Maybe a small piece of personalised luggage for the holiday. Does she wear makeup? Maybe a nice makeup case with her initials on it.

If that’s not her thing, what about something for your home (assuming you live together)? My wife and I tend to buy ourselves the “bigger” things for Christmas, as our gift to each other - some furniture we’ve been wanting, or similar.

If that doesn’t sounds like you guys, there’s the tried and true jewelry option. Or maybe just cruise Etsy for the sorts of things she likes (does she like knick knacks, or ornamental stuff?) that might be customisable.

Failing that, have a think about what makes you special as a couple. Is there a shared interest or experience that got you together or you always talk about? Is there something in that?

Finally, I’ve been holding on to some ideas for future inspiration should I need them:

• Waveform art: record yourself saying you love her, have the waveform turned into a print, or a piece of jewelry, or similar
• Anamorphic art: a skewed picture that reveals itself when a specifically shaped mirror is put behind it
• A glass lamp base filled with something meaningful: I always thought of filling one with origami love hearts
• Ambigrams: maybe you can figure out an ambigram with both your names, and have it made into something - a print or a wood carving (this will probably take a lot longer than the time you have before Christmas)
• Birth stones, star signs, birth flowers, birth fruit: admittedly these are probably better suited to birthdays

This old thing - a Barmah Squashy hate, made from Kangaroo leather. I clearly don’t regularly treat it with leather conditioner like they tell you to.

This hat is my constant companion whenever I go camping. We’re literally tomorrow leaving for a three week trip through the Outback, so it’s about to get a lot of use.

A lot less VCDs and MP3s downloaded from FTP servers and BBSes.

Not sure if I’d bring it back, but I sure do miss the fun of playing Quake against my mates on public servers.

No judgement here, and my wife has always said she never judges how anyone gives birth.

Question was asked. I answered. That is all.

Watching her give birth to our daughter. No drugs. Just natural child birth (in a hospital).

Years later, discussing childbirth with her (now) 20yo daughter (my step daughter), when asked why she did it that way for all three of her kids, she simply said it was something she wanted go go through, to feel connected to the experience of having her kids.

Awe and pride don’t even begin to explain what I felt (and still feel) for my wife.

Not sure where you’re located,but we have https://www.productreview.com.au here in Australia. I’ve occasionally found it useful.

Absolutely nothing bad could ever come of this

Fucking hell. Where’s the incentive for responsible disclosure, if that’s the sort of (non) response you get?

Here in Australia, it’s costing our family of five about $100k a year to live, excluding our mortgage. 4% return ($80K) is conservatively realistic here (for low risk investment), and still isn’t enough.

Like I said, while it would’ve set me up with a house and no debt, I’d still have to work to pay for the cost of living.

In my mind, rich means not having to work again. A couple million doesn’t even get close, sadly.

Well, at least where I live, phones are banned in schools. So that’s a good start.

This is odd advice, when you consider many kids in the same age group probably have access to (or own) a tablet device of some sort. The only difference with a smartphone is the ability to call and text, and portability while staying connected (assuming many tablets aren’t 4G/5G capable).

Or am I missing something here?

Nearly 30 years ago, I worked for a tiny li’l anti-virus software company that got acquired by one of the big boys, and everyone’s performance-based options they were holding were suddenly worth a lot. Being hungry for career growth at the time, I’d left the company and forfeited those options. Less than 6 months later, they announced the sale of the company.

My options woulda been worth a few million at the time, maybe double that in today’s money. Importantly, it would’ve set me up with a nice house, car, etc, without any debt, in my early 20s.

Not rich, but certainly comfortable.

I paid a subscription fee for the option

I’m starting to really hate this timeline. Might be time to pick another door.

Oh man - hard disagree on this one for me. Still rates up there as one of the best adventure franchises of all time. We rewatch the trilogy as a family at least once every year or two, and always (re)notice awesome little easter eggs each time.

Plus, entirely safe for family viewing. It’s getting harder and harder to find movies series like that where the teenagers will still enjoy it, and the young 'un can get into it.

lol. Well played.

DCs do indirectly create/support a lot of jobs, though. Construction is an obvious one, but even running a DC requires lots of additional people that often aren’t employed by the DC owner/operator.

I can absolutely attest to the fact that it takes even less than 20 directly-employed people to run an entire DC, including the racks of gear within it. But there are quite literally dozens and dozens more contractors and vendors involved in maintaining the facility and the equipment within them:

• Physical security
• Fire systems
• Building controls
• Electrical
  • HV and LV can often be separate sets of skills/contractors
• Refrigeration
• Mechanical
  • Critical mechanical - generators, etc
  • Regular mechanical - electric gates,etc
• Plumbing and gasfitting
• Water experts (cooling towers, etc)
• Building maintenance contractors
• Gardeners

And the list goes on. My point is that DCs can absolutely be a significant driver of employment and economic activity, just not all directly.

For you, is it ‘reG-eks’ or ‘reJ-eks’? I know it should absolutely be the former, but my brain tells me to say the latter when I read it.

One of my best mates is someone who I’ve worked with, at a few jobs, over the past 30 years. We met in our first ever technical support job then, over the following decades, kinda landed at the same places around the same time. At one point, I even hired him as a contractor into a team I was building.

We’ve helped each other move houses, we’ve been there for each other’s weddings, and our kids have pretty much grown up together. We get together for pub meals and barbecues as often as we can - sometimes just he and I, sometimes with the wives and kids.

My point is, over those 30 or so years, we’ve discussed a lot about our respective histories, families, school mates, hobbies, etc. There’s probably not much we haven’t shared about our lives with each other.

Literally two weeks ago, he randomly sends me a picture of the back of a family photograph that was taken when he was a little kid. Had the name of the photographer and the photographer’s phone number stamped on it.

Turns out my grandfather (a professional photog at one stage in his life) had been my mate’s family’s photographer all those years ago. Used to visit them once a year to take all the family photos. My mate remembers him quite well - just funny that we never connected the dots before now.