You can study to become a beer judge, even just for fun: https://dev.bjcp.org/education-training/exam-preparation/beer-judge-training-study-program/

One of the parts of that is to get a kit that helps you recognize “off” flavors: https://www.bjcp.org/education-training/education-resources/sensory-kits/

I tried to sign up for a 3 month trial that came with my TV. I had to create an account on my phone or PC. No problem. Then I had to validate my account somehow? It was essentially impossible to do without an Apple device. I went through tier 2 and tier 3 support, nobody could figure out how to activate my account. They wanted me to send screenshots of my error messages, but I could only submit them through my activated account.

After a few days I got an email saying my account was permanently locked. I called about that and they put in a ticket to have my account unlocked. Another few days and an email saying my ticket request was denied. I called to have them delete my account, they said I could only initiate that request by logging into my activated account. Most incompetent service I’ve ever encountered (not the customer service agents, the people who created such a horrible process).

I think they’ll go full terminal mode on the next iteration. You’ll download a 100MB launcher and then just do cloud gaming from there.

I had a similar thing today. My app (looks just like this one) told me it was currently 138 degrees out. I thought I might need to stay inside today.

So, who’s putting out the 80s monitor to go with it? It’s just not complete without a giant “CRT” sitting on top.

We didn’t create this society, but we have to do our best to survive in it. Use the tools available to you - Reddit, LinkedIn, ChatGPT, etc. Take care of your family first.

I have a Chevy Bolt with level 2 charging and I love it. The charger was a little more expensive for me to install because I didn’t have an easy wiring run, but it was totally worth it. I have a second ICE car that we use mainly if we need more space or when we need 2 cars at the same time. I don’t feel any need to have an ICE option, I just don’t have a good reason to replace it right now.

The way I’ve seen it, it appears to primarily be used by the various British and former British colonies, including the US. For these groups, anyone from outside the colonies living in “our” territory is an immigrant (who is certainly a lower class!). However, if we choose to reside in another country, we are not immigrants, we are “expats”.

Not everyone uses this term, but those that do frequently congregate in English speaking enclaves and make no attempt to integrate into their new home. They often see the locals as a sort of servant class, particularly because they probably came with enough money or income to make them wealthy by local standards.

As you might imagine, people with this attitude are probably not very popular with locals.

If travel time and cost doesn’t matter, I would always pick Hawaii over Florida any time of year. If travel time matters, then I’d look at the Caribbean before Florida for anyone on the East coast. Florida would be my last choice if I needed to keep things cheaper.

Deus Ex. When I first played it I was amazed by the graphics and I specifically remember being impressed that your character was reflected in mirrors. I’ve been replaying it recently and the graphics are obviously very dated, but it also doesn’t run smoothly on modern hardware. My PC gets louder and louder as I play it and eventually the game starts to stutter and I have to restart it.

I vote for same computer. Mine is definitely still a Packard Bell. Each time I replace a part, that part became part of the original and I’ve never done a 100% replacement in a single session. I think the longest lived original part was the 3.5" floppy drive. I only remove it because I bought a case with no slot for an externally accessible drive.

I thought the original was far better than the second and the Undead Nightmare was a surprisingly good extension of the game. The story was better, the characters were better. Obviously the graphics were worse, I don’t know if the new release updates those in a meaningful way or not.

I know RDR2 was wildly popular, but I thought it really dragged. I managed to “finish” the story and then…it just kept going, so I finally quit. I don’t know how much was left, but I mostly regret not having quit much earlier.

I would do a search for job listings that would be the jobs you would be applying for if you chose to leave your job or were laid off. Do the job descriptions list the certifications you are thinking about getting? If so, it might be worth pursuing, especially if you can get your current employer to pay for it.

For example, almost every project manager job lists PMP certification. If you are currently a PM and don’t have it, you might want it just in case you get laid off to improve your chances of getting a new job. Otherwise, you might be up against 10 other candidates with just as much experience, but 3 of them have a cert and you don’t even get a screening interview.

If you use this equipment frequently, try to quantify them on your resume to show you have experience. You can ask chatgpt for better wording, but you might have something like “unload 20-30 trailers per week using an electric pallet jack.”

Create a list starting out of everything you might want to tell a future potential employer. The original list can be messy and have awkward wording, but try to list all of the useful skills you have and wherever possible, quantify your impact. Once you have that, then go to your AI of choice and practice some different prompts to see what kind of results you get. You’re not going to get a great or even necessarily accurate resume on your first try, you have to put in some effort to edit and re-prompt for improvements. Here are some possible prompts to play with starting out:

• “You are an experienced recruiter helping me craft a resume to get a job in a warehouse. Review this list of experiences and recommend better wording to show that I have the skills to be an effective warehouse employee.” <paste your list that you created>

• “For this experience, recommend how I can quantify my impact to show that I added value.” <paste a bullet that you want to improve>

If you find a job description that represents the kind of job you want, you can also provide that to your AI friend to get even better results. Something like this:

• “Using the following job description recommend changes to my resume that better reflect the role.” <paste the job description>

Once you’re done editing your resume to fix any errors the AI gave you or to change the wording to be a better reflection of your writing, you can paste the resume in again and ask for a final review.

• “Review my revised resume to improve readability and recommend any changes to better fit the job description.” <paste your updated resume>

The first time you do this, you’ll probably think “wow, this is so much better than what I started with” or possibly, “this is garbage, it’s making things up that aren’t even true.” Either way, if you keep playing with it, you’ll start to get a feel for a good balance of words that reflect your experience, but also connect well with job descriptions for jobs you’re interested in. Or maybe you’ll get lucky and get a job offer right away and not have to think about it again for years!

Some bonus prompts for when you get an interview:

• “You are an experienced recruiter helping me prepare for a job interview. I have an upcoming interview with a <recruiter/hiring manager>. Based on the job description, what are 10 questions they are likely to ask me. Explain what the purpose of the question is.” <paste the job description>

You can take it another step and provide your resume and ask it for suggested answers to the question. Careful here though because you don’t want to try to memorize the answers. And finally, you should always ask questions in an interview (ALWAYS), try this:

• “What are some questions that I can ask in the interview to show that I am engaged and very interested in the role?”

Good luck with your job search!

California is probably one of the least gerrymandered states. In 2008 there was an initiative to form a non-partisan redistricting commission to draw districts. All federal and state districts have been set using this process for more than 10 years.

California also has an open primary system where all candidates run against each other in a combined primary vote regardless of party affiliation (except president and some local offices). The top 2 from the primary advance to the general election. So, the general election could feature 2 democrats or 2 republicans.

Additionally, following the pandemic, California moved to automatically mailing a ballot to every active registered voter. They also have automatic voter registration at the DMV.

Altogether, it would be unfair to compare California to Texas or any other red state, all of whom actively gerrymander and work to suppress voter participation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Citizens_Redistricting_Commission https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/primary-elections-california https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-27/california-universal-voting-by-mail-becomes-permanent

My prior employer actually ran diversity reviews on layoff lists to make sure the layoffs were diverse enough to defend against discrimination lawsuits.

At my old company we would ban customers that were repeatedly abusive to customer service agents. Agents had the right to hang up on customers that were being abusive and if the same customer kept getting reported, eventually they would receive a letter from the legal department telling them to stop. If it continued, they would get banned.

I remember one guy was so bad that a director got the phone system to automatically route any calls from him to his mobile line and put him in his phone book. He would very politely greet him by name as soon as he picked up the call to make it clear that he wasn’t ever going to get through to anyone else.

At a prior employer, we noticed that there were many customers getting essentially free service ($100-200 per month) by calling customer service hundreds of times per month and asking for credits for all sorts of things. They were generally very nice and just picked up $5-10 credits until their service was free. Beyond the free service, they were costing the company the expense of the service calls.

We started routing all of them to a small group of agents and flagged the accounts so the agents would deny them pretty much every time. It was kind of funny because we didn’t tell them anything changed, but you could see that some of them noticed because they started asking which call center they were talking to. They would immediately hang up and call back over and over and just keep going back to the same place. Eventually most of them gave up.

Note: nobody here would/should feel sorry for this particular company, but I still thought it was funny to see these scammers get mad that we caught on to the scam.

I joked recently that I should put a ruinously large bet on Trump to win the election. That way, if he wins, I’ll get a huge payout, which will soften the blow a bit. If Harris wins, I’d be broke, but at least I’d be happy that Trump lost.

Worst book I’ve quit is Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. What a horrible book!

Worst I’ve finished is Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, immediately followed by Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. I’ll throw in a special mention for The Scarlet Letter and The Great Gatsby. All terrible books that I finished only because they were required reading in school.