I bought this can opener after watching a Technology Connections video, and I kinda love my can opener.

My laptop doesn’t have dust filters, but the fan almost never runs anyway. Like the heatsink is way overbuilt for the CPU it’s attached to. It’s actually quite nice. I’ve never seen it hit 70 degrees. I’ve cleaned it maybe three times since 2016. It really only spins the fan up when I’m watching 60 fps YouTube videos or playing games. And even then, it kicks hard for a very short time and shuts off again.

And again, I bought this thing nine years ago. It’s just a little Acer. And it’s not even a nice one. I paid like 500 bucks for this thing.

Now, my wife’s MacBook that she games on…yeah, I need to figure out how to get the back off so it can get a proper dusting. Fuck you, Apple. Let me work on my stuff, dammit.

Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to come across aggressively. I get a little fired up at the thought of crossing a huge, fast road, and it doesn’t help that cars are way bigger and drivers seem way worse these days.

No question bikes are the best way to get around in a densely populated area. My wife and I stayed in a condo in a building that housed a Target (Newmark Tower) when we vacationed in Seattle a couple months ago. If I could afford it, I’d buy that condo and live that way. We rented a car while we were there, but we barely drove it. It was genuinely liberating not needing it. We rode the monorail. We took the bus from time to time. We climbed a stupidly steep hill to get dinner one night. It was awesome.

But man, I live about a mile and a half from the grocery store and I refuse to bike there for the simple fact that there are way too many fast, wide roads to have to cross to get there, and there are zero bike lanes along the way. Unless you’re on the college campus, everything here is built for the convenience of the car at the detriment of literally everyone else.

And if OP also lives in the burbs, I reckon their situation is pretty similar.

Again, sorry that I came across aggressively. I didn’t intend to get so riled up about it.

Big talk Unfortunately, that’s a huge ask if you’ve never crossed a six lane stroad on foot. The American transit system is often downright hostile to anyone not in a car. It can be goddamn terrifying. Adding: If OP can get around safely and feasibly on a bike, this is great advice.

Otherwise, there are ways to cut down on car costs if you need one. What car you own matters. Get something extremely common that never breaks. A 1998 Camry or Corolla are probably two of the most solid cars money can buy and junkyards are full of them. Parts are cheap and available.

Learning to do your own basic maintenance will also save you lots of money.

• A dealer might charge sixty bucks to swap a cabin air filter. It takes one minute and a replacement for my Honda Civic is eight dollars on Amazon. Same story with the engine air filter.
• Check your oil and transmission dipsticks every once in a while for level and condition.
• Check your brake fluid level and clarity.
• Tire pressures are on the inside of the driver door jamb. Learn how to properly inflate your tires, including the spare.
• If your car came with a scissor jack, a tire iron, and a compact spare, you can rotate your own tires in 30 minutes without buying any tools.
• On an inline four cylinder engine, spark plugs are often on the top of the head, below a cover, and are insanely easy to replace. Just be aware of torque specs, especially on an aluminum head. A torque wrench can be yours for ten bucks at Harbor Freight.
• Check your lights and blinkers every once in a while and learn how to replace bulbs. This is important on older cars that use halogen and incandescent lamps. A tail light is a few bucks, takes 15 minutes to replace, and will probably save you from a ticket.

Learning how to replace some parts is also a big plus and parts stores will often lend you small tools for some jobs free of charge.

Many states also offer discounted rates on yearly registration for older cars. In Oklahoma, it costs me $26 a year to tag my '97 Honda.

Finally, get a dash cam and the cheapest insurance you can, and drive like you’re on probation and on thin ice with your parole officer.

It’s the State tree of Oklahoma. When my neighbors’ redbud starts making pods, I’m gonna snag a bunch, refrigerate them over winter, then scarify and try to get a few to germinate the following spring. It takes probably 5 or so years to start getting flowers, but I really love everything about these trees, not just their awesome flowers. The heart shaped leaves they develop in summer are so cute.

Living in tornado alley, having a TV antenna and a weather radio is almost a requirement. If the Internet gets knocked out, OTA still works. Also, my Internet is shit so I wouldn’t rely on it if a tornado is bearing down on my location, but I do also love watching 9½ hours of nonstop tornado coverage when nasty storms might come my way.

Outside of that, I know to tune in at about :15 past the hour during newscasts to catch the weather report, which gets uploaded to their website later anyway. If the football game is on, I might catch that if I care to watch. I don’t really watch OTA otherwise.

But I’m 32 lol

Hate to break it to you, but nostalgia will probably make them cool. Nostalgia is the rosiest of tints.

Cheetahs have always been my favorite. It’s not that they’re the fastest land animal that fascinates me, but how. Dogs are so funny to watch run because they’re so goofy, but even the fastest dogs get going maybe 40 miles an hour. They spend a lot of time off the ground in their stride. And if you’re not in contact with the ground, you’re slowing down. Cheetahs keep their strides very low to the ground and spend little time in the air. Additionally, their long, muscular, flexible spine allows them to treat it kind of like a leaf spring. And the long tails are gorgeous.

And if that wasn’t enough, they meow and purr, too.

Undertale made me ugly cry, thanks Toby.

Hell yeah animation is ok, and Gavity Falls is a solid 10/10 choice.

Between my brother, a mutual friend, and myself, we have over 1,800 collective hours in Borderlands 2. That was probably my favorite game for about 5 years. It’s fun enough on your own, but the game gets a million times between with co-op.

I thought the Pre-Sequel was pretty good. The low grav mechanic was a fun addition, and the moon being populated by Aussies was a nice touch. Borderlands 3 was kinda meh. We all had high hopes for it. It’s a pretty good game, but its greatest weakness is that Borderlands 2 exists.

My first job out of college was in a hospital. When you see doctors outside of their own setting, you quickly realize that >90% of them are pretty stupid at literally everything else. I was an accountant processing travel reimbursements for business-related professional expenses (mostly vacations disguised as conferences and workshops for CMEs) and many of them just could NOT understand why they weren’t allowed to claim alcohol on their travel reimbursements. Literally, the IRS will not allow it. And even if it did, state law forbids it, too. Sometimes, I got angry emails because they couldn’t claim miles for taking a detour to visit a relative before going to their destination after I adjusted it as if they drove directly from work to the airport. Shit like that. I was good friends with the IT guy there and he had many similar gripes. Most of his job was arriving on-site to plug machines in because they swore up and down on the phone that the machine was plugged in.

I’m convinced the majority of doctors are just average intelligence people who spent a decade practicing and mastering a skill. That’s it. Anyone can be a doctor if they can be allowed into med school and sink the time and effort into becoming one.

The disappearance of defined benefit retirement plans is yet another way those on top are boning us, and it is NOT being talked about enough.

deleted by creator

Depends on what I need to return to baseline.

• Need to cry to just get it out? Moon Song by Phoebe Bridgers
• Need to scream at everything? Monkey Wrench by Foo Fighters
• Need to just piss and moan for fourteen minutes? Beach Life-in-Death by Car Seat Headrest
• Need to feel calm again? Literally the entirety of Loveless by My Bloody Valentine
• Need something to lift me up so I can wear a happy face? Don’t Stop by Fleetwood Mac

There was a promotion around at the time where if you bought a Windows 7 laptop within a certain time frame, you could get $25 off your Windows 8 Pro license, which cost $40 on launch day.

And so on launch day, I paid $15 for my retail copy of Windows 8 Pro and installed it on my new PC.

Everyone shits on Win 8, but I had some shell extension that brought back the Win 7 start menu so I have somewhat fond memories of Win 8. I almost never had to deal with the Metro Start Screen.

My thing is I’ve got years of experience in Linux. I began using Ubuntu in 2012 because my laptop’s hard disk failed, the sticker with my product key had worn away, and I wasn’t paying $100 for another copy of Windows 7.

I’ve only been noncommittal about it this this long because of my Steam library. But with the Steam Deck and Proton being so damn good, and all my games working just as well on Linux as they did in Windows (many times, better), I just stopped using Windows altogether.

So there I was, staring at GNOME Disks for a couple hours. Knowing that like a bad relationship that was doing something for me, but also hurting me, it was best to break things off. And then I nuked that bitch lol

I finally deleted Windows 10 on Sunday. Ubuntu too. Now Debian is my only OS. I realized that every time I log into my Windows partition, it’s got a trillion updates to install because it’d been weeks since I last logged in. So why bother?

If I really need it for something again, I’ll just virtualize.

I’m under no illusion Ubuntu is perfect. But I PAID for my Windows licenses. And if I paid, I don’t want to see ads. I don’t care about Win 8’s penetrative pricing model or the $25 coupon. I don’t care that I paid for my licenses 10+ years ago. Don’t sell me ads on a product I paid for. And Windows serves up ads all the god damned time now. If there’s anything good to be said about Windows 8, it’s that it didn’t take every opportunity to sell me an Office 365 subscription ever second breath I took. I don’t actually remember the last time I saw an ad in Ubuntu, and I’ve been using it to varying degrees since 2011. I think we can at least agree Canonical is better than Microsoft, yeah?

All that said, I’ve had thoughts of switching to plain old Debian, especially now that I’d consider myself much more experienced and comfortable in Linux. But if I were recommending a distro to a new user, I am one million percent telling them Ubuntu or Mint, depending on how they feel about the Windows UI.

Good thing I use Ubuntu for >90% of my computing now.