None of us can actually determine if a kid is school-ready just by guessing on an internet forum. We either have to trust the parents or rely on professionals, hoping there isn't some hidden motive behind their decision.
Think about it: if parents follow advice from a thread like this only to have their child held back at the end of first grade, what's their excuse? Maybe they'll say, "But someone online told us elementary school was just coloring and drawing!" When asked who said that, they'll point to urbantinker8. Then CPS shows up and takes the kids away.
I hope Tinkertoy has stopped reading this thread. If she hasn't, she really should—and she needs to ignore most of what's being said on this page and the last one, because a lot of it is flat-out wrong (and even if it isn't, just because one kid was ready doesn't mean hers is). She made the right call taking him to a speech therapist for an evaluation. She should go for a full assessment—speech therapist, specialist, psychologist, whatever—and listen to what the pros say. They might not be perfect, but they're probably as close as we're going to get.
Gary Martin12 said:The school is pretty small, so I'm guessing they're short on students... Anyway, I just scheduled a private speech therapy assessment for him today to see where he stands. We'll see what the results say! If they find areas where he needs extra help, I’ll take those findings straight back to the school. Honestly, I feel like nobody will take my concerns seriously at first, and then once he's actually enrolled, we'll all be left scratching our heads wondering why we didn't act sooner. Once that happens, there's no going back!
Call the Department of Education. Try to talk sense into the administration at the school—unless there's a specific reason like the one James Bond mentioned (maybe they're low on enrollment and are terrified of having to merge classes and lay someone off). Honestly, they should be listening to parents, especially when the deadlines are still months away—like January or February. I don't know how big he is physically, and I wonder if being the biggest kid in preschool might cause issues later, but if he isn't ready for school, the actual school environment will cause way more frustration and complexes than his size ever would.
Gary Martin12 said:Experienced moms, I need some advice! Who should I contact if we disagree with the school district's decision regarding first-grade enrollment? During our evaluations at both the school and the Mayo Clinic, we requested a one-year delay, but we were turned down. They claimed my child isn't right on the cutoff date and is physically large enough. Honestly, the school staff didn't seem thrilled with the testing results either; they could see themselves that delaying would be the best move, yet we still got a "no." How do I appeal this? Should I draft a formal written request to send over? Is it too late since we've already completed all the medical exams?
Try talking to the school again. It's the easiest path. Set up a meeting with the school counselor or special education coordinator and lay out your reasons for wanting the delay. Usually, schools actually prefer it when kids are ready; it makes their lives easier. Also, just ask them directly who handles the appeals process. They should know.
wiredotter14 said:Jerry Murphy3, that i3 9100 and motherboard combo is a terrible deal.
@urbanowl81/">@@urbanowl81, what's your budget for a new build and what are you actually doing with it? I haven't quite caught that from your posts.
P.S.
Yeah, like Bryan Taylor6 said, you can just stick with your old GPU if it's still decent. Maybe build something around an i3 10100 f instead—it's an excellent processor (roughly i7 7700 territory) for next to nothing.
Thanks. Since my current setup is working fine, I'm not sure I'll pull the trigger on a new one right now. Don't want to waste anyone's time needlessly.
I'll keep these tips in mind, though. I was thinking of something beefier, like the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (surprised people were hating on it in another thread), a 1660ti, etc. That feels like a solid, mainstream PC for a reasonable price. Basically, whatever counts as the current generation for those parts, just so I don't feel stupid waiting two years only to pay more in 2021 for the exact same machine that's been out since 2019.
fadedorca66 said:Yeah, suggesting you shut down the VM is honestly just useless, dumb advice. 😁
Since everything is running fine now, I assume you won't be buying anything new since this setup handles your needs just fine...
It’s actually surprising how smoothly this thing runs considering the PC is about 13-14 years old. I pushed it to the absolute limit last night. It almost gave up the ghost near the shipping containers (not the first time either), though it's definitely nearing its expiration date.
I still remember the old build: an AMD Ryzen 5 3600, a 1660ti, some SSD—probably a Samsung EVO 500—and 16GB of G.Skill 3200 RAM on an ASRock motherboard. No monitor, no peripherals, no HDD since I already had those. Maybe a $6,000 or $6,500 budget back then; nothing crazy.
I turned on hardware acceleration because there was zero logic in thinking it would fix anything—that was clearly just a fluke, even if the internet claims it’s the go-to solution for the issue mentioned above. Anyway, it's on now and everything seems fine, though I don't see much of a performance boost from it. Not sure if the SSD feels any faster since it's on an old motherboard without SATA 3, so the drive is bottlenecked anyway, but whatever. I clicked the option to auto-adjust (at the top, not per item), and it set itself to 7.6GB. I'm leaving it alone while it runs. 😁
As for that VM situation, I can't even be surprised; it's pure madness. I can't quite remember, but maybe during some late-night session when an update wouldn't download or something else needed space on my C drive, I noticed the pagefile was massive and just toggled it off, then forgot about it. Back when I was using XP or Vista, a few GBs was plenty, and an 80GB C partition was total overkill. Once that filled up later on, I didn't have the option to change it anymore. It's also possible that back in 2007 or 2008, someone advised me to disable the VM because I had enough RAM for the time, so there was no point pairing it with a slow HDD. It's wild how that setting managed to fly under my radar all this time.
fadedorca66 said:What does that out-of-memory error actually look like? That shouldn't be happening. If you run out of RAM, the system is supposed to swap to virtual memory...
Exactly. I tried searching online for an identical screenshot—which would have been easier if I hadn't just kept opening more tabs 🙂—and all I found was a mountain of "fixes." I already tried switching from Chrome (my usual driver) over to Edge or Opera, but the exact same thing happens.
ps. turned off hardware acceleration, so I'll test it out.
pps. looks like disabling hardware acceleration fixed it 🙂 (opened a bunch of tabs and everything works fine), but I went to check my virtual memory settings and—it was disabled. No idea why. Probably messed something up when I installed the SSD.
Since I haven't played anything in ages (last thing was BF2), I just need a desktop for browsing the forums 🙂, running accounting software plus a stock trading app, Excel, Word, YouTube, etc. Basically, my requirements are pretty basic. I honestly think this old rig could keep going if the memory wasn't such a massive bottleneck; I was thinking about letting it retire gracefully. It’s running a Q9650, which back in the day (around '07 or '08) was top-tier, along with G.Skill DDR2 memory (4x2GB). The ATI 4850 was swapped for a GTX 580, added an SSD and an HDD, and so on. But man, this memory is killing me. If I have accounting software running in the background, I can barely open a few tabs before it tells me I'm out of memory—maybe one or two more if I don't have YouTube open, which is incredibly annoying. Even though 8GB shouldn't be *that* pathetic, I don't know. From what I can see, it isn't easy to find DDR2 sticks that would actually help (like 4x4 or 2x8GB). The motherboard (Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3) supports up to 16GB, but right now it's sitting at 8GB. I found some used Kingston 8GB 1600 stick on AliExpress LINK, but I have no idea if it'll actually work properly. To be honest, I really don't want to dump $70+ into this old machine, though if it actually fixes the problem, it's still way cheaper than buying something new. What do you guys recommend?
If I decide to go for a new build, what's the best move? Like, how much should a decent modern PC cost? I saw someone in another thread put together a build with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and a GTX 1660, only to get told it was "bottom of the barrel" because the parts are older generation (LINK). I'm out of the loop; I've been reading that there's a shortage and prices for older components are driving up (makes sense, given the pandemic).
darkotter35 said:So, my kid just got slapped with a 10-day quarantine because some classmate tested positive. Now, we just got hit with news that the isolation period is being tacked on for another 7 days because apparently, someone else in the class popped up positive in the meantime. Is there actually any legal ground for them to extend those initial 10 days like this? At this rate, they could basically sentence healthy kids to three months of isolation! Right? WTF?
Yeah, weird. Or maybe you just have the timeline messed up—it’s at least 17 days total...
When was the contact with the first infected person, and when with the second? If, say, Friday Oct 1st was the first contact with a teacher who tests positive on Tuesday Oct 4th, the kid stays isolated for 14 days from that last contact, which means 10 more days (until Oct 14th). If someone else in the class tests positive on Tuesday Oct 4th, then the isolation extends to Oct 18th to hit that 14-day mark from the most recent exposure. Technically, it shouldn't work like that, and I don't think rules are uniform everywhere since it should be based on when symptoms actually develop. That's how it ought to be handled.
Nothing unexpected has happened over the last six months or so. We could have easily guessed that the public—and the economy—wouldn't be able to stomach lockdowns and isolation for very long. But we also knew people would start acting out and causing trouble if they weren't personally facing death or sitting in an ICU. When that happens, you see a total 180: it flips from "this virus is fake, I’m not wearing a damn mask, let alone isolating" to "screw everyone who isn't reporting their contacts; throw them in jail and let them rot!"
Can an admin or anyone with editing privileges on the car subforum fix these images (just leave the link)? It feels like there isn't an active moderator online right now.
The whole page is a mess. Some people just ignore the author to deal with it, but it’d be better if the site staff actually cleaned this up.
In the first comment, I see someone saying "me and my wife." If the husband was exposed to someone potentially infected, shouldn't he be isolating by himself somewhere else until things are cleared up? If he turns out to be positive but she isn't, he’ll likely just pass it to her, which might have been totally avoidable. I get that people don't exactly have extra apartments lying around, but this is about the core goal of stopping the spread. You can't have a situation where a wife ends up dying from COVID because her husband didn't isolate properly in time.
And what's the deal with contact tracing? Even if you follow every single recommendation to the letter, you're still interacting with people. For instance, the mail carrier dropped off bills. A delivery driver brought packages. He went to the grocery store for food and hit a local corner market for fruit while he wasn't even showing symptoms yet. He saw his cousins or his mother, who's still working. She was out socializing. His wife had to go into her school to coordinate shift changes. And so on.
Does everyone—the mail carrier, every single person he crossed paths with, the staff and customers at those grocery stores, the delivery guy, his own contacts, his wife's coworkers, their families, and every person *those* people ran into at work or the store—does every single one of them need to self-isolate? Because if that's the case, you're looking at thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of people.
Or is it just the immediate contact with a confirmed positive case, who should then separate themselves from everyone else (including family)?
Since we’re talking about emigration and the whole situation in Ireland, the mods really need to look at the posting history of whoever started this thread. Take today’s comment, for example—he describes people living in California in a really nasty way. It’s a malicious statement clearly designed to insult certain users and bait a reaction. And it isn't the first time either. What happens if someone bites on the provocation and snaps back with something like, "Fine, Californians are irresponsible, incompetent lazybones, but at least they aren't intellectually stunted creeps like..."? You end up with a massive circular argument, all because these malicious types aren't removed quickly enough. These provocations shouldn't go unpunished or receive such light penalties; individuals like this degrade the quality of this entire forum. Add to that the constant targeting of that woman from Miami, mocking her accent, and so on... the conclusion is obvious. Even if what he says were true, it’s no way to act, and it says more about him than it does about her. Also, there's no point constantly writing about yourself in superlatives and acting like you're important; let others decide that. This isn't Instagram where everyone needs to brag. Just as Ambient is tedious with Denmark, this guy is tedious with his constant whining. Ambient is always going off-topic regarding Denmark, which ruins the few interesting bits of info he actually shares, though it seems he isn't trolling intentionally—it’s actually surprising how calm he stays during the provocations and bullying. Even so, his posts definitely have no business being in a thread about Ireland.
While things like whether moving is worth it, salaries, or comparisons to the US are topics that constantly spark debates regarding life in Ireland, it's precisely because users will never agree on them (which is fine, a forum doesn't need to be a monolith) that these subjects should probably be moved to another thread—ideally Politics or maybe Economics. Let the Ireland thread stay for those arriving who need to know technical stuff, like life in Glenbeigh, opening a bank account, etc.
The real issue is how hard it is to build a career when you're dealing with that diagnosis. It leaves people stuck with those "dead-end" jobs nobody else wants. And when you combine that condition with a lack of drive, it becomes a nightmare—everything from the mental decay of unemployment to a total collapse of self-esteem and all the dark consequences that follow, like self-harm or suicidal ideation.
I find it hard to wrap my head around when someone brings up a diagnosis similar to yours but then claims they've been dealing with it for years. To me, those two things just don't add up, though I guess it leaves a tiny bit of hope that it actually is possible.
Carl Doyle92 said:Hey everyone, I’m running into a bit of a headache here. A guy needed to wire me $50 so I could get some items shipped out to him via mail. We had a clear agreement: nothing moves until the funds actually hit my account. He claims he already sent the $50 and even sent over a screenshot from his online banking app to prove it. I checked the details, and the account number matches mine perfectly, but the money is still nowhere to be found. He initiated the transfer on Thursday evening through Chase, sending it to my account at Wells Fargo. I’ve attached the confirmation photo he sent me—does anyone know if there's an extra step where he needs to authorize the payment, or is this just a typical delay on the bank's end?
Frankly, I don't see any reason for him to play games; I was very explicit about not shipping anything until the balance shows up in my account. I even went out of my way to tell him repeatedly that I wouldn't budge until the funds cleared, specifically so he wouldn't think I was the one trying to pull a fast one.
It's possible he still needs to confirm it since it says "pending orders," but I don't use Chase so I can't be sure. Usually, if a transfer goes through, it shouldn't say "pending"—it should say "processing" or "completed." He probably needs to click one more button to finalize it. It happens, and he might not be lying, but... you know how people are these days. Anything can happen.
