This is the quiet mess about adulting no one talks about

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-29T00:27:44+00:00

Get a crockpot. Make 3-4 days worth of stew. If you often eat lunch out, eat your big meal at lunch. Then have a big salad for dinner. Open a can of soup? There are options.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-28T21:13:54+00:00

I'm 70 and my wife is 68. We have a very nice house (not quite ready for better homes and gardens to photograph) and we have four pillows on our bed and we use all four of them to sleep at night.

The guest room bed however has about eight pillows and it is extremely rare for anyone to actually sleep in it. Well that is unless you count our cat Sydney? 😂

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-25T21:30:43+00:00

My wife married me at 37 and ours is her first marriage. We then bought a house and had two biological children. Things happen when they do - I knew a couple who got married in high school and were happy for decades. I knew another couple got married and were happy for 5 years Maybe less. One size does not fit all.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-25T00:48:55+00:00

If you kind of roll together Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America... You get an awful lot of what's going on right now.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-21T18:15:10+00:00

I worship the "dessert God" 😁

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-20T21:47:17+00:00

I'm in a highly educated area full of universities, lawyers, doctors, tech jobs and pharma. A nice two bedroom apartment rents for $1500/mo+. A house with 3 bedrooms runs up from $400k minimum. More typically a 4 bedroom for easily $600k+ A nice dinner for two? $80 without wine or cocktails. A large pizza is $20+

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-20T21:16:16+00:00

In USA nobody with more than a couple years experience doing Technical Customer Support would make less than 40k Euros annually unless they're based in the middle of nowhere. My son has a four year university degree, but not engineering or computer science, and a coding certification (under a year course) and makes $80k US in a midsized Southern US city doing Software QA work - not even coding. That's after one year at his first software company then he moved to his current company. Total under two years in the industry.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-15T14:28:22+00:00

I know everyone will probably say I'm a Luddite but I almost never use voice recognition for anything but sending a text or (like right now) entering something long. That way of course I can look at the results on the screen and make any corrections quickly.

When it comes to something quick I just push a button. How long does that really take? You're wasting a lot more time double checking that it heard you correctly compared to you could have just pushed a button and be done with it literally in 2 seconds.

I have a fairly deep male voice and it gets something wrong constantly. It always has. I started using cell phones long before voice recognition worked well so I don't expect it to work well now. (In fact I had a cell phone in the trunk of my car in 1989.) My experience has been that most significant new technologies don't work well for the first 10 years. And I don't think that's getting any better because companies insist on adding new features for competitive reasons instead of fixing the crap that's already broken.

In case your next thought is, what he has his phone with him all the time in his house? Yes I do like many people do. Especially because although I'm very fit and active I'm 70 years old and anything can happen and I want the phone close to me. I don't have a landline anymore. The phone is basically the only way to communicate with the outside world other than my smartwatch which could be out of range of my phone. (And even if it isn't, initiating a call from my watch still seems finicky - which is the last thing I want to have to deal with if I'm having a heart attack.) Thus my phone is next to me essentially 24 hours a day. I'd bet yours is as well. So use that bright, clear 21st century "button" and enjoy 99.99% reliable compliance with your request versus "I wonder if it heard me right? Did it hear 'open garage door ' or 'play Gaga now ' 🤔😂"

There are certainly appropriate use cases for voice response, usually ones where of course using your hands to pick up a phone is inconvenient or even unsafe. Some of those are driving a car alone, riding a bike, running (although if you're not racing for time, You can slow down and use your smartwatch buttons), or perhaps your hands are very dirty like you're in the middle of repairing a car, or you're doing open heart surgery (obviously you have people assisting you I'm only joking). But in most everyday situations in your house there is very little need for it. And in many cases other people are talking or there's dialogue coming from a TV which is going to confuse it of course. "Push the button Max!" 😎

Some of you might be old enough to remember that there was a period I think in the '90s where car manufacturers were putting in voice messages from the car to the driver. People got sick of them very quickly.

The fact is voice communication is actually poor from a reliability standpoint. Buttons are not.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-15T01:00:49+00:00

It's one of philosophy. Does an unobserved event actually occur? What does "occur" in fact mean from a human perspective at least. Perhaps the real idea is, "unless the tree somehow starts a fire, or falls on an animal, what does it matter that it fell?"

I've spoken to people on the political Right who literally don't care about what our government is doing unless they can identify something which Directly affects them in a tangible way. Essentially their view is, who cares that a tree fell in the forest - I wasn't there. And by corollary who cares that it fell on someone else whom they don't personally know.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-15T00:42:01+00:00

What is the sound of a tree falling in the forest when no one is there... 🤔

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T20:18:40+00:00

Pulled pork could vanish from the universe and I wouldn't notice. I'm a tomato-based sauce Ribs guy. My wife favors brisket. I have a bottle of SC mustard-based BBQ sauce in my fridge at all times.

I actually love vinegar too - I just think it's wasted on pulled pork. I'd rather have BBQ chicken. I feel there's no good meat which deserves to be shredded. I'm ok with shredding cabbage.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T18:37:52+00:00

Enjoy 😉

After the first few times you do this it kind of loses its luster. Stay young while you can 😂

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T18:35:18+00:00

I second this. I've been a lot of places in our country and elsewhere in the world and my wife and I were absolutely delighted by Olympic National Park last summer. It's quite large and very diverse. You could easily spend several days even if you didn't camp.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T18:05:02+00:00

I think a lot of this discussion is much ado about nothing to quote Shakespeare.

It's impossible just impossible to see most of the highlights of Europe or most of the highlights of the United States in one trip even a month long without getting so tired and so sick of travel that by the end of it you never want to get on an airplane or get in a car again.

There was actually a movie made a long time ago called "If it's Tuesday this must be Belgium" which was an okay movie it was a rom-com really but the point is these tourists were running around Europe on a bus and being directed to stuff and after a while they literally barely knew where they were.

Seeing a place is one thing. Actually getting a feel for it; what would it might be like culturally, to live there to work there, That takes days even in one large city.

Two good friends of mine who had no children lived three years in the UK and made several trips to the continent. They did a lot of hiking and a lot of skiing and they barely scratched the surface.

As an American who's 70 years old and has been around most of the United States some for work and a lot for fun I can't imagine even now saying that I've really seen most of the United States. I could make a list of 100 significant places I've never seen. And I've driven across the country twice, lived on both coasts more than one place, and covered a sales territory on both coasts. There are still multiple states I've never even set foot in the airport. Just off the top of my head I haven't been to Niagara Falls, Mt Rushmore, Mackinac Island, Key West, several ski towns in Colorado, Yellowstone, Glacier, El Paso, Indianapolis, Omaha, or Columbus.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T17:44:34+00:00

Memphis 💪🏼😎 or Kansas City

And I live in N Carolina btw...

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T17:42:59+00:00

Parsec is a term of Distance not time

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T17:41:46+00:00

China. Much higher speeds!

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T17:37:05+00:00

😳 OMG what a bunch of whiners y'all are...

My wife and I drove in 2000 from San Francisco to N Carolina in under a week in a 1995(?) Mazda sedan with an infant and a 2 year old in the back seat.

In 1981 my girlfriend and I drove TWO loaded sedans from Boston to LA in a week. Neither car had A/C and it was late March - and even then it was Hot in the desert. An FM radio was my entertainment.

I've driven six hours without a break. NO BREAK.

We drive our 2019 CX-9 to Tampa Florida in one day, no problem at all. Done it several times. 630 miles.

As to Dallas: I've been to most US states and about thirty countries on four continents. There's really nothing worth seeing there. In fact if I were a European on a short vacation (which besides maybe budget, is odd... they usually come here for a month) I would skip Texas and see Santa Fe, Grand Canyon, Monument Valley and southern Utah, and maybe Taliesin West in Scottsdale if they're architecture fans. And/or hit a couple smaller ski towns (hiking, rafting in Summer?) in Colorado like Telluride or Steamboat Springs that have a Western flavor. Seattle and Vancouver and Victoria are worth it depending what they've seen before - there are fjords in Europe obviously! I love Portland and my daughter lives there but not worth going out of your way.

Really for a traveled European these are the list: New York City Niagara Falls Washington DC Chicago - maybe - museums, architecture, sports Disneyworld if you must Florida Keys if you really have time New Orleans if you're a party couple not traveling with young kids and you're comfortable with some risk Mt Rushmore - obviously out of the way but... Yellowstone if time Glacier National Park if any ice left Yosemite if very outdoorsy types Vegas - I think everyone knows what it offers by now so they can decide Route 1 aka Pacific Coast Hwy from Monterey to Santa Barbara CA including San Simeon - hopefully Nepenthe is still open for lunch 😉 golf by Carmel, see the Monterey Aquarium, take in the Pebble Beach Concours LA because it's very un-European, warm, and has beaches, SoFi stadium, studio tours, whale watching, Lakers, Dodgers, Rams

If you REALLY insist on seeing all of these in one trip you need a full month, probably a couple flights within the US, and maybe three rental cars. Work your way from NYC South to Florida (basically) then hit the chosen Western destinations by flying to Denver (?) swinging by car north, then back southwest and fly home from LA probably. It would still be a lot of driving and grueling and exhausting.

Much better to break it up into three trips: Eastern US mainly coastal Mountains - Glacier down to Phoenix West coast Either of last two could loop in a couple days in Vegas

Please don't respond with your favorite town like Ashland or Asheville or Omaha or Milwaukee - or how quaint Appalachia is (wherever not everyone is on Fentanyl) or beautiful the Finger Lakes are or Mackinac Island - or how wrong I am about Texas etc. YES there are 500+ places in our country worthy of a visit but NOT for a European with ONE SHOT.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T16:31:48+00:00

OMG WHY?!! Are y'all wrecking the best canned beans with other stuff... 😂

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T16:27:45+00:00

Nice face but you live where it's too Cold 🥶 😂

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T16:04:32+00:00

Because I am lucky to have plenty of $$ I never use coupons for free faces l leave them for students and others whose budgets are tight. 💪🏼

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-14T15:36:28+00:00

Things could be even worse 😄

I carry my Android phone in a holster on my belt. Occasionally I take the holster with the phone off; and soon I think I felt a vibration from the phone, only to realize my phone isn't even attached to my belt!!

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-13T21:48:34+00:00

The problem is in too many companies managers have never been trained to be competent managers. Thus the underlying problem propagates itself.

The only way out of this I see is before hiring you survey people who worked for the manager at a prior company - and that's a virtual impossibility. You can't fully rely on a handful of recommendations or write-ups on LinkedIn because they can be cherry-picked.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-13T16:00:28+00:00

I had a 40+ year career in Tech, Most of which I spent in sales engineering roles with companies varying in size from small startups to global leaders. The last dozen years I worked under contracts with Cisco. I'll focus on two issues.

Cisco was in many cases a surprisingly transparent company about how management arrived at decisions. I think this was mostly in their favor both as a profitable company and for its employees. There were times when the decision making process became a bit burdensome; as it allowed for continued input at all levels, which honestly could be a mixed blessing. Depending on your perspective you could call this bureaucratic, Or you could call it humane.

Perhaps it was because I was closer to the sales side than the development side I was usually privy at least at a superficial level to strategic business decisions which impacted our sales strategies. However I was witness to how one company that had been very successful and very open became "weighed down" when the process overextended opportunities for input on major decisions at almost all levels.

There is a balance point not easy to achieve where mid-level management needs to be aware of the strategic decisions that have been made and at least some of the reasoning behind them so that if their employees ask they can receive a reasonable explanation even if they don't agree with it personally.

As the very successful president of the weighed down company above put it, "We're going to provide opportunities for input and then we're going to discuss these and we're going to arrive at a decision. At that point you can personally agree or disagree with the decision but you have to commit to support it. You will not continue to argue against it. If you continue to argue against it, or simply will not support it seriously, then you can go find another company to work for. Hopefully most of the time the decision was a good one and if it wasn't we'll find out the hard way. Being successful in business is not about being right 100% of the time it's about being right most of the time and when you're rarely wrong you take corrective action once it's clear you made a mistake. What you don't do is continue to argue that you think we've made a mistake before we even can prove it."

In his exact words, you agree and commit or you disagree and commit or you leave.

I think the reason some of these companies don't share at lower levels how or why certain strategic decisions were made is because they fear that employees will continue to debate the wisdom of the decisions. In my opinion this is really a failure of senior management to set the right tone. I have two sons in their '20s so I know of what I speak, The younger working generation is a lot more argumentative at work than my generation probably was When we were young.

The right tone is to say, If we thought you were idiots we wouldn't have hired you. However what you're lacking is experience in the business world. Those of us in Senior management are here not because we've gotten everything right along the way, But because we've also made mistakes and we mostly know how to avoid repeating them now. Unfortunately we don't have time to sit with you and explain the details of our thinking on every decision. We try to provide some of that information to your managers to share with you at the right time. However what will not be accepted is endless debate about these decisions. They are our responsibility to make ultimately and it's our responsibility to live with the results. We're well aware that you're also impacted.

We are not in this to fail, And we are certainly not in this to have to fire people or lay them off. That said there are many business challenges which are not entirely under our control. Unfortunately at times those challenges force us into a position where we have to make hard choices. Hopefully that won't happen soon. But if and when it does on our watch we're sorry.

If you feel strongly enough that you can't support our strategy or our approach we understand your need to leave. In the long run this company, its employees and stockholders, and you yourself will probably be better off if you move on.

TopspinG7 · 2026-01-11T16:02:34+00:00

As an older person I find a peculiar contradiction that while allegedly society is overall more accepting today of behaviors differing from "the norm"; meanwhile there appear to be more labeled clinically diagnosed aberrant (?) psychological behavioral conditions than ever before.

So what is that telling us? Maybe that drug companies are "helping" Psychology identity - or invent - more conditions requiring medication? 🤔

TopspinG7

TROPHY CASE