“For vonce I deed not forget mine Stahlhelm or mine Luger. But I sink zis siege of Stalingrad is going to be a booger.”

Can I up vote this more than once? Quality print journalism is absolutely vital and it will die without the support of its readers.

Personally I like a happy medium. Our 2200 sqft house is plenty big for our family of five. Any bigger and I would have a hard time maintaining it by myself. Larger houses definitely require more effort to upkeep.

We like having a little room to spread out or entertain guests. I also love having my shop in the basement. That was something I really missed when I didn’t have it for a few years.

It’s a personal preference that really depends a lot on your lifestyle, hobbies, and what you can afford.

We still have a landline (technically VoIP) phone. There’s also a list of important phone numbers written on the fridge. Good for emergencies.

There are few things more nerve wracking than frantically trying to find your cell phone and the number for poison control after your kid just swallowed something they shouldn’t have.

NGL, at first I was kind of concerned that you had a “geyser” so close to your house until I realized it was probably another term for what my American brain calls a “water heater”.

Someone else suggested a water softener which would help a lot. Aside from that, does your geyser have a sacrificial anode? If so, when was the last time you replaced it?

I am consistently amazed at the sheer number of parents who don’t seem to care about their kids at all. And those are just the ones in my kids friend groups.

Winchester Model 1897

“Am I a joke to you?”

I just want to say how much I appreciate that the “Ghosts” in the headline photo are from The Muppet Christmas Carol which is by far the best film version of A Christmas Carol.

Friendly reminder that Eddie Lampert effectively drowned Sears Holdings (Sears & Kmart) in the bath tub. He single-handedly wiped out two major retailers, hundreds of smaller ones, and tens of thousands of jobs in one of the most successful corporate raids ever executed.

What a greedy shit bag.

I’ve made angry threats to cars while working on them but this is taking it to another level.

I refuse to celebrate the man’s death. That just doesn’t sit right with me.

However, I’ll climb on my soap box long enough to point out that first, an insurance business model is fundamentally incompatible with healthcare. It does not work on basically any level and the need for profit will always be in conflict with the need to provide high quality healthcare.

Second, this conflict between the need for profitability and providing healthcare means that most of the health insurance industry is built on a foundation of ethical compromises. For profit health insurance companies like UnitedHealth are just straight up immoral. Any business that has to give loyalty to shareholders at the expense of anyone’s life and health is immoral. Not to mention the incredible amount of work health insurance companies have done to effectively rig much of the American medical system for their own benefit.There are lots of corporations that do lots of bad things but I would classify for profit health insurance as a special kind of evil.

As much as they like to pretend they’re the good guys, the good guy doesn’t make it their sole mission to extract as much money as possible from their customers before they die while doing the bare minimum to keep them from dying.

Long way of saying, my condolences to the guys family. Having your husband/father/etc. assassinated in the street has to be awful. At the same time, screw UnitedHealth. They’re a bunch of worthless blood sucking vampires.

Story time!

Years ago I had a client who owned a big car dealership. Really good guy and a straight shooter. His son, who is roughly my age, was the GM.

Anyway, I was wearing a suit and tie because I was on my way to a funeral but I had to stop by the dealership on the way. Stopped by the GM’s office to say “hi” really quick. He looks at me and get this concerned expression on his face before saying, “You didn’t let dad see you like that did you?”

I told him I hadn’t seen his dad and asked why?

He says, “You need to ditch the tie ASAP. He’s not going to like that at all. One time, a couple reps from [auto manufacturer] came by all suited up. They sat down in Dad’s office and without saying a word, he grabbed some scissors and lopped both of their neck ties off. He hates ties. Says it makes you look like you think you’re better than your customers.”

Knowing his dad, I honestly believed the story. But, if I had any doubts they were eliminated some time later. I was leaving the dealership one day when two reps from [auto manufacturer] pulled into the parking lot, got out of the car, took off their jackets and ties and left them in the car before going in.

Depends on the model. I figure about 2 ft. X 2ft. X 2ft. Is about average.

Each missile should have “Happy Holidays” painted on the side.

Whole house humidifier. They’re great if you live anywhere where it gets dry in the winter.

Imagine being the one who has to explain that Putin died when another person burst forth from his body like an alien.

Ok, but where is the Judean People’s Front in all of this?

🎶I am a lineman for the county, and I drive the main road. Searchin’ in the sun for another overload.🎶

I knew it! I was sure I heard John say “hail Satan, Lord of Darkness” when I played one of their albums backwards.

Then there’s the small group that just throws everything into Excel

Interesting. Excel is certainly capable enough but I would think data set size limitations would be a frequent issue. Maybe not as frequent as I would have thought though.