One of the biggest ones I’ve corrected is taking an active role in their education. My parents would get so mad at me when I got bad grades. I’d constantly get grounded and told you can do better, or literally slapped up the side of the head. But my parents never asked me if I had homework or tests coming up.

If I asked for help with my homework my dad would talk down to me and be like, why don’t you get this. It took me running away from home at 15 to finally get sent to a doctor and low and behold get diagnosed with ADHD.

My wife had a similar, but thankfully a less physical situation. Her mom would ground her if she got a bad grade. But she got straight A’s outside of math, so it obviously wasn’t for lack of trying. But no offers to help or asking what was wrong just you got a bad grade your grounded until your next report card.

Anyways, all of that is to say, I stay involved with my kids school work. Not to a helicopter parent level, but I check with them daily if they have homework, and make sure they know they can come to me if they need help. I remember the first time my daughter failed a test, I didn’t yell and she didn’t get in trouble. We sat down at the table and reviewed it, and made sure she understood it by the end of the night.

Both of my kids get wonderful grades and I reinforce to them that their hard work is what got them those grades, and reward them for it. Not punishment for bad grades.

Simon Whistler is basically my melatonin.

I never cared for Kellen Moore because I thought he relied too much on gadget plays. Man do I miss him now.

I rented one of the big 75 foot ones from Home Depot to clear a branch drain. The sound it made of all that nasty water rushing out as soon as I cleared it almost made up for the smell I had to endure… almost. But the rental was $81 versus the $750 I paid a plumber for a similar job in the past.

Thanks!

My wife would love if I did this to her cutting boards. You mind sharing what oils and wax you used?

Our version was slightly different at the end:

With a big fat gun
And a bullet in his head
Aren’t you glad that fuckers dead

It’s a crossover between Nine Inch Nail and Dee Snider

I was a teenager and had two younger siblings who were obsessed with it. I remember getting in trouble for hiding one of their VHS tapes.

I had a modded version that made it all characters from The Tick

I have 20 years experience in IT process automation, with the last 15 spent in consulting. The number one thing I’ve learned is businesses don’t care about the technology. I could write the coolest automation that covers 99% of potential issues, but if it costs more to run than having a person in India push a button, they won’t buy it.

I’m just glad to watch football again

I don’t care what M$ says, Azure DevOps is being left for dead. As someone who worked on the System Center space for years, I know the signs of a product they want to kill but can’t. I’m convinced the only reason it is still around is because some internal teams haven’t moved to GitHub yet.

About 15 years ago I did some work with a large international pharmaceutical company with over 2,000 of offices across the world. There was a laptop in an empty cubicle with signs like this on it. Apparently if it turned off their entire email system would go down.

You generally don’t want to have rats around. They are scavengers and can cause a lot of destruction. We have rats that come up from the greenbelt behind us. They will try to burrow and nest everywhere. And their nests are absolutely disgusting and can carry diseases because they poop everywhere. We had one chew through the insulation and get into our garage. Thankfully it didn’t nest in there but it took me days to clean all the shit off everything.

As far as your garden is concerned you can try planting some lavender. It is a natural deterrent for them.

Some dog breeds are great at getting rid of them too. My small dog is quick and can corner them easily. And my German shepherd will grab them off the fence or out of the pool. I also let our small dog sniff around in the garage about once a week to check all the small cracks or places they can get in.

With that in mind you very well could call the fire department to come let you out. That will certainly help draw attention to it.

Super Bowl XL is by far the worst Super Bowl I’ve ever watched. That officiating was complete and total crap.

I hate to see him go, but thankful for the 15 seasons he gave us. He played more games as an Eagle than anyone in history. I’ll never forget that strip sack he had to win us of Super Bowl LII. An absolute legend.

I replaced all of mine with nest ones a few years ago. Every time one would chirp my son would have a full on meltdown. It was ridiculously expensive, but worth it no more 3 am meltdowns.

My rule of thumb is anything you are not willing to clean with a garden hose should be stored in a sealed plastic container. Not plastic bags, but plastic containers with lids you can close and seal.

I came up with this rule after I discovered a rat had been getting into my garage to eat some old birdseed I’d forgotten about. It didn’t nest in there, thankfully. But the amount of poop I had to clean in 100°+ Texas heat was insane. And my garage is not a clustered mess like a lot of people. I can actually fit both cars in it. But it still took me 3 days to hand wipe down every single item in there.