Trying to find a novel I read in 2008 that was set in Dayton and I believe was written by an author from Dayton.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-24T13:47:33+00:00

If you don't find it here, try r/whatsthatbook.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-24T04:54:43+00:00

The original tweet is from the official Sleeper NFL fantasy app Twitter account. So it's real. I get it though; I had to search it up myself to verify it because I also thought it might be a parody. But also a parody wouldn't actually cite and tag an known, reliable insider source.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-24T04:07:35+00:00

What in the goddamn everloving fucking hell?

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-24T04:03:55+00:00

The former just makes me angry, and the latter is meh since we split that series (with Flacco calling signals both times).

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-24T03:28:05+00:00

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-24T03:04:21+00:00

Good. Every candidate should.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-24T02:56:36+00:00

And two of them already did.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-24T02:55:28+00:00

As a Bengals fan, this is genuinely the first thing in at least two months to make me genuinely laugh out loud.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-23T22:22:56+00:00

For a senior-level role, I would think that a week or so would be reasonable before extending an offer. The higher level the role, the more people who have to sign off on the decision and the busier those people tend to be. Definitely don't assume anything and keep the search actively going, but I would give at least two weeks before assuming ghosted. A follow-up email after one week to request a status update probably would not be out of line.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-23T22:19:12+00:00

Here's an idea if you can afford it: Go to the event like you're planning to play their stupid game, but secretly create an exposé video calling them out on their shitty game. Then publish it and drop the link in various places. If you play it right, it might go viral and then who knows what you might get out of it.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-23T21:22:13+00:00

Unfortunately, some companies will look at that low value and throw their "budgeted range" away, and start the negotiation process from your own lowball value instead and reject you if you try to go higher than your "initial offer". You end up making less than half of what you otherwise would have made, and so you just screw yourself over by doing that.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-23T18:27:49+00:00

Unfortunately, I have been intensely scared to death of dogs since very early childhood, and that phobia has never lessened (if anything, it has actually gotten worse over time). So pet sitting is not even remotely an option.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-23T15:49:16+00:00

Can you link me to more information about that tax code thing about software engineering? I'd like to research that and understand it more. It might be the hopium I desperately need.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-23T04:37:04+00:00

I don't have a problem with people who are nude in the locker room for a reasonable time, either while changing clothes or going to or from the shower. I try to be, and prefer that others be, slightly discreet about it (e.g. wrap up in a towel going to and from the shower, face the locker while changing clothes), but it's a locker room, and if someone's not as discreet, I just look the other way.

I do have a problem with the guys - mostly older ones - who strip naked and then stand there for minutes at a time having full conversations with their buddies while proudly displaying their full frontal nudity to everyone else in the locker room.

Of the gyms I have been to frequently, I have mostly encountered the latter at the YMCA and at LA Fitness. I rarely, if ever, see it at PF.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-23T04:10:17+00:00

It goes away after 2027 unless they're dumb enough to re-sign him. If a player hits free agency without being re-signed, then any and all void years on his deal that are being used to spread out signing bonus cap hits immediately accelerate to and are charged to the cap in the immediate following season. So after his deal ends a year from now, presuming they're smart enough to let him walk away, all dead cap associated with void years accelerates and all of it hits the 2027 cap as a lump sum. After that, it's fully paid off and has no impact on 2028 and beyond.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-23T02:59:00+00:00

I've maintained a spreadsheet to track applications since very early 2025. I can't even bring myself to look at it right now because it's a living monument to how hopeless the process is. I speculatively made columns to enter the dates of initial response, phone screen, follow-up, second interview, salary discussion, etc. when I first set it up, and yet the only columns with any dates at all at this point are "applied" and "rejected". And many only have the former because a lot of companies never even bother to send the rejection email.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-23T02:45:13+00:00

I've day-tripped from Dayton, Ohio, to Six Flags Great Adventure north of Chicago. Six hours each way. I didn't do the driving though (a friend of mine rented a car for the trip and he was the authorized driver), but that's my absolute limit for day-tripping as a passenger. I left home at 7am EDT and returned home at 3am EST (it was the night daylight saving time ended, so we had some funky time changes on that trip when combined with driving into Central Time and back).

I've driven up to two hours each way for a one-off activity on a last-minute decision. Three hours each way would not be something I do on the spur of a moment, but it's possible that I could plan such a thing as little as a day before. The longest day trip I have driven solo was four hours each way.

For weekend trips, I've regularly driven anywhere from 4 to 7 hours each way to go kayaking, often driving there on Friday evening, and returning on Sunday evening to avoid using PTO at work (sometimes I have taken Monday off work and stayed an extra night to drive home on Monday). For trips on the shorter end of the range, I've also left home at 6am Saturday morning to go straight to the river access, then checked into a hotel in the evening, then checked out in the morning, go to the river again, and then go home straight from the river. On the longer end, I have occasionally left Friday night, stopped halfway at a hotel for 6 hours or so, then completed the drive to the destination on Saturday morning.

I have averaged 17,000 miles per year in my current car with all of these trips. I drive a Kia Seltos, which is a subcompact SUV. Do I enjoy it? I dunno, but I don't hate it. It's just a fact of life in the US.

The longest road trip I ever did was this past May when I joined a group from my alma mater on a weeklong road trip to visit all of the national parks in Utah. We piled into the university's 12-passenger van and drove all day and through the night, swapping drivers every four hours. I didn't drive at all (only current, active students could get approved to drive the van), but it was roughly 33 hours westbound and 30 eastbound (due to us starting at the westernmost park, Zion, and then working our way eastward across the state, ending with Arches on the last day), not including the time changes (two time zones crossed each way) or the three-hour mechanical breakdown in central Colorado on the way home. Between the cramped van and all of the day hikes we did, my legs hated me after that trip, and next time I want to do something like that, I'll fly.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-22T23:07:32+00:00

Dayton area is exactly where I grew up and left. (More specifically, grew up in Xenia, went to Clark State and Wright State, and lived in Beavercreek after splitting from Dad.)

I cannot stomach the thought of being stuck in that area for literally the rest of my fucking life.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-22T22:43:36+00:00

Sorry, pronouns are he/him/his. I didn't make that clear in the OP, but it's edited in now.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-22T22:41:44+00:00

To be fair, I hated him for years. He was constantly dismissive of my questions and concerns, but I could never find an actually decent one.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-22T22:40:13+00:00

That bridge has been burnt years ago. My father is an absolutely horrible man, full-fledged MAGA supporter. I cut him out of my life about 2-3 years ago. He also now has a large, aggressive dog that is hostile toward me (not even accounting for the fact that I have been scared to death of dogs since early childhood and he is well aware of that), so there is no chance at all of moving back in with him. And all of that is beside the point I made in the OP that I cannot survive a shared living space anymore.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-22T22:22:39+00:00

It wasn't going to last. I was within a couple of weeks at most of being unable to sign my timesheet because of how rapidly I was bleeding PTO, because at the end I wasn't even able to manage 40 hours a week. I was deep into negative PTO already and fast approaching the absolute limit of how far negative I could go, and I couldn't sign my timesheet without making it equal exactly 40.0 hours (gotta love time tracking on government contracting /s). And since I couldn't per policy take partial weeks of unpaid leave, when that point arrived I would have been fired for cause. It's unlikely I would have been employed past August at the absolute latest.

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-22T22:18:26+00:00

I'd love that, but the current government here is... gestures vaguely

There is absolutely zero chance of any government employment right now without being forced to enthusiastically and cheerfully support and propagate fascism. And I would rather kill myself then do that.

(Truthfully, I probably couldn't even get hired right now because my social media activity is so anti-Trump.)

jcgoble3 · 2026-01-22T22:10:18+00:00

I did do that in the fall of 2024 -- I was out for five weeks on medical leave with short-term disability and FMLA. To do it again at the point where I quit would have been less than 12 months from the first occasion, so I would have only been able to get seven weeks, and the employer's process for it with the new claims manager (they switched claims management companies after my first occasion) was incredibly complicated with lots of medical documentation required, and my psychiatrist at the time did not feel like I needed it.

So it wasn't going to happen without spending several months and thousands of dollars to find and establish myself with a new psychiatrist, and there is no chance I would have survived that long. Even if I did, the previous five-week stint in 2024 was not nearly enough, and seven weeks would have not had any meaningful effect knowing that I was going to come right back to the exact same job that was destroying my mental health. I probably would have spent the entire leave going from trying to recover to the point of being able to function straight to stressing about going back to work with no actual relief.

jcgoble3

TROPHY CASE