https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/cows-on-the-road-overturned-livestock-trailer-on-the-interstate/844538000
Some of the coverage has been just fall down funny
Chuck (from Jersey) gave the trailer a shorthorn and told its driver to Mooooove. The driver couldn't steer but decided to brisket anyway. That's what got him T-boned on the New York Strip.
Some time ago, we elected not to invite full time employment to a certain co-worker who was on a three-month probationary period into his initial hire.
Which is sort of a fancy way of saying we fired him without actually firing him.
At the time, it was kind of dramatic. He wasted a lot of my time trying to trick me into doing his job. And I wasted a lot of my time trying to give him the tools to do his job... except he couldn't really figure out how. A senior level developer who couldn't perform research... we don't have a need for that in this place.
His poor decision making skills came to light when he sent an email confessing his alcoholism, after his boss suggested such a move wouldn't be wise.
Well, he died recently. Ultimately, liver failure.
And the news makes me feel really, really weird.
In my early 50s, I'm experiencing a bit of death around me... friends, family, folks I know... some threat of it for myself prompting me to make healthy changes in my life... I suppose you could say it's on my mind quite a bit lately.
And many of the deaths I've heard about or seen seemed rather awful. None of this gentle fading light shit... pain, with mental anguish plaguing the soul as it descends into oblivion. Just... godawful... misery.
So the former coworker is another one of those miserable souls that came to a horrendous end.
And I see my father going down a road that doesn't look all that great, either.
So... it gets me thinking... what makes a good end?
What should I ensure happens in my life, right now, to ensure that its end is as good as possible?
What... *is*... a good end?
Fleeb,
I understand where you are coming from. The past few years I have been having the same issue. I don't have any suggestions for you, but to tell you I understand. My timeline looks like:
Feb 2013: Grandmother (Mom's Mom) passes away from stage 4 cancer, originally diagnosed in 2009.
November 2013: Accidental Facetime call from my Aunt, who was with my Grandpa (Biological Father's father). The next day, I get a call that he passed away.
March 2014: My wife's mother passes away while at the hospital.
April 2015: We visit my Father-In-Law for Easter. Two weeks later we get a call from the police that he passed away.
May 2016: Get a call from my biological Father, his mother passed away.
May 2017: Plan to call my biological father the upcoming weekend to see if they are still coming down for my kid's graduation from high school. Get a phone call from my step-mother, Dad is in the hospital for emergency surgery. Call a few hours later, he is out and doing ok. 30 minutes later another call, they took him back in. 30 minutes later phone call, he has passed away.
So the past few years have been a bit rough. I keep being worried about my step-dad.
Dad died a few years ago, age 95. His last three years were hell. He had a massive stroke that cost him the left side of his body and much of his mind. Micro strokes in the next three years made him worse and worse. Eventually he wouldn't eat and had lost so much weight that a tube was implanted in his stomach. The hospital discharged him to a "care" facility and he bled to death the next day. We children consider his passing to be a blessing.
Mom died earlier - in 2008 at age 87. She had Congestive heart failure. Over eight years, just about every major component in her body failed. I wasn't with her for the last few years but I'm sure they were agonizing.
Here's thing: My mom was my mom right until the end. Smart as a whip and enjoying life as best she could. My father ceased to be himself three years before the end. She suffered more than he did - because his main point of failure was mind, not body.
Which was worse? IMO, my Dad's fate. I really do hope I die still being myself.
It makes me sad to see a man who was brilliant, and one of the best troubleshooters and generally handy people I've ever met (and no, I'm not just saying that because he's my dad) have trouble balancing the fucking checkbook is heartbreaking.
Anyway, who balances a checkbook anymore? 99.9% of transactions are electronic, just use the ledger on the online banking.
My mother strongly subscribed to the deficit-spending approach to checkbook management.
Much like the federal government.
I know it's my age... that as I get closer to my life's end, I'll see more of the folks I know go.
But there's a part of me that tries to think a little bit ahead... not so much as to make life a burden, but not so little as to get caught by surprise at everything.
And the part that's looking ahead sees all this death and wonders how best to prepare for my own death. What makes a good end, when they all suck?
I have an idea of what I might do if nobody gave a damn about me... but that's a different problem.
(If nobody cared about me, I'd easily get rid of myself in as constructive a way as possible).
Hrm... not myself... OTOH, blissfully ignorant? But then, I would have no control over the rudder of my life at that point, so... eh...
Do I want the company of family and/or friends around me when I go? Would I rather be alone?
Would I prefer to be poor, having used every last shred of my money to the very end, or have enough of a buffer that I'm financially comfortable, and can pass whatever is left on to my niece or Melvin's nephew?
Living in my own home, in some kind of facility built for our end, or in the wild, with the animals, to come to nature where I rarely spent the time I wanted with it, at least in my final times?
Maybe in jail for having done something socially unacceptable, but harmless, and let them dispose of my body when it gives out while incarcerated?
A world of possibilities. What, though, do I want?
Anyway, who balances a checkbook anymore? 99.9% of transactions are
electronic, just use the ledger on the online banking.
Still uses a checkbook. And refuses to get an ATM card...
I have switched off voicemail everywhere I had it. For a long time I had my cell phone roll over to my work phone so that I wouldn't have an extra voicemail box to check. But even that's too much. After emptying the home phone voicemail of 100% pure junk, I shut that off. Then the work & mobile voicemail ... nothing in there except unwanted sales pitches, robocalls which didn't compute that they were talking to another machine, and ...
... voice mails to the cell phone from my dad (or occasionally mom) who are still stuck in the 1980's, and still communicate as if they were talking to a tape machine with no caller ID. I know you called, I know when you called, I know the phone number you called from, the f*****g phone tells me all of that. How about telling me *why* you called so that if I call back I can have an answer for you ... or better yet, just send a text like everyone else in the 21st century.
So that's it, I'm done, I don't even want the voicemail to work.
Telemarketers have destroyed my cell phone's voicemail. People tell me it's full. I tell them that I know, and there's nothing I can do about it, so e-mail me.
And they do.
I also don't take calls from the front desk, but that's more of a local problem.
The front desk never actually calls me. If caller ID says it's the front desk, it's almost always an unwanted solicitation from someone who got my contact information from an old list, back when we didn't have direct dialing.
The guy who maintains our phone system hasn't been clever enough to pass caller ID all the way through a blind transfer.
I'll be cordial to "regular" salesbeings when I do speak to them. At least they're sitting at a desk with a phone trying to reach out to people in a relevant industry. But I think at this point everyone recognizes the "bloop" sound of a predictive dialer cold-connecting a call. Those people get no mercy.
I've begun using a word that I can't believe no one has already come up with:
"notmyjobocracy"
Search engines don't turn it up anywhere. The word should be self explanatory.
"I used to work for Acamai, so, yeah, you could have cached that data," he said.
Mm hm.
I wrote something that tranferred data more quickly than Acamai, and validated the data transferred properly, unlike Acamai's unreliable, error-prone shitfest of a trash heap of software could for us.
So, trying to tell me my business by standing on the credentials of a company I don't respect probably didn't give you the results you thought, you ignorant, daredevil programmer.