My disorganised thoughts in no particular order:

In Australia, donation of blood products is not paid. I think you get a cup of tea and a few biscuits (“cookies”).

I don’t have a problem with that, and I’m very grateful to those anonymous people who volunteered their time and blood so that I could have blood during my stem cell transplants.

I also don’t have a problem with people in other countries who are paid for their blood products; I understand what it’s like to be in dire straits, and blood is a renewable resource. However, I feel that if a company is making money from selling blood, they should be paying a fair price to donors.

Ethically, I feel that any donation of blood (or organs) should be completely anonymous, altruistic, and uncompensated in order to remove any hint of obligation between donor and donee. The idea of being paid for donations makes me personally uncomfortable, even though I just said that I don’t mind other people being compensated.

I’d like to contribute and save lives and whatever, but I have incurable blood cancer (multiple myeloma) and they won’t allow me to donate.

Memory isn’t infinite, CPUs can’t process all integers, and Santa isn’t real

Wait, what? Need a spoiler tag.

Okapi. They’re unusual and they look cool.

Gave up smoking 25 years ago. Diagnosed with incurable blood cancer 5 years ago. After two stem cell (bone marrow) transplants, three years of chemotherapy, and a year of immunotherapy, I’ve been told I’m in full remission — no evidence of disease — and I’m not expected to relapse.

Look after yourself while you’re young and fit and still have a chance to keep healthy.

https://10minutemail.com/ or similar. New address for every query. Clogging up their system with bad data is their choice, not yours.

What did Apple tell you when you asked? Did you think anyone here knows the answer?

Ada

International Talk Like a Pirate Day, the Pastafarian religious holiday celebrated on September 19.

Well, they were discovered in China, so it won’t take long, but they won’t tell anyone until it’s been spread to other countries.

Book the time as an appointment or consultation and just go. If your direct line manager makes a fuss, tell them it’s a doctor’s appointment. If you’ve got far enough that you recognise that you need help, just go ahead and do it.

It will be interesting to find out if these words will come back and haunt them.

• “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”.
• “640K ought to be enough for anybody.”

One time, we were given six month’s wages plus a month’s wages for each year we had worked there (I had been there 12 years). The company paid for career counseling, resume training, self awareness (similar to Myers Briggs only it was useful), use of an office space and computers and printers to hunt for jobs.

Another time, we were told that our entire IT department wasn’t important enough to keep and our jobs had been outsourced to India. But they still wanted us to stay for four weeks and train our replacements. Bitch, if I’m not important enough to keep, then I’m not important enough to train anyone. I collected my stuff and walked out that day.