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Tesla Owner Who Sacrificed His Model S To Save Another Driver Gets Surprise From Elon Musk

Mmmh, that sweet good publicity. It's even better than bad publicity.

I lost a second button off my coat. I managed to retrieve both buttons with the intention of sewing them back on, but the sewing kit lay untouched on my desk for a week.

I am very much a creature of habit. I do certain things, I don't do things that I don't usually do. I'm not used to sewing buttons, so the prospect of doing so struck me as terribly onerous.

Even so, it's still cold here in the Pacific NorthLeft. Leaving my jacket unbuttoned was not only cold, it permitted my shirt to get rained on.

When I got out of bed tonight I was completely overcome with self doubt with respect to my next consulting gig. I wrote an email to two of the client's people to tell them so, but that I had done lots of projects that were far more difficult. That is, my self-doubt does not make sense.

I went out for coffee and started to feel better.

When I came home I was determined to sew those buttons, dammit, and I did.

It wasn't hard at all.

This is a problem I have: the prospect of doing many kinds of work strikes me - ahead of time - as far more difficult than it really is when I'm doing it. So I put off starting it.

I worked an entire quarter at AMCC without doing a damn thing, then checked myself into a psychiatric hospital where they told me I had Attention Deficit Disorder.

I have no lack of attention, but I don't do well at volitionally directing it. If I can get started at a task I have no problem carrying on, but I have a hard time getting started.

That I know this is the case doesn't make it go away.

New diesel Chevy Cruze can go an estimated 702 miles on a single tank of fuel

The 52 mpg highway fuel economy numbers apply to the six-speed manual transmission diesel Cruze, which gets 30 mpg on city streets. The car also comes in a 9-speed automatic transmission version, which returns 47 mpg on the highway and 31 mpg in the city with start-stop technology regulating the engine.

My client asked me to bid on a second job. It requires a deep understanding of USB. I didn't understand much of the spec, so I ordered "USB: The Universal Serial Bus" by Benjamin David Lunt.

Just now I emailed my client to tell them that I'd need to study the book before I could produce a sensible bid. I said of course I would charge them for reading it, but I needed some time before I could produce that bid and get started on the actual job.

I expect they'll respect me for being honest but I fear they'll shitcan me for being an idiot.

It couldn't be any more difficult than firewire, which I was once quite good at.

Mod journal flamebait!!!

Why does the United States still let 12-year-olds get married?

This is an opinion piece in WaPo written by the founder of a nonprofit. archive.is link because I figured out WaPo has a 5 article/month limit paywall.

While most states set 18 as the minimum marriage age, exceptions in every state allow children younger than 18 to marry, typically with parental consent or judicial approval. How much younger? Laws in 27 states do not specify an age below which a child cannot marry.

Unchained At Last, a nonprofit I founded to help women resist or escape forced marriage in the United States, spent the past year collecting marriage license data from 2000 to 2010, the most recent year for which most states were able to provide information. We learned that in 38 states, more than 167,000 children — almost all of them girls, some as young 12 — were married during that period, mostly to men 18 or older. Twelve states and the District of Columbia were unable to provide information on how many children had married there in that decade. Based on the correlation we identified between state population and child marriage, we estimated that the total number of children wed in America between 2000 and 2010 was nearly 248,000.

Turns out R2D*2pa$tramimacaronomy is doing just fine stateside, for the moment...

They're even paying me to prepare my bid. That is, I'm getting paid just to tell them how much it will cost them.

This is really good news. These people really like me.

This despite the fact that I constantly feel like I'm fucking up. Sometimes I don't go in to work because I sleep all day. But as a consultant, I'm not particularly required to show up, I'm only required to deliver a quality product on time.

Which I did, for my first project. It had a hard deadline because our customers were scheduled to go to manufacturing March 1. They wanted a whole month for QA so I absolutely had to finish by February 1, which I did.

Everyone at the client company likes me. I like them too. It's good to work for good people, that makes a lot of difference to me.

I bought a Mac Mini with some of the money from my first paycheck. I worked at home tuesday and wednesday, and will work at home tomorrow (Friday). I brought one of their evaluation boards from work to use at home.

In other news, I busted a button off my coat. I briefly considered purchasing an entirely new coat, then thought "What a colossal waste of money, I'm not that lazy, I'll sew the button back on." Then I braved a torrential rain shower as I went to but a sewing kit on the way home today.

Republicans vote to rebuke Elizabeth Warren, saying she impugned Sessions's character

Republican Senators Vote to Formally Silence Elizabeth Warren

Sen. McConnell Refuses to Let Sen. Warren Speak About Attorney General Nominee Sessions - YouTube

Rule XIX - Senate Rules Committee - US Senate

Micron 2017 Roadmap Detailed: 64-layer 3D NAND, GDDR6 Getting Closer, & CEO Retiring

Worth a look, but not a submission just yet.

I recently griped that I sleep more than anyone, but that all that sleep does not make me feel rested. Actually it makes me feel terrible; when I first wake up in the morning I feel as if I've been beaten with a baseball bat.

Back in the day I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, a phenomenon in which one stops breathing during sleep. It partially wakes you, reducing the quality of sleep.

But I had surgery for it in 2008. As far as I could tell the surgery worked. Actually for some time my sleep was just dandy.

In response to my comment, AC recommended I take Vitamin D. Now I am skeptical of nutritional supplement treatment, but at this point I'm willing to try waving a dead chicken over it. I googled it and found what appeared to be a credible report of peer-reviewed research that indicates Vitamin D deficiency diminishes the quality of sleep.

For several months I've had a low-sugar, low-cholesterol diet. I'm pretty sure that diet is low in Vitamin D as well. It's been a cold winter here in the Northern Hemisphere; I haven't had much of the exposure to the Sun that causes our skin to make Vitamin D.

I stopped at the drugstore on the way to work just now and bought some 2000 IU Vitamin D3 tablets. I also got Vitamin B12. The article also recommended Vitamin B5 but the store didn't carry it. I took my first doses when I stopped at Peet's for a coffee.

A while back I complained to my witch doctor that I often slept all day, that no amount of sleep made me feel rested. In response he prescribed the antidepressant Welbutrin. It's working partially, in that, if I didn't have to get up, I would sleep until noon.

My present contract has a long commute. I don't have a key to the office. To work a full day I need to get out of bed at 7:00 AM. It is uncommon that I manage to do that.

I just bought a Mac Mini. Soon I should be able to work from home, but even so it's not going to work if I'm sleeping all the time, especially if that sleep is not restful.

Canada's Trudeau decides not to poke U.S. 'grizzly bear' for now

Just play it cool and use Canada's great strength: utter invisibility despite sharing a border with the United States.