@taber yes! Since I do a lot of work in VMs I don’t always see the first Hi, and would prefer they do as I do and put the salutation, request for assistance, and detailed description of the problem in the first message, so that I can address it all together when I get back to teams.

Never a real IM fan, even in the icq and aim days, because I have inattentive ADHD and hate being distracted by anything when I’m coding.

@taber I think that sometimes you also need to consider the impact on the pet’s people, especially when losing the pet can cause profound issues with depression.

And I know there are many pets waiting to be adopted - our little boy and his sister were feral rescues - but for many people animals are not fungible. They are little people with whom we already have too few years.

@taber In principal, I agree, and when our cat’s kidneys failed acutely and they discovered he had a heart condition that made treatment impossible, we decided to do what was best for him and let him go.

That said, the impact on us was 100 times worse than the last time we lost a pet, and the hole he left in our lives is incredibly painful. I worry about his other daddy, and am haunted by the irrational thought that we could have done more.

@StephanieCarvin They adjourn overnight while McCarthy cajoles the hold-outs and promises things he can’t or won’t deliver. Add his OK brigade likely trying to persuade the hold-outs with the stick vs the carrot, which sets up the classic good cop/bad cop dynamic. Eventually somebody blinks, and that somebody eventually gets scr3wed.

More popcorn.