cobysev

As someone named Coby, I liked that no one else seemingly shared my name. I’ve never run into another Coby in my entire life. Although I know they exist because a simple Google search brings up a handful of people with that name. But every time I hear “Coby,” I know someone’s trying to get my attention.

Then Kobe Bryant showed up and became famous. Now I hear “Kobe!” everywhere I go, and it’s giving me whiplash. I keep thinking people are talking about me, or calling for me, and it’s just people throwing trash into a basket from across the room.

It’s a damn shame what happened to Kobe, but I’m a bit relieved that almost no one seems to be calling out his name anymore. Although I constantly need to spell out my name every time I give it to people, because they always write it as “Kobe” now. I used to get “Colby” or “Cody” all the time. Now it’s just “Kobe.”

As someone who served 20 years in the US military… we created the Reserves so we don’t ever have to enact a draft again. There are enough people serving in the Reserves to cover us if we go to war. It’s our compromise to avoid drafting people ever again.

Heck, I joined just before the Iraq war started back in the early 2000s and folks in the Reserves were shocked to find out they were tagged to go to war first. The active duty military is already running operations around the globe; we can’t just abandon all our bases and active missions to run to war. So we sent in the Reserves first to set up shop and create a stable environment before moving active duty personnel and resources to the region. As an active duty member, working for a deployment squadron at the time, I didn’t actually see Iraq until 2007.

To be more precise, there are career fields in the military that are designed specifically for boots-on-ground operations, and those active duty career fields were technically the first members to go to war. But after an area was secured, then we’d send in Reserves behind them to help set up and maintain local bases and operations until active duty could eventually filter in and take over full-time.

I’ve been saying it for years, but my ideal scenario for a reinvented Bond story would be to make a TV miniseries that’s loyal to the original books. A period piece, set in the 1950s that explored Ian Fleming’s original gritty, alcoholic, borderline suicidal Bond who has nothing but the next job in his life. Not the suave, charming, sophisticated womanizer and luxury sports car driver from the 1960s movies and on.

I actually loved the Daniel Craig Bond films because it was the closest we’ve ever seen to the original version of Bond from the novels. Although I absolutely hate the end of his arc. (No spoilers)

I also think they promoted him from rookie 00 agent to tired, grizzled old veteran way too quickly. The first film (Casino Royale) was a masterpiece; one of the best Bond films we’ve ever had, and a great modern retelling of the first ever Bond novel. But Barbara Broccoli panicked when his second film flopped hard, and spent the rest of the Daniel Craig arc trying to win back audiences instead of telling good, engaging stories.

I think reinventing Bond as a TV miniseries would be better, because we could do multiple episodes to tell a grand story arc from the books, or a single episode for the short stories that Ian Fleming compiled. We would have room to tell a good tale without being confined to the limits of film. And it would be fascinating to see Bond in his original era, having to function off raw skill and intellect rather than gadgets.

Thank you for not calling it “Daylight Savings Time.” That’s never been the correct name, but almost everyone here in America has decided to call it that for some reason.

Note for those passing through and not reading articles:

This is not a summary of the article, but OP’s suggestion for a solution. The article talks about creating a yeast product that’s lacking in bees’ diet due to climate change and a lack of diversity in flowers.

OP suggests combatting the effects climate change has on biodiversity by planting your own diverse flowers. Which may work, or climate change may just kill those too.

I mean, see for yourself. OP specifically requested it in another post.

I would only join my parents in bed if I had a nightmare in my own bed, which wasn’t very often. They would let me sleep between them in the middle of the bed, which made me feel safe and cozy.

When I was maybe 7-8 years old, they started encouraging me to not do that anymore. If I had a nightmare, my mother would calm me down, talk it out with me, and then send me back to my bedroom. I never shared a bed with my parents again.

It’s strange to me that OP started sharing a bed at 8 years old and continued into their teens. At that point, it would make sense to start enforcing independence.

But if I recall, OP mentioned in another thread that their mother regularly insisted on expressing how much she loved them, then demanded to know if OP loved her too. So it sounds like OP’s mother has some extreme anxiety and self-worth issues, which she reinforced by over-mothering her “child” long past the stage where they should’ve been growing up and learning independence.

Coffee is acidic. If you’re brushing right after coffee, you may be damaging the enamel of your teeth (acid + scrubbing is not a good combination). And it can’t grow back; once you’ve lost it, it’s gone forever.

When I became a sysadmin 24 years ago, I figured the general public was still adapting to the rapid overnight advancements and integration into the tech industry. I assumed that as people figured out how to use software and computer technology in their daily lives, help desk support would practically disappear and we’d be able to move our efforts toward fully maintaining systems instead of customers.

I had no idea how resistant the general public would be to actually learning and understanding technology. We went from recommending customers avoid certain bad programs and hardware, to being forced to incorporate them into our infrastructure because the general public didn’t want to give them up.

My professional opinion was overruled many times because someone higher up the food chain wanted to use a device or app that hurt our client base or mission parameters, but was familiar to them, so they wanted it included in our suite of tools.

I’m grateful to see a lot of public resistance to AI, even if corporations are doubling down on their investment into the technology. But I don’t have any hope for the future of technology or the general public who use it daily. AI is just the latest excuse for people to not learn how to use technology efficiently.

I expected younger generations to be raised on this tech and be absolute wizards in its use, understanding it even better than I do! Instead, they were raised on slop and ad-riddled ADHD-promoting garbage apps that rotted their brains and prevented them from learning basic tools and functions. As a millennial, I’ve spent the better half of a decade teaching boomers how to use this tech, and then the next decade trying to reeducate zoomers on how to properly use tech and break their life-long bad habits.

I retired from the IT industry after only 20 years. Now I enjoy tinkering with technology in my free time. I always enjoyed teaching people how to use their personal computers and smartphones, but I can’t spend another minute on a help desk, fielding calls from people who still don’t know how to read error messages that pop up in their face. AI will be the death of the industry if integrated into everything and left unchecked. Maybe it’d be for the best.