Posts by Antron Argaiv 2190 publicly visible posts • joined 18 May 2016
Call me behind the curve, but I prefer MATE. Mint is my choice on my personal machines, which date from 2016. Still quite zippy with plenty of RAM and SDDs. I'm a happy penguinista and have been for many years.
I'm qute impressed with its stability. Only objection I have is that some of the packages in the repo are seriously behind the releases on their PPMs, but that's easily remedied.
Linux user here (for over 10 years). I use Win10 on a work laptop, exclusively Linux on my personal gear. I have no trouble switching back and forth.
I have noticed that Windows has not really been improving from Win7 to Win10...it just seems to be moving the UI around as if the goal is to keep you from being able to effficiently work. Not my idea of progress. Sure, Linux is not perfect, but IMHO it doesn't suck any worse than Windows, and there's no malicious actor pulling the strings behind the scenes (I don't think so, at least)
I'll use Windows when necessary, but I prefer Linux.
Why, when I were a lad...
...right out of school, I was treated as a professional and given an 8'x10' cubical. Later this shrunk to 8'x8'. Things have changed a bit.
Granted, I no longer need the bookcases full of books, or the tabletops to spread D size schematics out on. But the "treating like a professional" looks like it's long gone. No longer do you get any personal space at work. No place to sit and cogitate. No wonder wfh seems so attractive.
Oh, well, the management will eventually figure it out...after all the top employees leave.
Re: private girls' schools
Newly married me and my newly minted maths/science teacher wife took a position at a PGS which included housing as we were to be live-in dormitory "parents"
The good parts:
- We could save for a house
- We had free child care (the girls loved our new son
- free "food" at the dining hall
The bad parts:
- immediate requirement on my part for selective blindness
- the girls were quite adept at sneaking out to meet boyfriends
- duty weekends
It lasted only a few years before we were able to put a down payment on a house. But it was a very interesting few years. Would not do it again, but enjoyed the experience.
Why, when I were a lad...
...I remember downloading ~15 3.5 diskette images to install Slackware Linux (was wonderful when Walnut Creek CD came onto the scene)
'twas shortly afterwards that I discovered Linux was noticeably more robust than Windows 3.1+DOS+QEMM+a bunch of TSRs.
I'm looking for a retired mechanical engineer to help me build the ultimate solution to the Canada Goose problem.
I envision an truck-mounted device with a large suction hose. Canada Geese in one end, and out the other end come goose-down insulated parkas on one side and pate de foie gras on the other side. I figure we could sell a few.
My son and his family used to live on the approach to Honolulu airport. It's a joint use facility, and every day you'd see the F-22s returning from training, landing at PHNL. Right over his house. His kids absolutely loved it. And the house was very well insulated, so the noise wasn't really bad, unless they were coming in hot and loud, which did occasionally happen...to the kids' delight.
// The occasional tanker, C-5, C-17 and Blackhawk, as well as all the airliners.
Retired now, but used to commute the 25 miles into Boston (MA) by rail. It was convenient, reasonably priced and low stress. The rails, of course, are shared with commercial freight trains, and I remember passing some on a siding with somewhat worrying labels on the tanker cars. Acids, Chlorine, plastics precursors and several other chemicals I don't remember. Not hundreds of tank cars, but more than 10.
I did think about what might happen if their contents were released, and it wasn't pleasant. As I retired, they were in the process of implementing Positive Train Control (PTC) on the line I travelled. This was in 2020. Railroading is not as technically advanced as we would like it to be, mostly for political and economic (business) reasons. And this is not a comforting thought. One might think "oh, well, we'll keep doing it until something really terrible forces us to consider doing things differently" is the attitude...I couldn't possible comment.
I feel I must agree with ComicalEngineer on this point.
In what professional world do changes to the screensaver rank anywhere above the bottom of the hierarchy of importance? Why even mention it?
Of course, the real question needs to be: why is Microsoft releasing new major versions of their operating system yearly? Can't they just fix whatever's wrong and leave it at that? Or are they having that much trouble getting it right?
When I was on salary (currently contracting, so not applicable now), it was always expected that you would do "whatever it took" to get the job done. I agreed with that, within reason (I had young kids at the time, and nothing comes before family). However, I have always felt that "it works both ways", which is to say, that if the work gets done, don't nickel and dime me about time I'm taking off to get home an hour early or go to the dentist.
In other words...salaried employees aren't punching a time clock...you don't pay them overtime, but you can't demand that they spend 8 hours every day at work.
I trust you don't believe there wasn't (isn't) a pandemic? (oh, and it was 2020, not 2021...how time flies!)
My approach, and you have the right to develop your own, was to do everything I could to insure my survival. Remember, in the early days of COVID, we weren't sure what one's chances of survival were, if you got it. So, I minimised my exposure to the virus by staying home, minimised my chance of getting the virus if exposed, by wearing the best mask I could find, and minimised my time spent in areas where I would be likely to be exposed. When I did have to go into work, I went in my own car, and on weekends and evenings when few were there.
I do things differently today, but I still have in my mind an equation of risk, which takes into account the percentage of the population carrying the virus, and the likelihood of exposure, and take appropriate precautions. I'm pushing 70, so all the data indicates that if I'm exposed, I'm at more risk of a bad outcome than a healthy 25 year old.
Do I think I overreacted? No. Wearing a mask and changing my habits are small inconveniences with which I'll happily put up, for a chance to live longer.
I started working from home in March 2021, before places started to shut down. I just didn't dare use public transportation any more. This man's fears are (and were) perfectly reasonable, and I hope he wins his case. His employer is going to have a hard time if they let three other engineers work from home, while forcing him to come in (unless there's valid reason he was needed on site). Most companies, mine included, were very tolerant of older workers' fears, and requests to WFH.
It's hard to remember how frightened we older folks were, before the vaccines, but I spent most of the next two years at home. Fully vaccinated now, but still wear an N95 on busses and aircraft, and avoid concentrations of people in enclosed spaces. Wouldn't think of going to the grocery store without a mask on.
Doesn't get much more "classic" than the 4040!
Good luck in your search. It's out there somewhere. (Perhaps as a printed listing?)
"He died at the console, of hunger and thirst.
Next day he was buried, face down, 9 edge first."
--https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/last.bug.en.html
Just a single data point here.
I have "converted" two non-technical users from Windows to Linux (I started with Ubuntu, now Mint), because I tired of having to drive to their places to help them adjust to something that Microsoft "updated", which somehow damaged their workflow. This would happen approximately every three months, and it was beginning to wear on me.
After conversion to Linux,and after the obviously necessary adjustment period, calls for service are minimal...one per year if that.
Your mileage may vary, but in my experience, Linux doesn't suck any worse than Windows.
Mint Mate 20.3 here. Though I confess to running Win10 in a VM all day today, because SDRplay doesn't yet have (c'mon, guys) a native Linux version of SDRuno...
But I do most everything on Linux, because MS has been getting significantly more annoying with each release of Windows, which I must use for work. Imagine yourself beavering along, creating a spreadsheet, or Powerpoint, or whatever, when all of a sudden, a largish rectangular popup, (which halts your work) informs you that "you can incorporate photos from your Android device into documents...try it!"...or some such useless invitation to try a feature I never wanted. You need to explicitly click on these before you can get back to what you were doing. AND, this is on the volume licensed corporate edition of Win10 and Office!
The daughter has one. She know if her heating is working while at work (or on holiday). Good thing to know if you live where your pipes might freeze if the heating fails.
Dishwasher? Washing machine? Not a priority for connection. Refrigerator? Perhaps, considering ours has failed twice in the last 2 years (Motor controller and defroster heater), but it didn't alert us to the problem until the temperature had risen enough to spoil the food. Not so smart...
My LJ5 doesn't do waste toner (have no idea how the innards work). It just keeps printing and printing, whenever I need it to. Still on the first toner cartridge after 2 years (I print a page or two a week). I have two more NIB cartridges, but I suspect it will be a long time before I need to open one.
Linux Mint at home, Win10 on the work machine.
I'm finding Windows and its Office apps harder and harder to use, mostly because I have to hunt through the various Ribbons to find the function I want. Configuring options and such in the OS is also getting more difficult...which setting page and which subpage will what I need to do be on? And just when you think you have it all figured out...another "update" changes things around again...at least, that's the way it seems. Add to that, Teams and Sharepoint...now which Teams channel are those files under again?
Happily using Linux at home for many years. I cannot ever see a need for Windows at home, would much rather use an OS whose UI can be counted on to remain fairly constant.
Good on ya for sticking it out and proving the (male) bastards wrong! Do what you love and show them you can do it better than they can.
As a male EE, I have run across only a few female hardware engineers, but they have all been first class and wonderful to work with. I wish we had more, because it makes no sense to discourage half of the potential talent pool. One woman we got back because she was treated poorly at her new company by a manager who did not believe women should be in engineering. As she was very talented, we welcomed her back.
Re: security Torx screws.
If you don't have the proper bit, take a small flat blade screwdriver, put the blade against the center pin and give it a whack. Often the pin will break off at the base. If not on the first whack, the second one will do it.
If, for some reason, you want to do it right, Amazon sells an assortment of Chinese tool sets that will fit anything ever designed, for around $30. Mine's in a blue case, with some six character name, and seems quite well designed.
I'll let the Chinese build my PCBs, but they get assembled in the US. FAR less chance of dodgy components that way.
When I retired last year, after a career of 42 years as an EE, I was making about $150k. This without having gone into management, as my only love is designing and building stuff. It was sometimes a struggle, and raises have definitely gotten leaner in recent years, but I've had a lot of fun, put two kids on track for their careers and am still happily married to the woman I met in college. Retirement lasted less than a year, and I am now back working as an hourly consultant at a very fair hourly rate. Apparently, my skills are still marketable.
I do not think that EEs will die out, because you need power supplies for those little embedded computers, motor drivers and interfaces to the real world, and those need to be designed for every case individually, because that's what makes your product better than the competition (if any). As for EE techs, those cables aren't gonna make themselves, and someone needs to fix that cord that got,pulled outmof the expensive gadget.
Those SIP gateways have to connect to the carrier network at some point.
And that's where they need to be cut off. The carriers know damn well who runs these gateways and which ones the robocalls come through, because they bill them. A little extra inspection of these gateways and a somewhat more onerous process to get connected to the network might prove effective at reducing the number of robocalls.
The FCC is toothless. All they can do is levy administrative fines; no one is going to prison. Mark my words, these clowns will pay the fine and pop up somewhere else doing the same thing.
Slowing down to 20 in the high speed lane, immediately after merging (which is what I understand the Tesla did) is almost a guarantee of a pileup.
Sure, the humans shouldn't have been following so closely, but I rarely see that kind of caution. And you ARE at fault if you do something like that (merge, then hit the brakes). Of course Tesla will probably claim the data isn't recoverable for some reason...
I will admit to doing something similar.
I have also typed the [command that must never be typed] as root. Oh, well, the system needed a new OS install anyway.
...and, as a "young learner"*, I have had more than one chalkboard eraser chucked at me when I wasn't paying attention (Latin and Maths classes, I believe)
* a term my teacher wife and I use to describe students who would have been referred to as "little bastards" in earlier, less sensitive, days. See also: "our valued client"
I have never trusted "anonymous" surveys. Especially when they arrive by email with a customised URL, and results are broken down by work group. I have decided that keeping one's opinions to oneself is a safer course of action.
I've gotten a bit less trusting and more paranoid re management as I have gotten older.
Of course, this is a large multinational with a fondness for metrics and AI, and very rigid business process, so YMMV, as they say.
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