David Strickland

Retired
Sales/Solution Architect, Solution/Software Engineer, Programmer, Integrator, Troubleshooter, SME
Currently: Husband, Father, Grandfather, Brother, HAM

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

I'm retired and now accepting donations via bitcoin.

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[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@BradCozart Good Afternoon Doc

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@BradCozart GMD

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@KeithHa93578985 @BradCozart Breakeven age depends on how you calculate it. Considering just payouts with no cost of living was 80+ for me; investment return 90+.

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@BradCozart DIY old man

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

Exactly. That's why I started at age 63.5 the next year after I retired. I worked part time for 1 year and made sure I didn't go over the max wage income that year so my SSA wouldn't be reduced.
Retiring early, I took a 22% reduction and calculated that I would be ahead until age 81 had I waited until full retirement age (like @BradCozart ).
If they do start reducing SSA benefits when the trust fund is exhausted, then I'll always be ahead.
No regrets here.

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@BradCozart GMD

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@lippyent Not sure, but I do seem to remember that the winner gets a free nomination for a Darwin Award.

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

Thereafter, I acquired a progression of arms, types include:
.22 rifles semi-automatic (that means a shot with every trigger pull)
20 gauge smoothbore shotguns (side by side held two cartridges)
12 gauge pump shotguns ( pump to chamber another shell with either shot or a slug)
.380 revolvers (concealable - I have a License to Carry)
9mm semiautomatic pistols

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

My second 'gun' wasn't a gun. The bb gun has a smooth bore but my second firearm was a pellet rifle. The rifle grooves in the bore cause the pellet to spin which increases stability. I was about 9. With 10 pumps, the air pressure would be enough to propel the pellet to about 900 FPS.

It was good for target practice and killing water moccasins (a poisonous water snake) from the shore when we went fishing.

More power means more responsibility.

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@JJohnsonlesss @belleofva KEBAB

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@BigOrangeMack Me. It's missing me.
I'll bring my fork.

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@james_xond I'd show them the scar on my left butt cheek and ask for $10,000

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@lippyent KFC has the best

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@BradCozart GMD

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@BradCozart Actually, Annie periodically makes me get up from the floor without using any furniture.
Extra points if you don't have to use any hands or limbs.
Using only one hand is a passing grade.

[Ethical Skeptic ☀ @EthicalSkeptic]

The next trillionaire will not fly stainless steel appliances atop controlled explosions, but instead will solve the problem of consciousness, intent, and the entailed eschatological critical path.

If consciousness is merely a local biochemical epiphenomenon, then intent is largely constrained by material substrate, entropy, distance, chemistry, physics, loosh, and mortality.

Identity frames as a temporary pattern retention inside a decaying biological bound. Civilization therefore optimizes around energy extraction, computation, transportation, and scarcity management. Destined to suffer endlessly inside its Kardashev scale fantasy.

But if consciousness proves to be nonlocal then the entire technological hierarchy inverts.

The critical question ceases to be:

“How do we move matter through space?”

and instead becomes:

“How is intelligence instantiated, preserved, transferred, and expressed onto the material itself? How does intent alter reality?”

Under such a framework:

death becomes a trivial status, memory becomes substrate-independent, consciousness becomes the topology rather than a possession, and civilization shifts from industrial mechanics toward ontological engineering.

At that threshold, propulsion systems, currencies, and even conventional economics begin to resemble transitional technologies — artifacts of a civilization still trapped inside material scarcity assumptions.

Once consciousness and intent are understood as potentially fundamental rather than derivative, whether other agencies exist — or have been here all along — along with the very function of derivative currencies, becomes almost trivial. A fleeting memory of one's comical adolescent exploits.

[James Woods @RealJamesWoods]

I don’t think Billy Woods and I are related, but, dear Lord, I wish we were.

[David Strickland @texasdbs]

@BradCozart GMD! again...