Laura: I have to do some sit ups, could you put something on to entertain me.
Me: I don’t have any leopard skin boxers, but maybe I can find something…
Laura: A clown suit?
Me: Oh did you mean on TV?
Progress?
Not only does this reaffirm my distrust of progress bars, but it’s increasing every second. As we speak it’s over 3 million percent, and 32 days. If I am to believe this, then the process won’t be complete for over a month, but it’s already complete many times over?!
It’s over 5 million now, but the green bar has gone, so we have many millions of percent completed, but a visual that says it hasn’t even started, and a eta of some time in the winter.
Nightwork
Because I had the foresight to keep them in the car, twice (separated by 15 years and multiple cars) I’ve been able to say to friends, “put the hammer down I’ve got lock picks.”
In 1991 a dorky role playing game sparked my interest in lock picking and being employed working with the Internet, I turned to it and found the MIT lock picking guide. Computers, hacking, and lock picking all share an element of puzzle or problem solving. Eventually I read Nightwork:
A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT By Institute Historian T. F. Peterson and learned more of the MIT Hacking community and its history. Before the term hacking became associated with computers, MIT undergraduates used it to describe any activity that took their minds off studying, suggested an unusual solution to a technical problem, or generally fostered nondestructive mischief. Hacks can be technical, physical, virtual, or verbal. Often the underlying motivation is to conquer the inaccessible and make possible the improbable.
Ultimately it’s about solving the problem, learning from it, and using the learned skills for good.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/nightwork
See What I Did There?
I believe it was me who coined the phrase, delusions of grandeur.
This is How You Remind Me
Overheard the following conversation between my kids and their 20 year old cousin while getting ready to power wash and paint their grandfather’s roof. The powerwasher was on the roof and they were trying to get the hose up there:
Jared: I know. We can get a big bucket and you can shoot the water up here and we can catch it.
Carter: You know, sometimes I forget that you’re twelve and then you remind me.
Jared: What? Would that not work?
My Wife: Mike! the kids need some supervision!
The Hole in My House
This is the hole in my house.
I thought a mouse came in this hole I found in my house.
This is the nest I found in the hole I found in my house.
Twas not a mouse, but a stinging yellow pest’s nest I found in the hole I found in my house.
This my flamethrower, a gift from my wife.
This is a wingless yellow jacket, having lost his life,
from the flamethrower I got from my wife.
I hate nature.
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Did Tolkien Influence Top Gun?
“But see here, Master Sandyman, I’ve a score to pay in this village, and don’t you make it any longer with your jeering, or you’ll foot a bill too big for your purse.” -JRR Tolkien, Return of the King, 1955
“Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash.” -Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. Top Gun, 1986
Careful What You Wish For
Every once and a while I try to coach my teenager on how to be a human being. My wife thinks that’s funny.
“Hey! Jared bumped my arm!”
“So, sometimes you just have to say excuse me and move,” I said. My wife is stifling a grin while staring at me. She’s talking to me, but in her head. “What?” I ask her. Her grin widens. “Are you disparaging me in your head?”
“I’m surprised that’s in your vocabulary.”
“Disparage?”
“Excuse me.”
Smoke Break
There was a fire downtown and our campus closed the following day while they checked the air quality in the buildings. They announced today that time cards should be marked with an L = Leave With Pay (explain in remarks). Is it wrong that I want people to put “Smoke Break”?
Lord Help Me, I Can’t Change
Free Bird: Just when he’s the most adamant that he can’t change, everything changes. The the tempo changes, the chord progression changes, the rhythm and melody change, and everyone in the band is expected to keep up with the changes.