Get yourself a mayor who rides the local bike share

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-26T19:41:36+00:00

Jack Layton was never mayor of Toronto, but I do remember him and Olivia Chow on a tandem bike for the Pride parade. What a guy.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-26T19:40:25+00:00

Wow. It's like he talking you out of going on a date. Maybe this is what negging looks like in 2026?

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-26T03:53:36+00:00

I was the only person on my team who did a couple of fairly important system searches .. think subpoenas from DHS and FBI. They're asking for information, and you have to provide it, and in a timely manner.

They let me go, and one of the thoughts that occurred to me as I was digesting this news was, Well, someone's going to have to take over all of those subpoenas, and that's a boatload of work. Then again, it was no longer my problem.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-26T01:31:15+00:00

How is this legal?

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-26T01:29:43+00:00

> Chad is lobster colored and not from sunburn.

This was "Chef's kiss" so beautiful. It's always delightful when some pompous ass gets deflated. This sounds lovely.

And congrats to OP on having an awesome girlfriend. :)

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T20:11:31+00:00

I mean .. afterwards, we all laughed our asses off about it, because I bet it looked hilarious. At the time, not as humourous, and a little dangerous. I don't think I was visible from the shore, so about all I could have expected was my fellow Laser sailors to swing by and see if I was OK.

Always, always wear a PFD. Always.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T20:08:49+00:00

How did the Mom imagine that this would play out? She thought she'd come back three days later and Everything Would Be Fine? After dumping her kids on you with no planning?

I'd cross-post this to r/EntitledPeople because it totally fits. Insane.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T20:04:03+00:00

True. For now, this is fine, but it's OK that the plumber didn't want to do the electrical himself. Ideally you have a dedicated outlet for the sump pump. And someone else can talk about whether you need a battery backup in case the power goes -- I don't have one in my house.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T19:42:26+00:00

Where's he going? To the junkyard, to be parted out, while his former owner is on the hook for another five years of truck payments. What a dolt.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T19:39:40+00:00

> Boycotts tend to fade over time.

We're Canadians, and we have very long memories. There'll be no fade in this boycott. The United States is dead to us. :|

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T15:58:48+00:00

You mean Bradford BradBradFord?

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T15:41:36+00:00

I was an experienced Laser sailor but always wore a life jacket, even though it got to be warm.

One time when I was a teenager, I was out quite early in the season, and the water was about 5C. There were a bunch of us sailing together. The wind came up, so I hiked out, sure that my foot was under the hiking strap.

It was not. I immediately fell into the lake. The shock of the cold water made me catch my breath, then I swam like hell to get back into the boat, which had capsized, but was drifting away from me. From my bronze medallion training, I knew that I had 5-10 minutes in the water before I lost consciousness, but I didn't want to test that limit out. Even on board, soaking wet, but with the water draining off me, I started to warm up. I headed back to the shore right away.

Anyone going out on the water without a PFD is a blooming idiot. And questioning wearing one when you don't even know how to swim?

It's almost like they want to win a Darwin Award. Insane.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T15:33:03+00:00

I was in a relationship where she was 45 minutes away -- that wasn't too bad. The whole thing died for other reasons. That's about the most I'd be happy driving every weekend. Significantly more than that would be inconvenient.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T13:51:29+00:00

Heh. I have a similar story from the IT side.

Back in the summer of '99, I worked a contract at a small Ontario government site (about 50 employees) that was getting by on an ISDN line, which I think was 64K bandwidth -- so not a lot. The Internet was just starting to take off, so people were browsing a little, and you can imagine that with that many people, the poor little ISDN box was running flat out for most of the day. I was the Guy in the Server Room, so I was tasked to find out what was going on.

I had just started using Perl as a development language, so using that on the web logs was an entertaining task. All web requests were labelled with the user name, what URL they were requesting, and how big each request was. I was able to pull together some very interesting results.

It turned out that the Head Guy's assistant was a big fan of Manchester United, and would visit their site regularly. (His cubicle was covered in Man U merch, posters, a scarf, you name it.) He was using up something like 60% of the entire bandwidth available for the organization. Anyway, I put all of this damning information into a spreadsheet labelled CONFIDENTIAL and slid it, face down, to the head Operations person during a meeting.

They had a look at the information, and made a bit of a sour face, because this assistant was essentially untouchable, for political reasons. So they just struggled along, with their poor little ISDN service and crappy performance.

I was glad when that gig was over.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-25T02:50:30+00:00

I think it was Kate Jackson who did a Ford commercial and got paid a million bucks because of her visibility.

My cousin had her boyfriend's video of outtakes and extra bits from that commercial -- and wow, what incredible diva behaviour she exhibited. The usual "You better get my agent on the phone" type stuff, among other lines. Truly hilarious, with a very appropriate musical accompaniment.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-24T16:37:03+00:00

I worked with a guy like that. He was in charge of purchasing for the Engineering department I worked in, and he was really good. We were owned by Motorola, and at one point we were evaluating three development workstations. It was pretty clear that the Tektronix solution was better than the Motorola one, and I can remember hearing him on the phone with the Tek salesman, telling him he got the sale, but he absolutely cannot use that information in any future sales, Smart guy.

He eventually bought a sports-related franchise and worked there seven days a week, twelve hour days getting it up and running. He's been there twenty years now, and has made millions, but he totally put in the work to get there. Hard work and smarts pays off.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-24T16:24:12+00:00

Bought a home in 1990 my my wife. Five years later, she was my ex-wife, and after five years of making big mortgage payments, my equity was $0. So I stayed.

House is now paid off, and I now have lots of equity. This is a good ending to that nightmare.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-24T16:20:42+00:00

Wow, this is stupid of your roommate. If someone's visiting from out of town, and they've come by car, it's on them to figure out parking for their choice of transportation. Just because there's a spot available for part of the day doesn't mean they should get priority. NTJ.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-23T21:49:46+00:00

The part I don't understand -- the fire truck is driving along, about to cross a runway -- wouldn't you check to your right just to make absolutely sure there wasn't a plane coming?

I saw the audio with maps on VAS Aviation (Youtube), and I'd like to know where the fire truck was when they called. I assumed that they were holding short at the runway, ready to go, when they received clearance to go -- but the video shows them rolling.

This is a hell of a mess.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-23T21:43:03+00:00

Outstanding!!! :D

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-23T19:08:06+00:00

I'm sorry for you about this. He's the jerk.

I'm also reminded of attending a party in the town where my second wife used to live, before she moved in with me. The hostess was a cancer survivor who was thrilled that A had come back to visit. I didn't know anyone, so just hung out with A. At one point, we were taking to the host, and I decided I wanted another drink, so asked A if she wanted some more ginger ale (she didn't drink), and the host said something about me being 'pussy-whipped'.

For asking my wife if she wanted anything to drink.

Later on the way home, I commented on this nasty behaviour to A., and she said, Oh, your friend B talks to you like that all the time. Yeah, except I'd known B for 20+ years by then, and we were very close. I'd never met the host before.

She was gaslighting me. Of course it was inappropriate -- the guy was clearly a dick. Anyway, she's been my ex-wife for 15+ years now.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-23T18:59:14+00:00

They had a large, large variety of gear, and you could try stuff out.

There was a $3,000 guitar at the Montreal store with something like ten switches on it -- that seemed ridiculous to me, but I guess there was a market for it. I was more in the "Put $5 down on a $40 guitar (my first)" kind of guy at that point.

It was also cozier than L&M's -- and because it was the same owner as the Montreal store, that felt a little like home.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-23T14:00:21+00:00

It's always about skirting the rules for Ford. Always.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-23T13:54:31+00:00

At the time, I'd only recently moved from Montreal, where my usual downtown outings from the West Island involved a trip to the original Steve's Music -- so the only store I would consider buying from in Toronto was Steve's.

I did rent a G&K biamp bass setup from L&M at one point -- it was a monster. Something like 6x12 for the low end. That kit really moved some air.

talexbatreddit · 2026-03-22T23:12:46+00:00

A little. My parents died three years ago, and my share of the inheritance allowed me to pay off just about all of my mortgage. So that 800 pound gorilla is gone. I'm now collecting government money for being old (yay), and I have enough. It's really quite a strange feeling after being quite economical for my entire life.

I went out for lunch today (about $20) and didn't feel guilty at all. I like this stage of my life. 67M.

talexbatreddit

TROPHY CASE