1. I have been shopping for hardwood floors. I’d had an idea that there were a lot of different types of wood out there, but I still was not prepared for the seemingly infinite selection. Even once we had settled on a type of tree (white oak), there were still a lot of decisions to be made. Fortunately, there are a lot of lovely options out there, so I am now leaning towards “whatever is in stock.”

  2. I live in terror of what is under the carpets. I am hoping that it is just slab covered with glue. However, this house is from 1954, so there could be anything. As part of my anxious overpreparation, I am googling demolition companies in case there is something terrifying like tile. Even more terrifying, what if there is lovely tile that is original to the house? Could I demo that to replace with wood? I really like wood floors, but I also have a preference for historic preservation.

  3. Summary version of tales from the BugMaster: (a) “i have been calcuating the questions for a very very very very very long time and how could i got the answer wrong i am going to say a terrible thing to the manager if this thing continues” The students are all assigned non-personally-identifiable usernames of the form AdjectiveNoun followeb by a two digit number. Petition to add “Karen” to the list of nouns. (b) We’ve been getting bug reports about sounds issues that have been impossible to diagnose because the user doesn’t include enough information. This is not entirely their fault because just about everyone in the entire world is bad at bug reports. A colleague in customer service has figured it out, and her explanation is amazing. Perfect instructions on how to reproduce the bug. (c) The other day I fielded a bug report from the child of someone who I dated in high school. The bug reports are linked to the parent’s contact information (in case we need to follow up), so I am absolutely certain that it is him. Customer service handles all replies, so I will not be sending an email explaining that there are only a small number of colors available in the avatar builder, so one can not make an avatar that is very pale orange.

  4. Several years ago, when I was visiting Germany on a fairly regular basis and making a decent effort to learn German, I joined a local German conversation group. It was a fairly unremarkable group: Meet once a month at a restaurant and speak bad German, receive announcements about the local Oktoberfest or the German-American Society Film Festival. Pretty normal stuff. The other day I saw that the organizer of the group had been arrested at a protest. He was accused of harrassing the protesters, and is viewed as a leading white supremicist in the area. I learned that he has a blog in which he makes many posts opposing the BLM and Chicano movements (and supporting the border wall). I’d been using the word “Nazi,” but apparently this guy has not yet bought in to the “what’s wrong with Nazis” viewpoint and is maintaining a more retro approach to bias. Needless to say, upon learning this, I removed myself from the group.