No joke. Just think of all the LoRa stuff out there.

We ended up besting our last year record. We ran 2B (battery) and it was a little challenging early on making SSB QSOs with 5w but we pulled through. Did a lot of digital this year. Could have done better but we were plagued with bad weather and thunderstorms.

Worked all bands but 10m wasn’t good.

I’ll check it out. I’ve been using Breezy Weather and have been happy with it as well.

PEF sues Employee Relations Office over worker classification

The union said the state is violating the law when “unilaterally” designating workers as management

By Molly Burke Dec 9, 2023

The Public Employees Federation filed a lawsuit against the state’s Office of Employee Relations over a categorization of employees as “managerial or confidential.” The union, whose president Wayne Spence, is shown in March at the Capitol, represents more than 50,000 state workers.

ALBANY — The Public Employees Federation filed a lawsuit this week against the state’s Office of Employee Relations for deeming employees as management without going through the legal classification process, the union said.

The union, which represents more than 50,000 state workers, alleges the state is violating the Public Employees’ Fair Employment Act, commonly known as the Taylor Law, which requires that a public employer must go through a “detailed process” to classify an employee as managerial or confidential.

The classification requires the employer to file an application with the Public Employee Relations Board. The employee is notified and — often with PEF’s representation — given a chance to respond. The board then decides whether the position should be designated as “management or confidential” or stay within PEF’s bargaining unit, said Rob Merrill, a spokesman for PEF.

PEF claims in the lawsuit that the state Office of Employee Relations’ designation of positions as “managerial or confidential was done unilaterally and without any authority.”

The lawsuit names eight employees who PEF claims have been affected by the changed designations since the current collective bargaining agreement was ratified in the summer.

The union is concerned with the process of changing a position’s designation as “employees lose all benefits of union membership” upon being deemed managerial or confidential in these positions. Merrill said the affected employees lose representation, bargaining power, union benefits including discounts, and a sense of solidarity with their coworkers.

Merrill said that the union found out about the state’s designations through a Freedom of Information Law request. PEF says the state has not been notifying the union nor, to their knowledge, the affected employees until the designation has already been made.

The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Albany, asks the court to overturn the eight named employees’ designations and to order the state to follow the Taylor law.

Not my kid. She only had it on for a specific reason and she only accepts she had to put up with it for now.

She’s more than happy to bring it up as an issue from time to time.

Ok. I’ve put in a SSD, I’m looking to add RAM (I may be already maxed out), and run zswap, etc. I guess I’ll be sticking with LibreOffice.

I use the laptop for ham radio stuff, mostly, and things like an office suite are secondary.

How is it on resources? I have a i386 project computer running Debian 12 and I’m looking to make it as “modern” as possible. Right now, my fight is with slow browsers and LibreOffice (I’m trying to avoid the Abiword, etc route).

These videos exist for monetization purposes.

Does anyone know if one where to view videos through Piped, NewPipe, FreeTube, etc the view would count towards engagement?

Basically, it’s the same upgrade procedure as Debian’s with the added step of editing rasp.list.

Know what’s ironic? One of the most prestigious Labor schools is at Cornell.

I know where you’re coming from. I have direct access to my music at home and use Strawberry to play them.

Plex (as far as I know) is only “free as in beer,” so i doubt you’re going to have any success finding a 3rd party music player. I have the Linux app for when I’m away and don’t want to use my phone but the tiny, Android-sized Plexamp app on my desktop is out of place, and has its own eq, compression, etc.

I was a Xubuntu user for about 15 years but have an old EeePC running Debian.

I just recently moved my main, home computer (10+ yo EliteBook) to Debian 12 and am very happy. I will be soon moving my amateur radio “shack” computer (bought last year) to Debian as well.

Forcing Snaps and Snaps’ terrible usage of disk space (in my experience) is what made me move. The annoying Firefox update warning only served to aggravate me further.

I do use a couple Flatpaks (did with Ubuntu as well) but it was my choice - not a requirement. I haven’t had any disk use problems or bad experiences with them.

If like add another question - how about in a RPi too? I believe there is a LineageOS android TV out there. For anything have any experience with it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaTcIzLk880

I find using a combination of AdAway and AFWall+ on android to be effective in blocking a lot of stuff. I run as root.

If anyone is looking, I made !amateur_radio (https://sh.itjust.works/c/amateur_radio).