edwhitesell

Sometimes it's Dutch instead, but that's true.

Many agencies, especially those new to having K-9 or small departments that may not be able to spend time dedicated to training from puppies, get dogs from Europe that are partially or fully trained. The lineage of the working dog breeds is much better in Europe because many breeds have bloodlines that haven't been bred for generations to be pets (like here in the US).

It's also why agencies pay so much for the dogs. Last I heard (I used to be more involved volunteering with my local PD) a fully trained dog was around $25k, USD, a partially trained was something like $8k - $10. It sounds like a lot until you realize a fully trained dog is 18—24 months old when acquired and has been training every day during that time.

I'd bet there are many. I know a few teams with spends in the thousands of dollars per day. It sounds crazy, but not too unrealistic.

Came in to, worked on a SaaS product that did this in 2000 (it was around since '97/'98). I was doing new customer deploy and support, not direct development. It was running on MSSQL 97, I think, then moved to MSSQL 2000. It worked okay, but we moved away from that model in a "next gen" build around 2001/2002.

The biggest hurdles are in the things like configurations. You'll probably want to have one code base, and maybe even one deploy/package for web servers. However, you'll need different configurations for each customer (DB name, credentials, etc.) and a way to manage them, and a way to identify which customer an HTTP request goes to before you can process it. You can use things like host names in your web app, but you'll really end up wanting some kind of "request router" to manage everything...at that point, it's far easier to put everything in one DB and move on with revenue-generation.

Not only that, some organizations have policies to not accept information/applicants who don't follow the process through recruiter, HR, job board, etc. Now you're effectively "black balled" from applying the right way.

Maintenence. I grew up in the north (Michigan) and spent time in Massachusetts, living in Texas now it's very different how infrastructure is funded. I'd call it a result of the general politics, no one wants to spend money on infrastructure.

I believe the latest stat I heard was that over 70% of the roads & alleys in the city where I live are >40 years old. That also means all of the infrastructure under the roads (water, conduits, etc.) are also >40 years old.

The description of the App in the Google Play Store lists GPT-4 & DALL-E 3.

This was similar to my experience in SE Michigan & NW Ohio in the late '90s to early '00s. Ameritech required you to order 2 ISDN phone lines, which cost somewhere around $80 per month, each. ISPs charged extra for the ISDN services, too.

Many cancer cells travel around the body. The cells may only attach and grow in certain kinds of tissue, but that isn't always the case. At a basic level, cancer is mutated cells...sometimes they mutate more.

I had seminoma testicular cancer. If you must have one, it's what you want. It's very treatable, but also affects the lymphatic system of the body. I had tumors in one testicle and 2 lymph nodes in my abdomen.

Surgery for the testicular tumor, chemo for the others.

We had plans to get together as a company (about 15 of us from all over the US) about 3 months later. They seemed excited about this. But, we never made it that far.

Long story short, GV or VOIP numbers will forever be a big red flag for me moving forward.

Longer story:

A few months ago, I posted a job for a remote US-based developer. 90% of the applicants were not in the US. Some of those who were immediately rejected re-applied with new US addresses and phone numbers, but that's another story. In the end, hired someone who was a great fit, passed the background checks, etc. The only odd thing was their phone number was GV and didn't match the location of their address. My mobile number doesn't match where I currently live and lots of people use GV, so we didn't think much of it.

About 4 weeks in, they sent me a message on a Sunday saying there was a family emergency. They would not be online during normal business hours, but would check in and would still work on tasks as they could. No big deal, I asked for follow-up on two assigned tasks so they could be handed off to someone else to finish a sprint that week.

After two days, haven't heard anything, reassigned the tasks and tried to reach out to check on the person. Phone number goes to the generic GV voicemail prompt, I leave a message. I tried calling the emergency contact, same thing. I reach out through LinkedIn & personal email, no RESPONSE. At this point, we disabled accounts and access to systems. No real reason or policy why, just seemed like a good idea.

Two days later, now Thursday, I start getting calls from a random phone number (also GV from another area of the US), but leaving no messages. Then I get texts, "This is <missing_dev> I've been trying to reach you, please call me back." I call back within 3 minutes, straight to GV generic voicemail.

A few hours later, the number calls again, I answer "Hey, this is <missing_dev>, I was trying to get some work done but it seems my accounts are disabled". After explaining the situation, they simply offered "Well, everything is good now and I'm ready to work." I tried asking some basic things like, are they okay, is their family okay, can we help with something, did you get arrested? Anything to give them a opportunity to offer something. The only response they gave was, "I'm back now and ready to work, if you'll enable my accounts." Over and over.

I explained it wasn't that simple, walked through the communication inconsistencies and asked how that would affect their reliability in the future. You will only need one guess for the response, "I'm back now and ready to work, if you'll enable my accounts."

I thanked them for reaching out and said I'd talk to HR and CEO so we could discuss (both had also reached out through personal LinkedIn, email and phone numbers to check on the person, no responses).

They were still in the 90 day probationary period, so we let them go. They were a very good developer, smart, good coding practices, but inconsistency is a killer. And yes, a GV or VOIP number will be a hurdle any future applicant needs to overcome with flying colors.

I sat on the board in my previous neighborhood and served two terms as president, this was definitely true for that community too. And, many other HOAs of individual homes (structures) too.

We were lucky to have a decent management company that provided a lot of guidelines and information about what we should be doing. As well as the things we were obligated to do (either because of bylaws or laws, in Texas). Still, any time there was a storm resulting in additional costs for landscaping/cleanup, or work on a damaged/degrading stone wall, or the pool area, etc. We heard about it from some neighbors who didn't want to spend any money, because it didn't directly affect them.

It's definitely an area that more regulations would help everyone involved. We were not experts, but could make some decisions if we had the right information (or knew what questions we should ask).

We went a few years ago and loved it. We happened to be there on the day the Memphis Belle exhibit was being opened (rained out the day before), which also meant they were doing flyovers of WWII planes and bussing people out to the runway to do tours in and around the planes.

All that being said, the highlight for us was seeing the WWII planes fly overhead and then seeing one of the VC-25As flying past seconds later. Multiple times. The rumor was they were doing takeoff/landing training.

My wife and left Texas in 2013, moved back about 18 months later in 2014. They told us we couldn't renew/update our licenses and had to get new ones (both would have not expired yet). When we recevied the "new" ones, the numbers and expiration dates were the same.

Texas is by far the worst state I've lived in for getting your drivers license and vehicle registrations.

> but the predictive value was not good

My understanding is that there is some dependency on the type of cancer, but mostly it depends on your immune system response. Doctors are pretty clear that just having a cold can affect the numbers.