u/Just__Liberty

I logged on to Voya to check something regarding my former employer (ExxonMobil) 401k (I'm retired). I had messages saying I had no beneficiaries designated, when, of course, I've had them designated for years. When I clicked on the link, it took me to a page where it had all of my beneficiaries' information, but the only options available were to change the information, remove the birthdate, or cancel. No option to confirm the information.

When trying to call them and speak with a representative, I finally got through the idiotic bot and just after I was told "All representatives are busy", it hung up on me.

When trying to contact them and clicking on "contact us" on the web page, I see this:

https://preview.redd.it/ycznojb8n9ah1.png?width=1207&format=png&auto=webp&s=a49a0bd9f9fecd9348247701918112fe169505e0

The first interesting thing is that it never asks me for a PIN number. It may send me a code and ask me, annoyingly, to set up voice recognition, but never asks for a PIN. Secondly, there is no actual button or option of any kind to use live chat. It says to do it, but no ability for me to use it. I find chat much more palatable that getting through the slow, annoying, error prone voice bot.

Anyway, stupid useless false message, slow annoying bot, hung up on me, incorrect information about what to expect regarding PIN, and no actual option for chat when it says there is one.

Is this typical for interactions with Voya? They are not completely horrible for checking a balance, but anything else seems really bad.

I finally got through to a person, after suffering through the voice bot again, but, while pleasant, they were unable to offer any explanation or help for any of this.

I tried Squirt drip wax, both as a primary lubricant and as a top-off to get a little more mileage after a melt-wax treatment was needing replacement. In both cases, the lubrication was Ok, but the chain was nearly as black and slimy as when using an oil. Recently, I ran it as a top-off for a single (50 mile) ride on a rail trail and the chain was left a slimy mess. Hands get black, etc. etc.

I hear some people love this stuff, but I hate it. Is it just me or did I get a soft (low molecular weight) batch or what?

There have been several questions in this community and others wondering why floors at McD (and elsewhere) are so slippery. I don't think the real answer has ever been given. My hypothesis as to the cause is that people don't know how to mop a floor. People includes McD managers and employees.

Suppose you have a greasy floor. Now take some soapy water in a mop and swish the mop around on the floor, leaving the floor wet. Now let the water dry. What do you have? The great majority of the grease is still there on the floor and you've added some detergent/soap, which is very much like grease. You've spread the grease and soap out into a thin uniform layer. You've made the floor worse. You've made it as slippery as possible.

The goal is to get the grease and dirt off of the floor. To do that with a mop and bucket, you do the soapy water swishing thing, but then you have to wring out the mop (this takes work) and swish the, initially dry, mop around on the floor again, PICKING UP the dirty water, Then you wring out the mop again in the bucket (this again takes work). This is the step that picks up what you are trying to remove and gets it in the bucket. When the water in the bucket is dirty, you have to empty it and put in fresh water and detergent.

I've watched dozens of McD (and other restaurant) employees attempt to mop the floor and none of them have ever done it effectively. The usual procedure gets a little of the grease off the floor onto the mop and then into the bucket just by putting the mop in the bucket, but its just a little; a secondary effect. If you keep this up, you end up with a steady-state amount of a grease/soap mixture on the floor and further mopping just keeps it at that level. When you mop and spread it out, you make it more slippery, so the floor is slipperiest just after mopping and the floor has dried.

I have four toolbags that I keep in the house for our use and that I take with me when I travel to visit my parents since I spend a large fraction of my time there fixing things for them. I have one for electrical things (multimeter, soldering stuff, wires, batteries, etc.), one for computer things (cables, replacement parts, USB drives, audio stuff, etc.), one for mechanical things (micro drivers, micro drills, needle-nose, polishing stuff, spudgers for taking devices apart, etc.), and one for specialty automotive stuff (scan tool, oscilloscope, etc.). They don't contain most of the stuff I keep in the garage like socket sets etc. that I assume everyone has and which belong in the garage.

Toolbags are horrible; especially for holding lots of smallish things. They are dark inside, they don't open wide enough, I need bigger ones, and they don't stack well in the closet or the car and they don't protect what is inside of them very well. I'd love some of the made-for-stacking toolbox sets like Mikwaukee packout etc. except for a few things:

1. They are super expensive. 2. They are heavy. 3. They are very inefficient: The lids are almost two inches thick but that space is unusable and just contains supports. The last two negatives are basically due to the fact that they want them to be able to handle huge amounts of weight. I don't need that.

I love the large-area format so you can find everything easily and the fact that they stack, or at least fit together well.

So, I would like some toolboxes that have about the same size as the expensive stacking solutions, maybe just a little deeper, but that aren't so heavy, expensive, or wasteful of space. I haven't seen anything. I don't like old-school toolbox formats; they are too narrow and too deep if you don't use the tray and too wasteful if you do.

Does anyone know of anything that fits my desires/requirements?

I have four toolbags that I keep in the house for our use and that I take with me when I travel to visit my parents since I spend a large fraction of my time there fixing things for them. I have one for electrical things (multimeter, soldering stuff, wires, batteries, etc.), one for computer things (cables, replacement parts, USB drives, audio stuff, etc.), one for mechanical things (micro drivers, micro drills, needle-nose, polishing stuff, spudgers for taking devices apart, etc.), and one for specialty automotive stuff (scan tool, oscilloscope, etc.). They don't contain most of the stuff I keep in the garage like socket sets etc. that I assume everyone has and which belong in the garage.

Toolbags are horrible; especially for holding lots of smallish things. They are dark inside, they don't open wide enough, I need bigger ones, and they don't stack well in the closet or the car and they don't protect what is inside of them very well. I'd love some of the made-for-stacking toolbox sets like Mikwaukee packout etc. except for a few things:

1. They are super expensive. 2. They are heavy. 3. They are very inefficient: The lids are almost two inches thick but that space is unusable and just contains supports. The last two negatives are basically due to the fact that they want them to be able to handle huge amounts of weight. I don't need that.

I love the large-area format so you can find everything easily and the fact that they stack, or at least fit together well.

So, I would like some toolboxes that have about the same size as the expensive stacking solutions, maybe just a little deeper, but that aren't so heavy, expensive, or wasteful of space. I haven't seen anything. I don't like old-school toolbox formats; they are too narrow and too deep if you don't use the tray and too wasteful if you do.

Does anyone know of anything that fits my desires/requirements?

I have no overly significant problems building the applications I need for myself in python. BUT, I don't do it often enough to keep in mind all the ancillary tools needed for effective development, sharing, distribution, and collaboration. I can get proficient in uv. I can get proficient in git, I can get nearly proficient in using github. I can get pytest to work. But when I take a break from development for a couple of months, my knowledge kind of falls apart and I often can't efficiently or effectively get it all to worth together. Maybe it is partly because I'm old (I started programming with Fortran 66 and punch cards...), but similar things were also true decades ago. I think I know enough to single out those 4 tools as the important ones to take me where I want to go. If I had to add another, it would be an IDE like VS Code.

The question for the community is this: "Is there a single learning forum (book, website, course, subliminal cassette tapes...) that helps one learn all of pytest, uv, git, and github (or hosted git in general) and how to get them to operate together?" I'd like something for first-time use and that would be a nice refresher to which one can return. Thanks.