Cancer

Today the prognosis was made terminal.

I had to explain the line to my daughter & her friend this evening (they were using a command-line prompt to circumvent a monetization grab when copying files, which is what brought it to mind).

Here's hoping for a playoff game during a Lake Effect storm.  Because I'm perverse that way.

Here's hoping for a playoff game during a Lake Effect storm.  Because I'm perverse that way.

Almost certainly the latter.
 
When McDonnell-Douglass bought Boeing with Boeing's money, the business-type sleazebags took over, and imposed their version of management (which had nearly taken McD-D down the toilet in the first place).  And that version is: you don't have to know anything to manage, you just have to push people around and make them do what you say, simply because you say it.  This is in direct opposition to the old core of Boeing, which was solidly in the Build Airplanes Right camp.  Nothing shows this as clearly as the 787 fiasco, and I know a now-retired Boeing engineer who was on that project and all but predicted the outcome.

Q: What's one of the fun parts of Monte Carlo studies of early Solar System dynamics?
 
A: It's less fun 4.5 billion years later.

I assumed the former was a delayed consequence of the near-apocalyptic winter storm and public utility crisis in Texas back in Feb 2021.  Y'know, the "Hell freezes over" thing.  It wasn't actually Hell that froze over, but Texas is an approximation thereof, as Gen. Sheridan referred to once.

Q: What's one of the fun parts of Monte Carlo studies of early Solar System dynamics?
 
A: It's less fun 4.5 billion years later.

Gazebo summoning

1)  this is awesome
 
2) if it hadn't been for the break in, I would have everything I need to make this.
 
3)  I am unncecesarily bothered by the fact that he went to the trouble to reclock the drive head and ultimately make this thing more difficult to use......
 
 

Needs two, and they bolt onto the struts between the sawblade and the saw driver.
 
 
=====================================
 

Needs two, and they bolt onto the struts between the sawblade and the saw driver.
 
 
=====================================
 

Where does the rocket engine go?

My son asked me: “Do trees poop?” I replied: “where do you think #2 pencils come from?”

Well, now that summer is gone, I change my answer from the other times I was asked that.  (Back then, my retirement felt a lot like my non-retirement, since I wasn't teaching most summers.)  However, one thing remains true: my attention is dominated by unwelcome things unrelated to any job or retirement state. 
 
Still (considering the annoying inconsistency of the local NFL franchise) it is pleasant not to have to grade papers -- especially labs -- which I often did with football on TV to provide distraction from my ineffectiveness as a teacher. 
 
A passing annoyance is ... dealing with Medicare for the first time.  Not helped by my being the first of my circle of friends to reach retirement, so I am walking point through that jungle. 
 
Social Security was a snap, once I was told all the forms I had to fill out (and I was told them one at a time, so I ended up doing them serially rather than in parallel); happily the physical SSA office is a ten minute walk from my house so needing to go there was not a problem at all, and almost uniquely in this town, that office has air conditioning, a real plus in August when the highs were in the 90s.

Torturing my students with math isn't really what my job is all about.
 
But it is an entertaining perk.

U-2.  The Francis Gary Powers kind, not the one that still hasn't found what it's looking for.

It took centuries, but the Chinese gradually replaced the hereditary aristocracy with scholar-bureaucrats (who had to pass the imperial civil service exam to join that civil service).  This was complicated by the ebb and flow of different religions' influence in the empire: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and whatever the northern horse barbarians were for the current incursion....

DrivethruRPG has quite a lot of free maps to download, and quite a lot more that are very inexpensive. 
 
My biweekly group uses a Chessex mat and wet erase markers, and sketches out maps quickly whenever we need one.  We usually have one we're referring to when we're drawing them out.  (This is always an open book test!)
 
I used the Tech Underground map from Robot Warriors to represent an underground former Rebel base in my Star Wars Hero game, and I did exactly that when they needed it: sketched it out on the mat. 

The X-15, because it deserves to be remembered.  It's still the fastest crewed aircraft ever.
(EDIT:  missed U, drat.  There's a cool one here...ultralights.  A very specific class of plane that doesn't need a full pilot's license.)

U-2.  The Francis Gary Powers kind, not the one that still hasn't found what it's looking for.