Learning how to type.

You either had to take typing, or some other class that I can’t remember during my junior year. The other class didn’t appeal to me at all, obviously as I cannot even remember it now, so I took typing. By happenstance my best friend was in the same class.

The class taught me a skill that I use till this day, some 38 years later.

Transistors.

The first working transistor was created in 1947. Before then it was just vacuum tubes. Less than 80 years later the modern world relies completely on its existence.

You use billions of them in your everyday life.

My girlfriend and I had been dating for about 5 months and were serious. We went for a day hike at a local park. Our conversation during the hike went to talking about the future and similar topics. Out of curiosity, I asked; “Do you want to get married?” Not meaning it as an actual proposal, but rather just to get her thoughts. I didn’t have a ring, nor was I on one knee. Yet she responded with an enthusiastic “YES”! We started planning the wedding the next day.

Here we are 20 years later, married happy as ever and our oldest is graduating high school and going on to University, our youngest is finishing up 9th grade.

I guess I found out what she was thinking!

Truth be told though, we were both 34 years old and neither of us had been married before. So it’s not like we were teenagers making a rash decision. We were thirty somethings making a rash decision. That’s different… Right?

You always were an asshole Gormon.

Raspberry, Dark Chocolate, Chambord. The Chocolate Passion Cookbook has my absolute favorite cake ever on its cover. My wife makes it for me every birthday. If she doesn’t make it for me, she makes it for our oldest’s birthday, which is only 2 weeks after mine.

I have two Wireless Access Points (WAP) and a separate router/ firewall. The WAPs are meshed, meaning as a WiFi connected device moves through my house, it will be automatically handed off to the WAP with the best quality.

Power and channel of the two WAPs use are automatic. I live in a fairly dense neighborhood. Meaning my neighbors are so dense they barely have done any configuration of their WiFi. There are also a lot of them. The main thing I worry about is having just enough transmit power to give a good quality connection within the house, without being so strong it interferes with my neighbors’ networks.

I would never leave the management of my home network to an ISP. With that said, I’ve been an IT professional for 30 years and got my start in networking.

My upstairs WAP often works at higher power, but I don’t remember seeing it at 100%. It is fighting all the other WiFi routers that are nearby. There are so many that there are no clear channels on 2.4GHz and very few at 5GHz. The WAP in the basement is better shielded, so I almost never see it at high transmit powers.

My router is a separate unit that provides routing, firewall, IPS/IDS, DNS, and management for itself and the WAPs.

No, you almost never require 100% transmit power out of a WAP. The best thing is to have a good quality WiFi router or WAP and set it to “automatic” for channel and power settings. That way the unit can determine what is best for network quality on the fly. It will be better at it than you logging in multiple times a day doing the same thing manually.

1985 Pontiac Sunbird and my parents had a 1986 Buick Skyhawk. Both were exactly the same car, just different front fascia. Same crappy 1.8L SOHC engine and terrible build quality.

Both cars blew head gaskets at 50,000 miles and my Sunbird blew it again at 65,000miles. Neither car were ever overheated. The A/C on both cars died at 60K. Various parts of the exterior and interior were just plain falling apart. The cars’ performance was absolutely abysmal.

The cars were so bad that I haven’t purchased another GM product since, nor will I ever buy another product from GM. My Dad had bought a mid-90’s Oldmobile 88 and it was actually OK for the most part. It just ate alternators, until I convinced him to put an upgraded aftermarket unit on and that problem was solved. Later he bought a Chevy Traverse and that thing was an absolute piece of trash. He had to put timing chains on it at 70k and that was a $2500 bill. The power steering also went out on it multiple times. He had the steering rack and power steering pump replaced multiple times.

I traded my old Sunbird in on a 1985 Toyota Corolla GT-S and THAT was my absolute favorite car of all time. I autocrossed it for several years and it never broke. I’d love to find one to restore. I have owned multiple Toyotas in my 39 years of driving. My current car is a Camry Hybrid.

This is exactly why an automobile should be treated as a depreciating asset, rather than an investment.

You fix a car if it will cost less than half of its value at the time of the repair. If it cost more than half, get rid of it at the first opportunity. There are caveats to that rule of course. So don’t fault yourself for buying another car.

You had some bad luck and that is just a part of owning a car. In commiseration, I invested $2500 into an Acura TL that I dearly loved for timing belt and some other 100K maintenance items. Only to have its transmission blow up less than 4 months later. The $2500, plus the transmission replacement would have been well over half the value of the car. I traded it. For a car that I still own and absolutely loathe, but it’s been reliable and I’ve put over 160,000 miles on it. My oldest kid now drives it.

The short answer is:

Keep your current car. It’s basically new. From a manufacturer that is notable for the reliability of its products. You also know its maintenance history, which is incredibly important.

Have your payments kept ahead of depreciation? Meaning, can you sell your car for enough to pay off your loan? Just so you know, that’s almost always “no”, but your results may vary. You would also be forced to buy another car. 7.59% APR sucks, but are you able to get a better rate now on another car? Do you have the down payment for another car? Again, you may not have any money left over from selling your current car and paying off the lien.

If you can refinance it at a lower the rate, then absolutely that is the path you should take. If not, then taking a more global look at your finances are in order to make the payment more palatable.

My wife is a Rheumatologist. She actually had a patient attempt to use an article SHE WROTE to argue against her diagnosis. The article the patient was “citing” was not even applicable to the symptoms the patient presented.

Told a janitor to not unplug the equipment rack in a closet to plug in their vacuum cleaner. Why they thought that plugging in their vacuum there, rather than just using the outlet not 6 feet away outside the closet is beyond me.

Further, why that closet wasn’t locked in the first place. But this was almost 30 years ago and it was another time in IT.

I spoke with the janitor and she started plugging in her vacuum in the adjacent outlet. Then I went to the director of IT and got the capitol cost approved to secure all of the networking closets in the building, which there were 6, one for each floor. Only the one floor was an issue as that closet also house a sink and drain for the janitors to use. There wasn’t another place we could move the networking equipment to without laying out a lot of money.

I find distressed audio equipment and bring them back to life.

Here is a photo of some of the pieces I’ve worked on:

Top Shelf:

Adcom GP-555 It’s actually dead. I cannot get the left channel to work at all. Resoldered the entire signal path, replaced the opamps, cleaned the controls, bypassed the controls… Just cannot find where the issue is…

McIntosh MC7108: On/off circuit issues. This one I didn’t really fix, just bypassed the affected circuit, because I don’t care about turning it on and off via a switch. I use it every day.

Second Shelf:

Carver TFM-15cb: Needed new lights in the meters and the input level pots cleaned. That is all the one pictured needed. I have another one that required the same things, but also had to recap it. The one in the photo will need new capacitors before too long. Great sounding amps, but not very well built.

Bottom Shelf:

Soundcraftsman PRO-PA2X200: This is actually an amp my wife has owned for over 30 years. The power supply caps went out and needed to be replaced.

Here is a photo of said capacitors:

Been in a plane crash.

It was a Beech 18 that experienced fuel starvation on climb out. The pilot raised the gear and belly landed it in a freshly tilled corn field off the end of the runway. It was a lot like being in a car accident, just lasted longer with a lot more rending metal noises. The port engine was ripped off and was sitting about 50 feet behind where the plane came to rest.

It wasn’t cool, believe me…

Doing a Horny Gorilla skydive with 5 friends.

Representative photo of a Horny Gorilla not a photo of me or my friends:

We get into the formation, actually get stable and the next thing we all see is a one jumpers deployment bag, with their main parachute in it, come out from his back. Goes above the formation, then the deployment bag comes down into the middle of the formation… goes back up… comes back down. Lines are streaming all around and it’s turning into a really dangerous situation. Getting tied up in the lines, while in free fall has a great chance of being fatal.

But it was just a surreal moment for all of us, seeing this deployment bag dancing around in the middle of the Horny Gorilla.

The person next to the jumper with the deployment bag out, reaches down and pulls the affected jumper’s Pilot Chute, which is what actually deploys the main, and tosses it into the air stream. The affected jumper went flying out of the formation as his main parachute deployed. The rest of us break and track hard.

The guy actually landed his main parachute! He did not end up cutting away and pulling his reserve. The way that deployment bag just danced in an out of the middle of the formation was just unreal and we all just stared at it for what seemed an eternity.

25 years on and we all still talk about it.

Kids are wonderfully resilient for the most part.

They should not have to be that resilient though.

Who ever owns that gun, should be absolutely crucified and thrown in jail as accessory to murder. Apparently the girl, who was the same age as my youngest, had a long history of suicidal and homicidal thoughts.

There are too many morons that own guns and they really need to start paying the price for being morons. You want a gun? Fine, for the first time in your life UNFUCK yourself and spend some time thinking about the responsibility of owning a weapon. The 2nd amendment also say “well regulated militia”. Maybe gun owners should be mandated to join a militia where a Marine drill Sergent instructs them the ins and outs of gun safety in that way only the Marines can do.

Fellow Madisonian here.

I’m very happy that your daughter is home and safe with you tonight.

My kids go to Middleton HS. Even so, today was a very scary day.

Guy who runs Plex on a Ubuntu container on Proxmox.

I’m going to just drop this here (be sure to watch to the end):

The English Language

Given:

You lack the capacity to experience imposter syndrome.

TIL!

I’ve lived in Wisconsin since 2006 and did not know that.

Thank you!

Wisconsinite here where the badger is native and the mascot for the University of Wisconsin is the Badger.

This meme is inaccurate.

The American Badger will also remove your kidneys and sell them on the black market as well, to support their meth habit.