What happened today that you liked?
- Thread starter SuperDave
- Start date
Perhaps you don't have fire-lighters in the US. They are not lighters and couldn't be used for smoking. They absolutely are designed to aid in setting fire to things though.
I think they're generally referred to as fire starters over here. But, yeah, I could see access to those being age-gated given their entire purpose is to make fires easy to start.
Work. I know, it sounds crazy, but hear me out.
I have a job where essentially all of the problems that people can't seem to solve come to me. And I am given the time and resources needed to solve said problems. And I have the ability to push back on that odd engineer who approaches me, breathless, exclaiming, "I have tried nothing, and I am all out of ideas.*" For someone who enjoys figuring things out, this job is a dream come true. Could I use a bump in pay? Sure, that 401(k) is not going to fund itself! But I get paid enough, and I really do like what I am doing.
*Not actually what they said, but unfortunately often what they mean.
I have a job where essentially all of the problems that people can't seem to solve come to me. And I am given the time and resources needed to solve said problems. And I have the ability to push back on that odd engineer who approaches me, breathless, exclaiming, "I have tried nothing, and I am all out of ideas.*" For someone who enjoys figuring things out, this job is a dream come true. Could I use a bump in pay? Sure, that 401(k) is not going to fund itself! But I get paid enough, and I really do like what I am doing.
*Not actually what they said, but unfortunately often what they mean.
But completely average sportsball would be the best one and they'd all flock to it, right?
I know all of those words, but can't parse what they mean in that order. You don't get, like "we need this by my C-suite meeting in ten minutes" and have zero dollars for training or execution?
LOL I am regularly pulled in for a technical consult with C-suite by my boss. He does not want summaries, if they have questions he prefers they ask his experts, one of which is yours truly. I have training dollars, and can go to conferences on the company dime, although we have been asked to skip this year (and then were promptly told that we would need to attend certain conferences). By resources, I mean they noticed I was too bogged down with day-to-day operations, and got me some help*. Help that I had to train myself, but that is totally in my wheelhouse, I trained people at HP for four years, and at Taos for three as my primary job.
*By 'help' I do not mean someone who reports to me, just someone who I had to show how to do operations. He reports to my boss just like me.
*By 'help' I do not mean someone who reports to me, just someone who I had to show how to do operations. He reports to my boss just like me.
Yeah, we have those. They're typically on a shelf in the BBQ section with the charcoal, various grilling implements, etc. Never seen/heard of any restriction on them here (and half the state catches fire every year).
I always just use some loosely waded paper towels packed under the chimney starter, works fine.
I was recently camping with a guy who saved a trioxane fuel strip from an MRE and threw it on the bottom of a charcoal chimney to get it started. Seemed to work well enough.
I showed off later by playing with a bow drill and then showing him how to light fire with steel wool and some batteries. His way was faster though...
I haven't been a minor in a long time, but when I was a kid there was never any restriction on any sort of fire starting materials; lighters included.
I showed off later by playing with a bow drill and then showing him how to light fire with steel wool and some batteries. His way was faster though...
I haven't been a minor in a long time, but when I was a kid there was never any restriction on any sort of fire starting materials; lighters included.
I guess with newspapers becoming less common, people resort to other approaches.
One sheet of newspaper is typically enough to light my charcoal chimney.
LOX works really well to get it going faster once you've got a little going.
I moved from engineering to product management a few months and feel completely lost and useless. I just had my quarterly performance check in with my manager and he explained that he's ecstatic with what I'm doing, that my peers love me, and that the technical expertise I bring is invaluable and the "easy product management stuff can be learned quickly."
That was a nice boost for the day!
That was a nice boost for the day!
I used to use newspaper, mostly. In the last few years I’ve found you can get just about enough paper to start the charcoal in the next bag from the previous bag in your chimney.
Not everyone has a cryogenic dewar full of oxidiser sitting in the potting shed, though.
It seems an entirely reasonable life choice to me, but still, not everyone is entirely reasonable in my experience.
My favorite hack on this front is to stuff empty toilet tissue rolls with dryer lint, and put that in my camping gear in a ziploc bag. Hella great fire starters, for no cost save some diligence on your part.
That is cool and I can see it would work well. Light weight and they would squash right down too. I would like to think you "invented" this life hack. Which leaves me wondering how one could possibly arrive at such a solution.
Dryer lint is well known as a serious fire hazard.
It's important to have a properly designed and installed exhaust duct.
Well, perhaps he had all this lint and was looking for somewhere to store it - and it spontaneously combusted.
Perhaps he was looking for a way to pad out some toilet tissue rolls to make very small pillows.
Perhaps he was speed-running a launderette cleaning service when last night's curry caught up with him.
If it was genuinely just Tom living up to his name, then man do I want to hear about all his other "life-hacks".
This, right here, is the reasoning I had. I read somewhere that it was a serious fire hazard, and an acquaintance who was a firefighter confirmed this. I put two and two together, and because I am an avid camper, I tested my hypothesis. Worked like a charm, so I proceduralized it. Now when I am running low on my fire starters, I just grab a couple of empty rolls out of the bathroom garbage, and put them on the shelf above the dryer.
This is true, I am the living avatar of the phrase, "Fook around and find out." I can show you the scars, burn or otherwise.
It's the bees here
Ah. Do you have some plants near your patio that draws a lot of them?
Here I am not only in the desert, but have an active population of roadrunners that eat not only bugs, but also mice, tarantulas, and salamanders. We call them 'zippy chickens.'
Bees in my yard are really chill, red paper wasps are pretty chill. Other wasps are pretty nasty/aggressive.
Our dryer is designed to filter the lint from the circulating air and store it [internally] for later removal by hand. There is no exhaust duct. Now I are concerned.
Probably also keeping the local rattlesnake population at bay since they'll eat the little ones.
In the US, ours have the cheapest filters they can find and a whole boat load of lint gets past them. The ducting is necessary to make all that go outside but its important to only use smooth metal piping (not the flex junk) and only joining the sections with duct tape. Screws are bad because the protruding tips will snag lint and cause buildup
If your filter actually works and you dont have a huge pile of lint accumulated outside the lint then you should be fine
That's what I hear. We saw one rattlesnake last year, and our neighbor messaged us to warn about some babies that they found next door to us. Idaho does not have roadrunners, can you guess what eats the baby (and adult) rattlesnakes?
Turkeys. I wish I could find the video, but I had/have some really cool footage of turkey chicks killing and eating an adult rattlesnake. They're savages.
Sometimes. But also they've historically enjoyed trying to build nests inside the patio chairs for some galaxy brain reason. Like... crawling up the little metal tubes that are two adult fingers wide.
What? How delicious velociraptors must have tasted basted with butter and baked? Or deep fried?
Mmmm. Velociraptor.
Recently I've been planning on attending a local pride picnic. It's not a huge town so I'm glad we're doing anything. It also happened to be on my birthday, very excited. Well... Tonight a local group I know that is apparently going to be playing for the picnic asked if I could fill in for their drummer. Should be an excellent time, very excited.
Reason alone to try to bring them back with sketchy-at-best DNA fragments.
Confirmed that my next two weekends are 3-days.
And it's not costing me any accrued PTO to do (holiday pay, and hours in excess of 80 + PTO leave award for being awesome).
Which means two three day weekends of game demos. And writing. And reading. And long walks listening to short storeis. And more writing. And Zelda. And turning 39 for the second time. Not bad for someone who generally absconds from interactions under the light of the day star.
That last one is more a TTPMO, so I'll go to that thread next.
And it's not costing me any accrued PTO to do (holiday pay, and hours in excess of 80 + PTO leave award for being awesome).
Which means two three day weekends of game demos. And writing. And reading. And long walks listening to short storeis. And more writing. And Zelda. And turning 39 for the second time
. Not bad for someone who generally absconds from interactions under the light of the day star.That last one is more a TTPMO, so I'll go to that thread next.
My wife made it through brain surgery, initial results indicate the tumor was completely removed, and I even got to see her for a few minutes in the ICU last night. Visiting hours start soon.
That's awesome @Defenestrar!
Sticking with the good tumor news, my daughter's quarterly MRI to monitor the tumor by her brainstem was yesterday and for the 4th straight time came back totally stable. This means the treatment is working and, in fact, we've got 2, maybe 3 more scans before we finish up the course of treatment and can back to a "watch and wait' mode. Doctors seem very positive overall that we're on a good trajectory!
Sticking with the good tumor news, my daughter's quarterly MRI to monitor the tumor by her brainstem was yesterday and for the 4th straight time came back totally stable. This means the treatment is working and, in fact, we've got 2, maybe 3 more scans before we finish up the course of treatment and can back to a "watch and wait' mode. Doctors seem very positive overall that we're on a good trajectory!