Kongar

I read that last year and it was fantastic. Top 5 for sure, I think my all time #2. It was like game of thrones, where you’ve got all these people showing up, and this spiderweb of seemingly unrelated stories gets told. But unlike game of thrones, it actually threads back together from chaos into a satisfying, well wrapped up conclusion. It is a masterpiece.

Honestly, half way through? That would be considered “the boring part”. It only gets better from there. You’re in for a wild ride. Enjoy!

For me I find endeavoros to be the goat. I realized that when I install arch and then the “essentials” for me - I basically recreated what endeavor does. Except endeavor does it with like three clicks on the installer. So now I just install endeavor. Gnome, nvidia drivers, pacdiff and meld, text editor, yay, you get the idea…. No bloat, no bs, quick install with exactly what I would do manually with arch.

I also know this take is controversial-but I like flatpaks as well. Sometimes you gotta mess with flatseal, and sometimes the AUR package is clearly superior. But they usually get the job done well.

It’s nearly impossible to break arch if you use the AUR as little as possible AND read the arch homepage for manual steps BEFORE doing an upgrade.

The anger over this always amuses me (I put my cart back in the corral btw). But there was a time in the very recent past, where there was no such thing as a cart corral. You simply left your cart in the lot and an employee was paid to fetch them (I also used to do this job as a kid - it was a great job).

Until it shows up for everyone. That’s not paranoia, Microsoft has a bit of a trend in this department.

I’ve been running proton in arch for a while now - both aur and flatpak, as well as the new flatpak mentioned.

I found in some obscure reddit post the solution to what I think is a lot of people’s issues.

I need to install network-manager-applet every time. As soon as I do, proton vpn works just fine. This is on gnome.

• I walked around with a ruptured appendix for weeks without knowing it. In my case, the pain was very minimal (not normal)
• there was so much raw sewage in my abdomen, they decided to gut me from my pelvis to my sternum, take everything out, and powerwash me
• there was a problem with the hospital pharmacy. I woke up in the ICU with zero pain meds and my nurse screaming murder at the pharmacy tech over the phone. “For the love of god he’s up, I need that morphine RIGHT FUCKING NOW”
• don’t know how long it took, but that was pure hell.
• then I got full bowel blockage, multiple times, throwing up and all, with my stomach cut in two trying to heal. Surprisingly the blockage was almost as painful as the unmedicated seppoku I experienced.

Take my upvote for bowel pain being horrific.

Another data point. I also literally broke my back from a fall on the ice. If bowel pain was a 10, I’d put breaking my back at about a 6.

I’m old

I remember dlp tvs and 40 inch tubes that weighed 200lbs.

I bought one of the first 1080p large screen LCDs that wasn’t $10k. A Sony XBR 46” for like $3000. At one point, I thought “man I should replace that TV, I can get a bigger screen, a thinner bezel, and better blacks”

And then I remember that this 20 year old TV has no internet connection, no ads, no bs, a million connections of any type (want to hook up that retro console - boom this tv can do it) AND it still looks good after all these years. It’s arguably a great tv, better than a lot of the crap being sold today. Funny and unexpected.

I think I’ll keep that TV forever.

Tying fishing flies

Looks really hard. Not terribly hard to make some respectable flies with a little bit of instruction.

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. ;)

That’s the neat part - it doesn’t flip either. It’s your mind playing tricks on you.

Left and right, and the act of turning around are so common to you - that when you look at your reflection in the mirror, your brain expects that image to have turned around 180 degrees either left or right. Since that didn’t happen you think it’s “flipped”. But it’s not - your EXPECTATION is that it should be flipped.

Here’s another way to think about it. If it was common for us as humans to turn around by doing a handstand to look backwards - then you’d be complaining “why do mirrors flip up and down but not left and right?” But because that’s ridiculous and we don’t do that - you have no expectations that your mirror image should be standing on its head.

Trippy right? :)

Moved across country for a job. Super high market to one less crazy. Had to do stupid things to buy into the first market, recouped that money and reinvested it back into my retirement (where it belonged) when we moved back. Decided to have some fun as well. “Leftover” in terms of housing money is where that term slipped out from.

It was insane $ for me ;) But it was something I wanted for almost 30 years and couldn’t afford. It’s insane what you can spend on stereo equipment. My wife and I both drove cars until they broke, 14 and 15 years, both over 350k miles. Some people buy sports cars - we chose a stereo ;)

• Emotiva 5x200w modular amp
• Marantz pre pro
• Ascend acoustics towersx2 up front, sierra2’sx2 rears, horizonx1 center
• Pair of Rhythmik sealed 15’s, with integrated amps 600W each
• Misc. stuff - blue ray player and whatnot.

I really like the ascend stuff. Most of my audiophile friends can’t believe the bang for the buck. Tough purchase though - internet only. No easy way to demo unless you find someone in their forums willing to invite you over (which I’ve done).

I also really like the Rythmik subs, but only as a pair.

I hate my marantz. That’ll get replaced soon. I’ve got my eye on Anthem’s gear.

Amp is fine.