“I once ran the Indy 500. I must confess I’m impressed how I did it I wonder how close that I came.”

Pickled okra is wonderful. That a gumbo are the only way I can eat the slimy stuff. Pickling seems to burn away the slime.

I like this explanation. I don’t think we can do a lot better than this one at this point.

I think a fun next step is “forget what’s real, I want to write a story with humans interacting with aliens that’s consistent with what we see now.” What do you have to invent to make it work? Nothing really works for me. But stuff like the dark forest is good. I can suspend disbelief enough to enjoy it.

I bought some $50 open back headphones a while back and they a just worlds better than anything I’d had before. Is there a step up from there that’d similarly rock my world?

My mic is pretty similar. $100 got me an SM58 and it’s wonderful. You have to basically eat it and I can peak it if I’m loud. But it sounds so much nicer than most things. I know there’s a few steps up from there. But I don’t sing so think I’m fine.

Second generetions software engineer. 19 years. It’s been good. I’d recommend folks try writing software one time somehow and if they like the puzzle solving bits look into it more. The market is really saturated for new grads now so it has to be something you love.

I’m a software engineer because I’m bad at everything else. Barely made it through college physics class and highschool chemistry. Wanted to do English but can’t write. Didn’t want to follow in my mom’s footsteps but I just can’t so anything else well. Came around in college after a pretty bad first semester.

I was kind of a slacker in school. I did ok, but the pressure I see on kids these days would have killed me.

I made it through a computer science degree because it was fun for me. So much puzzle solving. Even the theoretical stuff was fun. I had a professor who everyone thought was really easy. Folks were getting like 98/100 in the whole class. I think, though, he just tought well. We got it. He made it easy.

These days I work on data things. Nothing fancy. All open though so googling my name will find it. It’s honest work. I got here accidentally. I was taking random tasks and worked on search once time. Was kind of fun. When that job went belly up I spent a while working for something cool. I found a job I was unqualified for but sort of bluffed my way into. Learned a lot.

While I was there I built a search thing that, terrifyingly, is built right into Firefox. Go to the location bar, type @w, hit tab, and type a word. That was me for a while. I’m proud of it. It’s no google, but it’s honest.

Been working in search and data stuff ever since. I don’t deserve it. It’s been good. But I got lucky.

Code talker?

Yeah! Every place I saw that did it seemed quite different from the US. I just thought it was neat that there are places trying this.

Mexico does that! It doesn’t look super common but it’s a thing.

When someone is having a computer problem I ask them to restart first. Not because I think they don’t know to do it, but just in case. Some people don’t know. Sometimes people forget. Obvious advice is useful sometimes.

I think all those are a little true. But I’m mostly guessing. I’m happy to change my mind if anyone knows better.

Either way, these folks are my hero.

We knew spooks were all up in the phone network. They’d show up and ask installers to run them some cables and configure ports in a certain way. I was friends with folks who were friends with the installers.