I wanted to be a pilot.

By age 16 I had several hours towards my private license.

My junior year in High School I started looking universities with aviation degrees, or engineering. I had settled on Rose Hulman and one other (been 40 years so don’t remember the place, but it was one of the top aviation colleges in the US at the time.) I actually was accepted at “the other place”.

It all came crashing down in the last conversation I had with my enrollment counselor and he asked a question that hadn’t been asked of me in the prior many conversations I had with him.

“How is your eyesight?”

You see, I’m legally blind in my right eye and in the US, pilots are required to have 20/20 corrected eyesight. In order for my right eye to be 20/20 I would basically have to have a telescope hanging off my face.

I never did get my private pilots license, which I can get even with my eyesight, but I would never pass medical for a commercial ticket.

Yes, I did look at training in other countries and yes there are a few that only require perfect color vision, which I do have. The problem was my parents absolutely forbade me to travel to another country.

So that was that.

Spent 2 weeks hiking in around the Red River Gorge, Kentucky and Sheltowee Trace back in the late 80’s. Only time I got wet was when it rained, or found a creek to take a dip in.

When I got home, even my own Mother would not hug me. She sent me off to the bath where I stayed for over an hour.

Greetings programs!

I prefer to think of them fighting evil in another dimension.

This means something.

Your ass looks like 150 pounds of chewed bubble gum!

There’s no fighting in the war room!

Sire! The Great Leslie escaped with a friar!.. He escaped with a chicken!!!

Of course I denied installing CCTV in the nursery! What the hell would they watch?!!!

I think what we have here… Is a failure to communicate!

Mensa membership is directly correlated to taking online IQ tests.

Truly intelligent people don’t.

“Not my circus, not my monkeys.”

My life became infinitely better once I understood that saying.

30 year IT Professional here, who has run laptop depots.

Absolutely mandatory in an enterprise environment.

The number of dead batteries I have seen throughout the years is too many to count. Having to dispatch a replacement laptop, instead of just a battery is really irritating. Sure the affected laptop comes back and my techs can take care of it and put it back into inventory. That comes with the cost of needing to keep extra full laptops in the rotation. Not to mention having to cross ship two laptops. Instead of just having much cheaper batteries that I can send off to the user, then they pop it in and drop off the old battery at a local store that accepts used batteries.

As far as a “thing”, which I would define as an object and not a person or animal, I would have to say my two McIntosh amplifiers. I have an MC7100 and MC7108.

Both were built in 1992. I am listening to the MC7108 in my office as I write this.

I’m a cook as a hobby, so typically the cost of making vs buying does not figure into my decision, except when things at the store get absurdly expensive.

A case in point: Toasted Sliced Salted Salad Almonds from Fresh Gourmet

My wife and I love these on our dinner salads so we go through a lot of them. The cost of a package of these salad almonds has risen to $7 for a 3.5oz (99g)package.

I can buy a 16oz (454g) package of raw almonds for almost the same amount of money, as the 3.5oz (99g) Fresh Gourmet package. I have an electric oven that consumes around 5kwh that runs for roughly 30 minutes during preparation and my daytime electric rate is around $0.13/kwh (I think).

Out of that I get a full pound (16oz, 454g) of salted almonds for ~$7.07 and 30 minutes of my time. I also use about $0.02 worth of salt, bringing the total cost to ~$7.09 for 4.5 times more almonds.

I also can adjust the amount of salt on them as well, as typically my wife and I like less salt that most people.

It’s also fun to do.

My favorite band that I’ve actually seen live:

Duran Duran. Was a closet fan of theirs back in the late 80’s and got to see them when my girlfriend at the time got tickets.

Actual favorite band and unfortunately have never seen live:

RUSH

And it’s not because I think that Neil Peart is the greatest drummer of all time (that would be Buddy Rich). It’s because their music actually talks to my neurodivergent brain. It is also due to that the 3 of them were a confluence of exceptional talent that just happened to come together to make something special.

It’s “Revved up like a deuce.”

Not “Wrapped like a dou…” well you know.

First heard that song in 1981… Learned the correct lyrics in 2020. 39 years of being wrong, but I think I’m in good company.

Also learned that the version that most people know is actually a cover done by Manfred Mann in 1976. The original artist is Bruce Springsteen and he recorded it in 1973.

Last August my family went to Maui and on our last day we toured the Maui Pineapple farm.

OMG… I didn’t know that was how pineapple was supposed to taste. It is NOTHING like what we get here in Wisconsin.

Onions

Raw: arrgg can’t stand them. Maybe if it is a sweet onion and very thinly sliced, but otherwise keep it away from me.

Sauteed: Mmmmm… spread them over EVERYTHING!!!

Caramelized: Extremely inappropriate moaning noises…

Landscaping

My very first job at the age of 15 was working at a Nursery/ Garden Center. I also would work on the landscaping crews and even did some design work.

When my wife and I bought our house she said she always dreamed of having a big flower garden, but said she didn’t know how to do it properly.

Well… I do. Even my Mother-In-Law, who is an experienced gardener, learned a few things from me. Although, I have to admit, she really does know a lot and I learned a lot from her as well.

Our flower beds are beautiful throughout the growing season with a huge variety of plants.

Learning how to type.

You either had to take typing, or some other class that I can’t remember during my junior year. The other class didn’t appeal to me at all, obviously as I cannot even remember it now, so I took typing. By happenstance my best friend was in the same class.

The class taught me a skill that I use till this day, some 38 years later.

My family had “The Best of Bill Cosby” album when I was a kid and we listened to it a lot. Some of the funniest bits on that album and I always had warm memories sitting and listening to them.

Then it comes out that he’s a complete monster. All those family memories tied to that now, it really sucks.

First Used: Tandy Model IV (Learned BASIC, Pascal, FORTRAN and COBOL on one.)

First Owned: Tandy 1000SX (It carried me through my first stint in college)

There, I added an avatar.

That’s me under my Performance Designs Spectre 150, circa 1997 or 98… Can’t remember as I’ve slept since then.

Audiobooks.

Music is fine, but I actually find I will make more time to exercise if I’m listening to a good book.

I’m a RUSH fan that is neurodivergent…

You can probably guess.

Transistors.

The first working transistor was created in 1947. Before then it was just vacuum tubes. Less than 80 years later the modern world relies completely on its existence.

You use billions of them in your everyday life.