What's next? Auto manufacturers requiring me to login before starting my car? Samsung requiring me to login before using my television?

From what I gathered, Amazon changed a policy that prevented large companies such as Popsockets from selling directly from the Amazon marketplace, and Amazon wanted Popsockets to sell their stuff to Amazon directly at wholesales prices. Popsocket however wanted to maintain pricing control so that the prices were the same with all other retailers selling their wares, including Target and Walmart.

Turns out, Amazon wants to be able to buy things at wholesales price, and price them to be cheaper than what their competitors sells similar items for. If Popsockets had conceded with Amazon, then Target and Walmart, and any other re-sellers could demand similar terms, impacting Popsocket's bottom line.

Yup. Wife and I went there several months ago to look for a business headphone with microphone so she can do her VOIP calling, and man, I felt bad. I've been laid off once (and again since then), and being in that store with so many employees and hardly anything worth selling brought back the specter of layoffs.

The local reddit has had quite a few threads about the Wilsonville store. Didn't know they were planning to run a road through the location. After some creative searching, yes, they are considering running not one, but two roads through where the store now sits at. The entire Town Center is going to be developed as a mixed use area, bringing in approximately 1600 living units into the area.

Eh, a paper mill I applied to work at, while waiting to begin my retraining (yay Trade Acts for requiring you to either be looking for work or actively being educated) actually had us do a battery of paper based IQ tests which, based on the graphics, were a relic from the 60s and 70s. Needless to say, I didn't get the job (WHEW!), and the paper mill eventually closed.

One thing I've noticed lately seeking employment related to my degree is this inane requirement to have a boatload of experience in order to qualify for a entry level/junior job:
Randomly

5+ years of IT experience
5 years of experience with some high end networking device no college or university is going to let a grubby student get close to
5 years of handling network device's management software
10 years of experience with Windows Server 2016, supporting 100+ users
If you meet at least half of the requirements, talk to us!

I could be wrong, but it's almost as if the company is looking for entry level for them and not actual entry level or junior anything at all.

Oh, the jobs are out there, however, the people (HR/management) are posting job descriptions and requirements expecting top of the line candidates for peanut wages.

This isn't a for profit school though, but a publicly funded college that is behind on the times. My Linux server administration course used Ubuntu 14.04... last year.

Yeah, same thing is happening in the Portland area. Entry level with a lot of required experience. It's almost as if the company wants entry level for the company, not the actual experience level.

I've recently graduated with a degree in Information System, and for some reason, every job I search for keeps asking for significant amount of experience using hardware that I haven't touched, let alone afford to use, or at least have some kind of IT/IS experience. When I had two terms left to go (I was being retrained under the US Trade Acts program), I started looking for internship opportunities, only to find I was running into the same issue: experience with hardware or software that no one without a significant amount of money can reasonably afford. Another option, I found, that might help open doors is to get some help desk experience, and I'm finding plenty of those. I just can't get any of them because I can't use a phone (I'm deaf, by the way), and offering to take up email and online chat support results in a "Yeah, no.. we need someone to answer phones.". By the time I was finished with school, my trade acts check ended, and I ended up going back to my previous line of work; manufacturing. I'm now building chip foundry tools that goes to Intel, Samsung, and a host of other microchip manufacturers, and every day I come home, looking for work, I keep running into that inane experience requirements. I thought internship was supposed to teach and train people to get those experience, so why are they asking for significant experience? Oh right, AS/BS/MS degree, shit wages, if any. So, how does one like me get past the HR barrier, and actually find work? Even claiming some experience with my homelab isn't enough, because I've not any experience using an expensive Cisco hardware in said homelab.

was for the built in support for the next generation Cochlear Nucleus 7. It's disappointing that there isn't any love or support for Androids, however, I get that there are just too many variables with all the different models and system versions that comes with Androids. However, I'm not willing to pay so much money for a phone that Apple claims is only guaranteed for an year, unless I get the extended warranty. Needing to spend $10k (estimated) just to move up to a Nucleus 7 setup and then 600+ for an iPhone, which may only work for an year? I'm not made of money. My insurance company may help with the CI upgrade, but I'm on the hook for the rest.

I know that not all of OS/X is opened sourced beyond Darwin (unless things has changed in the last few years when I last looked). Surprised no one brought up OS/X so far.

Most of us are grown ups here. Why the hell do we need a note from the doctor saying we were really sick? I thought we left primary school years ago. The few times I had to bring a note, was for the doctor to say I was cleared for work, or if I had work restrictions. That said, my previous employer had implemented something like this. We got 5 free sick days, and could use PTO, as long as we gave a week advance notice. Other than that, we got credited 1 point for each occurrence (not day. Calling in sick for 2 days in a row for the same thing counted as 1). Show up 5 minutes late, that is a half a point. Leave early? Half a point. Once we got to 10, we're disposed of. To make shit worst, it was on a rolling calendar year; the slate doesn't get cleaned on Jan 1st, as some people found out the hard way. Who's to blame for thing? IMHO (factually unsupported, btw), both the employees and the employers.

The Big Ass Glasses

Nope. I was even surprised about waiting in line for the men's room that night.

Nipples!? Rewind to confirm. Nope. Moving on. (while ignoring intense glare from wife)

Forgot to mention the crappy subtitle options I have to choose when I go. Regal's big ass glasses tends to not work at the start, requiring me to go to the front desk to get it reset, resulting in me missing out on the start of the movie. Ugg.

Cinemark's Box on a stick is even worst. At least with the Regal glasses, if I'm looking around the screen, the subtitle is still visible. On the plus side, I've never missed out the opening due to the subtitle not working with Cinemark. Then again, I've only used Cinemark's caption system a few times.

At least at home, I can ensure the damn subtitle works when starting up the movie, which is why I'd most likely just wait for the DVD/BR to become available at RedBox. I have no idea if the 30 bucks watch it at home option would include subtitles.