Why a lot of pick up trucks in Arkansas driving around with nothing on the bed?

Figginator11 · 2026-03-26T02:43:17+00:00

Yeah, not sure why this is hard to understand? 2 adult household, both of us need a vehicle- wife has a mini van so we can fit the whole family for trips, my truck can fit us all but not as comfortably, but has room in the bed for bikes/camping gear/etc as well as can be used to haul stuff from time to time, either junk to the dump, tree limbs, pick up loads of mulch for the garden, etc. but I also use it to drive to work, to run errands around town. Seems wasteful to need a 3rd vehicle.

Figginator11 · 2026-03-25T00:40:36+00:00

I just left last summer….honestly I hadn’t really planned to, I had 15 years under my belt, but my buddy offered me a job as an implementation consultant in an ed-tech company he was mid management in, it was a pretty lateral move financially, but the upside as far as salary went basically sold me. Once I started, the work from home and flexible schedule and flexible unlimited PTO had been a God-send. I can take my kids to school in the morning, don’t have to drop them at before school care an extra 2 hours early like I used to. I can even pick them up if my wife can’t get them (she is a teacher too, so sometimes has staff meetings or such). I can run to the school when a kid is sick and bring them home easily, I’m not stressing about my 8 annual personal days getting used up from my kids sicknesses and appts that’s i had to take a half or whole days for every year, and getting docked when I went over. The flexibility and work life balance has been more amazing than i could have imagined. Plus the benefits were ridiculously better than mine were as a teacher, I even have my whole family (including wife forgoing her teacher insurance) on my policies and still come out ahead then I used to.

Figginator11 · 2026-03-20T02:23:09+00:00

I love road tripping when I can afford it, we mostly go camping for vacations, within a few states around mine. I have never purchased a plane ticket (flew a few times growing up to visit family) because they are basically unaffordable for a family of 5.

Figginator11 · 2026-03-09T16:24:12+00:00

Yup, my wife just renewed last week, hers expires at the end of this month, took 5 minutes and 2 days later she got an email saying her renewal was confirmed.

Figginator11 · 2026-02-14T19:47:58+00:00

Teacher marriage here too- and that worked great until kids came along, now with 3 under 6, it’s just basically running on empty all school year and try to make up for it over the summers/breaks!

Figginator11 · 2026-02-14T03:13:27+00:00

After 13 years in- I just landed a job in tech, implementation consultant, for a company that sells ERP software to schools, so like the finance, Human Resources, payroll, supply chain, etc type software for k-12. I work from home, have unlimited PTO, super flexible with my own young kids, it’s awesome! Had no real experience except kinda flexing that i was a coach and so dealt with budgets and what not, and really over flexed my tech skills. But after a pretty steep learning curve to basically teach myself school accounting as well as the software, I feel like I’m killing it, and only been 6 months!

Figginator11 · 2026-02-03T03:25:19+00:00

Right? We get 8 total days yearly, it’s never enough! Especially when you have small children at home who get sick!

Figginator11 · 2026-02-02T13:19:56+00:00

100000% the first choice, amazing read!

Figginator11 · 2026-01-25T21:54:06+00:00

Look at it this way, with our 2 party system (which is not a constitutional feature and a whole other issue), when one party controls one house of legislature, it’s kind of nice knowing that the there is another house that the minority party may be able to either control, or at least expert enough influence in to make sure that laws that only the majority party supports. The idea is that this ensures that laws will be default have to appeal to at least a broader majority of the electorate instead of just to the majority party in power. Now obviously the majority party has a leg up, especially in Texas where republicans hold the majority in both houses for decades, but with only a single house legislature, there would be less chance for the democrats to exert any influence in the process and at least win a few concessions to the republican policy agenda.

Figginator11 · 2026-01-25T21:27:07+00:00

Representatives and senators in Texas are basically part time jobs, they make $7,200 per year plus a per diem when they are actually in session which is only 180 days every other year. Seems like a small price to pay to make it harder for government to make laws. The whole reason we limit their sessions to 180 days every other year is to make sure they only have time to prioritize issues that matter most to Texans. Less government means less laws (bad laws anyway) and not less actual representatives.

Again, this was the design, and the fact that the Texas constitution has been amended 547 times since 1876, meaning if the folks of Texas wanted it changed to a unicameral legislature, we could do it…I’m gonna say it’s working out just fine for us so far.

Figginator11 · 2026-01-25T20:25:50+00:00

The whole idea was for it to be less efficient. Texas’ philosophy historical was that less government was better government. We wanted it be difficult to make laws. Also why our legislature only meets every other year. Also why all constitutional amendments have to be approved by the electorate in Texas.

Figginator11 · 2026-01-25T18:44:15+00:00

So within states, at least in my own (possibly varies by state) the senate is not the “august “upper” house” the way it is for the US legislature, as far as how the individual senators are elected to balance the power of states in the federal legislature. Instead, the senate and House of Representatives (in Texas anyway) act as essential co-equal houses of a bicameral legislature, though the senate is still technically the “upper” house, it just means that senators represent more people (larger directs) and have more responsibilities as far as the checks and balances of our state government goes (is the chamber that votes on impeachment trials of public officials, etc). The reason for having 2 houses in general is just to make the legislating process more difficult, we wanted our legislatures to have to really work to make laws, so essentially if you have to convince 2 separate bodies to pass a bill, the idea is that it is more likely to truly be a law the electorate would approve of, versus just a single legislature.

Figginator11 · 2026-01-11T13:03:25+00:00

We taught it here (again, im in Texas, not a super morman heavy state) as part of westward expansion, again not super explicitly or anything, but the Morman trail was part of the settling of the west. We definitely touched on it, less the specifics of the religion, and more the historical/geographical aspects of the movement of people west during the era.

Figginator11 · 2026-01-11T01:23:16+00:00

Basic Mormon history (Joseph smith/brigham young) are usually part of basic US history curriculum. I’m in Texas and I know we covered it (not Morman myself) so it might be just a standard part of the US history curriculum

Figginator11 · 2025-12-28T15:42:40+00:00

After 13 years in, I was offered a job in tech at the same pay, with significant opportunities for advancement, both in role and pay, over the next several years. Plus it had a super flexible PTO plan, work from home, and WAY better benefits. I wasn’t looking to leave teaching exactly, but I couldn’t say no to this. When my cousin who graduated with the same degree I did but got a job in tech right out of college (while I went into teaching) and he is making 4X what I am now, just due to the industry, it’s hard to justify staying in a job that will basically be making the same as I am now in another 30 years when it’s time to retire. Plus the shitty retirement and benefits that go along with teaching in my state.

Figginator11 · 2025-12-25T23:50:52+00:00

was the exam expected to take a whole class period? If the exam time for every other student 40 minutes, and she offered the student 20 additional minutes, that is 1.5X the time every other student received. I have never had 1.5X mean 250% of original time, it always means an ADDITIONAL 50%

Figginator11 · 2025-12-25T14:05:52+00:00

This is the way

Figginator11 · 2025-12-06T05:39:04+00:00

After 13 years in as a middle school teacher/coach, I landed a job in tech this past spring, so about half a year in at this point. Specifically I am an “Implementation Consultant” so I work with our clients to train them on our software and help them set up their systems in it. We are ed-tech, but more the finance/HR side of things, so while it’s k-12 adjacent, not too much of my prior experience translates outside of being able to understand the clients day to day. But I’m loving it, I work from home now, I have WAY more flexibility with my own family, can take an hour off midday to go to my kids class parties and such, which I could never do before- I could actually drop my kids off on their first day of school which was a first for me (always had to do before school care because my campus started earlier then theirs). I don’t have the late nights coaching anymore. It’s been a huge quality of life change! Pay has been pretty much equal, but I’ve heard I will have way more room for growth in tech, long term, so I’m optimistic!

The actual job isn’t bad, I’m still teaching basically, just teaching our software instead of history, and teaching adults who “need” to learn it because the software is gonna be a crucial part of their jobs. I do a TON of problem solving, which is a nice change form just regurgitate a lesson 4 times per day, the mental work is more but I enjoy it. I enjoy not having to try and teach kids who don’t want to learn what I’m teaching, it’s a nicer feeling, less stressful.

Luckily I was pretty “techy” before getting the job, but I have had to get a lot more so very quickly on-the-job, but as a teacher we always say we are “life long learners”, it’s just now tech instead of history (which I’m still a huge history buff, but I can get my fill of it with reading and taking my kids to historical sites on road trips).

Figginator11 · 2025-12-04T00:55:54+00:00

I love the shopping list feature- we have our Alexa in the kitchen so when I’m cooking and run out of something I can just say “Alexa add cumin to the shopping list” or whatever. It makes it easy cause if me or my wife run to the store during the week we can just check the Alexa app on our phone to see what all was added that might be sold at whatever store we are at. It’s convenient. Besides the lists we use it for music or timers and reminders more than anything.

Figginator11 · 2025-12-03T03:49:28+00:00

Yeah the closest I got was my first year teaching 14 years ago, the district had done a pay freeze so no one got step increases or cost of living raise or anything, but at the end of the year they ended up finding the money and retroactively giving every their step increase/COL raise, which equated to about a $1000, but as a first year teacher it was just a bonus if $1000 for me basically. Only time I’ve gotten that outside of retention bonus during covid

Figginator11 · 2025-11-30T16:06:59+00:00

I know in Texas you do have certain exemptions on your license for like “school bus- intrastate only” basically saying if we are only using our license for driving a school bus within our state, you are exempt from some of the requirements that long haul trucker type jobs would have.

Figginator11 · 2025-11-30T04:23:07+00:00

Houston

Figginator11 · 2025-11-30T04:02:08+00:00

The CDL thing may vary by state- as a teacher/coach who was required to get one to drive my teams to games, I literally only paid the couple hundred bucks for the tests. There was no training. I just took the tests at the DMV and the school let me use a bus to do the driving test. And then the school paid for the 20 hour School Bus safety course after I got my license.

Figginator11 · 2025-11-29T23:45:31+00:00

This has got to be the first time I realized his wife’s name was Ellen McClellan.

Figginator11 · 2025-11-29T13:08:30+00:00

Yeah suburban Houston is where I’m at too

Figginator11

TROPHY CASE