How about today’s, random complete freeze. Had to hard reboot then spend 30 minutes watching it trying to “fix the issue”. It then failed to find anything. So I had to force it to reboot to windows. Then it worked fine the rest of the day.

While it was down, I was working on my 11 year old, budget laptop running Mint.

My work truck looks like this most days. I spent 4-6 hours per day driving in remote areas/off-road.

I have more sensitive gear and equipment I need for my job in the back seat The bed is also usually full of equipment that is not as sensitive.

I keep a cooler full of water and several boxes of granola bars inside.

So whenever I fill up the tank, I spend a few minutes tossing trash out of the truck. It’s the only way I have found to keep the pile of mess somewhat under control.

Once I year I clear out the truck and have it detailed to start fresh on the dirt buildup.

Yep I did it. There is still some annoying bits of it floating around that you can’t get rid of.

The phones in the midrange are getting to be better than the top end ones in my opinion. Decent enough build quality for the phone to last 3-4 years. Expensive enough that the bloatware is reduced. If the company does do a modified launcher it’s generally pretty clean.

I am liking the OnePlus 13R I picked up. Stable UI, decent battery life, and not a bad price. The stock launcher does a pretty decent job.

For my work phone I have a Pixel 8. I really regret buying it. I had to disable 30 different bloatware apps. Plus I have 4 apps that I have rejected all updates because they can’t be disabled. I also installed a launcher because the stock pixel UI is trash. The hardware is solid and works well once you clear out the buggy bloatware

Apple made a major fuckup with IOS26. I upgraded my iPad and felt nauseous from the blur effect almost instantly. I can’t completely get rid of it, just make it less horrific. Their “new” multitasking options I am not even bothering to turn on or try to use yet. This is like their 10th edition of multitasking. Let’s see if they get it right this time. Then I will bother to learn their “simple” process that usually involves having to read a manual and remember half a dozen new commands. Fuck it still takes me 2 or 3 attempts to get the the home screen without a button.

Almost there…

A small cordless drill with a torque setting plus a driver set. A short flexible bit holder for the tight spots.

Drop the torque setting all the way down then use the drill for most of the work. Then finish tightening with a reacheting screwdriver.

Companies who have checklist to make sure they get “all” of the company property back are awesome. It’s always made by HR with no clue what the job entails. I returned all of the company property listed items on the checklist.

Last layoff - real human beings- “Do you have time to drive to the office for a meeting? We are so sorry, business isn’t going well an we are having to cut whole departments. You are laid off the end of the week plus severence. Return the truck laptop, phone etc then. We’ll transfer the phone number to you, the supplier contracts etc that you brought in, we will sign off to you as well.”

Layoff before slimy corporate shills (all laid off a year later) teams meeting labeled as business discussion". Surprise, HR is on the call. You are not allowed to drive the company vehicle. At the end of this call IT will cut off the laptop phone and we’ll arrange for for someone to go to you house and collect company property.

So I drove the truck for 4 hours to collect all the stuff from my 3 offices. Then grabbed a guy from the last stop to drive the truck back after I finished cleaning it out at home. While I was driving I called up the new job I was supposed to start 2 months later and said, “Hey you guys OK will me starting next month instead?” I then took a nice 3 week vacation. Getting severance from a job I was going to quit, chef’s kiss .

In my area the self checkout systems at the grocery store often fritz out an don’t register the item. This is even after they beep. It’s truly wonderful. I consistently get 50% or more of the items in my cart for free. Nothing they can do to me either. They have me on video scanning every item. If their system buggers up the total it’s on them.

If they want somebody to catch computer errors then there’s a thing called “pay a employee.”

During the last housing bubble, you could rent the same place for less than 1/2 the cost of buying it. Renting and investing made more sense then.

Currently buying a house is overpriced but rent is even more so.

The best financial decision right now is to live with your parents your entire life. If you don’t have a parent you can stay with, then a tent and cardboard boxes in the park it is.

I have “purchased” thousands of books from Amazon, but never given them money for a book.

They run free specials all the time. FreeReadFeed scans for them. It’s a great way to discover authors to purchase their books at another site or use the library apps.

This one is extremely difficult to fix as well. Ad companies bribe politicians with reduced price advertising for political campaigns to prevent laws being passed to regulate them.

Come to my neighborhood.

The average resident makes double what the average household income is in the region. It’s essentially the wealthiest neighborhood in the region without gates to keep the poors out. The houses are not too far apart for kids to walk either. So most of the community brings their kids to walk around this neighborhood. I get 400-500 trick or treaters on average.

As my wife and I both grew up well below the poverty line we are very generous with the candy.

Hard drives are wiped and sold as “refurbished” to cheaper companies.

Lol me either. Their services are not nearly as good as the unauthorized streaming sites.

Not usually in my experience. Almost all target shooting is on relatively flat ranges. Especially not for ranges that short.

For those that don’t know, when firing down the slope the effect of gravity decreases the bullets velocity loss. So the bullet transverses the distance in less time and drops less over a given distance.

When firing up a slope the bullet loses velocity due to gravity. So it drops more due to the extra time it takes for the bullet to transverse the distance.

If you have a regular 30.06 bullet with a rifle sighted in at 200 yards, it will hit around 5" lower than you aim at 250 yards depending on the gun and conditions.

If you have it sighted in at 300 yards and aim for center mass (heart) the bullet will hit around 5" above where they are aiming.

In both conditions the bullet hits the neck area.

Hmmmm… think about how hard tracking a sniper would be on a university campus via surveillance cameras if they dressed to fit in. A black computer backpack from big box store combined with a university branded outfit and hat. Then walk into highly congested areas like a student union building and make a quick change into a different university branded outfit.

They could then walk to public transit with the crowd of people as the officials shut down the school.

Yes well trained people with the right software could eventually figure it out but it would take time.

The longer it takes the more chance the shooter gets away.

Rent vs mortgage - gotta put a caveat on that one.

Renting = landlord gets all the money but has to maintain the property.

Mortgage - bank gets all the money and you get a partial refund if you sell. You pay for the upkeep. A mortgage is not really an “investment”, you usually lose money on the deal if you live there. It’s cheap rent from the bank.

It basic math to see which one is better long term. Usually the mortgage wins because of of the partial return. However if you can’t do the upkeep yourself, renting is often a better financial decision.

There have been times when renting was the smarter financial decision. Like the housing bubble in 2003-2007. You could rent places for 1/2 what it would cost to buy them per month.

My wife and I created a funny named joint e-mail account when we were engaged for all the wedding stuff (we got married in '01). Over time it sort of morphed into the default address for all bills, schools, family, etc. Anything that both of us should be aware of.

The username has since became the default for most of our joint online accounts as well. It’s pretty close to the perfect username. It is distinct, short and easy to remember. Best of all it’s always available.

Hmmm… wait a minute I have nightmares about this one - JDE