Homercles

I went through that, proxy wars over past alcohol transgressions. In fact a vicious cycle of my problem drinking was driven by how my wife jumped on my case over little things…she was on edge due to my transgressions, which lead her to a short fuse, which lead to picking fights over the gotdamn laundry I spent an hour on, which lead to me withdrawing in a bottle because I didn’t feel appreciated…it just went on like that. Although not an alcoholic (if my success moderating past few years is an indication), I can sympathize. It’s such a personal triumph to quit/fix the problem, you’re feeling good and (in my experience) you can tell the mental gymnastics over ‘Will I / Won’t I Tonight’ are over…but your partner hasn’t immediately followed along with you and things haven’t really changed at the same pace you have. In my case it just took time to earn her trust back…and therapy to realize that I can only control myself, and not hitch my mental wagon to her mental state. I still felt down when I was getting snapped at for seemingly minor transgressions, but I tried hard not to let it ruin my whole day like before wherein I’d double down with ‘well fine, if you’re gonna treat me rudely then I’ll do what I want…which is drink and watch Aliens by myself.’ I’ve always been a giver and people pleaser, so it was hard. But things definitely improved over time, and I got my girl back…which started a positive cycle from the ashes of the negative one we’d been in. As noted above it’s certainly possible that your spouse won’t ever ‘follow’ this refurbished you, but all you can control is your choices, stay focused on how you react, and hope for the best.

There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it’s all dark.

It’s called speed tape, sharp as fuck, it should do a good job holding that wing on.

Tour the famous fallout shelter neighborhood of Steele City!

Yeah they probably shot it trying to deny drag queens from driving to their show

I mean…I have plenty of disgust for the military/industrial complex and it’s blatant abuse of taxpayer funds…but the thousands of people who spent years designing, refining and agonizing over building this thing deserve a snazzy rollout to celebrate their work. It also seems to have come in on time and on budget, which is a celebration in itself. There’s a great book called Skunk Works by Ben Rich (RIP) that does a great job covering development of the F-117, along with working with legendary Kelly Johnson. It’s remarkable how far stealth has come from those days.

I stopped going a few years after I sold my motorcycle, but went to ROT a good dozen times from 2007-2019. Moving it to COTA, then whatever god forsaken glorified field it’s in now, was the end of the road for me…plus it was expensive for what you got, the acts were shit, and it was the same people doing the same shit. I’m always amazed there weren’t more deaths around town or at the grounds…I think the primary saving grace was that most of the dumbest shit, where there was a crowd to show off to, happened at all of 15mph. The ‘parade’ downtown became a slow crawl of overheated Harley’s and the ‘parade route’ around the Expo center barely moved at all late in the evening when people were most drunk…had to call 911 once due to a cart tipping over with head injuries but everything else was fender benders.

Wow I didn’t know that, not to be rude but is there a source on that? I cannot imagine living with a national public figure for a parent, who not only spreads that hate to a huge audience but is also in a position of power to advance laws that discriminate against someone like his own child. I like to think that these people legit change when the leopards try to eat their own face, but let’s be real…his entire persona revolves around this and is probably key to yet another ambition on being president. Our 9yo boy has apparently shown a few signs that he may be gay, according to my educator wife who has taught/counseled a few over the decades. He’s definitely not your rough/tumble/sports/etc boy, has mostly girls as friends, etc but we all know it’s too early to know and doesn’t matter anyway…the only reason I’d care is because assholes like Cruz want to make his life miserable, and I want him to be happy to avoid this exact kind of misery that leads someone with their whole life ahead of them to try to kill themselves. We take an active role in reading books, making comments and having discussions that people should be free to be in a relationship that suits them and their partner, whatever gender they feel is appropriate. My son is an extremely kind, thoughtful, insightful, empathetic, calm (unlike his sister), gentle soul who loves all the world has to offer and I will go fucking nuclear if the GOP succeeds in making him feel like an outcast should he end up gay, non-binary, whatever he chooses for himself. I take no joy in little miss Cruz misery, but I sure hope Ted takes this to heart or his wife kicks him out of the family if he doesn’t. But who am I kidding, nothing changes with those people. /rant

I have two LoveSacs, and no they are probably not worth it…but since we were able to afford a nicer house due to my wife’s trust fund, I kept my mouth shut at the price. Also helped we were able to do 0% financing for two years. Only buy when there is a sale. I would expect many couches are like this, but it was nice to be able to machine wash the whole thing, to refresh it each year (we have two young kids.) Not just the cushions but every component Also being modular seems to be an advantage but the people who really need that functionality are likely the ones who can’t afford it. The quality is there, and as long as you don’t end up divorced over the assembly process, they’ve stood the test of time. Also the kids can build the most king kickass fort of all time from the shithouse mountain of cardboard you’ll end up with.

I’ve been to a drag bingo and drag brunch over the years in Austin, they’re a fucking riot. I suppose I could see it being uncomfortable for someone, but no one is hitting on you and they read the room well to see if someone isn’t interested in playing along…unlike a time we stumbled into a gay bar in NO, obliviously drunk off our asses, and our wives just laughed their asses off as random dudes struck up random conversations with us.

Reporting from the Fox News comments so y’all don’t have to venture there…it was leftist eco terrorists, so I guess that settles that.

JFC of course it’s probably a right wing domestic terrorist act…was camping this weekend and barely used my phone, saw the headlines on google news and jokingly said to myself ‘let me guess…some brain washed idiot was told child sex slavery was happening in the TRANSformers har har.’

It’s obviously smaller, hopefully they make more because of that and one crashing due to water in a sensor isn’t a national crisis. The MLG bogies only have two wheels due to less weight overall. I posted this in the airplane fanatic thread but those inlets lack the splitter/sawtooth of the Spirit, so curious how it handles the boundary layer…maybe some version of the SDI like the F35? The whole thing looks like it’s one piece, no visible seams or other gaps like some of those Chinese prototypes they show off at air shows. It’ll be a flying NAT box that can also drop bombs. Can’t wait to see what the exhaust and interior look like.

Was camping with my son this weekend and had like 1 bar, so catching up on it today…sadly we don’t know much beyond the full frontal view, but the shape is subtly amazing. The whole thing looks like one piece, the joins are so smooth and blended. What initially got me were the engine inlets are damn near art, appearing to lack the splitter for boundary layer and associated saw tooth features on the B2. The front windows look as if the designers were like ‘fine, we will add windows so you can see when landing and refueling…otherwise you’re fucking with our all-aspect stealth here.’ Same with the side windows, which are shaped that way to minimize exposure to expected radar aspects. Naturally can’t see the exhaust yet, or see if it lost that platypus tail the B2 needed for the failed low altitude requirement. Besides, all the really good stuff is hidden underneath the skin…structures, systems, antennas, etc. Crazy to think back like 65’ish years when something like the B-58 came out and you could glean a lot just looking at it. But compared to some of those Chinese prototypes we’ve seen, with huge panel gaps and the fit/finish of a bad Tesla, this thing really looks like a finished product on the outside at least.

It’s obviously been happening for a bit of time now, but it kills me that the heros of my teens/early 20’s are starting to die of old age…I’m 42. I grew up a military brat and dad was stationed at Incirlik, Turkey from 93-96 so I only had my parents vinyl for music as the budding internet didn’t quite reach the corners of USAFE back then nor was Napster a thing yet. Pop culture was strictly imported by kids coming in from the Freedom Bird, the BX was a good six months behind on CD availability and thus I got a fill of Fleetwood, Floyd, Santana, Steppenwolf, Huey Lewis, etc from the old turntable as I made my mix tapes to carry around. A decade later, in my starter house I bought as a young professional, I had an acrylic record frame I’d rotate stuff through as a display depending on my mood…from Born In The USA to Crosby Stills & Nash to a 45 of Deadmau5 “I remember”. Rumours stayed there over a year. Side 1 is about as amazing as one half of an album can be. So I guess my point isn’t so much about CM, one of the saner members of Fleetwood and arguably the best voice…may she Rest In Peace…but more about how an artist’s work, regardless of the medium, can become part of you as an anchor to a time/place that you didn’t realize was special until it’s gone. As Nate said at the end of Six Feet “you can’t take a picture of this, it’s already gone”. I didn’t realize how good I had it…owning a home at 25, smokin weed and playing Wii with my best friend everyday after work, cleaning the house every Sunday morning to Never Going Back Again or I’m On Fire blasting on my (my parents old) turntable. Just me and the dog…who I had to put down last year Fleetwood, and therefore CM, was a small but significant part of that bridge to ‘real’ adulthood…with Christine dying, it feels like a small but significant part of those memories died too. Sucks but a reminder I gotta make the most of the time I have, hell in another decade I’ll be looking back with fondness to today when my kids are still young. Perspective.

I spent five years at two companies doing tech support, and I hate talking on the phone with the fiery of a thousand post-Matt’s El Rancho burned assholes. Tier 1: Wife, daycare or school…any of them calling is usually bad news, even if it’s just my wife calling to give me a honey-do Tier 2: Boss or family. Unless fully indisposed or on a critical meeting, will answer. Tier 3: Everyone else. Leave a voicemail, or don’t. I don’t give a shit.

Donkey Cigar, Monkey Cigarette, Turkey Chew…wasn’t there a Juul in there too? He’s, by far, the most visible ‘victim’ of the various Outrage Machines that actually are dividing our country. And yes, the vast majority of them are right wing and yes there are documented + intelligently-inferred instances of influence from those countries. Just because there haven’t been concrete consequences for internal individuals (Jan 6 players, Trump taxes, etc) or Putin/Xi/et al doesn’t mean that the adults in the room are wrong to be suspicious. The jury is out on his motives, I tend to lean towards a confluence of (narcissism ^ surrounded by yes men) + (possible drug problem * broken heart) more than some sinister motive as of late. I’d say that’s a damn good reason to be glad he’s ineligible to run for President because I’ve seen a variation of that formula before, and it certainly did much more to further divide us than unite the country. But you keep on keepin on, and I await the day we see Platypus Pipe or Shark Snuff or whatever comes next.

Why is their slide background the back cover of a used Scantron Blue Book? And why is the date on slide 2 from 2020…if Twitter is anything like my employer, they average about a full man hour for every minute of exec time, so someone would have caught that if it was an oversight.

Yes, you’re right…even if your dogged defense of Twitter is really stanning for Elon, along with your cryptobro / no regulation / perverse take on freedom of speech / veiled take on the incel anger machine which regularly has real consequences for innocent people…you could easily cut significant workforce at most large tech firms to shore up efficiency. But that’s missing my point. My point was that there can be a happy coexistence between the business making money and allowing the contributors to have a comfortable, balanced life. Hit that ideal and everyone’s happy. That’s also how you attract (and keep) key talent. That’s also how you democratize advancement as people feel free to speak their minds. I could get fired tomorrow and my team, my org, and the company as a whole would keep on humming. I’m the black sheep on the team in that I do not possess unique tech talent valuable to our core product for internal customers: a customized Azure sub launched with a basic core/federated governance structure but slowly evolving towards a more ideal form of data mesh as our customers upskill. I’m really good at communicating complex things via exec-ready slideware (yeah I know) and handle other bullshit engineers hate…budget execution, outside spend and vendors, running forums. Fire me though and they’d figure it out. And yes I WFH…I do laundry, I take naps, I run errands, take kids to the doc, jerk off, post here, etc. My CEO is on the record as supporting whatever format works for the individual, and the manager I’ve worked for the last 15 years says ‘family first’ and really means it…seen me through my marriage, two kids, grad school, a dark period with an associated drinking problem, and everything else. I will also work until 3am to get the visuals just right on a deck my boss needs by 9am, motivated by the sheer terror of letting him down…or my team members down. I get the flexibility I need outside work, they get my 100% commitment without complaint when it’s needed. I can’t fucking stand this reduction of real people with real lives to ‘hours’ and insinuating we are all getting ‘easy money’. People are a spectrum and there’s way more to life than the job, the pursuit of being rich. I relish the idea of Musk burning down Twitter because I want to see what he embodies fail, despite unlimited funds…out of control narcissism hitched to the hate wagon. You seem to relish an entire collection of pee-ons getting their comeuppance because they haven’t hitched their wagon to the almighty dollar. Anyways I’ve waxed poetic about this shit enough, sorry for the wall of text. I feel strongly about this shit but I ain’t solving anything as I’m just a pee-on myself.

I don’t even know why I bother engaging with Beast, probably as an outlet to how shitastic OSU’s football season has become. However, the fact that you refer to people who declined to sign a contract committing them to long, intense, ‘hardcore’ hours as ‘divas’ tells me more than enough about you. Anyone with options and self respect should absolutely have bailed out of there the moment they were presented with that form. Beyond hero worship of the rich, this secondary fascination with people who refuse to give their sanity to support large companies as being diva/lazy/worthless/selfish/etc is hopefully, slowly coming to an end via the youth of this country. This isn’t the 60’s where you have a pension waiting for you if you stay loyal. It’s been proven over and over again that they have eschewed any commitment to individuals in the name of quarterly profit. And yes that sounds all South Park ‘the corporations, man’ hippy-ness but any remaining doubt has been killed by PPI loan handling and taking advantage of the complex drivers of inflation to continue raising prices. Massive stock repurchasing. All of it. Fucking Jimmy John’s wants me to add a tip on a pickup order because they won’t pay their people enough. Airlines stupidly furlough’d tons of pilots as a short term cost saver during Covid, are now short handed on captains, and are making us pay higher fares as demand outstrips supply. Disney was an absolute shitshow last year with record crowds and broken rides/light bulbs/full trash cans but are still raising prices to cover for their greedy failures in the streaming world. Fuck em all. I’d be out of Twitter the moment that contract shit hit my mailbox. You’re laying off half the company under the guise of cost savings / leaning, and now I have to work endlessly to pick up the slack. Fuck. That.