Ember

because dogs and humans have different expectations and rights Yeah, but isn't it bizarre that it's nothing to use the right pronouns for the dog that couldn't care less, while using the right pronouns for a fellow human is a hill some people would die on?

Every now and then, someone will ask me which tribe I'm from. It can be a little jarring. Thankfully, everyone I've answered has accepted it rather than insisting I'm something I'm not and confused about my own identity. Is that relevant? If she tells me I'm using the wrong pronouns, I'm not going to argue with her. I am a meat popsicle.

I really don't understand why some people are so shitty about gender stuff. When someone sees my dog and ask what his name is I say, "Her name is Diva." and that's that. They don't double down after being corrected, or insist that she "looks like a male." They don't start talking about genitals, or chromosomes, or reproductive capacity. Why is it such a problem when we're talking about a person?

You wear pants to interviews?

Unless that's literal. "Boss makes a dollar and I make a dime, that's why I poop on company time."

That's craptastic, and you deserve better. Unfortunately, not all of their problems are technical in nature. I had a recent run-in with a visitor who didn't come prepared and knew just enough to send our driver to the store to look for things that don't exist. While trying to work out just what he was asking for, and what he actually needed, he started talking down to me. "Look, this is incredibly simple. Can you do it or not?" "Surely I'm not the first person to ever want this," and so on. Holy cow. I do systems development; I was only even there because I can figure out how to plug stuff in. I must have blanked for a moment, trying to work out whether it was actually happening; a coworker later said she thought I was about to go hands-on. I wasn't, it was just such a surreal situation. We got him set up in the end, but... wow. Luckily, I didn't have to deal with him past that.

I suggested making it a rat rod, but Cat wasn't having any of that. My brother didn't come away with any damage I was qualified to fix. He jumped up immediately and insisted he was okay, so I had him sit down and chill out while adrenaline ran its course and checked in with him again a couple minutes later. The bike? Those were problems I could address.

pretty sure he's in Michigan LOL Yep. Southern Michigan, if that counts for anything. [hide] [/hide] Over the weekend, I went out to work on my cousin's bike. We got it running, but it isn't quite right. It's been like three years since it was running, so we had my brother run laps around the yard to see if it would improve. He wiped out on gravel; scraped knee and gravel embedded in his hand. The shift lever, foot peg, and handlebars were all bent, and the tank has a scrape on one side and a dent on the other. Oops. With a bench vise, a hammer, and an anvil, I managed to mostly straighten out the shift lever and foot peg. Then we used a ratchet strap and a fence post to pull the handlebars out. I kind of regret not taking "before" pictures on that one.

My 2007 Mazda 3 has a little over 130k miles. It's a good thing I like it, because I'll probably be driving it for a while. Cat's 2000 Buick LeSabre has over 250k miles. Earlier this year, she hit a deer and totaled it. I put in a new radiator and air conditioner condenser, pulled the broken bodywork, and bent some stuff straight. The headlight assembly on one side was destroyed, so I wired up a $7 halogen lamp from Harbor Freight in place of the headlight, and mounted a spare motorcycle turn signal. It's ugly as sin, but that got it back on the road. Yesterday, we hit up a scrapyard and pulled a headlight assembly and the header panel. We'll be back with a truck/trailer for the hood, fender, and bumper cover. She's going to want the colors to match; we'll see how that goes.

Congratulations!

I'm doing this now, sort of by accident. It's a four-bedroom farmhouse on 7 acres, and there's a little ravine out back we can use to shoot safely. We have cherry, apple, peach, and walnut trees by the house and some crab apple trees further back. Estimates are that it was built in the 1880s, so it's mostly functional, but could use new plumbing, wiring, flooring. It's not totally separate; the kitchen, dining room, living room, and bathrooms are sort of common areas, but everyone has their own bedroom. Except Cat and I, because we're not into the whole "married with separate bedrooms" thing. We have my brother, Cat's sister, and a friend of mine from school, so everyone is pretty respectful. It's been kind of nice having people around to help with cars and house stuff, and they make the whole mortgage payment between the three of them. Of course, weekends where everyone else has something planned remind us what we're giving up for that. About 10 years ago, my dad went from renting a house for about $800/month to buying a house on land contract for less than half that. It was $10k for a four bedroom house in the same city, with a full (unfinished, concrete walls/floor) basement, and we had to redo floors upstairs and plumbing. All said, I'm pretty sure he came out ahead on that one.

Neo-noir, played by black Keanu Reeves?

Why do we even have neonazis? Weren't the old nazis bad enough?

1v1 me in wildy! Maybe(probably) I'm a little weird, but I think they're kind of sexy under all the boxes.

If they were all in running condition, I probably wouldn't have half of them.

At least you're selling your old ones. I keep thinking I should, then manage to convince myself that I could get more out of them after just a little work that never seems to happen. In my barn, I have too many bikes. Mine: 1983 Nighthawk 6501984 Nighthawk 6501981 Goldwing 11001983 Goldwing 11001985 Virago 700My wife's:1983 Shadow 7502009 V Star 6501987 Rebel 250Some I'm storing for my dad:1982 Virago 9201981(?) Virago 920198? CX500 (three of them)1972(?) Suzuki Z1I feel like I'm missing some, but it might just be that dad has his Goldwings (two more GL1100s) elsewhere.

I was thinking of SupaDavis' video, which I can't seem to find now. He danced with lemons on his thumbs. That's pretty much all the context I can give, because it's really all the context I ever got.

Be sure to put lemons on your thumbs when you do, it's a proud tip.it tradition.

Since you don't seem to be opposed to gaining summoning experience (just to training it), charming imp sounds like the way to go. I've set mine to consume all charms, and it's been pretty nice.

And here I am, running 1mbps ADSL. I mean, it's better than dial-up.

Did you have to stash food outdoors to save it?

Further diagnostics: pull the headset and see if you can make it crash.

I've bought a car on Craigslist, and like eight motorcycles. So far, I've gotten pretty much what I've expected or better. The car was my '97 Mountaineer, which was listed for $800. I showed up, the guy explained a bunch of issues, we went for a ride, I paid cash, and I drove away with my new truck. I figured I'd be lucky if it lasted until snow melted in 2014, but it's somehow still not dead. The bikes have mostly been listed as non-running or running with issues. The previous owners haven't always understood the issues, but I don't think they were intentionally deceptive. There have been a few listed as non-running that we wound up riding home. It probably helps that I have a pretty good understanding of what I'm looking at, and that most of them were priced low enough that I could have afforded to be wrong.

Debt sucks, but I think there are cases where the benefits make the drawbacks tolerable. Buying my house is one instance. I went ~$100k in the hole for it, but I got a four-bedroom farmhouse on seven acres. I haven't had to pull a gun on a neighbor who decided he and his buddies should come at me on my own porch. I can see the stars at night. I don't have the city breathing down my neck because they don't like my project car in the back yard. I can go shooting out back whenever I want to, instead of packing up and driving to a range. The minimum monthly payment is comparable to rent for a smaller house on a smaller plot in town. It's just a much more peaceful existence all the way around. My car is borderline, but it's a much smaller debt. My fuel efficiency jumped to two or three times what it was with my truck, and I'm not paying as much or as regularly for repairs. I'm still probably paying more per month for my car, but I enjoy it and feel pretty okay with it overall. I think we've spent more on my wife's car (which we started to buy from her dad, and her mom wrote it off as a wedding gift) in the past six months than we have on mine, so it's tempting to get something newer for her now... but we're pretty confident that would cost more over a five-year term, and she refuses to consider owing on two cars at once.

We don't eat detergent around here. We eat glass.