My stove has been blinking 00:00 for as long as I can remember. Lost power briefly about 6 months after I moved in and I never reset the clock.

I work in the event industry as a production manager, I get to write these things.

As is typical when you have a large crew there will be dietary restrictions, some of them can be deadly. So before me or any of my crew starts unloading the truck I need to have a cold Dr. Pepper in my hand. If I don’t, we doordash, we do not eat the food provided.

I always say everyone should see requiem for a dream, but no one should watch it. That film does more for stopping drug abuse than any government program ever did.

I setup and run events. Nothing particularly messy, but very sweaty. On setup days I can do a half marathon just by moving equipment to where it needs to go.

I have always strived to keep between 1-2 month’s worth of expenses in savings at all times. That small buffer has allowed me to ride out almost everything without going into debt, then when I am in debt I pay it off as quick as possible.

The worst thing you can do is get on a payment plan, as that normalizes having debt and you end up paying thousands in interest. All interest is, is you giving your money to someone else. I like to keep my money, so if I have to live off of ramen and hot dogs for a couple months, so be it.

That’s a different kind of special.

No, but I donate time and sometimes items. I’ve seen how wasteful so many “charities” are. When less than half of what is donated actually goes to the end user that’s a problem. So I donate things that have to go to the end user, or at the very least in support of the end user.

I live pretty close to work, it’s about 15 miles (24 km). Grocery store is about 6 miles (9.6 km) from me. I consider anything within 2 miles (3.2 km) to be “right next door.” It’s not uncommon for me to travel over 100 miles (161 km) in a day. I consider When I want to visit my Sister it’s a 1120 mile (1802 km) journey. That happens a couple times a year. The crazy thing is that that’s less than halfway across the continental US. I have to travel from the Atlantic ocean all the way across the international date line in the Pacific to get across the US, and that doesn’t include our territories, just our states.

What I have found is a better comparison is the US and Europe. Think of the european country’s as us states and you start to get an idea of the scale. 44 countries vs 50 states, $24.22 trillion vs $28.65 trillion GDP, 10.2 million sq km vs 9.8 million sq km. They are very similar.

You can also get all in one’s that both wash and dry in a single unit if space is a concern. They tend to be a bit pricier because it’s literally two functions in one item but not terrible.

I work AV and have worked many of these events on both sides of the aisle. Presidents, VP’s, presidential hopefuls, the whole gamut. The democrats tend to be less organized but way more friendly and accommodating, the republicans are very their way or the highway, but tend to have all their ducks in a row. As far as attending you hear someone parrot ideas that you’ve already heard before, and either already agree with or don’t. They won’t take any hard stances and are unlikely to answer any questions, if they do they will answer the softball questions and sidestep the hard questions. All in all, largely a waste of time and resources.

The only two that I’ve worked that didn’t fall into that category was beto o’rourke and chris christy. Both of them were very engaging with the audience, were willing to answer hard questions, they actually seemed like they cared, and were doing this for country, not career.

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They are majestic but they don’t strike fear into the heart of Australians quite like an Emu does.

Am I allowed to talk about Russia and Ukraine? Israel and Palestine? Great Britain and Ireland? Australia and some birds?

If something is happening it’s fair game to talk about. We may not be able to fix / change anything, but we can express our opinions on the subject.

Pause long enough to go “that’s different”, then hand you the hot dog, because only one of those items is a taco, even if it’s not commonly called a taco.

But hot dogs aren’t sandwiches they’re tacos. It perfectly logical to describe a hot dog as an American taco. If there were no taco items on the table and you asked for a taco I’d think you were being funny, but I’d pass you the hot dog.

I’ll be honest, just recently bought new shoes from them haven’t gotten a chance to wear them in yet, the previous pair was pre-covid. But they look and feel exactly like my old pair did when I bought them, so maybe their work line hasn’t suffered yet.

And this is why I’ll never be loyal to a brand, as long as they’re good I’ll keep buying their product, when it’s not good I’ll stop.

I will never always trust a brand, there are some brands that have good trust, but I’ve seen too many brands screw people over for money.

I will say currently, Darn Tough Socks, Keen Shoes, EVGA, Milwaukee Tools, if you are in the cinema / live production world Teradek, and Yamaha.

Greyscale.

I’m colorblind.

I’ve had European BK it’s still not good, passable maybe, but not good.

It’s no wonder that American’s are fat.

Backblaze, it’s a personal cloud backup solution that just works in the background. I don’t have to manage a backup protocol, I get an offsite backup, and it’s cheaper than trying to let a file sharing service like Dropbox or Google do my backups.