His aren’t. A pair of high-end massage guns so they can massage each other at the same time instead of taking turns. BowFlex adjustable dumbbells. Not a gadget, but a new Tesla Model S and charging port. There’s an Amazon Echo Show in a few rooms…

I’m not saying that he shouldn’t buy those things – I’m saying he has a different mindset than I did/do, but I do believe that my mindset makes it easier to get by financially.

Sorry it took me so long to respond. I was stuck in an infinite loop and had to reboot.

No, I’m not a bot. Check my post history.

When I went to college I had saved every penny that I made. I went to a community college for two years under an earned scholarship and worked during that time; then I transferred into a four-year institution that required three years of classes. I paid for the first two years with my savings and part of the third year with a loan. I continued on to grad school and took research/teaching assistantships to provide a salary that covered housing, but received free tuition as part of the deal.

My first semester at the four-year school was way harder than anything I was used to. At community college I had coasted along, but this required effort. Paying for it myself out my bank account made it so much more real, and I decided then that I was going to do better because I sure as heck didn’t work so hard all those years just to throw it away.

We paid for most of our millenial child’s college. He ended up dropping out of college a couple of times and always spent too much money. He’s now married with a wife and child, and together they make more money than my wife and I did combined up until a few years ago. They’re still living paycheck-to-paycheck but have to buy every new gadget.

Our two Gen-Z daughters just went off to college. They will probably graduate, but they also don’t understand the value of money. They didn’t want to work, didn’t want to save… They get a scholarship that pays a monthly stipend, and they burn through that as it comes in. Their college decisions were based on things like “is that campus pretty?” “is their cafeteria food really good?” regardless of the cost. They refused to do community college.

What’s my take? These three kids have a sense of entitlement and a need for immediate gratification that I didn’t really see in my generation. I’m pretty sure this isn’t the result of bad parenting (we adopted the two younger ones as teens), and I see it with co-workers’ children as well.

Does that mean that every Millenial or Gen-Z is like this? No. It just means these three definitely are. But they don’t get much pity from me when they complain and it was the result of bad choices. I chose my college path based on value: scholastic and economic. They chose their path based on social and sensory reasons.

Here they’re pushing the “must be within 60 miles from the office” trope; I bet they’d say to drive in if it’s after hours.

Growing up we had two large mulberry trees in the yard, and every summer I was sent out daily to pick a bucket full of mulberries. My Mom made mulberry syrup, mulberry jam, mulberry clafouti, put them in fruit salad, and, of course, made mulberry cobbler.

This brings back memories. Thank you for sharing!

My worst feeling is “I tried that two years ago but couldn’t get enough people interested, so I dropped it…”

I was a manager, and another guy was a more senior manager in another division. We both did IT. For some reason he didn’t like me and/or was trying to get our services moved to him, so he went to our director every week for over a year to tell him made-up stories about me.

He eventually left after a lot of people realized he was a highly manipulative, but I still hear things that he told people as part of an explanation about why I was passed up “for this” or why I wasn’t right “for that.” It cost me a lot of raises, especially in cases where things were gossiped to other people and the source was lost. Now I’m only a manager in title, but my management responsibilities were taken away.

Unfortunately, I’m caught in a ticking trap – another 1.5 years and I retire with a full pension for the rest of my life. Losing that by leaving isn’t worth it (assuming I live long enough afterwards).

Exactly!

Same here. The most I get out of might be a pointer to a module that could be a better approach, but the code I get from ChatGPT is usually worthless.

I treat it as my water cooler talk, and maybe I’ll come away with a few new ideas.

It depends. For a movie, it probably doesn’t matter to me unless there was a really egregious transgression.

If i’m buying a painting to hang on my wall, am I going to think about the artist more than the piece when I see it? If so, that would ruin it for me and I wouldn’t enjoy the piece, so I wouldn’t buy it.

Of course, sometimes the controversy behind a work is the reason it’s appreciated – not the quality of the work.

I had this too, but mine went further. Eventually became burning, terrible pain down my arm – worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I spent six weeks on steroids, oxycodone, and gabapentin until I could finally get steroid injections directly into my spine.

Be careful, and get checked out for cervical spinal stenosis. You might be able to do some proactive stuff at this point.

Now my neck always hurts, I can’t feel my fingertips (especially on the right hand), and my right forearm sometimes feels like it’s on fire.

I like my pour over with steel filter more; it seems to have less bitterness than the press.

I wish it was database agnostic. And I’m slightly concerned about the version three rewrite.

It does look awesome, and I’ll revisit it to see where things are in six months.

Yup! Since 1993… Started Linux on my desktop and haven’t looked back.

I have a problem with Amazon Drive going away for non-photos on December 31st.

For a while, they had unlimited storage and you could use a Linux API to access it – I stored 8TB of data.

Then they set a quota, but for those over quota it was read-only. Oh, and Linux access no longer works.

Now they’ve set a deadline to have everything off by December 31st, but the Windows app still doesn’t work (constantly crashing) and I see no way to get my files.

I started back with kernel 0.12 and called it Line-ucks. I still do and people look at me funny, but it’s an old habit and I’m an old dog.

When Linux released his audio file it was already etched into my brain the other way. I do remember being joking that I’m glad his name wasn’t Pinus (like the genus for pine trees) after hearing him say it.

My favorite exchange on ChatGPT (back in March):

**You**
Tell me a dad joke.

**ChatGPT**
Why did the tomato turn red?

Because it saw the salad dressing!

**You**
Can you explain to me why that joke is funny?

**ChatGPT**
Sure, I'd be happy to explain why that joke is considered funny!

The humor in this joke comes from a play on words and a bit of misdirection. The first part of the joke sets up an expectation that there will be a serious or logical explanation for why the tomato turned red. However, the punchline delivers a silly and unexpected answer that has nothing to do with the actual reason for the tomato's color change.

The play on words is in the phrase "saw the salad dressing." The word "saw" can be interpreted in two ways: as the past tense of "see" (as in, the tomato observed the dressing) or as a cutting tool (as in, the tomato was physically sliced by the dressing). This creates a bit of confusion and a humorous mental image, which is why the joke is often considered amusing. Additionally, the idea of a tomato being aware of salad dressing is absurd and adds to the silliness of the joke.

We went on a bit further with me pointing out that their murder take was distasteful, and it responded that humor is subjective.

I thought you were going to say you liked lint (the source code checker).

Battlefield Earth was my favorite book as a young teenager. Ignoring everything else about the author (which I didn’t know at the time), I thought the book was brilliant (especially the first half). It touched my imagination in a way no other book had before, and I must have read it about a dozen times.

I seem to recall the book cover saying that a major motion picture was coming out soon, but I guess time is relative. For me it was about eighteen years (which was more than half my life at the time) before the movie actually came out, and that seemed like an eternity.

I wish I could say it was worth the wait. The movie was horrible – it had bad acting, a bad script, and couldn’t carry the book in only two hours.

It currently has a 3% tomatometer score at Rotten Tomatoes and a 2.5/10 at IMDB. The movie also won Worst Picture of the Decade at the 2010 Razzie Awards.