Sign up for the new gym. Figure out where going will fit into my likely future schedule. Set an explicit period of lapse due to the effort of moving (or whatever life change is disrupting the norm).

Of course that is in an ideal situation. Sometimes you don't have enough notice for this (COVID stay-at-home threw me off).

Donut and coffee clubs (and similar) in offices have worked this way forever.

I would guess that geography and the demographics of the American west are as much to blame as the relative lack of continental conflict in the rail era.

I've worked at a lot of places like this, and I'm continually surprised people enjoy it. For me, it always ends up having the telephone game problem. You spend a huge amount of time error-correcting.

How do folks scale it? Given the aforementioned error-correction process, the amount of time a manager spends facilitating that process caps with very few engineers.

We have gone another way and our engineering teams work with product managers and together they make decisions. The PM deals with gathering feedback from our analytics teams, end-users and clients, and summarizes that for the team.

We feel this gives a sense of ownership to individual engineers and allows them to make better decisions without a lot of back and forth communication funneled through a proxy. And it also means we don't need a dozen managers.

Good engineers are expensive and hard to find, and I'd say finding excellent managers is just as onerous.

I can understand that absolute values aren't very meaningful, as they're probably missing a lot of necessary context. BMI is one metric that doesn't paint a clear picture on its own -- but no doctor would ever rely solely on it.

I can't understand dismissing most of medical science. Can you expand on that part of your statement?

Use a torque driver if you can. And always bracket the bit with your fingers.

If you are straining, something is wrong.

I’ve found slightly over-tightening most locking tuners will break the string. Not a frequent occurrence for me, but frequent enough to bug me. Usually happens when I’m in a rush.

"in my book" is often used to cast a statement as opinion. So something "definitely" being X "in my book" is pretty clearly not meant to be any sort of argument (necessary! sufficient! proof! -- gag me with conversation killers) where I come from.

I don't think there's any good way to define a toy in any hard-and-fast way, so rubbing words like "necessary" on it is just not in play.

In the original discussion, lamp oil was interesting when framed as a toy. The background given was enough for me to think of it as such as part of the thought experiment. I gave a couple of dimensions that I think supported its toyness when some balked.

You could: 1) not have a monitor on your desk 2) use a smaller monitor 3) use a laptop 4) get a bigger desk

Each of these has a number of ways you might achieve them, easily meeting or exceeding the throw-away number I posited.

For example, with (1) you might use a school computer lab. Or you might eschew computer use altogether. Or you might borrow a computer when necessary. Or you might devise an alternate mounting scheme. Or you might get a lap desk, so you need less real-desk surface for other things.

Anyway, we're way off in some boring-ass woods. The woods that kept me from participating here for years.

Good day, human.

You could have solved your problem in a dozen other ways. You were privileged enough to do it in the way that presumable pleased you most. There is a hint of toyness to it in that respect.

Go look at Volvo concept trucks over the last few years.

First you have to accept that the trucking industry is conservative. The mom and pop distributors, the big guys, everyone. The people who own, lease and operate the trucks. There are all sorts of legislative hurdles to deal with.

I think a winning strategy is to start with city or county distributors. Lease out trucks at _very_ competitive rates. Do this with an agreement that your backend (accounting, maintenance, inventory) systems will replace _everything_ at the distributor. At first you'll probably have to compromise on this and integrate some things.

On top of that you pretty much have to integrate your onboard sensors/telematics with consumable manufacturers. Unless you're going to manufacture your own tires and such too.