Season 1 was wonderful. The showrunner had initially written the pilot to get a job on Mad Men. It was eviscerated by critics for being too male, too masculine and seasons 2 onward pivoted into a girlboss series with Lee Pace's character taking a backseat and Scooter's character becoming a stay at home house husband. But if you like Breaking Bad and Sopranos, S1 is very well written.
Seasons 2 through 4 were vastly more interesting. We've seen Joel a hundred times. Donna and Cameron and Gordon felt less worn, and Donna and Cameron's relationship vastly more interesting than Gordon (the skeptic) and Joel (the believer!) in Season 1.
If you prefer "great men" stuff, I can see preferring Season 1.
But it's not exactly a story you can't watch elsewhere.
I've heard of Season 1 described as "Don Draper teaming up with Walter White", which makes it sound far more juicy than it is. The entire show gets way into the melodrama of the characters' personal lives, but S1 is no better than the rest in terms of that; it's strongest when the personal melodrama is rooted in the tech, like Joe's self-sabotage of their COMDEX demo followed by the fateful realization in the hotel room of their doom. There's a really great article in Grantland about HCF, Silicon Valley, and Microserfs by Douglas Coupland which points out that these characters are not great men, because they are but footnotes of history:
> The story twists again: Joe loses his nerve. The Giant goes to market as a regular old fast/cheap PC. Then, in a Comdex hotel room darkened as if for a séance, Joe comes face-to-face with his first Macintosh, and realizes he’s made the wrong call: “It speaks,” he says, his voice full of wonder and dread. We realize we’ve spent the better part of a season watching these characters fail — that Gordon and Joe aren’t going to become the Jobs and Wozniak of this world because Jobs and Wozniak are the Jobs and Wozniak of this world.
Cameron is just sort of an unstable tortured genius with a lot of baggage, and while Donna ends up being the responsible "den mother", it is really far from girlbossing, and rather trivializes those seasons and the characters to put it in such a way. And Joe does not take a backseat at all! He ends up being the main foil for most of the show, which is a really interesting turn for the character!
I do think Gordon gets sidelined (with a debilitating disease, no less!) far too easily. But then he's also sort of doomed to be a footnote, his fate is just all the more tragic for it.
I laundered money on The Silkroad (sent birthday cards filled with cash for bitcoin). It was a level of criminality I was fairly comfortable with. I do retain some fear that my door would be kicked in some day. Lawyers of HN, Am I in the clear now too? Ross tried to have a guy murdered, after all.
For the past year I've noticed their cashiers are oddly hostile. I've just not been digging the vibe of the store lately. I pay $60 for membership. You don't need to treat me like a potential criminal who may be using someone else's card.
Anyway, I have two Discover cards (0% apr for 12 months) that gave me 10% cash back at Costco.com. I purchased $3000 worth of Costco giftcards & will be using them in lieu of membership in the store when mine expires (a little known store loophole). I'd like to think it's in the spirit of Steve Jobs leasing cars for one month at a time to avoid license plates.
I'm not sure what you are hinting at by saying "like a potential criminal who may be using someone else's card." Were you using someone else's card or not? Its a membership based store and your card is what validates that status. What exactly was the scenario you found yourself in? maiden vs. married name? Picture scratched up?
It looks like from reviews left that the Costco Shop gift card[1] is a one time use. How they would know that, maybe via system tracking, I'm not sure. It would seem that you would have to have a new card every time you go verse a single card with $3k on it. Other reviews seem to indicate that they check the member that gave you the card which after the first year of renewal you would not be able to show since your membership lapsed.
Where am I hinting at anything? I literally said that "I pay $60 for membership"
The scenario I've witnessed many times in the last year: a cashier screaming at members for not having their card ready/not having an item barcode visible/scrutinizing the tiny B&W photo for any hint of malfeasance. Just an unpleasant experience altogether. They do this because memberships are way down. And if you think it's just me here's a reddit thread
Costco cashiers enjoy the highest pay and benefits for a job that requires little intelligence or skill. For some reason they act like frustrated divas forced to interact with the unwashed masses. Sorry, no. You're an unskilled service worker and wear a nametag. Get over yourself!
Anyway I'm not going to subsidize that. But I'm also not going to give up my rotisserie chickens and $5 gallons of organic milk. I'll get a membership again when the self-checkout machines outnumber employees.
>one time use
Nope. Have used a single card 3x. Also gift cards are highly regulated in my state, what you're describing is illegal
>they check the member that gave you the card
No idea what you're talking about. Been doing this for three months.
I wasn't asking about a reddit thread, I was asking about your experience since you indicated it happened to you. If you don't want to share thats fine I was just curious as quite a few commenters on the thread seem to think that verifying your membership by asking for your card is "being treated like a criminal." I was trying to take other instances into account.
I don't really know how many times you would have to shop at Costco to not know to have your card out. I can understand peoples first time or forgetting but you have to be very oblivious to not notice the process that is happening with the person in front of you and have it ready. This is akin to people waiting in line at a restaurant then getting to the counter and not knowing what they want.
If you went to the link I referenced you would see in the reviews that people were leaving on the Costco site that this was their experience with the gift cards.
>one time use
>> Nope. Have used a single card 3x.
Right, because your current membership is still active. Again, if you read the Costco link I referenced the people attempting to use the card were not members and gifted the Costco cards. This will be the scenario you run into when your membership expires.
>>Also gift cards are highly regulated in my state, what you're describing is illegal
Great, then apply your personal knowledge to where you live, clearly its not the same everywhere.
>they check the member that gave you the card
>> No idea what you're talking about. Been doing this for three months.
Again because your membership is still active and you are the one that purchased them.
>I was asking about your experience since you indicated it happened to you. If you don't want to share thats fine
I just have written two paragraphs on my personal experience
>seem to think that verifying your membership by asking for your card is "being treated like a criminal."
not at all what I said, but I think you knew that
>I don't really know how many times you would have to shop at Costco to not know to have your card out.
Not addressing my point but again I think you knew that
>This will be the scenario you run into when your membership expires
Again, gift cards are highly regulated in my state. They don't suddenly lose all value contingent on the buyers standing at the store. You're making that up for some reason. Do you work for Costco?
>Great, then apply your personal knowledge to where you live
That's... what I've been doing this whole time, thanks
>I was asking about your experience since you indicated it happened to you. If you don't want to share thats fine
>>I just have written two paragraphs on my personal experience
I see. So you haven't directly experienced being yelled at or having your picture scrutinized, you just observed it happening to other people?
>seem to think that verifying your membership by asking for your card is "being treated like a criminal."
>>not at all what I said, but I think you knew that
I think its disingenuous to cherry pick parts of quotes. I'll list it out again so you see that it wasn't directed at you specifically.
"as quite a few commenters on the thread seem to think that verifying your membership by asking for your card is "being treated like a criminal."
I'll leave it to you to scroll through the thread if you want to see what I was speaking too.
>This will be the scenario you run into when your membership expires
>>Again, gift cards are highly regulated in my state. They don't suddenly lose all value contingent on the buyers standing at the store. You're making that up for some reason.
I think if you read the reviews from the link I referenced[1] there was no mention of loosing the cards value. I said Costco only let them use it once as a non-member. There are a number of different scenarios listed in the reviews that people ran into. If you don't want to read the reviews thats fine, but there is nothing being made up instead you are creating a scenario which wasn't stated. It makes no sense why I would do that and then provide you the link to the source of the information.
> Do you work for Costco?
I pointed you to the Costco site which is where I would go to find out about their policies and because of that I must "work" for Costco now? I was simply pointing out other peoples experiences as "non_members" which you alluded to as your future plan here with the cards.
Here are the reviews incase you missed the link previously, look through the (1) star reviews to see what I was talking about.
>Great, then apply your personal knowledge to where you live
>>That's... what I've been doing this whole time, thanks
Yes and where you live is known to you, not everyone in the thread. We were only granted the illuminating information of cards being "highly regulated in your state" later on in your response post. No one would have known this information prior to that.
In the event you were unaware of this, angle brackets are a form of quoting in markdown and other forums such as mailing lists. Multiple brackets are intended to show threaded conversations.
You quoted a statement that wasn't part of our conversation and seemed misplaced in our thread.
Based on your displayed reading comprehension level it seemed prudent to include the thread since you were unable to piece a few previous sentences together and were mis-quoting previous statements.
I've also decided to break out my sentences so they are easier for you or your screen reader to work with.
I hope whatever bot this is training works out well and can help improve its comprehension levels. Don't get too tired typing one sentence answers today, drink some water and take some breaks.
The problem is that people ARE using other peoples cards. It hurts members who actually paid for a membership, and I don't mind them checking for that at all.
OP is absolutely wrong about this. Federal law requires that you serve 85% of your sentence before becoming eligible for parole or early release. She'll serve at minimum 9.5 years, (so, technically correct, but not what OP likely meant) unless she's pardoned or the sentence is overturned on a further appeal.
>One day you’ll find yourself wearing shorts. Fair enough, it’s probably hot out. One day you’ll also find yourself wearing a t-shirt. Again, fair enough. Unless you’re playing a sport, however, you will not be wearing the two together because you’re also no longer a ten-year-old boy.
Fucking boomer hypocrite. btw I am wearing shorts as I type this.
The problem is that I can't tell if people who say/write this would unironically wear long-sleeve button-down shirts to shorts or if that thought would make their head explode.
>American men are extremely susceptible to multi-level marketing schemes
Men are under extreme environmental pressures to be successful providers. Perhaps it's why they suffer the highest suicide rates. Equating their eagerness to provide for loved ones with susceptibility (i.e. stupidity) is misguided.
My last Airbnb experience was six months ago. A room rented in an old Silverlake home. It was a superhost with dozens of rave reviews. The woman who owned the house was in her 80's. A few weeks in to my one month stay, she knocked on my door at 10PM and asked me to get ice for her at Whole Foods. When I declined she began screamed profanities, then proceeded to blast calypso jazz for a few hours, among other things.
She had some sort of dementia which is sad, but I could not comprehend how she had been a superhost with Airbnb for years. That is, until I left a review of my experience and Airbnb promptly deleted it. I'll stick to hotels from now on. As far as LA apartment hunting goes I still think I made it out unscathed.
Oh, also I started shorting $ABNB shortly after this experience and it's almost made the whole thing worth it.
Edit: It feels really good to finally tell someone about this. It was so bizarre I'm too embarrassed to tell friends or family.
I recall the wording being some sort of corporate-speak 'we've deemed this review not helpful to future guests' or something of the like. Sometimes I wonder how far I could have gotten taking Airbnb to small claims court. They misrepresented my stay, it was terrifying and I lost money.
Not only can they do it, but they do it all day long. Many, many stories of deleted reviews out there. Check this thread for a start... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34219422
There is a certain class of people that will somehow call that an authentic experience and give them 5 stars. I think they need help, but there are quite a few out there.
I met a lot of those in New York. They conflate crime, nuisance, feeling unsafe with 'heh, classic new york'. They're almost always transplants from other states.
This was a concern of mine, so I purchased an induction stove. Also took it one step further by moving my entire kitchen to a covered outdoor patio. It seemed silly to be breathing oil particles for hours every time I cook chicken. Very grateful for my hypochondriac mother. She taught me to never not stop think about all the ways we can get cancer.
