In better news, my little Boxster is finally on BAT, after jumping through a lot of hoops. I listed it there to make Jacks BAT price theory come to reality.
Don't get me started on the copy, it's likely written by a team of minimum wage copywriters, err, auction specialists, who are here to make the auction go smoothly, like the 100,000 previous smooth auctions.
Looks very clean and I suspect it will go higher than I want to pay, but I put my hat in the ring for now. I’ll bid more as it progresses. If nothing else, it will give you one more bidder creating interest.
This is typical in any hobby community whether it be cars or something else. There's some know-it-alls that love to be the first to chime in with some sort of concern or issue, and they're in such a rush to have their comment seen that they don't even read the ad.
Absolutely typical. For fun, click on your bidders’ BaT name to see their history. On the auction I won, there was a bidder who had bid on 50 cars, usually just with a single bid, and had never won an auction.
I love the guys who have never bid or bid joke amounts asking for videos of the car getting the snot beat out of it or criticizing videos that don’t have the car being driven like an ape on the public roads. Go ahead and win the auction and beat on the car as much as you want.
Listen, that guy is banging on me for not selling the car to his "buddy." His "buddy" sent me a small deposit and then wanted me to do an oil analysis as he was too cheap to pay for a bore scope himself. The oil has 300 miles on it, an analysis would show nothing. His "buddy" wanted me to sit on the car for 3 weeks until he was satisfied with the engine, and could come down to pick it up. It was absurd.
I always found it odd that air travel was not demonized during the scamdemic. If it was a source of rampant transmissions, I believe it would have been publicized as such because the scamsters would have been unable to keep it under wraps. And if the metal tube/cattle car wasn’t a source of transmission, why was that? Surely the lizard people would not have missed an opportunity to restrict the mobility of the masses. But nope, crickets….
We’re in the office Mon/Tues and WFH the rest of the week. My work is cyclical. Sometimes I’m very busy, sometimes I’m between projects or waiting on others or just don’t much to do. The worst part of my job by far is having a slow Mon/Tues and having to pretend to look busy in the office when there really isn’t much going on.
"My dad said that when he worked for the Post Office, he'd never stare out the window in the morning, because then he wouldn't have anything to do in the afternoon."
The second company I had out of college hired me to create a new role that was requested by the client we were servicing. It ended up turning into just creating a bunch of analytics that only a few people wanted, but were too busy to look at, and that the rest of the people who were supposed to use them didn't care about.
I automated the entire processes using VBA as well as automating a bunch of grunt work another guy on the team was doing. Coupled with the fact that my boss regularly split a handle of tequila with his wife over the course of two nights, EVERY two nights, and rolled in at 11 am and left at 1, it was pretty cushy and allowed me to do whatever I wanted.
I think I rode my road bike for 4 hours a day starting every afternoon for an entire year during that job.
I'm signficantly more productive. Sitting in an open plan office, surrounded by walk-ups and random noise, reduces my effectiveness to about 2.5 Accentures or 3.5 Wipros.
Many many moons ago I had a territory that included the Southern portion of Vancouver Island, and I had to take an early morning hour and a half ferry ride to get there with enough time to see my accounts. I would leave my car on the vehicle deck and go upstairs to the cafeteria to have some breakfast and work on my laptop. The cafeteria was often packed to capacity with busloads of asian tourists jabbering excitedly in their native tongues. I would park myself right in the middle of them and work productively for the entire journey. No distractions cause I had no clue what they were talking about!
Instead of noise cancelling headphones, try regular headphones and play white noise/some other kind of sound blocker. I find this to be a far more effective solution. That's what I do at home because my parents constantly have the television blaring at all hours of the day. Keeps me sane.
A colleague of mine has been working for my department a few months longer than I, and we both hit 30 years this year.
“Dave” is a decent worker in his early sixties..going on about twelve years-old! Social graces of a cow! Has some hearing loss from way too much loud music in his youth, so you can hear him talking on the phone through a good part of our office, and for whatever reason, I’ve always found his voice akin to someone talking with sandpaper in their throat! Additionally, he will talk about every ache and pain and malady to the point that nobody has any sympathy for him! Not to mention that because he’s going to doctors often, he won’t get checked out for the constant hacking cough which drives the office nuts, because he doesn’t want to hear what bad news a diagnosis might portend!
I worked an IT help desk, but our IT department had a locked door (and you needed another key to get to the servers) which meant we didn't have to deal with folks bothering us while we worked.
For people who can buckle down and be effective anywhere, skipping the commute is great.
Obviously it wont work for everyone. I have not known anyone including high performers not to coast *sometime* with the possible exception of repeat entrepreneurs!
In my next job I am absolutely willing to go into an office. Potentially even 5 days a week. IF it increases productivity and something related to the WORK is actually gained by my presence. I would go to work in Martin Shkreli's stench-filled NYC office rental - but most offices don't deserve my presence, or the presence of any enlightened poster on this board.
A few years ago when I still went to an office, I had started building my lounge in an unused room in a dingy sub-basement. Got to know of this empty room by talking to my buddy in facilities. Brought in a sofa, ping-pong table, old '70s console stereo (next woulda been foosball). This place was the bomb. Creating a fun place to be is key to wanting to be away from home for work. Home has too many un-fun distractions, I'm wearing out my couch too fast, and it's too hard to play ping-pong by myself. I'd like to go to an office 2 days a week.
I was 40% work from home prior to 2020 so the transition to full time WFH was pretty easy. My productivity isn't any lower than it was in the office, I just don't have to pretend to look busy when I'm waiting for processes to complete anymore. The nature of my IT job is such that being in the office isn't necessary. My meetings are still going to be Teams calls with coworkers located all over the US and Canada. My boss is still going to be in a different state. There may be some socialization / community advantages to being in the office, but they are hugely outweighed by the hour plus bus commute each way followed by the half mile biohazard hopscotch past the illegal homeless encampments to get to the open plan office.
Can't wait for more covid fuckery from people who are desperately hoping everyone forgot how retarded they were with mandates and such. Obviously, the ones with enough power will do what they want regardless and face zero repercussions like last time. They enacted some incredibly stupid ideas at the college I attend, and they just might pull a stunt like that again as the student body is about 70% Indian students who won't dare to rase a fuss. Every covid "policy" they had was utterly useless, by the way.
There are STILL people wearing masks, even in their cars. I seem them often enough and I'm out in the freaking COUNTRY. They still bleat about how deadly it is.
I think this time around a LOT of people are going to end up shot. Because all of the sane people have just had it with the fuckery.
New Hampshire is good, Maine is too except in the little progressive-adjacent pockets where, unfortunately, I have a second place. I bet they're busting out the masks big time going to Hannafords.
I spend my week days in a section of the Toronto area that's literally a Chinese vassal state. Looking around in public id say it's often a 50% mask rate. Though it could just be for the stench.
Canadians, I well recall my Canadian travel app. I was called once by the Canadian Covid Gestapo when I returned to the US did I know I had been randomly selected for a screening and why didn't I show up?
I was doing 75 in a 55 a few days ago on my way back from work, and i got passed by a nissan rouge going 90+, but the driver was still wearing a mask. As if driving a soulless crossover isnt a death sentence enough, I think driving at 40 above the speed limit has a FAR greater chance of killing you than the the coof, but i guess that guy thought otherwise
Go ahead make my day, just when I was looking forward to yet another winter in God’s anti chamber, also know as The Free State of Florida. You have now said our winter will be filled with sickness and death. Gee thanks for making my day,,,,, I better hurry and grab a Culver’s hamburger before the sickness and death set in…,
I’m done with anything because the J&J vaccine (/sarc) is no longer available, and I don’t trust the mRNA jabs. I’ve had it at least twice, most recently in early March, and I recovered fully, as in no cough and post-nasal drip, in about half the time of the last go-round in May of 2021.
I'm no Gasly fan, but the in car audio after he crossed the finish is fantastic. He sounds like my 17-year-old son with his buddies after a win. F1 is too cold and businesslike. We need more teenage, toxically-masculine, flying chest bump enthusiasm.
I sent an email to the company running NASCAR's drive for diversity an email asking why they excluded Jews from their program for ethnic minority and female drivers as to my knowledge there's never been a Jewish driver competing in any of NASCAR's top series, nor have any team owners been Jewish.
or more of the complete nonchalance and no-fucks-given of Kimi Raikkonen. I always got the sense that if he hadn't landed in F1, he'd have been racing for pink slips and beers on the streets of Helsinki.
The F1 race was spectacular and it was great fun watching my two favorite drivers demonstrate their clear superiority over the rest of the field.
Then the IndyCar race. I feel like I wasted 2 1/2 hours watching the guy who records every fill up and current fuel mileage in a pocket sized spiral notebook.
If all the prosecutions can't keep Trump off ballots at least they still have covid in their back pocket.
You continue to push the 'Daniel Ricardo is just a face for TV time' bullshit, and I will continue laughing as you're uninformed. Lawson was SECONDS off of Tsunoda in qualifying, the next race will tell more.
I do think Stroll's time in the car is limited, and transitioning to a managerial role within the team would make sense. He'd have still gotten further than the likes of Horner and Wolff, and look where they are now.
Before this race, I was on the VER/RIC + TSU/LAW for 2024 hype train, but I have no idea what happens now. Max clearly like Danny, and if he returned to pre-McLaren form, he'd be exactly the right driver: fast, marketable, and content with being #2. You know, what Checo is supposed to be, but not isn't good enough. Verstappen made up 10 seconds on Periz in a few laps!
One has to wonder what returning to the job of Max's valet, after a very public declaration that he would do no such thing, does for the racing mindset.
Only so far as there are overtaking possibilities, either based on conditions or created out of exceptional talent, and the team gets a similar result (+/- 1 position) out of the worse qualifier (see Magnussen/Hulk). Scores of drivers have been canned for their poor qualifying because it matters when the cars are 17m wide on a track that is only 20m wide (/s).
Most are nostalgic about those for the engines and the sounds. I miss them for their change in direction and the WAY they made those lap times happen. And it is my professional opinion that those cars from 2004-2005 were faster than the present day turds. One simple thing often overlooked by the green zealots who're trash talking the older cars is the differences in tires.
Daddy Stroll is never going to fire his son— the way to get him out of the car somewhat gracefully is moving him to management. The interesting thing will be how long it takes for that to occur.
It doesn't matter, he was as prepared as possible for a backup driver. The only additional misfortune he had was Riccardo chewing up the practice at Zandvoort before making a rookie mistake.
I sat next to a Merc F1 development driver at a 4 hour dinner tonight.
Among the many things we discussed, he said that the most important thing for pace in the actual car is time in the actual car, particularly the sheer number of tire (tyre) sets the drivers get to go through. Merc has a $15MM “simulator,” and it’s still a poor substitute for teaching someone how to drive the car; rather, it’s a tool for tweaking the physical car, not a training exercise.
Oh the covidiocy is so delightful! Same fairy tale, just dig it up and run it again!
I saw a “news” article the other day ominously titled “You Should Be Worried About the New Covid Varant.” Wow thank you so much for telling me what to think!
The manipulation is so obvious and naked, totally shameless.
I always like to be first to welcome our new overlords of whatever variety, to demonstrate my obeisance most strongly, but in this case, I'll have to settle for second best worshipper of the religion of the moment.
I read a long article by the WSJ the other day breathlessly on the new Covid variant right up to the point where they said “uhh we haven’t actually determined if it’s more or less dangerous than the previous variants but we know it’s different!!!” Green jacket gold jacket who gives a shit.
I played the game to go along and get along last time around, masks and all that. This time it’s fuck you no. Some mom at a sports event last weekend was talking about little Jimmy has a runny nose and “well he tested negative for Covid” and I just look at her and said “you’re still testing for that? How quaint” and walked away. Man fuck that.
Even my fifteen minute commute one-way is infuriating because of the damned construction project that, if it lasts into the middle of October, will have gone on for FIVE YEARS! 🤦♂️
I'm still laughing at the people who said 'Work from home is here to stay!' Obviously none of these people had been born until 2 or 3 years after 9/11. That or could it be none of them can remember what they had for dinner last night?
We went through this exact same thing after 9/11 where business travel was impossible for a month, and damn near it for about a year. Where everyone was afraid to go into the office - because you know, every office building was a target for the terrorists!
And suddenly telecommuting was everywhere and we were all told 'Work from home is here to stay!'
Companies literally spent tens of millions of dollars on this.
Yet it all went away, and in less than 2 years.
Some of it is because, yes, there are managers who want to see the smiling faces of their serfs... err employees. Some of it is because they have the offices sitting there empty and it's still on the balance sheet.
But the truth is that there are things that work better when everyone is in the same room/building. Say what you want, but as an engineer/lead/manager I've seen it. You need people to talk to each other, daily, or they won't interface except when they absolutely have to. In Tech (of all places) work from home is very counter productive. Because no one will talk to each other. Your product will become shit, and you'll be forced to open up a division in a country where people don't do that, because your people at home are pretty much worthless (seen it).
So yeah, everyone thinks it's about ego, but it's not. Work from home for most companies, especially tech/engineering companies just doesn't work. You need your people to talk to each other. You NEED that dynamic and those office relationships.
While we've always had two incomes, if I couldn't cover the bills on what I brought in, I told them they had to offer me more, or I'd look somewhere else.
I just refused to put up with their BS. My attitude, for a long time now, has always been:
I'm doing YOU a favor by working here. Oddly enough, that worked.
Then you don't go there. Honestly, those are not companies you want to work for anymore, unless maybe you've got a business degree. STEM is dead in this country. I don't know why they're encouraging people to get degrees in it (especially women) you'll just get screwed.
I just checked the office occupancy stats for Chicago. It’s at 50%, pretty much the same as last year. Ridership on the Chicagoland commuter rail system which covers 6 counties, is at 52% of 2019 ridership.
If these numbers have not come back close to 2019 numbers by now, when are they coming back? Other cities are similar, per Kastle Data Systems occupancy data.
I think there’s a lot of spin on WFH out there. For the record, I disliked WFH when I still had a job pre-pandemic.
I totally agree. The kind of (physical) product development teams I want to build and have found the most success with can only be built at least partially in person. Pull, flow, and accountability come more naturally when the team works together and sees each other’s faces. There’s collaboration time and heads down personal work time. The former requires coming into the office and building real team relationships.
Oh absolutely! All ball bearings and automation these days...
I had a conversation with a self employed marketing consultant last weekend. He looked at me strange when I said that I go to factories for my job...made a comment about blue collar people. Yes, Mr Man Bun, human beings still build things out of metal and fasteners and physical parts.
In the wake of a major update to our primary software that took out an important tool and sidelined a whole department, I started to wonder if computer code actually exists. If it's only in the computer in electronic form, is it even real?
Back when I was working for a major tech company, the four main engineers used to go out for lunch together fairly often.
One day over lunch they had a fairly 'ridiculous' and 'impossible' idea.
They kept discussing it over lunch.
Then they started building prototypes together on their lunch hour.
Then they showed it to the company, who green lit it immediately and probably made a 100 billion dollars off of it (we made over a billion the first year it went out).
And it only happened because they got to talking about something. During their time when they weren't head down and working.
Yah well, I work on unofficial stuff constantly. Jira has taught us to simultaneously manage both the official and unofficial tasks. The official ones are to endlessly discuss and argue about points and "blockers", while the unofficial ones secretly get work done. It's glorious.
So much better than the old days, where we just worked and reported once a week. Everyone knew who actually did work, and who didn't. The ones who didn't got fired. Now the people who can spin good Agile BS are the heroes. But let's face it, it's less about getting good work done than it is endless BILLING, and as a contractor, I can't completely disagree with that. ;-)
that's how bryan crow and i came up with our patent on variable valve timing in '64. of course we were discussing it over lunch at bahamas speed weeks!
I often wonder where the staunch return to office types work. Because the job I had during Covid I was the FPA guy for about $700M worth of manufacturing sites spread over 4 or 5 domestic sites and another dozen countries. A typical day involved me sitting on the train for an hour, walking into my office, closing the door, and then getting on the phone with Ohio or Belgium or China or whatever. I’d nod to some random person at the office microwave at lunch time, maybe pee next to some HR guy or whatever, and then go home. Ive been effectively “collaborating” with people world wide my whole career, I don’t need to transport myself to an alternate location inside my same metro region daily to do it. It’s nonsensical.
They should GTFO of NoVa. It's gotten absurd. Loudon moreso than anywhere. Just avoid MoCo. Its origin is actually in the Bible in Genesis. God created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. People forget about the eight day. On the eighth day he took a massive dump and that is what we now call Montgomery County MD.
At Honda i would drive 90 minutes a day to a plant where i spent 4 of 5 days working with resources in Longmont, CO... Indiana... Ontario... Alabama...
I'm the type that needs to be in the office. I'm a manufacturing engineer and I can't build stuff (or help people build stuff) from my living room or my garage. I have to be here in-person to help folks solve problems and come up with solutions on how we're going to build stuff. I tried 1 day/week at home early in Covid and it didn't go very well. The Zoom meetings went ok, of course, but I've gotta do real work too.
Just for clarity, I'm not suggesting that people make hamburgers from home... just pointing out that if you spend most of the day on a keyboard, you could probably do that from home.
Yeah, that's totally reasonable. In fact, an internal recruiter at a factory several states away said the manager was almost begging me to come to work for them. It was in a very bad remote rural area, plus I realized that industrial automation was going to require met to be physically present in factories.
The issue is with work that does NOT need to be on-site. Especially with employers who do not provide a quiet and comfortable work environment, or are located in a remote rural area or the ghetto.
I still remember the day my old consulting company shitcanned 25 plus help desk people individually, for cause, on the same day. Because the client wanted to shed some expenses in the last quarter of the FY.
The consultant mill H1Bs are useless, but we hire a bunch of H1Bs who are great. We only recruit from US universities. The H1Bs have fewer options than the natives, so they work harder for less money. Getting a degree from a US university filters out the ones with no English skills and the straight up liars.
To be fair, the Congressman who sponsored the bill creating the H-1B was on "60 Minutes" very quickly, maybe within 2 years, admitting that the program was evil and claiming that it was not what he intended.
But the corporations obviously love it. And Trump is RACIST RACIST RACIST for saying what every engineer has known for a long time.
They're already banging the drum to staff the big Ohio semiconductor facility that was financed as a matter of national security and, I think, partly by the "Inflation Reduction Act" and intended to be a jobs program to some degree with the "OH NOES HOW WILL WE STAFF THIS? WE NEEDS TO FILL IT WITH 100% FOREIGN NATIONALS" BS.
I learned to take notes during the phone interview of exact answers to specific questions. Then I make them come in for a face to face and ask the same questions. If I get mostly the same answer, cool. Totally different answers no where as good? After I kicked the guy out of my office I told the HR people that we were being scammed by the agency and not to ever send me anything from them again. Thankfully, HR usually listened - they didn't like being scammed either.
But I used to know details about all of the tech colleges in India and I'd ASK about their alma mater during the interview. That sorted a lot of people out very quickly. But I figured if EDS was gonna force me to hire foreigners, I'd do my research to get ones that could at least do the work.
That's why the H1B people HAVE to be in the office, they need serious supervision.
And it depends on the company. If it's a company that doesn't give a shit about quality (Say google, Microsoft, the government) yeah, they'll stack it with H1B's.
If they're in a business that cares? Well 10 years ago when I gave tech the middle finger and left, things were different.
I'm a mechanical engineering manager at a company that produces laboratory automation equipment. We have mechanical, electrical, and software engineers in house as well as a full manufacturing floor and machine shop. For every one day that I need to spend on the floor, there are at least two days I'm sitting at my desk writing and reviewing documents. I don't need to be in the office every day to do this job. For our electrical engineers, that ratio is even worse (or better depending on your opinion of WFH) where they sit and design for days, then wait for prototypes, then test. Software engineers don't need to be in the office at all and can be just as effective at home as they are taking up space in the office.
I was a senior in high school in 2001 so wasn't affected by travel restrictions as a result of 9/11 but I do know things are VERY different now than they were 22 years ago. You can't deny how much the internet has grown and how online collaboration tools have exploded and become commonplace amongst a lot of industries or how programming as an industry has changed since 2001! At a very basic level, all you need from an employee is for them to produce at a level that all parties agree is appropriate for their compensation. If an employee can output just as much work at home as they can in the office then why should anyone give a shit?
How else are they going to make sure the employees aren't HAVING SEX or FUN on company time? That sort of stuff is reserved for the EXECS who SHTUP their secretaries on a lunch break!
Fuck Git and triple fuck GitHub, which is rapidly approaching status as a single point of failure for much of the computing world. I was a ClearCase admin for years and that program was evil but at least you ran it locally.
I find it easier in a lot of cases to work collaboratively over tech than in person.
Tech: let me share my screen so you can see what I’m talking about.
In person: let’s all hunch over my laptop or monitor and then when you want to show something we hunch over your laptop or walk to your desk. Or we fight for one of 5 conference rooms, 3 of which have TVs or Clickshare hubs that don’t work, 1 hasn’t had an HDMI cord to plug into for 6 months, and the other we can’t find a remote to switch it back to Input 1. And when we figure it all out, Joe at the plant has to dial in anyways so he can see what we’re talking about, we might as well all call into the Teams meeting while sitting next to each other and then play “who didn’t go on mute and caused the echo loop”?
The world couldn’t have gotten through what happened beginning in 2020 without the advances in the Internet and computing power that occurred in the intervening two decades, as far as working remotely! IIRC, Remote Desktop wasn’t a thing in the Windows 2000 days! And videoconferencing was the stuff of Star Trek fantasy!
As a grad student, my desktop Sun was much less powerful than the newer laboratory Suns, so I used X Windows to edit, compile, and run my code on a lab box using my "office" keyboard and display. I think this capability was introduced in the 1980s.
The world didn't get through what happened in 2020. We'll be paying for that for the rest of our lives. The governments did it because they knew they could get away with it. If work from home hadn't been an option, then all the power they grabbed they wouldn't have been able to, because the 'quarantine' lie would never have flown.
As far as I can tell this is the first professional race that Lawson has participated in that he did not win on debut. A feat he accomplished in F2, DTM and Super Formula. For what it’s worth, I rate him very highly and think it would be nuts for him not to be at AT next year, I just hope it’s not at the expense of Yuki.
If a fella wanted an affordable FWD car for autocross and rallycross that was readily available, easy to work on, with cheap and plentiful parts support that is not extremely old, what are the choices? Ideally a domestic built in US or Canada, but that is somewhat flexible.
The AutoX requirement eliminates Fiesta. I sense that Civics got very hard to work on post-2005. Is Focus probably the best choice here?
Thanks, but outside of maybe Oregon and California, it's not easy to find cars that old, especially ones which were purchased as daily drivers rather than a Ferrari that has has spent its entire life in a carcoon.
And if I end up wrecking it and need a replacement in 3 years, then it's going to be even more difficult. Focus ran through MY2018.
Was there any particular reason for suggesting 02-ish versus newer or the EG/EK generations that Drunkonunleaded suggested? They're probably all older than I'd prefer, but I have read that the newer ones have extremely crowded engine bays.
I didn't suggest newer based on your comment about the difficulty of working on them previously so I figured those were out. Also, anecdotally, I feel like there are more of that 7th gen in halfway decent shape at this point compared to the 8th gen. However, an 8th gen Si is on my bucket list so if you can find one I think it is worth buying.
EG/EKs are great but there just aren't many left in decent shape, and if you were to go the Si route, absurdly priced.
Someone else suggested a Fit and that is a great idea that I didn't think of.
Yeah...I don't know if they're "easy to work on" (I've seen some really bad decisions on other Honda products) or what their stability margin is, but perhaps worth looking into.
The Mazda3 has been a solid competitor in H-Stock since its release. The Mazda2 is a great option, but there are not a ton of them out there so I'm not sure what parts support is like. The Civic is the wrong Honda, a Fit is what you want.
Stick shift Mazda3 or Focus? The whole Power-SHIT automatic transmission fiasco seems to have dinged their resale values nicely so if you're shopping for a (admittedly, rare) stick shift one then maybe you can save a few bucks. By most accounts the chassis and engine is very decent.
Golf? 2017 MK7 1.8 Wolfsburg was my first car. If it could talk I’d be in jail, and I’m amazed that in 50,000 miles of pure abuse I didn’t do more than drag the bumper off with a rock in a random field at some rural WV park. But I loved it. And wish I still had it. Would likely sell my 2022 A4 tomorrow in exchange for the Golf. You wouldn’t regret one.
Thanks. Not totally out of consideration, but this project is the "low" in my personal "High-Low Mix, and modern Golfs were relatively rare and not known for cheap or easy DIY repairs.
Friend had a Focus SVT. Go fast parts were hard to get 10+ years ago. Things like HD front wheel bearings and such were nonexistent. Same for 1st generation Neons. You may be able to find a decent SRT-4 though.
If I were starting over, I’d probably just go with a “boring” EG/EK Civic. Parts are still everywhere for them and they are dead simple to work on.
The 2014 Civic I bought to start autocross and track driving with has been easy enough to work on. The GTI I replaced it with, much less so. The M235i I replaced *that* with is easy to wrench on but parts are expensive and it can drop a 4 figure repair bill with absolutely no warning (but damn it is fun to drive).
We're having a similar shift back to in office with managers ranging from clamoring for it to not caring because their team gets their work done.
I'm looking forward to my 35 minute, each way, commute during which time I will be able to em, erm, uhm. Think? Listen to NPR?
The flipside being I can absolutely understand if people have gone fishing and been unresponsive when they were needed in the middle of the day - but if that's the sort of job you have then that's the expectation, no?
As to racing - Jake Gagne locked in his class win for Superbike in MotoAmerica with a solid three race performance in Pittsburgh thanks to Cameron Beaubier's continued misfortune in the series. Unfortunately for the season the top competitors for Gagne each suffered bad wrecks and injuries and what had been incredible competition came down to more of a last man standing scenario. Still, I hope it's a glimmer of what to expect in upcoming years as seen people duke it out and do a lot of passing is what brings excitement to the sport.
MotoAmerica's Twins Cup provides solid competition with a three way fight for first amongst the young guns and a pair of manufacturers - Aprilia and Yamaha. Rocco Landers appears to be undergoing an attitude adjustment late season which is healthy for him. In the meantime Blake Davis and Gus Rodio are making for a good show and all three are playing to the strengths of their bikes and styles.
Supersport finally has competition up front at the end of the season but Xavi Fores is almost certainly going to lock up the title (I think technically it's still up for grabs but not really). Stefano Mesa and Tyler Scott took wins but it is too late in the season.
MotoGP's Brad Binder and KTM continue to show serious speed and talent but unable to quite keep up with Perfect Pecco Bagnaia who took first in the sprint and the race with Binder in second. Some of this is due to tire management, or so I hear, with the pressure penalties, grip issues, and the like all coming into play. Jorge Martin is still in the running for the title, but a mistake in qualifying cost him starting position and it was all he could do to salvage points. This lead to highly aggressive riding and incidents which put a number of riders out of competition. He will have a long lap penalty this weekend which will hurt his efforts.
Ducati figured something out for Bagnaia's launch control which nullified KTMs big advantage on starts.
Marc Marquez finally finished a race and Honda's woes are still alive and well - maybe they'll manage something next season.
Hey, what's everybody think about Rahal Letterman Lanigan daring to give Juri Yips a shot at Indy racing after he (gasp!) said a BAD WORD last year? It's only for the last two races of the season...then, if the Karens don't whine too loudly, maybe Yips will be back in 2024.
Ironically, Yips is replacing Conor Daly, who was dumped by sponsor Eli Lilly a few years ago because his dad said a bad word in an interview before Conor was even born.
PAINFUL to read. Comes off like someone free-associating words while using crystal meth and masturbating to interracial porn in the middle of a Khmer Rouge struggle session.
Rahal has history of sticking drivers who have stepped on their dicks in a seat. Ferrucci, Daly, now this guy. I wish one of Ganassi's engineers would yell out the wrong word in the wrong place.
Now that's funny. Remember when Truesports had Adrian Newey back in the day? Maybe RLL can entice him back... (That's a joke - obviously they can't afford him)
Kyle Larson's suspension got way more press than a pregnant Black lady getting falsely arrested for a carjacking because the Detroit PD uses facial recognition software that can't tell one Black person from another. This story was in and out of the news cycle in 72 hours:
That seems like the definition of "institutional racism" and a way bigger deal than some race driver dropping an N-bomb, or a career criminal fighting the cops and getting shot. But I'm 93.75% White, so I guess I don't understand how racial outrage works.
When Bobby took over Jaguar he guaranteed Newey's services. Unfortunately Ron Dennis wasn't about to let that happen. That was the beginning of the end for Rahal in F1.
You're burying the lede here, which is that the Detroit Police actually arrested someone for carjacking. I suspect they did the pregnant woman because they figured she would be easiest to subdue.
Amusingly, someone figured out that this problem is usually caused by using inferior cameras to train the AI software. If the camera cannot determine true contrast between darker skin and a darker background, you get false positives. The same thing happened on some game console a few years ago where they had a game where you could put your face into the game, darker skin gave very weird results. The reason was the system had been trained in brightly lit rooms, not darker ones and the built in camera couldn’t pick up the contrast.
Also, someone figured out that certain cosmetics, when applied thickly, interfere with IR facial recognition cameras.
In better news, my little Boxster is finally on BAT, after jumping through a lot of hoops. I listed it there to make Jacks BAT price theory come to reality.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2007-porsche-boxster-s-29/
That’s nice. GLWA!
SHARP
I dig it.
Be honest, was the copy written by chatgpt? It forgot to mention that Jack was going to cover the maintenance. Car look great, best of luck.
Don't get me started on the copy, it's likely written by a team of minimum wage copywriters, err, auction specialists, who are here to make the auction go smoothly, like the 100,000 previous smooth auctions.
BAT’s house style involves liberal use of the passive voice - as in, ‘the engine was reportedly rebuilt’! By whom I always want to ask!
Starting salary is $70k. Really.
Hell, I could do that in my free time! (I have no discernable writing skill)
Looks very clean and I suspect it will go higher than I want to pay, but I put my hat in the ring for now. I’ll bid more as it progresses. If nothing else, it will give you one more bidder creating interest.
I've watched the market for years, now I'm a market maker!
From the BaT comments "DME overrev report? is it possible to schedule a PPI?"
Man what a bunch of nerds. Imagine the absolute horror these guys would experience shopping for something like a used WRX or Neon SRT-4
The dude didn't even read the description, I sprang for the DME and a bore scope.
This is typical in any hobby community whether it be cars or something else. There's some know-it-alls that love to be the first to chime in with some sort of concern or issue, and they're in such a rush to have their comment seen that they don't even read the ad.
NA Miata Short Nose Crank cranks.
"I am very smart!"
Absolutely typical. For fun, click on your bidders’ BaT name to see their history. On the auction I won, there was a bidder who had bid on 50 cars, usually just with a single bid, and had never won an auction.
A tip to BaT bidders. Click on the people you are bidding against for a car to see who is potentially a serious bidder.
What bizarre behavior.
I love the guys who have never bid or bid joke amounts asking for videos of the car getting the snot beat out of it or criticizing videos that don’t have the car being driven like an ape on the public roads. Go ahead and win the auction and beat on the car as much as you want.
Listen, that guy is banging on me for not selling the car to his "buddy." His "buddy" sent me a small deposit and then wanted me to do an oil analysis as he was too cheap to pay for a bore scope himself. The oil has 300 miles on it, an analysis would show nothing. His "buddy" wanted me to sit on the car for 3 weeks until he was satisfied with the engine, and could come down to pick it up. It was absurd.
Ha, I already ⭐ it earlier today so....
I always found it odd that air travel was not demonized during the scamdemic. If it was a source of rampant transmissions, I believe it would have been publicized as such because the scamsters would have been unable to keep it under wraps. And if the metal tube/cattle car wasn’t a source of transmission, why was that? Surely the lizard people would not have missed an opportunity to restrict the mobility of the masses. But nope, crickets….
They don't all have access to private jets so they focused on closing the playgrounds.
We’re in the office Mon/Tues and WFH the rest of the week. My work is cyclical. Sometimes I’m very busy, sometimes I’m between projects or waiting on others or just don’t much to do. The worst part of my job by far is having a slow Mon/Tues and having to pretend to look busy in the office when there really isn’t much going on.
"My dad said that when he worked for the Post Office, he'd never stare out the window in the morning, because then he wouldn't have anything to do in the afternoon."
- Mike Hamar
The Red Green Show
The second company I had out of college hired me to create a new role that was requested by the client we were servicing. It ended up turning into just creating a bunch of analytics that only a few people wanted, but were too busy to look at, and that the rest of the people who were supposed to use them didn't care about.
I automated the entire processes using VBA as well as automating a bunch of grunt work another guy on the team was doing. Coupled with the fact that my boss regularly split a handle of tequila with his wife over the course of two nights, EVERY two nights, and rolled in at 11 am and left at 1, it was pretty cushy and allowed me to do whatever I wanted.
I think I rode my road bike for 4 hours a day starting every afternoon for an entire year during that job.
"Dear Diary...Jackpot!"
VBA really was great for that sort of stuff.
visual basic macros.
that is a FLEX
Lotus 1-2-3 keystroke macros.
I'm signficantly more productive. Sitting in an open plan office, surrounded by walk-ups and random noise, reduces my effectiveness to about 2.5 Accentures or 3.5 Wipros.
I wonder how many people would accept a 10 hour work day in exchange for not commuting. That might help make up for it.
Oh, who am i kidding. The visa crowd is already working 10 and putting in for 8. That's the expectation!
Hey, do they stay in the office till 8 and then go drinking with the boss, too?
I don't know what that means, but I'm not a fan of random noise either. Granted, I'm hardly efficient nor particularly sharp on my best day.
Many many moons ago I had a territory that included the Southern portion of Vancouver Island, and I had to take an early morning hour and a half ferry ride to get there with enough time to see my accounts. I would leave my car on the vehicle deck and go upstairs to the cafeteria to have some breakfast and work on my laptop. The cafeteria was often packed to capacity with busloads of asian tourists jabbering excitedly in their native tongues. I would park myself right in the middle of them and work productively for the entire journey. No distractions cause I had no clue what they were talking about!
Absolutely
Some people are MORE productive at home than in an Open Plan Office with broken air conditioning.
I really don’t want to hear about your mother’s shingles, nor do I want to wear noise canceling headphones all day.
Instead of noise cancelling headphones, try regular headphones and play white noise/some other kind of sound blocker. I find this to be a far more effective solution. That's what I do at home because my parents constantly have the television blaring at all hours of the day. Keeps me sane.
Mostly.
A colleague of mine has been working for my department a few months longer than I, and we both hit 30 years this year.
“Dave” is a decent worker in his early sixties..going on about twelve years-old! Social graces of a cow! Has some hearing loss from way too much loud music in his youth, so you can hear him talking on the phone through a good part of our office, and for whatever reason, I’ve always found his voice akin to someone talking with sandpaper in their throat! Additionally, he will talk about every ache and pain and malady to the point that nobody has any sympathy for him! Not to mention that because he’s going to doctors often, he won’t get checked out for the constant hacking cough which drives the office nuts, because he doesn’t want to hear what bad news a diagnosis might portend!
My last cubicle at the open plan office was right next to the Help Desk Call Center. Don't miss the office.
I worked an IT help desk, but our IT department had a locked door (and you needed another key to get to the servers) which meant we didn't have to deal with folks bothering us while we worked.
This is a great point.
For people who can buckle down and be effective anywhere, skipping the commute is great.
Obviously it wont work for everyone. I have not known anyone including high performers not to coast *sometime* with the possible exception of repeat entrepreneurs!
In my next job I am absolutely willing to go into an office. Potentially even 5 days a week. IF it increases productivity and something related to the WORK is actually gained by my presence. I would go to work in Martin Shkreli's stench-filled NYC office rental - but most offices don't deserve my presence, or the presence of any enlightened poster on this board.
A few years ago when I still went to an office, I had started building my lounge in an unused room in a dingy sub-basement. Got to know of this empty room by talking to my buddy in facilities. Brought in a sofa, ping-pong table, old '70s console stereo (next woulda been foosball). This place was the bomb. Creating a fun place to be is key to wanting to be away from home for work. Home has too many un-fun distractions, I'm wearing out my couch too fast, and it's too hard to play ping-pong by myself. I'd like to go to an office 2 days a week.
I was 40% work from home prior to 2020 so the transition to full time WFH was pretty easy. My productivity isn't any lower than it was in the office, I just don't have to pretend to look busy when I'm waiting for processes to complete anymore. The nature of my IT job is such that being in the office isn't necessary. My meetings are still going to be Teams calls with coworkers located all over the US and Canada. My boss is still going to be in a different state. There may be some socialization / community advantages to being in the office, but they are hugely outweighed by the hour plus bus commute each way followed by the half mile biohazard hopscotch past the illegal homeless encampments to get to the open plan office.
Can't wait for more covid fuckery from people who are desperately hoping everyone forgot how retarded they were with mandates and such. Obviously, the ones with enough power will do what they want regardless and face zero repercussions like last time. They enacted some incredibly stupid ideas at the college I attend, and they just might pull a stunt like that again as the student body is about 70% Indian students who won't dare to rase a fuss. Every covid "policy" they had was utterly useless, by the way.
Yes, "can't wait..."
There are STILL people wearing masks, even in their cars. I seem them often enough and I'm out in the freaking COUNTRY. They still bleat about how deadly it is.
I think this time around a LOT of people are going to end up shot. Because all of the sane people have just had it with the fuckery.
Where do you live? I haven't seen a mask here in New Hampshire in over a year.
Texas
In TEXAS?
WTF?
We got a LOT of californians here now
Hope you're not letting them vote. Those people can't connect dots.
Here in leftyville-by-Puget-Sound I see them all the frickin' time. I am sure to socially distance myself from them on the theory that they are sick.
New Hampshire is good, Maine is too except in the little progressive-adjacent pockets where, unfortunately, I have a second place. I bet they're busting out the masks big time going to Hannafords.
Did COVID kill the free cookie for kinds at Hannafords?
I spend my week days in a section of the Toronto area that's literally a Chinese vassal state. Looking around in public id say it's often a 50% mask rate. Though it could just be for the stench.
Mask rate probably coincides with the Chinese vassal state part. How different are the governments, really?
Where? I just spent a week in Markham and it was like 85percent Asian. Maybe 20 percent masks.
There’s a lot of masked banditos on the Canadian left coast, especially in recent weeks. Feels like this thing is ramping up again....
Canadians, I well recall my Canadian travel app. I was called once by the Canadian Covid Gestapo when I returned to the US did I know I had been randomly selected for a screening and why didn't I show up?
"Wear you mask for others," they say.
"Hey lads! Let's give this nancy a fucking good kicking!" I respond.
Gotta love seeing people wear masks in their cars.
Alone.
the truly hopeless
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONfvD8hbofo&pp=ygUVTWVkaWFiZWFyIHNhZmV0eSBtYXNr
Maybe not shot, but fucked with, yes.
No. I mean shot. They're gonna be a lot more violent this time around. Because they're being encouraged to be that way.
I still occasionally see single car occupants wearing masks too - insanity.
I honestly think that they like the brain dead feeling that they get from it.
Let me guess--they’re also parked in the left lane and won’t budge from the speed limit, oblivious to the line forming behind them! 🤬
They're not oblivious, they're enjoying it.
Virtue signaling or something. Bongino calls them “face diapers.”
I was doing 75 in a 55 a few days ago on my way back from work, and i got passed by a nissan rouge going 90+, but the driver was still wearing a mask. As if driving a soulless crossover isnt a death sentence enough, I think driving at 40 above the speed limit has a FAR greater chance of killing you than the the coof, but i guess that guy thought otherwise
I got passed once by a Nissan Rogue.
At about 90 as well.
It had a decal of Steve Harvey on the door with a radio station's call letters, advertising his show.
With two rather space-efficient black women inside, wildly bebopping along to the music.
An unexpected pick-me-up, to be sure.
Scott Adams made the excellent point that the first corporation to adopt a mask mandate should get the Bud Light boycott treatment. This would work.
On target, as Scott usually is.
Watching right now.
they tried enforcing mask mandates in my college and everyone went out to party anyways lmao
Go ahead make my day, just when I was looking forward to yet another winter in God’s anti chamber, also know as The Free State of Florida. You have now said our winter will be filled with sickness and death. Gee thanks for making my day,,,,, I better hurry and grab a Culver’s hamburger before the sickness and death set in…,
I'm survived you (or anyone else) survived the last one!
Yes, it'll be Covid that kills them.
Not the diabetes or heart disease or cancer or surgical complications or the three strokes or having alive since the first FDR Administration.
Covid.
I’m done with anything because the J&J vaccine (/sarc) is no longer available, and I don’t trust the mRNA jabs. I’ve had it at least twice, most recently in early March, and I recovered fully, as in no cough and post-nasal drip, in about half the time of the last go-round in May of 2021.
I'm sorry for your loses. Forcing people to stay in hospitals and putting them on ventilators probably was a net harm.
David Spade & Dana Carvey nailed it:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oH5tk98Pnc4
I'm no Gasly fan, but the in car audio after he crossed the finish is fantastic. He sounds like my 17-year-old son with his buddies after a win. F1 is too cold and businesslike. We need more teenage, toxically-masculine, flying chest bump enthusiasm.
https://youtu.be/Xv8ivbn9Nm8?si=NKwLosDdL4rIJ_mX
LET'S GOOOOOOOO!
Same with NASCAR. It hasn't been any good since the days when drivers looked like Jerry Reed and got into fistfights after the races.
Pre spec cars. The phantom yellow flags to bunch up the field were bad as well. WWE!
Three guarantees in life are death, taxes, and yellow flag during the last 15 laps of a NASCAR race.
Jerry Reed was awesome.
Pretty good guitarist!
I stopped paying attention to NASCAR when they found the noose. I just can't support noose shenanigans.
Ah yes the garage door pull that required 15 FBI agents to investigate
Fun times
Oh come on. It wasn't a real noose.
IT NEVER IS.
There's nothing funny about a slipknot on a rolling door!
I sent an email to the company running NASCAR's drive for diversity an email asking why they excluded Jews from their program for ethnic minority and female drivers as to my knowledge there's never been a Jewish driver competing in any of NASCAR's top series, nor have any team owners been Jewish.
Hoist 'em on their own rhetorical petards I say.
And raced wearing wingtips and smoked during cautions!
I will always applaud a Jerry Reed reference.
Just go check out your local oval track! All the good stuff in spades.
or more of the complete nonchalance and no-fucks-given of Kimi Raikkonen. I always got the sense that if he hadn't landed in F1, he'd have been racing for pink slips and beers on the streets of Helsinki.
Kimi's "I was having a shit" answer to Martin Brundle's question was exactly what I was thinking of!
I hate the fact that I have to be physically in the office for my mind to shift into Work mode.
“Now I'm switchin' my mind back into freak mode”
Got a flag for it and everything!
The F1 race was spectacular and it was great fun watching my two favorite drivers demonstrate their clear superiority over the rest of the field.
Then the IndyCar race. I feel like I wasted 2 1/2 hours watching the guy who records every fill up and current fuel mileage in a pocket sized spiral notebook.
If all the prosecutions can't keep Trump off ballots at least they still have covid in their back pocket.
Yep, getting ready to hide grandpa POTUS in the basement again.
Uh, Bunker Boy isn't President anymore .
-Nate
You mean like he’s just a puppet of 44?
Or something.
Are you suggesting that Obama sticks his hand up men's asses?!
Next you'll be telling me Michelle is really a man herself.
Geez.
The Biden family is like the people who bury Grandma in the backyard so they can keep cashing the Social Security checks.
Once Joey flat lines Hunter should be very concerned about all those powerful people he shit talked.
Laughed out loud!
eeeYup.
Never was.
I've been calling him Resident Biden during this dark interregnum.
"...the guy who records every fill up and current fuel mileage in a pocket sized spiral notebook"
Your last paragraph is funny too!
"This is Aloysius Pferdscheisse. His hobbies include measuring."
You continue to push the 'Daniel Ricardo is just a face for TV time' bullshit, and I will continue laughing as you're uninformed. Lawson was SECONDS off of Tsunoda in qualifying, the next race will tell more.
I do think Stroll's time in the car is limited, and transitioning to a managerial role within the team would make sense. He'd have still gotten further than the likes of Horner and Wolff, and look where they are now.
Before this race, I was on the VER/RIC + TSU/LAW for 2024 hype train, but I have no idea what happens now. Max clearly like Danny, and if he returned to pre-McLaren form, he'd be exactly the right driver: fast, marketable, and content with being #2. You know, what Checo is supposed to be, but not isn't good enough. Verstappen made up 10 seconds on Periz in a few laps!
One has to wonder what returning to the job of Max's valet, after a very public declaration that he would do no such thing, does for the racing mindset.
There are some rumblings even from other drivers on the grid that the two red bull cars aren't alike. But Sergio isn't helping his case at all.
Well said
By sped in the pits you mean hydroplaned into the pits.
Qualifying isn't racing.
He was also brand new to the car.
Only so far as there are overtaking possibilities, either based on conditions or created out of exceptional talent, and the team gets a similar result (+/- 1 position) out of the worse qualifier (see Magnussen/Hulk). Scores of drivers have been canned for their poor qualifying because it matters when the cars are 17m wide on a track that is only 20m wide (/s).
Man, I can't wait for the return of the darty little V10 era F1 cars.
Too bad that'll never happen.
Most are nostalgic about those for the engines and the sounds. I miss them for their change in direction and the WAY they made those lap times happen. And it is my professional opinion that those cars from 2004-2005 were faster than the present day turds. One simple thing often overlooked by the green zealots who're trash talking the older cars is the differences in tires.
🤣
Daddy Stroll is never going to fire his son— the way to get him out of the car somewhat gracefully is moving him to management. The interesting thing will be how long it takes for that to occur.
How many laps did he have in the car before qualifying?
As many as it takes to get a super license, plus unlimited miles in the sim plus unlimited miles in older cars.
He wasn't exactly yanked from a formula ford and thrown in the deep end.
Also why I said the next race will be the real gauge.
It's my understanding that he has the license from F2 plus tests in the previous AT. And he has been driving the highly dissimilar RB19.
It doesn't matter, he was as prepared as possible for a backup driver. The only additional misfortune he had was Riccardo chewing up the practice at Zandvoort before making a rookie mistake.
I sat next to a Merc F1 development driver at a 4 hour dinner tonight.
Among the many things we discussed, he said that the most important thing for pace in the actual car is time in the actual car, particularly the sheer number of tire (tyre) sets the drivers get to go through. Merc has a $15MM “simulator,” and it’s still a poor substitute for teaching someone how to drive the car; rather, it’s a tool for tweaking the physical car, not a training exercise.
None of this is a revelation to me.
Oh the covidiocy is so delightful! Same fairy tale, just dig it up and run it again!
I saw a “news” article the other day ominously titled “You Should Be Worried About the New Covid Varant.” Wow thank you so much for telling me what to think!
The manipulation is so obvious and naked, totally shameless.
"Would you say it's time for people to panic?"
"Yes I would, Kent."
I, for one, welcome our new viral overlords.
Who knew The Simpsons would predict so much of the modern world.
"Kuala Lum...Kuala Lu.....France!"
I always like to be first to welcome our new overlords of whatever variety, to demonstrate my obeisance most strongly, but in this case, I'll have to settle for second best worshipper of the religion of the moment.
I read a long article by the WSJ the other day breathlessly on the new Covid variant right up to the point where they said “uhh we haven’t actually determined if it’s more or less dangerous than the previous variants but we know it’s different!!!” Green jacket gold jacket who gives a shit.
I played the game to go along and get along last time around, masks and all that. This time it’s fuck you no. Some mom at a sports event last weekend was talking about little Jimmy has a runny nose and “well he tested negative for Covid” and I just look at her and said “you’re still testing for that? How quaint” and walked away. Man fuck that.
I really need WFH, sadly.
"What good is money if you can't inspire terror in your fellow man?" - Mr. Burns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1qHhMNL0rg&t=191s
I'm perfectly fine going into an office. What I'm not fine with is having to sit in commuter traffic for two hours or MORE per day!
Ultimate luxury
It's good to keep work and home separate. The "dream" of WFH is not as fun as it seemed early on. Grass is always greener syndrome.
Brave New World, man! House-poor AND two hours from work!
You be grateful to your betters!
That was me for 15 years, in progressively larger houses demanded by my then wife. And no kids for the four bedrooms!
Nice ocean views though.
Even my fifteen minute commute one-way is infuriating because of the damned construction project that, if it lasts into the middle of October, will have gone on for FIVE YEARS! 🤦♂️
In Houston, the Berlin Wall has gone up and come down but we still haven’t finished the Gulf Freeway.
On the office thing:
I'm still laughing at the people who said 'Work from home is here to stay!' Obviously none of these people had been born until 2 or 3 years after 9/11. That or could it be none of them can remember what they had for dinner last night?
We went through this exact same thing after 9/11 where business travel was impossible for a month, and damn near it for about a year. Where everyone was afraid to go into the office - because you know, every office building was a target for the terrorists!
And suddenly telecommuting was everywhere and we were all told 'Work from home is here to stay!'
Companies literally spent tens of millions of dollars on this.
Yet it all went away, and in less than 2 years.
Some of it is because, yes, there are managers who want to see the smiling faces of their serfs... err employees. Some of it is because they have the offices sitting there empty and it's still on the balance sheet.
But the truth is that there are things that work better when everyone is in the same room/building. Say what you want, but as an engineer/lead/manager I've seen it. You need people to talk to each other, daily, or they won't interface except when they absolutely have to. In Tech (of all places) work from home is very counter productive. Because no one will talk to each other. Your product will become shit, and you'll be forced to open up a division in a country where people don't do that, because your people at home are pretty much worthless (seen it).
So yeah, everyone thinks it's about ego, but it's not. Work from home for most companies, especially tech/engineering companies just doesn't work. You need your people to talk to each other. You NEED that dynamic and those office relationships.
This breaks down because companies:
a) will not pay enough for workers to afford housing near the office
b) do not want long-term employees, so "near the office" changes every 18 - 36 months
If the company isn't paying you enough, why are you working there?
Some companies do want it, some don't. That's always been the world of business.
The "market rate" require two full-time incomes for one household. I am single and have a needy parent (yay divorce!).
(the "two full-time incomes" is also hard if they both have to be near each other)
While we've always had two incomes, if I couldn't cover the bills on what I brought in, I told them they had to offer me more, or I'd look somewhere else.
I just refused to put up with their BS. My attitude, for a long time now, has always been:
I'm doing YOU a favor by working here. Oddly enough, that worked.
If you look at the markets that IBM and Amazon have been "encouraging" their people to move to... very few jobs pay that well.
Yeah, I really should have said "the market rate is intended to allow 4 H1-B's to share a 2-bedroom apartment".
Then you don't go there. Honestly, those are not companies you want to work for anymore, unless maybe you've got a business degree. STEM is dead in this country. I don't know why they're encouraging people to get degrees in it (especially women) you'll just get screwed.
Only members of the Laptop Class could believe WFH was forever. After all, they're all at least three steps removed from productive activity.
You're not supposed to say this out loud.
Oh dear! Is my face red!
I just checked the office occupancy stats for Chicago. It’s at 50%, pretty much the same as last year. Ridership on the Chicagoland commuter rail system which covers 6 counties, is at 52% of 2019 ridership.
If these numbers have not come back close to 2019 numbers by now, when are they coming back? Other cities are similar, per Kastle Data Systems occupancy data.
I think there’s a lot of spin on WFH out there. For the record, I disliked WFH when I still had a job pre-pandemic.
So never.
I’m so glad I no longer work in downtown Chicago. Spent my entire career there.
I totally agree. The kind of (physical) product development teams I want to build and have found the most success with can only be built at least partially in person. Pull, flow, and accountability come more naturally when the team works together and sees each other’s faces. There’s collaboration time and heads down personal work time. The former requires coming into the office and building real team relationships.
We live in a world where productive things like manufacturing and customer service are done by robots.
Oh absolutely! All ball bearings and automation these days...
I had a conversation with a self employed marketing consultant last weekend. He looked at me strange when I said that I go to factories for my job...made a comment about blue collar people. Yes, Mr Man Bun, human beings still build things out of metal and fasteners and physical parts.
In the wake of a major update to our primary software that took out an important tool and sidelined a whole department, I started to wonder if computer code actually exists. If it's only in the computer in electronic form, is it even real?
Back when I was working for a major tech company, the four main engineers used to go out for lunch together fairly often.
One day over lunch they had a fairly 'ridiculous' and 'impossible' idea.
They kept discussing it over lunch.
Then they started building prototypes together on their lunch hour.
Then they showed it to the company, who green lit it immediately and probably made a 100 billion dollars off of it (we made over a billion the first year it went out).
And it only happened because they got to talking about something. During their time when they weren't head down and working.
Under modern management practices, working on Stories that are not part of the Sprint is grounds for termination.
Yah well, I work on unofficial stuff constantly. Jira has taught us to simultaneously manage both the official and unofficial tasks. The official ones are to endlessly discuss and argue about points and "blockers", while the unofficial ones secretly get work done. It's glorious.
So much better than the old days, where we just worked and reported once a week. Everyone knew who actually did work, and who didn't. The ones who didn't got fired. Now the people who can spin good Agile BS are the heroes. But let's face it, it's less about getting good work done than it is endless BILLING, and as a contractor, I can't completely disagree with that. ;-)
Using Agile should be grounds for termination!
I wish it was taken that seriously. There are so many interruptions I don't know why we bother planning sprints.
Fleming discovered penicillin because he didn't follow the rules.
Bread mold????? Next they will be pushing nickel a dose horse paste when there are perfectly useless newly patented thousands per dose meds.
How much did the engineers get paid for it? I suspect i know the answer.
Anyway, lunches are for mistresses, not fellow engineers.
They got paid. Company did take care of them.
Nowadays? Yeah, things would be different.
that's how bryan crow and i came up with our patent on variable valve timing in '64. of course we were discussing it over lunch at bahamas speed weeks!
Really? How did it work?
I swear I won't steal your idea.
I often wonder where the staunch return to office types work. Because the job I had during Covid I was the FPA guy for about $700M worth of manufacturing sites spread over 4 or 5 domestic sites and another dozen countries. A typical day involved me sitting on the train for an hour, walking into my office, closing the door, and then getting on the phone with Ohio or Belgium or China or whatever. I’d nod to some random person at the office microwave at lunch time, maybe pee next to some HR guy or whatever, and then go home. Ive been effectively “collaborating” with people world wide my whole career, I don’t need to transport myself to an alternate location inside my same metro region daily to do it. It’s nonsensical.
They should GTFO of NoVa. It's gotten absurd. Loudon moreso than anywhere. Just avoid MoCo. Its origin is actually in the Bible in Genesis. God created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. People forget about the eight day. On the eighth day he took a massive dump and that is what we now call Montgomery County MD.
Hey!
At Honda i would drive 90 minutes a day to a plant where i spent 4 of 5 days working with resources in Longmont, CO... Indiana... Ontario... Alabama...
I'm the type that needs to be in the office. I'm a manufacturing engineer and I can't build stuff (or help people build stuff) from my living room or my garage. I have to be here in-person to help folks solve problems and come up with solutions on how we're going to build stuff. I tried 1 day/week at home early in Covid and it didn't go very well. The Zoom meetings went ok, of course, but I've gotta do real work too.
Just for clarity, I'm not suggesting that people make hamburgers from home... just pointing out that if you spend most of the day on a keyboard, you could probably do that from home.
Yeah, that's totally reasonable. In fact, an internal recruiter at a factory several states away said the manager was almost begging me to come to work for them. It was in a very bad remote rural area, plus I realized that industrial automation was going to require met to be physically present in factories.
The issue is with work that does NOT need to be on-site. Especially with employers who do not provide a quiet and comfortable work environment, or are located in a remote rural area or the ghetto.
Short of Jeff Toobin hijinks, metoo shenanigans are less likely with everyone at home.
Perhaps they will wait for commercial real estate to bottom out before pushing workers back in.
I'd suggest that nobody really cares how productive their tech people are. If they did, the average IT office wouldn't be entirely H1B.
Or how good they are, either.
But Jack, think of the savings! Sure, they take longer and aren't as good but they'll work for pennies on the dollar!
Nothing could go wrong!
And we can shitcan their asses posthaste to raise the stock price ANY TIME WE WANT!
Pump and dump, but with people, and not sexually!
I still remember the day my old consulting company shitcanned 25 plus help desk people individually, for cause, on the same day. Because the client wanted to shed some expenses in the last quarter of the FY.
The consultant mill H1Bs are useless, but we hire a bunch of H1Bs who are great. We only recruit from US universities. The H1Bs have fewer options than the natives, so they work harder for less money. Getting a degree from a US university filters out the ones with no English skills and the straight up liars.
It benefits property owners: 2x the people fighting over 1x the real estate.
To be fair, the Congressman who sponsored the bill creating the H-1B was on "60 Minutes" very quickly, maybe within 2 years, admitting that the program was evil and claiming that it was not what he intended.
But the corporations obviously love it. And Trump is RACIST RACIST RACIST for saying what every engineer has known for a long time.
They're already banging the drum to staff the big Ohio semiconductor facility that was financed as a matter of national security and, I think, partly by the "Inflation Reduction Act" and intended to be a jobs program to some degree with the "OH NOES HOW WILL WE STAFF THIS? WE NEEDS TO FILL IT WITH 100% FOREIGN NATIONALS" BS.
>Getting a degree from a US university filters out the ones with no English skills and the straight up liars.
It doesn't filter out the egregious cheaters though.
And they still can’t speak English that most English speakers could understand!
FFS, it’s “that,” and not “dart!” 🙄🙄🤦♂️🤦♂️
"The H1Bs have fewer options than the natives, so they work harder for less money"
Sounds like everyone gets screwed except the corp
Is this news to you?
Yup, they treat 'em like slaves in the bay area - literally.
I learned to take notes during the phone interview of exact answers to specific questions. Then I make them come in for a face to face and ask the same questions. If I get mostly the same answer, cool. Totally different answers no where as good? After I kicked the guy out of my office I told the HR people that we were being scammed by the agency and not to ever send me anything from them again. Thankfully, HR usually listened - they didn't like being scammed either.
But I used to know details about all of the tech colleges in India and I'd ASK about their alma mater during the interview. That sorted a lot of people out very quickly. But I figured if EDS was gonna force me to hire foreigners, I'd do my research to get ones that could at least do the work.
For some reason EDS hated me doing that.
Clever! I'm going to do that.
Excellent tip.
That's why the H1B people HAVE to be in the office, they need serious supervision.
And it depends on the company. If it's a company that doesn't give a shit about quality (Say google, Microsoft, the government) yeah, they'll stack it with H1B's.
If they're in a business that cares? Well 10 years ago when I gave tech the middle finger and left, things were different.
No Western English speakers (or even Asian English speakers) can begin to understand them, that’s for sure!
I'm a mechanical engineering manager at a company that produces laboratory automation equipment. We have mechanical, electrical, and software engineers in house as well as a full manufacturing floor and machine shop. For every one day that I need to spend on the floor, there are at least two days I'm sitting at my desk writing and reviewing documents. I don't need to be in the office every day to do this job. For our electrical engineers, that ratio is even worse (or better depending on your opinion of WFH) where they sit and design for days, then wait for prototypes, then test. Software engineers don't need to be in the office at all and can be just as effective at home as they are taking up space in the office.
I was a senior in high school in 2001 so wasn't affected by travel restrictions as a result of 9/11 but I do know things are VERY different now than they were 22 years ago. You can't deny how much the internet has grown and how online collaboration tools have exploded and become commonplace amongst a lot of industries or how programming as an industry has changed since 2001! At a very basic level, all you need from an employee is for them to produce at a level that all parties agree is appropriate for their compensation. If an employee can output just as much work at home as they can in the office then why should anyone give a shit?
How else are they going to make sure the employees aren't HAVING SEX or FUN on company time? That sort of stuff is reserved for the EXECS who SHTUP their secretaries on a lunch break!
Just don't get caught lol
If you cheat on your wife with your secretary at work, it's an office affair. If you do it at home, it's just a plain ol' affair...much less exciting!
Hard data time: Although there were predecessors to both, Git was initially released 2005-04-07 and Zoom was released 2011-10-12.
Fuck Git and triple fuck GitHub, which is rapidly approaching status as a single point of failure for much of the computing world. I was a ClearCase admin for years and that program was evil but at least you ran it locally.
Yes, but Git itself is GPL, and you can certainly run GitLab on your own on-premises server:
https://about.gitlab.com/free-trial/?hosted=self-managed
FAQ:
Self-Managed: You host. Download and install GitLab on your own infrastructure or in our public cloud environment. Requires Linux experience.
My previous employer did this, until the admins got tired of it and had us migrate to the SaaS version.
I dislike that Microsoft used GPL'd source code in GitHub to train its AI models.
Git itself is excellent. Agree on GitHub though. As a happy git user, the criticisms I fully agree with are:
1. Git requires you to know too much about how it works to use it well
2. The CLI syntax was built over time and is an inconsistent mess.
I'm curious what you don't like about it
I find it easier in a lot of cases to work collaboratively over tech than in person.
Tech: let me share my screen so you can see what I’m talking about.
In person: let’s all hunch over my laptop or monitor and then when you want to show something we hunch over your laptop or walk to your desk. Or we fight for one of 5 conference rooms, 3 of which have TVs or Clickshare hubs that don’t work, 1 hasn’t had an HDMI cord to plug into for 6 months, and the other we can’t find a remote to switch it back to Input 1. And when we figure it all out, Joe at the plant has to dial in anyways so he can see what we’re talking about, we might as well all call into the Teams meeting while sitting next to each other and then play “who didn’t go on mute and caused the echo loop”?
Interesting as to how WFH started after 9/11.
The world couldn’t have gotten through what happened beginning in 2020 without the advances in the Internet and computing power that occurred in the intervening two decades, as far as working remotely! IIRC, Remote Desktop wasn’t a thing in the Windows 2000 days! And videoconferencing was the stuff of Star Trek fantasy!
As a grad student, my desktop Sun was much less powerful than the newer laboratory Suns, so I used X Windows to edit, compile, and run my code on a lab box using my "office" keyboard and display. I think this capability was introduced in the 1980s.
The world didn't get through what happened in 2020. We'll be paying for that for the rest of our lives. The governments did it because they knew they could get away with it. If work from home hadn't been an option, then all the power they grabbed they wouldn't have been able to, because the 'quarantine' lie would never have flown.
"...or they won't interface except when they absolutely have to." Yup.
As far as I can tell this is the first professional race that Lawson has participated in that he did not win on debut. A feat he accomplished in F2, DTM and Super Formula. For what it’s worth, I rate him very highly and think it would be nuts for him not to be at AT next year, I just hope it’s not at the expense of Yuki.
This is the most fair minded way of looking at his performance, and doesn't involve reducing other drivers to useless caricatures. I agree.
If a fella wanted an affordable FWD car for autocross and rallycross that was readily available, easy to work on, with cheap and plentiful parts support that is not extremely old, what are the choices? Ideally a domestic built in US or Canada, but that is somewhat flexible.
The AutoX requirement eliminates Fiesta. I sense that Civics got very hard to work on post-2005. Is Focus probably the best choice here?
Mostly a thought experiment.
Mini? I think you might be able to use some of the neat factory parts like the bigger brakes/LSD/ transmission/suspension bits.
Thanks, but I don't think that modern BMW products with plastic engine components meet my definition of "easy to work on".
Fair. Mazda 2? How competitive did you want to be in both those disciplines?
Hadn't thought about the Mazda 2...in some years, it shared a platform with the Fiesta, which is unstable.
I think I'm more concerned with being able to DIY everything than with being competitive.
02ish Civic Si?
Thanks, but outside of maybe Oregon and California, it's not easy to find cars that old, especially ones which were purchased as daily drivers rather than a Ferrari that has has spent its entire life in a carcoon.
And if I end up wrecking it and need a replacement in 3 years, then it's going to be even more difficult. Focus ran through MY2018.
Was there any particular reason for suggesting 02-ish versus newer or the EG/EK generations that Drunkonunleaded suggested? They're probably all older than I'd prefer, but I have read that the newer ones have extremely crowded engine bays.
I didn't suggest newer based on your comment about the difficulty of working on them previously so I figured those were out. Also, anecdotally, I feel like there are more of that 7th gen in halfway decent shape at this point compared to the 8th gen. However, an 8th gen Si is on my bucket list so if you can find one I think it is worth buying.
EG/EKs are great but there just aren't many left in decent shape, and if you were to go the Si route, absurdly priced.
Someone else suggested a Fit and that is a great idea that I didn't think of.
Noted; thanks Ross!
Honda Fits are popular with the auto-x ers in the Puget Sound area.
Yeah...I don't know if they're "easy to work on" (I've seen some really bad decisions on other Honda products) or what their stability margin is, but perhaps worth looking into.
The Mazda3 has been a solid competitor in H-Stock since its release. The Mazda2 is a great option, but there are not a ton of them out there so I'm not sure what parts support is like. The Civic is the wrong Honda, a Fit is what you want.
Noted, thanks.
Looks like the 3 is a platform mate with Focus.
It is but between the two I'd go Mazda since they have a great contingency program if you decide to get competitive.
The early 3’s are, but the post Ford divorce ones are all Mazda.
Stick shift Mazda3 or Focus? The whole Power-SHIT automatic transmission fiasco seems to have dinged their resale values nicely so if you're shopping for a (admittedly, rare) stick shift one then maybe you can save a few bucks. By most accounts the chassis and engine is very decent.
Yup, Focus was the front-runner before posting this.
Golf? 2017 MK7 1.8 Wolfsburg was my first car. If it could talk I’d be in jail, and I’m amazed that in 50,000 miles of pure abuse I didn’t do more than drag the bumper off with a rock in a random field at some rural WV park. But I loved it. And wish I still had it. Would likely sell my 2022 A4 tomorrow in exchange for the Golf. You wouldn’t regret one.
Thanks. Not totally out of consideration, but this project is the "low" in my personal "High-Low Mix, and modern Golfs were relatively rare and not known for cheap or easy DIY repairs.
Friend had a Focus SVT. Go fast parts were hard to get 10+ years ago. Things like HD front wheel bearings and such were nonexistent. Same for 1st generation Neons. You may be able to find a decent SRT-4 though.
If I were starting over, I’d probably just go with a “boring” EG/EK Civic. Parts are still everywhere for them and they are dead simple to work on.
Noted. The modernization part of this project might not work out.
The 2014 Civic I bought to start autocross and track driving with has been easy enough to work on. The GTI I replaced it with, much less so. The M235i I replaced *that* with is easy to wrench on but parts are expensive and it can drop a 4 figure repair bill with absolutely no warning (but damn it is fun to drive).
Thanks. As I told Bryce, this project would be about putting some "Low" in my "High-Low mix", so I'm trying to avoid my European "usual suspects".
We're having a similar shift back to in office with managers ranging from clamoring for it to not caring because their team gets their work done.
I'm looking forward to my 35 minute, each way, commute during which time I will be able to em, erm, uhm. Think? Listen to NPR?
The flipside being I can absolutely understand if people have gone fishing and been unresponsive when they were needed in the middle of the day - but if that's the sort of job you have then that's the expectation, no?
As to racing - Jake Gagne locked in his class win for Superbike in MotoAmerica with a solid three race performance in Pittsburgh thanks to Cameron Beaubier's continued misfortune in the series. Unfortunately for the season the top competitors for Gagne each suffered bad wrecks and injuries and what had been incredible competition came down to more of a last man standing scenario. Still, I hope it's a glimmer of what to expect in upcoming years as seen people duke it out and do a lot of passing is what brings excitement to the sport.
MotoAmerica's Twins Cup provides solid competition with a three way fight for first amongst the young guns and a pair of manufacturers - Aprilia and Yamaha. Rocco Landers appears to be undergoing an attitude adjustment late season which is healthy for him. In the meantime Blake Davis and Gus Rodio are making for a good show and all three are playing to the strengths of their bikes and styles.
Supersport finally has competition up front at the end of the season but Xavi Fores is almost certainly going to lock up the title (I think technically it's still up for grabs but not really). Stefano Mesa and Tyler Scott took wins but it is too late in the season.
MotoGP's Brad Binder and KTM continue to show serious speed and talent but unable to quite keep up with Perfect Pecco Bagnaia who took first in the sprint and the race with Binder in second. Some of this is due to tire management, or so I hear, with the pressure penalties, grip issues, and the like all coming into play. Jorge Martin is still in the running for the title, but a mistake in qualifying cost him starting position and it was all he could do to salvage points. This lead to highly aggressive riding and incidents which put a number of riders out of competition. He will have a long lap penalty this weekend which will hurt his efforts.
Ducati figured something out for Bagnaia's launch control which nullified KTMs big advantage on starts.
Marc Marquez finally finished a race and Honda's woes are still alive and well - maybe they'll manage something next season.
Haven’t paid attention to Rocco since he’s in Twins; but my impression of him last year can be summed up with two words: arrogant dick.
Fores is on the brink of that championship— another one for Eraldo Ferracci! My niece and I had a great time at the track (as usual).
The continued maturity of Pecco is impressive to watch.
Hey, what's everybody think about Rahal Letterman Lanigan daring to give Juri Yips a shot at Indy racing after he (gasp!) said a BAD WORD last year? It's only for the last two races of the season...then, if the Karens don't whine too loudly, maybe Yips will be back in 2024.
Ironically, Yips is replacing Conor Daly, who was dumped by sponsor Eli Lilly a few years ago because his dad said a bad word in an interview before Conor was even born.
Marshall Pruett, who is married to a Black Womxn, wrote an article about it yesterday.
Based.
Long article, even for Marshall.
PAINFUL to read. Comes off like someone free-associating words while using crystal meth and masturbating to interracial porn in the middle of a Khmer Rouge struggle session.
Gotta be one of the most vibrant sentences I've ever read.
that is a VERY specific reference...
He takes himself entirely too seriously. I especially hate the MP podcast where he calls every guest “mate” a dozen times per episode. Pure garbage.
Marshall is a genuinely nice guy. I wanted a Jeff Krosnoff sticker for my autocross helmet and he made it happen.
That said, his podcasts are unbearable. Every podcast interviewer should listen to https://pca.st/podcast/58391dc0-f514-012f-a2d0-723c91aeae46
and do what Otis does.
Rahal has history of sticking drivers who have stepped on their dicks in a seat. Ferrucci, Daly, now this guy. I wish one of Ganassi's engineers would yell out the wrong word in the wrong place.
Now that's funny. Remember when Truesports had Adrian Newey back in the day? Maybe RLL can entice him back... (That's a joke - obviously they can't afford him)
Kyle Larson's suspension got way more press than a pregnant Black lady getting falsely arrested for a carjacking because the Detroit PD uses facial recognition software that can't tell one Black person from another. This story was in and out of the news cycle in 72 hours:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/facial-recognition-arrest-detroit-lawsuit-b2389820.html
That seems like the definition of "institutional racism" and a way bigger deal than some race driver dropping an N-bomb, or a career criminal fighting the cops and getting shot. But I'm 93.75% White, so I guess I don't understand how racial outrage works.
When Bobby took over Jaguar he guaranteed Newey's services. Unfortunately Ron Dennis wasn't about to let that happen. That was the beginning of the end for Rahal in F1.
You're burying the lede here, which is that the Detroit Police actually arrested someone for carjacking. I suspect they did the pregnant woman because they figured she would be easiest to subdue.
There's nothing easy about subduing a pregnant woman.
Having lived in Detroit for more than a couple of years, this is horrifyingly accurate and also made me lol.
Amusingly, someone figured out that this problem is usually caused by using inferior cameras to train the AI software. If the camera cannot determine true contrast between darker skin and a darker background, you get false positives. The same thing happened on some game console a few years ago where they had a game where you could put your face into the game, darker skin gave very weird results. The reason was the system had been trained in brightly lit rooms, not darker ones and the built in camera couldn’t pick up the contrast.
Also, someone figured out that certain cosmetics, when applied thickly, interfere with IR facial recognition cameras.