It existed as more than an idea in the late 1800s, because it is referenced in the US Constitution in 1787.

It looks like the concept was established earlier:

Intellectual Property

I was doing IT 30 years ago.

Back then you’d post a question on USENET and get an answer back from the guy who wrote the program you were asking about.

My go to.

Sounds like Twice Baked Potatoes.

My mom used to make them. My wife does too.

To be extra fancy, use a piping bag with a star tip when you fill them.

Never got it. I never did much drinking there.

Back in the olden days, my order was:

Potato skins

Salad

Filet mignon

Deep Dish Apple Pie

It broke my damn heart when they stopped offering that dessert.

Yep.

Sometimes the answer you need is to the question you didn’t ask.

Edit: I’ll add that I’ve tried buying restaurant branded potato skins from the grocery store, and they were absolute crap, worse even than the frozen ones that the restaurant was microwaving.

I don’t think there’s going to be any way to buy what the restaurants purchases, unless you’re able to buy in bulk, or find someone who’s willing to sell you some that “fell off the truck”

My wife would kill me if we wasted any part of the potatoes.

We’ve done a couple things with the insides. Sometimes we pan fry the bits in butter with some sauteed onions to have at breakfast the next day.

Last time was the first time I used a melon baller.

When we saw the almost perfect potato balls, it was almost automatic to deep fry them, add a little salt, and just eat them like that.

You mentioned TGI Fridays.

When I was in college, we’d go to Fridays all the time, and the food was incredible.

Then, over the years, it turned to shit. We stopped going.

One day, we were craving the memory of what it was and decided to give it anorher chance.

When we sat down, the manager stopped by our table to thank us for coming in and informed us that they had changed their process. She said that in recent years all their food was being prepared off-site, frozen, and just microwaved to order at the restaurant. However, they recently went back to doing all the prep from scratch in their kitchen.

The food was incredible! Exactly what we remembered. We started going back.

Then COVID hit. The Fridays that we would go to shut down.

The last time we went to a Fridays, the restaurant was empty, the staff was disinterested, and the food was shit.

Where does Applebee’s get their potato skins?

I’ll give you instructions for making potato skins.

1. Since you referenced food from Applebee’s, first you’re going to need to wean yourself off whatever drugs you’re on so you can tell the difference between food and what Applebee’s sells.

2. wash and dry some potatoes.

3. pierce the potatoes several times, all around the outside with a fork.

4. bake the potatoes in a preheated 400° F. oven until you can easily insert your poking fork all the way to the center of the potato (probably about an hour, depending on the potatoes).

5. take the potatoes out of the oven and let them cool down.

6. slice each potato in half

7. scoop out the insides of each potato, leaving about a quarter inch thickness for the skins. Last time I did this, I used a melon baller and deep-fried all the potato balls.

8. deep fry the scooped out skins at about 375°. I prefer beef tallow for frying.

9. when they are golden brown, take them out and set them aside to drain.

10. cook bacon until crispy, then brake break it up into small pieces.

11. arrange all the fried potato skins on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

12. season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.

13. fill each potato skin with shredded cheddar cheese, and sprinkle bacon pieces on top.

14. bake in the oven at 350° until the cheese melts.

Serve with sour cream and chopped scallions.

Scissors are the ideal utensil for correcting unseparated pizza slices.

I believe that computer just attracts people who are outcasts

I think you’re right, but I’ve also read that there might be some correlation between being trans and being on the autism spectrum. If that’s true, then it is reasonable to expect a higher than average percentage of IT people would be trans.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9014767/#%3A~%3Atext=(2020)+found+that+that+transgender%2Cand+sex+assigned+at+birth).

I will say a proud (if dismayed) moment for me as a parent was being forced to see the text’s between my daughter and the boy she was interested in.

Context: they were both 15, and the boy’s parents were religious wack-jobs. The father specifically said that 15 was too young to have a relationship. I had to respectfully disagree, since my wife was 15 when we started dating (I was 16).

Of course, the parents monitored all the boys communications, and would send me crap i didn’t want to see.

In the texts the boy suggested that he and my daughter should lie to the parents. My daughter pointed out that there’s no way we wouldn’t know.

She knew that we considered lying to be the one unforgivable sin. So she wouldn’t waste it ;-)

Thankfully, that relationship died. It would have been a whole lot easier to let it alone, but his parents couldn’t.

I’ve heard that when the boy went to college he couldn’t handle the freedom and ended up dropping out and returning home.

That depends on the situation. If you don’t know them, then yeah, you’d need to confirm you’re taking to the right person.

I ended up meeting all the parents of my kids’ friends, so it would have been beyond difficult to fake that.

Said this in a reply to another comment, but I wanted to make a top level reply as well.

I’ve been in this situation.

My recommendation is to tell your son he has to have Tiffany ask one of her parents to give you a call.

You don’t want to initiate the call in case they don’t know and are nut jobs.

However, you want to hear them say they are ok (and what they are ok with) in case they don’t know and are nut jobs.

Establishing a relationship with her parents will help when it comes time to decide which grandparents are going to cover which babysitting shifts ;-)

Just kidding about that last part. Kind of.

I’ve been in this situation.

I wouldn’t initiate a conversation with her parents, but I would insist that they give me a call.

I would want to hear it from them. If they did give permission, I would want to find out what their expectations are.

Asking to hear from Tiffany’s parents also gets around the possibility that they think Tiffany is actually spending the night at Amber’s house.

Play the lottery. I don’t know anything about the people who won big lotteries. Maybe it was me.

My parents chose each other. My mother chose my father to get away from her mother.

My father is an only child who isn’t used to not getting his own way. If you had asked me 30 years ago, I would have said she’d eventually divorce him or murder him.

For a long time, he’d leave her alone so he could go out and ride his motorcycle, and she was miserable because she was stuck at home alone.

Now he’s too old to ride so he’s home all the time. He’s definitely crossed into “elderly”, and he’s having serious health issues. He’s depressed because he thought he’d be young forever, and he can’t accept the reality. He won’t do anything to improve his situation. He just sits around saying he’d rather be dead. So now my mom is miserable because she’s stuck at home with him.

Despite all that and the hostility they’ve expressed to each other over the years, I’d say they are perfect for each other.

Well, the context I was thinking was routine travel.

If I had plans with a friend, and they had something big to tell me, I’d be ok with them saying we needed to talk when I got there.

I’m thinking more along the lines of:

It’s Wednesday, I’m at work, and my wife calls me in the middle of the day to tell me we have to talk when I get home.

Or conversely, I’m at home, and my boss calls me to say I should come to his office so we can talk when I get in.

“Promise me you won’t be upset.”

I am not promising shit until you tell me what we’re talking about. In fact, you just got me upset.

However, “don’t panic” wouldn’t get a better reaction from me. If you want me to not panic, tell me you’ve already dealt with it and there’s nothing for me to do, or at the very least describe your plan. I’ll decide whether panic is warranted after I hear your solution.

Another bad one:

“We need to talk when you get here.”

If we’re not going to talk about it now, why not wait to bring it up until I’m there?

“I was lucky and my brain chemistry corrected itself, so all you need to do is stop being unlucky and be lucky like me!”

While we’re at it, if you can’t reach the top shelf, just grow taller. That’s what I did.