And WTF is going on with those sheets of paper?

My daughter, a sociology major, joined me at Microsoft, as a recruiter, and promptly built an Excel spreadsheet to help manage her team's workflow.

It's all in the genes. When visiting her I use her "Ah, this calls for a spreadsheet" mug.

Yay!

The first 80% of the development takes 80% of the time, and the remaining 20% also takes 80% of the time.

Or various versions of the theme.

Mid 1980s we had this all sorted out. Escape codes for switching ISO code tables for a while. Then came Unicode, UTF8, RFC headers, and it was clear how to transfer text cleanly.

Except some old code still insists on seeing everything as Latin-1 and screws up everything downstream.

Forty years.

We bombed all the concrete runways but couldn't see the asphalt ones.

Elizabeth Warren made this point years ago in a domestic meet and greet. The way that self-made, John Galt types absolutely depend on the infrastructure WE created, through a democratic government.

Including one she didn't mention, a stable, dependable financial system.

Read the NYT article. It's actually genuine medical research.

It was just a bad attempt at a joke.

Actually, not directly (Medicare pays most, an additional private insurance the rest) but we are fortunate and, as I said... insurance. As an expat Brit, I'm well aware of the difference, although the NHS is suffering from cuts these days.

You might try actually reading the article?

My regional hospital in Massachusetts has free parking!

I give it 2 weeks.

You too! My granddaughter, new to middle school, snagged a named part in "Seussical Jr" and the entire cast, 6th to 8th grade, sang and danced their hearts out 5 times in 4 days. The PTA hired a professional director who drilled them for 2 hours after school for weeks.

The kids are all right.

Rich perverts haven't suddenly dropped their perverted needs just because JE can no longer supply.

God, I so remember that moment.

You make it sound like a bad thing.

And in her mind she's the only one. I doubt she's appealing on behalf of her fellow sufferers.

IIRC, but I'll check, my granddaughter was diagnosed severe. But I also admit she has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, poor kid.

Fly in marginal VMC with inadequate training.

First, does he define "safe"?

When he does, we'll see him asking you to prove a negative. Someone school him in logic, please.

"Profound"? That's not a medical term, Mr Secretary. "Severe".

I was recently added to the "AI Haters" list and just now added to the "positive Gen AI opinions" list.

Lists are crap.

Before that I was added to the "techno phobics" list - after 44 years working on computer systems, 18 of them at Microsoft.

Lists are crap.

All your reginos are belong to us.

All your reginos are belong to us, apparently.

It's almost as the motto were "move fast and break things".

Which usually results in "fix the broken thing later the same day, which breaks two more things".

Meanwhile the typical customer is wondering what they did wrong.

Yes, I'm old school.

But do those two live raccoons in the shot still have their penises?

(not that i can be sure they are male)

I am *so* glad I didn't read this to my wife earlier, or I would have been in for an uncomfortable afternoon. She got it on the last attempt.

Incidentally, where is the spoiler alert?

Why are they still talking about Easter 2024?

Never mind. These things never die. Like Jesus on Easter, I guess.

The author and his wife in front of St Peter's, Vatican City.

And Vatican City's southern border is completely open! I have crossed it, unchallenged, many times.

Here's me and the missus, @jeanniebrooks.bsky.social, standing near the border a few (ahem) years ago.

And when we moved to the Puget Sound in 1997 snow was rare. As were snowplows.

Back here in MA after a brutal winter we're suddenly experiencing a run of 80+ days.