BigMax

My entire life, swans were kind of an exotic animal, seen only in zoos or on vacations.

Then about 5 years ago, we had one swan family in town, and it caused a brief little buzz.

This spring? I drove by three separate small water bodies, and saw over 10 swans on each one of them.

I looked them up, and apparently they are invasive and do some ecosystem damage. And the other interesting thing - they don't leave for the winter, they can survive her just fine.

Are we in for a future where swans are as common as geese or ducks?

You can give the powers of Superman to a group of people, but only people that are a given age today. So everyone age 40, or age 22, or whatever you pick.

You can't benefit from it - so yourself, anyone you know personally, even a mild acquaintance, are exempt. Meaning if your spouse, your brother, and your old college roommate are all 30, and you pick age 30, none of them get it.

What age gets to rule the world?

I'm currently fighting with upper management related to teams I manage.

I want to promote two people. The good news is those promotions are already approved.

The problem is that we have a set pool for raises, with it keyed off of our defined average raise amount for the company. Let's say for example it's at 3%. So they'd look at a department of 10 people at 100k each, and say "you get $30,000 to spread among the 10 people".

I'm now stuck. Those two who will be promoted will get higher raises, to move them into the next salary brackets, lets say 8%. (And because a raise with a promotion should be bigger than just what everyone else gets! Otherwise what's the point of a promotion?)

First names are created all the time. "Hey, I like the name James, but also Brandon... so... my son is now Jandon!!!" Boom, new name.

But there are so many last names out there. I know some names are from the old days where it was from jobs. Cooper or Goldsmith or whatever. But that doesn't explain them all. And no one does that anymore. John Smith isn't changing his name to John Architect. And in a lot of cultures last names are just passed right on down, there's no obvious moment when a new last name can be given to someone.

So how do we have so many different last names, and where do new ones come from?

I worked an engineering contract for a while. They were pretty open ended, like a lot were, with a vague (but not binding) length specified.

Kind of like: "This contract is expected to be for 12 months, but it is at will of the employer, and could end earlier or be extended further." But for those that do that kind of work, usually they stick to the vague timelines, and a lot of well performing contractors get extended.

Anyway... one day our team of 10 (all contractors, managed by one full time employee) let 3 of the contractors go. (And they had ME do it!!! Technically I was running that team, but... I was a contractor too, and not in charge of any firing like that.) So they were

My wife has always had this weird thing about her ability to find things. She's no better at it than anyone else, but has this idea that women are magical with their ability to find things, and men are just absolute morons.

So early on I noticed if I ever said "hey, have you seen (whatever?)" she will come and look for it with me, and lecture me about how stupid men are, and then get all self righteous whenever she found it. "See?? When a guy takes an hour to find something, he just has to ask a woman and she'll find it right away!"

For a bit I just stopped ever asking her if she knew where something was. Maybe she would know where she left the scissors last, but then again, I didn't

I go to so many offices and retail places that have double doors, and they always only ever unlock one. Why do they do this?

Many even go so far as to put a sign that says "use other door!"

Why not just unlock both? Are there any landlords or business owners that can explain to me why you do this?

I explained Daredevil to my wife years ago while watching the Netflix show. And this was her summary:

"So Daredevil is a blind man whose superpower is that he can see?"

We've had a lot of jokes about it since then. The latest was that to celebrate the new show coming back, we should have a fight in a hallway. (Since I always tell her that his second superpower beyond being able to see is that he is really good at fighting in hallways.)

She said to be realistic, we should all wear blindfolds, but to make it feel more like Daredevil, the blindfolds should be made of saran wrap.

(I love the show and the hero - the jokes are made in good fun!)

I'll be going to hike in a few days, and was planning to park there. I assume that's allowed for day hikes? If so, does it ever fill up at all?

For various reasons (but mostly because I contend "Lost in the Woods" is the best Disney song ever) I'd love to get a picture of me with Kristoff (and maybe Sven!)

I tried looking online, but find only very old references, or else references to his statue in the ride.

Any chance anyone knows if he might be wandering around somewhere lately?