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Cake day: July 19th, 2023

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  • There’s another part to this, and the renowned surgeon makes it a bad metaphor.

    It’s more like: “You have a choice for your surgery. On one hand, we have a trained surgeon, on the other hand is a circus clown.”

    “What are the surgeon’s credentials and record?”

    “Well… they have a reasonably good record in other kinds of surgery, but and they’ve shadowed a surgeon who has done your surgery before. I won’t lie to you and say their record is perfect, though, and some of the practices and techniques they use draw serious criticism from various world health organizations.”

    “And the clown?”

    “They have more experience with these surgeries, but the vast majority of the people who underwent these surgeries have died. In fact, he shows flagrant disregard for even the most basic and accepted sanitary standards in the medical community.”

    “But some people did live, right? So he can’t be all bad.”

    “Occasionally he was part of a surgical team, and in those cases the rest of the team managed to keep the patient alive. And again, your other option is a trained surgeon.”

    “But a shitty surgeon with no experience.”

    “A questionable surgeon with limited experience. Or a clown who kills those he commits surgery on more often than not.”

    “I can’t believe these are my only two options. When you said I had a choice, I thought it was a real choice, but it sounds like you’re just trying to force your surgeon on me. I think I’ll wait until another round of surgeons is available.”

    “You will probably die before the next round of surgeons is available.”

    “Honestly, I don’t trust your judgement over what’s best for me. I’m sitting this one out.”

    Undecided doesn’t always mean who you vote for, sometimes it means whether you vote.

    Still dumb not to vote, though.




  • I once had a female coworker who was complaining about how she had walked in on a male coworker using the single-occupancy bathroom (peeing, his back was turned to the door), that him not locking the door was somehow inappropriate of him.

    Somebody put a poll up on a white board with the scenario, with question “who behaved inappropriately” with the choices “the person entering the bathroom without knocking” “the person using the bathroom without locking it” “they are both wrong” and “we’re all adults here, get the fuck over it.”

    The tallies were overwhelmingly in the “get the fuck over it” column. But I feel the poll was missing something important: the door had a tendency when locked to stick and leave the person locked inside. We were in a quick-response duty status (as in running to the aircraft), so the person already in should absolutely not have locked it (he was the runner).

    You see a closed door to a room (of relative privacy) that might be occupied, you knock. Simple as.


  • My parents were wonderful, so I have no real complaints, but my father had a weird quirk. Tools, equipment, whatever that he had interest and purchased himself were “his.” I mean, obviously, but he would use the possessive when referring to those things.

    “You have to prime my lawnmower first before you try to start it.” “Go and get my ladder.” Never the ladder, always my ladder. I never questioned it (because I didn’t care), but when I was a teenager I started noticing it and it was odd. Like he was establishing that the lawn mower or the ladder or whatever didn’t belong to the household, they were his. And nothing seemed to get him worked up more than a neighbor borrowing something and taking more than a day or so to return it.










  • Especially hot sauce. I missed that the cap wasn’t closed on some… I think Sriracha, and ended up pepper spraying myself. The waitress was very concerned.

    BTW, actually getting pepper sprayed is MUCH worse. Getting bear sprayed is worse and also disgusting, because on top of the pain and misery, it also has a really gross musk stank. It took A LOT of washes with vinegar to get the smell out of the clothes I was wearing.

    Do not recommend getting spicy stuff of any kind in the eyes.



  • And the US military. I was studying the supply manual (not for fun, a large portion of our promotions are based on a test we take once a year), and saw there was a hierarchy for ordering. Most of our stuff is from Skilcraft (“Made with pride by people who are blind”) and thought that was our preferred source. Nope! Our first source we have to try to order from is Unicor. So I looked up Unicor, and it’s prison labor.

    So our first focus is buying cheap products from slave labor lining the pockets of truly awful business people. The secondary choice is one that helps blind people. Way to show priorities, right?





  • A put a hole in the side of a helicopter that left it grounded for a week.

    I accidentally tapped it with another piece of the helicopter. I’m happily working on helicopters that are made of metal now, so no more of that nonsense.

    Edit: also, honorable mention because it wasn’t my fault, but I made a helicopter drop an external fuel tank when it took off… by replacing a light bulb. It was on the button that makes the helicopter drop the external tanks, but there are failsafes so it will only do it in the air. Apparently the internal switch got stuck, so the second the weight was off of the wheels CLONK… and a tank was laying on the active runway. Excellent.