Got IT training during my time in the military that ended up opening the door to a network engineer position with a defense contractor after I got out.

I was a pretty poor engineer, but I was good at explaining technical details to non-technical people. The bosses liked this because they wanted constant updates on what was happening, the other engineers liked this because they didn’t want the bosses to bother them, and I liked it because going to sit in briefings got me out of doing real work, so I ended up in management.

I don’t remember specifically, but it would have been something on my uncle’s Atari 2600 in the late '80s…probably Dig Dug or Pitfall.

Interesting article…let’s see how I score.

• White (1/1)
• Not female (1/2)
• Not between the ages of 30 and 34 (1/3)
• German ancestry (2/4)
• Not named Jessica (2/5)
• Don’t live in CA (2/6)
• Married (3/7)
• Not 5’4" (3/8)
• I am a brunette, though (4/9)
• No kids (4/10)
• Some college (5/11)
• Not in the healthcare industry (5/12)
• Drives a Camry (6/13)
• No commute (6/14)
• Don’t rent (6/15)
• Depends on how generous “one of” the best countries is taken…but yes to the rest of that paragraph (7/16)
• Votes Democrat (8/17)
• Not religious (8/18)
• Believes mass shootings are a big problem (9/19)
• Own a gun (9/20)
• Higher earner, higher debt, and higher net worth (9/23)
• No longer believe in the American Dream (9/24)

I am fairly below average, apparently.

My Hotmail account, which I’ve had since high school. Oldest email in there is from 2002, but I think I opened it up in 2000.

Ok, boomer.

I think what you’re experiencing is people here being less tolerant of your assholery.

I have a Kindle from 2011 that’s still in perfect condition and gets daily use. Every now and then I’m tempted to get a newer eReader but I can’t come up with a single reason to actually do it.

My wife just dug an old iPod that must be from ~2008 from some box in the basement so she can listen to music at work all day without killing the battery on her phone.

I am a veteran (you’re welcome for my service) and I also find this annoying/over the top.

We have an auto feeder for their dry food that has a removable metal bowl beneath the spout. When the metal dish is in place, all the kibble pours out into the bowl. When the cats think the food is overdue, they will tap the metal bowl out of the way to get attention or wake the machine up or whatever cat reason…and the kibble bounces off the hard flat plastic surface and half of it spills onto the floor where the dog will gobble it up.

Sometimes I put the bowl back in place and sometimes I wait and see if they’ll learn the lesson on their own.

My main takeaway from that article is that Nautico Crepusculo would be a good album title.

We went through a long phase of people being hyped about Marvel, followed by a phase of people shitting on Marvel…now I think we’re entering a phase of “people who like it can still like it, people who don’t like it can move on to something else.”

It will be interesting to see what comes next in the monoclture now that Marvel doesn’t have the same stranglehold on the box office as they used to. Most other studios seem to have already moved on from the “cinematic universe” model with a new tie-in blockbuster every 6 months forever…

Sparkling water.

I got my vasectomy done through Planned Parenthood. I had to go in for a screening first where they asked questions like, “Are you sure you want to do this?” and I said yeah and they said, “Really sure?” and I said yeah, so they said “OK cool, come back in two weeks and we’ll snip snip.”

Very easy process, highly recommend.

Just got home from an impromptu night of camping out at the lake. Did a few hours sailing in decent winds this morning. I am now sun-drenched, sweat-soaked, and exhausted, but feeling good.

X-COM with the Long War mod.

Football Manager 2016 was the first version I tried. I put 1,500+ hours into it and only stopped because I decided to upgrade to Football Manager 2018. I’m on 2024 now at ~400 hours.

Do I get to keep all my current knowledge if I go back and change things? If so, I’d go back to May 5th, 2008. That was the day I decided to stop my through-hike of the Appalachian Trail because I thought I needed to go back home and enroll in college courses for the fall.

In hindsight, college was a huge waste of time that left me depressed and in debt. Thankfully an old Army buddy turned me on to a good job that got my life back on track, but it was a rough few years.

If I had stayed and finished the hike, I could have started that job years earlier, banked a hefty salary, and be that much closer to an earlier retirement now.

Too goddamn early in the day for them to get my hopes up like that. Probably just meant Trump either forgot or lied about when his birthday is.

Trusting the home inspector that said the roof wouldn’t need to be replaced for at least another couple years.