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686

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Everything posted by 686

  1. Do you use a rangefinder and are you planning on dialing turrets / holding over with mil dots, etc.?
  2. Holy Shit what a dumbass kid and tip of the hat to you and the landowner for not letting that screw up a good thing y’all have going.
  3. I’ve worked in commercial construction, heavy construction, utilities, consulting engineering, equipment sales, and O&G; and I’m sorry to say, for some reason the fraction of toxic socio/psychopaths trying to climb the ladder no matter the cost is much higher in O&G than anywhere else I’ve worked (even sales!). The exact scenario you describe I watched happen over the last two years at a small O&G firm I was at. I ran the Projects group and he was hired about halfway through my tenure to run the Operations group. It was depressing watching him turn a collaborative, profitable operation into a hyper-political, miserable, (and non-profitable) environment for everyone around him. He spent more time spinning stories and board slides excusing negative results and blaming other groups than he did actually solving problems. As you allude to, he didn’t have enough experience to actually know how to solve problems, he had spent much more of his career figuring out how to climb the ladder than building the skills/knowledge to make good decisions when you get towards the top. To keep this post FIRE related; I read The Millionaire Next Door about 20 years ago and used a lot of the information provided there. I made the decision fairly early in my career that it wasn’t my goal to own my own firm or be someone seen as important, I just wanted to make as much money as I could doing what I’m good at to build wealth and financial independence. I have worked my ass off building experience/knowledge to give myself career flexibility/portability and I’ve negotiated career moves decently to increase income and we have lived below our means, usually at a 20-50% savings rate. I started investing with Vanguard over 20 years ago and became a bit of a Bogle-head early on. We’ve never had any massive breaks or huge windfalls, just the slow and steady saving and investing. Two kids 12 and 9. College 529’s just about funded to my satisfaction. No debt. Currently trying to decide if I “retire” in a few years around age 50 (if I can get the healthcare thing figured out and my portfolio keeps chugging along - should be ok at 4% withdrawal rate at that point), or if I stick with working beyond that age either in upper mgmt or downshift to technical expert and just enjoy tech stuff and not have any mgmt stress. I’m currently running a ~30 person consulting group and definitely feeling some burnout. Wife hasn’t worked in 3 years, was doing part time contract consulting before that. Maybe once the kids are a little further along I can get her to take a low key job with healthcare and I can take a long sabbatical/retire/downshift/whatever.
  4. The cofounder of CrowdStrike was on 60 Minutes this weekend and said the US could “takeRussia off the internet” (?) for some time as a response to cyberattacks. I don’t know what that means but the segment made it sound like “top men” are working on it. Hopefully for real.
  5. MillerEP probably posted this but in case not, supposedly recent Wali sighting: http://
  6. Tapatalk is really struggling and did the double post for me as well. The interesting thing is when Tapatalk can’t load a twitter link from MillerEP, it just loads a random surly topic. Like your clicking on Ukraine links and then the Surly “Beer 2018” thread pops up.
  7. Good article. This is my favorite quote, probably the understatement of “After Stalin died, the Soviet Union became a much safer place to live.”
  8. Good article. This is my favorite quote, probably the understatement of “After Stalin died, the Soviet Union became a much safer place to live.”
  9. Another Moscow photo. http://
  10. She must be right with God. http://
  11. “Orcs shelled a church in Severodonetsk on Palm Sunday This is the fourth visit to the Severodonetsk Holy Christ-Christmas Cathedral. This time the shells hit the roof.” http:// Fucking ridiculous.
  12. During some time I spent in Romania, my host told me that one reason the Romanians hate the Russians is that a Russian plan to defeat some kind of NATO invasion through Romania was to detonate nuclear bombs in the depths of the Black Sea, bringing huge quantities of hydrogen sulfide to the surface and in effect creating a massive chemical attack that would basically kill everything within some distance of the coast. A little far fetched, but that’s what the man said. And there is really high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide at depth in the Black Sea, which is fatal at fairly low airborne concentrations; could really complicate any salvage operation.
  13. Oryx posted a good longer form article reflecting on the Moscow sinking. Worth the read. “The catastrophic saga of Russia's attempt at subduing its neighbour must have not only astonished those following the offensive, but also Russia itself. Once thought to be amongst the most powerful armies of the world, the biggest enemy of the Russian Armed Forces turned out not to be NATO, but the Russian government itself. The incompetence, corruption and complete denial of reality so deeply embedded in its way of governing not only contributed to dragging yet another country into a senseless war, but also appears to have eliminated the Russian Armed Forces as an effective fighting force. In this sense, the sinking of the cruiser Moskva, though a seemingly isolated event, is a symptom of far larger problems. Ukraine might derive little direct military benefits from it (though a boost to morale of this kind is perhaps one most beneficial events any military can enjoy), these problems are certain to continue to hamper any Russian attempts to win the conflict militarily. Whether the Russian political and military leadership is capable of eventually tackling these problems to some degree is unknown, but their ability to do so will likely be the single largest determinant in the outcome of Russia's war of brutality.” http:// https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/04/neptunes-wrath-flagship-moskvas-demise.html
  14. Maybe Vlad will add some Hall and Oates to his repertoire now Everybody's high on consolation Everybody's trying to tell me what is right for me, yeah My daddy tried to bore me with a sermon But it's plain to see that they can't comfort me Sorry, Charlie, for the imposition I think I got it (got it), I got the strength to carry on, oh yeah I need a drink and a quick decision Now it's up to me, ooh, what will be She's gone, she's gone Oh I, oh I I better learn how to face it She's gone, she's gone Oh I, oh I I'd pay the devil to replace her She's gone, and she's gone Oh why, what went wrong?
  15. I’m sure Miller posted this, but Tapatalk is really struggling to load and I didn’t see it: Commander of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation Igor Osipov arrested. He was said to have been arrested by people in civilian clothes. http://
  16. Seriously - I don’t know why Putin has these puppets out there spewing this rhetoric. Honestly, what are they going to “bomb” Kyiv with? They can’t fly bombers over as they don’t control the air; their cruise missiles get shot down at a significant clip; maybe use the handful of hypersonic missiles they have left? It’s like he wants these folks out there trying to foment (via dog whistle to this point) the “launch the tactical nukes” rhetoric to paint him into a corner so he can finally do what it seems like he really wants to (start using nukes) with the excuse of “the public demanded it”. If he wasn’t so crazy, he’d have these folks using the sinking to lay the groundwork for the turning point/walking back of the “operation”: “it was an accident/tragedy/major setback/our guys fucked up/this is going to really screw with our operational effectiveness / we need to step back and reevaluate/ maybe this is just too costly right now.”
  17. I’m pretty sure those are dry grain storage. I’m all for screwing up the dock, but cruise missiles coming from the north I would think would have a good chance of being hit by Russian SAMs (I mean you would think the Ruskies would stage anti air defense around their port, but maybe they were counting on the Moskva for that?…) How many Neptunes does Ukraine have?
  18. So thinking about trying to sink the Moskva; I was looking at where they’d take her in Sevastopol. Looks like when Google flew it earlier this year she was docked just down the way from the big dry dock they’d probably head for. Lots of tall buildings and shit in the way to try and hit her again in the harbor; I’d try to hit it again tonight while she’s still at sea.
  19. Yeah but that Finnish PM seems like she’s into some kinky / fun shit.
  20. Good article in that twitter thread: http:// https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/12/ukraine-military-culture-advantage-over-russia/ “an 1854 article in the Economist explaining Russia’s early defeats in the Crimean War — also fought primarily in Ukraine — reads eerily like an account of Russia’s current military travails… The Economist ascribed these pathologies to the “inadequacy of despotic power.” It noted that “cheating, bribery, peculation pervade the whole tribe of officials,” that “there seems to be no conscience, and not much concealment, about it,” and that “regard for truth or integrity has no part in the Russian character.” The Economist wasn’t pulling any punches in 1854.
  21. Finnish PM is giving me this vibe:
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