Oh yeah, I’m very much aware of where I asked. Haha. I see an opportunity where I can at least advocate for the FOSS options, so I’m trying to learn what those are and how they compare to other solutions before I make any suggestions to the decision makers.

I was recently laid off, and have been wanting to explore some personal self hosting projects, plus I’m hoping to make a bit of a career pivot, so my interest is coming from a variety of motivations.

I only just discovered this problem a few days ago, so I don’t really know yet. We definitely need to be able to track a number of details about the animals including source, outcome, medical records, etc. I think having a way to keep track of “employees” (we’re 100% volunteer run), “customers” (finders and adopters), and finances is also pretty important, and hopefully in a way that doesn’t require a lot of duplicate entries due to multiple fragmented systems.

There’s quite a few (mostly proprietary) systems out there specifically designed for shelters, so I suspect something like that might be the best option for the current issue, but looking at Odoo might be relevant to my professional development in general, as I was recently laid off, and hoping to pivot a bit from the general administrative work I had previously been doing.

Thanks! Looks interesting. Might be a bit awkward to fit the data types, but I’m definitely curious to play with it and see how it compares to the other ERPs I’ve experienced, which were also clunky, even with more typical business data.

Thank you! This particular issue is something that I only started to become aware of a few days ago, so I’m still trying to learn more before pushing for any big changes. I don’t know that self hosting is even the right solution for our group, so I’m glad to see that they also offer a hosted option, although the self hosted option seems like a great way for me to test it out.

I have no clue yet if an open source solution exists, but I’m just getting started volunteering with a local animal rescue, and they definitely need a better solution for records management.

Hard disagree. If you ask people to make a temporary change that still feels achievable, they’re more likely to at least give it a shot, and many of those people will spend some time considering alternatives. Once the week is up, some people may even choose to continue boycotting Amazon, or at least reduce their spending there.

It’s happening. Slowly.

I first dabbled with Linux around 2015 by dual booting. Ran into too many issues, then I royally fucked shit up by accidentally deleting the bootloader or something, so I was pretty hesitant to try again. I finally got a hold of a surplus laptop from work so I could install Mint on it without any worry that I’d lose important data.

I’ve been using that as my primary PC for a few months now. I’ve run into some minor challenges, but nothing critical that I couldn’t figure out with a search engine.

I had another old laptop still running Windows 7 that has been having weird issues, but I’d been too lazy to backup the files so I could wipe it. I finally pulled the trigger today, fully wiped it, and installed Mint on it.

I’m not ready to preach Linux to my “normie” friends yet, but do mention it to them here and there in hopes I’ll be able to bring them over in the future.

I’ve recommended it to others, but none are interested, which is extra surprising considering how many of them work in tech or tech adjacent.

Stephen Colbert did a whole series of bits back on The Colbert Report where he formed a PAC, then a Super PAC, and pointed out numerous loopholes in the whole system. So basically, yep.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colbert_Super_PAC