4grams

Yeah, I see so much sandblasted brick these days from removing paint. I mean, it does look better than paint, but it’s so worn looking. Painting bricks is just a horrible idea.

That is one of my most used phrases. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve started telling someone something simple, 10 random side conversations later, maybe I’ll remember to get to the point. It’s there that I hit them with “short story long” and then finally wrap it up…

I never look at reviews, I just go in expecting to be disappointed and so usually am not. Even shitty movies are fun since I plan on them sucking…

Update- saw it last night. A bit of a mess, but interesting and enjoyable. I like how it was a retelling of the story but connected it with modern themes. I enjoyed very much the diverse cast, I like performances, and appreciate various takes on the roles from performers with different backgrounds. Dialog was a bit wooden in places, especially the last line, but it was a show, not a documentary so I don’t mind a little ham-fistedness.

The best part was the Trojan Horse portrayal. My whole life I’ve seen the cartoons of a horse rolled up to the gate, and a simple telling of how they were tricked. This put the human cost of it into perspective (the fictional human cost anyway), and the stuggle with how it unfolded by Odysseus. Made me think about it more than I ever have, and from a new perspective.

This and flannel was me in the 90’s; and everyone else. I loved the thermal under a t-shirt look, let me stay both casual and warm!

I’m convinced this has been the plan for some time. My kids don’t see the point of computers when they have their phones and school iPads. They dont understand the concept of data ownership and everything is temporary to them, whatever is fed by the algorithm.

They are better off that most, my hard core nerdiness has rubbed off so they at least know how to use a computer, have built one each themselves. I just hope it continues to be possible going forward, but I’ll be willing to bet, on the other side of the age verification crap, is even more restrictions. They plan a death by a thousand cuts, until it’s no longer feasible, then. No longer legal to run your own compute.

F’ing suck, used to be available to the masses. I hope it will again, but even a raspberry pi is a luxury good these days.

I have failing hard drives in my NAS but they are nearly 4x the price from when I bought them, so I’m struggling to save for replacements. I’m so pissed off that even used enterprise stuff that used to be cheap, is now also luxury goods priced. I will be paying 259.99 for a drive I used to pay 69.99 for.

I agree that the functionality is sometimes nice, but I would never keep data in just the cloud, at least anything sensitive or valuable. Beyond not trusting someone else with the integrity of my data, I also do not want to be subject to control of it or access to it. Lastly, my data is mine, and in most cloud providers, my data will also be used for AI training.

So, I enjoy using the cloud for some things, I still keep my primary data under my control, in my own known and backed up locations.

As for the forcefulness, there are a lot of us who care deeply about ownership and privacy, and there are a lot of those that dismiss our concerns as invalid or unimportant. Not that you are by any means, just that is what I see frequently.

Most of the time it does work, which is why it’s so goddamned hard to undo. I’ve been working on de-appleing, I’ve nearly completely de-Amazoned and am also working on de-googling. But these damn providers make it so difficult, they get in so deep. It’s not even me that makes it hard, I’m willing to make a little extra effort for a more privacy focused platform I control. No, it’s the family and friends that all are perfectly comfortable handing control of their data and frankly lives (everything is in these fucking things, schedule, contacts, financial stuff, all digital communication, photos, videos, etc…).

As long as you keep spending a lot of money, and upgrading to the newest devices, you will have a decent experience. As soon as you try to extend the life, find alternatives, look for ways to control your own data, then it gets real hard.

To be fair, it’s not just Apple. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, any of the big players are the same. They all manage to make it easy, so long as you are comfortable being captured.

I’m a big fat guy who sweats a lot. I’ve never cared about the sweat though only the smell. So my whole life I’ve used nothing but deodorant, NEVER antiperspirant.

I’ve never had problems with either pit stains, nor lingering odor. I’m pretty convinced that antiperspirant leads to more smell; I’m not saying I’m fresh as a daisy at all times, but even at my worst, my odor isn’t that bad, while drier people often stink to high heaven.

This shit drives me up a wall. I try to only buy peanut butter made out of peanuts, so for years now I’ve been buying “natural” peanut butter. I recently noticed however that 100% “natural” doesn’t mean shit as all the natural brands are loaded with palm oil. I honestly might have to start making my own.

It sucks because my family treats me like an insane person when I look at the ingredients and nutrition of the food stuff we buy. Food culture in the US is awful, just awful.

Just had this thought, and realized all my backups had been through a flood. I wound up with several damaged disks, but was able to get all the content off of them, damage was to the outside edges, and most of them didn’t have much data written.

I have a Blu-ray burner, but I’ve never burned one (only a couple DVD’s). Probably never will.

In this insane world, I’m not so sure.

I mean, same can be said about datacenters…

I mean, the boys was meant as biting social commentary so not sure where we are in the cart/horse equation here.

I understand the authors reasons, but for me personally, having paid for the app, I’ll use it until it no longer suits my needs. Right now it does early what I need and does not cause me any issues. As soon as the enshittification hits me though, I’ll abandon it for something else. I also would not recommend someone purchase it, given the new pricing, and the availability of free alternatives. Had they been there when I paid for Plex, I’d be using them instead.

Yes and no, I only buy refurbs these days, so long as they work out of the box, they have been far more reliable than retail drives from a box store.

Definitely higher incidents of DOA drives, but the ones that work, have been pretty solid.

Still don’t trust spinning rust, so in addition to dual parity raid, I also have a full backup copy. But I no longer have reservations about refurb drives…

I swear, that is the hotel room I stayed at in CA. Looks like the Huntington Beach Springhill Suites.

I paid for it ages ago on a deal, and it currently suits my needs. It runs as a docker container and it just works. It’s easy enough for my elderly mom to use remotely and I’ve ripped my entire movie collection for her to watch. I also like the live tv that’s included with the pass.

I would switch in a heartbeat if it wasn’t doing what I need, but so far I have no complaints, it works well for my family’s needs.

Yeah, I’m sure my normal is not regular normal, I’m an old graybeard so my perspective is a bit off.

But a pihole is super easy. Mine runs in a VM in Proxmox now, but I’ve run it on a raspberry pi and as a docker container as well. Well worth a shot.

I honestly don’t know what I’m doing right, just typical stuff I’d think.

I have a pihole as my dns/dhcp. I use Firefox with enhanced tracking protection turned on, ublock origin and privacy badger.

On my phone I have AdGuard (paid one time license fee).

I still am seeing YouTube without ads. I occasionally have to reload a video, but no showstoppers yet. Only posting my setup in case it help anyone else. Hopefully it’s not instructions for them on what to attack next…