Now I'm retired, linkedin's daily games are a fun way to do a little brain tai chi. Queens https://www.linkedin.com/games/queens/ is my favorite, although my solve time is consistently about twice the average apparently.

I have to admit that this is also what keeps me coming back to LinkedIn. My brain is dangerously easy to motivate by dangling a virtual leaderboard in front of it.

But there’s so many good games out there. Check out Zachtronics/Coincidence.games for some cool examples. Walk to a bookstore and get one of their many sudoku/puzzle books. Check out the App Store for some puzzle games. Write your own puzzle game!

Fry's was one of the few places that used a single checkout queue for multiple checkout stations instead of each station having its own queue. Seemed like the queue was longer, but checkout time was actually less most of the time. Was a fun place to go and browse, just to see what stuff was available. Before fast shipping, was also great if you needed something for a fast fix today.

Think of an oval as two straights connected by two Eau Rouge nearly flat style corners. Short one mile ovals offer some of the best racing as there are multiple lines around the corners and you can often race side by side. An F1 race on something like the Milwaukee Mile would be absolutely fantastic with the leaders coming through traffic after about 10 laps.

People used to spend entire careers at one company so investment in them pays off. I spent 10 years working for Bell Labs in the 1980s albeit as a contractor, and the bodyshop that employed me found it worthwhile reimbursing all educational expenses for a grade of C or better.

Privatisation was awful from the traveller's point of view having to figure out which company to deal with. It would have been much better to micro-privatise each train - selling off the dining car franchise to a commercial operator or allowing a commercial company to add a coach to a train for a given fee.

In work life as in the rest of life there is a mid-career crisis thing where you plateau and realize this is likely the best you will ever do. Crazy things can happen or you may float until there's a downturn and/or layoff but likely at some point the same old same old may appear to be a friendly shore you would not mind landing back on to finish your career. A side hustle can be a good way to do something you feel passionate about.

Been there after the dot com bust - in my case I eventually got hired by a startup where I aced the brain teasers and 6 months there gave me the tech stack to get hired at a big company that carried me through to retirement. Six months of 996 may be the price to get back on the ladder.

Was laid off in 2001 during the dotcom bust. Was self-unemployed buying and selling used docking stations and power adapters until 2007 when I aced a job interview for a small start up after mostly giving up the job search. Six months at the startup gave me experience in an in-demand tech stack that landed me a job at a large tech company that saw me through to retirement 10 years later. If I had it to do over right now I would be creating something with AI as my own business - probably not very lucrative but good experience that might get you hired someplace.

What are your favorite few RSS feeds?

Fabian Way is an office/industrial area near the major 101 freeway with wide streets and plenty of room for the RVs. Seems entirely reasonable to park RVs there. The surrounding office buildings have acres of empty parking lots. I can see if they stay a long time or are broken down and it becomes a shanty town that would be a problem, but given the problem of stupidly high rents pricing people out of homes, this seems a reasonable solution. City could lease an empty office building and allow cars/RVs in the parking lot with services like security, showers and social services in the office building.