@scottalanmiller said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:

@storageninja said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:

I can pay someone but that costs money (It's an insurance policy against having to deal with all this stuff or do my own RCA's on obnoxious interop issues of SIP inspection with a broken 3rd party Avaya system etc).

With good spares and any level of competent receptionist, you can do this without needing a third party. Somehow, somewhere there is a scenario where there isn't a single competent employee within any reasonable distance, but we are into the insane niche here. And those techs sent out are just random on call remote hands, they don't have any specific skills or training. For all you know, it's your own receptionist that they have contracted to do that for you.

We had firewalls on barge/piers and lumbar sites with actually illiterate staff... also in retail cables and poets can be color coded and the stoned teenager there will screw it up. It’s not as far off as you think. Throw in language barriers overseas and it gets more fun.

This is part of the reason for cloud managed configs like Meraki, and Ubiquity. Cold spares have a lot larger config drift problem than people realize.

@scottalanmiller said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:

Who needs that, just have a spare. Better protection, a fraction of the price, and no arguing with Cisco to try to get support from those idiots. Not trusting Cisco support is another facet of the situation

If you need product support (Question about why something isn't working) if you need a bug fixed, or a workaround for a 3rd parties bug (Cisco gave me the workaround for fixing interop issues caused by bad RSTP implementations by HPE and others etc). Also, same day replacement with labor to do it (If I've got a firewall at a lumber mill in the middle of no where having the staff to deal with that). I can pay someone but that costs money (It's an insurance policy against having to deal with all this stuff or do my own RCA's on obnoxious interop issues of SIP inspection with a broken 3rd party Avaya system etc).

@scottalanmiller said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:

$100/yr is more than the cost of entirely replacing it with something modern and better from a vendor that treats you better. Making $100 an insane price for keeping crap gear patched.

Who will all in the firewall space provide 24/7/365 follow the sun support for a firewall/router for $100 a year, as well as patches, feature improvements etc? I wouldn't call that expensive for what it is.

@dashrender said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:

This same reasoning now makes HPE servers a no go. You don't get patches from HPE unless under a valid/current support contract.

While I love some cheaper ODMs, just because they don’t charge for firmware patches Also doesn’t mean 6 months in they refuse to support a new OS. Your opinion is valid if you never update, but it’s nonsense if you hope to update.

@zachary715 said in Notorious Short-seller labels Ubiquiti Networks $UBNT as FRAUD:

@scottalanmiller said in Notorious Short-seller labels Ubiquiti Networks $UBNT as FRAUD:

@jmoore said in Notorious Short-seller labels Ubiquiti Networks $UBNT as FRAUD:

@storageninja I get that.All good ideas.I have thought about the Index funds and that option seems decent. I do enjoy the fun of researching companies and buying a few shares of stocks too. I have never lost money over a years time but dont make much either. Depending on the year its like 5-15% increase. Not sure if that keeps up with inflation at the low end lol.

Just remember that that "fun" comes from the risk. It's your money and nothing wrong with it, but Index funds are the safest. So if you are using terms like "divesting" which is a risk reduction strategy, but not using Index funds, that's an odd mix.

Although I understand what you probably mean here and you're just oversimplifying, I can't stand when people say this as a general term. It's not the "safest" for someone near retirement to be parked in an S&P index fund. Over the long run historically, index funds have outperformed like 86% of active funds yes, but that doesn't mean that just parking in an S&P fund is safe for everyone. People still need to understand even basically what's going on in the market and know how to move money around to protect assets as they approach retirement.

Disclaimer: Majority of my money is currently parked in an S&P index fund

Note, my Couch Potato strategy I mentioned includes rebalancing into index's of bonds or bond funds (Actively managed bond funds tend to do a little better than stock index's but I'm using it basically as a proxy for cash so I don't really care that much).

@jmoore said in Notorious Short-seller labels Ubiquiti Networks $UBNT as FRAUD:

I do enjoy the fun of researching companies and buying a few shares of stocks too. I have never lost money over a years time but dont make much either. Depending on the year its like 5-15% increase. Not sure if that keeps up with inflation at the low end lol.

The problem with lots of buying and selling is that trading fee's add up (unless your doing very large orders for single stocks, in which case your taking on a LOT of risk).

@travisdh1 said in HyperV Partitioning:

You expect Microsoft to do things rationally, or correctly? That'd be a nice change of pace.

My point is that things in the IO path go through that VM. They didn't want to write a full IO driver stack for Hyper-V so they have the VM for that. Compute/Memory doesn't go through it (that I know of), but network and disk IO do. (Otherwise Perfmon wouldn't work as a monitoring solution on the host).

AFAIK only ESXi uses a microkernel that has a fully isolated management agent plane (It's actually just a busybox shell).

@mike-davis said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@dashrender said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

I go back and forth on this. Ultimately I I think they should be paid because it's likely they are bringing some type of value to the company they are interning for.

Now consider that NY is pushing the minimum wage up to $15 /hr. It gets expensive to train someone when you only get a little work out of them at that rate. So as an employer, what do you do? Forget about the people with no experience and hire people that are actually worth $15 /hr.

The problem with that is that in this industry experience is worth more than a degree.

Eventually, the gap gets large enough that companies start their own paid training programs. Zackery engineering runs their own pipeline welder training school.

@scottalanmiller said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

That's my point, there are benefits ingrained in being a public servant. Why does there need to be the added benefit of "paying off their debts" before they ever considered working in the public sector?

Because it's not extra, it's just part of the normal package.

My employer has tuition reimbursement. Tons of employers do this.
Looking into the tax code on this $5,250 is non-tax'd pretty easily and if it's a working conditional benefit then you can get even more non-taxed.

@dustinb3403 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

there are benefits ingrained in being a public servant

What Pensions? Those are being unilaterally negotiated down, or have the rules change after you sign up.
My 401K I ACTUALLY know will exist in 10 years. A pension might get cut in half.

@dustinb3403 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@storageninja said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@dustinb3403 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

A lot of public employees are given "company cars" etc.

Because it's cheaper For a city to run a vehicle fleet than pay 54 cents a mile to reimburse you for your milage.

That's my point, there are benefits ingrained in being a public servant. Why does there need to be the added benefit of "paying off their debts" before they ever considered working in the public sector?

Normal companies reimburse you for mileage driven at work. Normally companies get leases if you start running too high, or get you rental cards for weeks you will be driving a ton (My current one does this, as did my last one). Government cars are generally shitty no-options cars. Private companies will at least let you rent/lease something fun to drive.

@dustinb3403 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

Removing someone debt for a public sector job like this doesn't help the matter of the national debt at all. It only compounds it.

Student debt is 1Trilliion, or ~6% of the federal debt. ~2% of employees are federal (a little less actually). Lets assume 1/2 of federal employees have college degree's, and 1/2 of them stay for 10 years.

This is .03% of the federal debt going to loan forgiveness. BUT WAIT THERE IS MORE?!?
The people who use this program actually pay back the debt for the most part they just don't pay interest. Considering the interest rate for the past few years has hovered around 2%, that means the government is only out a 2% interest on a loan that amounts to .03% of the deficit.

This is a program that assuming pretty generous participation costs us nationally 100 Million a year? That's actually a rounding error at the Pentagon.

@dustinb3403 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

A lot of public employees are given "company cars" etc.

Because it's cheaper For a city to run a vehicle fleet than pay 54 cents a mile to reimburse you for your milage.

@dustinb3403 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

The reason is that there is no private sector judicial system (or anything even remotely comparable in this case). If the government allowed individual businesses to be the court system, what point does the government serve?

Judicial courts in universities have been told using "Dear Colleague" letters to run extra-judicial investigations into criminal acts.
Bail Bondsman are private, the companies who do drug testing are private, the car interlock and ankle bracelets are private, the red light camera systems are private, the collections of court fee's are private. A huge part of our legal system is private now compared to other countries.

@zachary715 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

I've seen people with high GPA and ACT (SAT) scores get lots of money for college only to blow it partying and on worthless degrees. I think I'd rather someone get the scholarship on the back-end (forgiveness/help with repayment) after they've proved their worth vs some bogus test they took at 16 years old.

IF the cost of college is 100K and I MIGHT get it paid back if nothing bad happens to me in college I wouldn't have gone to College....

@dashrender said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

As stated above, it's not over a year, but over 10 years, so only $6,300 a year of value.

$6300 plus 0-15% for taxes (I would View this as something more like a stock grant because of the time bomb with it, so it's capital gains long term rates applying here).

@coliver said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@storageninja said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@coliver said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

So basically what you're saying is that the point is still going over your head. This isn't a gift. It's a signing bonus/incentive/income (untaxed)/fringe benefit/whatever you want to call it. He is literally working to pay off his debt. A gift would be if he (and other like him) were just given the money with no expectation of employment.

Signing Bonuses (especially for education) often have a clawback (If you don't stay for xxx amount of time you have to give it back).

Which is what this is specifically. You lose all the benefit if you stop working for them during that time. If you do start working again the clock starts over.

My signing bonus had a clawback up to 1 year. I've seen education have an up to 3 years after you finish your MBA (Oil Company), but the trick there is you get your NEW employeer to pay off your old bonus (and give you a bigger one).

Golden handcuffs don't work if the new guys start throwing diamonds at everyone.

@coliver said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

So basically what you're saying is that the point is still going over your head. This isn't a gift. It's a signing bonus/incentive/income (untaxed)/fringe benefit/whatever you want to call it. He is literally working to pay off his debt. A gift would be if he (and other like him) were just given the money with no expectation of employment.

Signing Bonuses (especially for education) often have a clawback (If you don't stay for xxx amount of time you have to give it back).

@dustinb3403 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@scottalanmiller said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@dustinb3403 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@storageninja said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@zachary715 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

HIs whole argument here is that it's the public sector which is offering this benefit with "our" tax dollars. I think he's fine with private businesses doing this same matter because they aren't operating with a $20trillion and growing debt with no solution in sight

The alternatives are raising salaries a bunch for government roles (unpopular), or only historically rich, or the very stupid will end up working in government as the private sector absorbs everyone with debt who's smart. All of these options suck

Why are those the only options?

Why not just make people pay their bill, period?

Well, in this case, they are. He's paying it through a signing bonus. So while SOME student debt forgiveness might be a problem because it is not given fairly, that doesn't apply here where it is a signing bonus.

$63K is way more than I ever had in student loans.

I want a $63K gift. Do all of you mind giving me a lot of money for my inability to pay my loans? (@PenguinWrangler again just using you as an example as this is a rampant issue, not hating on you)

If you think people shouldn't take out loans they can't pay then the schools should be on the hook for the students not paying.
Blaming the person taking out a loan (Who's not a sovereign state) is dumb.

@scottalanmiller said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@dustinb3403 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@storageninja said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

@zachary715 said in Student Loan Forgiveness Rant:

HIs whole argument here is that it's the public sector which is offering this benefit with "our" tax dollars. I think he's fine with private businesses doing this same matter because they aren't operating with a $20trillion and growing debt with no solution in sight

The alternatives are raising salaries a bunch for government roles (unpopular), or only historically rich, or the very stupid will end up working in government as the private sector absorbs everyone with debt who's smart. All of these options suck

Why are those the only options?

Why not just make people pay their bill, period?

Well, in this case, they are. He's paying it through a signing bonus. So while SOME student debt forgiveness might be a problem because it is not given fairly, that doesn't apply here where it is a signing bonus.

Next up the War on relocation bonuses.
PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE LESS STUFF