Alaskan here - this is what I’m most afraid of. I can’t tell you how many coworkers (who are conservative) have bitched and moaned about how “That’s the only reason Peltola [D] won!”

It’s extremely evident that they simply don’t understand the system, nor do they want to. They’ve latched onto it as “the thing that made their pick lose” and so it must die.

OpenSUSE TW KDE supremacy!

It’s probably in reference to The Hobbit movies - which were…less than great.

I actually have this too! For me, it usually happens when my extremities get too cold, and it can take me a bit to even notice it’s happening. It usually happens predominantly in my big toes for some reason. For me it just feels like like it’s gone completely numb, and I lose all feeling in the digit. I usually break out the heating pad and try to warm it back up until I can feel it again.

Ah…yeah, whoops 😅. IT & Military definitely love their acronyms!

But you’ve got it pretty much spot on! Just keep an eye out for the various companies that are winning defense contracts; I usually keep an eye out on this site to see what’s going on out there: https://news.clearancejobs.com/category/defense-contracts/

Once you find one you’re interested in, the job listing will usually tell you it requires a certain level of clearance. Depending on the job, some will expect you to already have said clearance, but most will not. The company will apply for your clearance on your behalf, referencing the contract that you’ve been hired for. Then you get to go through the extremely fun process of a 30+ page background check, where you get to go through the last ten years of your life. Where you lived, who knew you at those addresses, where you’ve been out of the country, jobs you’ve held, etc. The very first one I did was in my early 20’s, so going back 10 years I was filling in my parents address when I was still in high school! It’s really not that bad, but they definitely ask a lot of off-the-wall stuff.

You’ll usually get an “interim” clearance a few months after you apply, which will allow you to do your work, but you’ll get your final clearance after about a year or so (assuming everything checks out.) Once you’ve got it, you keep it for 5 years, and it’ll automatically be renewed as long as your job requires it, and it can be transferred between companies if they require you to have a clearance.

Now that does not shock me in the least. The contract I worked for the USAF was to provide IT services.

You know how many usable SOPs or process guides they had available to train us with? None. Not a single one. We recreated each and every process after having to fumble through it ourselves.

There’s so much transition in the USAF that unless you have a civilian or contractor working alongside the uniformed workers, it only takes like one or two PCS cycles until there’s not a single person left that remembers the processes unless they’re written down in a detailed SOP (that is updated regularly.)

I guarantee she had access lol. Getting access to a flight line is not as difficult as you’re making it out to be.

If her job duties included…you know, being on the flight line (as it sounds like her contract absolutely was,) all she had to do was get the SMO to verify her clearance, verify her job duties, assign her a RAB, and she’s good to go. Guaranteed she had all of the correct clearances and authorizations.

If you’ve got access to the area, nobody is going to follow you around and “keep track of everyone.”

I know this because I had all of this access as a civilian contractor when working on a military installation.

I feel you fellow IT brother/sister!

The IT world is chock-full of this garbage, and all it really forces people to do is A. Provide lesser service so that it “takes longer”, inflating their time metrics, and B. Causes people to make shit up, or submit their own BS tickets to make it look like they’re doing stuff to justify their existence.

Ultimately holding people to a metric-based system like this leads to worse service, and make people hate their jobs.

The job I had before my current one, I was site lead for Field Services. Luckily we were sort of a start up/experimental program, so the technician metrics weren’t tracked at all. MAN it was nice. Nobody felt stressed out needing to justify every second of their day, they wound up doing the work in an appropriate amount of time because it didn’t matter how long an individual took (be that long, or short). We only had an SLA to meet for the customer, which was easily hit.

I even took it a step further and didn’t really pay much heed to the corporate timekeeping rules… If someone needed to run an errand or “telework” for a day; fine by me. The company didn’t give anyone sick time, or enough time in general, OR a big enough salary, so they can eat my whole ass. Lo and behold, our section had the lowest MTTR, and highest amount of tickets closed, all with 100% SLA met. Crazy what you can achieve when you treat people like adults and actual human beings instead of soulless automatons.

I am from Alaska and I love that we have FPTP/Ranked Choice. A lot of my coworkers are super right leaning, and have been crying that ranked choice is the only reason any left leaning candidates have won. They want to ditch it and return to the old archaic system.

I’ve tried and tried to explain how it’s such a better system, and that it means that you can vote for the person you actually want, instead of the ‘if I don’t vote for this guy, the other guy who I definitely don’t like will win’. They just didn’t get it; they kept going on and on about how ‘Oh you just want people to be able to vote twice. people should only get to vote once’ 🤦

Immediately

It’s definitely not short, but The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey is absolutely top notch.

The attention to detail that goes into a sci-fi series that lives within a realistic world, with actual physics is incredible - i.e:

• Ships need to calculate when to flip around midway through their journey to decelerate by burning the opposite direction.

• Torpedoes and tungsten slugs have travel time.

• Making hard accelerations or evasive maneuvers can and will crush you into your flight seat due to the intense G forces and the only way to not black out is a cocktail of stimulants, adrenaline, and blood thinners

• Communications take place at actual light speed, which means when you’re dealing with distances up to several hundred million kilometers, it can take anywhere from minutes to hours for your message to be received.

But fear not! This is truly a traditional sci-fi novel, packed full with ancient alien substances that seem to reprogram human cells for their own use - but to what end? Ancient feuds between those born in space, and those born on a planet. And the answer to the age old question: why not just use asteroids as weapons?

The main characters are an extremely close knit group, who it seems at times get by on sheer willpower and a touch of luck (with some excellent planning).

The story takes turns being told from different characters’ perspectives, which really helps you get to know each character intimately - how they think, and feel about the events unfolding - how their morality affects their choices.

If you’re looking for a more “realistic” take on sci-fi, this series is absolutely up your alley.

The first novel is called “Leviathan’s Wake” and there are 9 main books in the series, with a smattering of novellas between that expand on the world.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8855321-leviathan-wakes

Link for the lazy: https://aersf.com/products/city-pack-pro

Man I miss Inbox so much. It kept me so much more organized than Gmail ever has.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, I suppose.

Hmmmm, this coincides with the shutdown of Tachiyomi…

His career.

I wish that it would come a little (see: a lot) further and connect to Alaska. It would be so convenient to take a high speed train down to Seattle.

How about maybe pass a fucking budget instead of wasting time and money on this bullshit.