I agree with this comment!

The best camera is the one you have, meaning that subjects or moments often pop up when you’re unprepared, and your phone camera is probably really good and always in your pocket. Take advantage of its availability!

I also agree on film cameras. Getting the film developed is kind of a pain, and doing it yourself is also quite involved. But shooting on film (slides) forced me to think more about composition, lighting, lens selection, and how I’d develop the resulting image.

I ended up with 3 lenses: a 50mm normal in f1.4, a 20mm wide in f2.8, and a 200mm macro in f4, all in prime. Sure these lenses are awesome (and relatively expensive) but unless you’re a pro they’re entirely unnecessary. They did however teach me about framing, perspective, light, and how optics change your image.

If I went about it again, I’d just take a few photography classes which focused on film (to develop good habits) and rent gear. Then use my phone camera or a cheap digi to have fun.

This is the first thing I thought of too, would be neat to shoot once, super impractical.

For VIM development check out ctags (or LSP) with auto complete. It’s magic for large projects.

You sound reasonable, and I don’t have all the information, but maybe I can play devil’s advocate.

Suppose your friend is actually a good dad, and is using his time without his kids around to catch up with his friends, listen to what’s topical in your life, and then do something other than talk about his kids?

This is a non-rhetorical good faith question: should kids be the sole focus of their parent’s lives once they have them?

I agree that kids need to be the top priority once people have them, no question there. But aren’t parents allowed to have lives of their own as well?

I don’t have kids and I’m at the age where most of my friends have them. The folks I knew whose only focus was on their kids gradually phased out of the group. Many of those people ended up divorced unfortunately. The parents I see regularly spend most of their time on their kids, but also have hobbies and interests outside of just kid stuff.

People who have their own lives in addition to being good parents seem to be happier and more well rounded. It also makes connecting with them easier for people without kids. I’m up to date on their kids, go to birthdays, and occasionally babysit. We have kid friendly dinners at each other’s homes, go camping with kids, etc… But we also go out once in awhile without them, catch games, play golf.

I feel like that’s healthier.

Food poisoning while on a road trip. On a shoestring budget so we were staying at a campground. Everything coming out of both ends simultaneously, doubled over in pain, delirious for ~24 hours. Only available place to do that was while laying on the floor in the campground shower. I was in there all day with the water on until the cleaning crew kicked me out.

No solids exited my body, it was excruciating.

I might be in the minority but I love my standing desks. I’ll sit once in awhile but I’d guess that 90% of my day is standing.

And to those who think standing is just being in one position all day and therefore is just as bad as sitting, I completely disagree. In practice I’m constantly shifting around, moving one leg back or forward, or walking in circles when I’m talking during a meeting and don’t need to look at my screens. Sometimes I’ll bring a chair over and put one knee on the seat for a few minutes to stretch my quads and hip flexors. It also helps if you get a soft pad to stand on or shoes designed for being on your feet all day.

My desks even go really low, which I squat at for about an hour a day. Full heels on the ground squat, keyboard and screens low enough to work without cranking my neck.

I’ve been working behind a desk for 25 years, and next to a true ergonomic keyboard I think my standing desks have done the most to keep my body from breaking down.

This is our time to shine Hydro Homies!

Why would right wing people come out to protest ICE? They all voted for exactly what is happening.

I don’t know if this is common, but in my family Legos are a common gift for children, and they never get thrown away. When kids age out (usually because they move out or go to uni) the bricks get tossed in a big mixed bag and handed down to the next round of youngsters. After at least 3 generations of this, the kids now inherit literal full sized trash barrels of mixed Lego. It’s awesome!

When it was my turn I got a big bucket, but two of my cousins got all of the Technic stuff, I was very jealous.

That makes sense.

The last time we had a power issue and I was at my desktop I didn’t get any GUI notifications of the outage, so that’s a miss.

However the incessant beeping coming from every APC in the house was enough to tell me that stuff was about to go really sideways 😂 I was able to manually power down my desktop before the systemd stuff kicked in.

I’m not sure what you mean?

I’m certainly not saying systemd is the only way or best way to solve this problem, only that it does in fact work, despite the other many misgivings I have with it.

I’m also not sure whether you’re trying to turn this into a measuring contest, or why? My home setups are relatively rigorous for a residential setting, but they’re all based on the many many years I worked in data centers, mostly in Los Angeles which is notorious for poor power availability and stability.

That sucks!

I’m on Ubuntu, which I admit is not a popular option around here. But when my power goes out I use apcupsd and a network component to alert my attached or networked Ubuntu machines. When the power first goes out all of my non-essential machines automatically shut down gracefully. When the backup batteries get low enough (I have several separate APC units around the house) my essential machines also shut down automatically.

When the power comes back up one of my machines automatically powers up and runs a few checks before turning most of my other stuff back on.

I have very few power issues which last long enough for my batteries to run out, but when I do the only evidence is a few alerts and the fact that I have to log back into everything. All of my windows restore on my GUI machines, and no filesystem issues occur. It’s more seamless than when I ran Windows, granted that was 25 years ago.

I’m similarly not a fan of systemd, but for backup battery and power management it seems to do the trick.

This is how you cook with stainless. Get a high smoke point oil, get the pan and oil plenty hot, the put the food in.

This is not, strictly speaking, true for eggs.

I’ve cooked eggs in stainless nearly every day for the last couple of decades. I can crack a few eggs in a properly prepared cold pan, and still get non stick effects, such that the food will slide right out without using a tool.

The level of heat which would require a high smoke point oil is generally much too high for cooking most styles of eggs anyway.

People should use whatever method works for them, I’m not judging, but high heat is not required for most styles of eggs.

Golf tournament, gala, more golf.

My weekends aren’t normally this fancy. I don’t really want to go to the gala but it’s to support my wife and a really good cause, and they’ll have an open bar, so I got that going for me I guess.

I’m excited for the golf tournament, I normally play in one about once a month but they’ll be my first since January. My game is coming together, so I expect to play relatively well. Sunday’s round will be a money game, so maybe I’ll come home with a little extra cash too.

It’s a mixed bag.

Growing up was made difficult because school is so slow that I’d rather be getting into trouble than sitting in class. By the start of middle school I’d already read the entire high school honors reading list, I had to walk to the high school from my middle school in 7th grade to take math classes. I rarely had regular school work in high school, nearly all of my academic teachers designed a different curriculum for me, which was nice but probably mostly to keep me from acting up in class. I never studied or did a shred of homework, but got good grades.

Social interactions were tough, I’m not much of an empath, not that I don’t experience empathy but emotions just aren’t intuitive, actually they often are the opposite of what you’d expect to be helpful, especially among young people. I had to concentrate to read people’s faces and mannerisms to understand the emotional and social subtexts of most interactions. I self medicated with alcohol a lot in high school.

All of my academic classes in high school were honors, and my final 2 years were all AP, while lettering in 3 varsity sports (4 total, but you can only play 3 each academic year). It wasn’t until my second year in uni that I ran into a class for which I actually had to study (nuclear chemistry), and boy was that an awful surprise. A handful of classes were like this for me, most I just showed up 3 times and got a good grade: the first day of class so I wouldn’t get dropped, the midterm, and the final.

I read quickly, think systematically, and information just sticks in my head. It was very difficult to understand why this wasn’t how most people were. Everything I do I analyze for improvement, and remember to do it better the next time. My wife calls me a skill collector because people seem to think I’m super good at everything, but to me it’s just logical that if you’re going to take time do something you might as well do it as well as possible.

After uni things started getting easier. Being forced to closely analyze social interactions and systematically give the “right” reactions is extremely useful in professional life. I wear this mask in all my interactions with all but my closest friends. It’s a bit psychopathic, but I don’t do it to anyone’s detriment, it’s mostly to get along and fit in.

I’ve self selected for highly intelligent friends, and I’m exhilarated to meet new people who can communicate with the kind of bandwidth that our brains run at, if that makes sense. I’m still close with most of my friends from high school, who have had varying levels of success, but I still have to be guarded when it comes to activities or conversation to make sure I don’t stick out too much.

In general I have a very pessimistic view of people and the world. The average person isn’t very sharp, and half of all people are dumber than that. However many smart people do evil things, most of the time for no reason at all. It’s exhausting to keep up with it all, so I just focus on my path and my family, and do what I can to directly improve my community.

It would be nice to fit in a little easier, but I wouldn’t trade my experience for anything else.

When I first picked up the straight razor I ran into the weird areas and contorting my wrist as you mentioned.

I just tried different grips and shaving patterns until I found a pattern without weird wrist positions, it took about 10 shaves to really get comfortable.

I don’t know the terminology, but if the common wrist position you see people straight razor shave with can be called “wrist up” I actually shave about half of my face and most of my neck with my wrist “down” gripping the razor kind of like a paint brush. I don’t know if that’s the correct way to do it, but a few months in and I can complete a shave nearly as quickly as I could with a safety razor.

The only weird spots left to figure out are the sideburn on my non-dominant side (which I do by feel with decent success), and my brow lines.

I think you nailed it, moving from a cartridge razor to a safety razor requires a large jump in technique. With a cartridge you can just whip around your face and get an acceptable shave without really caring (unless you have sensitive skin). But with a safety razor you have to pay attention to the direction of hair growth, handle angle, and to a smaller extent the tautness of your skin.

I have VERY sensitive skin and cartridge razors were killing me, so switching to a safety razor and getting past the skill curve saved my face.

After 20 years of safety razor use I recently switched to a straight razor which accepts replaceable safety razor blades, which I saw my barber using. I’ve found the skill gap between a competent safety razor user and a straight razor was very small. Within 2 weeks I was getting better shaves with the straight razor! It’s closer, easier on my skin (fewer passes), and I can detail around my mustache and eyebrows way better.

YMMV

Not the most recent incident, but where I live we observe daylight savings time (which is dumb). I have a large wall clock in the main room of my house in a very visible location, but up high enough that I have to use a ladder to fiddle with it.

Daylight savings ended and I put off changing the clock. Months went by and it eventually got closer to daylight savings coming back so I told myself I’d just wait it out until the clock was right again. 24 hours after daylight savings kicked in (the clock is correct again, I lazied my way into a win!) the battery died and I had to get the ladder out anyway (shit!).

A typical weekend involves golf, grilling, and a few cocktails. If the weather is nice (which it almost always is) maybe we head down to the beach, or a pub with outdoor seating.

I don’t expose anything to the internet other than the WireGuard endpoint.

This is the way