tech404

Anyone try one of these?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZN7B52/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apip_ieqHkfGid2pQJ

My massage therapist was recommending an actual sitting massage chair but this is closest I found.

I’m not a fan of the Herman Miller chairs.

The Aeron I had was OK, but it didn’t fit me any better than any other chair I’ve had.

(I had an ATV accident ages ago, as well as a minor case of scoliosis. My back is well and truly messed up with not a lot of options to fix it permanently.)

that sucks

sorry to hear that

I have a standing desk but I don’t think I can bring it in

one of the founders is kind of strict about stuff like this

What works for me is 1) don’t stay in any one place more than an hour 2) find a chair that’s reasonably comfortable 3) if you need it, get a drs note and it becomes an ADA thing.

I have my first electric sit/stand desk coming in a few weeks, I’m stoked.

Especially for the days where you get really engrossed in something and don’t want to take that hourly break.

Used to use workrave or whatever it was back in the day, eventually moved to a simple pomodoro timer, these days it’s so engrained in me I don’t have to use any timers

The think about Aerons is that they come in... I think 3 diff sizes. I had to find the right size for me (i.e. my butt. haha!).

ah. I felt like I was always sliding out of it

A, B, C -> bigger

hehe.

I’m short and I have short legs

so it’s hard to find a chair that works for me

maybe I should try to see if the Aeron A works for me

I just wish they were not so darned expensive.

Also... They are not exactly warm and comfortable during the winter.

We were fitted for ours when I had mine.

I’ve got a $100 chair from Staples that I find more comfortable

I found a used one of these for $40

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZN7B52/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_apip_ieqHkfGid2pQJ

It is almost like a massage chair. If it doesn’t work I plan to try a massage chair but it gives the impression u are not being alert.

I sat on a ball for a long time too

I tried the ball but it didn’t help that much

Standing desk has really helped the most

But founder is concerned others will get envious even if I bring my own in

https://www.natlawreview.com/article/can-your-employees-think-their-feet-analyzing-standing-desk-trend-through-lens-ada

Honestly though, an Autonomous desk is like <$300... if the others want them it’s not the end of the world.

And, you know, if you have chiropractic benefits those cost more than the desks do

I use it mostly only when I am screensharing the IDE via Google Meet or WebRTC

that's kindof weird...

While I understand the cost arguments, even if the desks cost $1000 per person what is the value in employee morale, productivity, and satisfaction? This is the same argument that companies like to use for why they buy crappy Dell laptops, crummy monitors, and open floor plan seating areas. Saving $20/person/month by not having offices just isn’t worth it in the long-run, but everyone is so focused on next quarter’s numbers that they’ve forgotten about next decade’s employees. Why do we keep seeing all these postings for senior positions? Because A) senior folks don’t put up with the guff as long and B) they can show up and make a difference faster (or at least that’s the perception) It’s short-sighted, narrow-minded, and just a bad decision-making. God forbid you should bring in your own desk and chair and make everyone else want to be comfortable and happy too; it could bring about the end of the free market, economies could crumble, and the heat death of the universe would be brought forward by a few millennia! Or you could just have happy, comfortable, productive, workers...

I should probably just take my grumpy butt back to #ranting and shout at the sky over there instead of bothering you good people... :shaking-angry-fist:

As someone who’s traded their home office for a hotel+conference room for the week... I don’t miss the open floor plans and uncomfortable seating world.

I feel ya. I don't like stupid or bad ideas that make some one money but at least I can understand the motivation (MONEY!) I will never understand stupid or bad ideas that make things less effective and less productive and lose a company money (like the stuff you're describing). I mean, WHAT'S THE UPSIDE?!?!?

value engineering will be the death of us

Open office is terrible. I would gladly trade it for the old cube farm.

Not to your overall point, but Dell makes some fantastic laptops. I'm very fond of my fully specked out Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition with Ubuntu Linux. Perfect in nearly every way and every bit as good as a Apple laptop as a dev.

I totally read this as Open Office (software) and was about to fly to defend its virtue. But yes, I agree on open office spaces. They suck and do not work at all for me as a developer in my mid 30s who has to focus on hard problems that matter.

I am coming up on 4 yrs fully remote. Not sure I could function in an open office anymore. I think a lot of times some of these office basics like chairs, desks, etc., boil down to :moneybag: in the short term. There’s so much cost to starting businesses that it might be hard to see the benefit of spending more. My wife’s in HR and previous company she tried to convince owners that hiring at a higher hourly rate for staff would bring in better candidates that would actually want to stay longer than 6 months and save her hours every month continually sourcing for replacements. It was a hard sell

Companies (or, specifically, “Leadership”) frequently underestimate the cost of turnover - both from a lost knowledge and experience perspective, but also from a ‘what it costs to find-and-hire a new person’ perspective

My wife's in HR and previous company she tried to convince owners that hiring at a higher hourly rate for staff would bring in better candidates that would actually want to stay longer than 6 month I find a bigger issue is the bird in the hand approach companies take. Especially larger companies. They tend to cap compensation increases by some across the board rate. This almost always guarantees that any college hires will go elsewhere after a year or two. They’d be better off saying What would I have to offer to replace this person? and giving that instead of having the cost of hiring someone and the lost knowledge.

CTO: "You can't put a price on institutional knowledge!" CFO: "Well, this engineer wants a 20% raise or he's leaving, so I think we have a price for that particular bit of knowledge"

HR: “This engineer just resigned. He had an offer at 25%”

Has anyone had success with taking an offer to a current employer and getting them to match/beat the offer? My impression is that most current employers are like, "Bye, Felicia"

At least, that's what a recruiter once told me

Last offer I had, current employer asked to beat it

only in academia

In 2001 I was a contractor for a company that decided to get rid of all of the contractors in order to make their numbers for the quarter. What they (apparently) didn’t know was that I was the only UNIX Administrator on the East Coast, and had been holding together their production operations by myself (I had repeatedly escalated the risk, and my boss knew about the issue, it just didn’t seem to matter). So, anyway, I got laid off on Friday and got a call from the Call Center on Saturday afternoon that a customer service wasn’t available. I told them that I no longer had a contract with Company X and wasn’t going to be able to help them out (while simultaneously verifying that I still had access to the VPN and to the systems). They called my Company X boss who called me, and I told him that it wouldn’t be fair to the Consulting Company if I were to just take the work without them having a contract negotiated (while simultaneously informing my Consulting Company boss that my rate had just doubled). At the end of the day, getting laid off doubled my salary in a weekend, and by the end of the first week they had started the search for the team that would eventually replace me… (The Company X boss is one of the two bosses I’ve ever had that I wouldn’t ever work with again…)

I have never gone to a company and asked them to beat an offer, but I have had companies give me a substantial bump when I told them that I was unhappy and I was going to start looking for my next role… I try never to surprise my boss with a resignation…

:like_a_boss:

I’ve been on the other end. Had several people leave as a manager that I was not sorry to see go and then 1 that did. I was able to get the CEO to sign off on matching her new $$$. I threatened to start looking if they didn’t match her

I am disinclined to tell a boss that I was going to start looking for a new job. I had an internship that let me go after telling them that I got a call about a potential new role. I remain a bit skittish about telling an employer that I am looking to this day

I’ve never taken a counter and don’t think it’s a good idea pretty much ever. The reasons you’re leaving aren’t changing just because they say good things to keep you around in a counter meeting.

if you are in pycharm, it automatically puts you into the right virtual environment

well this person really did like her job but was vastly underpaid. I had mentioned this as a flight risk but no one really did anything. We right-sized the other flight risk right after that too. Both are still with the company and have gotten promotions.

But certainly that may be a rarity.

i've had my employer beat better offers a couple times. common advice is that it usually doesn't work out, but i wound up staying for ~2 more years in one case and it worked out fine. incidentally, the company that made the original offer got all mad and gave me the "don't come crying to us, we don't hire people in the future that turn us down now..." shtick when i told them i was staying, but they came back ~a year later ready to make another offer

From my perspective, telling a boss that I’m thinking about leaving is just the ‘adult’ thing to do - it’s a hard conversation to have but it’s usually been worthwhile. A couple of times I’ve had bosses who got pouty or even angry because of ‘loyalty’, but it has worked out for me more times than it hasn’t… . It’s not always just a money thing, sometimes I’ve just wound up in a role that I didn’t enjoy or that I didn’t want to do, and they’ve been able to adjust my role to make it so I stayed for a while longer. Some day I’m going to land at a company that is actually trying to take care of it’s people and I’m going to stay there forever. 20 years down, 20 to go, and I remain optimistic!

I think letting them know that you are going to start looking is a very different situation than accepting a counter after recieving another offer

I have never accepted a counter offer after receiving another offer. Partly because by that point I’ve already explained to my current company that I’m unhappy, and if I it wasn’t important to fix it before I went looking I have no faith that they’ll want to keep it fixed in the future. Once I start looking we’re pretty much done…

I did something similar. Told my boss I was unhappy driving into the office (Cumming > Buckhead) and working on a product that I knew was going to be termed in 2 years. Got put in contact with a different group and moved to the current position.

Good companies that want to take care of you aren’t easy to find. Often though it’s about your direct manager and their direct manager

Good bosses will find a way to keep employees they see as valuable, even if it means moving them into a different group. Bad bosses will see it as ‘treasonous’ and work to maintain their empire…

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

^relevant reading on the attitudes of the latter bosses

Anyone have experience setting up and hosting 1 (ideally 2+) WordPress (regular, not multisite) on Digital Ocean with EasyEngine, SpinupWP, ServerPilot or CloudWays?

First time I've had a windows machine in years. My wifi seems to disconnect randomly but my mac never had this issue. My router is downstairs directly below me so I'm not sure if it's a signal issue :thinking_face: . Anyone else see a difference in connection reliability between mac/windows?

macs have supernaturally good wifi. Couldn't tell you why.

^^I have experienced this, even when running Linux on Mac hardware… I think the drivers for OS X on Apple hardware might just be tuned within an inch of their lives…

David, are you on the 2.4 GHz band or the 5GHz band? I don't know what router you have, but some routers will move you around from band-to-band. Sometimes that will make the Windows PC cry.

Yeah, if you're doing the "same ssid for multiple bands" I've also had that cause trouble

Someone near my house has an SSID of "PrettyFlyForAWifi"

@rajaw That's a good question...

hehe.. mine on my cell phone is

FBI van 267

The most interesting SSID near my parents house is “Disconnected” and “Disconnected Guest”

haha! Good one!

Near my house there is a “TellMyWiFiLoveHer”

lol

“Free Public WiFi”

it’s password protected

There's a "Winterfell 2.4" near me

Mine is "TheDoctor". All of my device names are Doctor Who themed when we name them.

So I named my 60ghz band on the router “T.A.R.D.I.S.“. And just like a tardis, it only shows up sometimes because not all devices support that frequency.

@rajaw To answer your earlier question the router shows my device is connected at 5ghz

My windows machine is named "Kuzco" though, because "no touchy"

I don't think 5ghz travels through walls very well

Might want to try to force it onto 2.4

So where do yall buy meds for your animals

Since I guess petco bought the place I liked and is now closing it

https://aquanerd.com/2019/01/petco-is-closing-dr-fosters-smith.html

damn you, petco

i mostly just got ripped off by my vet's preferred online pharmacy

Yeah our vet's pricing is ~60% higher than buying online was

TIL that buying online is so much cheaper

:disappointed:

Ok, that’s a REALLY old article

And the Petco over here on Cobb is open like right nopw

Right, but I can't buy the same stuff online for cheap from Petco like I could from the subsidiary they just closed

:stuck_out_tongue:

Nah. Chewy all the way. :smile:

That or Amazon, really

We've never looked at their meds, just toys, hmm

We have pet insurance, but it’s for like… car accidents only, not day-to-day.

catastrophic pet insurance?

^ we have that too. For catastrophic stuff. Not normal shenanigans.

What I want help with is regular vet visits, not your piddlin’ “only in case of a moon misalignment” insurance

I think a checkup and two regularly-scheduled shots was $250 last month

i use banfield for my two dogs

This guy….

Yes, that’s his car seat he’s in.

isn’t chewy owned by petco?

dunno

PetSmart looks like

Petco didn’t actually go out of business, tho

Dude you read the article wrong. lol

The article was "petco bought this company and is now shuttering it"

That's all

ah, no

chewy is owned by petsmart

wait

please tell me more about this dog seat

Prices between 1 year ago on dr and mrs foster smith, and now on petco (who bought them) are 49.95 + 20% off -> 65

UGH

Carseat

wrqps around the seat high and low, and has a collar hasp to anchor him in the seat

Do they make them in quadruple XL

omg

yes

i must have it

amazon?

@jski for real meds, like the prozac and gabapentin -> https://www.roadrunnerpharmacy.com/

Cool, I'll take a look. Just looking at preventative heartworm/flea right now.

if it requires a prescription, that's where we get the stuff from.

We had pet insurance from Pet Smart

We had a dog that turned out to have epilepsy (as many purebreeds, and dogs periods do). That insurance was totally not worth it

(the epilepsy did not increase the insurance costs, even though they suggest all sorts of expensive observation, etc to deal with what's essentially a non-treatable condition in many cases)

No other real problems other than a skin thing ever happened to that dog, so YMMV

>That insurance was totally not worth it That's what pops to mind when I hear the term "pet insurance". Of course, I've only been a pet owner for a year now, so what do I know?

Like I own my own business, so am ready for more income/expense variability than some people, so perhaps insurance is different for you. But we still had plenty of random expenses.

If anyone else is a local ham, I just got my technician last Monday!

That's interesting! I remember my parents doing that in the 80s

Do they still have you learn morse?

Not that I’m aware of.

…I feel like we may need to hold an intervention for @ajkelly… Too many interests, I’m concerned he’s going to burst something… drones, magic, games, ham radio…

at least not for technician

Topher - you forgot cycling

and IoT

Apologies, I am not being sarcastic/sardonic. We had what you'd expect insurance to help with (medical issues in a pet) and it did not.

I can only list the ones that I’m aware of

plus, you know, a spouse and a job and…

hmm. maybe I should add twins to that list.

It was not worth the cost of the insurance.

:rolling_on_the_floor_laughing:

…did you have babies when I wasn’t paying attention?

belated congrats

I suppose, technically, that would be your wife… but… the sentiment remains the same!

nope - that’s how I can have so many interests.

nice

@mj_langford thanks! I was surprised how little prep you need to get the license and get on the air. Definitely a steep learning curve lol.

Wait, I thought the congrats were for babies, and then I was all, "there's no way they could enforce needing a license for babies"

It was, I misunderstood.

baby without a license? That’s a steep fine

I got my concealed baby license last week

ham radio - license required driving a car - license required carrying a gun - license required creating a human being - whatever

you need a license to conceal babies now?

yes

concealing a baby without a valid license is technically a kidnapping

It’s likely that some parents conceal their babies

I would like them to be licensed so we can find them and stop them

Babies can do serious damage. Imagine sitting next to one on a plane on a honeymoon trip to the UK (this is an “I think you should leave” reference)

Mmm... 10 minutes in the freezer and the wax paper comes of perfectly on a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. :slightly_smiling_face: Who is Reese anyway?? haha!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._B._Reese

77 years old

that’s a long lifespan for the man who invented covering peanu t butter with chocolate

yes, I googled that right I after I posted..... 16 kids... whew!

Youwzers!

8 boys and 8 girls.

on the other hand, totally a story of ‘if at first you don’t succeed’… This is a guy who definitely worked for what he got.