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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Servers weren’t much of a problem, they’re mostly virtual and could be just restored from a backup. The several hundred workstations were a problem. They needed a physical touch. All are encrypted with BitLocker, requiring passkeys stored in AD. Over half are laptops. Most of those don’t have wired ethernet ports, and an account with local admin rights hasn’t logged in since the day they were imaged. Throw in a proper LAPS config, where randomly generated passwords of three dozen characters in length are also stored in AD…

    … Yeah, today was a bad day.



  • This was no accident.

    He drove while drunk. He made a decision to become impaired. While impaired, he decided to get behind the wheel of a vehicle. He made a decision to drive unreasonably fast, beyond the speed limit and beyond his ability to safely operate the vehicle. He further made a decision to take a photo while operating his vehicle.

    All were his choice to make, and thus the repercussions of his choices were no accident.

    Does society want a person inclined to make such decisions roaming about freely? How many years of incarceration are likely to eliminate his continuation of such behavior?







  • Very much the point. Building a boat is labor intensive. The materials are relatively inexpensive, compared to the time invested in building. The person selling that used Pocketship was likely the builder, and sees value in their time spent building it.

    That ~50 year old Westerly? That labor is long gone. The previous owner did invest his time in a partial refit, but relinquished his interest when he stopped paying storage fees and let a lien be placed on it. The club has no time invested, just the lost storage fees, but would rather minimize future loss; an abandoned boat takes up space that would otherwise be generating revenue for them. The club members (nearly all power boaters) see little value in the boat itself. Any revenue gained from scrapping it would likely exceed the cost to scrap the fiberglass hull (again, a labor intensive process).

    She really is a cool boat, though. I’m having a great time completing the refit, and I don’t see my labor invested as lost when I’m enjoying the process as much as I am.


  • Boats are weird. I’ve looked at buying kit from CLC to build a 15’ Pocketship: about $12,000 US. Buying a used one, a couple years old? $15k.

    Meanwhile, my local yacht club had a 26’ 1969 Westerly Centaur one step away from being crushed. Prior owner stopped paying storage fees and refused further contact, so the club put a lien on it. I picked it up cheap, $500. Nobody bothered cutting the lock off the companionway; it was chock full of tools and supplies the prior owner was using to refit it.

    I’ve dropped some cash into finishing the refit, but nowhere near what I would have spent on a 15’ Pocketship, and I’ve got a much more capable boat. There are deals out there.