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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Been on my own since I as 17. The first few years were rough to say the least.

    I worked 2 jobs, 30-60 hrs per week and went to college. I shared shitty apartments with some pretty creepy people. I moved so constantly I ended up paying for a post office box so I could get my mail. I did not have a vehicle (no car) so I rode a bike for up to 60 miles per day. Even all that wasn’t enough without government grants and student loans to pay for college.

    Food was something that I ate when I had it. I spent a few months with mybe 4-5 real meals. Cornflakes and ramen where the bulk of my diet for a while.

    I took the first professional job I could find. It was terrible but it paid well. I gained 50lbs to be at a healthy weight the first year. The next few years I jumped around jobs until I landed in one I liked.

    The last few weeks before I graduated college I met my wife. Her family has become mine over the past 25 years.

    Today my income alone puts us in the top 10% of earners. My wife makes close to the same. At many crucual times in our lifes we’ve taken advantage of government assistance. To be blunt, it’s not possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You need a helping hand once in a while no matter how small.







  • That’s a good one to hang up in my office.

    I tend to pace when my brain is working on a problem. When I do some heavy analysis, I often look at data for 20-30 minutes and then pace for 15-20 minutes as I process.

    Good thing my office is empty most of the time, so I don’t bother others.

    Of course after 4-5 hours my brain is done so I often find and excuse to leave the office after lunch. Gotta go walk a field/visit a customer etc…




  • This varies depending on the cultural norms of the country.

    Japanese: I have been in high level meetings with a Japanese company. As soon as I walked into the room they all switched to English. Some of their English was weak but they still made the effort. When I commented on how much I appreciated it, surprised Pikachu faces all around. They responded course they would swap, to do otherwise is rude.

    In France I have had business meetings with with 8 people around a table all of who all spoke english. 4 of them were native French speakers, 1 polish, 2 Arabic, and me the sole native English speaker. The native French speakers spoke French the entire time. They would swap to English to interrupt the English language conversation then swap back to French amongst themselve. If two or more native French speakers are together, they speak French and don’t give a fuck if they include you or not. They then act all surprised that you didn’t follow their in French conversation.


  • Unless the program you need is not in the store, which, for some reason is still normal for the programs I want to use. Then it’s back to the stupid tar.bz bullshit and typing in random shit I found on the internet into the command line hoping it works.

    Every 2-3 years, I get fed up with the bullshit Windows is doing and test out a few distros in a vain hope it’s finally usable. Then for some random thing I have to hit the command line and inevitable failure to accomplish what I want to do. So I unistall the OS and wait a few more years.


  • I have messed around with Linux for 20 years. In all that time it’s always been completely unsuable for most users. The use of the command line for anything routine is complete bullshit.

    All I want to do is download a program and click on it to install. How fucking hard is that. I am not a programmer and have zero desire to be one.

    I do not want to go to the command line and try to fucking remember the sudo bullshit and fail because I missed one letter in the sintax.

    Just let me use the fucking computer for the tasks I need to do, not fuck around with the OS.




  • It greatly depends on the age.

    For under 10’s. I highly recommend the small tablets with educational games and videos. I had the homepage on the webbrowser set to PBS kids. Any other website was locked by parental controls. I also had Netflix with a kids account back when they had everything. For the games they wanted to play, I had to preview before they were installed.

    The hardest age is 9-12. This is when they act all grown up but absolutely should not be online unsupervised. This is when they need room to explore what they are interested in. I open up the restrictions and allow them more of the world but routinely check to see what they are up too (an make sure they see what I am doing).

    After 13, it’s all about education, not control. There is no fucking way to stop a determined teenager from accessing places they shouldn’t. The totally “locked down” school chromebooks are a great example. I am constantly impressed with the ingenuity to circumvent the controls. At this point, open discussions on all the issues online are key. They need to know about what criminals and perverts are up too. It’s no longer blocking them, it’s learning how to identify, avoid, and report them.

    I also spend a few hours hanging out while they are gaming with my teenagers. It’s let’s me know what they are playing and showcase my incredible skill to their mocking.


  • I get spam to my work account saying that they got my information from LinkedIn. The e-mail I use on linkedin is a spam collection account that I never use for anything real. I check it every couple of months and delete the entire inbox.

    The only place they could get my contact information is one of my suppliers has a shitty webpage design with my info listed. Easy for a bot to scrape and sell.

    My current theory is that the professional “sales list” data collection companies are running scraped data against Linkedin data and claiming it came from there.

    I get e-mails from from companies who want to sell “sales lead” lists to me as well as a few poorly targeted fools who bought the “sales lead” list from them.


  • Gardening is a great way to save money from sitting on your bank account.

    The raised beds were only $200 for the wood.

    I blended compost with my sandy native dirt for only another $200.

    The cute fence around it was another $200 plus… Plus $100 for the new tablesaw blade because I needed it to make it.

    The additional irrigation setup was only $80.

    I get the fertilizer with my employee discount, only around $100 per year.

    The front flower bed was only $400 to make it tiered with retaining blocks.

    Then there the $300 per year for flowers etc that I just have to have.

    Then there is my vegetable seed bill. That’s relatively cheap, only around $200 per year.

    Since I start my plants I from seeds i need a starting setup. That’s $200 for the lights plus another $100 for the heater.

    Potting soil and trays are another $75 per year.

    Then there’s the steady stream of tools etc that I break or wear out and need to be replaced. Another $200-400 per year.

    And then there’s the koi pond…


  • FYI This is the majority of the workforce. They have to work in order to do other things that are not paid. The are not interested in self improvement, climbing the social ladder, kissing ass etc. They want to do a job that doesn’t suck, get paid a fair wage, and work a fair number of hours so they can do the things they actually enjoy.

    These are the people that drive human society. The most valuable portion that maintains our existence.