At least there’s no fork in the road.

It’s berry berry good! 🍓

My daughter also made wonderful art around that age, later went to art school, and now has a career that uses those skills. I hope your kid reaches her artistic goals, whatever they are.

> you can boot the ISO off a USB

I am not familiar with ISO, will need to figure out what you are suggesting. (Sorry, I have decades of PC experience but not that type of technical expertise.)

Thanks, but wouldn’t I need to be able to log into the laptops to use that method? Or are you implying that I would remove each drive and connect it to another computer to run that software?

How can I prepare laptops to be recycled, especially if I don't have the passwords to use them?

My family has several old laptops that we want to dispose of through the state's official electronics recycling program. But we can no longer log in to those laptops, and I'm concerned that they may contain sensitive info (passwords, finances, etc.) that a savvy person could access.

Is it safe to recycle them as is? Should I try to take out the hard drives? (If so, would I smash them with a hammer or run a powerful magnet over them or something like that before disposing of them?) Thanks.

Careful — I just clicked on that link and got a spam popup.

I’ve really enjoyed several of the films on that list. But my favorite musical biopic is actually a documentary: Thunder Soul, about a groundbreaking high school band director in the 1970s. It shows how he and his students smashed society’s expectations in that era, and the enormous and enduring influence he had on their lives. Tremendously moving and inspiring — plus it features lots of funky music.

I was working for a company in the publishing space, hiring editors. So it was vital for us to know how skilled and careful the applicants were with words. A sloppy cover letter could eliminate them.

Having been on a hiring team, and hence having reviewed many resumes and cover letters, I don't recommend doing that. I think a lot of HR people can tell AI-generated text from human-written text.

EDIT: As a compromise, I suppose you could use ChatGPT to write a draft, then edit it to sound more like you.

I’m about 55 hours into Andy Serkis reading The Lord of the Rings. Terrific so far, but we’ll see how the final 10 hours go. 🙂

Just what the well-dressed teens are doing in between business meetings.

Current mood …

I taught 7th-grade English for a year, and many of the students were reading those books. I assumed that age range (12-13 years) was the intended target audience.

This is the only movie I ever remember seeing where I started laughing uncontrollably in the theater — not because any specific funny thing happened, but because it was just so weird.

Looking like the original Freaks and Geeks.

Because they fit the bill.

Downs, Ups, And Louie. Refers to the bad and good films and to you — and has the acronym DUAL, a second reference to the two aspects of the films you’re showing.

Looks like the love child of Axl Rose and David Cassidy.

No worries. That happens a lot, even to adults.

Once, I was running in a 5K race through a park, on a course I knew well. About halfway, I came upon a guy who was ahead of me but had gotten lost and stopped. He called out to me, "Which way do we turn here?" I said "Follow me!"

We ran together the rest of the way. And I tried not to slow him down ... in fact, by running at his pace, I set my PR for that course!

Also, in the only marathon I've run, I got injured partway through and had to walk the rest of the way. So I reached the finish line about an hour later than I had predicted, and my wife was panicking, figuring I must have been hit by a truck or something. She got over it, and I'm sure your parents will get over the worries they had about you.

Did somebody tell her a shaggy dog story?