Some school districts will train you for the CDL, and some even pay you while you're training (mine didn't at the time). My training didn't take very long because I already owned a used school bus and knew how to drive it, at least. You have to take four standardized tests (general CDL, airbrakes, passenger endorsement and school bus endorsement), have a driving exam, and take a 14-hour special school bus class (this is all in PA, at least). The standardized tests aren't super-difficult, but you do have to actually know the shit, you can't guess your way through it and hope to get a passing grade. I just crammed the free online tests over and over until I was getting 100% on them. I think it was maybe a month and a half between when I started my training and my first day on the job, but that was with not doing a whole lot each day. My district was (and still is) a weird combination of desperate need for drivers with a frustratingly slow pace of actually training people.

I have a class C. I wouldn't bother with a class B unless I actually needed it.

"I wish I could lick my own balls like Bob can."

My house had no insulation anywhere, just walls made of cinderblock filled with concrete and a basement. Ceiling was just plaster tiles (a weird old 1940s system that was intermediate between lath-and-plaster and sheetrock) with no insulation in the attic floor at all except for faint traces of what I assume was asbestos. I've spent the last two weeks putting in R19 fiberglass batts and decking the attic, absolute murder on my knees since the peak of the roof is only 5' tall. My heating bills have actually not been too terrible up to this point since the house is so small (650 sq. ft.), but I'm assuming that having at least the ceiling decently insulated will make a significant difference this winter.

My house originally had only this little sliding panel between two joists, so the opening was like 24" x 15". Just the most insanely claustrophobic experience I've ever had in a house. One of the first things I did on the house was to install a dropdown folding ladder access hatch -- still blows my mind that the thing cost only $109. Found a hat up there that one of the builders must have lost when the house was intially constructed in 1942.

One of the fraternities at my first college got kicked off campus because the frat brothers beat up a pledge and kicked him down the basement stairs where he broke his neck and died. His corpse wasn't discovered until late the next day after a campus-wide search. No criminal charges resulted because the police couldn't determine who had actually done it. The frat just moved to an off-campus house where their parties became even more popular because of the complete lack of oversight.

"I don't answer questions."

God damn, I grew up in the '80s and I would have sworn that was a Huey Lewis and the News song.

I was a programmer for 25-some years but I haven't written a line of code since 2019. I now get my engineering jollies from the used school bus I converted to a motorhome and from the house I bought three years ago and am finishing up renovating. For money I drive a school bus, which pays about 1/6 of what I used to make but is infinitely more satisfying. As far as retirement goes, I'm hoping to die a painless death before AI replaces all the CDL jobs in the country. I think AI will work fine for school buses, mainly because kids are easier to replace the younger they are.

"Bruce, did you know that some actors turn down roles?"

My cousins are half-Thai, their mom is an immigrant from Thailand that my uncle married while serving in the Navy. My uncle was a trumper and virulently racist and anti-immigrant and taught his sons to be the same. For bonus points, thanks to the genetic dice my cousins happen to look generally central american and got abused more for that growing up in Florida than for being half Asian. How you could have that kind of background and still be a white supremacist is beyond me, but they've pulled it off. It helps a lot that they are just straight up stupid.

HOLA ICE

they found a guy who looks exactly like David Byrne

You may ask yourself
Why the big bomb?