I’ve decided to prioritize health and exercise again. Rowed 2000m on a ERG, lifted dumbbells, and meditated. I’m hoping to do some rucking a couple times a week and generally want to see how fit I can make this body.
I’m planning on making this a come back story that will deserve an 80s esthetic and a personal videographer to document my return to grace. I’ll be an inspiration to a younger generation and help them coalesce into a cohesive team inspired by the old man’s prowess and endurance then I’ll fade into oblivion and the new generation will have the next trilogy of stories but they’ll never quite live up to the legacy. We will stir the entire pot of emotions. It shall be epic and bodacious!
I just renewed my bookmarking service for ten years. I was a huge fan of del.icio.us before Yahoo, destroyer of all things Internet, trashed it. I moved onto https://pinboard.in/ and have been using the service since January 18, 2010. It’s like having my own focused search engine. And it archives the site that I bookmark so if the site ever goes away, I still have a copy of it similar to the way https://archive.org/ works. What does 13 years of curating bookmarks look like?
Bookmark archiving is on. It will expire on November 2, 2033. 34960 of your bookmarks have been archived, representing 91% of your collection.
This consumes 75.35 G of disk space.
3122 bookmarks have not been stored due to errors:
Pinboard also used to automatically record all my Tweets. Of course, Muskrat ruined that as it would now cost Pinboard over $40,000 per month for access to the API.
The Sam Vimes “Boots” theory of socioeconomic unfairness, often called simply the boots theory, is an economic theory that people in poverty have to buy cheap and subpar products that need to be replaced repeatedly, proving more expensive in the long run than more expensive items. The term was popularized by English fantasy writer Sir Terry Pratchett in his 1993 Discworld novel Men at Arms.
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
While not wealthy, I am trying to apply Vimes’ Boots Theory where I can. For instance, LinkedIn’s annual billing will save you 50% over monthly billing. Cancelling LinkedIn’s paid service will save you 100% but that’s a different topic. If using the Boots Theory saves you $6 per year on a bookmarking service you may wonder if it is worth it. The answer is yes because 1) I now don’t have to worry about a bill from Pinboard for a decade. I just go into OmniFocus to my Finance project and under the Pinboard.in task I put the deadline as “10 years” and OmniFocus automatically calculates the next due date. And 2) while only $6 if I did the same for 10 services then that’s $60 per year savings. The truth is using this approach is similar to snowballing debt. The little numbers add up to thousands very quickly. It’s like the small differences in the grocery stores. A person on a very tight budget may have to purchase the smaller bottle of ketchup which has a higher price per ounce than a larger bottle of ketchup. We nickel and dime the poor to death.
Whenever my “representative” Tim Burchett posts something on social media, I resist the urge to respond in social media and instead email his office. This is today’s email:
As a constituent of Tim Burchett’s, I am writing to request he raise his level of professionalism. I write to remind Mr. Burchett that he represents all citizens and not just those of a single political party.
On October 29, 2023 at 11:13am, Mr. Burchett Tweeted, “As the radical left continues its wringing of hands and bed wetting over @SpeakerJohnson I am convinced we made the right choice.”
This antagonistic rhetoric is unprofessional and more on par with something I would expect of a middle school teenager rather than a Congress person.
Allow me to rewrite your Tweet in a non-confrontational way that does not leave your constituents feeling attacked or underrepresented. You would have kept my respect, what little I have left of you, to simply write: “I am convinced we made the right choice with @SpeakerJohnson.” Read your original then read that line and see how you could convey your meaning without stooping to childish bullying tactics. Plus you even get to keep a sneaky double entendre with your poor English “right choice”.
Learn your job. Grow up.
Burchett’s response:
Dear Mr. McCaughan,
Thank you for contacting me about my recent tweet. It is an honor to serve in Washington on behalf of the Second District, and I appreciate you taking the time to write in to voice your concerns.
The tweet you referenced was posted by me to my personal, unofficial Twitter account. Like many Americans, I use social media to express my views and opinions. While I never intend to offend, I will continue to use social media as a way to communicate, both in my official capacity on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as well as on my personal Twitter account, where you saw the tweet you referenced.
I hope you will continue to keep me informed of your views and opinions when you feel compelled to do so. Your messages enable me to better understand the priorities of East Tennesseans, and I will keep your thoughts in mind as I work with my colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to produce legislation that addresses the needs of the American people.
Please let me know if you have additional questions about this legislative issue or if I may assist you with any issues in the future. If you would like to receive updates from my office, I invite you to visit burchett.house.gov to sign up for my newsletter.
Sincerely,
Rep. Tim Burchett Member of Congress
My reply:
Thank you for your response. I appreciate the desire to have a professional and a personal representation of yourself. As a sitting member of Congress, you do not get the luxury of such a division. As an employee of a large company, I do not get the luxury of saying whatever I want on the Internet without risking repercussions from my employer and possibly making myself unhirable. The People do not see the distinction between your personal and official accounts.. You represent us whether you are publishing from an official account or a personal account. As a public figure, you are held to a higher standard than the rest of us. You gain nothing by belittling the democrats or Joe Biden in an antagonist message. You serve yourself as well as your constituents better by keeping your messaging more neutral and to the facts. We sent you to congress to represent us. Your behavior reflects directly on the people of East Tennessee.
If Al Franken can be held accountable for something he did decades prior in his youth, then you can be held accountable for what you publish regardless of it being an official account or a personal account. Regardless of where you place your messaging, you are still messaging as a Representative and we the people expect a level of decorum and professionalism from you. Rise up. Be better.
Husband to one wonderful wife, father to five fantastic children, juggler, technophile, freelancer, DIYer, adventurer, volunteer, KO4NFA (2m/70cm), WRMJ225 (GMRS)
