Well you know what to do! I have an external on my desk that I just grabbed and took with me when we left.
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Staple for Chinese/Asian hotpot. 
Glad to hear youāre safe @hatsnp! Wind can be terrifying.
On the topic of preparedness, a few years ago I forced myself to memorize my wifeās phone number. Before cell phones I had so many phone numbers memorized, but eventually I could barely recall my own cell number. Useful in many situations, but for me, at my wifeās urging, itās in case I get arrested for some of the mutual aid stuff I do.
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My understanding is that phenomena like this are extremely difficult to forecast accurately, and then if your forecast says severe weather with 10% probability, after the 5th one people will ignore the warning.
There was a severe, sudden storm in Budapest on 2006.08.20. āOnlyā 80ā100 km/h winds, but this was a state holiday, and there was a large crowd watching the fireworks. 5 dead, 300 injured. Ever since, the state met service has been issuing severe weather warnings for all events if there is the slightest possibility of anything.
The problem is, once the above event started fading from memory, people started dismissing the warnings. Yeah, there is a āsevere weather alertā, but remember the last 10 of those when nothing actually happened? People are very bad when it comes to reasoning about probability.
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I have a new bicycle shaped object.
Due to ongoing health issues, I figured it was time to embrace the eletric bicycle age so I bought myself a nice, cheap and cheerful folding fat tyred ebike, Koolux BK6S,
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Nice. Looks like the tires are farther apart. The cable management seems a little bit haphazard. Is this photo taken within a park?
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Itās a folding ebike, hence the over long cables! Itās a local woodland not far from home, ideal for a maiden bike ride!
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Brian Innes, Welcome to the world of e-bikes! I switched when I started transporting my daughter to kindergarten and found the daily uphill parts too demanding.
My detour for the day: I spent about 40 minutes debugging an intermittent charging issue on my laptop, which included bios updates, checking the wall socket and the charger end with a multimeter, and quietly going crazy, because sometimes it would charge, sometimes it would not, and I could not discern what made the difference. The problem was a piece of debris in the C5/C6 coupling of the carger.
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I am āyoungā, in decent form, and Iād say ebikes are a must in hilly terrain for everyone who is not a dedicated cyclist. After moving houses to a more hilly place I have stopped cycling as much since itās quite hilly around here. I enjoy cycling when the HR is stable and I get in the zone, but going uphill is just murder, the legs use so much oxygen, itās always a guarantee HR will spike to max and I will be tired the rest of the day.
One of my goals this year is upgrading my current bicycle with an electric kit so it just provides assist on reaching top speed.
Looks like a really nice place.
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Not concerned about that and more about them fraying or getting grimy in rougher terrain. Still, I hope you get to go on many photographic adventures.
I used to live and bike in an area with some notoriously steep hills. There was a hill behind my apartment where once while bombing down it the speedometer on my bike read 45 MPH. That was the last time I did that since itās an unpredictable back road and I didnāt want to hit a rock and go flying. There was another hill that I would tackle that took me several months before I could actually climb the whole thing without getting off my bike and pushing.
That said, I saw this video the other day and have gained new inspiration on what is possible in life. Perhaps those of you complaining about hills have simply not hidden enough whiskey along the way?
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I mustāve watched this video 3 times by now in my life, itās just too good 
A bit of whisky with fresh spring water and there he goes
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I am not, never have been and never will be an athlete. That said, between 2012 and ~2019 (my ages 53 - 60) I did weekend road riding with a few friends. I got my first bike since my teenage years in 2010 but replaced it two years later because it was VERY heavy (45 lbs).
Weād typically do 20 - 35 mostly flat road miles on a ride but the smallest hills were a killer for me ā Iām over 6 feet tall, above 200 lbs (ā¦well above). In Louisiana there are only moderate hills at most but even a motorway overpass would be tough. I remember hitting 182 BPM once crossing over an Interstate highway. I routinely would stay at 150 to 160 BPM on flat ground just keeping up (at 15 to 18 MPH). Like I said, no athlete! LOL
So much for an āenjoyableā rideā¦
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Iām the odd guy at work who rides his folding bike to work in any weatherĀ¹. Donāt even own a carĀ², but a garage full of a rather surprising number of bikes that found their way in there for somewhat unclear reasons.
Only one of them is electric; the big cargo bike for kids and groceries. Everything else just isnāt urgent enough to not just slow down instead. But the newer, lighter motors do have me temptedā¦
Footnote 1: I only need to go to work once per week, so mostly weather is avoidable.
Footnote 2: We do rent cars relatively frequently, though. Just not often enough to own.
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Ever since I got promoted to team lead Iāve been struggling with my identity as an engineer. I used to pride myself on my technical competence, on finding neat algorithms that solved real problems with good performance. I loved deep analysis of thorny problems.
But now Iām mostly managing others. Of course I help them with algorithmic problems, but itās not the same. I miss getting my hands dirty. But I also recognize that my schedule doesnāt allow me to tackle main-quest problems. At best, I get to contribute a side quest here and there, and maybe the odd prototype.
Itās not that I donāt like my current work. Itās good to see my team in good morale, performing well. They do work better with my guidance and planning. They are happier now that I shield them from interruptions.
Butā¦ I feel like thereās no more personal accomplishment here. Itās no longer me doing the work. And I fear that if I do spend too much time on direct technical work, Iāll abandon my team. At the same time, if I donāt, Iāll just end up an idiot boss. Iāve had too many of those myself.
If youāve gone through something similar, how did you deal with it?
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I donāt have a team, just one other person who recently started and I charged myself with helping make them successful. It takes way more time and effort than I thought, but theyāre doing well now and theyāre a way better engineer than I am, so theyāre starting to run circles around me.
I think the key is to just keep listening, checking in, and concentrating on making them successful, whatever that means.
And then you just find other technical things to do that satisfy that itch and replace what you used to do at work with that.
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My story is mainly from 1985. I was a top-level system administrator in a large data center. They wanted to promote me to āmanagerā. I knew that that was not the work I wanted to do and I didnāt think I was suited for it, even though my bosses did. I turned down the promotion.
Within about a week, they transferred me to the ācentral supportā organization of the corporation. I do not believe they were trying to punish me; I honestly think they were putting me where I could grow within my interests and aptitudes. It was a āwin-winā.
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In the few management roles I had in my 50-year career, I found satisfaction in seeing the end-product done well, in no small part contributed to by my facilitation of the actual work. As a first-line manager, I needed to know the job at hand almost as well as the folks actually doing it, both to explain it to the upper-level managers as well as to find ways to accommodate the edicts from above in a constructive manner.
Itās my observation that engineering is less about the tech and more about human communication, even the act of writing code is about communicating to others reading as well as compelling the machine to execute. First-line engineering management to my way of thinking is just a bit more indirect manifestation of that apportionment.
All that said, I much preferred the non-management portions of my tenureā¦ 
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I have the opposite experience. I am always at the bottom of the pecking order and have trouble doing meaningful work because everyone sees it as inconsequential even though I am pushing the envelope, implementing solutions and future-proofing on multiple fronts.
Currently, I have a manager who sees me and has been advocating for the creation of a permanent position where I can thrive, for which I would still have to compete due to HR fairness policies. Unfortunately, the funding and business need is simply not there according to the leadership.
A month to go before the end of the temporary contract and two unfortunate things happen: (a) my manager is suddenly on sick leave for two months and (b) the project/contract that justified my extra role is at great risk of being discontinued. I may have contributed to its demise because I have been unravelling evidence on how broken it is! Sounds like I may be out of a job yet again in the near future.
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Alan, my condolence. Iāve followed your story as you told it over the years, and it seems a difficult road to travel. But I admire your strength and resilience.
Thank you for your kind words everyone. This was triggered by a neighbor coming over to pick up the kids. They have just started a new job, going from manager to engineer. He sounded so careless and happy. (But I know the last careless job I had was because it was boring, and that was worse.)
Anyway, I researched the topic yesterday. My experience seems pretty common. My greatest fear seems unfounded: that my technical acumen might atrophy, and that I canāt go back. But both Glenn and Tim and my neighbor have reported they went back to engineering eventually.
This gives me hope. My current job is genuinely interesting. I love learning things, and this role change has certainly taught me a lot. If I want to go back in a year or two, Iām fairly confident that my workplace will accommodate for it.
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