Reddit ambushed me with their new automatically-generated avatar feature, where an accidental misclick overwrote your existing custom avatar completely. I reverted to my usual, but I have to say, their randomizer came up with a surprisingly good likeness.

Add some glasses, fill in the beard, and we’re good to go.

Adjacent articles on Slashdot:

• Android Turns 13 Years Old

• Netflix Targets Critical ‘Cuties’ Tweets With Copyright Takedown Requests

I guess Android’s too old to run Netflix now? 😁

One day at Synopsys (long ago and far away), email went out informing our team of an urgent meeting. The subject line read:

Emergency Sexual Harrassment Training

With no further context, we weren’t sure if it was a class on how not to get fired or how to definitely get fired. Worse, it was going to be run by the HR rep who just happened to be smoking hot and extremely friendly.

I think we were a bit disappointed that the “emergency” was simply the fact that the Director of NCS was going on vacation and just wanted to get this done before he left.

So what did I find in my onboarding inbox today?

Preventing Sexual Harassment Training

😁

Related, with Labor Day weekend coming up, I’m reminded of the small healthcare facility located just off-campus at OSU my first year, that I noticed for the first time when the handmade sign on their door was changed to read:

Pregnancy Distress Center: Closed Labor Day

[Okay, since the brand new MacBook Pro they sent me just arrived, I think I can officially believe that I start on Monday…]

My first job in Silicon Valley was at Synopsys, where the (tone-deaf) collective term for employees was (and still is) synopsoids.

My new job is at Pure Storage, where, according to my welcome letter, the equivalent term is apparently puritans.

I think this makes me a Puranoid.

Fair enough.

Related, long ago and far away I delivered pizza for Dominos during the 30-minutes-or-free era, which overlapped with the infamous Avoid The Noid ad campaign that inspired a real-life Noid to show up with a .357 magnum and prove he was correctly named.

Unrelated, LinkedIn recently popped up a “congratulate (redacted) for 14 years at Ooma!”​. Apparently his widow wasn’t able to disable all of his online accounts.

Related to a picture I used recently, I was disappointed to discover that there are almost no online references to the term “mobile grounding units”, the item responsible for most of the campus power outages when I was at OSU. Also known as “squirrels”.

PS: the instructions for my new-hire orientation Zoom session included the words “wear something orange”. I was surprised to discover that there actually was one item of orange clothing in my house. It’s a George Of The Jungle t-shirt that I’ve never worn, and that’s probably been in a box for over 20 years. I’m not even sure who gave it to me; sometimes whimsical t-shirts just appear in my life.

Technically, the shirt is light brown, but even without partial color-blindness, the border between “dark orange” and “light brown” is pretty fuzzy.

[I can’t do anything with the new laptop until they send me the temporary login password early Monday morning, but it’s certainly shiny.]

Two dams have failed in Michigan, forcing the evacuation of 10,000 people; and, hey, look, there’s a major chemical plant right along the river in question, so what could possibly go wrong?

Now that Gretchen Whitmer has an actual emergency on her hands, will she free the rest of her subjects to cope, or double down on the stupid? Rhetorical question, I know.

"You'd call off the attack?"

"I could."

"Everyone would be saved?"

"Yes... and no. After the earthquakes and tidal waves, they

won’t be quite the human beings you remember. They’ll be more… tractable. Easier for you to rule, in the name of Ming.”

"You mean slaves."

"Let's say... they'll be satisfied with less."

California temperature forecasts for Memorial Day

Salinas: 81
Los Angeles: 89
San Jose: 90
Fresno: 97
Sacramento: 97
Bakersfield: 99

Monterey: 70
Half Moon Bay: 70
Ventura: 74
Santa Cruz: 75

Masks, social distancing, and “stay-at-home” hardest hit.

Top of the “trending” list on Twitter just now:

Not entirely unrelated:

Two months into the lockdown, some people can’t handle the pressure:

In response to criticism, California has simplified their convoluted stages-within-stages “reopening” roadmap, which was about as smooth as a typical California road:

Someone found an upside to all this nonsense:

I approve of your decision to make a larger 16-ounce bag of your delicious Splits pretzels. However, I think perhaps you should have had the graphic design team put a bit more thought into the layout of the bag…

Also, the design for the Rings pretzels always makes me think they’re a LotR tie-in product.

Because the hipsters all had Corona-chan before it was cool, and now that everyone’s into it, they are so over it.