That’s just enough to buy my wife and I ice cream cones at the best place in town and leave enough of a tip that we don’t feel like we’re being cheap. Date night sorted!

Depends on why/how my needs are being met I suppose. If this is a post-scarcity situation where everyone’s needs are met and no one has to work, I’d probably keep at my current job. I install and repair nurse call systems (the buttons you push in a hospital to tell the staff you need help) I mostly enjoy the work and someone is going to have to keep doing it. I live in a town with a huge hospital and could easily keep busy without leaving town.

If this situation where only my own basic needs are met and not everyone else’s, I wouldn’t keep going to that job. Management is kind of a pain and they can certainly afford to train someone who needs the work. I’d still fix whatever kind of shit I knew how to because honestly, I love working with a wrench but, I’d be doing it freelance at that point. I’d probably start by knocking on the doors of local machine shops, fixing machine tools and lasers was more fun than nurse call and if I wasn’t tied to one specific brand, I could probably keep busy without driving 4 hours a day (I quit that job because I was tired of travel). If that took off, I’d try to turn it into a business and train someone to pick up the slack so I could still take the occasional vacation without leaving regular customers hanging. If that wasn’t enough to keep even just me busy, I’d probably start asking around about other random shit that needed to be fixed. Lots of people deal with broken shit because they can’t afford to fix it and if I was only looking to stave off boredom, not having to make a profit, I could probably get it done affordably.

Pretty similar here. First time I saw a CNC mill run I was immediately hooked. I used to work as a field service tech for a CNC machine tool distributor and I can honestly say that I absolutely loved the work. You drop into some random factory, spend between 3hrs and a week fixing it and then probably never see the exact same issue again. It’s mentally engaging but almost never tedious or repetitive. You can get stuck working late or even spending a night out of town with almost no notice but, I like things a bit unstructured so for me that wasn’t a big deal. Also, I’m problematically introverted so for me the field service gig was perfect. I got to work alone most of the time but I was also forced to interact with complete or relative strangers virtually every day which is good for me because if I can avoid people as much as I’d like, I get a little weird.

I like to say “don’t become an anecdote.”

Lol, this makes me think of a guy I went to highschool with. He was a farm kid who would get up early and work around the farm before school. One day he spills gas on his flannel shirt before school but doesn’t have time to change so he figures it’ll air out enough on his way to work (it didn’t). Second or third class of the day was shop. He starts working in the welding booth without stopping to put on the flame removedant overcoat. A hot spark hit that gas soaked flannel and dude light up like the human torch. He had some serious burns but makes a full recovery. For years after that though, the shop teacher used to say to anyone who complained about the overcoats, “go ask Phil if they’re worth it or not”.

I had a friend in highschool who’s dad had lost part of his pointer finger to an encounter with a saw blade. He had just a little bit of the bone beyond the second knuckle that was weirdly pointed and it hurt like hell when he jabbed you with it. I know this because I used to help them build shit around their farm and if he caught us being unsafe he’d poke us in the chest with that damn half-finger while he yelled at us about it.

Those lessons really stuck too.

If your business relies of billions in VC money every year to stay afloat, then you don’t have a sustainable business and probably shouldn’t keep doing what you’re doing.

This right here. We need to see unprofitable “disruptors” close before they wreck existing systems and drive up the cost of living and/or drive down the quality of life for everyone. How many previously profitable businesses who provided decent jobs closed because they couldn’t complete with Amazon while Amazon wasn’t even technically making a profit? How much of the current housing crisis is driven by AirBNB and such? They drove up housing prices in the name of cheap weekend rentals and now the weekend rentals aren’t even cheap anymore.

There used to be lots of delivery models that were profitable while paying people fairly. Door dash and others just convinced us all to cut each other’s throats for a brief window of savings.

“Bro, we hitting the bar tonight?”

“Hell yeah! I’m three beers away from extra heavy drinker status this month. Let’s get that AB-Inbev cash!!”

(Sounds of chest bumping)

Ooof. Current job has a big problem with that.

I’m in facilities for a company with 2 dozen buildings. We’re big enough that we have a drafting department who needs to sign off on all of our drawings and documentation. For reasons that are always changing, they never want to convert the contractors’ schematics for remodels into something that can be shared. If we’re lucky, the contractors are willing to share prints with us directly more offen, we just have to hope the labels are still there when it breaks and/or ring out individual wires. Huge waste of man hours on our end but every time we suggest fixing it, the drafting department insists that it can’t be done for whatever reason. Our department has offered to handle these schematics several times but, “that’s not in our scope”.

They will switch jobs before things come crashing down. All they want to show is a slight uptick in sales or revenue to take credit.

I used to work in field service for a machine tool company. One of the machine brands I serviced had a couple years in the late nineties that hated to work on. The machines were always cheap but those years were egregious. Corners cut everywhere and the original parts were so shitty we’d usually have to retrofit shit from a different year. Eventually bumped into a guy who’d worked on them at the time who explained the history. The owners of the company at the time were about to sell out to another manufacturer and they wanted to jack up the profits before the sale so they cut every corner they that they didn’t think would be noticable before the sale.

The brand stayed afloat for another ten years but everyone I know who was in the industry at the time said their was never any coming back from the damage two years of shit machines did to their image.

Worst part about was, because the machines didn’t start having issues until after the company sold, the new owners got all the blame and got stuck with bill for all the warranty work. Literally no incentive for anyone else to not do exactly the same as the original owners.

Yeah, I also met my wife online back when you’d lie about meeting someone online. Spent our first couple years telling people we met “through a friend of a friend”.

I’m guessing this was around the time you guys met since she introduced me to StumbleUpon shortly after we started dating.

Have you ever read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser? I’ve never read anything that made feel so terrified and hopeful at the same time. The number of close calls (that we know about) that we’ve had but, cooler heads (or random chance) saved us at the last moment is both horrifying and grounds for having a fair amount of faith in most people to do the right thing with these things. Of course, the amount of times we were saved by random ass chance is absolutely terrifying.

I think if it were over 100 it would be almost always be a yes. But to be entirely honest, t probably depends a lot on the day and the mood I’m in. There are days I might do it for one or two. On the other hand, there are days when I think the planet probably needs fewer humans so yeah, as bad as it sounds to say out loud, it depends entirely on the type of day I’m having.

Today, I think it’d take at somewhere between 10 and 20. I guess I’m feeling optimistic.

Last month I picked up a grab bag at a used bookstore store in my old home town. I plan to grab one at random until I get through them all. So I don’t know what I’m reading this month but I know it’s something from this bag.

I’ve finished “Dance if the Hag” and “Pennterra” so far. Just started “northern stars” today.

I’ve started using ghee a lot lately. Never thought to try making my own. Might have to try it now.

Yeah, I’ve read so many reviews that talk about Lecruset like it’s non-stick and I’ve never found mine to be that way. I mostly use mine for making pan sauce (can’t beat this one for sausage gravy IMHO) or stuff that simmers a good long while. This goulash for example simmers for like an hour. The hamburger stuck pretty bad while I was browning it but after the simmer with the tomatoes and everything else in, it all came out clean and the burnt stuff on the bottom gives the whole dish just a hint of charred flavor which I’m personally a big fan of.

But yeah, for something like fish or steaks where you need stuff to come off in a single piece, I’m reaching for my lodge or even the wife’s non-stick. I think I’d get dressed and go out for breakfast before I’d try to make eggs in my enamel skillets.

So my wife lived in Waco 15 years ago and bought a cheapo enameled DO at the grocery store. Her mom liked it and bought herself one there too. Two years later, the enamel on her mother’s was cracked and peeling. Wife bought her a replacement. Two years later, same thing. Meanwhile, the original one my wife bought has been the workhorse of her kitchen for 15 years and the only chips it has are exterior ones from damage during cross country moves. I’ve often wondered if that company’s quality control sucked and we just got lucky or if my MIL was that hard on them.

Condolences, that really sucks.

There wasn’t sad food to go along with it but, my wife and I had a very similar experience. My nephew passed away after 3 months of trying to repair a heart defect (HLHS specifically). My SIL, her husband and, her other kids had been living with for the past six months because we lived near the hospital he was treated at. Their extended family spent a lot of nights with us as well.

The day after he passed away, they all went home. My wife and I are child free so we were just alone in this quiet, empty house that had been loud and crowded since we found out our nephew was going to be born with a bad heart. The weight of the past months hit us all at once and we sat there sobbing for what felt like hours. It’s been like three years and I still get teary thinking about it.

Yeah, I just started a couple years ago and finding the same corporate greed at a medical “non-profit” that I thought I’d left behind in the manufacturing sector was a pretty big disappointment.

Still beats helping assholes make war materials though.

I also work for for healthcare “non-profit” like this. You’re not in the upper midwest by chance?