That’s how I make sure I’m dreaming - I look for anything written. Written words in dreams are always changing and illegible.

I did this myself a few years ago. Put a planter full of coir in the closest bush I found it near. Fed twice a day on mealworms. Disappeared after 3 weeks. Mine was either a starling or a grackle.

My wife and i went to Tortola in '99. Everything went wrong, and we still had a good time. If things had gone right, we might have never left.

That said, the off-trail areas of the state parks of north NY, NJ, PA, up to Canada and into Vermont) are where I feel most at peace. A quiet cabin on a lake ten miles from a small town would be a perfect place to retire to.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran_Capo

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Packing/moving. We’re almost done, but discover another part of the attic around a corner. It opens up into a multi-level mall-like area (but with narrow stairs) full of dining room and bedroom furniture sets. It all needs to be out by morning.

I’d also consider Tempest.

These guys claim to want a degree, but really will take a warm body:

https://careers-tierpoint.icims.com/jobs/2572/operations-technician-i/job

The pay is still peanuts, though.

Fish.

Tuna Colada. No.

Hurin Thalion. Excellent choice. I like you.

1978? We had a commodore pet. “Open 1,8,15”. My father had some HP touchscreen thing.

Upgrade was the atari with the ms-basic cartridge and cassette storage. I coded up a database.

Then I had an Amiga 1000 with a real 2400 modem. And then later a beige box 486.

First cell was 1990. I owned a town car - ran airport service. Needed a phone for the execs to show off. Charged them $1/minute.

Or real orthotics. Mine completely changed my ability to get through my day.

I was a lazy jerk that just bombed out of the local college in record time. I figured I’d try photography trade school. She was a natural artist with no plan and picked the same trade school. We were in the same 6-month program. She specialized in lab work, I went into product photography. Class started October 1984. We had several family deaths, financial ruin, and other calamities - but supported each other through it all. Lived with family and in the car. Got my life on track in my 30s. Bought a house in 2000, married in 2004, kid in 2009. Now a boring but desperate suburbanite staring down the next downsizing wave and big medical bills.

I was a manager of a team with rotating 12 hour 6 to 6 shifts.

It was a datacenter. We had to staff the building 24x7x365. Billions of dollars of equipment, not to mention the transactions flowing through. No mistakes allowed here.

We paid $15/hour in 2010. Entry level. But it was a foot into the industry for someone without experience. Tasks were light security, walk the floor, swap drives, be on hand for server emergencies.

We used the rotation to onboard. No one did nights solo (no one else in the building) until they knew the job. Two weeks days, two weeks nights, back and forth. Two days on, one day off. 6-day rotation meant no one person was always stuck with weekends. And overtime pay every week.

We managed the schedule with a staff of 4.

Prior, the night shifts were handled by sysadmins who would work a day shift, go to the break room and get a few hours of sleep between tasks, then shower and go back on day shift. That really sucked. I did it for more than a year.

We had plenty of applicants every time a position opened. Folks tended to like the rotation as no one would get stuck with repeat holidays or all overnight. It sucked in a fair way to everyone. And if someone missed a shift (sick, emergency, etc.) I would have to fill the shift. It happened at least once a month. It was a good team. I liked all of my people, and after I got canned, they all wrote recommendations for me on LinkedIn.

Yes. Migraines. It wasn’t my parents but an early job in the late 80s. Dude next to me smoked so much it was a problem with fouling the equipment. We had to re-do jobs all the time for failure to clean the settled soot. I left the job and one of the reasons was the constant migraines.

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Slackware. About 1994 or so.

I am in the local club and have two over-the-top scopes and still can’t pull it together.

The Dispossessed, The Lathe of Heaven, and The Left Hand of Darkness - by LeGuinn

The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion

Dune

The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis

Stranger in a Strange Land