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Man, registering for school right after you move is a bear, particularly when they want photo IDs as proof of residence--when your state takes up to 45 days to get your updated ID to you. Ack.

Years ago, your out-of-state ID combined with your local power/water/cable bill was good enough to count as a local ID until you got the real thing.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Years ago, your out-of-state ID combined with your local power/water/cable bill was good enough to count as a local ID until you got the real thing.

Not even years ago. That's how things work most places these days in my experience. Heck, for the past ten years or so, the address on my ID has only matched my actual address MAYBE for a year of that time. I'm not getting a new ID just because I moved to a new apartment. No thanks.

I won't have those till next billing cycle either though If I'd moved 2 months ago it wouldn't be a big deal, but right now the district we're in is saying we have to register ASAP to get our kid in the school nearest our house

Ugh. Did battle with the lawn (emulating Monaco in avoiding downed trees) yesterday and wasn't aware of my blood donation until the dog started licking my banged-up leg. Got myself good. My contracted (no cash outlay yet for 2018) lawn service seems to have vaporized, so spent 2 days nursing a Cub Cadet that hadn't started in 2 years back to health. Engine started up fine (2 years in the rain/snow uncovered and started on 3rd turn, mirabile dictu), but deck pulleys needed lots of convincing to spin once more and several cotter pins seem to have went walkabout in the down-time. Found out today that the chain saw is hors du combat due to rotted fuel lines and, since every other lazy man tried to start small engines over the holiday weekend, the repair shop is stacked up.

I am too old and in too bad of a physical condition to be doing this, yet I have no choice. Visions of hella-expensive John Deere X700s/1-series with shaft drive, liquid cooling, 4WD, and power steering fill my dreams for now. MSRP on either crowds the low-end of the cheapest cars one can buy in the US these days, and used pricing on "green iron" makes Subaru used pricing (at least here in VT) look semi-reasonable.

When I was a kid I was often hired to do neighborhood yards for slave labor wages which are mind boggling amazing to a kid. Is that not a tradition there?

Stupid Chinese spammers seem to think I own a commercial brewery. I keep receiving e-mails offering to sell me commercial brewing equipment.

just brew it! wrote:

Stupid Chinese spammers seem to think I own a commercial brewery. I keep receiving e-mails offering to sell me commercial brewing equipment.

It's a message to get started

Heiwashin wrote:

just brew it! wrote:

Stupid Chinese spammers seem to think I own a commercial brewery. I keep receiving e-mails offering to sell me commercial brewing equipment.

It's a message to get started

Want to loan me the money to buy the equipment, build out some space, and acquire the required licensing?

Heiwashin wrote:

When I was a kid I was often hired to do neighborhood yards for slave labor wages which are mind boggling amazing to a kid. Is that not a tradition there?

Ned lives in a fairly rural area. There may not be too many kids around that can do it. Though maybe he should ask the daughter?

JBI wrote:

Want to loan me the money to buy the equipment, build out some space, and acquire the required licensing?

I have a still, endless woods, plenty of overalls and absolutely no shirts.

Folks take a shine to my 'shine.

Want to partner up? You won't need to need to worry about those revenuers ott HEER, believe you me!

DancinJack wrote:

Heiwashin wrote:

When I was a kid I was often hired to do neighborhood yards for slave labor wages which are mind boggling amazing to a kid. Is that not a tradition there?

Ned lives in a fairly rural area. There may not be too many kids around that can do it. Though maybe he should ask the daughter?

Even before the tree disaster the lawn was dangerous to mow what with the side hill and the concomitant need to disable all safety switches to get the mower to actually mow. No way I'd ever let anyone else use that mower then, let alone now with the slaloming around dead trees on a side hill.

If the lawn, she was flat (like your head, Bugs Bunny reference), I'd have paid a local teenager long ago.

Took the back roads home today and followed a scooter for 20 or so miles. It surprised me to see oncoming "real" motorcycle riders (though no Harley riders were encountered) offering the traditional biker salute to which the scooter jockey responded. Call me odd, but I somehow thought that scooters were excluded from the fraternity.

It’s a gateway drug.

Chronicles of Aging:

If I am wearing my contacts, I must find my Costco cheaters to have any chance of seeing the screen. If I am not wearing my contacts and am instead wearing my hella-expensive vari-focus glasses, I must take them off to clearly see the screen. Remembering which domain I'm in seems to be beyond my aging mind given how often I bounce off of file cabinets in the office.

Gerbils beware. This awaits ALL of you.

Captain Ned wrote:

Chronicles of Aging:

If I am wearing my contacts, I must find my Costco cheaters to have any chance of seeing the screen. If I am not wearing my contacts and am instead wearing my hella-expensive vari-focus glasses, I must take them off to clearly see the screen. Remembering which domain I'm in seems to be beyond my aging mind given how often I bounce off of file cabinets in the office.

Gerbils beware. This awaits ALL of you.

I'm there. I currently have three different sets of glasses, with three different prescriptions: One for working at the computer (optimized for ~18" viewing distance); one "general use" progressive prescription (useful range ~18" to distance) that I typically use if I'm out and about; and prescription sunglasses (distance only). Plus I still need to look over the top or take them off for anything where I need to read really fine print or deal with tiny parts.

Severe myopia + presbyopia + astigmatism = suckage. The myopia means you need glasses to see things that are more than a few inches from your face; the presbyopia means that with glasses, you have trouble seeing things that aren't far away unless you use progressive lenses; and the astigmatism means that if your prescription isn't precisely right (which gets even harder to nail with progressives), you have double vision when you look in certain directions.

You know what else makes me feel really old? Today's news post about the rumored i7-8086K for Intel's 50th anniversary. I was at a massive party they threw for their 25th at the 1993 supercomputing conference in Portland...

I have caught myself lifting my glasses to read the fine print on certain labels lately, and it makes me feel super old.

Presbyopia forces me to wear glasses since my arms are not long enough to hold something at a distance to read small text. Eye lens muscle got weaker over time and can't focus near field anymore. Optometry office said it happens typically in the middle age time frame. Thankfully I can see sharply past 3ft.

I'm lucky for now in that my presbyopia is not too far advanced and allows me to compute and read at comfortable distances without any corrective lenses. I do know that this is not likely to remain the case for long, meaning continual (and expensive) prescription changes for the progressive lens glasses (contacts are single-focus and tuned for distance). Of course, I also had to throw astigmatism into the mix as well. Haven't had any double vision issues with the glasses, so I got off easy in that regard. Thank Bob for pre-tax flexible spending accounts to help defray these costs.

I'm still young and lucky on that front. I can read the 16/20 line with no close range shortcomings. all that really is doing is making me fear the decline of my vision more. As a diabetic it's almost guaranteed although my mom hasn't had any issues and she's keeps her sugar at around 500 most of the time.

Captain Ned wrote:

I'm lucky for now in that my presbyopia is not too far advanced and allows me to compute and read at comfortable distances without any corrective lenses.

Without corrective lenses, anything beyond 8" away is out of focus for me. It's like seeing the world through a macro lens.

Captain Ned wrote:

I do know that this is not likely to remain the case for long, meaning continual (and expensive) prescription changes for the progressive lens glasses (contacts are single-focus and tuned for distance). Of course, I also had to throw astigmatism into the mix as well. Haven't had any double vision issues with the glasses, so I got off easy in that regard. Thank Bob for pre-tax flexible spending accounts to help defray these costs.

My discovery that online eyeglasses site Zenni is able to do a decent job with my prescription has brought the costs down significantly. IIRC the most recent set of progressives cost me less than $70; the single-vision computer glasses were around half that. They're actually better than the last ones I got from a B&M optical place (at ~3x the price).

just brew it! wrote:

Without corrective lenses, anything beyond 8" away is out of focus for me. It's like seeing the world through a macro lens.

That's me in the office if I'm wearing my contacts and forget to take off the cheaters when I get up and move around. There's one file cabinet I continually hit if I don't take them off because of the "macro effect".

See (heh) what you've got coming, gerbils?

I'm just gonna hope for eye replacements by then.

just brew it! wrote:

Without corrective lenses, anything beyond 8" away is out of focus for me. It's like seeing the world through a macro lens.

Same, but for me it's closer to a foot still. My wife's prescription is probably closer to yours.

But that 8-12" is pretty glorious. I'd love to get it corrected, but my vision insurance (provided by Eyemed) is a joke. 15% off list price or 5% off any discounted price. Ugh. Regardless of what companies will tell you, it's far more than just a "cosmetic" thing for me. I'm probably looking at 3500-5000 overall (depending on the doctor) based on a little Googling.

just brew it! wrote:

Without corrective lenses, anything beyond 8" away is out of focus for me. It's like seeing the world through a macro lens.

There are dozens of us!

There are 4 lights!

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

There are 4 lights!

There are FOUR EYES!

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... es-attack/

Looks like my code gets to keep flying. (I wrote a lot of the code used to run the AR display system they upgraded the A-10s with a few years back.)

Most excellent. My favorite currently flying plane around (easy to pick since the SR-71 & The Concorde aren't currently flying.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

There are 4 lights!

They all kind of blended together for me, so I figured it was one large LED strip.