ghaff

You've described many things over the past few years. COVID is also one of them. Stuff that was just basically holding on anyway based on history and momentum just couldn't handle an additional body blow. (And, in a number of cases, didn't really care to.)

I live fairly near a commuter rail stop—about a 8 minute drive but not walkable or cycle really even if I biked which I don’t.

It sorta works for going into the nearish big city for a 9-5 event. But it’s worthless for the evening because of infrequent trains.

Companies have standardized on, mostly, 13” laptops with whatever accessories. But, honestly, for some people who never leave their desk, a desktop of some sort is probably a better choice— though just connecting to a server works too.

13 seems to have emerged as the generally best compromise for using at your desk and traveling. Even a 15” is still small relative to an external monitor and is getting large to fly with.

Many were almost certainly staged. At the time, people were not generally allowed to be casually snapping photos in work environments.

Yeah I hit the middle of the night microwave fire with two different extinguishers after the smoke detectors woke me up. No joy.

Did it need two additional fire trucks to assist my town? Don’t know. I’m not a professional in that field.

There was even an T apparently assigned to babysit me as I was underdressed when I left the house for mid-Jan.

Not always slow. I had a kitchen fire at 4am from a microwave spontaneously combusting. Had the local deputy fire chief and local fire truck there within 15 minutes plus trucks from two other local towns.

I am by no means a fan of JOAS in general but things like the maintenance of private roads including winter plowing do need to be dealt with and while a couple of neighbors can probably get agreements drawn up for “only” $10K each, that only goes so far if more people are involved.

And I have a house without a HOA but did go through a bunch of complicated (and expensive) easement agreements and survey definitions that LePage’s to a lot of loose-gooey hand shakes and outright mistakes over the years.

On general principle I’ll probably put some sort of pad down. Likely unnecessary but it takes 10 seconds.

Fortunately when I had to have my kitchen redone after a fire my brother already had it in his kitchen(s?). Which gave both me and my designer confidence that I would like it at scale that she was a bit nervous about.

Apparently (per neurologist) onset is basically bimodal—teens or so and around 60.

The use of engineer as a title is endemic in some industries that don’t involve software. A mechanical superintendent at a drilling company I worked for like to refer to (drilling) mud “engineers” as mud salesmen because they were always trying to sell you more product.

He had a real burr in his saddle about IBM. But there were some stories related to Rometty that I initially assumed were at least highly embellished. But people I knew there assured me the reality was as over the top as they sounded.

Tangentially related... Back when I was a product manager for fairly large old-timey computer systems, it took a while for me to wrap my head around the fact that all these super-smart digital designers basically didn't know jack about anything remotely related to AC power. I needed to talk to the mechanical/power systems people directly.

Living in a 200+ year old house, I've seen a lot of this first-hand through both planned and unplanned renovations and repairs. In my experience, some contractors are better able to deal with all the uncertainty than others and, if you find the right people (which I have again), hold on for dear life--and, of course, be prepared to write some substantial checks and make potentially expensive decisions.

Had a kitchen fire caused by an appliance in the middle of the night a couple of Januaries ago. Was a complete nightmare to deal with which basically ended up redoing much of my interior because of smoke. Insurance covered a lot, but it took a lot of time and something north of $50K out of pocket.

You've had this fragmentation of attention. Many of the main computer magazines had essentially destination columnists whether writing under their own name or a pseudonym--which periodically passed to a new writer (which in Cringely's case was a matter of some controversy at one point). The latter were often written in a sort of gossipy style intended to make the reader feel that they had an inside view of a company or an area of technology.

It was a different time.

Well, maybe some of Ridley Scott's.

Anytime someone is at a company for less than a year and "departs," rightly or wrongly I assume there was some lack of meeting of the minds. I've known professional friends in that position but never asked about details.

6-12 ft. C-band satellite antennas that piggybacked on unencrypted programming traffic certainly existed. My neighbor had one and I did some research but decided it wasn't worth the effort /money when I moved in. Whatever broadband cable company did eventually wire me up a few years later; this was in the late 90s. And I'm about 40 miles west of Boston.

Maybe revisionist but what most people think of as "cable" was broadband cable (maybe DirecTV, launched 1994) with lots of commercial channels. They don't think of having a 12 foot antenna scouring the sky for signals.

There was certainly some earlier cable, e.g. HBO, if you could pickup broadcast, that predated channels like CNN.

When I had to get a lot of work done on my house after a kitchen fire (appliance but not a smart one), I told pretty much everyone involved "nothing smart." (OK, the new dryer has a moisture sensor but that's it. Didn't have much that was smart anyway aside from a couple of Alexas that I use rarely.

I think there was also a novelty around a lot of smart devices that just didn't translate to much real world benefit. And in my case here, there was also the matter of having more pressing issues than fussing with smart lights and the like--like rewiring a substantial portion of the house when various walls were open..

The math does pencil out for Boston to New York. I'd be an hour to my local airport, arrive 2 hours in advance (could cheat a bit with an early flight--it's taken me almost 2 hours to get into Boston near rush hour--especially given basically a commuter flight but a good hour drive in), probably an hour for a shortish flight, baggage claim (if relevant), then transportation into the city.

Were I amenable, which I'm generally not, could probably drive 4 hours from my house into the city. (Almost always take the train.)

One of the things I didn't realize until relatively recently was that a lot (or at least some) of the re-used Wagner opus came from Tannhauser rather than the Ring Cycle.

It has very little to do with security though. I usually go through security in 5 minutes at my home airport. I do leave a lot more time than that partially because my car company sort of insists on it. (Of course, the car company is another cost.)

Honestly, it would be faster and possibly cheaper for me to drive to Manhattan than take the train--in which case security doesn't enter in at all. And certainly for two people. But I hate driving into Manhattan.

I'm not sure I disagree. I don't have numbers but, anecdotally, you sure hear a lot of "But flying is such a hassle" which is sorta true but not sure how much more than it's ever been especially if you're willing to pay a bit more. I'm not sure how many people translate that into "So I'll just drive 1,000 miles instead."

In Europe (and the US Northeast Corridor), I do favor trains to avoid going to and dealing with airports, but they're no panacea either. And I say this as someone with the various passes that make flying easier.

Netflix is definitely the service that's closest to my bubble. Sometimes I then see something I'm interested in but I don't watch a huge amount of video and Netflix has gotten really pricey.

A lot of (good) series are also just fresh and different when they land. They're not as fresh in Year 2 much less any subsequent years. Yes, sometimes they can build on a serial story but, personally, I lose interest in most TV series after a bit. I realize others have a different mindset where they hate not being able to live with their favorite characters for more or less forever.

While there is certainly some (very) expensive real estate outside of Boston, to a much greater degree than San Francisco, you can actually get a house within a drive for an evening event that's pretty reasonable to a much greater degree than the Bay Area.

Very early on. The real growth of cable aligned with the growth of stations like MTV, CNN, WTBS, etc.

Along with more channels; many cable adopters got perfectly good OTA signals. And I used it for many years. It just became not a good value for me at one point.