Many agencies, especially those new to having K-9 or small departments that may not be able to spend time dedicated to training from puppies, get dogs from Europe that are partially or fully trained. The lineage of the working dog breeds is much better in Europe because many breeds have bloodlines that haven't been bred for generations to be pets (like here in the US).

It's also why agencies pay so much for the dogs. Last I heard (I used to be more involved volunteering with my local PD) a fully trained dog was around $25k, USD, a partially trained was something like $8k - $10. It sounds like a lot until you realize a fully trained dog is 18—24 months old when acquired and has been training every day during that time.

The biggest hurdles are in the things like configurations. You'll probably want to have one code base, and maybe even one deploy/package for web servers. However, you'll need different configurations for each customer (DB name, credentials, etc.) and a way to manage them, and a way to identify which customer an HTTP request goes to before you can process it. You can use things like host names in your web app, but you'll really end up wanting some kind of "request router" to manage everything...at that point, it's far easier to put everything in one DB and move on with revenue-generation.

I believe the latest stat I heard was that over 70% of the roads & alleys in the city where I live are >40 years old. That also means all of the infrastructure under the roads (water, conduits, etc.) are also >40 years old.

I had seminoma testicular cancer. If you must have one, it's what you want. It's very treatable, but also affects the lymphatic system of the body. I had tumors in one testicle and 2 lymph nodes in my abdomen.

Surgery for the testicular tumor, chemo for the others.

Longer story:

A few months ago, I posted a job for a remote US-based developer. 90% of the applicants were not in the US. Some of those who were immediately rejected re-applied with new US addresses and phone numbers, but that's another story. In the end, hired someone who was a great fit, passed the background checks, etc. The only odd thing was their phone number was GV and didn't match the location of their address. My mobile number doesn't match where I currently live and lots of people use GV, so we didn't think much of it.

About 4 weeks in, they sent me a message on a Sunday saying there was a family emergency. They would not be online during normal business hours, but would check in and would still work on tasks as they could. No big deal, I asked for follow-up on two assigned tasks so they could be handed off to someone else to finish a sprint that week.

After two days, haven't heard anything, reassigned the tasks and tried to reach out to check on the person. Phone number goes to the generic GV voicemail prompt, I leave a message. I tried calling the emergency contact, same thing. I reach out through LinkedIn & personal email, no RESPONSE. At this point, we disabled accounts and access to systems. No real reason or policy why, just seemed like a good idea.

Two days later, now Thursday, I start getting calls from a random phone number (also GV from another area of the US), but leaving no messages. Then I get texts, "This is I've been trying to reach you, please call me back." I call back within 3 minutes, straight to GV generic voicemail.

A few hours later, the number calls again, I answer "Hey, this is , I was trying to get some work done but it seems my accounts are disabled". After explaining the situation, they simply offered "Well, everything is good now and I'm ready to work." I tried asking some basic things like, are they okay, is their family okay, can we help with something, did you get arrested? Anything to give them a opportunity to offer something. The only response they gave was, "I'm back now and ready to work, if you'll enable my accounts." Over and over.

I explained it wasn't that simple, walked through the communication inconsistencies and asked how that would affect their reliability in the future. You will only need one guess for the response, "I'm back now and ready to work, if you'll enable my accounts."

I thanked them for reaching out and said I'd talk to HR and CEO so we could discuss (both had also reached out through personal LinkedIn, email and phone numbers to check on the person, no responses).

They were still in the 90 day probationary period, so we let them go. They were a very good developer, smart, good coding practices, but inconsistency is a killer. And yes, a GV or VOIP number will be a hurdle any future applicant needs to overcome with flying colors.

We were lucky to have a decent management company that provided a lot of guidelines and information about what we should be doing. As well as the things we were obligated to do (either because of bylaws or laws, in Texas). Still, any time there was a storm resulting in additional costs for landscaping/cleanup, or work on a damaged/degrading stone wall, or the pool area, etc. We heard about it from some neighbors who didn't want to spend any money, because it didn't directly affect them.

It's definitely an area that more regulations would help everyone involved. We were not experts, but could make some decisions if we had the right information (or knew what questions we should ask).

All that being said, the highlight for us was seeing the WWII planes fly overhead and then seeing one of the VC-25As flying past seconds later. Multiple times. The rumor was they were doing takeoff/landing training.

Texas is by far the worst state I've lived in for getting your drivers license and vehicle registrations.

My understanding is that there is some dependency on the type of cancer, but mostly it depends on your immune system response. Doctors are pretty clear that just having a cold can affect the numbers.

It's usually not that those specific services are whitelisted, but that a number of hostnames have to be whitelisted for the user experience. Sometimes, those hostnames include those types of services, depending on the phone, OS, carrier, etc.

Of course, the most recent was a 8TB server I built in 2011. So, take that as bad that I can't speak to any recent experience. But, good that it's still running with all of the original components 9 years later.

Source: spent the last 5 years doing SaaS where one of the verticals is restaurants. I'm on the tech/product side, but some of these are things we've looked at for marketing and finding leads.

Seems like some of the choices they made were getting bashed, though I'm not sure the reasons were more than personal preferences.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067003

Edit:typo