A black fluffy cat on my legs. My feet are just visible beyond her head.

I have things to do today, but Pepper has other ideas...

So I got hit with a layoff notice on Friday, just due to contract financials. I have a couple months left with the company to wind things down and do handoffs, etc, but I'm officially looking for something new.

Cybersecurity, director-ish level. If anyone has some connections, let me know!

This is very mid-thread, and you should read the whole thing, but here in NY, you are actually not ALLOWED to pull out a phone to take a picture of the ballot. The idea being that you could be coerced into proving you voted the "right" way. (We don't have QR codes on our ballots either)

For the record - I'm still an adjunct!

Ah, yeah. I haven't been in several years myself, and it's hard when your home institution won't cover the cost at all.

I am looking at the AHA for next year, because New Orleans. Might be worth saving up for...

I attended conferences as an early adjunct, both the AHA and the OAH - oh, and also the SMH! (although, I WAS presenting a paper at the OAH that year). If it's geographically convenient, and you can afford the travel, it's worth going!

The lovely @ltimonin.bsky.social discovered that there's a 1975 adaptation of Jerome K. Jerome's _Three Men In a Boat_ featuring Tim Curry and Michael Polin, so we're watching it on YouTube...

Oh, that sounds awesome! I don't know what I'd cook, but I'd figure something out.

Chickens also!

That's not something I'm qualified to comment on.

"Modern" is a loaded term in academics; it often has specific connotations that go beyond "recent." But, yeah, there are still people alive who experienced WWII, so I think it can be considered "modern" in terms of recency.

Foreground, sidewalk, cut in a curve around a garden bed. Mid-back, the trunk of a paper birch, assorted green plants. Around the tree and plants, fresh brown mulch.

The garden of the house on my crossing guard corner has been freshly mulched; it smells like JMU in spring time here...

I am not ready for it to be this warm. Luckily, there's snow in the forecast for Monday...

Season 2 of Designated Survivor - released in 2017 - opens with a pandemic threat (episode 3). I'm beginning to think we were, perhaps, not really paying attention...

A short bedtime tale by the 4yo:

"Once upon a time there was a little boy who really wanted a unicorn. But every day, no unicorn came to his house. He would shout, "UNICORN!", but no unicorn came to his house. He wished EXTRA SUPER HARD but still no unicorn came to his house!

Only tigers."

I remember building a computer and a friend confidently telling me that there was no way we needed a hard drive with more than 1 GB space ...

I learned to program on a computer with a built in track ball... Except I had a better computer at home and already knew Basic by that point...

Yeah it was!

I'm not as anti-screen as some folks are. Kids are going to graduate to a world where being able to use a computer for daily tasks will be expected. But schools keep giving them laptops and then restricting what they can do with the laptops. Let them create or give them typewriters instead!

Hey, they're on Bluesky - @cantripcg.bsky.social .

I don't play TCGs, but I love play mats as big mouse pads. My current one is from my flgs, the art was done by a patron.

As is often the case, I was wrong!

A cluttered desk. In the front, some sort of flat box with a dice tower at one end. There are two stickers in the lid of the box. One is a beholder in a top hat levitating a tea cup; the sticker reads Behold my sophistication. The other shows a classic mimic chest with the phrase Don't be Suspicious... Next to the box, a set of metal dice, and then a mug of milky tea. Behind that, jars of dice and vitamins and assorted other clutter. Behind the box, just visible, the bottom edge of a computer monitor and several D&D Lego mini figs, plus assorted bric a brac.

It's almost game time! Behold! My disaster of a desk set up!

That's an ... Interesting switch location...

Hey! Your house was clearly owned by the same guy who owned our house! Our guy was a NASA engineer, and based on the problems they had with the toilet on Artemis II, he's still working for NASA ...

Some of what I looked at seemed to suggest that, yeah.

Apparently, buying authentic WWI Russian uniforms is complicated, because Soviet film companies made uniforms for their prop shops. But a prop label doesn't mean a uniform is fake, because theaters provided uniforms to soldiers during the war.

But John! Oral Roberts U has a pair of giant hands at the entrance! None of those other schools have giant hands.

and then later Canadian Coast Guard - why ships? And he said, probably because of the regular trips to Honduras by ship during his formative years, when my grandfather was working for Chiquita to save the Gros Michel banana. Which I already knew about. Side tangent complete.

2/2

** I knew he had been an officer, and in the White Russian army, but I learned he was artillery because my uncle's obituary stated that Ivan had served in the Canadian artillery because his father had been an artillery officer. Which prompted a question for my dad, who was naval reserve...

1/2

So, not a SUPER deep rabbit hole, but I was surprised to see someone I "knew" from one context in a completely other context.

But I still don't know what sort of sword Russian artillery officers carried.

8/8