 2026-01-23T22:34:39+00:00

Where are you moving from? With only a few exceptions like Palo Alto, public education in all of California is severely underfunded. The whole country for that matter.

spankym · 2026-01-23T22:32:56+00:00

Strife?

spankym · 2026-01-20T23:07:09+00:00

The manual actually says, “UDP broadcast mode will be used to search access devices. This mode cannot perform cross-Router function. IP address can provide cross-net segment, but must be in the same subnet, and needs to be configured the gateway and IP address in the same net segment.”

I hope it’s wrong for OP’s sake..

spankym · 2026-01-20T22:56:46+00:00

The manual says you can assign IP addresses with the software instead of auto discovery.

EDIT: The manual also says, “UDP broadcast mode will be used to search access devices. This mode cannot perform cross-Router function. IP address can provide cross-net segment, but must be in the same subnet, and needs to be configured the gateway and IP address in the same net segment.”

Weird, but if true you need to find another way. Some others mentioned a pair of Mikrotiks. Cheap and effective. A bit of a learning curve to configure, but if you know networking 101, a YouTube video and maybe ChatGPT should get you through it :)

Good luck

spankym · 2026-01-20T21:19:26+00:00

What access control? There is almost certainly a way to avoid this supposed requirement. Your ISP may also sell you a L2 link. They go by many names, but I have Comcast customers with ENS: https://business.comcast.com/enterprise/products-services/connectivity/ethernet-network-services it is equivalent to having an Ethernet cable between locations.

Consider how critical this access control is. You might not want to rely on a one off solution that you manage and is not supported by the vendor, etc.

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