~~ CEB Community Thread ~~

[Uaarkson]

14 hours ago, Uaarkson said:

Dear god I am so fucked. Someone send me money 

I might have been a little drunk last night. lmao

[Joe]

5 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

Hey @sblfilms if you're still fascinated by the Canadian winter experience, I could use some help shoveling tonight, were supposed to get another foot of snow.

 

 

For reference, that's my front lawn, and we've already piled about 6 feet of snow over half of it.

Free healthcare and a better society just isn’t worth this. Je suis desolee.

[thewhyteboar]

Nothing more fun than taking your baby for a walk around the park and having every old lady stop and tell you what you're doing wrong.

[marioandsonic]

On 2/5/2022 at 2:16 PM, Uaarkson said:

I might have been a little drunk last night. lmao

I've been there, buddy.  Hang in there

[Jwheel86]

Very good chance I'll be getting offered a new job soon. The job is a combination of work from home, office, and some offsite meetings.

 

If I do, it means I'll have to reinvent my care setup since I'll have to move. It's been years since I've been fully independent so I could use some outside perspectives. I basically need 24/7 help and I'm trying to figure out the best way to structure that in terms of shifts. I know I've have at least one roommate who will fill gaps. 

 

Would two 24 hour shifts a week be attractive to people? I don't care if they sleep so long as they can wake up (I'm going to smart home the hell out of apartment). 

[CitizenVectron]

We've had a series of contractors out to look at our house (purchased last year, built in 1964) to determine some work and the order it needs to be done in, and it's been a disaster trying to line things up in the right order. Complicating this is that our dishwasher died so it adds some electrical and plumbing work (since the old one was hardwired and we want to have an outlet installed instead, etc). Anywaaaaay:

 

We had some house levelers out since we need our teleposts adjusted to bring down the centre of the house a few inches. For anyone who doesn't have a basement or live in a swamp, teleposts are what are pictured below, and are used to gradually readjust the main beam as the foundation shifts. In our case it looks like we need to lower them about 1.75" in the centre of the house. Fortunately the foundation has sunk uniformly over 50 years so no foundation work is required. BUT, if we lower the teleposts to even the main floor a bit, then ALL the ductwork in the basement needs to be replaced since the previous owners installed new inside walls that butt right up against the existing ducts. Also the furnace would crumple like a tin can, so needs to be modified. Also the water heater needs to be moved. Also the drywall and framing and ceiling bulkheads and doorframes would need to be cut out and replaced.

 

So, my question is: how long after purchasing a house can you return it? lol

 

EDIT - Here's what teleposts look like (not our house). They are giant steel rods with screws that can be slowly adjusted over time to raise/lower the main beam:

 

[Guest]

Just YouTube how to do it yourself 

[CitizenVectron]

18 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Just YouTube how to do it yourself 

 

lol. Removing framing, leveling the house, and replacing all the furnace/ductwork goes a bit beyond my comfort level.

[Guest]

I mean, what is the worst that could happen?!?!

 

[CitizenVectron]

4 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I mean, what is the worst that could happen?!?!

 

 

Also the previous owners not only made it impossible to lower the teleposts without renovations, they also moved one of the posts so that it's only half-on the main beam, meaning the beam (over a period of a decade or more) will slowly twist and crack. Then the entire thing would need to be replaced, which...is basically a gut of the entire home. About once a week we cuss out the previous owners. They also hid all the dishwasher pipes under cabinets when they renovated the kitchen, so there is no way to get at them except for the exposed ends. Any renovations that we are doing (or fixes, etc) we are making sure to do 100% to code and with future-proofing in mind. We plan to live here for 20+ years, but if we do sell we want future owners to appreciate the work, not hate us, haha.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

17 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

They also hid all the dishwasher pipes under cabinets when they renovated the kitchen, so there is no way to get at them except for the exposed ends.

You just know when they did that they were so fucking proud of the work they did

[CitizenVectron]

3 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

You just know when they did that they were so fucking proud of the work they did

 

For sure. And 100% were thinking "yeah this will last 10-15 years but we'll have moved by then."

[Nokra]

Is this the kind of thing that would be found with a home inspection? I'm a complete n00b with these kinds of things but I'm hoping to be buying a place in the not-too-distant future, and you've got me nervous. 

[CitizenVectron]

17 minutes ago, Nokra said:

Is this the kind of thing that would be found with a home inspection? I'm a complete n00b with these kinds of things but I'm hoping to be buying a place in the not-too-distant future, and you've got me nervous. 

 

Kind of—we did assess the level of the foundation on the inspection, and it was level. It still is, it's just that the centre of the house is higher than the outsides (which are all level). This is a much better situation than the outsides not being level, since fixing that would involve mud jacking around the concrete, or possibly repouring, etc. Basically, we just noticed over time than there was a very slight but perceptible hump to the centre of the house, and a house leveler was able to measure it in greater detail. But in my city (built on swamp land, basically) there is no solid area for foundations—every house in Regina is going to shift over time, and the foundation and walls will crack, etc. It's just a part of home ownership. We don't get floods or hurricanes, but we have soft ground. You can prevent some of that with modern pile construction on the foundation, but barely any older homes have that.

 

Home inspections are good for minor-to-medium stuff, and I am 100% in favour of them, but you're likely never going to find all major problems with them. Fortunately our real estate market is not hot enough that buyers are expected to offer without inspection. In our inspection we paid to have the sewer line scoped as well to make sure it was solid all the way to the city line (which it was, it's ABS and installed about 8 years ago).

[Guest]

A good home inspector will find lots of things, but many issues are hidden behind things you don’t want to start tearing out just to check. 

[Jason]

Will car dealerships order a car for you if you want to lease or is that just a thing for buying? Everything I'm seeing that I'm interested in is listed as "in transit" on the dealership pages so it got me to wondering about this. 

[CitizenVectron]

Following up on the house leveling/ductwork: Had a duct specialist out this morning, and his opinion is that we definitely to replace the ductwork to level the centre of the house...but that it's not just a matter of replacing the ductwork—in order to even do that, we'd have to tear out the basement bathroom and centre floating wall, along with half the ceiling. Effectively, gut the basement. So the question now is: how fast does the house need to be leveled? I've sent a text to the leveler to call me when he can, as gutting the basement and redoing it is a likely $30,000-$50,000 job...and we don't have the money for that right now. It's only a few thousand to tear things out and get the ducts replaced, but then we have a gutted basement until we can afford to renovate it, which at the way prices are continuing to skyrocket, won't be for many years. We also need to replace the house siding, regrade the backyard and add clay around the foundation, and do some other stuff. Ugh.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

Following up on the house leveling/ductwork: Had a duct specialist out this morning, and his opinion is that we definitely to replace the ductwork to level the centre of the house...but that it's not just a matter of replacing the ductwork—in order to even do that, we'd have to tear out the basement bathroom and centre floating wall, along with half the ceiling. Effectively, gut the basement. So the question now is: how fast does the house need to be leveled? I've sent a text to the leveler to call me when he can, as gutting the basement and redoing it is a likely $30,000-$50,000 job...and we don't have the money for that right now. It's only a few thousand to tear things out and get the ducts replaced, but then we have a gutted basement until we can afford to renovate it, which at the way prices are continuing to skyrocket, won't be for many years. We also need to replace the house siding, regrade the backyard and add clay around the foundation, and do some other stuff. Ugh.

I remember what someone told me before I bought my house: when renting, your rent is the most you’ll ever pay; when you purchase, your mortgage is the least you’ll ever pay. 
 

does Canada allow you to access any equity from your home? HELOC or something like that?

[CitizenVectron]

21 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

I remember what someone told me before I bought my house: when renting, your rent is the most you’ll ever pay; when you purchase, your mortgage is the least you’ll ever pay. 
 

does Canada allow you to access any equity from your home? HELOC or something like that?

 

Oh yeah for sure, HELOCs are a thing. But we only purchased last year, so I think we have, like, 6% equity in the home at the moment. However, with our income we could likely get an unsecured LOC as well, if needed, our home is only worth about 1/2 what we could afford for a mortgage. Very happy we decided to live well within our means!

 

I think what I'm going to do is hire a structural engineer to come out and give an impartial inspection/recommendation. The house leveler may very well be right, but they also have a financial incentive to have us do a bunch of work. It's worth it to spend $500 or whatever and get an actual engineer's report if it means saving tens of thousands, potentially. 

[Chris-]

What kind of life insurance y’all got? I’m in the market now that I’m a HUSBAND (I have a policy through my employer but it sucks)

[Guest]

I desperately want to come spend a few months teaching you how to do all this stuff yourself. It would be fantastic.

[CitizenVectron]

56 minutes ago, Chris- said:

What kind of life insurance y’all got? I’m in the market now that I’m a HUSBAND (I have a policy through my employer but it sucks)

 

Just a regular life insurance policy. Got it four years ago, it's for 25 years. Covers around $300k, which is enough to pay off most of the mortgage. A warning—it's always better to just get life insurance yourself rather than any kind of mortgage insurance a bank/lender pushes on you. Life insurance can be used for anything, while mortgage insurance only really protects the bank.

 

56 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

I desperately want to come spend a few months teaching you how to do all this stuff yourself. It would be fantastic.

 

One my main life policies is that I don't want to spend time doing any complicated DIY stuff. I know that I could learn many things and save money that way...but I vastly prefer to just make more money in my job and then pay other people to do that work for me. During years when I know I will need more money, I take more wedding photography jobs on the side of my regular IT job. I have friends that enjoy their DIY projects (have a friend that floored, insulated, and drywalled his entire basement, along with some plumbing), but I get no enjoyment from that at all. 

 

EDIT - However we did also just this week have an energy audit done of our house in order to qualify for some government grants to "green" the home a bit better (mostly insulation stuff, since heat generation is the #1 energy consumer in most of Canada's homes, and air-sealing the house is the best way to stop waste), and there are a few really easy things I'll do myself. I'll tackle DIY stuff if it involves buying a single thing and watching a single YouTube video. Or it's just an application of easy labour. e.g. I dug out my basement window wells on one side of my house this past summer since the old ones weren't deep enough, and then put in new wells and sealed them to the foundation. That was basically just a weekend of digging with a shovel and then sticking a piece of metal in the ground. I have massive respect for people that enjoy that kind of stuff and are capable at it, but it's not for me.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

One my main life policies is that I don't want to spend time doing any complicated DIY stuff. I know that I could learn many things and save money that way...but I vastly prefer to just make more money in my job and then pay other people to do that work for me.

 

Aside from my actual enjoyment of construction projects, I also just see how poorly done the vast majority of work is these days. I like to the spend a little extra time getting things right, and I know for sure whatever I do is exactly as it ought to be. But I can totally get the desire to simply trade your labor for cash and your cash for somebody else's labor in these things.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

2 hours ago, Chris- said:

What kind of life insurance y’all got? I’m in the market now that I’m a HUSBAND (I have a policy through my employer but it sucks)

Buy term but price whole life. Invest the difference. 
 

I got my insurance through work so I only pay about 20/month for nearly half a million for life insurance, and a few more a month for AD&D rider 

[Nokra]

Has anyone here ever made the transition from IT to programmer? How did you do it? I have a master's in CS but since I didn't do any internships , I got my first post-school job working IT, doing tech support for a contracting company at Intel. I've been there for nearly two years now and though I enjoy the work itself, management is OK, etc., the pay is not great (about $55k/year, too low when living in Portland, OR) and basically I feel stuck. There isn't really anywhere else to go within the company (I'm the technical team lead) unless I want to continue my current path into management, so I'm thinking it's time to put my degrees to use and make the jump to programming, since I always enjoyed it and it seems to generally pay a lot better. 

 

Other than some light scripting in my current job, all of my programming experience is academic, however. To beef up my resume to land that first programming gig, I'm thinking it's maybe best to just start making some apps in my free time and maybe get something like an Oracle Certified Associate certification for Java 8. I think getting this cert shouldn't be hard given all of my academic training. I've also been reading through Cracking the Coding Interview, which seems to be one of the generally most highly recommended books for interview prep. 

 

For those who have made the leap, what was your route? Any tips or suggestions? 

[marioandsonic]

DeVry Refunds

WWW.FTC.GOV

---

Department of Education Approves Loan Forgiveness for DeVry Students

 

So, I got an email regarding this a bit ago. I made a few phone calls, and long story short, there's a chance I might get a partial or full student loan discharge.  I likely won't find out for a while (I assume before  loan repayments start up again in May), but if it does, and I do get a full discharge...I don't know how I'll react.

 

[marioandsonic]

17 hours ago, marioandsonic said:

DeVry Refunds

WWW.FTC.GOV

---

Department of Education Approves Loan Forgiveness for DeVry Students

 

So, I got an email regarding this a bit ago. I made a few phone calls, and long story short, there's a chance I might get a partial or full student loan discharge.  I likely won't find out for a while (I assume before  loan repayments start up again in May), but if it does, and I do get a full discharge...I don't know how I'll react.

 

 

So I have an update. Whoever I spoke to yesterday was wrong. My claim hasn't been approved, but it is currently under final review, and I'll receive an email once there are any updates. The good news is that until they make a final decision, my loans will be in forbearance until then. (They would still accrue interest though once May hits, so I'll still have to continue making payments until then.)

[CitizenVectron]

My work forced me back into the office at 40% time, even with my wife's medical conditions. Now, on Sunday we were potentially exposed to COVID through her father, who tested positive the next morning. The contact was fairly brief (indoors at a store we had masks, and then outside for a while, fairly close without masks). The chance of infection is quite small, but I let my manager know and said I would be okay with sticking home for a few days just to reduce the risk of passing it on to others, in case I am positive without testing so, yet. He said...no, I need to come in two days a week unless I am actually sick myself. Like...okay? I can't work from home an extra two days over the next week to protect him and my other coworkers? Whatever.

[GeneticBlueprint]

On 3/20/2022 at 12:32 AM, Nokra said:

Has anyone here ever made the transition from IT to programmer? How did you do it? I have a master's in CS but since I didn't do any internships , I got my first post-school job working IT, doing tech support for a contracting company at Intel. I've been there for nearly two years now and though I enjoy the work itself, management is OK, etc., the pay is not great (about $55k/year, too low when living in Portland, OR) and basically I feel stuck. There isn't really anywhere else to go within the company (I'm the technical team lead) unless I want to continue my current path into management, so I'm thinking it's time to put my degrees to use and make the jump to programming, since I always enjoyed it and it seems to generally pay a lot better. 

 

Other than some light scripting in my current job, all of my programming experience is academic, however. To beef up my resume to land that first programming gig, I'm thinking it's maybe best to just start making some apps in my free time and maybe get something like an Oracle Certified Associate certification for Java 8. I think getting this cert shouldn't be hard given all of my academic training. I've also been reading through Cracking the Coding Interview, which seems to be one of the generally most highly recommended books for interview prep. 

 

For those who have made the leap, what was your route? Any tips or suggestions? 

 

My career started in tech support for a software company where documenting bugs for software engineers kind of introduced me to that world. I started learning a proprietary language and platform on my own while being on the same company's implementation team. I obtained some certifications. I built things with what I was learning and that's how I started doing what I'm doing now. So what you've outlined above is exactly how I made the transition. And my degree isn't even in CS. So it should be definitely possible for you my man.

[marioandsonic]

8 hours ago, marioandsonic said:

 

So I have an update. Whoever I spoke to yesterday was wrong. My claim hasn't been approved, but it is currently under final review, and I'll receive an email once there are any updates. The good news is that until they make a final decision, my loans will be in forbearance until then. (They would still accrue interest though once May hits, so I'll still have to continue making payments until then.)

 

Another update.  I called again to try and get more clarification because I got two different answers.  According to the person I spoke to just now, my case is still listed as under review, but it has been flagged as approved for 100% forgiveness, and there's a chance that any payments I've made to this loan would be reimbursed.  Still no timetable on when that would take place.

 

I don't know what to believe now, but I so want to believe this.

[Jason]

16 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

 

Another update.  I called again to try and get more clarification because I got two different answers.  According to the person I spoke to just now, my case is still listed as under review, but it has been flagged as approved for 100% forgiveness, and there's a chance that any payments I've made to this loan would be reimbursed.  Still no timetable on when that would take place.

 

I don't know what to believe now, but I so want to believe this.

 

1. How much could you potentially get back? 
2. Are you going to get whacked with a huge tax bill for the forgiven debt? 

[marioandsonic]

55 minutes ago, Jason said:

 

1. How much could you potentially get back? 
2. Are you going to get whacked with a huge tax bill for the forgiven debt? 

I don't know for either.

[b_m_b_m_b_m]

if you get a sinus infection get that shit taken care of immediately. A friend of mine who I saw just Friday is in the ICU on a vent because he got (fortunately for me, non aresol spreading) meningitis because he didn’t treat a sinus infection. Late 30’s and in great health. Recently married with a kid on the way. He’s critical but stable now. Hopefully his wife didn’t catch it given her condition. 
 

shit sucks. 

[Nokra]

11 hours ago, GeneticBlueprint said:

 

My career started in tech support for a software company where documenting bugs for software engineers kind of introduced me to that world. I started learning a proprietary language and platform on my own while being on the same company's implementation team. I obtained some certifications. I built things with what I was learning and that's how I started doing what I'm doing now. So what you've outlined above is exactly how I made the transition. And my degree isn't even in CS. So it should be definitely possible for you my man.

 

Thanks for the response.  Sounds like our potential paths are very similar. Which certs did you do?

 

A few days ago I had told our HR guy that I wanted to throw my hat in the ring for a sysadmin position that of course would have still been in IT but it would have paid a lot better ($34/hour) and would have gotten me more programming/scripting experience. Today they sat me down and basically told me that I was too valuable in my current position so they couldn't afford to move me since it would create a big vacuum. They've been having such terrible turnover that there's nobody to replace me, and the lab I run is too valuable to the overall operation. The best part is that they're also asking me to help conduct the interviews for the position I want.  

 

Tomorrow I'm asking for a raise. 

[Anathema-]

4 hours ago, Nokra said:

Tomorrow I'm asking for a raise. 

 

Tomorrow you need to start looking elsewhere.