Looking at the way tech CEOs are bending over backwards to tickle orange balls, I have absolutely no doubt that they will go 10x farther than they did in 2024 election to skew any election going forward. At this point I won’t be surprised if even Apple and Google both release a special edition phone because they’ve become that cheap.
Macro
Feels like Atlassian bought Arc because CEO is a big fan. I honestly feel like browser wars are mostly dead. Does it even matter anymore? your default OS browser is likely good enough and in some cases extremely good (Safari for example!). Every time I try a new browser I keep coming back to Safari. Chrome is the only other browser I will use mostly because something doesn’t work on Safari.
Sad news coming out of Lisbon and the Gloria funicular disaster. We saw this one a few weeks ago in Lisbon, but in general looking at how each of these trams were packed like sardines to the brim we decided against doing any tram at all. This disaster was a matter of time in making, not if. They really need to do a better job at people management in these trams. Just because you can pack it to the brim doesn’t mean you should!
Our sprinkler system stopped working right after deck work started. I already had a feeling that when the contractors fixed the deck they probably cut some wires hence our sprinkler system was not working. The app said water was on while there was no motor running or water coming out of the system. I called our regular sprinkler guy to come over and in 5 minutes he was like yep, they cut the power. Thankfully the power was connected via a rain sensor so all he had to do was bypass the rain sensor and it was working again. He then proceeds to tell us we have two rain sensors that previous owners installed and basically the whoever put it in fleeced our old owners. The rachio controller along with the app are basically rain sensors and there is no need of an external rain sensor to ‘sense’ rain. And we have two of ’em. He then went ahead and cleaned up all the wiring, disconnected the sensors and cleaned up the panel. All of this for 50$! I am sure if I had called irrigation “specialists” this would have been a hundreds of dollars repair. Moral of story – once you find a good handyman/electrician/plumber, do NOT let them go!
After 4 nights of partying body is like bro just sleep. Not that we drank too much or did anything crazy. Our nights ended at 1:30am and no one was waking up before 9am so not like we didn’t rest – just that body is simply not used to this either anymore 😆. We are fighting age at this point I suppose!
Kid got math homework first week of school. “It’s only 1 page!” she proclaimed before turning it over in no time. Yesterday the teacher sent everyone an email that while homework counts for only 5% of overall grade, it still does count…. and the entire class scored an F. It was so joyous to see the kid getting a rude awakening of High School expectations. All her friends also had similar pikachu faces it seems. Welcome to adulting kid 😀
In my retirement I want to become an executive assistant to a VP and be in charge of scheduling meetings day in and out while also getting all the gossip from other EAs. Added bonus is I will get to travel with VP wherever they go and be in charge of food & drinks so it will all be according to my wishes at expensive places. What a low stress high reward job!
It’s such an incredulous thing really that Trump in first term was presented with the covid pandemic, and instead of using his own wins of funding the vaccine development as his real legacy (lets be honest, operation warp speed did save a lot of lives!), he looked at it and decided, nope, I am gonna go real crazy town here and then goes even more anti-science in his second term. Like dude, if you had played your cards correctly, you’d have won the Nobel peace prize already just for that. Some people are just gifted losers.
I mean to be honest I thought America is the only country that did yearly covid vaccines anymore. Like I don’t know anyone in India who took any more covid boosters after first couple. Last year almost half my friends skipped it – I don’t think the vaccine restriction news will be taken as badly as reddit or online communities suggest. The uptick was low anyways! FWIW I do plan to take it again (I think…. I qualify).
I am convinced that RTO mandates are yet another way of trying to keep women out of workforce. Yesterday at work my bosses (one desi, one American) seemed genuinely surprised that I was willing to pay toll to get back home because I had to pick up my kid. Both of their wives are SAHMs so they never quite relate to the idea that other women work and can be busy. Their usual response to anything is “my wife usually takes care of it” – yeah dude, that’s why you can come in at 7am at work and stay till 7 in evening, that’s why you have no issues doing the 90 min one way ride into office into DC, that’s why you have no issues with meetings at random times off hours and we are expected to join because “at my level we do”. If only they took more interest in their personal lives more than work we’d all be more productive!