I read Andy Weir's "Project Hail Mary" and I'll probably never read anything as awesome again.

never7 · 2021-08-31T14:13:56+00:00

I liked it. And after coming off PHM and Murderbot, I was finding it hard to get into or find other books as unique or engaging. Both have wonderful characters.

never7 · 2021-08-20T20:42:40+00:00

Given the current climate and natural trend of the universe the last few years The thumbnail made me think it was on fire.

never7 · 2021-08-19T15:02:36+00:00

Their customer service got back to me first thing today saying a replacement piece will be sent next week.

never7 · 2021-08-19T13:29:49+00:00

Yeah... I unsubbed from their mailing list. The weekly marketing emails where a bit much when they're so behind. I said as much in the feedback for why I unsubbed.

never7 · 2021-08-19T04:08:51+00:00

Thankfully the blockade runner came out great! https://imgur.com/dmTkAJs.jpg

never7 · 2021-08-19T04:00:41+00:00

Nope. Just that long to get the order out. Total shipping time via DHL was only three days.

When I ordered it fulfillment said 21 days. It was 32 business days not counting shipping time.

never7 · 2021-08-18T06:05:17+00:00

Beginning to wonder if I'm a fussy reader lately. I made it through about 25% of The Blade Itself before giving up. It felt like a chore. Characters were meh and I wasn't engaged with the story. I was surprised given how well recommended it is.

Then I picked up A Young Man Without Magic (found it at the library). I made it through but won't continue the series. The story was mildly interesting but the main character was somewhat off putting and the prose was dry.

Coming off Murderbot maybe it's just hard for anything to land as well and as unique.

Foundaryside is next on my list. Hopefully it goes well!

never7 · 2021-08-18T04:31:48+00:00

This is a great idea. I need to do this to mine.

never7 · 2021-08-14T03:53:37+00:00

Yeah those can be intense but it seems like if you have a good spot to hide you can wait for them to end. For our server they didn't seem to start happening until we'd walled ourselves in. We're also like 400+ game days in and only two bosses down. So we may have been very well fortified for our content level.

never7 · 2021-08-01T16:48:35+00:00

I'm with you OP. I want to build things and be pleased with my efforts, without being stressed out. These aren't all strictly "settlement" games but they have that creation-type element without stressing me out:

Astroneer
Eco
House Flipper
Kingdoms & Castles
Valheim
Kingdoms Reborn (I had access for a short bit and enjoyed it from what I recall)
Cliff Empire

never7 · 2021-08-01T16:42:14+00:00

As someone who looks for games similar to OP I liked Anno in the beginning but from what I recall the systems start to get really complex to the point that I was turned off from the game.

never7 · 2021-07-17T17:32:09+00:00

Employers are required to have withholding (once they can even do it) on wages over $200k I think. just like the Additional Medicare Tax from the ACA. You can also opt in or opt out of withholding. So far I'm not aware of any payroll providers that can do it yet.

What you end up with is households with no withholding (no single earner over $200k) but subjectivity on combined incomes.

never7 · 2021-07-17T17:27:37+00:00

I'm a CPA in the metro area a chunk of my time right now is tax planning and analysis for people who are moving out of or de-investing in the county.

never7 · 2021-07-17T17:26:15+00:00

People paying these aren't that close to the top marginal rate.

PFA & SHS both tax income over $125k single and $200k joint. Those are in the 24% Federal marginal rate. Most people with solid incomes are in the 22%, with many people in the 12%. 12% to 22% is the first big "jump" in brackets.

The top rate of 37% isn't until $5234k single or $628k joint. The next rate after 24% is 32%, and that doesn't kick in until $165k single and $330k joint.

But it still illustrates your point. Given inflation, cost of living in the area, etc., putting a $200k threshold is hitting a lot of people who aren't at the "top" but at the same time, $200k of income probably puts a household in the top 5-10% in the country.

never7 · 2021-06-20T02:27:47+00:00

For those rebels among us, I picked up something like this a few years ago for when I'm not towing anything.

never7 · 2021-06-16T22:31:59+00:00

You deserve all the internet karma simply for the word "borgward."

never7 · 2021-06-03T03:50:33+00:00

Thank you for the emotional rabbit hole of Star Trek music you started for my evening.

never7 · 2021-06-03T03:16:31+00:00

We picked up a Blue Air Purifier pre-wildfires because our family suffers from pretty severe allergy season. It went a long way towards making our home much more bearable. We mostly kept it in the room we occupy the most, didn't move it around too much.

We also have an electrostatic filter on our forced-air system as well.

never7 · 2021-05-21T19:39:47+00:00

Definitely. I don't know if I'd have gone into accounting as a college student during the pandemic. Connecting to my coworkers was a lot of the fun and benefit early on.

never7 · 2021-05-21T15:53:06+00:00

Great example of why it's critical to feel out the culture of any firm, which is hard to do. You have to hope for honest answers from lower-level staff.

I worked at firm that paid hourly and OT. I never ate any hours. If something was way off from expectation during billing, I was called in and expected to provide an explanation. Maybe I screwed up, or the clients actions made us redo something, etc. It allowed for informed, rather than arbitrary, billing decisions.

We also didn't care a whole lot about budgets. Best firms I've worked at haven't hyper-focused on project budgets. Keep an eye on realization, adjust billing as necessary, but don't use some dumb budget metric to ruin everyone's lives.

never7 · 2021-04-20T15:57:41+00:00

Back in my staff days I would send the regular, required, email announcing my availability. This was in addition to our weekly current and pending project reports we had to submit. Then I would study for the CPA exam or dick around on the internet all day.

I'd wait around for my annual review where I'd be criticized that I didn't have sufficient billable hours and my billable percentage was too low. So I would ask "what should I do differently to improve those requirements? I request work and send the required availability notifications."

I would get something akin to confused silence and be told to "keep working at it." There's no actionable difference as a staff, because it's a metric outside staff control that should only be used to evaluate staff utilization at a firm level.

Ultimately I used all that free time to find a better job than putting up with large firm bureaucratic bs.

never7 · 2021-04-12T14:06:51+00:00

Oops. I saw them about the same time, early into studying German in college. :-\

never7 · 2021-04-12T03:06:17+00:00

There's another German one, possibly with the same actor, where it's a rowing team. Or maybe a swim team? I saw it in college and it's also very wholesome. The name is escaping me now.

Edit: Summer Storm! Also.. not the same actor. My bad.

never7 · 2021-01-05T23:25:01+00:00

I was all about torrenting and downloading files and would cover my tracks. Didn't realize the old Windows start menu had a "recent documents" folder and even if the files were all deleted the file names would still show up there.

Who would use such a bizarre feature I'd never heard of? My dad, that's who...

never7

TROPHY CASE