I think I understand what you’re talking about. I wouldn’t classify the extra words I use as strictly “filler” words. My phrasing is designed to avoid speaking in absolutes. I’m sure it was intentional at one point but it’s been a habit for so long that it’s become automatic.

I’ve considered why I do this and come up with a few reasons. First, because I routinely doubt myself. Even on topics where I am an expert. Imposter syndrome is real. Second, because I often find myself having to deliver news that the other person(s) doesn’t want to hear and I feel like it helps “soften the blow.” And third, to give myself the feeling of plausible denyability; even if there really is none. e.g. “I said <X> could happen, not would happen.”

TLDR: Because I doubt myself and want to avoid conflict.

But there are times when I will drop the fillers. And it’s not really a conscious effort. If I’m talking about something I feel morally responsible for, I will drop the bullshit and get straight to the point. It happens when I’ve decided that I’m going to die on this [proverbial] hill and that doing what I think is right outweighs any potential consequences. I can coun’t on one, maybe two hands where I’ve felt I had to choose between a job or a friend and my personal ethics.

In those moments, the fillers go away because my choice is already made.

Entergy is lying through their teeth about the whole ordeal. Claiming the data center would not impact rates while fighting like hell to suppress the details of their deal with Google.

At the same time, they are currently pitching a full rate restructuring to the Arkansas Public Service Commission which will absolutely increase rates. Especially for small businesses.

Sarah Sanders administration also bears some responsibility for this bullshit. After Ted Thomas resigned as PSC chairman in 2022, the governors office began working hard to make the PSC much more friendly to utilities and much less friendly to rate payers.

In some ways, this is Arkansas voters having the day they voted for. Ya’ll wanted a governor who was “pro business” (aka pro corruption) and now you’ve got a PSC – which is supposed to advocate for ratepayers – that just rubber stamps rate increase requests.

The Brave Vengeful Little Toaster

Yes.The ability to do speech-to-text and text to-speech with a relatively high level of speed and accuracy is impressive. And it has at least a few potentially positive real world applications.

Similar tools have existed for years but the quality and user friendliness of those has generally been pretty lacking.

IKR? For what it costs and for how hard Microsoft has worked to shoehorn it into everything, it offers very little in terms of increased productivity. I would go so far as to call it an epic failure. Especially considering they spent vast sums of money on it and all they managed to produce was something that is at best marginally good at drafting emails.

As far as a coding assistant, Copilot is pathetic and produces code that is utter trash much of the time.

We have copilot at work and we are expected to use it. They recently updated the Copilot desktop app to include live voice chat, where you can have actual “conversations” with it. To be honest, that actually is kind of impressive. Unfortunately, that’s also about where the impressiveness stops. I burned up all of my daily voice chat limits, and I don’t even know how many tokens trying to get that stupid thing to walk me through making a relatively minor configuration change in Azure. It could not do it. It was consistently wrong about so many things.

You would think Microsoft would be embarrassed about selling a chatbot that can’t even tell you how to make basic configuration changes to their own products. Personally, I’m not strongly opposed to LLMs. But the value proposition that all these tech firms are currently selling is laughable at best.

Murrell ended up sending a $1K bonus check to 1,500 stores

Assuming each store averages 20 employees and the bonuses were split equally between all employees:

$1000/20 = $50.

So he was bragging about giving employees a bonus that wasn’t even enough to buy a family of four dinner at Five Guys.

People don’t always appreciate the potential seriousness of head injuries. And unfortunately it doesn’t take a long fall to become serious.

Hope you’re able to get the medical care you need.

September is just summer pretending it’s fall. The high here for today is 101 (38C).

Or even be manufactured.

If you’re editing a VBA macro in an Excel workbook stored in OneDrive, it temporarily stops syncing the workbook file and can cause sync conflicts where you lose all your changes. This has been an issue for years.

Nobody in their right mind wants to work with VBA. Spending all day hammering out a macro or function only to have it magically poofed out of existence is just cruel.

So now I store Excel workbooks (where VBA is involved) on my work pc and have a PowerShell script that copies them to OneDrive on a schedule as a backup.

I’m still amazed that corporations everywhere subscribe to this ridiculous circus.

“I’m sorry. You’re right to push back – since you’re a guy – and I can now clearly make out the knee in your MRI. My extensive internal medical knowledge indicates that you have tuberculosis.”

I made many stupid mistakes and there is no evidence. The same cannot be said for kids today.

I had an old colleague who was an engineer for Emerson Electric for most of his career. Emerson started as an electric motor manufacturer and eventually got into making just about EVERYTHING. I have a house from the 70’s that originally had fans, garbage disposals, heaters, light switches etc. All made by Emerson. Even different branded appliances using Emerson components.

One time I asked my former colleague what Emerson still makes. He just smirked and said, “Money.” I knew what he meant. I work in manufacturing and as far as I can see, innovation is dead. Because the goal is no longer to design a solution to a problem and (hopefully) profit from it. The goal is to profit. Period. As quickly and cheaply as possible.

So now, all the old people who knew how to design things are gone. And young people are not going into electronics or mechanical engineering because no one is hiring. And who really wants to spend their whole career having to answer to people who don’t care about building cool shit.

Tech has a similar problem.

We use Copilot to make memes that we share on Teams. What else are we gonna do with it? It’s useless for anything remotely productive.

The Bible does not posit that the earth is 6,000 years old. You’re thinking of Dispensationalists.

“They did not teach us any of this in college.” – Virtually Every IT Intern I’ve Ever Met

In fairness, “Corporate Politics 101” and “Nepotism for Dummies” aren’t actual college courses.

Shoot to Thrill would be a close second.