Random Thoughts

Oh and our printer at home only did 2 passes for NLQ and of course a single pass in draft mode. Man, I don’t even want to think about how slow 3 passes must have been. But I’m sure it did end up looking nicer.

My teachers certainly accepted the two-pass NLQ for papers that had to be typed.

I remember those days, I quite liked the NLQ. I also typed some papers on an electric typewriter that would store your stuff in memory, but I only used that for so long.

Just saw this list from the Southern Poverty Law Center. The 20 states with the most active hate groups per person. Skewed heavily to the least populous states.

There’s probably a positive correlation with something meaningful, but that’s a pretty meaningless statistic.

If State A has 50 hate groups with 50 unique members in each group, and State B has 5 hate groups with 1,000 unique members in each hate group and the populations are the same, by that metric State A is 10x worse than State B (50 vs 5 groups). But I would argue that actually State B is twice as bad (5,000 vs 2,500 people involved). Especially because State B’s 5 groups are likely better organized to do more damage, although not necessarily.

I assume it’s rather difficult to get membership lists, or even a count of members / active participants. (I don’t even know if “member” is the right term… probably not in all cases.) So maybe this is the best they can do, but I’d take it with a large grain of salt.

Yeah, I had a similar thought. Still interesting, but not too much you can read into it. Kind of surprised Kansas wasn’t top 20.

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January 23, 2023
IRS Starts Processing Tax Returns

April 18, 2023
Tax Filing Deadline

October 16, 2023
Deadline for Extension Filers

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Yep, for individuals.

Partnerships, S-Corps and C-Corps are due earlier. And trusts are a special beast.

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Oh, and the tax is due on April 18 regardless of whether you extend or not. And most people reading this are probably at an income / tax level where you have to make sufficient estimated payments and/or withholdings.

(It’s always fun to explain why people have penalties on timely filed returns with refunds.)

I unpacked my clothes and put them away in the dresser and closet at my hotel this week. I’m in my late thirties and this is the first time I’ve ever done that, and you know what? It’s way better than living out of a suitcase for three nights. Who would have guessed?

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Even though I decided to take up quilting I also decided to try out making an art journal. At least I have a lot of the basics for that—from my scrapbooking days.

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Dude, I wrote my school papers on a Smith-Corona

The first word processor program I ever used was freeware called Speedscript on the Vic20. And back then, BEFORE 5.25" floppy disks, we had a tape drive to save your papers on an audio cassette.

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I took typing class on actual typewriters…and had to change the ribbon.

My dad had these different bulbs for different fonts for his typewriter.

I think mine was an Imperial - Portable. Had a carry case

When I first started as an actuarian, we had DEC writers, no screens. If you were going to do APL coding, you needed to change that bulb thing for the one with the APL fonts.

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Smith-Corona generation here too - manual, then we got electrics!!! :meep:

On my flight today, a young woman asked if she could have my seat, in order to sit next to her husband. She was in the row in front of me, I was in the window seat, her husband in the middle. She said I could have the window seat in front of my original seat, but she was assigned the middle seat, and clearly felt embarrassed as her husband and I were trying to explain why she couldn’t offer me that seat, and it was going to be a downgrade for me.

I was going to be sewing the whole flight anyway, so while the middle seat is much more uncomfortable, I didn’t need any space to fall asleep or anything. So I offered it to her anyway, a little annoyed that she asked, and a little annoyed that I have a hard time saying no to people. I hope that the next time a stranger asks her for an inconvenience, she treats them the way she wanted to be treated in this situation.

At the end of the flight, she reached through the seat, tapped me on the shoulder, and offered me a Starbucks gift card. I declined a few times, but I could tell she felt really bad about the whole thing and this was going to make her feel a little better, so I finally took it. I have no idea how much is on it, not that it matters. It was kind of her.

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how long was this flight? i don’t understand people who are so co-dependent that they cannot be separated for what i assume is a flight for a few hours. i’d welcome the me time. i’d have said no and been super annoyed that i was asked in the first place.

It was about two hours of flight, maybe two and a half from gate to gate. Not too long.

yeah, completely unnecessary.

even with a longer flight, it’s completely unnecessary though.

would have super said no, fuck off.

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Fancy!!!

I remember when I was maybe age 14 or 15 and one random summer weekday I really super-duper wanted my mom to drive me to [somewhere vitally important*] when she got home from work. I called her at work around 9:00 AM or so, begging and pleading.

Nope… she was in grad school and she had a paper due tomorrow and she had to type it tonight. No dice.

I looked at the kitchen table. There was the typewriter and a box of papers and her hand-written paper, waiting to be typed. Desperate times…

It took me the entire freaking day to type her paper (maybe 10-12 pages, double spaced?), and I probably went through triple the paper that was actually in the finished product, but I got it done. My mom was so amazed and thrilled that she didn’t have to do it that she was like “yep; I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go!”

I had to change the ribbon too… PITA but I’d used the typewriter just enough that I knew how to do it.

(*So important I no longer recall where :joy:)

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