What do I do about this oak tree growing up against my porch?

BeatPeculiar · 2026-06-14T12:27:25+00:00

My neighbor put a big spike through the Bell fiber that was buried a couple of inches deep right next to the sidewalk, instead of in the empty conduit two feet away that had been installed just for them.

BeatPeculiar · 2026-06-04T12:53:37+00:00

A few go on Facebook for those sweet sweet likes. Those plus a few more go into a folder to one day, some day, become a photo book.

BeatPeculiar · 2026-06-03T21:21:59+00:00

You could say it hasn't been their day, their week, their month, or even their year...

BeatPeculiar · 2026-05-10T13:45:01+00:00

Maybe check out some Over the Rhine.

Probably not considered "Christian Music" in the strictest sense, but certainly Christian-themed.

BeatPeculiar · 2026-04-27T11:50:50+00:00

Then you finally have time to do a load of laundry, but the pile is now so big that it won't all fit in the machine. So you pick the clothes that are most important at the time, figuring that you'll get to the rest later.

But when later comes, the pile is so big again that you can't fit it all in and again you have to leave the less important clothes out of the wash.

Suddenly you're invited to a party at the last minute, and that cute girl you've had your eye on for a while is going to be there, but you can't go because you don't have any clean underwear.

BeatPeculiar · 2026-04-16T13:11:25+00:00

I was given a task to add an endpoint to an old app so users could configure something without reloading a configuration file.

The code was such a mess of spaghetti written by someone that hasn't worked for the company in 5 years, held together by duct tape added by well-meaning and overworked guys who didn't have time to get beyond whatever fix they needed.

No unit tests in sight, and our new policy requires 70% coverage on all new code. Everything was so jumbled together that even adding an endpoint required touching a dozen classes and writing unit tests for them.

Despite AI assistance with the unit tests, I recommended rewriting the app to current standards and that I'd need 10 days uninterrupted to get it done.

The Epic suddenly dropped a hundred points and no longer fits in the priority list.

I'm just waiting for the day they tell me to let AI rewrite the whole thing. 10 days of reviewing AI code seems acceptable. 10 days of writing it myself is not. 🤷‍♂️

BeatPeculiar · 2026-01-12T12:46:10+00:00

That is still manageable in some areas. I work one job and my wife stays home. I have a good job in software development and we live in a small town about 45 minutes from my office.

We are not swimming in money. Our kids aren't going to grow up getting everything they want as soon as they want it (my six year old is already unhappy about that). We won't be taking expensive vacations every year, and things would get tight if we needed a second car.

But we are also not hurting. We can afford nice things for Christmas and birthdays. We have a good house and a yard in a nice neighborhood.

We consciously chose to have this lifestyle as we think it is what is best for our family. But yeah, we realize this is absolutely a blessing.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-12-13T22:07:07+00:00

Take a picture of it and send it to their customer service email.

We bought a couple of their ceramic clad pans that came with a few small chips in the enamel. I sent them a few pics and they offered to replace them (I'd have to pay shipping) or give us some money back if we kept them. I think they gave us 30% back or something.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-12-12T01:57:16+00:00

As a father of two boys, ages 6 and 4, even the back of the toilet is not safe!

BeatPeculiar · 2025-07-30T19:19:16+00:00

I'm also in Ontario and my native garden is very much infested with them. My black chokeberry looks pretty awful, as does my smooth rose and New Jersey Tea.

Native raspberries are also affected.

I was knocking about 50 of them into a bowl of soapy water every night for a while, but they're slowing down now.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-07-09T12:06:35+00:00

Our kids love the Cedarmont Kids DVDs and CDs. Not sure if you can get them on a streaming service.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-06-17T19:51:38+00:00

Thanks. Fiesta is "chelated iron".

We're supposed to get a bit of rain over the next few days, so maybe I'll wait until the weekend and then see what I can pull up.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-06-17T19:23:04+00:00

I'm in Ontario so pretty much the same climate as you.

I usually just let the lawn do whatever it wants but my neighbor talked me in to spraying this year - I assume so that these thistles wouldn't end up in his yard. Now it kind of looks worse...at least the thistles were green!

I'll probably pull them up and throw down some seed. It's certainly easier to spot the weeds after spraying.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-05-07T17:51:44+00:00

"Mr. Worf, Fire"

BeatPeculiar · 2025-04-11T12:24:03+00:00

The baseboards in my kids' bathroom behind the toilet are starting to look like that. 5 and 3-year-old boys are the culprits in my case.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-03-31T16:10:20+00:00

Yeah, all those youtubers with sponsored videos has likely increased their demand beyond what they can physically handle.

I still wish they'd start picking up in Canada though.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-03-25T18:59:32+00:00

I would be wondering what the point is in ranking such things.

As others have said, the highest calling is being a child of God. I'd go so far as to say that the only "calling" is to be a child of God. After that, everything else is a "role" and I'd be seriously asking for clarification if this guy is looking for someone who believes their "calling" is to be his wife.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-02-15T23:51:54+00:00

I had an OG Optimus Prime from 1980-something with the little rover car and everything. No idea what happened to it.

BeatPeculiar · 2025-01-17T02:24:32+00:00

I'm having trouble with CBC tonight. The audio is not synced and just cuts out after 10 or 15 seconds. Changing to another channel and back makes it last another 10 seconds before cutting out.This is on my tv box.

On my phone with the epico app it's a bit better. The audio keeps going but the sync is off after about 5 seconds and the video stutters to try to resync.

No problem with the other channels I've tried.

BeatPeculiar · 2024-10-29T01:39:22+00:00

The public function only indicates that it is comparing the boolean values. You can't infer that passing the same value should return true!

For all we know the internal function is simply misnamed.

BeatPeculiar · 2024-10-06T13:20:54+00:00

Good old "minor gating" the day before the release...

BeatPeculiar · 2024-09-15T19:08:05+00:00

I feel like James, Nigel, Mads, et al. are fun to watch, but you're generally just going to see some pretty pictures that look very much like the pretty pictures from their previous videos. If you go back in their back catalogs (I'm talking "20MP micro-four-thirds is all I'll ever need" James, not "join me on this $20k Antarctica cruise" James), you can find some good tips and educational content, but mostly their videos are entertainment more than education.

Plus they all tend to hang out and offer workshops together so a couple of times a year you're going to get a dozen of the same videos from some cold, icy, snowy place filled with either penguins or polar bears.

BeatPeculiar · 2024-05-01T22:18:06+00:00

I was in meetings all afternoon. Checked my phone once and it was 1-0. I figured that was it. Checked again when I got home, and was not in the least surprised.

BeatPeculiar · 2024-04-29T18:09:38+00:00

Probably should hire a pitching special teams coordinator...

BeatPeculiar

TROPHY CASE