setsneedtofeed

I know somebody who ran with a kind of rough crowd. About a month after he was buried a few friends went to go pay respects to his grave. The place had all kinds of full liquor bottles left, and there were many empty beer cans nearby.

One person said, “Why all the alcohol, he wasn’t a big drinker.”

The other person said, “Yeah but his friends are.”

That stayed with me as a very no frills kind connection people had.

I’m beyond the debate over the Starship Troopers book vs movie. Both are very much being their own thing, and I am able to enjoy them both.

The knife training scene in each summarizes the different approach they have.

I highly recommend scifi fans read Starship Troopers and Forever War back to back. I consider them complimentary books regarding the nature of war, and government.

The terror mission in the opening of the book would have been a very interesting introduction to the political and military dynamics in the universe. Shame it doesn’t seem to show up in any Starship Troopers media.

The original book spends almost no time with the old empire. Once the Foundation is established, the details of the empire’s fall are irrelevant to the story. In fact, the premise makes a point that the exact details of its fall don’t really matter.

Cheaperthandirt.com has pulled enough stunts to make me permanantly shun them. The thing that sticks out the most for me is canceling confirmed orders so that they could turn around and put items back on their storepage for a massively inflated price.

Tonight…you will remember.

In addition, the mere act of giving that information to somebody else.

On a phone I can obviously text somebody, but what if I'm somewhere with bad signal (and yes, those places often exist), or the person doesn't have the phone in their pocket right that second (yes, this also happens in places with work where people don't want to risk the phone in their pocket breaking)?

With a mini notepad, I can rip a sheet of notes off and hand that diagram to somebody else. If it's work that will take some time doing while following a diagram, having a phone screen locking up because it isn't being touched is a hassle and going into the settings to change it back and forth is annoying.

I once quit on the first day of a job.

I had previously worked with industrial robots and automation. Fixing them, calibrating them, making hardware and software adjustments as needed.

I was between jobs and found a small business that seemed like it was looking to do some automation expansion. The interview was a little weird because they were kind of vague with specifics. That’s not entirely abnormal with companies that have proprietary processes or automation, though I felt they were being a little bit overly cagey.

They wouldn’t take me into the clean room, which again isn’t unheard of, if in my opinion a little overly protective.

My previous job had been partially titled “Maintenance” (as in I maintained the robots) and the small company asked quite a lot about my versatility in maintaining things. I think that makes sense for a small company to want one person do all things for a robot.

I get a call that I’m hired. On paper the job looks good. Pay is a little low but this was an in-between job.

I show up for the first day of work and one of the first things I have to sign is a 15 page front and back Non Disclosure Agreement. That’s an insane length. My previous job with a huge, established tech company was a two page NDA and they actually had a lot of different processes.

So, I sign their crazy NDA and I’m taken into the airquotes “clean room”. First thing I notice is that I’m not suiting up or even putting on a white room style jacket. I see a cup of coffee on a “clean room” work bench. This is not a clean room.

I’m walked through and out of the “clean room” and to the outside back of the building and shown some air conditioner units. Told I need to work on those to fix them, and then later in the week I’ll be cutting the grass.

Lol.

No.

I left at lunch.

I'm at a loss about what you mean.

The history of the calendar in Roman times is actually an entire topic to itself.

The pre-Julian calendar required fine tuning every year in winter to keep the rest of the months aligned with the seasons.

Technically not a difficult job to keep the calendar running smoothly and consistently, but the person in charge of the calendar in Rome was a politician, so they would play political games with the length of the year.

Caesar wanted a calendar that would run on auto-pilot to strip power away from those politicians.

By sheer coincidence when Caesar made his reform, during the the changeover of calendars while he was in charge, he got to rule over a 400+ day long year.

He’s too Chad to be left alive.