Yup!

Fianceé’s dad is a Senior Level Employee and he was told he’d be safe for at least the first 2 rounds of layoffs, but they couldn’t guarantee he’d survive round 3. Expect two more cullings and for them to get increasing severe: if a ~20 year Boeing vet, 40 year industry vet, working the worst hours with the worst people isn’t safe, nobody except the executives are (he is forced to comply with another country’s work hours halfway across the world AND be present in the office for normal working hours).

I can’t get over how bad the pelican’s broadcast audio is. Everything sounds like the broadcasters are sharing a webcam mic. I don’t remember pelicans audio sounding like this in the past…

Nuggets truly rounding back into form. Jokic is producing more than ever, but we need to scale back his usage more as the other players each start hitting their marks.

I am a new CA resident, moved here just in time to register and vote. Thank you to CAA & HJTA for dissenting against everything good so that I didn’t have to know anything (I actually spent 2 hours researching the ballots and candidates to make sure of the right choices, but it was nice to use that as a sanity check.)

Prop 34 was truly insidious in how it was written, I spent half the time filling my ballot trying to figure out why a bunch of shitty groups were supporting a boring, procedural sounding prop about federally funded prescription revenue spending.

North of the Border

His name is Adam and he likes to make tiny nerdy things. He makes dioramas of nerdy stuff, sometimes normal, some times with too many teeth, fingers, and/or toes.

I

Wish the Nuggets would do the Mountain or city skyline, kinda boring court as is.

The SEM+EDS machine in one of my school’s materials labs ran 98 and there was exactly one thumb drive on campus that was allowed to be used if you wanted to pull data. The lab coordinator had to pull the output file to his computer and email them, but made it sound like the biggest inconvenience in the world if you, ya know, wanted your data.

My school gave up on printing/binding theses, so they also gave up on thesis formatting requirements. As long as your advisor approved the thesis and the title page had all the relevant info, it could be formatted however you wanted.

After finishing my dissertation, I spent maybe 20 minutes emailing the library staff about dissertation edits (date format/placement on title page mainly) and otherwise was told any other requested changes were optional so long as my advisor signed off. I have to get my dissertation printed and bound myself, but that is a small price to pay compared to the nightmare that is univeristy thesis format compliance.

Lol, no, but I’d be damned if I put my actual name out on the internet. Dr. Drail is my profesional anonymous title.

As a newly minted doctor, I prefer Dr. Drail because of the work I put in. I have seen three common name/title presentations though:

Dr. Drail

Dr. Drail, Ph.D.

Mr. Drail, Ph.D.

The last one obviously preserves a gendered title if desired. I tend to include my pronouns where applicable, as it makes clear my gender identity while allowing me to use the least cumbersome combo (Dr. Drail) without confusion. I haven’t ever met someone who double stacks their honorifics (ie Dr. Mr. Drail), but if you want to make clear your gender, there aren’t any rules against it, and it is common in some non-english speaking cultures.

Ultimately, it is your title, your honorific, so you get to decide how to present it. I prefer to just go by my name 90% of the time, but while applying for jobs or introducing myself in a profesional capacity, Dr. Drail (he/him/his) is a really easy way to get all the info across succinctly.

What state are you in, if you don’t mind me asking? I just moved from Dallas to Los Angeles and there are Wincos in both, just kind of out of the way.

If one is in your area, Winco is your friend then. 24hr grocery shopping. They are also worker owned and have a great bulk goods selection, so they are a better food shopping experience at roughly the same price point.

My goal for the summer was to finish my PhD. I defended on Friday and am now Dr. Drail, so I actually accomplished my summer task for once. I sacrificed all my sleep and sanity to do so, as I was told at the 11th hour to redo a major analysis that made up 1/4 of my dissertation, but I fucking got it done.

Everything should just be in eV. Particle physics natural units are the best.

I gave my PhD dissertation defense on Friday, so I am looking forward to not having anything specific to look forward to.

I haven’t played a video game for any length of time since Elden Ring first came out, so I might play Shadow of the Erdtree. Or maybe BG3. Or maybe I will just do some dnd planning. I want to get some home repairs done, so some of that. Maybe just go chill with some friends. All the little things that I haven’t had the time/energy/bandwidth to do for so long.

I want to enjoy not being consantly anxious about my research and not just be distracting myself from said anxiety, but to truly relax, just for a week or two before I move and have to start job hunting.

The people downvoting you just aren’t ready for a Big-G heavy future. I bet they are doing so with a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound, as they vote your banging godzilla memes down

Blue Oyster Cult guitar fill

I have both ADHD and minor hearing loss that started when I was a teenager (wear earplugs if you frequent concerts and play in live bands, turn the music down on your headphones from max volume). It is a rough combo that led to plenty of awkward situations as an awkward teen.

The worst was when I was on a first date at a SixFlags and my date didn’t tell me she was terrified of rollercoasters. I felt bad, but only went on a few rides without her and spent the remaining time trying to win a stuffy at a carnival game for her, trying to have a good time anyway. She was really really quiet and I was having a hard time with all the stimulus and crowd noise understanding her. Eventually, it got to the point where I was asking her to repeat everything more than once, so I started to autopilot. While we were waiting in line for something, she muttered something and I responded, my brain playing fill in the blanks, “Uh-huh.”

Turns out, when I heard her say “Mumble mumble ride mumble bring mumble with you mumble.” she was not saying, “I really wish I could go on a ride, but I am happy you wanted to bring me with you anyway!”

She was, instead, saying something along the lines of, “It must be so annoying that I haven’t gone on a single ride, I bet you regret bringing me here with you at all today.”

Needless to say, there was no 2nd date. She told me later it was shitty of me to respond like that, and I couldn’t convince her that I just misheard her. Since then, if I can’t understand someone after two tries, I just explain that I have bad hearing and need them to speak up. Asking someone to repeat themselves will always be less awkward than driving her home after that.

I am a physicist. I am good at math, okay at programming, and not the best at using programming to accomplish the math. Using AI to help turn the math in my brain into functional code is a godsend in terms of speed, as it will usually save me a ton of time even if the code it returns isn’t 100% correct on the first attempt. I can usually take it the rest of the way after the basis is created. It is also great when used to check spelling/punctuation/grammar (so using it like the glorified spellcheck it is) and formatting markup languages like LaTeX.

I just wish everyone would use it to make their lives easier, not make other people’s lives harder, which seems to be the way it is heading.