Personally, I’ve never liked the taste of beer. It’s just not my thing.

I’ve always assumed I wouldn’t like the taste of piss either, although I never tried and I never imagined the flavors would be similar.

I’m left wondering how you determined that beer tastes like piss. Did you do a comparison? Did you do a peepsi challenge?

We do about $300/kid. We haven’t increased that over the years with inflation.

Kid’s are all grown up now. A couple years ago we started having everyone make Amazon wishlists. It was too difficult to figure out what everyone wanted. The wishlists make it easier for everyone. Also, we can put all our purchases on an Amazon store card and get 12 months interest free.

(I know. Amazon.)

Last year I also gave each kid a $300 Amazon gift card because everything sucks, and I didn’t want them to feel pressure for the holiday. I’ll do that again this year.

It probably seems crazy, but it works for us.

I had a rule for my kids for dealing with bullies in school.

First, tell a teacher.

If that doesn’t work, tell me, and I’ll tell the principal.

If that doesn’t work, deal with it yourself, but avoid causing permanent damage.

I never really expected telling the teacher or the principal would help. I just wanted it on the record in case shit went down and lawyers had to get involved.

OH MY GOD!!!

When I was in college, a computer lab coworker asked me how long I had been dating my girlfriend.

I told her 6 years. She said, “Shit or get off the pot!”

That was the moment I decided to propose. We’ve been married for 33 years, together for 39.

When people ask about the proposal, I tell that story, and end with, “…so I decided to shit.”

Maybe I’m not looking deep enough into the question, but wouldn’t this be because we do the easy parts first?

I’m just thrown by you saying you have a vendor that sucks donkey balls. If you only have one that sucks donkey balls, that seems unreal to me.

My group supports around 65 applications, and I’d find it a hell of a lot easier to list the vendors that don’t suck donkey balls.

I think there’s one. Maybe.

I’m the, “could be worse”, guy for my wife. No matter how bad things are, I can always imagine something entirely possible that would be worse.

I don’t know if it helps her at all, but she seems to be amused by it.

I live in a world of ever-present, looming disaster.

I’m a sysadmin.

All those dirty fish swimming around…

Some people keep journals. When those people write their autobiographies, they can check the records.

Other people have good memories.

It’s probably also more important for it to be a good story than for it to be 100% accurate.

Because the victims of the rape of children in the Epstein case don’t have the money. The perpetrators do.

This is that guy?

No wonder he’s spewing bullshit. It’s leaking out of his brain.

I think it was me. I just installed Steam on my Linux machine to give Darkenstein a try. That might have pushed it over 3%.

Thankfully the values my mom taught me are the same ones Jesus taught: love your neighbour as yourself and do unto others as you would have done to you.

This is what baffles me when my dad argues with me for being left of center.

You sent me where they taught this, did you not want me to learn it?

(Also not religious, but kept some of the philosophy)

I was single for 16 years until I started dating my first girlfriend. We dated for seven years, and we’ve been married for 32.

We started as friends and stayed friends.

Have you seen their books?

The vacuum has no capability for an Internet connection and no cameras or audio recorders.

The quality of the vacuum wouldn’t lead me to choose anything else from Eufy. It’s just a good robotic vacuum.

We love Meryl.

I’m going to get a piece of wood, paint it white, and mount it under the fridge so she doesn’t get caught underneath.

Leo finds her a bit frightening.

Just when he thinks he’s safe, she turns around and goes on the attack.

I got a Leatherman Wave years ago and it’s almost always on my hip.

Fantastic thing.

I’ve got another one:

Long before COVID, I would go to a barber shop for haircuts.

The place I went to had one short, old guy who had arthritis. I’m tall, and long in the torso. When he was cutting my hair, he couldn’t lower the chair enough to be able to cut my hair, so I’d have to scoot down in the chair so that I was sitting with my ass at the edge of the seat and my spine bent so my head was low enough.

When you entered the shop, you’d write your name on the board, and if you wanted someone specific to cut your hair, you’d put the barber’s name next to yours. So, I started picking one of the taller, younger guys to cut my hair.

One day I was in a rush, and there was a line, so I figured I’d just take whoever was available and scoot down if I had to. The old guy skipped over me two times. When someone pointed out that I was there before him, the barber got pissy and said, “he doesn’t want me cutting his hair”

One of the other barbers apologized and took me next. I gave that guy a $20 tip.

When I got home I went online and bought a Flowbee. I haven’t been to a barber shop since. It does a great job, there’s no line to wait in, it takes me about 10 minutes, leaves no mess behind, and I haven’t paid for anything but electricity and shop vac bags ever since.

Eufy 11S Max robot vacuum.

We had a Roomba back when they were new. It did ok, but it wasn’t really that impressive. My wife had a rechargeable upright vacuum after that. When that died, I argued for going back to a robot vacuum because her health problems were both making it hard for her to use the vacuum and also leaving me too busy to do it.

She resisted because she was never happy with the job the Roomba did. However from day 1, the Eufy vacuum did a visibly good job cleaning and won her over.

We have it set to run once a day. There’s one chair it occasionally gets stuck under, and we have to block the base of the fridge or it gets stuck there. Aside from that, it’s very independent. It does the vacuuming and then finds its base to recharge for the next day. It needs to be emptied out every day and cleaned more thoroughly once a week.

We’ve been very pleased with it.

We named it Meryl Sweep.