The Official Status Thread
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@e4tmyl33t said in The Official Status Thread:
@benjamin-hall Eh. I suppose I'm kinda used to the queues on my WoW server, where even as a DPS, 12 minutes was on the long-ish side (usual DPS queues were ~5 minutes where tank/healer queues were nearly instant)
My WoW queues were mixed, depending on dungeon and time of day. I ended up running all of them a lot (being an altoholic), so I saw all the variation. Didn't help that I was Alliance on a super-majority Horde server, so...
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@benjamin-hall Yeah, I was Horde on a server where Horde had a majority. It did depend a bit on dungeon as well, but I also didn't PUG dungeons much. Most of my queueing ended up being for the various holiday event boss kills.
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Status: Trying to learn how to use Aspose to make PDFs. They're using Discourse for their forums, and no one knows how to quote code there. I assume it was dumped from other forum software. Aaaargh!
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Status: Yes? Now, can you stop repeating yourself so I can actually, you know... connect?
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Status: University just sent out a nice long email about how, despite it being a very hard decision, they have decided to make an enormous sacrifice for their students and not increase tuition yet again.
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@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
Holy crap, and I thought our $70 con tickets were kinda expensive...
What's that, Bronycon?
edit: nevermind, you're probably talking about BABScon, aren't you.
$70 is really cheap for a convention, so I assume you either have corporate sponsors, or that's just the lowest level entry price and you have more expensive packages for people who are willing to shell out more cha-ching.
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@anotherusername said in The Official Status Thread:
@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
Holy crap, and I thought our $70 con tickets were kinda expensive...
What's that, Bronycon?
edit: nevermind, you're probably talking about BABScon, aren't you.
$70 is really cheap for a convention, so I assume you either have corporate sponsors, or that's just the lowest level entry price and you have more expensive packages for people who are willing to shell out more cha-ching.
Yes, $70 is the normal 3-day if you pre-reg. They go up to $2.5k.
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@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
They go up to $2.5k.
For $2.5k I better get my own damn live unicorn to take home.
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@e4tmyl33t said in The Official Status Thread:
@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
They go up to $2.5k.
For $2.5k I better get my own damn live unicorn to take home.
Not quite a live unicorn, but they play one on kids TV. :D
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@tsaukpaetra
I wonder what the net profit (to the con) of the Royal Pony sponsorship after all that swag is. Or would be if they weren't getting the swag donated from the various fan suppliers.And how that compares to the next few tiers down.
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@izzion said in The Official Status Thread:
@tsaukpaetra
I wonder what the net profit (to the con) of the Royal Pony sponsorship after all that swag is. Or would be if they weren't getting the swag donated from the various fan suppliers.And how that compares to the next few tiers down.
I can't imagine much, since we're 501c3 or something.
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@tsaukpaetra
501(c)(3) Not for Profit status doesn't preclude you from turning a profit. It just means that the profits you do turn have to go to an approved exempt group or cause. Such as next year's con.And I really meant it more in the Gross Profit sense - revenue minus direct cost of revenue (what gets spent on all the swag) - which would then be what you use to actually put on the convention.
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@izzion said in The Official Status Thread:
what you use
I'm pretty sure we were only slightly (scaled) in the red this year.
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@tsaukpaetra speaking of, apparently someone got a little excited with the save button, or for some reason the "send update email" box is checked by default...
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@izzion said in The Official Status Thread:
501(c)(3) Not for Profit status doesn't preclude you from turning a profit.
I'd recommend turning a(n operating) profit as much as possible, as that lets the organisation build up a financial float so that they can last a few years without major sponsorship.
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@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
Yes, $70 is the normal 3-day if you pre-reg. They go up to $2.5k.
For reference, a three day tech conference, of modest size, without heavy sponsorship and at a not terribly expensive hotel, that can be around $500. The exact costs are very dependent on the negotiations with the venue; there's an absolute shit-load of factors involved in the price. Bigger venues may well be cheaper per participant, but you have to be able to get a lot more attendees to cover the fixed costs involved.
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@timebandit said in The Official Status Thread:
@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
They go up to $2.5k.
$2.5k
Sure, but will the hookers be wearing fursuits?
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@anotherusername said in The Official Status Thread:
@timebandit said in The Official Status Thread:
@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
They go up to $2.5k.
$2.5k
Sure, but will the hookers be wearing fursuits?
Sure! And if you wait long enough.... no, not going to continue that sentence outside the NSFW thread... :P
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@dkf Hmm. Makes me wonder how we pull off all that we do...
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@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
Makes me wonder how we pull off all that we do...
If you've got the numbers to tackle a big venue and some generous sponsors, it can work. If the basic price doesn't include food and drinks, that brings the cost right down (as mass catering isn't exactly cheap) and if the organisers aren't having to deal with providing power and networking, that's another huge outlay not there that a computing conference has to eat. There are a lot of factors. If you want to get involved in the organising committee, I'm sure you'll get to find out far more about the financial tightrope that conferences walk than you thought was possible…
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@tsaukpaetra
slave laborvolunteerism, would be my guess.Which isn’t atypical for fan-based conventions. Business technical conventions are generally paying for their presenters (at least travel expenses, if not full up speaking fees), paying organizing staff, etc. But fan shindigs usually have a pretty sizeable volunteer pool for both the “front” side of the con (presenters & events) and the “back” (logistics, organization)
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@dkf said in The Official Status Thread:
If you want to get involved in the organising committee, I'm sure you'll get to find out far more about the financial tightrope that conferences walk than you thought was possible…
I know the board, but my curiosity doesn't extend quite that far.
Actually, I do know that the price is $400 per port per day.
@izzion said in The Official Status Thread:
@tsaukpaetra
slave laborvolunteerism, would be my guess.Which isn’t atypical for fan-based conventions. Business technical conventions are generally paying for their presenters (at least travel expenses, if not full up speaking fees), paying organizing staff, etc. But fan shindigs usually have a pretty sizeable volunteer pool for both the “front” side of the con (presenters & events) and the “back” (logistics, organization)
Yeah, our GoH make up a sizable part of the budget if memory serves...
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@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
Actually, I do know that the price is $400 per port per day.
The crew I conference with will run fiber to the hotel if necessary. That can earn the conference a big discount, though rather less once they discover the rate you charge them for the hire of the supporting networking equipment.
But realistically, one port is enough for many people if you've got your own commercial-grade equipment to handle the step after that. (You really don't want to use domestic-grade kit for that job.) The main thing is to negotiate no bandwidth caps, no port blocking, no meddling. Then you can tunnel all the traffic you generate off site without mucking about.
If you think $400/port/day is expensive, you wait until you see the cost of the power for a stand at a vendor exhibition attached to a conference.
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@dkf said in The Official Status Thread:
negotiate
Yeah, I'm not part of that. For all intents and purposes, the ports (collectively) are allocated about 30 Mbps download, 3 Mbps up, max ten unique MAC addresses (luckily we're smart enough to shove everyone that accesses it behind a NAT, natch).
Yes, I said collectively. We block the likes of YouTube and Facebook of course.
It's... sufficient. Luckily the con isn't a tech con, and Internet is really only used for the vendors...
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Status: Hoping the discoloration of @PJH's balls is not a sign of a health problem...
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@lorne-kates said in The Official Status Thread:
Okay, well, do not automatically accept their first offer. Unless you've done the research. You did.
Of course, to actually get the money I've got to find my title, and since it's not in the "most recently used documents" folder at my desk, that means it's in any one of about ten identical boxes labeled "Documents" in my storage closet.
Sigh. I should probably know where such things are offhand. My organizational skills leave something to be desired. I'd just order a new one, but looks like that'd take about three (calendar) weeks and I assume insurance would be annoyed by that.
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@heterodox Maybe not, if it delays them having to pay you.
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@hardwaregeek said in The Official Status Thread:
@heterodox Maybe not, if it delays them having to pay you.
True this. When the roof blew off the house the insurance company put us up in a hotel for quite a few months instead of paying out to get it fixed. You'd think they wanted to save money by getting us out of the hotel asap, but no, different department and so feet shuffling...
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@hardwaregeek said in The Official Status Thread:
@heterodox Maybe not, if it delays them having to pay you.
Well, this is true. My getting a new car also isn't dependent on their payment. I'll see what a search brings up on Sunday.
Also, wtf, why aren't we fucking paperless yet? Why can't I just download a PDF title, digitally signed by my state? I can do that for my academic transcripts, why hasn't the government caught up (rhetorical question). Then I could digitally countersign it over to them. It would take about 24 seconds. (Okay, let's round it up to 1 minute given how ActivClient has been fucking me about recently.)
Point is, I would like my ten boxes of "Documents" to just fucking go away. I have literally thousands of pages of financial records, government records, medical records, etc... that I would love to digitize but then they wouldn't be valid anymore, depending on whom you ask. What fucking year am I living in again?
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@magus said in The Official Status Thread:
Status: Trying to learn how to use Aspose to make PDFs. They're using Discourse for their forums, and no one knows how to quote code there. I assume it was dumped from other forum software. Aaaargh!
I've just finished a big old project using aspose for pdf generation. Give me a shout if you need any help
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@jaloopa I'm not too worried. On Monday I'll figure out how to do multi-page stuff properly, since it doesn't seem to want to avoid overflowing the footer, and I need to figure out how many pages I have after adding content so I can get the footer page count right, since the overflow doesn't seem to apply immediately. For the most part, though, it's been pretty easy.
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Status: I get it, you need something to pass the time in the service center waiting room. But I swear to dog, if you don’t mute your handheld Yahtzee game, grown man who could use a hair brush, I’m gonna come over there and break it...
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@izzion said in The Official Status Thread:
I swear to dog
And now I imagine you walking around cursing at random dogs
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@bb36e said in The Official Status Thread:
Like headlines that pose questions, the answer to that is no. Not only no, but not a chance.
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@benjamin-hall said in The Official Status Thread:
@bb36e said in The Official Status Thread:
Like headlines that pose questions, the answer to that is no. Not only no, but not a chance.
The only results I see on the first page (in incognito mode so my browsing history doesn't affect it) say the answer is yes.
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@ben_lubar Those results are fake news
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Status: One of the steps Oracle SQL Developer launcher takes is named "Restoring Windows". I admit, I freaked out for a moment.
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@anotherusername said in The Official Status Thread:
@timebandit said in The Official Status Thread:
@tsaukpaetra said in The Official Status Thread:
They go up to $2.5k.
$2.5k
Sure, but will the hookers be wearing fursuits?
Yes, but they'll all be men underneath.
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@izzion said in The Official Status Thread:
I swear to dog
I've got a sudden surge of nostalgia for early-2000s FPS games, which all featured command console and a standarized set of cheats (god, giveall, noclip, etc.) Some developers of course tried to be "clever" as to not make cheating too easy but still very easy, so they renamed the god mode cheat to "dog".
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@gąska There was also Rise of the Triad, which had an actual dog mode:
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Status: Google apparently "updated" their GApps admin pages. Now I have no clue how to find an account's aliases. Used to be right there, four clicks into a user's account info page. Now? Gone.
Progress...
Edit: Nevermind, found it.
Still can't use the "Search everything" bar to find aliases though. What a joke. :(
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@tsaukpaetra You expected "everything" to mean everything?
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@hardwaregeek said in The Official Status Thread:
@tsaukpaetra You expected "everything" to mean everything?
No, I expect the Awesome Bar to be Awesome though. :P
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Software containers and VMs are like if cars were all different, so you had to carry your own portable steering wheel and seat that went over the existing steering wheel and seat and interfaced with them so you didn't have to adapt to a different environment every time.
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@anonymous234
And half of the cars have a metal spike stiking out of the seat. The ones without spike feature razor blades at various controls.
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@heterodox said in The Official Status Thread:
Of course, to actually get the money I've got to find my title,
Things like that are in my firebox. (I have 2 - a smaller one for basic things like passports, backups, etc; and a larger one paper (hanging files))
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@heterodox Titles have particularly magical meaning in a legal context. Think of them as a birth certificate or passport.
Mine are in the same cabinet drawer and folder as my birth certificate and passport (I moved from a series of documents boxes to a fireproof filing cabinet).
Titles could be retooled, but they and their siblings, Certificates of Origin and Salvage Certificates) are Central documents to so many heavily regulated industries (car manufacturing, car sales, law enforcement, auto service, banking, insurance, recycling) and they are so dramatically portable, that all 50 states would have to retool regulation for all those industries simultaneously.
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Status: Ate a half-pound Reese's peanut butter cup (with milk and half a cup of frosted corn flakes) for brunch.
Perhaps that wasn't a good idea....