A couple of years ago I bought the pioneer BDR-XD07UHD. I just plug it in and it works great. It works flawlessly with makemkv and eac for ripping. I’ve used it on three PCs across Ubuntu, fedora, and endeavoros. No issues.

Amazon doesn’t sell this one anymore, it appears there’s a new version. Might be worth checking that one out.

New iPhones bought from Apple that are unlocked “connect to any carrier later” work on all the networks in the us. Once upon a time, there was an “unlocked” phone - meaning you could change the sim and the phone wasn’t locked to a contract. But you still had to match the phone to the major carrier. For example, an att phone could be unlocked, and then used on straighttalk (becasue straighttalk resold att network). But it wouldn’t work on Verizon or T-Mobile because they were different networks.

That’s not a thing anymore with iPhones and hasn’t been for a long time. An unlocked iPhone can be used with any carrier that supports esims.

If your old phone is still on a contract - you may not be able to transfer the phone number, or have to request an unlock, or any other shenanigans. But the new iPhone will still work on whatever network you take it to.

Ideally, your contract is done, you buy new unlocked iPhone, you take it to your existing or a new carrier, you say “I bought a new unlocked phone, I want to set it up new, and I want you to transfer my number” a prime time carrier will just make this happen for you. A reseller can be a little more of a pain in the arse.

Personally I’ve been happy with the prepaid plans from straight talk - despite their setup process sucking. If you call them and get a person to help it goes pretty smooth. And the service is indistinguishable for a much cheaper price once it’s setup. I’m pretty sure this goes for most resellers.

Good luck - you’ll be fine!

Devastator and jetfire

Clear winners

98 Volkswagen Jetta. Rampant problems for everyone, not just me. Body molding falls off, window motors fail, water pump fail, wiper motor fail, 3 starters and an alternator, frame problem wearing out at the wheels, and the clear coat peeled.

When my third window motor failed, I drove my pregnant wife and her sister (who were in the car) to a dealer instead of whatever plans we had. I bought a Highlander on the spot and drove home in that. My wife drove that Highlander for 14 years.

I went from one extreme to the other! :)

I have it. I don’t know why, but it won’t sink its claws into me. It’s a great game but something isn’t clicking for me. Most people like it though from what I can tell.

See, after one year everything repeats indefinitely. You literally can’t miss anything. So there’s actually infinite time. If you’re stressing out like “omg spring is gone and I didn’t grow abc”. That’s what’s supposed to happen - you’ll grow it next spring.

Yup. There’s a story reason for it. It’s actually part of the charm of the game. But that first bit (which should be an intro cake walk, but isn’t) is a bad design choice IMO.

Not everyone likes every genre of game - so here’s my grouped list:

The “I’m a nerd and like to build things and I like to watch lava lamps flow” Factorio

The “I enjoy tough but fair games that I can totally become OP in once I figure it out” Elden Ring

The “I just want to chill” game Stardew Valley

The “I like to build things” game minecraft Honorable mention-Terraria

The “Metroidvania” game Hollow Knight

The “Arpg” game Diablo 2 Honorable mention - PoE

The “I like action and smashing things in an open world” game Neir Automata Honorable mention - God of war (play one of the originals so you can 1st hate the remake, and then get to THAT point, and then happily eat crow and let Kratos be your baby daddy.

I came here to say this. I’ve been gaming since the early 80s. Factorio is top 5 for me.

This one has been sitting in my steam backlog since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. I should get on that…

+1

I’m NOT allergic to them but they scare the crap out of me. Bees are a little bit ok. Wasps and hornets though - F that.

In 2010 I built a new computer. I was interested in bitcoin from a “this is technically neat” category. I set it up and was able to mine dozens of coins per day.

I did. It was all set up and working. But it generated a lot of heat in my upstairs So. Cal. Apartment. So I stopped. Just deleted the coins because they were pretty worthless then.

I don’t get too upset though because I never would have held them to $50k each. I would have sold them for a buck each.

But I “could have” if it wasn’t so hot out. ;)

I trust Apple more than Google. May be misplaced faith, but that’s the primary reason.

Pathetic.

For my 75 year old mother who doesn’t do anything besides Facebook. Ya an iPad is perfect! ;)

She thinks it’s a full blown computer and it’s impossible to break or install a virus on it. iPads can be surprisingly good for that purpose…

This is honestly such a pile of shit from Microsoft. Right…. Grandma is going to resize her partitions with those ridiculously cryptic instructions. She’s totally going to figure out which partition we’re talking about, she’s totally going to open a command line interface as admin, heck she totally even knows to find those instructions. Its hard enough for people to distinguish between “ya that’s windows update, click that button” vs “no that’s a phishing attack, never click that button”

Now the rest of us who know what we’re doing have to fix everyone’s PCs in the family. Keep pushing everyone to iPads and Linux Microsoft…

If I knew who you were and what company you worked for, I’D report that to HR. If that ever happened at my office I’d fire the guy without even consulting HR. I’d confiscate his stuff and walk him out the door, HR can clean up the mess.

If there was one hint of retaliation by another employee, I’d fire them on the spot. If there is any hr or manager retaliation to you, you call a lawyer. You’ll be paid extremely well.

The situation you described is so black and white in your favor - your management and hr department should be quaking in their boots that you don’t sue.

I worked at a college bar for beer money. Her friends came in all the time, she did not. Then one night she did, and I was literally struck dumb - just like the stories. There was a few months of seeing her here and there, a few conversations - I had never met a woman so amazing. I was a bug, and she a goddess in every way. Imagine my shock when she handed me a napkin with her phone number on it and said “call me sometime.”

You bet your ass I called her the very next day. That was 28 years ago. The crazy part is things got steadily better over the years. Nothing got “boring” it got more exciting. Looks fade, but she’s more beautiful to me today than ever. Kids didn’t drag us down, they made things more fun. Bills and chores and life’s troubles became something we worked through together - teaching us that we can overcome just about anything and be successful. I’d argue all of our success is because we’re a team.

We truly hit the love lottery when both of us were “done” and didn’t believe something like what we have is possible. Put away your baggage, and keep an open mind - your napkin could be handed to you today.

I agree. I’m the guy who picks, buys, assembles, and installs the OS and programs for like everyone around me. I enjoy doing it, they enjoy getting awesome PCs for good prices.

My next build for them will absolutely not be Microsoft. The average person can get away with an iPad running iOS for their computing needs. So it’ll be a user friendly Linux distro going forward.

Same

Feels just like Apollo did.