In a 10 hour stretch in bed last night, I think I finally got close to 6 hours of sleep. I may try to increase that this afternoon. I’m finally able to lie down for extended periods without my knee screaming at me.
Had a delicious mango just now.
It was very messy, but so divine… YUMMY!!!
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The hole in the ozone layer is healing. It turns out that we can make a positive difference to the earth after all. All those measures that were put into place to reduce CFCs have actually fixed the problem (unless we do something really, really stupid from here).
As a person who lives directly under the hole, that’s great news. The thing that bugs me though is that it isn’t news. I haven’t seen anything about it anywhere - news outlets should be broadcasting it from everywhere they can 
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I managed to design and print something 100% from scratch and it came out right on the first try. I haven’t touched a CAD program since AutoCAD 12 30+ years ago, and I wasn’t doing anything 3D then.
It’s a stupid-simple little bracket but given that I went from creating an account for OnShape to having it printed in about an hour, I think I did OK.
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This site is hilarious. I tossed up whether it should go in the web find thread, but in the end it made me laugh out loud, so here it goes 
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I’ll admit, it makes me a bit sad that I moved out of CA. 
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If you’re able to go to the Emerald City Comic Con in March, they have some cast reunions that may be of interest:
Firefly/Serenity: Wash, Zoe, Kayle, Captain Tightpants, Summer! and Simon. Inara had to cancel and Jayne was probably off finding a replacement for his cunning hat.
Starship Troopers: Johnny Rico, Dizzy Flores, Carmen Ibanez and the squad leader of Rasczak’s Roughnecks.
A couple of notable guests I spotted (not everyone, of course)
Adam Nimoy
Adam Savage
Anson Mount (Christopher Pike and Black Bolt, the guy in the second Dr. Strange movie that learned the hard way you don’t tell someone who can alter reality what your superpower is)
Bruce Campbell
Terry Brooks
John Boyega
Mads Mikkelsen
Seth Green
Breckin Meyer (actor and voice actor, who drives sound engineers crazy with his habit of flicking his fingertips against each other while recording his lines)
Georgia Dunn (Breaking Cat News comic strip)
Katie Cook (Nothing Special web comic)
Brittney Karbowski (frequent voice actor for dubbed anime released by Sentai Filmworks)
Check out the guest lists.
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Nice! Emerald City Comic Con’s been on my bucket list for years, along with SDCC. Some day I’ll get down there.
Come to SDCC and I’ll take you out for Mexican food.
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Setting up my retirement. I’m on vacation as of the start of this week, and it will carry through to my retirement date on June 4th.
Hooray.
Paperwork. Forms. Insincere well-wishes. I’m done with it.
Still looking for a part-time job, though. I’m workening on setting up a sharpening service as a side-gig at farmer’s markets a couple of times a week and a general neighbourhood gardening implement SHARP-A-THON in the spring and fall. Still waiting on confirmation from the markets around here.
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Shap man! You’re all good! 
From Thursday: I found out that a Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur graphic novel is not just a story for the TV show. It’s based on an episode that didn’t get produced, making it effectively another episode. Also got a signature from a voice actor from an anime series I particularly like and she was pleasantly surprised it was one she’d one several years ago.
From Friday: go to the Web Find of the Day thread for the info.
This story from Not Always Right:
“Gotta Pull Some Sick Maneuvers With A Bogey On Your Tail”
I have a local grocery store near me with a decent-sized lot. It doesn’t usually end up full, but I guess yesterday was crazy for reasons I’ve yet to care finding out. There was no space, and there were drivers looking for spots with no patience.
I got in well enough to do my minor amount of shopping, exiting with barely two bags full of snacks and sandwich makings.
As I exited, a few of the hovering parking spot snipers were following people from the doors to cars. A guy in a large hatchback tagged me and slowly followed me.
Usually, I dip between cars to the next aisle over, and they don’t bother to follow because it gets a little creepy then. I don’t like people willfully hovering behind me like that — even less so when in vehicles.
Nope, not this guy. He gunned it around the aisle and back to me to follow my path. I jumped across again, pretending I’d forgotten where I parked. Guess what? He followed me again.
This next time, I was far more blatant about shaking him off and doubling back. He promptly lowered his window and shouted at me.
Hatchback Guy: “Just find your f****** vehicle so we can both be happy!”
He didn’t even give me a chance to reply before rolling his window up again. I figured my bags weren’t that heavy, and the cold was enough so that my sandwich meat was fine if I took a bit more time, so I began wandering aimlessly, letting the guy think I was finding my vehicle when I knew exactly where it was. He cursed at me a couple more times and seemed to think he was my designated replacement to a spot.
I didn’t time it, but I believe he hung on for ten grueling minutes of my wandering before gunning it hard out of the lot, going straight through a four-way stop, and garnering the ire of several drivers. No cops, unfortunately.
The funny part was that as I left, I could clearly see a few scattered spots he could have taken if he hadn’t been so obstinate or driven by pure spite.
The best part, though…
I walked to the store that day.
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From The Register’s On-Call column…
The working week can be ugly, which is why The Register beautifies each Friday morning with a new instalment of On Call, the reader-contributed column in which we tell your tales of tech support splendor.
This week, meet a reader who asked to be Regomized as “Terry” and told us about the job he had in the late 2000s providing tech support for students and teachers.
Strangely, the job wasn’t attached to the IT department. But that team didn’t mind because they were massively overworked.
To earn his users’ trust, Terry would help staff by fixing their personal devices and he developed a reputation as a solid citizen, which helped him to negotiate frequent management changes.
Most of Terry’s bosses were decent.
This story is about one who Terry asked us to name “Tyrant.”
“He was an ambitious new member of the management team, a man who claimed he had a vision ‘To Revolutionize the way technology worked in Education’.”
That vision seemed mostly to consist of a weekly challenge that saw Terry asked to achieve the impossible, in no time, without any budget.
“I would have to research and demo as best I could and politely explain that what he was asking for was often of little or no benefit to educational outcomes,” Terry told On Call. “Tyrant didn’t care. He wanted to make a name for himself climbing on the backs of others and was burying me under a pile of time-wasting projects that would never come to anything.”
Worse still, Tyrant was giving Terry poor quarterly reviews that could be bad for his career.
“I loathed the man,” Terry told On Call.
Give up your Sunday, or else …
When Tyrant called Terry on a Sunday and asked for help, he was not inclined to do so and suggested paying for service at a local computer shop.
Tyrant was having none of it, claimed he was working on an important document that was due on Monday and that Terry simply had to come and fix a PC ASAP as it was in his best professional interest to do so.
Terry felt that was a threat, and decided the best way to defuse it was to just do the job.
“On arrival Tyrant was in a state of panic,” Terry told On Call, and explained that he’d been working on his wife’s laptop while his own iMac was being repaired.
The laptop was a mess, but after a few hours Terry figured out how to fix it and started to restore files from an external hard disk.
That felt like job done, so Terry asked to be excused. Tyrant insisted he stay until the very last file was safely copied.
The two of them therefore watched as a Windows progress bar inched across the screen.
And then Tyrant’s wife came home, which seemed to surprise him mightily.
“His panic level shot up again and Mrs Tyrant was less than pleased to see me in her kitchen,” Terry said.
It got worse: Terry cringed as he heard Tyrant and Mrs Tyrant bicker about him using her laptop without permission.
Mrs Tyrant angrily stated she would be most displeased if a single file went missing, and therefore took over the watching-files-copy vigil and sent Tyrant out to buy dinner.
During that process, Mrs Tyrant asked Terry what files Tyrant had created on her laptop.
Terry found a few Word and Excel docs … and an enormous collection of videos featuring people wearing not much more than oil while noisily enjoying each other’s company.
As soon as he saw one of those videos, Terry made his excuses and left.
Oh, what a Monday
Terry had no idea what happened once Tyrant came home with dinner but imagined he would be blamed for it.
Come Monday, Tyrant summoned him to a meeting and Terry asked if he should bring a Union representative. Tyrant called off the confab and the two hardly spoke for weeks until Tyrant casually mentioned he was searching for a new place to live.
Terry’s pretty sure the videos he found were the reason why.
“I didn’t last there much longer due to budget cuts and restructuring, but I did learn never to offer out-of-hours help to people I work with, no matter their position in the organization,” he told On Call.
But he occasionally checked Tyrant’s LinkedIn profile.
“He’s not yet revolutionized technology in Education,” Terry told On Call. “I’m shocked, I tell you. Shocked.”
Has supporting colleagues’ personal tech caused trouble? If so, trouble yourself to click here as doing so will send On Call an email in which you can share your story. ®
A two-fer within 10 minutes of each other while driving to work.
Two pickups ahead of me were each towing a travel trailer. As I passed them, I saw that on the rear bumper of one was a plush Buzz Lightyear figure, its left hand grasping the hand of a plush Sheriff Woody figure that was dangling behind. I should mention that even though they were plush figures, they weren’t moving around, so they were frozen just as the toys are in the movie when observed.
A few miles later, I see an SUV of some kind a ways ahead. Something about it catches my eye. After a few seconds, I figure it out and don’t pay it any more attention. That is, until about 30 seconds later, a car behind me suddenly makes a one- or two-lane change and surges ahead. I start counting down from five. When I got to one, the brake lights came on and I started laughing. Guess the second driver spotted the State Patrol logo on the side that I spotted from about a quarter mile or more behind it.
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One more day until we leave on vacation.
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Just the first one.
The others are interesting, but not funny.
The first one made me laugh out loud. I showed it to my daughter and I could still hear her giggling as she went downstairs 
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Proper set of headphones.
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Working through Support Adventure employment material. Most of it is stuff that I already know, but then again, it pays to go through it all and just refresh what you know wrt email communications, verbal communications etc, and also which topics to avoid (sex, politics etc).
Thought I’d do the introductory stuff, but there’s 13 days left before the deadline, so I’m just prepping myself for that.
@Johtoguy maybe have a shufty at them if you’re interested?
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Yesterday I made a cross cut sled for my 40 year old table saw and made my first half lap joint… test. I’m making a fence gate and wanted to step it up passed just butt jointing two 2x4s and this is my solution. It’s a real woodworking joint rather than pocket hole screws or some other crap.
I’ve made many functional things in my time woodworking. I’m trying to make something functional and attractive, or at least tidy. My wife loves the stuff I’ve already made, but it’s because I made it and it works well rather than how awesome it looks or anything.
This along with the bow bread knives I’ve been making is much more fun.
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