I have this absurd fantasy about being paid for my commuting time.

Too many stripper recalls lately.

I used to work as a contractor at the Comcast Center in Philadelphia. One day my boss (at my contracting company) came by and said we were going to a meeting with Time Warner Cable execs. I reached for my coat but he stopped me; we rode the elevator up to the 16th floor where Time Warner Cable had a suite of offices ... in the Comcast Center. A year or two later they announced plans for a merger of the two companies, which was somehow and mystifyingly stopped by the FCC. Like, they'd already merged essentially.

My current job (school bus driver) has a pension, which is the first of any job I've ever had in my life (and I'm almost 60). It's another 5 years before I'm vested and get the pension, and I'm not sure I would bet on the job not having been replaced by AI before then. Hopefully not, since the pension would allow me to afford the brand-name dog food.

I live 5 minutes from work and I am still unreasonably pissed about that. I'm a school bus driver, we have morning and afternoon runs with about four hours in between, so I have twice as much commuting as a normal job. Some of my coworkers live as much as an hour away and they just sit in their cars between 9 and 1 looking at their phones, so I really shouldn't be complaining.

Huh, just found a 2000 Whizzer Motorbike for sale for $800 on craigslist. That might be my speed. Apparently they top out at 40 mph but that would probably be OK.

Bob Tiktaalik, nice to meet you.

Shit, I know some people with bicycles that cost nearly $20K. Meanwhile I have a fleet of '90s hybrids that I paid $50 to $100 for on craigslist.

Some of the roads I drive on for local errands are 45 mph and I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that on an e-bike.

As long as they keep all those land mines on the border, they'll be fine.

I just don't see any electric scooters around here anywhere. I kind of have my eye on this thing called an Aventura-X which is a vespa-style electric scooter that can go 35 mph ($3K) or 50 mph ($5K). I feel like that price kind of defeats the idea in the first place, and I still couldn't get it serviced anywhere.

I'm straight-up afraid of motorcycles; somehow the sit-down style of a vespa seems more accommodating. You're of course right about the danger of being hit, but I'm already an avid bicyclist so I assume I'm going to die that way anyway. I could just ride my bike everywhere, but of course that's slower and the logistics of getting a bike ready for a ride is the big pain in the ass.

TBF, my colleague also managed to produce complete disasters in a language (C#) that he knew, the entire company knew, and lots of other programmers in the area knew very well.

I live in the US and I want to start riding a Vespa-style scooter for my local errands. It's crazy how difficult this is, and I live in a suburb of a major city (Philadelphia). There are only two scooter shops within 50 miles or so, and their cheapest scooters are over $6000. Used scooters are virtually non-existent, and even if I found one, the scooter shops won't service anything you didn't buy there. I could buy one on Amazon for $800 plus $400 shipping but I'd have to service it myself and I feel like that would be taking my life in own hands. I'd like an electric scooter but that's virtually non-existent as well.

Then I watch videos from Vietnam and China and scooters are fucking everywhere.