There isnt much to do in my city.

My youngest kid just started college. I wanted to spend time with him before he left but it’s tough finding common activities between a teen and parent.

Our solution was walking around town: started as walking the dog until she couldn’t keep up, played a little Pokemon Go as an activity while walking but grew tired of it. Honestly, having nothing to do around town was a plus. It turned into basically talking for a couple hours! If we were thirsty, grab something at the nearest convenience store. We started a routine of takeout from our favorite kebab place to eat on the town common, but it was all just low key activity while talking! Just about every weekend this summer we’d take a couple hour walk around town, and just talk!

Good one, thanks for the link

I always appreciated being in the receiving end of such plans. It takes a lot of the thought out and I just need to figure out how to make the schedule. Fwiw it also makes the yes/no decision easier.

An additional reason I don’t like making plans like that is I like to think I do things on impulse. In reality I have to admit I often don’t do anything so the gift of someone making plans is appreciated even if I grumble a bit.

Thanks, this story inspired me to pay more attention to that for today’s plans.

Originally I agreed to overly complex logistics for a family activity because I know my ex doesn’t like to drive. But she agreed to simpler logistics that would save an hour on the schedule and save everyone else a lot of driving at the expense of her driving. This will be so much more enjoyable spending a little more time with my kid and not be in a rush to get everything done.

The problem is the difficulty is intentional.

Part of the system of checks and balances is the Supreme Court is appointed for life so should be above the constant swing of politics or popular opinion.

In theory even today’s right wing court is ok (after four years) because they will remain regardless of what party is in power or clown is in the White House. It’ll be interesting to see what they do when politics swing back to sanity, however a non-fascist party resident won’t stretch the legal boundaries so maybe is irrelevant.

Given that positions on the court open up rarely and years apart, it generally stays relatively balanced. However this time around a combination of bad timing and political maneuvering made today’s court more partisan than ever. Violating the norm of requiring that they be competent means they no longer follow existing law or legal precepts

Only that there is one. I don’t expect my phone to get wet but I do want it to survive everyday life.

Supposedly the Apple Watch is fine to go swimming with. I’m happy to see that feature, as confidence I can wash my hands without ruining my watch

Yes please.

• I’ve found ai useful as a tool especially when switching context to a different language or framework, as a quicker way to get the syntax and features, to generate a first approximation. It works and saves time
• vibe coding is a horrendous waste of my time doing code reviews. Don’t people look at the slop their tool generates and try to refine it? Why is it ok to waste my time like this?

Edit: just did yet another code review generated with “vibe coding” and there is so much slop that will create maintainability issues in the future - did everyone forget the truism that code is much more expensive to maintain than to create? So much duplicated code, misleading names, useless and excessive tests, hard-coded strings duplicated, etc. …… and I found an entire generated function very close to identical to one the same guy already created

What’s the term for the guy equivalent? Is it like jaw-maxing r something? I’m happy that seems to be gone as well

Everything would be a bit more efficient, a bit more interchangeable nine Ted. Landfills would fill a bit more slowly.

A useful step to reduce the growth of environmental damage, but not enough

It’s important to consider whether a tv is even desirable anymore. Everyone has their own personal devices to stream, gaming systems have monitors, etc: I rarely use the big screen anymore. If I needed to replace it, I’d give serious consideration to NOT

I just replaced my ten year old Vizio …… with a Vizio. The old one still works great but I wanted the new features. I upgraded to OLED, higher resolution, higher refresh rate, better automation: 10 years worth of incremental improvements. Even the apps were still reasonably responsive.

I used to care about reliability. I used to care about specs, but a dominating criteria now is how annoying the ads and and surveillance are. I don’t use the apps, but There’s not really any way to get away from it.

I have an old Firestick that i stream from, so it’ll be a much better experience when I find something less shitty to replace that

Or worse, you risk being parentified. My ex was 7 years older then her brother, and to this day their only bad blood is that she had to take care of him while he got anything he wanted.

My kids. Even if we can’t fix the mess the world is currently in, they can

Believe me it sucks from the other side as well. It’s bad enough that I have white hair but I also can no longer be “the guy”. I may no longer be up for the hike, the sport, the long drive. My knees are bad enough so it’s difficult to get on the ground to play. I stiffen up in a long video game session. It’s much harder to find the energy.

My kids grew up just in time. But my littlest one got up at dawn today, hiked up a mountain and sent back picture of his university as a faint dot in the distance. That used to be me, and I hope I’m part of his inspiration but can no longer join him.

This summer for the first time I took a hike that was too much. We hadn’t planned for the heat or sufficient water. It’s bad enough that I had to sit and send him for the car, but that bastard was perfectly fine so he ran the remaining two miles to the car. Since then he’s been overly worried about me. I’m supposed to be the one worried about him

That’s a good point. We had kids older so now I’m approaching 60 and my youngest just started college. Now that my peers are thinking about retirement soon, I’m thinking how can I finish paying for college? How can I help jump start their adult lives?

There were advantages to being well established before having kids, but the disadvantaged are coming along now. Paying off colleges is going to set my retirement way back, and I may never get to enjoy grandchildren.

I’ll go with 40.

• for women I believe the risks went up dramatically 35–>40, with the new label “advanced maternal age”. There’s a clear medical threshold here.
• for men, I was about 40 and really think that should be about it. In fact I wanted another child but after that was delayed by medical issues in the family, decided we were getting too old. There may not be such a clear medical threshold but ….

When we did things with other parents we were invariably the oldest in the room. Not a blocker but it’s harder to be part of that community. I went to school with a kid from a very large family whose parents were older and they never did fit with other parents.

But the biggest thing is energy. As a Dad, I took a big part of my role to be active involvement. To keep up with toddler energy while also handling logistics. To jump into physical playtime or homework after a days work. to be always ready for the adventure, the sport, the activity. My crowning achievement was getting up at first cry so my wife could sleep, throwing the little one into a backpack, and doing a predawn hike to give his first bottle at sunrise on top of a mountain.

What was I saying? Oh energy. Now that my kids are in college, I’m old enough to make it difficult to keep up. I got my littlest into hiking but now I can’t go 5 miles without my knees killing me. Meanwhile he’s sending pictures back 15 miles in.

But seriously, energy. Now after a full days work I just want to get home and sit. Vegetate. It’s getting much harder to stir up the passion to join them whether for a video game, hone improvement, or even take them to an ice cream stand

I realize your mileage will vary, greatly, but I just don’t have the energy to be actively involved with kids anymore. They grew up just in time. But that active involvement, again doesn’t have to be physical but active participation , makes parenting so rewarding for both you and them. You don’t want to miss it. Kids aren’t goldfish where you can sit back in your chair and watch the aquarium but they shine ever brighter when you’re in there with them. You’re not a simple babysitter where you just make sure they survive, but it’s so much more rewarding as a parent to be there, do stuff, keep up.

But you have a different scenario with a large age gap. You’re at a great age for becoming a parent so don’t let age stop you. Medically it should be fine (statistically). You should be fine. But be aware that your husband may no longer have the energy or as much involvement as he would have a decade or two earlier. Both he and your child will miss out and likely you will face more of the burdens alone. But it is what it is. Life doesn’t always deal a straight flush and you have to play the hand you’re dealt.

When I was approaching 30 I was looking forward to kids, and that wouldn’t be sufficient to raise them.

In a couple years though …… once they are through college so I’m done with those payments and child support, living on 65% of my income would be easy.

I went through a phase of beyond/impossible meats and they’re ok. I generally don’t object but they didn’t hit the same as actual meat or actual veggies. Plus they’re awfully expensive and sold in small packages with excessive plastic packing. I gave up in favor of either meet or plant based.

Except breakfast sausage. My grocery hasn’t reliably had breakfast sausage in over a year and the beyond stuff doesn’t work for me

Exce!

Swapping gas stove for induction. It was a bit delayed because they screwed up capping the gas line, so new install on new circuit. I plugged it in and nothing happened.

It could be as simple as the breaker is off or there’s some sort of power button on the new stove. I got as far as plugging it in and nothing lit up, then already ran out of time. If it’s something that simple, we get to the beer sooner