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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I’m one of the parents in this arrangement and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We raised three kids, a son and two daughters. None of us are rich by any means, but we’re all currently self-sufficient. The one’s that live here don’t do it out of need, but because they’d be crazy not to. We own a decent-sized ranch style house, plenty of room for two couples, on 2.6 acres with a largish pool, and it’s conveniently located to everything one wants to be convenient to. At this stage in our lives, if it were just my wife and I here we’d go crazy. This place has been the central family gathering spot for our local extended family for decades now. Pretty much every month at least one big gathering is happening here. Anywho… We’ve paid it off and deeded it to a trust, with the three kids being successor trustees. Once we’re gone, the property transfers automatically. They can live here forever, or they can sell it and split the proceeds three ways, but I seriously doubt they’ll ever do that. Our oldest lives nearby quite affordably with his girlfriend (both child-free by choice), and our middle daughter and her husband own their own place with our two grand-daughters just outside of town. Our youngest daughter and her husband (no kids yet) live here with us. This son-in-law races street-stocks on dirt and was able to build a big 30’ x 60’ shop in the back, so this place is like heaven to him. He’s 28 going on 12 and has a pretty good job, so he gets to buy whatever toys he wants, and with the investment of his shop into the property, he’s actually got some skin in the game. They are both hugely helpful, and it’s a great arrangement for all of us. We’re currently kicking around some ideas for my son and his girlfriend to move back onto the property, but into their own space…






  • When my wife was pregnant with our first-born, my mother went with her to her first ultrasound appointment. To add a little back-story, I had a baby brother who was born when I was about 4 (1967). He had multiple birth defects and so many things wrong that he only lived 16 days. Needless to say, this affected my mom deeply. My wife told me that my mom cried while seeing her soon-to-be grandson on the screen and told her that if that technology had been available when she was pregnant with my brother that she would have terminated the pregnancy without a second thought. When I think of the pain and depression she lived with for pretty much the rest of her life, and then think about how the repukelican party want’s to force other women to go through that same agony too just makes me want to start hurling molotov cocktails into a trump rally…









  • One day a couple of years ago, we had some meatloaf and some baked mac&cheese leftovers that my wife had made. The next day I got a loaf of homemade sourdough from the farmers market that pops up every Saturday. I sliced off about a half-inch thick slice of the meatloaf and the baked mac&cheese with that fresh sourdough and grilled a sandwich that I really hope to be able to replicate at least once more before I die…


  • I drove a taxi and dispatched for a couple of years back in the mid '80s. For ease of use, Street Guides were a drivers best friend, because they just gave you concise directions from the closest main road. For instance, if I wanted Elm street, I would find it quickly alphabetically, and it would tell me something like “Runs south from Main St, two blocks east of First Ave.” The driver would mainly just need a decent understanding of the main roads and how the numbering system for addresses worked, and they could just flip through it pretty quick without having to spread out a big map. The whole city fit into a neat little paperback book.


  • back in the early-mid '80s I worked as a tire changer for a chain of tire retailers. We had a mechanic who did all the front-end alignments and brake jobs etc, and he had an apprentice/helper who worked with him. When cars with drum brakes came in, they liked to each take a side and race to see who could get them done faster. I remember timing them once, and they both could remove and replace the shoes and the spring kits in less than 45 seconds.


  • it seems to me, and I could be wrong, that they don’t accent syllables the same way, if at all. Years ago I had a database teacher in community college who was from India and it took me a couple of classes to tune in to her, but after that it wasn’t hard to follow her at all. I’m often in Zoom meetings with a software engineer who immigrated from Vietnam and he was a bit of a challenge to understand at first, too.

    Oh yeah… and my cancer doc is from Sri Lanka. That was doubly fun. His heavy accent pronouncing four-dollar medical terms took some serious getting used to. Listening to him dictate into his little recorder for the transcriptionists at the end of our visits is an added treat I always enjoy…


  • Sure, AI can whip up fantastical imagery and low-effort dialog — but if audiences call BS, the blowback can be extraordinarily embarrassing.

    I see AI generated bullshit on youtube all the time these days. To the point where I can tell by the thumbnail before I even watch it. I’ve gotten in the habit of checking out new-to-me channels in a private window first, before deciding whether I want to subscribe or even keep watching. The instant I detect any AI… either in the voice or the nonsensical writing, I’m outa there. I do e-learning multimedia for a living, and we use a lot of stock images, and those sites are being loaded up with AI generated garbage. It’s getting harder to find stuff that isn’t AI, and using it to generate your own is a total crapshoot as far as results go…