Gene Splicer PHD

It used to mean getting stressed out over who was hosting Christmas, who was going to be there and how drunk and mean they'd get, spending money I didn't have on presents i wasn't sure would be well received, trying to figure out how to bring a boyfriend without my family freaking out, shopping stress in general, decorating for the sake of decorating because no one was coming over anyway, and trying to figure out how I was going to find the time to cook food to take along to...wherever I was supposed to be. Nowadays it means going to the movies and having some Chinese food for dinner. +1

Those are girls! Look at the hairstyles on the lady at the top and the man to the right, plus the style of his shirt. It looks like they're from the late 1930's or early 40's to me. Now look at the hair on the two kissing Santa. Men didn't wear their hair like that in that timeframe. So, girls. Cool picture, I love old photos.

Well ain't that something. Well done! Congratulations!

Mark? You were busy when you wrote this. It's a terrible sentence. Right there in the middle: “It was awesome,” he said enthusiastically. “I met Bellona Carter, and she liked me enough to invite me to another event on Friday.” I knew who she was, mostly from listening to conversations about her with Stef and Claire. “She has as good of taste as you do,” I said. “Thanks,” he said, then paused. “I’m sorry I was such a dick to you.” “I deserved it,” I said. Let's try something else: instead of "she has as good of taste as you do" try "her taste is as good as yours" or "she has impeccable taste. Almost as good as yours" ...or something. But that's just a rotten sentence, dude Oh and this was a greet chapter, you're setting us up. I can tell

Happy Birthday Steve!

I get a kick out of seeing that she started a gofundme campaign, and they cancelled it lol. She's a real piece.

http://www.sidetrackchicago.com/

Hey Eric, Yeah, I'm an MS partner, I've been running Win10 in a sandbox (and now live on my cranky old laptop) for what, over a year now? Since the first preview, anyway. I do like the OS. I just don't think it's fully baked, specifically when non-technical people attempt to upgrade and it fails. Because non-technical users don't deal well with when Windows, or an upgrade attempt, is in a failed state. My issue with Microsoft and Win10 runs a little deep, mainly because my customer base is not by and large technically literate and many run old programs and old hardware. You are technically literate, with google-fu at your fingertips and the ability to read a knowledgebase article and apply its instructions with little to no fear. That's not at all true with a very large subset of Windows users. - Yes, there are ways to dismiss the nag screens, but if you don't know you can, then it bugs you multiple times a day until you push the button. Show a non-technical user the word "regedit" (which you need to use to disable the gwx string to kill the nag screen) - with its attendant WARNING YOU'RE ABOUT TO DESTROY YOUR COMPUTER BY EDITING THE REGISTRY warning, and it scares the crap out of them. My point is that there should be an option right on the nag screen that says "I don't want to upgrade right now. Check with me in 30 days" (and one option should be "never". By not including that, Microsoft is in my opinion forcing this upgrade. - Speaking of the "never" option: I have a laptop here that will never ever ever run Windows 10. I'm surprised it survived an upgrade to 8.1. But there's the nag screen, with no obvious way to actually kill it. Because it'll check again in a month, and let me know in a month, that I (still) can't upgrade. That's annoying and it should be dead simple to remove. - When your Spotify software killed your machine, you knew what to do. Including having a backup to restore from in the first place, which isn't all that common unless it's absolutely dead simple to use and understand (see Time Machine on a Mac). I've got a client that per a standard process document, swaps out their external hard drive backups every three days (I didn't write the procedure). Problem is that the power strip that the backup drives were plugged into is dead. It hasn't had power for about a week, and they never checked to see if the backups actually ran (status is sent to them in an email. They stopped reading the emails). And they're panic-scared about using cloud backups. - Yes, MS is moving to incremental updates. It's a really good idea. The old saw about "wait for the first service pack" isn't there anymore. But by waiting a while before upgrading, it matures on its own. In other words, it's the same effect: Install a clean Win10 via the upgrade, then download 1,320 pending updates to correct deficiencies and get the security up to date. I'd really rather have non-literate users do that then install it today, and have issues, some which may well be pain points, incrementally fixed. - Sure Windows 10 is going to get a lot of adoption, and get it pretty early. It has some seriously good features in it, and I know that a lot of users are able to get up and running very seamlessly with it right out of the gate. That's awesome. I just think that the upgrade experience will be vastly improved in six months to a year by removing fail points. And that's what I'm recommending to my clients: wait a while, let the early bugs get worked out, and then do it.

Also, Microsoft forced this upgrade, they didn't just make it "free". They did that because several features need a critical mass of data to work well (Cortana, specifically). They weren't going to get widespread acceptance of the OS - meaning it woulda looked a lot like the windows 8 debacle - without it. So they pushed it. In my experience so far - about a month after RTM - it wasn't done yet, it isn't done yet, it won't be really solid for a few more months. So, unless you have the technical chops to deal with failure - because there's a good chance it will fail - the need to upgrade to access software or features that are missing from your current version, or are mandated by a corporate policy, just wait. It'll still upgrade in six months. There's time.

Yep. Business is booming with all the failed upgrades, reverts to windows 7, features that don't work properly, graphics and sound driver problems, privacy concerns, and general ignorance about the upgrade process. Hey lady! When it told you it was going to uninstall that genealogy program because it was incompatible, did you even read that? And now your data is unusable because you didn't back it up to a compatible format? Thanks for the $400! Glad it's working again after the total wipe and reload. Hey graphic designer who "knows about computers"! You didn't notice that it told you you had an incompatible driver for your graphics card? So you uninstalled the driver and installed the upgrade only to find Photoshop won't run anymore? Thanks for the buck fifty! Always happy to install a new graphics card. Hey kid! Your dad told you not to upgrade, and you did anyway, and you stopped it in the middle because you were gonna get caught? Talk to dad about your phone upgrade, because it's not happening, he paid me instead. I'll say it over and over and over again: unless you are absolutely sure it's absolutely necessary, WAIT SIX MONTHS TO A YEAR BEFORE UPGRADING TO NEW OPERATING SYSTEM VERSIONS. You'll note that Microsoft is not reporting that a lot of those 75 million users are HAPPY that they were forced to upgrade.

It is way too early in the cycle to even consider which candidates are viable. Let's talk next summer.

Sooo... did you color in Africa with the same crayon as Konstantine?

I started to clean my bedroom closet out, and was putting things away, but then I found a bill I forgot to pay in the jeans I wore the other day, so I ran a load of wash to get the jeans out of the way, and then I remembered the bill so I paid that, and that led me to file all the paid bills, and then I organized the top of the desk, and found some other stuff to file, and then I found a spoon that was dirty, so I took it to the kitchen, and I was hungry so I had lunch, and then I started cleaning out the refrigerator, and took some stuff out to the trash, and then I passed by the car, which needed washer fluid so I did that, and then I took a nap. Final frontier, indeed

Well, ain't THAT a shitshow, lol Great start, Mark, wth was Isidore thinking?

Many students, especially in inner city and depressed areas, don't have the money (or the parental or community support) for school supplies. So the teacher provides them, and there's no budget for the cost. Also, if the teacher wants to teach something that requires additional "stuff", they often pay for that too. It's now fairly common to see gofundme campaigns set up by teachers so they can actually concentrate on teaching. It sucks.

In all the pictures I've seen of Austin Falk I just googled (because that link is borked), it appears that his lips have been superglued together. Which is unfortunate.

ok i tried it sorry its hard to type

It breaks because it's cheap stuff. A 2 terabyte drive for 50 bucks? Good for maybe a year. MAYBE. People think they get a great deal because they didn't pay much AND it's all the same stuff anyway, who cares who made it? Yeah, that'll cost you. Pro tip: when you (I mean the global you here, not just Comsie) buy an item as critical as a backup drive, look for drive reliability. Look in the specs for a long warranty, like 3+ years. That indicates a better-than-average drive in terms of quality. Here's a link to a blog post by a tech at Backblaze. They do online backups, and currently have about 35,000 hard drives running 24/7. They know a little bit about which ones fail most: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-update-september-2014/ Okay so you might pay 50 or $100 more for for a good drive. So what? What's the cost of losing the data that's stored on it? One thing I've learned over a long time fixing computers for a living: It's not the cost of the gear, it's the loss you face when it doesn't work. People never seem to take this to heart. And manufacturers know this. There's a big, big difference in the quality of the gear you get at a Best Buy or a Microcenter or a Fry's, and the price point is where the rubber hits the road. They'll sell you the cheapest crap they can because YOU'LL BUY IT. Do some research beyond looking in the weekly flyer, and buy stuff that will last or consistently work based on history and reviews. Don't look at the price. If more people did this, I'd be (happily) out of the business of trying to recover data from shitty equipment.

He pulled it from GA.

If I never read another gay story with a brunch in it, one with petite, lightly toasted salmon and Swiss chocolate étouffée's with a garlic sprinkle and a parsley embellishment served on a pool of cream sauce and a glass of their finest claret, I will die a happy man. Scotty, you are, like all people, a diamond. You have many facets. One of them is your sexual orientation. Be yourself, and let all the facets shine.

They want him to put his groceries in their trunk /sorrynotsorry

Haha, yeah. I worked with my dad for a while before he died, and before we split off to start a new company, I worked for him at an IT staffing company, where I was totally in the closet. They had a Christmas party, and one of our staffers was a cute, young gay dude. He brought his boyfriend to the party (that's how we found out his orientation). My dad comes up to me at some point and said "so, xxx is cute, you keep looking at him." I said yeah, but I was really just admiring the balls it took for him to bring his partner to this party. My dad said "bullshit, you want to do him." I was appalled. I said (a) get out of my business, and ( he's got a partner. He said "well, there's your challenge then", and walked away. We never spoke of it again, except for when this guy quit and got a new job, and my dad made a comment that I'd missed my chance. Sorry for your loss, Myr, go be with your mom and take care of business. It's gonna suck for a while, and you'll never really get over it. But you'll remember him always and, when you dream of him, give a little nod and say "hi dad" when you wake up. Cause that's when he'll pay you a visit.

I...I think I know what this is. The excuses. "Slammed in real life". The apologies. "Sorry I'm late posting this chapter". The sucking up after you've posted a chapter. "You guys are awesome". Oh, yes. This looks real familiar. REAL familiar. The sideways glances, the way you can't quite look us in the eye. The way you look past us in that group hug, as if there was something...better over our shoulder. Yeah, I think I see it. You've found someone else. Who is it, some cheap trollop of a story site, with pretty fonts and a smooth yet shallow interface? Or maybe they have a bigger...audience than we do. Is that it? Are you looking for something more turgid, some swollen quality we don't have? Maybe something engorged with new blood? Is it the URL? I bet they have a sexy .com on their site name and not some stodgy .org. Is that it? Really? Are you so enamored of such things? Well, I'll tell you what they DON'T have, Mark. THEY aren't us. THEY will lavish wild praise on you...for a while. Not for long, but long enough for you to get a little hooked on it. But it'll taper off, Mark. It'll turn into a cheap, limp little "like" button, with no review button. No reviews, Mark. No statistics, either, because they'll want to keep that for themselves. They'll keep you under their thumb, keep you hoping for just a little more of their time, while they're off courting the next Mark to keep in their little orchard. You'll be trapped, like a rat. Just like a rat, Mark, on your little running wheel in your habitrail. What did we do to you? How could you DO this? WHAT.DID.WE.DO.TO.DESERVE.THIS??? Was it something we said, or didn't say? Was is the things unspoken, the reviews not written, the long praises that were hurriedly backspaced over when mom came in the room? WHY, MARK, WHY??? :::pounds fists on table::: //eats a Cheeto that bounced out of the bag// Well. I've said my piece. We will be here, Mark, when you're done with your little "fling". We'll be here, reading your old stories, looking at that last chapter, wondering. Wondering, and waiting. That's what we'll be doing, Mark, just wondering, and waiting. Love, Gene

I'd offer you best wishes on a speedy return to normalcy, and a lightening of your workload, but I'M ON HIATUS

That's what I'm saying WTF MARK UNSUBSCRIBE ME FROM YOUR NEWSLETTER /s