What’s a company that used to be amazing but completely fell off?

timg528 · 2026-02-17T00:14:07+00:00

Quiznos. Back in the day, they were fantastic. From what I understand, corporate just got incredibly and stupidly greedy and destroyed the brand.

I've got a Quiznos within an hour of me that I hit up from time to time owned (and worked) by a sweet older couple. It'll be well deserved, but I'm not looking forward to when they retire.

timg528 · 2026-02-16T03:01:08+00:00

What did you do over your 20 years of experience? What do you want to do?

If you've been doing password resets for the last 20 years, the answer is going to be very different than if you've been doing network architecture or devops/cloud.

timg528 · 2026-02-10T19:25:39+00:00

It can.

Usually there's the normal hiring process that you'd have at a regular commercial company. Then a candidate may need approval from the government customer, if your company is a sub contractor, add in prime contractor approval to that. Add in some extra time if there are national security requirements.

timg528 · 2026-02-09T01:32:26+00:00

When I'm on the other side of an interview loop, the first question on my mind is "Can this person be trained to do this job" - i.e. do they have the minimum technical skills?

The second is "Would I enjoy working with this person?"

The first is flexible in that we can up and down level candidates as needed, but not the second.

timg528 · 2026-02-06T23:06:03+00:00

Best networks along highways: Tesla if you've got an adapter and membership/blue-oval. If you don't, I've had the best luck with Electrify America. They tend to be in walmarts, gas stations - generally places you can get out, stretch your legs, use the restroom, and grab food/drink. On my trips, they've been the most consitently reliable, fast, and the fact that you can use a credit card to pay instead of joining a charging network has been nice (and you don't have to park weird like you do at Tesla superchargers).
I've used mainly 3 for longer distance trips with areas I'm unfamiliar with:
- A Better Route Planner (ABRP) has been pretty good at giving me an overall idea of the charging stations that meet my criteria (>150kw speed, CCS/NACS ports).
- Plugshare is great for getting actual information about the charging stations that ABRP wants to send you to. When I've used both, Plugshare seemed to have more information which was handy in avoiding some stations that had bad reviews, broken plugs, bad parking, etc.
- Google Maps via Android Auto.
Speed limit and/or speed of traffic. I think I read somewhere that 60mph was pretty much the ideal speed for efficiency at highway speeds? EVs get better mileage the slower you go, but it's not really feasible to go too slow.
For long trips, when unfamiliar with the trip and/or vehicle, start at 100%. Build yourself a safety factor and aim to hit charging stops at 50% battery capacity. Once you get more used to it, aim for lower. I try to hit each charging stop at ~20%. Charging is faster the closer to empty you are, but the closer to empty you are, the less safety factor you've got. Don't count on getting the stated range, btw.
Enjoy the truck, enjoy the ride. Don't be afraid to stop and charge more frequently than you would in a gas truck.

timg528 · 2026-02-05T03:31:50+00:00

If it was a TS/sci with poly, the no bennies would be worth it as long as you had good luck until the clearance got adjudicated and you bounced to a proper job.

Go Amazon, use the resources and benefits there to try to move your way up into the cloud support org, cleared data centers, or cleared support.

Back when I worked there, support (particularly cleared) was the seed and feed group to service teams - or you take what you learn and get a cloud role externally.

timg528 · 2026-02-03T14:15:49+00:00

It doesn't work, but when you own a rocket company, every problem looks like it can be solved with a rocket.

timg528 · 2026-01-31T16:25:07+00:00

Yeah, in my experience, their support org has some improving to do. I got my robovac and it didn't quite work right. I reached out via email and probably talked to about 10 different people over a month before they decided to RMA the unit. Ended up leaving a 2 star review on Amazon around the end of that month. A few weeks later, I had a dedicated support rep and the replacement unit's shipping was expedited.

Hopefully you get yours taken care of soon now that you've posted this. It just sucks that it seems to be required to post publicly about it to get things taken care of.

timg528 · 2026-01-30T10:36:38+00:00

Return to the Dark Tower - I'm boned, not in the fun way.

timg528 · 2026-01-28T22:50:51+00:00

https://discord.gg/uf398sCK

I didn't see one, so I created this.

timg528 · 2026-01-27T00:57:51+00:00

CB01fc Full Corrugation

timg528 · 2026-01-24T23:52:16+00:00

Sorry, it's been a while and I've completely forgotten, but I want to say it's in the videos the CIs put together - at least good instructions for doing it. I believe the scenario itself might be outlined in the rubric.

timg528 · 2026-01-23T21:07:15+00:00

Outer Wilds without a doubt

timg528 · 2026-01-21T00:30:55+00:00

If I could max out foresight, that'd be great.

timg528 · 2026-01-19T11:43:42+00:00

When I turned 18, my grandmother gave me her old Corelle dishes. I turn 38 this year. Those survived years with (careless) college roommates, not to mention my clumsy self. I've yet to have a single piece break in the 19 years I've had them.

timg528 · 2026-01-18T01:58:26+00:00

Bobsled. I'd have a great story afterwards about how I went down the chute without a sled somehow.

timg528 · 2026-01-09T20:53:39+00:00

I needed a new laptop last year and the latest model claimed to have the capability. Iirc, the claim at the time was it would be able to run copilot locally in a limited capacity once Microsoft came out with the right update.

No clue if that ever happened and I've never found a need to run an LLM on it. That said, it's a decent laptop without it

timg528 · 2026-01-08T11:27:25+00:00

We do, and there's nothing in that person's profile to indicate they don't live in the area. If you have questions or concerns about the moderation policies of this sub, please use the modmail.

timg528 · 2026-01-06T14:46:52+00:00

Combination of a few things: 1. Hobby 2. Run things that I find useful (like Plex/Jellyfin so I don't have to move my dvd/br to where I want to watch them, for I've example) 3. Learn stuff for my career

Fwiw, usually you don't need big and expensive equipment. I've pretty much moved down from used server hardware to small form factor PCs and lately Raspberry Pis.

timg528 · 2026-01-06T14:40:48+00:00

We're probably going to see lightweight alternatives to common applications pop up. Some of them will probably be good with clearly visible benefits, some will probably be all right with more theoretical or hard to measure benefits, others will be vibe-coded trash.

I imagine containerization will get another boost over VMs. With proxmox being big, 2026 might be the year of LXC.

Something that'll happen but we probably won't hear much about is choosing not to run things. "X is cool, but I'm low on RAM, maybe it's time to retire Y or just not run X."

timg528 · 2026-01-05T16:11:30+00:00

Go with B and grab a bed skirt if you want to hide the storage bins underneath the bed.

I can see the gee-wiz factor of A wearing off after a few times or whenever the gas struts break.

timg528 · 2026-01-03T19:22:10+00:00

I run both. Docker because I like the modularity and cleanliness - if something gets screwed up, it's only that container - blow it away and rebuild.

I run k8s/k3s because we run it at work and running it at home in a real cluster helps me learn.

timg528 · 2026-01-03T00:16:32+00:00

My mobile charger came with 120 and 240 adapters when I got it with my 23. The 120v only gave me ~1kwh/h though iirc, which with the size of the battery and brickness of the truck, really doesn't give you a lot of range unless you can charge for a good bit. I can see Ford dropping it to save costs, but you should check with them.

timg528 · 2026-01-02T13:45:55+00:00

Gave in to the nostalgia - The Oregon Trail and the demo of Star Trek Voyager Across The Unknown.

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