Phoenix

Appreciate you having the courage to share this.

I preferred books until recently I tried reading a large paperback and found it surprisingly difficult with my neuro problems. I pretty much have to do screens now. I have a large phone but I've thought about getting a super lightweight e-reader. The bath idea sounds great, too. I wouldn't even consider getting my phone near the hot tub, but a cheaper device, sure.

Now who would do that to an innocent pizza?

Yeah, I was in the same boat with the Bears being off (though I should be thankful their games aren't a death march any more like they were through week 4). KC at Dallas wasn't so good, and I think I watched the Monday night game on mute the whole time while I did other stuff.

Uh oh. You could probably beat me up.

He threw four picks at Twickenham last year, so definitely a better trip this time around. Is he doing well enough to take the starter job from a healthy Sam Bradford though? I have to figure either way the Vikings should take the division this year. Tonight's broadcast was brutal. I'm not at all a fan of McDonough and Gruden, so when the game's bad, it's bad.

That game across the pond was close for a while. This is why the NFL is as popular as it is--the league has enough parity that any game that could be a blowout can end up interesting. This Bears defense is for real. They have second and third-stringers out there but still forcing turnovers and not giving up a lot of points. Drew Brees had been sacked five times all season, and the Bears front got to him twice. Trubisky is very raw, so this may not even be a playoff team next year, but if they can pick up a wideout, this young roster could look great all of a sudden.

Just finished up Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, on to the third. Starting to see why this series was so popular. The characterization is outstanding.

Minnesota Vikings vs. Cleveland Browns. Probably going to be very one-sided, even with the Vikings' trouble at quarterback. The Browns are a complete disaster.

I had an interesting experience with a med student this week while I was in for one of my frequent clinic visits. He was researching impacts of poor health on individuals and their coping mechanisms, and he asked me a question I had not even really thought about: "how do you handle having medical conditions that are not common for persons your age?" I realized in that moment how often I had heard (from the upward of one hundred doctors and other health care workers I've interacted with over the past few years) that it's very strange to see my kind of spinal disease and arthritis in someone "so young" (I'm 34). I had to think on the spot as it's not something I really had considered. Of all the things my depression causes me to wallow in, my physical health is rarely something I brood over. My answer appeared to surprise and delight this young man that was interviewing me, and that answer was "these things happen." Maybe it's because I had an injury at work I can point to. Maybe it's because sometimes there is no good answer for these things. I mean, really, it's not entirely unlike asking why kids get cancer. I have never had a point at which I've reflected on why I have such poor health. It's just there, and I can't control that right now. What I can control is how I respond to it. I get the requisite medical attention, and I've been working at losing weight. I haven't really faced the possibility that I may never work full time again. That I may not be fully independent again. Perhaps if that time comes, I will face it, and I might lose some of my optimism. But, for now, it's "these things happen." And I'll continue to fight it.

This one didn't make me feel as old as the NES one, but still bad. >_< Also, I forget how prudish I am when it comes to kids. I cringed hard when "Like A Prayer" came on, and was so glad the suggestive lyrics seemed to go over their heads.

It's amazing how frustrated I get and how much I shut down when I fail. I had a project I had been thinking about for a while, which involved flipping my living space, essentially. Move my computer to the other side of the room, and move a "portable" air conditioner with it. Flip an ancient, large dresser to the other side. It's an asymmetric space, and the whole point was to get the air conditioner to the other side of the room, much closer to the bed. I investigated the space and it had seemed fine--there's a concrete pillar in the way, but measuring everything out, I knew it'd be fine. So I moved everything around. As you might imagine, something that takes up a ton of physical reserve for me, but not something I can't handle--everything heavy is on wheels. As it turns out, it was indeed spacious enough, but somehow I completely missed a slope in the floor. It's sloping back and to the right, at enough of an angle that even stuffing something under my chair isn't enough. I feel like I'm going to lean out the window. I'm so angry. I've already cleared stuff out to move everything back, but it's been such a waste of time. I don't know how long it's going to be before I'm willing to risk my time and my body to do something like this again, and I hate that. HATE IT. I pass on so much because of past failure, and I'm not growing from that.

Well, this is neat. I don't think I ever knew you drew.

Okay, finally got around to it. I've never been one for film noir (nor Ridley Scott), probably explaining why I didn't get much into it. Or it might just be that some of the sci-fi in this era was just plain weird (i.e., the first Star Trek film or Dune). The older reviews seem to focus on the visual design though, which is definitely amazing. It's also interesting to look at old visions of the future--this one has the flying cars and off-world travel, but at the same time, there's few miniaturized electronics and newspapers feel anachronistic. This didn't have me raring to go out and see the new one in a theater, but I'll probably check it out next year.

If you don't have the exact figures, you don't have them. Grant execs just don't like seeing a bunch of round numbers in a breakdown. I don't see anything obvious to change in this revision.

Yeah, I didn't spend any significant period of time in rural areas until I was 23. People in Japan a couple years earlier would tell Hirakata was rural, but it barely felt on the suburban side of urban to me! I knew I hated urban life, but I didn't know how much I'd like rural communities. Decentralized economy was such a big part of rural communities in the early 20th century, and I'm convinced that all the efforts to strip that away since World War II are a big part of why wages have stagnated there. It would also help to assuage all the nativist anger out there right now. I just have to get some experience and then find a town to sponsor the research to prove it.

I'm still watching Star Trek Discovery, and while I'm glad a Trek TV series is on, it's still meh. Only character I'm into is the captain.

Fall is definitely sticking around now, only a month late. Makes me want to drink Oktoberfest beers but that would not be conducive to weight loss.

Tangentially related: University Tells Students to Masturbate Instead of Committing Sexual Assault Poor Roo.

I need one for my fleshlight. I mean, uh...my all-weather, winter-rated flashlight.

I've heard of the film. I think I've unconsciously avoided it because the red pill subreddit has such an awful reputation.

Yeah, unfortunately, smoking is the cheapest THC vector, especially in areas that allow folks to grow their own plants. Oils and edibles are typically much more concentrated. But yeah, I knew a guy in my undergrad classes that couldn't be within 20 feet of cigarette smoke. Poor guy had attacks damn near every time we went out. Maybe there's a clean air lobby out there you can join!

Your literature review looks great. I don't know if you have specific parameters (i.e., you had to create a scenario out of of whole cloth), and my proposal writing experience is in the public sector, but best practices for proposal writing in my field say to be as specific as possible in your fact reporting, to avoid so-called "weasel words," and to watch for round numbers. I can't see Hiro's comments, so she might have gotten the first one, "higher than normal turnover percentages." The first question back from the executive is going to be "what exactly are the percentages?" This appears again in the second graph, "A large percentage of the employees who are assigned to first level management roles..." If nothing else, a percentage (especially one that's not a round number) makes it look like you've done your research on the personnel. Same goes for the schedule--seeing 200, 100, 40, 20 man hours, round numbers without specific breakouts, might raise an eyebrow.

To my knowledge, laws restricting tobacco smoke also apply to marijuana. So at least, there's that. I don't know if marijuana vaping is a thing, either. The bigger concern might be the pollen growing from farms, which are going to see explosive growth soon.

Haha, I ask to ask @Kenai how to do this a while back, too.