He is much needed and missed right now.

I love that Rogers supported Clemmons and truly had no issue with his sexual orientation. Rogers could’ve simply said to not be openly gay on his show, but he went as far as advising him for the long haul. If you read this as a single headline, it’s way too easy to misconstrue as homophobia, but the reality was that Rogers had a deep understanding of society and how to traverse it to survive and have a career in such socially chaotic times.

That’s when you know you’re winning.

Context for those wondering.

Mr. Rogers stated that he had no problem with Clemmons being gay, but said he had to keep this secret for the sake of his show. It’s shitty and it doesn’t give context on exactly why Mr. Rogers told him this (except for the show being his dream that he didn’t want to jeopardize), but I think it was possibly related to the social climate of things at the time. The gay community was facing persecution also, so I think this was Mr. Rogers trying to weather a storm so that his show could persist and continue to help people. My theory is that he probably had bigoted folks in upper management that thought bringing a black and gay man onto the show was a bridge too far for them, and Mr. Rogers didn’t want to see his dream disappear.

In the end, it probably saved both of their careers, but it’s really terrible. It was also during times when folks stayed closeted in order to not lose everything they’ve built career and reputation-wise.

I grew up on Mr. Rogers, Bob Ross, etc. They’re a big part of what shaped me and made me empathetic. I live a good life but the world around me (the US) is determined to make me bitter and angry, and it’s an everyday struggle to keep my mind above water.

I know if he were around today, he would still manage to always keep a cool head and a grounded spirit, despite knowing where this country is headed.

I couldn’t believe it. I talked to other people at the company and it had become like a running joke. Some people could cash paychecks, others couldn’t. So it was a race to the bank.

The company has since downsized considerably, but I don’t know how they’re still around. Shit floats to the top I guess.

It was a wild ride. Any time I tell folks about this place, it blows them away what kind of things the company got away with. There’s probably tons of stuff I don’t even know about…

But I did just recall another gem:

The company often times didn’t have enough money in their business account to cover all paychecks. On a couple occasions when I went to the bank to cash it, they told me I had to wait because there weren’t enough funds. When it happened one time, I got super pissed, drove to the office on a Saturday and demanded they put cash in my hand. I embarrassed one of the owners in the lobby when I held up my paycheck and said “I can’t cash this.” They were only able to front me $100 and I made accounting give me a receipt as proof. They would regularly tell us to wait until Monday. So they were writing checks that were worthless.

They’re primarily for companies to advertise using their fleet vehicles, but folks get them for appearances too (you can get textures and colors of all sorts). It’s a vinyl material often made by 3M that is super resilient and is installed using a heat gun, squeegees, utility knife, and patience. It’s not primarily used as a protective layer but conveniently doubles as one.

Thanks! Gonna have to keep the coffee flowing.

I’ve probably told this story a million times now.

Had a boss that was clearly an entitled, arrogant, hand-fed asshole his entire life. He used to pull all kinds of illegal shit at his company. I’ll bullet this to save time:

• Asked me one time if I wanted to do some web dev work for the company website. He wouldn’t tell me what he was willing to pay or anything and said I had to accept first. I refused because he wouldn’t tell me. The kicker: his web dev team was waiting in the lobby to meet with him. He was trying to undercut them by underpaying me to do their work.
• He was paying a woman under the table illegally as a favor to a friend. Pretty sure she was in the country without a visa. I didn’t give a shit about that (fuck ICE) and never said anything. What pissed me off was that he was clearly exploiting her and not paying her well.
• He regularly tried to force people into signing pieces of paper that would outline an error made, and would try to garner the wages of employees to cover it. This is highly illegal but some people signed and in one instance, a woman had $800 taken from her pay over a few weeks. They tried to pull this on a colleague and I for a job we had never even heard of. It was obvious he thought we could be scared into signing. Get fucked, pal.
• He tried to make me do work off the clock once and I was essentially fired until it was done. For context we installed and designed vehicle wraps. I was a designer that ran a 54” printer. We had a ton of client jobs come in so I was pretty busy. He calls over to the office I’m in (we had 2 locations) and tells me he needs some stickers for his own vehicle pretty quickly. I tell him we’re pretty busy but I’ll fit them in. Fast forward a few days or so. His stickers aren’t done because I’m swamped and customer work comes first. He tells me (through my manager) that I have to print, drive to the other office (1 hour round trip with a paid toll), and install the decals off the clock because I’m essentially fired until it’s done or I’m fired fired. This was the last straw for me. I tell my manager verbatim “I’m not fucking doing that,” clock out and go home—never to return.
• Fast forward a few weeks. I get a notice that the company has reported me for getting unemployment benefits without being fired. So a phone mediation session gets scheduled between myself, the dickhead, and an unemployment office person. The owner lies the entire time saying that they called me multiple times and I refused to answer. I call bullshit and ask if they’d like me to obtain phone records. Silence. Of course because employees have zero fucking power in the US, I’m told I have to pay back the unemployment and they rule in the company’s favor. I tell them “I’m not paying back a single penny of this” and hang up on everyone. Every time the mail came stating what I had to pay, I tore it up and threw it away. No one ever came after me.
• It gets worse. I hear from a woman that works there that she won a court case against him. Apparently he called her late at night, super drunk, and verbally harassed her with sexual comments. He had a wife and kid at the time (I say that because I’m pretty sure his wife divorced him over this). He also had to take a massive hit to pay out the settlement. Fucking piece of shit human finally getting what they deserve.

It’s Monday and I’m in 5 solid hours of meetings from 11am to 4pm. My job could vaporize into nothing, me along with it, and nothing would change. I’m barely thinking 5 minutes ahead, let alone 5 years.

That’s part of why the AirReps community formed on Reddit. To vet and report back on various ones.

The US thrives on negativity 24/7. Its tiresome.

Going out as an adult doesn’t appeal to me anymore because it’s almost always centered around drinking, or places where people are drinking. It’s inescapable.

We watch billionaires be absolute idiots on a daily basis. We can live a little. We gain nothing by participating in fake competitions that make others rich, so why not burn the empire and have fun doing it.

At least we got some wild videos out of that I guess? Peak internet days.

I have a Rove camera I got a few years ago. I want to get a second one for the back (I guess they sell a dual kit now).

All I can say is invest in 4k vehicle cameras. Get one facing one and one facing the rear. CYA for when these self-driving Teslas start crashing into everything.

Here’s my recent favorite:

• Try to log into site
• Tells me my password is wrong… uhh okay
• Try to reset password by auto-filling a new one from my password manager
• New password set successfully! Yay!
• Try to login again… fail. Wrong password… fucking what…?
• Realize that their password field was clipping the password length off at some max length not fucking mentioned anywhere, so I have no clue what the actual password is without trial-and-erroring, which then results in an account lockout again

I’m a programmer and this kind of blatant stupidity from massive companies pisses me off to no end. MAKE YOUR PASSWORD REQUIREMENTS CLEAR. MAKE YOUR UX CLEAR.

The fuck are you on about?