They’re not. The ship has 1 bad thruster, but need like a dozen to fail to make re-entry impossible. They could leave right now and everything would be just fine.

The thing is the module that’s malfunctioning doesn’t survive re-entry, so the only time to investigate the problem is before they head back.

Carriers will offer better deals on the phones though if you’re planning to stick with them.

I’m looking at a $1000 phone that ATT will give me for 2.99/month for 2 years. That’s over 85% off on the phone. The trick is they give it to you by actually charging like $42/month, but then giving a $39 credit every bill for 2 years, so you have to pay the difference on the $1,000 phone if you jump carriers.

But since they’re the only carrier that works at my office, and this is gonna be a work phone (my company pays me a monthly stipend for it), I can live with that.

So I’m super liberal overall, but I’m also Texan, so I do in fact love shooting guns and being on the ranch…

Dammit you nailed me.

Though I don’t love cowboy boots. They’re just too uncomfortable and difficult to get on and off for something that costs what my first car did.

“When and where did you graduate”

Texas: 2024

“… How can you even read this?”

This quote is from 1950 in Tokyo and is referring to a surprise amphibious landing in South Korea, which was the big win that the South Koreans needed to stop the North from taking over.

That’s also most of what’s on Amazon these days.

Doom 2016 was just about perfect. It blended old-shool FPS fundamentals with modern aiming, collectibles, etc.

We should be able to charge them for ad time. You want to paint an advertisement on my car you have to pay me. Why should it be any different when you want to put ads on my work computer screen when I’m working with clients?

Well… to be fair the sitting President at the time didn’t object to the the Charlottesville Nazi march, January 6th, etc, but tear-gassed an invited crowd at a church protesting the murder of black people.

Hidden manual releases that still require you to push the door through the windows trim. FFS people have already died because of this shit. Why the hell hasn’t there been a mandatory recall on all Teslas over this?

Even the last season of Picard seemed to forget that Geordi was the pilot in season 1.

There’s this whole sideplot with family strife because one of his daughters decided to be like their dad and become an engineer, while the other one rebelled against him and wanted to pilot ships. I thought they’d eventually point out that they’re both following in his footsteps, but they never did.

They’re making that increasingly difficult. Basically, as more and more people get solar it becomes economically impossible to maintain the grid with millions of people being paid to connect to it.

The result is a higher and higher percentage of your power bill not be for “use” but for some other bullshit.

Because of the crazy power rate spikes during one of the Texas freezes, my power bill gets like a bunch added to it as a recovery fee for like the next 15 years. Then there’s the connection fee, maintenance fee, etc. My bill is like $300-400 a month before the first milliwatt is calculated, which makes solar less-viable. I’m paying a huge power bill no matter what (illegal to disconnect from the grid entirely), so payments towards a $50,000 solar setup would just make it more expensive.

I might save 20-40 bucks on my electric bill, but the extra $250 in payments for solar would kill that.

Well, he didn’t speak to her again for like 30 years…

That’s the goal. The insurance company wants your premiums while keeping the out of pocket so high you find another way to pay, so they don’t have to cough up a dime.

Frankly - it’s a lot harder to quantify. “Time at desk” is easy to track. Response times to tickets are much more variable and difficult to measure.

Some jobs necessarily include idle time when you’re waiting for work to come through even if there’s nothing to do in that specific moment. The flip side of that is that the employer is able to require that the worker be available instantly. If they’re leaving their work area because they’re bored then they’re not “at work.”

My Dad was a career firefighter, and he spent most of his time sitting in the station watching TV, cooking meals, or sleeping. He was paid for every minute of that time because at the drop of a hat he could be called to a wreck, fire, or medical emergency.

The reason he had to be paid is federal law requiring that all workers who are “engaged to wait” are on the clock. If someone is installing mouse-jiggler software so they can leave their workstation and do whatever they want, they’re no longer being engaged to wait.

The jigglers keep you online status from changing to “away.”

Some jobs require you to be at your desk, and using mouse jigglers to fake being at work is the kind of thing that keeps more companies from allowing WFH.

I also love how they have different types of leaders.

Kirk is the Captain you’d love to have as a boss. He gets stuff done, but also has fun with it. He’d inspire loyalty through Charisma.

He’s the captain you want standing by your side in a bar fight.

Picard is the perfectly-distantly, dignified leader. He’s a diplomat and archaeologist who loves exploring not only space, but culture and the nature of life. His love for his crew is shown through his desire to develop them into better officers.

He was the captain who kept you from getting into a fight.

Sisko is the most militaristic of the Captains. We first meet him in a battle, and he doesn’t back down from many fights. When Picard was annoyed by Q he complained. When Sisko met Q he punched him. But Sisko was a great tactician who also had to be a diplomat in charge of a station inhabited mostly by people outside his command structure.

He was the captain who punch someone in the throat if he thought there would be a fight.

Janeway was a scientist and diplomat. She could be hard as iron, but she was absolutely devoted to her people and would do anything for them. Her loyalty would cause her to occasionally cross the line, however. More than any of the captains, she wanted to develop her crew into leaders. They had limited options for advancement, but she tried to give them all opportunities to grow. She also didn’t see any sense in playing fair if she was in the right.

She was the captain that would bring a gun to a knife fight.

It was a backlash to auto manufacturers classifying everything as a truck to get around emissions and fuel economy standards. The fucking PT Cruiser was a “truck” according to Chrysler.

So they started classifying standards based on vehicle footprint with the idiotic hope that would make the manufacturers act better, but the manufacturers realized they could just make cars bigger every refresh cycle to stay ahead of CAFE.

Heck - even the letter is just a sans sarif Swastika.