One time I asked someone what they thought about the phrase "people are temporary" and it ended with them telling me:

I don't like saying goodbye to people because I don't know if it's going to be the last time.

That just stuck with me and really got me thinking how precious our time is.

I'm asking this as a genuine question, not as a hot take.

Where I'm coming from:

My husband and I went to dinner the other night -- apologies from the waitress on being shortstaffed. A sign on a local store asks for patience with the lack of staff. The people staffing order pickup at a nearby department store aren't enough to keep up with orders. At my most recent doctor's appointment I spent almost 45 minutes in the exam room waiting to be seen (for an appointment I had to make over a year ago). A few hours after the appointment I went to pick up a prescription, and it hadn't even begun to be processed yet. There was only one cashier working, and she was having to jump between the in-person line and the drive-thru lane. At my job we don't have enough substitute teachers, so we're dependent on regular teachers covering classes during their "prep" periods.

This is merely a recent snapshot from my own life that I'm using as a sort of representative sample, but it feels like something that's been building for a while -- like something that was going to be temporary due to COVID but has stuck around and is now just what we're supposed to get used to. I remember that I used to keep thinking that understaffing would eventually go away over time, but it seems like it's just standard practice now?

Is this something specific to my experiences or my local area (I'm in the US, for context)? Are other people seeing the same thing?

Assuming it isn't just me, is there anything out there besides anecdotes that addresses this phenomenon? I don't want to lean solely on gut reactions, but I also can't deny that nearly every business I go to seems visibly short-staffed all of the time.

Hello... looking to hang a 100lbs heavy bag in my basement (with regular wood-stud walls). I've researched various options and have gone down all sorts of engineering rabbit holes, including pull-out strengths of various sized lag bolts, horizontal load maximums of different kinds of wood, etc. I've perused various marketplaces for various types of mounting solutions and such. The problem with standard DIY wall mounting is that it doesn't come off the wall far enough.

I'm wondering though -- and it seems simple enough of a solution -- why the following wouldn't work:

An 8-foot span of 2x6, turned "vertically" so that the top and bottom faces are the 2" edge, affixed 45 degrees to the studs. ASCII art not-withstanding, it's just an isosceles triangle, where the 8-foot hypotenuse is the lumber, and the "height" of the triangle is 4-feet. It would seem 2 brackets (the kind used in making decks) on each end, screwed into the studs would be suitably strong.

The "Sagulator" (google it!) seems to think that such a setup would only experience a total 0.01in sag in the center of the span.

The heavy bag would just hang from this with a strap that loops over the beam.

An 8-foot span basically means I have a lot of clearance on either side.

I suppose I could just go right into the ceiling joists, but with my proposed setup I can slide the bag to one end or the other and create a bit more of a dynamic setup (albeit it looks a bit more unsightly).

Thoughts or suggestions? Or am I crazy?

Following yesterday's question about showering, I was really interested in how often everyone brushes their teeth. I know dentists recommend 1-3 times a day, with once being like "you'll be fine if you do it properly," and thrice being like "yo, don't brush too hard because you can damage your enamel," but I also know a lot of people do it more than three times a day and I suspect a lot of people do it less than once a day...

I try to do it twice a day...sometimes I miss my evening brushing because one of our cats sleeps in the bathroom so that she has her own space and if the dog (who wants to eat the cats) is already in the bedroom, sometimes I don't feel like escorting him out first. Not great, but at least I'll get it in the morning. And I do sometimes forget in the morning on weekends, but I try to do it as soon as I realize that I've forgotten, and I try to make sure I don't skip nighttime brushing if I forgot to brush in the morning.

I'm interested to know how often people shower or bathe - but I'd also be interested on your thoughts about other people's frequency. Do you feel strongly about how often one should be cleaning themselves, and what factors go into this? I would certainly hope it's reasonably frequent for warm-climate athletes, for example.

Minor hoarder here. Can't seem to let go of small items like pencil stubs and erasers from childhood, and other small seemingly insignificant things. Im a full blown adult but every time i move, those things come with me, and get stored away in the closet or under the bed.

Anyone else do this? What are some things you are forever attached to?

I'm currently juggling full time work and graduate school. Project management is not something that I necessarily find easy, but I need to figure it out in order to succeed this semester. Any productivity tips would be welcome. Thanks

I run into this sometimes (but not often) in my professional life. Instead of signing off their email with their full name, or first name, they simply put the first letter of their name.

Example of ending of email :

Best Regards,
A

I'm trying to sense if I'm off base with this, but I find it pompous. To me, it suggests the sender believes they hold a position of importance. They claim a single letter as their own, ahead of everyone else. Or it suggests the sender believes they are so busy/productive, they choose to save time by not spelling out their full name. Pah.

Thoughts?

Just coming back into the rental market after owning a home for a short time. I found a place that would be great. Then, I got the lease.

This thing is a nightmare. Here are a few of the greatest hits:

• The lease lists my rent and then says they can charge "additional rent" which is "all added charges, costs, and fees for the duration of this lease." So, sounds like they can just make up a number and add it to the rent and I have to pay it?
• The landlord will make a "good faith effort" to make the apartment available to me when my lease starts. Shouldn't the landlord actually do that, not just make any sort of "effort" to do it, "good faith" or otherwise?
• If the unit is damaged such that I cannot live there while repairs are being made, the landlord "may" issue me a credit for the days I can't live there. What criteria will the landlord use? If they decide not to, that means I'll be paying rent for an apartment I cannot occupy?

This is a short lease — I've seen much longer in my time renting — but even so, I could come up with a dozen more examples like this. What is going on here? I've read the law in the area, and I suspect some of the clauses in here are actually unenforceable. For example, the lease allows for automatic rent increases at lease renewal without notification while the law requires 60 days notification, and it requires me to notify 14 days after notification of a rent increase if I do not accept where the law says I have 30 days to do so.

But how did we get here? I just want to pay a specified amount every month in order to be able to live in a space someone else owns. This should be relatively simple, but it's turned into this weird whack-a-mole game where every lease is a document of all that landlord's past tenant grievances they are trying to now avoid in the future, along with any other unreasonable terms they think they can get away with. Regardless of what the law is, the lease can say anything. If I read it and decline to sign, the next person will probably just sign it and hope for the best.

For those of you who are renting, how do you deal with this sort of stuff? Are there reasonable landlords still out there? Is the right way to buy a home just to escape from unreasonable lease terms, even if you don't really want to own?

Update: Possibly important context- This property is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I've been a professional in the IT sector for the past 25 years, and during that time I've gone through several different methods of finding my next gig. Back when I started out, the internet was still a relatively new thing, so I got my first few positions by answering ads in the local newspaper (remember those?)

Two years ago, I decided to try my hand at writing novels, and while that has been quite fulfilling personally, it hasn't yet started to pay any bills so I've had to keep my IT skills sharp and hold down a standard job to pay the bills.

Now though, I find that I'm looking a lot harder at the companies and people I work for, and I'd like to be able to shop around a bit more for a position at a place that is more in line with me as a person.

To that end, I'm wondering what methods are more commonplace now for finding employment, as opposed to my standard, which is pretty much indeed and the occasional linkedin find. Which methods have you had the most success with?

How old were they and how long did it take you to get to a place where you were confident enough in their recall to let your dog(s) run around off-leash at the park or in a field?

My boy is 6 months old now and we've had him with us for 3 months. He's loose/ off-leash at home and his recall/ general engagement at home is very good but obviously there are still lots of exciting distractions out in the wider world. We still do plenty of recall games with him every week to build on it.

At the park we switch to a 15m long leash clipped to his harness and let him trot out in front of us and have a good sniff around. When we find a clear space to have a game of fetch, we'll let go of the leash but leave it attached to the harness just in case we need to stomp on it and retrieve him quickly.

Recall still seems decent at the park but I don't trust him enough to take that leash off completely yet - I don't think he'd come back straight away if there was a football or another dog that he could run to and play with. What have your experiences been like?

Edit: starting to realise this might be a very Europe-centric question, the laws for keeping dogs on a leash/ lead are very different in the UK