Canopyflyer

Donate money to your local food banks, homeless shelters, or any other non-profit that has a good reputation for assisting those in need.

If someone approaches you asking for money, absolutely under no circumstances should you give it to them. Be sure to say that you do not carry cash to give them. Then if you are feeling that you need to give to them, then offer a meal or buy groceries using a credit card. You'll find that most of them will decline.

They are using YOUR GUILT to get their next drug fix most of the time. That guilt is artificial and the result of manipulation techniques they are employing against you. It is rather contemptible to be perfectly frank.

If I'm just casually thinking about something. In other words, it is a subject that does not require too much to come to a conclusion, then I actually think in words. That process can provide a solution almost immediately, to taking several minutes.

If I'm thinking about something that requires a lot of cognitive function, then my mind essentially goes blank. Either I no longer think in words, or the memory of what I was thinking about is not laid down in long term memory until I come to a conclusion. Or if my "sub-consciousness" took over the heavy lifting and my cognitive functions were left out of the loop. I honestly have no idea, but if it is something I am truly concentrating on, I will have no actual memory of the thought process that brought me to a conclusion.

Some of the most confounding things that I have had to think on, I literally slept on it and had a finished thought when I woke up. I have done that several times in my life. Again, not sure if it was just that I needed rest, or if my brain actually worked the problem while asleep and delivered it when I awoke.

Cheese Curds

Yeah, I live in Wisconsin, who'd guess.

I wanted to be a pilot.

By age 16 I had several hours towards my private license.

My junior year in High School I started looking universities with aviation degrees, or engineering. I had settled on Rose Hulman and one other (been 40 years so don't remember the place, but it was one of the top aviation colleges in the US at the time.) I actually was accepted at "the other place".

It all came crashing down in the last conversation I had with my enrollment counselor and he asked a question that hadn't been asked of me in the prior many conversations I had with him.

"How is your eyesight?"

You see, I'm legally blind in my right eye and in the US, pilots are required to have 20/20 corrected eyesight. In order for my right eye to be 20/20 I would basically have to have a telescope hanging off my face.

I never did get my private pilots license, which I can get even with my eyesight, but I would never pass medical for a commercial ticket.

Yes, I did look at training in other countries and yes there are a few that only require perfect color vision, which I do have. The problem was my parents absolutely forbade me to travel to another country.

So that was that.

Spent 2 weeks hiking in around the Red River Gorge, Kentucky and Sheltowee Trace back in the late 80's. Only time I got wet was when it rained, or found a creek to take a dip in.

When I got home, even my own Mother would not hug me. She sent me off to the bath where I stayed for over an hour.

Greetings programs!

I prefer to think of them fighting evil in another dimension.

This means something.

Your ass looks like 150 pounds of chewed bubble gum!

There's no fighting in the war room!

Sire! The Great Leslie escaped with a friar!... He escaped with a chicken?!!!

Of course I denied installing CCTV in the nursery! What the hell would they watch?!!!

I think what we have here... Is a failure to communicate!

"Not my circus, not my monkeys."

My life became infinitely better once I understood that saying.

30 year IT Professional here, who has run laptop depots.

Absolutely mandatory in an enterprise environment.

The number of dead batteries I have seen throughout the years is too many to count. Having to dispatch a replacement laptop, instead of just a battery is really irritating. Sure the affected laptop comes back and my techs can take care of it and put it back into inventory. That comes with the cost of needing to keep extra full laptops in the rotation. Not to mention having to cross ship two laptops. Instead of just having much cheaper batteries that I can send off to the user, then they pop it in and drop off the old battery at a local store that accepts used batteries.

As far as a "thing", which I would define as an object and not a person or animal, I would have to say my two McIntosh amplifiers. I have an MC7100 and MC7108.

Both were built in 1992. I am listening to the MC7108 in my office as I write this.

My favorite band that I've actually seen live:

Duran Duran. Was a closet fan of theirs back in the late 80's and got to see them when my girlfriend at the time got tickets.

Actual favorite band and unfortunately have never seen live:

RUSH

And it's not because I think that Neil Peart is the greatest drummer of all time (that would be Buddy Rich). It's because their music actually talks to my neurodivergent brain. It is also due to that the 3 of them were a confluence of exceptional talent that just happened to come together to make something special.

It's "Revved up like a deuce."

Not "Wrapped like a dou..." well you know.

First heard that song in 1981... Learned the correct lyrics in 2020. 39 years of being wrong, but I think I'm in good company.

Also learned that the version that most people know is actually a cover done by Manfred Mann in 1976. The original artist is Bruce Springsteen and he recorded it in 1973.

Last August my family went to Maui and on our last day we toured the Maui Pineapple farm.

OMG... I didn't know that was how pineapple was supposed to taste. It is NOTHING like what we get here in Wisconsin.