Notices by Adam (inkslinger@mastodon.club), page 9

In other news, I played Mario Kart 8 at Toys R Us yesterday, while picking up a kid's birthday present and now I want a Switch. The system has not dramatically come down in price, but I noticed most of the games are only about $40, which is nice. Last time I had a Nintendo console, I remember games costing closer to $80 for the "premium" titles (e.g., Mario Kart Wii).

@interneteh You're letting your kid ruin your nest egg! THOSE BEANIE BABIES ARE NO LONGER MINT!

1st day back at work after Henry died. I'm going through all the emails that have stacked up, deleting most of them since they're no longer relevant. Labeling and archiving a few others and I noticed that I have one email, from years ago, labelled "NEVER DO THIS AGAIN." The email is just a bunch of screenshots that don't seem to be marked up in any way...I'm assuming I publishing something with a lot of typos, based on my vague memory, but wow, way to not be helpful, past self.

@ThatGeoGuy You're a coward. She's a coward. I'm a coward. We're all cowards! Coward is a gender-neutral form of address!

@maloki A dozen of us in a room, with one who is "woke" enough to answer the ignorant questions the rest of us ask? That's...not a bad idea, honestly.

Broke: ladies and gentlemen

Woke: guys, gals and nonbinary pals

Bespoke: comrades

Are HR professionals class traitors?

Early in the pregnancy, she also suggested we name her brother (RIP) Naramata, so this isn't a weird one-off...

Kids are weird. My daughter said if she has a daughter, she'll name her Safia (her best friend). If she has another daughter, she'll name her Emma (her other best friend). If she has a son, though, she'll name him Naramata – a kid she doesn't like and who appears to be the resident bully in her daycare.

The only explanation I can drag out of her is that she'd name a future son that "because I can" and because she likes the name even though she doesn't like the kid.

@mpjgregoire I'd imagine you're right, because I was very surprised to learn a method that's been in the mainstream for *at least* 30 years and has research backing it up is still controversial to some. That frankly has to be ideological.

As a bit of an aside, phonics seems so natural to me that I don't understand how people would figure out new words without it. If you learn to read by memorizing whole words, how does your vocabulary expand much beyond elementary school?

It's well known that YouTube has some of the worst comments on the entire web. A data scientist should do some research and prove, conclusively, that Pornhub comments are more insightful (or at least less awful) than YouTube's. Obviously, I'm assuming the outcome here, but I'm confident in my hypothesis.

@mpjgregoire I read that article a few weeks ago and was surprised that phonics is considered controversial. That's how most of my peers and I learned to read, and I still remember the ol' "Hooked on Phonics worked for me!" TV commercials. I assumed it had long ago become the mainstream, standard method for teaching children to read.

I'm pretty sure one of our school board trustees is becoming a communist before my eyes (via Instagram). Ironically, even though he lives a block away from me, he's not the rep for my ward, which is a shame (our actual rep seems good, though not nearly as much of a radical leftist).

Once, at a board meeting, he asked what administration is doing to make sure we're not just teaching kids to be cogs in the capitalist system (a paraphrase, but pretty close to what he actually said).

@keithzg That's a great area. I've only visited the Sask side, but it's really beautiful.

We ended up deciding to go to "rural Alberta's only professional theatre" in Rosebud. We're going down later today and spending the night. We decided to get a hotel room instead of taking the trailer, since it's only one night and the weather is still gonna suck. Next time, maybe. I'm eager to get the trailer out now that it's finally ready to go, nearly 9 months after we first bought it.

Trying to do a weekend getaway with my wife, before we attempt to reintegrate into normal life. We were going to take the trailer but the weather looks to be shitty in the entire province, which means camping probably won't be super fun even with a trailer. So now we're trying to figure out an alternative plan before everything is booked up (lots of campsites available, but probably less so for cabins and the like).

@allan Honestly, I don't really intend to use it. I was mostly curious if it was even functional. I might pull it out and use the space either for additional storage or look into a newer (and probably safer) heating system.

@allan Couldn't hurt. I suspect it hasn't even been turned on in...possibly ever, so another possibility is that the valve is seized shut.