and so it begins

i am still falling into the realisation misconception* that i can’t be a kid forever.

You definitely can. I have met plenty of people who preserved this part of themselves. It’s too often outside pressure that makes people abandon it. A few weeks ago my mother berated me for owning a game console as a grown man but it didn’t phase me because the little history I lived through has taught me some lessons. When my father was my age he was working overtime to provide as much as possible for his family. He’d come home tired and stressed and self medicated with booze to somehow keep going. I’d often get a speech about how much he sacrificied for me but here’s the thing, I never asked for it. Did I like living in the big house after we moved from our small rented apartment? Sure, about as much as living in a big apartment complex with a bunch of other kids to play with. What I didn’t like was having a dad who was constantly burned out and angry so I made sure not to live as he did. Recently I took my wife and our dog fossil hunting. We were digging through rocks and mud having a blast and around us were a bunch of kids. Meanwhile their parents were standing in the back complaining there aren’t enough benches to sit on while the kids have fun. I will never get this old. Not in a hundred years. As long as I can hold my hammer I will be right next to those kids digging for paleontological treasure instead of standing in the back with the bitter “grown ups”.

So I can’t speak Russian? That’s rough. I guess I’d try to stare everyone down until they get nervous and leave. Sometimes nod when people talk to me, sometimes just walk away from them. Oh no, he’s giving me the silent treatment they’ll think. Better not make him mad. Let them worry about the windows. Meanwhile I plan my escape through South America to LA where I live as a not-Putin impersonator. Hide in plain sight.

Privacy Enhancing Technologies. A blanket term for anything protecting your identity (Onion, VPN, etc.) I feel like the people asking for this either have a very limited technical understanding of it or completely different motives. You can’t ban encryption. What they could do is ban VPN services from officially operating or certain protocols but that would mostly hit your regular user.

High availability and security are the bane of IT infrastructure jobs. It makes me anxious to think about my MSP days when I’d sit on my couch on a Saturday fully aware that I’m one phone call away from having my day, weekend or even the next two weeks ruined because some customer CEO has full domain admin rights and would give them to anyone who’d ask on the phone or via email.

The amount of bullshit jobs that exist is insane. So many people in offices that either don’t do anything or barely anything. Then even more who could easily get all work done in half a work day. Then a gigantic amount that could easily do their work in 4 instead of 5 days or 6 instead of 8 hours. I’m typing this at work because of all the downtime I have and I still believe I get more work done then most of my colleagues.

I think the idea would be to have machines replace people wherever possible and then have multiple people split the work time where it isn’t. Why does one farmer have to work 24/7 if two could split the work and actually have a life outside of work?

I don’t even have a child. If I were to end someone else’s spawn would that count as -1 child for my footprint or theirs? Just asking out of curiosity…of a friend…an acquaintance really.

I beg to differ. In a mad maxian wasteland the child would still burn a lot of gasoline. Witness them.

Every day some engineer would have to answer his questions. “Can we remove brown?” “Pardon me?” “The color, brown, can we remove it?” “I’m sorry I don’t understand, remove it from where? I don’t think our rocket has any b-” “No, I mean from the world. Maybe with our satellites?” “I…don’t think that’s something we’ll be able to-” “How about birds? I don’t like them. They remind me of god.” “We…we’ll look into it.”

Bold of you to assume he’s not already doing that.

Finally the iconic red phonebooths can shine again and big ben will be the primary source of the time in London. Oy, it’s seven bong.

It’s a bit misleading. They’re not private contractors but employees of a different company instead. The union busting in the US is pretty extreme. I just hope these people can put their talents to work in a company that doesn’t have so many issues complying with the rule “don’t be evil”.