Category: Personal

Kids these days

So I was tired of “Things are so terrible! Kids these days! The world is coming to an end!” when people suffered a stolen bike or a dog owner not cleaning up after their dog. I noticed these markings on my walk, took a couple pics, and tried to be funny on NextDoor:

Comments generally fell into three categories:

(a) They got the humor and added to it: “I see them doing it sometimes. They’re bold. They wear yellow safety vests and act like they’re some kind of construction crew!”

(b) Literal: “It’s construction markings.” Got it in one try.

(c) People who didn’t like the post at all: “Gangs!!! Why are some folks minds in such an odd place.”

Here’s the whole thread:

This was long enough. Good News next week.

Financial records: keep or toss?

Ten things to keep forever: Birth certificates and adoption papers, death certificates, marriage and divorce records, Social Security cards, military service records including discharge documents, loan payoff statements, year-end pay stubs, retirement or pension records, estate documents, funeral programs. Details on some of these in the article.

It depends: Loan documents, vehicle title, receipts for big-ticket items, home improvement purchase orders / receipts / canceled checks, investment statements.

3-7 years: tax records, medical bills (if tax related).

One year: credit card statements.

Less than one year: ATM or retail receipts.

Full story: https://wapo.st/3KOCAL1. 1,060 words.

And more good news from FutureCrunch (now Fix the News):

Animal conservation in the Caribbean is paying off
The Caribbean islands have suffered some of the highest extinction rates in modern history. But over the past three decades, conservationists have worked tirelessly to restore 30 islands and have saved 12 species, including the Antiguan racer, one of the world’s rarest snakes, the White Cay iguana, and the Sombrero ground lizard. BBC

[emoji words]

Emoji have their place… to express emotions, not facts or verbs. I dislike using them in place of words because they tend to be seriously ambiguous, and we have these things called “words” that we have been developing for millenia and which are much less ambiguous. We’ve had ideographic written languages and we’ve gotten rid of most of them.

I had this late-night text discussion…

Girlfriend:

       Why are there no hug emoji

Me:

   🫂 🤗

       But they could be ambiguous. I prefer words.

Girlfriend:

   🛌

       #notambiguous

Me:

       “F*** me now.”

Girlfriend:

   🤦🏻‍♀️

Me:

       “Wasp on my forehead!!!”

Girlfriend:

   🏃‍♀️

Me:

       “Time for a jog!”

Girlfriend:

   💩

Me:

       “Pooping makes me happy!”

Girlfriend:

   👽👾🤖

Me:

       “I’m going to eat your soul.”

Choosing the right people in your life

If someone offered a chance for you and a team of your choosing to go on a quest that had a prize of $10 million at the end, how carefully would you choose that team? You’d likely sit down and carefully analyze the most critical characteristics for your team to win the quest.

Well, the quest is called life, and the prize at the end is worth more than $10 million.

————————————————————————–

Choose people who choose you back

Choose authenticity

Choose people that help you grow

Choose people who are different than you

Choose character over charisma

Choose often

Details at https://medium.com/better-humans/how-to-choose-the-right-people-to-be-in-your-life-997737ca4288.

Thanks a bunch, Verizon

A couple of years ago, Verizon purchased Yahoo. One of Yahoo’s features was Yahoo!Groups, a way to set up an email list for a group of people. It saved all the messages so you could read them with a web browser instead of getting emails, or review them later; it included ways to conduct polls (“Should we do dinner next Sunday at (a) McDonald’s, (b) Uno’s, (c) etc”); it let you save photos or images related to the group; and various other things. Millions of groups were created for everything from fans for a particular TV show to members of a real-life group to religions to finance (Wikipedia article).

Recently, Yahoo (owned by Verizon, remember) decided to drop all the features except the basic email list: whatever you email to your group still goes out to everyone, but Yahoo (owned by Verizon) will no longer save the emails, and your photos or whatever are gone. They gave users a few weeks to download stuff. I downloaded the group of my family’s relatives. We had used this since 2002 to chat about marriages and new jobs and deaths, and the occasional digression into politics.

UPDATE: I thought that several years of messages had not been downloaded. They were. I managed to lose them, my fault. (And just found them again.) Some apologies to Yahoo (owned by Verizon). I’ve toned down this posting a little.

I’m sure this is saving Yahoo (owned by Verizon) millions of dollars. And I’m sure this is going directly into the pocket of Hans Vestberg, the CEO of Verizon.

Thanks a bunch, Verizon. Remind me to never spend one cent with anything related to your company again.

Love my gel pen

Some time ago, a friend left a pen in my place. I loved the clear, consistent, solid strokes. Finally I got around to checking the price of this OCD-compliant writing tool: approximately the same as ordinary cheap ballpoints.

They are Uni-ball Signo gel pens. I stopped at Staples and got 14 for about $11. Love them, and I now have one in every corner of the house. Tons of info at https://www.jetpens.com/blog/uni-ball-signo-a-comprehensive-guide/pt/639.