07:46 – Winston-Salem had another Brown/Garner Hands-Up/Black-Lives-Matter protest yesterday, this one at the intersection of Hanes Mall Boulevard and Stratford Road, a major shopping area and one of the busiest intersections in the city. The protest apparently lasted about 90 minutes, with a maximum of about 60 protesters present. That’s pretty pathetic for a city of a quarter million population. There were no arrests, but after the protest ended the cops issued citations for impeding traffic to three of the protesters. It seems that both protesters and police in Winston-Salem have more sense than those in many cities.
Barbara has Wednesday and Thursday off for Christmas. Ordinarily, she’d probably take PTO days Friday and most or all of next week, but this year she’s saving her remaining PTO days because she’s going to have knee-replacement surgery early next year. She’ll probably be off for a month or six weeks after the surgery, but policy requires her to take the first five days as either PTO or unpaid before paid medical leave kicks in.
Except for faster DNS resolution, which was the pits with AT&T, I am only noticing a change in download speeds with the new fiber connection when doing something with huge files. However, uploads are shockingly fast. My morning weather reports are sent as an MP3 attachment to a standard email message (sent via Evolution), and took about 30 seconds to upload to the Gmail server with AT&T’s DSL-2. Using the fiber account, the whole process is about 1 second, virtually the same as sending an email with no attachment. I sent a 10mb attachment last week, and the upload to Gmail was about 3 seconds.
This fiber company is owned by Cinergy out of Cincinnati, which used to be our power company before Duke Energy bought them out of most of Indiana. These fiber folks also provide cable, but are aware that is going to be a tough business. Cable companies were once merely pass-throughs, but now with local retransmission fees and separate contracts with the providers of all the services they want to carry, the cable companies are being forced into the programming business, having to decide which cable networks are attractive to customers and therefore worth the fees to carry their service. A friend in a neighboring town has cable through a different fiber provider, and they carry no NFL sports at all, and only one of the ESPN networks, while he is an NFL sports addict. The only games he gets to see are the ones carried by the regular local TV stations. Having the fiber Internet is more important to him than the sports programming, so he lives with a cable service that does not give him everything he wants. Although there is some competition with cable around the state, Comcast and AT&T going head-to-head in some cities, there is no competition in the fiber arena, and fiber is not even available to all localities yet. My fiber company seems to understand that their best product is fast Internet, and that is what they are focused on.
BTW, this company does not run their own mail servers. They pay Google to do that, so I now have another email account at Gmail with the fiber company’s name as the domain.
We have our funny little situation here; we dumped Fairpoint and went to Comcast, and on the whole it’s much better. Although about once or twice a week the wireless slows to a crawl or cuts out entirely, probably due to the location and weather in this burg. The Windows box is on the wireless and I have the Mint machine on wired and it’s much faster and reliable. So I’m putting all the machines on the wired, directly connected to the router today. I’ve also noticed that I should now reboot the Windows box weekly, if not twice a week, as it slows up anyway; maybe time to replace the hard drive with a SSD. Or sumthin. I dunno, I still have close to a TB of space on it.
Also probably gonna build a FreeNAS machine at some point here.
Overcast and no wind.
Revel in your fiber! Looks as if I will always have tin cans and string, unless our local PTP wireless provider upgrades his system to take advantgage of his new fiber connection. Right now, his usual speed is 0.5 Mb/sec symmetrical, which is slower than my slow DSL.
The AT&T cellular data net at my house sometimes hits 3 Mb (wow!) In other parts of town it hits 20+ Mb, so I am considering using my still-unlimited data plan to inject into my Ethernet at home. All I need is a Wi-Fi to Ethernet dongle to plug into my router’s WAN port, although that will disconnect the DSL unless I figure out a way to have both live at the same time. My head hurts.
Any of you Linux gurus follow Distrowatch? I have for a long time, and it gives me a good overview. I especially like the weekly part that goes into a little more depth. That brings me to a book I am considering: How Linux Works by Brian Ward.
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20141215#qa
I haven’t seen such a glowing review of a book of this type in a long time, and that includes the reviews on Amazon.
I think I will get it, but am interested in any of your comments.
Bear in mind, this is one of those books that mostly satisfies curiosity. I am most definitely not a programmer or an OS designer, but am interested in getting the most out of desktop Linux. Anyone familiar with Brian’s earlier book on the same subject?
I will first take a look at the free chapter 4 available on the No Starch Press web site, to get a feel for his writing.
When I see “PTO” I see red these days. My daughter had over 150 hours of PTO in the “bank” when she was laid off last week. Guess what, her low-life employer is not going to pay it and Washington State does not require it. She has spent the morning at Work Source (what WA state calls the unemployment office) filling out her unemployment forms, there was a line (some were her fellow workers), sure a lot of Grinches this time of year.
Bah Humbug
Wow, I didn’t think that was even legal, assuming it was earned in advance as most PTO days are. (I have heard of a few companies that grant x hours of PTO at the first of each year, which you then have to earn throughout the year, but even then in December I’d expect her time to be nearly all earned.) So they basically stole a month’s earnings from her. If I were her, I’d contact the Wage & Hour division to file a complaint.
I’ve heard of some companies with a “PTO isn’t earned until it’s used” policy on the books (and signed by all new hires) to avoid paying unused PTO when employees leave.
I see the US is now retaliating to NK’s hack:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/22/7434201/north-korea-internet-problems-after-obama-response-sony-hack
That may be, but I’m still not sure it’s legal. One can’t sign away some rights, such as overtime, by action of the employer (as opposed to one’s own inaction, such as losing days not taken by the end of the year).
“Any of you Linux gurus follow Distrowatch?”
Weekly for years.
NoStarch Press and O’Reilly are highly recommended by this drone.
“So they basically stole a month’s earnings from her. If I were her, I’d contact the Wage & Hour division to file a complaint.”
Correct. Good luck filing the complaint; the company will continue to stiff people anyway. This is How Things Work Now in Murkan business and jobs.
If the U.S. is in fact retaliating cyberwarfare-wise against the Norks this sets an interesting precedent for everyone else. I believe our Grid infrastructure is particularly vulnerable to this but nothing much has been done to prevent it, apparently. The precedent is that it can be considered an act of war, esp. if its main target, inadvertent or not, is a country’s military and political systems.
RBT – When she was at the “unemployment office” she asked about that and was told that in WA State she has no recourse. I also went on-line and confirmed with the state’s L&I office. You are not even guaranteed your final paycheck, if you don’t get it you have to go through small claims court.
It looks like Chad is right.
I have been going through her SOB-former-employer’s “benefit” package and it is plainly vague.
BTW when she left the “unemployment office” the line was now out the door and the parking lot was full with cars circling waiting for spaces.
Bah humbug
I’m sorry to hear that. This kind of crap is why I resolved long ago to depend only on myself, family, and friends. I do realize that most people don’t have that luxury, more’s the pity.
I’ve also been fed up Workin’ fo da Man every day for all these years; it’s only gotten worse. Thus, it may well be in our best interests here if I do NOT find another dumbass IT drone job locally and am forced to step up the alternatives ASAP. I am So fed up it beggars belief and I don’t need to feel this rage and bitterness again when I’ve worked so hard to tamp it down recently.
“Breathe in, breathe out, acknowledge your anger and hold it…” Part of the mantra we try to remember to work on lately down at the VA. Don’t suppress it, don’t bottle it up, don’t blow it off; it’s real and you can deal with it. A lot of the mantra stuff and “mindfulness” is b.s. but we take what we can use and roll with it.
Time to move on to something else.
My condolences and best wishes for Mr. DadCooks’s daughter, esp. this time of year. It truly sucks and the best thing is to grab whatever she can get now and focus full-time on doing something else somewhere else. Been there and felt that pain.
And Merry Christmas anyway; don’t let the bastards grind ya down.
The oil patch is laying off like crazy. People are getting ready for $40/bbl oil here in the USA. That is less than one dollar per gallon for crude! There are over three million people employed directly by the oil and gas industry in the USA. There is another twenty? thirty? forty? million indirectly employed by the oil and gas industry in the USA, including yours truly.
It gets worse. Many of the companies were using the $100 oil to subsidize their $3 natural gas. Now they are getting a double whammy to cut costs.
“Dear Lord, please give me another oil boom…I promise I won’t blow it next time.”, an old bumper sticker from the 1980s. Well, we blew it.
Dave, as I’ve said, I think you’re an excellent candidate for self-employment. You’re smart, motivated, and have numerous skills. So sit down, right now, and make a list of possible money-making endeavors you could get started with quickly. There’ve been half a dozen or so of them listed here already. I’ll bet you’ll be surprised how many you can come up with. Then talk with your wife, winnow them down to the best three or four, and get started RIGHT NOW. Not tomorrow, not the first of the year. RIGHT NOW.
Always remember, “the cowards never started and the weaklings died along the way”.
BTW, this company does not run their own mail servers. They pay Google to do that, so I now have another email account at Gmail with the fiber company’s name as the domain.
Google Apps rocks! Gmail is definitely the best in class. I would give it one of Pournelle’s orchids each year if I could.
“North Korea experiencing severe Internet outages”
http://www.chron.com/business/technology/article/North-Korea-experiencing-severe-Internet-outages-5973840.php
Payback is a you know what.
So, all ten users in NK are offline.
DadCooks,
According to the infallible internet, if you sue in small claims court in Washington State, the court can award double damages and attorney fees. Here in the sunshine state, there are many small law offices that take such cases without prepayment of fees, depending upon the employer to pony up fees and costs. Most lawyers here do not charge for an initial consultation, so your daughter wouldn’t lose anything by visiting a lawyer. Also, according to the infallible internet, the statute of limitations is three years, but I wouldn’t wait that long. Here in the sunshine state employers hate to pay attorneys fees, so a suit like what I’m suggesting you investigate is generally settled rather quickly, before the plaintiff’s lawyer can run up the fees. Here in the sunshine state, if the suit is for a specific sum of money, interest at the statutory rate can also be included in the judgment.
This is just a suggestion. I’m not licensed to practice in Washington, State or D.C., and have no way of guaranteeing a particular outcome. As usual, ymmv.
“Well, we blew it.”
Yeah, and all you Texas sons of bitches can roast in the hellfire heat! (just funnin’, y’all)
(we have a fridge magnet that wife got on one of her numerous trips to the Great Lone Star State and it’s a Davy Crockett quote: “You may all go to Hell and I will go to Texas!”)
“…winnow them down to the best three or four, and get started RIGHT NOW. ”
Winnowed down to about four. And already started on three of them, with the fourth about to kick off before the first of the year. Will be spending 6-8 hours a day on them all, at first, and then increasing the time with the one/s that have the most bang for the bucks, so to speak.
“So, all ten users in NK are offline.”
Sure, and all then of them are the top generals and admirals and they’re now pissed off, as is the Pillsbury Pig-in-a-Tunic, and could consider this as an act of war. Oh wait–they already did. They’re gonna attack any minute now…
…I’ll be out the door with a rifle when they’re drifting down from the skies in their Korean War-era chutes…
Well, if they all look like their Fearful Leader, they shouldn’t be too hard to hit…
Except they don’t. He’s probably the fattest mofo in the country. Eyewitness traveler reports describe the soldiers and cops, presumably the best-fed, as having the physiques of whippets. Regular starvation still out in the countryside.
Fred, thanks for the comment. I have been doing some investigation and will help her pursue that avenue. She will not receive her final paycheck until Friday and then has been told she would get one week of severance pay once her computer equipment is returned to the company (waiting for the FedEx pickup). Rather than start with an attorney regarding the PTO, I feel it best to wait to ensure we do not also have an issue with the final paycheck, return of equipment, and receipt of severance.
I appreciate the dialog that occurs here on RBT’s Journal. We are of many backgrounds and opinions, but somehow we manage to respect each others’ opinions and comment and keep moving forward. Thanks folks.
“We are of many backgrounds and opinions..”
They’re all wrong and suspect except for mine.
re employers: Yep. All but one of my last several “real jobs” were screw jobs, with them cheating me out of pay, promised benefits or whatever. That’s the main reason I go the self-employment route, getting paid by the hour and not getting benefits — benefits I likely wouldn’t have gotten anyway.
(Strictly speaking, I’m usually an “employee” of an IT vendor, but that’s just for the duration of the contract, and it’s solely for my convenience for tax purposes. Except for not having to file quarterly federal and more frequent state paperwork, I’m self employed.)
“US Families Prepare For ‘Modern Day Apocalypse'”
http://news.sky.com/story/1395842/us-families-prepare-for-modern-day-apocalypse
Wow!
“… it allows Americans to indulge in some of their favourite pastimes: consuming, camping and buying lots and lots of guns.”
Yup, dat’s why. Murkans prep for stuff ’cause they like to sleep in the woods, buy lots of chit, and play wid gunz.
“Thousands of families”
Thousands? Give me a break. Hundreds of thousands to tens of millions, depending on how you define it.
“That’s the main reason I go the self-employment route, getting paid by the hour and not getting benefits — benefits I likely wouldn’t have gotten anyway.:=”
My own experience with IT jobs in recent years is that they’re mostly temp/contractor gigs, with minimal or zero bennies anyway and even the permanent gigs aren’t much better than this, not unless you’ve been at a place like IBM for 10-40 years and accrued a lot of them, likewise state and Fed gummint. But more and more folks are having to bounce around to and from jobs after only a year or two and going for periods of unemployment in between.
I get my med stuff done at the VA med centers here in VT anyway so that’s even more of a kick in the pants to go indie. Our concern in this regard is with Mrs. OFD’s health and med coverage which is way more badly needed than mine, currently. So we’re playing it by ear, month to month, like everyone else up here; the gov just canned “single-payer” and the outside contractors/consultants the state brought it for the Health Connector web site made a huge mess for many millions that will never be seen again and paid by us. On TOP of whatever premiums and co-pay/up-front $ we’ll end up paying. Probably deliberately from the git-go, too.
Retirement? What a joke. We’ve had to burn through four separate retirement accounts between the two of us over the past 17 years, just to pay bills and for living expenses. Would we be OK if we hadn’t and still had all that money? Nope; seen too many folks lose their retirements and pensions completely when companies and state entities either went belly-up or outright reneged on their “promises.” Imagine busting your ass for forty years someplace and building up a nice nest egg for your golden years and then seeing it go up in smoke upon your actual retirement. Which is why we see old buggers doing the greeter gigs and working as bag-boys at supermarkets and Wall-Mutt. They had to go back to work at jobs they first worked as teenagers!
I’ll get the passports/visas and whatever and sign up to do a Crusade gig in the Sandbox against hadji hordes before I end up like that. Go out in a blaze of glory!
Deus lo Volt!
We have been hit here with a reduction in work at the video business, as a couple law firms we have contracts with, have dumped their medical malpractice efforts altogether. Indiana has changed their methods of handling medical malpractice, and now require a medical panel to rule on each case first, before it can be tried in court. The effect has been to stretch cases out for 4 or 5 years, and make it very difficult to get a judgment against a hospital or doctor if the medical panel finds in their favor.
The computerization of operating rooms has also made it very difficult to make major mistakes during surgery. Most cases I was involved with, dealt with mistakes in post-operative care. But if the patient is not 100% compliant with doctor’s orders and that causes or exacerbates problems, then all I can say is kiss that lawsuit goodbye. Juries do not like non-compliant patients.
We did quite a bit of work for just a few firms, and now are focusing on broadening the client base.
Meanwhile, not to boast, but the new fiber is supposed to be 30 up and 300 down. I am getting only about half that, but that is more than 10 times what I had with AT&T. I feel kind of sorry for the AT&T tech guys, because they have been out here twice, and practically kissed my feet for staying with them through all the troubles I have had. They know that the crap customers have to go through with their various phone contacts, and all the billing and pricing games that are driving people away. When I got a bill last month for double the previous rate, I immediately called the fiber company. I now have speeds AT&T cannot even come close to touching, at less than the what AT&T just tried to hit me with. Have I said enough times that I hate AT&T? Where is Judge Green when you really need him, anyway?
My friend in the other town with fiber from another company said the best thing about fiber service is that you will never, ever have to call them. Everything just works, all the time. After AT&T kicked my calls to landlines into overage rates, I am really looking forward to that!
On the Linux front, I am watching the “systemd”, um, discussions with quite a lot of interest. For those who haven’t followed it, systemd is a relatively new system-initialization tool, i.e., the tool that initializes the system during boot, gets all of the required processes running, etc.. The classic Linux startup is script-based, whereas systemd is a chunk of code.
The disturbing bit is: (1) systemd is apparently implemented by self-absorbed jerks who are uninterested in fixing problems that they create for others, (2) systemd is absorbing more and more tasks; it has become far more than just an init-system, and (3) adoption is being pushed hard by Redhat and others.
One wonders just why/how a monolithic, buggy piece of really critical code is getting pushed into essentially all of the big Linux distros. Seems decidedly odd for the Linux world.
It was RH developers who came up with it initially, so that’s why RH is pushing it.
I don’t/won’t use Gnome3 but will be keeping an eye on this as it develops and other people work on it and come up with alternatives if it becomes a major problem.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-and-others-on-linuxs-systemd/