____ @ ____ @infosec.pub

Posts

1

Comments

306

Joined

2 yr. ago

Lord, don't even get me started on NC property insurance. Their solution to increasing rates for many years was to mandate that rates couldn't exceed x, based on what they believed was appropriate.

Protip: It wasn't appropriate. I've been out of that game for long enough now that I don't know if they ever fixed it, but it was bad - basically if you couldn't write a policy within x% of the expected rate, the risk had to be ceded to the state's reinsurance facility, which drastically limited the available coverage.

Home

And no doubt for a bunch of off-brand internet-connected cameras. Or, those are just totally open to the whole world. Glad to see Shodan is still up... Though I'd hoped some mfg would change their practices once it became obvious no one changes the default.

People do that to me at work frequently - I know you have me on speaker, that's fine, but you're in your little private office so no worries...

Nope, Jerry from Billing is sitting there listening to every word, and will jump in and offer "assistance" on topics he knows fuck all about. The person I'm actually trying to assist will of course take Jerry's input over mine... So why didn't you just ask him in the first place?

Was wondering what the actual hell was up with his string of vetoes lately.

Maybe he sees himself as the 2028 Dem nominee and wants to demonstrate he's not an evil socialist to the non-crazy Republicans...

I certainly hope not - any D is better than none, but he's one of those who least align with the collective interests of most.

Yep, those were the two.

Love that you applied a high-tech solution to a very low-tech problem, and it seems to be working well - and that a little stubornness got you a new hobby.

Hope I did not come across judgemental in any way, I'm definitely not. Actually makes a lot of sense to switch gears a bit with hobbies, to avoid boredom and getting stuck in uninteresting patterns over time...

Two hobbies I don’t see combined very often, for no real reason. Curious which you picked up first, always interesting to see how people got to enjoying two disparate things.

Which leads to another hobby…

The “good” news - and your landlord might benefit from hearing this in advance - is that as I understand it, you’ll be paid salary for any shutdown period, after it’s resolved. Could be a meaningful amount of money depending on how long. Making sure the ll understands that could buy you some time, but depends on them.

I’ll assume you don’t qualify for any assistance programs given a gov salary and a second job plus your wife’s income. But…. Check anyway. Some states are rather more generous.

I THINK you might be eligible for unemployment during any shutdown, but generally there’s a waiting period of a week, it’s max 2/3 of income with a hard cap, and I cannot cite a source that says you do qualify. Worth diggging into, very state specific.

I’ve taken to gig work, so that the misc money I spend on myself doesn’t come off “rea” income. With a second job that might not be practical, but might be for your wife if you live in or near a relatively safe city. I ignore gigs in my hometown entirely, I make more in the nearest major city and they have “hourly” pay there so I make something worthwhile even without a tip (25% of orders don’t tip, roughly, from my experience).

As far as your mental health, which is the real focus here…. A couple things come to mind.

It’s short term hardship, you need to get through days or weeks - not a way of life. Understanding and actually internalizing that has helped me through some significant rough patches.

If at all possible, don’t short groceries or the miscellaneous money your wife spends on little stuff, including her. You don’t function well without decent food. Aldi is one possibility, can be cheaper for some things.

I’d expect family to be sympathetic to the potential shutdown, but I understand feeling like you shouldn’t ask for more. Guess what, though - they know the position you’re in already, and the potential shutdown is public knowledge as well. OTOH, that’s assuming they are decent humans and that they have the money in the first place. I don’t and can’t know if either are true.

Gotta be honest, selling stuff is a) getting ripped off, b) depressing af, and c) you’ll have to spend money to replace it down the road. It’s to be avoided if at all possible, for all of those reasons.

You’ve already rented a room, that’s more than I’d be able to do - I WFH so the spare room is my office, and the only place I can maintain some confidentiality of data, which is a base expectation of the field.

Don’t know how far behind you are on utilities, but most states make it fairly easy to find just how far you can push “past due”, and what arrangements can be made.

Some states require reasonable payment arrangements to split the bill across future months, some don’t. Worth exploring. You want to keep the lights on, at nearly any cost, because usually they’ll expect entire past due amount plus deposit to reconnect. Same for gas/water, as applicable.

Comcast has offered 10 day extensions to me,for internet only. Have to chat and ask for it, though that may vary by state as well

Also…. Remember there’s no guarantee a shutdown will occur, or last a long time. As we saw, last minute action is very possible. Also, if I remember the timeline correctly, we passed a 45 day CR and there are still 30 ish days left before that happens.

Food pantries if needed - no one there is judging, they wouldn’t volunteer if they did. You almost certainly will walk out with way more stuff than you expected. You’ll need to fill in holes, but that’s a short term way to reduce your grocery bill by a meaningful amount, since most staples are there.

Take care of yourself, it matters. The mental health side of this creates a slippery slope that’s easy to descend into and hard to get out of. Even if that just means sometimes buying a thing you particularly like as a reward for getting through the week. Compare the cost of me making a crab cake once a month, with the cost of additional therapy because I tried to live with zero extras. Silly example, but total self-denial is positively brutal to your brain, and tends to turn desire into cravings.

Wish I had more advice, but I hope something in there helps. You probably took a gov job at least partially because it (generally) offers stability, I’m sorry that our leg branch can’t seem to maintain that.

One more thing - unless you’re likely to get a giant pay bump, now is probably not the time to look for a new job. That takes time to spin up and find the right one, and the long term hit to eg any pension is significant. It also doesn’t solve immediate issues, since generally checks are delayed a pay cycle or so for processing.

Again, I’m sorry this is happening to you, and I wish I could do more for you and your colleagues. You have no dog in this fight, and neither your nor the military’s paychecks should be impacted.

Me: “don’t be from Indiana, don’t be from Indiana, don’t be…. Aw, fuck. “

Reasons I left. Just about the time I started to feel like a native, the right jumped from Reagan-esque (annoying, wrong, but tolerable and able to cooperate on mutually agreeed social good) to this.

That’s what I get for having adopted Kettlecorn, KS as my hometown, I suppose. Not surprising at all.

A handful of good fountain pens, a few inks that I really love, and good paper. Those are fairly small amounts of money, and ongoing purchases, but good tools that just work and make me happy when I use them are highly valuable to me.

The priciest pen - which writes amazingly - is not necessarily the one I value most. I get the most use out of a $17 pen, and a $25 pen - multiple of each, really, because i must have allllllll of the inks.

Doesn’t take much - or much money spent - to make me happy, really, and I consider that to be one of the few positive aspects of adulting. Once I figured that out and started focusing on quality over quantity in general, life improved dramatically.

Absolutely counts - you purchased freedom, and flexibility. Those might be the most valuable things a person can spend money on, IMHO.

You sure are - my insurance is great, as they go, but for profit and they force me into Caremark.

Also lucky HMOs evolved into something different than they used to be, where anything other than primary care requires a referral, that you could only get if the doctor changed the right incanttion under the right phase of the moon, after sacrificing a meerkat.

Kinda screwed up that I - and probably you - could go out and get more money at a new job tomorrow, but the insurance keeps us pinned down. Not that I hate my job, but some choice would be nice.

Glad you got it taken care of, I can relate very much to “vast health and quality of life improvements, but only because I have good insurance. “

Ouch... This should never be possible, in any world. If the password can be emailed, it can be seen. If it can be seen, it can be stolen.

That would be a combination of your settings, and headers coming from GitHub.

That would be a client side issue - your browser is using Google Docs to display the pdf. What’s in the repo is a pdf only, that works equally well in Foxit or whatever you like.

You are but one “make && make install” away from happiness. Libidevice actually works well for me and it’s free in both senses.

If you’re not already on Linux, spin up a Manjarp VM - offhand, I believe it’s in the AUR.

I expect there are other non itunes solutions, havent needed to find them.

The thought process is…. Convoluted, at best.

Switching platforms annually also is a) worthless, because if adopted at large scale, it’s a wash…. And b) Quite a bit of work mentally readjusting annually.

I can’t even.

Login passwords are not something your pw manager can type.

Correct. I can think of worse people, like the current occupant of the seat.

Ryan wouldn’t be my choice, but beats hell out of anything the current crop of Rs could put up.