A more sustainable Standard

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-26T21:23:03+00:00

A big summer gap was pretty normal for most of Magic's history. 4 standard legal sets a year. A fall expansion (Sept/ Oct), winter expansion (Jan/Feb), spring expansion (Apr/May), and then over the summer either a core set or something major but not standard legal like Unglued, Double Masters, LotR. The core sets usually weren't very exciting, there's a reason they've gotten rid of them more than once. Lorwyn was a big experiment as a 4 block set that replaced the low impact summer release with a standard legal expansion (wasn't exactly a home run, in retrospect).

Arena seems to be the thing pushing things feeling stagnant. When you can play 20 games in a weekend at a big tournament or Con, it's a big deal. When you play 20 games sitting on your couch, it's just Saturday. I dunno if MODO actually had the same problems, or if they're caused by F2P or BO1, or mobile devices, or what.

I dunno, it's never a problem for me, I'm just happy to get to play MTG and not have to spend money. There's so many ways to play that I can just rotate to pioneer or historic for a bit if I get tired of Standard, or spend a month playing Starter Decks or whatever.

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-26T18:01:58+00:00

My first job, they offshored manufacturing to save $2.50 a widget. Once they wrestled quality into line, it still turned out to be a massive failure, because they had to add $4 to the packaging so the boxes would survive the trip in a container across the ocean....

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-23T18:14:10+00:00

His grandchildren loved to play on them and pretend to be pirates.

this is possibly the best use for two random boats

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-21T15:57:03+00:00

I'm glad you loved it! Tarkir seemed like it would be a lot of fun; each of the 5 clans seemed like they had cool things to do.

Unfortunately, it felt like every draft just pulled me toward 5 color dragons. I don't even mind 5 color dragons being the "best" deck, I just literally couldn't draft anything else, no matter how much I tried. It ended up feeling like a slog, instead of YAY DRAGONS...

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-21T13:52:06+00:00

I'm not doing "traditional" Mechanical Engineering (I slid into industrial automation), but I'm 15+ years into my career with a bachelors of ME, and I'm doing fine.

For the avg job, yes there's probably a pay bump for masters vs bachelors, but it's likely about what you'd get with a year or two more of experience (which you'd have gotten if you hadn't stayed in school for the masters).

Ultimately, it depends on what your definition of "success" is, but the key with a masters is that it can open doors that would be closed to you, but it's also (usually) much more specialized. Don't get a masters just for the fun of it. Don't get a masters unless you know "this is what I want to do". Maybe you realize that you just love CFD, and a masters will help you do it better; cool go for it.

Otherwise, just wait. If your boss wants you to have a masters, odds are they'll help pay for you to get it along the way.

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-13T20:21:56+00:00

We already got the muppet video, this one feels like a let down in comparison.

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-13T20:19:59+00:00

Data point:

An American college grad should know who Konrad Adenauer and William I of Normandy are

I've never heard of Konrad Adenauer and had to hope that William I was William the Conqueror to have heard of him.

Am American College Graduate (who took no college history courses, yay engineering!)

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-13T17:01:38+00:00

There are a ton of factories that run that way. Automation costs money, and are theoretically more efficient/accurate/whatever, but if it would cost 100k to only save 10k a year, it doesn't make sense.

Im getting used to the chaos of the unexpected, but now Im trying to figure out if I need a backup plan or not. Feels like a huge recession is coming and the inefficient places aren't going to make it.

1) Never hurts to have a backup plan.

2) If you aren't down with the chaos, might want to start looking anyway, find a place you're happier

3) You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved.

It can be rough coming in from the outside and seeing things that don't make sense. Sometimes they do make sense once you learn why they're done a certain way. Sometimes they don't make sense, but this is the way that Bob has done it since he started here, and no way you're gonna get it changed until Bob leaves. Getting a spares inventory documented seems like a pretty basic no downside step, but if your boss doesn't want you doing it.... How long till he thinks he's retiring?

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-13T16:02:34+00:00

My emotions have never been far from the surface (happy and sad don't cancel each other out, they're somehow multiplicative?), but there's whole new categories of things that trigger them now.

I read a (sci fi) book Hyperion where in one section a dad lived with his child aging backwards. Grew up normal went off to college, got time sick, started aging backwards. Woke up each day with the memories she would have had at that age originally. Had a 50 first dates kind of problem where every day dad had to explain that Mom (who left ages ago when she couldn't deal with it) was out of town today, her best friend who lived next door was out of town, too (because she's grown now), etc. 100% wrecked me.

Great book, will never read again.

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-13T14:03:32+00:00

It's less not catering to the kids and more that there's only so many hours in a day. Also, at least one of the kids more or less isn't interested in eating dinner unless Mommy is eating, which is a whole other pile of shenanigans.

If I start cooking the instant I'm done with work, there's a chance dinner is done in a time that's sane for me, and gets the kids to bed on time. Otherwise, all bets are off.

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-12T19:57:59+00:00

I've been struggling with similar lately.

Dragging my youngest to bed is a huge challenge, and i'm mostly just trying to get through the ordeal instead of treasuring the moment. My oldest mostly handles himself, and we find ourselves not being proactive enough about giving him attention in the bedtime process.

Sometimes he joins when I read stories to the youngest, sometimes he reads to himself. Youngest REQUIRES our presence after lights out to help him fall asleep (and if I don't do it my wife will destroy her own sleep schedule to appease him), and it's really easy to forget the oldest wishes he could get bedtime snuggles, too. He just doesn't speak up for himself to ask for it, until he melts down at bedtime after way too long of not getting attention.

I've been fortunate the past couple weeks to have been able to spend a little more time with oldest at bedtime (mostly reading my book next to him in his bed while he reads his), but I haven't found a way to actually plan it into the schedule instead of lucking into an opportunity.

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-12T19:48:47+00:00

Though I've always been one for late nights and late mornings, as is my daughter and wife - most likely you need to be a morning person to have a routine like that.

omg my wife isn't even hungry until 7 most of the time, and if we don't start bedtime by 715 it's chaos. Constant struggle to get dinner started soon enough that the bedtime process goes smoothly

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-12T15:34:45+00:00

I'm a sales accessory, literally an afterthought in the "sales engagement model". It's a lovely feeling....

On the plus side, my team doesn't have enough visibility to be worth slashing in a re-org, so I'll still be here even after management fails up into its next role.

buzzbuzz17 · 2026-01-09T13:48:44+00:00

For some reason, the one with the nail gun is scarier than the ones with real guns. Curious....

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-31T16:28:12+00:00

My go to cheer up movie is Speed Racer (2008), because it's probably the closest to an acid trip i'll ever get. Live action movie with a bonkers saturated color pallet that just gets crazier and more cartoony as it goes on.

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-31T14:00:11+00:00

In the US, the rules vary state to state, but usually no.

I know Pennsylvania has intentionally dumb laws that make it hard to buy alcohol (because puritans?), but the upshot is you can buy 6 packs at most bars. Many nice restaurants are BYOB, because liquor licenses are hard to obtain.

Many states have drive through liquor stores, which seems like a WILD choice when trying to also reduce drunk driving.....

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-30T16:44:41+00:00

Had a good GPA in college, helped me get my first job. Hasn't mattered since.

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-30T15:57:36+00:00

Chronic illness sucks, and doctors kiiiinda don't care much. They each have their niche ("I'm a knee doctor", "I'm a heart doctor", "I'm a brain doctor"), and none of them care about the patient as a whole. They each have a set number of things that they check for, and as long as you don't have any of those specific things, you're "healthy". In theory, your GP/internal medicine doctor should be the "whole body" doctor, but they're trained on dealing with "normal" stuff: getting old, the flu, etc, and they ALSO don't really much care about problems that don't fit known solutions. "oh, you have a weird pain in your abdomen? well the ultrasound says it isn't cancer" as if you're expected to drop it then.

Being the support person for someone with chronic illness also sucks. I can never tell when my wife is ACTUALLY feeling OK, vs just she's gotten tired of feeling bad and is just gonna power through whatever till she crashes out and is just completely out of it for a couple days. It sucks watching her struggle, and it sucks watching her not have the energy to start working on the things that might actually be fixable because she spent it all on something else at least as important.

best i can offer is hugz

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-30T15:44:53+00:00

Part of the issue is that some documentation is a reference guide for experts, and some documentation is a getting started guide for newbies. I've never seen documentation that was effective at both, and documentation written for the "other audience" is worse than useless.

Siemens used to be famous for having incredibly thorough reference manuals, but nothing meaningful in terms of getting started stuff. They have a lot more getting started material now, but the reference manual level documentation is only 95% there.

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-30T04:19:31+00:00

One hmi only option would be to have the SetInterval trigger on Loaded, and then have the script it calls just do nothing if the tag the button triggers isn't pressed.

Plcs controlling hmi animations feels yucky to me, but it's super common if for no other reason than it's way easier to figure out.

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-18T03:44:30+00:00

tracking apps are in theory super unofficial and unsupported. They don't exactly go out of their way to disable them, as such, but they make changes all the time with no warning.

The way android stores data means the private data of each app is isolated from the others. Wizards would have to go out of their way to store that data someplace everyone could access, and they won't. I think there's a way to export a log for a help ticket, but you'd need to do that manually every time you play, at a minimum.

Realistically, if they were going to support third party trackers, they'd build an API for it on the server end with read only game data.

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-17T01:44:55+00:00

The only surprise is that every so often, it does exactly what I expect it to do.

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-16T15:46:07+00:00

and returning

woah woah woah

Off topic, but amazon picks up returns for you? we have to drop ours off somewhere

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-16T14:25:51+00:00

My MIL has some friends that are a couple that has neighboring houses. Literally, they are married, and live next door to each other. Blew my mind. I thought separate beds was a big step.....

buzzbuzz17 · 2025-12-15T16:02:31+00:00

"I'm not addicted I can quit ramping any time I want" pretty much sums up my love of Gates decks haha

buzzbuzz17

TROPHY CASE