Linux nerd and consultant. Sci-fi, comedy, and podcast author. Former Katsucon president, former roller derby bouncer. http://punkwalrus.net

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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • When eventually washed off, the aerogel is handily broken down by soil microbes.

    I am not going to claim to be an expert on any of this BUT that wording sounds suspiciously like bullshit. Maybe it’s not, but it’s one of those phrases that sounds like when vitamin companies claim that more B12 has shown to fix whatever ails you. Or “our plastic is environmentally friendly: 100% recyclable, and breaks down into teeny micro-particles over time, and gets absorbed by the sea life like ordinary sand…”



  • I have had two tech jobs like that, even before COVID, starting in 2016. The first time, it was a company that outgrew their workspace. They put us in ‘rent-an-office’ spaces for a bit, and then my boss started working from home a few days a week. Then he allowed me to. We moved to a new office, but it was always empty in my section. That was fine, too, but the commute was terrible, so I started doing 2 days a week, then once a week, then a few times a month. I rarely saw my other coworkers in person, and nobody said anything aloud.

    The next job started because of COVID, and when they started doing RTO, they also wanted to do “hot desking” (no assigned seating) and open office plans, and I was not having that. I was not going to work in a “cafeteria” like setting. So I got contracted work and have worked from home 100% for several years now. Nobody has office space, and we work all over the world to collaborate. I get paid very well.

    I hope i never had to go back to an office. I reach retirement age in about 15 years, and I am hoping to make it.




  • I married my first wife when she was 18 and I was 20. We went through a lot of hardship. It should not have worked out: we were both poor, from broken homes, in an LDR from different worlds. She was the popular girl, I was a shy and awkward nerd. When we got married, we had only been in one another’s presence for a few weeks total. I went into the marriage not expecting a path or plan, as my parents were toxic which ended with my mother’s suicide, and my mother in law had been married 4 times before she became single for the last time. None of us had healthy marriages to draw from. At our wedding, her relatives even said, “I give it two years, tops.” We were desperately poor, and struggled most of our marriage with health and money issues.

    But we made it work for 25 years. We’d still be married, but she passed away ten years ago. We became “foxhole buddies,” us against the world.