Lol, likely more than 50% I’m guessing

Well said friend, well said

LOL, yup. I love me some decline button action. I'm just in a weird spot at work right now where I've got some very large projects but also an impending long OOF due to surgery so my timelines have gotten super compressed. You're dead on though, the ability to decline or not attend useless meetings allows so much more to get done in a day.

PM here also but I've been on vacation for the last two weeks. Your comment made me curious about my unread email count. I am anal about a clean inbox so when I left, there were only three unread emails I left as a reminder for something I wanted to take care of. As of now I am sitting at 2,347 unread mails. Figure I'll be around 2,600-2,700 by the time I decide to do actual work on Monday which is of course the obligatory 6-10hrs of meetings.

Congratulations on persisting through all this and finding a solution that works for you. I wish you nothing but continued success on your path.

Appreciate the validation. I'd never really linked any of them together before because I wasnt diagnosed for so long. Now that I have my diagnosis, I can easily put different aspects of my day to day life together and see how causal the relationships are. Nice to know I'm not alone here, even if it is depressing to know a lot of us go through this.

Lucky for me, my doctor just told me to keep an eye on my mood and left it there. Since I have a long documented history of depression, I think it was a formality as part of the physical overall. You're right though, in the past he did try and push me towards meds. I tried a few on the off chance they'd do something useful but most just made things worse.

Pretty sure they're going to have a sequel, especially with the cut scene at the end. Glad you enjoyed it and I'll see a sequel if they make one. Maybe I just need to go watch it again and see if I was in a bad mood or something :)

Glad to see I'm not alone here. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Well if it's any consolation, I'm sorry you're feeling that way and hope you enjoy doing the things you like doing.

Not to mention that KoQ is one of the more realistic depictions of marriage than most shows. Hyperbolic in many aspects, but still pretty close. Or maybe it’s just close to my own marriage.

Now if they'd only do something about the drunk hotel guests in my alley, I'd be happy :)

As for the muffler situation, I know of two Infiniti's that belong to local construction dudes which are hella loud. They love to spin around town early before work and just run up and down the street. I presume its to stick it to the elites that live around downtown, but they'd be better off putting in the zero insulation I have in my apartment. That's way more annoying <g>.

And how did you feel about Suicide Squad? I realize we'd be a sample size of two but I'm curious how much that might correlate.

I've been trying to figure this out myself. We live in Seattle so Sunday Ticket is the only legal way to get games. But with a season like this one, the team has four national games and likely will have a game or two thats the late national game. Since I dont have cable, that means I'm likely going to need to spring for Sling or YouTubeTV to get everything. When I did the math it comes out to between 400-500$ depending on the service used and where the games are shown.

The NFL needs to go the way of MLB. Give me an option to watch all Browns game for a set price. Even if its the same exact amount as DirectTV, knowing I can get all games no matter if they're on locally or not would be an easy sell for me. I just want one place where I can see everything and not have to head out to a bar.

Just got back from seeing this. First time I've ever been the only person in the theater. Gotta say, I was pretty disappointed. Sure there were some solidly funny parts but the interactions between the different characters never seemed to click for me. I'll be the first to say that I know nothing about the comics but the same was true for Guardians and I loved both of those movies. Seems like fans of the comic really like how they used the characters though. It was better than most other DC properties though and the trailer for the new Batman movie gives me the tingles.

Well shit, so now I have to move to Tacoma? FOR THE HORDE!

don't think its intentional fearmongering, just that this is the way COVID metrics have been presented for most of the pandemic, so change is hard.

Definitely agree with you on this point. I dont think its intentional either, more so that people are being given too much information without proper context which is allowing some of these crazy theories to fester. As always, thanks for all your work on giving everyone good data, its been super helpful.

Gotcha and thanks for the reply.

Just curious, why wouldn't you wear a mask at the gym? Isn't that your most likely place to catch COVID between people heavily breathing and multiple people touching similar surfaces? I ask mostly because my approach has been pretty similar to yours but I've explicitly avoided the gym because of my reasoning above so curious how you're thinking about it.

The main thing I missed during the lockdowns of the last year and a half was going to the movies. I started going again in June, but only to theaters with small attendance and I'd always where a mask. I had stopped wearing a mask to places like the grocery store or when running into Target for something. In early July I went to the movies without a mask on for the first time.

Over the last two weeks, I've now gone back to wearing a mask everywhere indoors (movies, mall, groceries, etc.). I still go to the movies but I've gone back to focusing on showtimes where there is less attendance, so basically nothing on the weekends or at night.

My main concern is I had a major elective surgery postponed due to COVID last March when the hospitals all shut down. Since we didn't know how things would go, I waited and finally rescheduled my surgery for September (it was scheduled in June when things were looking really good). I'm not so much worried about getting COVID-19 as I am about testing positive for it before my surgery. They told me a positive test, even asymptomatic, will cancel my surgery and I'd be looking at another 2-3mo wait to get back on the schedule. I'm hoping that doesn't happen but am mentally prepared it might.

IMO, the problem breaks into several different aspects, all of which require individuals to have some basic levels of critical thinking.

1. Being vaccinated, irrespective of the vaccine you chose, is your best way to prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death from all strains of COVID-19. This is just medical fact and it should not be really disputed.
2. Being vaccinated, irrespective of the vaccine you chose, does NOT mean you won't test positive or even get sick from all strains of COVID-19, it just makes it much less likely.
3. COVID-19 transmission is highest in areas where ventilation is poor and people are close together in large numbers. This increases your chances of contracting any strain of COVID-19 but each individual will react differently to any potential infection. Some will not get ill, some will get seriously ill and die. This is how disease works across the board.
4. COVID-19 is a more serious illness than the common cold but less serious than something like smallpox.

When you break out the talking points of those who don't want to get vaccinated they tend to be based on very stupid reasons (you think you're pwning the Dems, for example) to fairly valid concerns (you feel the vaccine might have further adverse effects that could not be caught sufficiently within the timeframe it was tested). We are much more likely to get the latter portion of this spectrum to move towards vaccines than the former.

With that being the case, the way the media should report this to the general population is in terms of percentages of vaccinated who are seriously ill or die vs. those who are not. Then within that cohort, there should be the same breakout we saw early in the pandemic. How old were they? Did they have underlying conditions? Etc, etc. Because that is the useful information to the general citizen who remains unvaccinated. The discussion should continue to focus on disease severity and not case counts IMO, so that's the tangent I would take in reporting moving forward. Instead of "we have 1,000 new positive cases today" it should be "of today's cases amongst vaccinated individuals, .02% resulted in death and 1% resulted in hospitalization. For unvaccinated individuals, 12% of cases resulted in death and 35% resulted in hospitalization". In this way, it makes it much easier for someone on the fence to see how vaccination impacts the severity of any potential infection they might incur vs. how the data is presented now which allows for an overage of misinformation, twisting of facts and general fearmongering.

I'd call mine the Disneyland approach where you break the intersectionality of the homeless population into "themes" and provide them resources according to those themes. IMO, at the highest level you effectively have three themes: those struggling financially who end up living in their cars/friends couch/shelter, those with mental issues and those with addiction issues. There is obvious overlap across these three, but just looking at it from this perspective you could do the following:

• The first group to me is effectively "the working poor". Those with job(s) but those who also continue to struggle. They should be provided long term housing either in one of the hotels being purchased or by building new structures meant for this group. Essential services such as internet, water, heating/cooling, etc are all available here. - Offering additional online courses, training, etc could also go a long way to helping find better employment options longer term. Each 'guest' has an addressed, lockable space where they can feel safe and then community areas for things like cooking, laundry, etc. This gives people struggling a chance to get back on their feet and IMO, it can take as long as they need it to. In addition, I'd provide this group transportation to a new, LCOL area if/when they find something that works better for them (and its something they desire). These sites should have security on site and available to all residents but it does not require police.
• For those struggling with addiction, build medically supervised injection sites along with counseling and information on how to move out of addiction. Similar to above, provide housing for all of these folks as well but have them learn to live/work together. The goal being to build a community of recovered/recovering addicts that can help one another out alongside trained medical staff for deep help on the topic. The rule here IMO should be that if you commit a felony level crime while being housed here, you spend a set amount of time in jail without being set free the next day. Try and build a sense of community such that people know where, how and when they'll get what they need to survive their addiction while also reinforcing that its a two way street and they need to appreciate what the rest of society is providing for them via tax dollars by attempting to reinstate themselves into society. Security here would be similar to above but possibly situated nearer to a police department in case that is needed (although I'd say fire department would be better).
• Finally the mentally ill. As someone who has seen my own family members suffer through severe mental illness (schizophrenia), we need to properly identify and treat this group aggressively and in a more locked down environment. Maybe not quite jail or mental hospital but much more heavily guarded and monitored than the other two groups. I say this only because my uncle was in and out of mental institutions for a long time and any time he was left to survive on his own, he couldn't. He committed various felony level crimes (rape, attempted murder, etc.) whenever he was left on his own to take his meds. When he was institutionalized, you'd never know he was sick because his meds worked. I'm not trying to equate that experience with all folks with mental illness but more to say we need to aggressively categorize these illnesses and treat them properly. Security here would be broken into areas where people who are a danger to themselves and others need more restrictions than potentially others but admittedly this is a tough problem to solve without making things into a flat out mental hospital.

Finally, there needs to be a criminalization of actual crime. As someone else mentioned, there's a difference in a 1-2 time offender and someone with 70-100. As a society, we can be compassionate while also being just. If you're a habitual offender, its entirely possible that you fit into one of my weird ass themes, so we start treatment there. Otherwise, we also need to accept that some people just belong in jail or mental hospitals because life isn't fair. I would tell you my own uncle should be forever locked up in a mental institution because he is unable to care of himself and is a legitimate threat to those around him when he has a psychotic break.

So then, how to pay for it. You just do. You can not continue to complain about the homeless situation and then expect a free lunch. If it requires more taxes, special bonds, whatever it might be, then that's what has to happen to make the city into a community we're all a part of.

I'm sure there are plenty of issues with my ideas but hell, you asked :P

Just watched Pig yesterday, incredible performance by Cage (and good movie as well)

I remember listening to Anyone Can Play Guitar at my local Camelot music kiosk in early 93. Been hooked ever since.