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Lol! I’m glad you picked on that. I won’t badmouth them, but the user experience does that for them. That guy from the party must hate himself, haha

I was at a party about fifteen years ago. A guy introduced himself and we gabbed for a few minutes. Then he asked what I do for work (IT sysadmin at the time) and I told him and asked the same. He said he was in sales for a tech company. I asked which one, and he stepped close and whispered, “Oracle.” I could see he was prepared for me to bring the hate. He saved himself when he told me he was actually leaving for a gig at Dell. Later, I learned from the host that he made that part about leaving up because he felt bad. I later learned he went to work for Nutanix. Poor guy hated his own employer, and it was obvious.

This. Try not to get hot and bothered from a kiss. I fail this test every time.

Be like, “I’ll just do this quick thing – oh wait! Suddenly I’m breathing harder. Oh! Their hands are all over me now. IT’S ON!”

Good catch. I don’t usually see SAS as /dev/sd* so I assumed. Almost the same cables, though *usually better made.

I second this. SATA cables are cheaply made and can present issues that seem to indicate drive failure.

Same. Burns my nose and feels gross, like leaving conditioner in my hair.

You cannot for example just get rid of your US citizenship - you have to pay to get rid of it…

I wanted this to be false but I see that there is currently a minimum renunciation fee of $2,350. I assume there are likely other consulate fees that may bring it closer to $2,500 at the very least. What a scam.

Edit: typo

the one where Fry and Bender join the army for gum and get sent to fight balls

The Elders tell of a young ball much like you. She bounced three meters in the air. Then she bounced 1.8 meters in the air. Then she bounced four meters in the air. Do I make myself clear?

I’m lucky! Mine (2015 pro) has been awesome, except for when it was going through a Demon AVR. Its fine when direct to the TV or through the Onkyo. It has flaked out before though, and I never updated to the “experience” version that introduced ads on the home screen.

I think that’s the same OLED I have. B7 or C7. It’s starting to band on red, but I got at least… 7 (?) years out of it, and the bands are only mildly annoying. Similarly, I have never connected it to the internet, and don’t use any of the apps.

It’s not very bright, but I’ll take that over washed out or blotchy blacks. I’ll shop for a used OLED like this when I’m ready.

I haven’t yet. Actually, the corrupt bureaucracy has withheld residency status so far without bribes. That said, here was the path I thought I was on when I moved.

The idea is to have been in the country for most of the year (no less than 14 days out of country), at which time you can apply for residency. Once you have residency, you must maintain it for 5yrs.

Citizenship for Permanent Residence Holders

1. You have been a holder of Permanent Residence for a minimum of 5 years.
2. You have been resident continuously in Belize, this means that upon being granted Permanent Residency you have not resided outside Belize for periods that exceed thirty consecutive days or accumulate to a total of three months in any twelve month period.

I didn’t want to muddy the waters with the reality of what happened once I moved, as the OP was about motivating factors. Power corrupts. And ultranationalism is infectious to other countries.

Edit: If I could do it over, I would form an offshore company or similar and get a work permit. Two attorneys have recommended this, even though on paper it costs more; there’s less headache running to renew visitor status every 28 days (they claim 30-120 days, but no immigration office will renew you for more than that unless you bribe or are over 70 years old). It’s been humbling (scary) going through this process legally and being afraid on several occasions that an angry official will wave their hand and deport me. I can only imagine being deported because of my skin color or where I shop would be even more scary.

When my country first elected a rapist con man president, I started looking. I was born and raised in (and never left) New England, and so I also wanted a place that’s warm year round. It took me four years to tentatively settle on Belize, in late 2019. I made my first visit in Jan 2021, as the pandemic messed up my 2020 plans. By October, I had sold EVERYTHING and moved with two cats.

Reasons (or things I didn’t even know I wanted):

-No DST messing up my sleep schedule.
-No more days with 17+hrs of darkness.
-CARIBBEAN!!!
-Every Belizean I met (exception: gov’t employees and police) is friendly and warm. In N.E., people avoid making eye contact and answer greetings in a way to stop further conversation, but in Belize, the people genuinely want to know how you’re doing and remember everything you tell them.
-No car required
-Culture with proud participation from the public; holidays with vibrant parades, and entire village ecstatically engaged in all aspects.
-Tarantulas walking in the street (my partner and I love them!)
-Path to citizenship without $0.25M investment
-Citizenship there comes with a CARICOM passport, meaning can live and work in most Caribbean nations.
-Food! Fish caught 30 minutes before it hits my plate.

Things that pushed me away from the USA:

-Truck nuts
-Nazi and/or Confederate flags on trucks everywhere
-Cost of housing doubled from 2017 to 2021
-Consumerism -Embarrassed to be a US citizen

The Elders tell of a young ball much like you. She bounced three meters in the air. Then she bounced 1.8 meters in the air. Then she bounced four meters in the air. Do I make myself clear?

I completely agree. I thought Plex would be fast in the collective rearview mirror as soon as they started forcing connections to their servers, pay-walling, etc. I also had issues with the database corrupting and causing huge slowdowns. I spent days trying and failing to preserve my ratings, watch data, etc.

In the end, I switched to a much simpler setup of an NFS/CIFS share accessed by Kodi on my Nvidia Shield TV. If Kodi chokes (happened once since 2017), I can just wipe the app and/or reinstall and then import the local metadata (XML or NFO IIRC). That takes about five minutes. It just works. Kodi also gives me access to the IAGL, so that’s a huge plus.

I’m running Nobara 42 (Fedora-based, created by Glorious Eggroll, the Dev who makes GE-Proton, responsible for the best gaming experiences on Linux presently) right now to get my 9070 working with Steam.

Having the 6.13 kernel wasn’t enough, as my former distro (MX) wasn’t planning on adopting Mesa 25.x for several months or longer. Every week or so, Nobara grabs newer Mesa builds and kernel updates and things work better. At first, HGL was black screen and audio only, but that only lasted a week.

Try it out and see what you think. What have you got to lose?

Yeah. The word really just breaks down to, “having been noticed widely.”

Have been using TrueNAS for 13+ years since the FreeNAS 9.x days. Can attest to its bulletproof-ness in my case.

Would second asking in the iX forums. I’ve managed to get replication help directly from iX staff before when using the forum. You shouldn’t have this issue, and you will find answers.

I’ve moved my disks to a completely new machine with fresh install and then import my config, reboot and everything is as it was. I’ve also done the same without my config and imported the pool with no problems, just need to recreate shares, and any jails (a feature which I no longer use) would need to be reconfigured to be 100% functional.

…apparently my roughly 2 year old and still fairly powerful desktop does not meet their requirements due to that stupid chip it needs to have. I do not wish to buy a new computer and I do not wish to be a Windows slave again.

https://github.com/builtbybel/Flyby11 will allow you to install on any older hardware by using the Server install method that skips the hardware check for TPM. That said, a 2 year-old PC could actually have TPM. My 5 year-old gaming rig does, and so does my 2015 with an i5 6xxx. Maybe your PC TPM defaults to a disabled state, or perhaps it really is not present.

Audacity(which I love)…

Tenacity is the preferred, privacy respecting fork of Audacity. Platform agnostic.

But here’s the thing, I WANT to be a Linux user…

And you can, but it sounds like you should probably keep using dual boot and learn Linux as you go. You can likely play your games on Linux (check protondb.com for compatibility and tips), but your list of required apps may be beyond your current ability to use on Linux.

However, with some time and experimentation, I suspect you’ll find the tools available for Linux might be superior to what you use in Windows. Like your mp3 normalization options are likely more varied and robust in Linux.

I do not wish to be a Windows slave again.

The only way to achieve this is to keep working with Linux to gain experience. In the meantime, there are tools and methods to limit the spying and put control of your Windows PC back in your hands.

You can block unwanted version upgrades with an app like Steve Gibson’s incontrol.

Install your chosen app-level firewall to block telemetry.

Utilize one of the popular privacy scripts (disclaimer: can easily break functionality of your PC, but easy to roll back, just make sure to save the corresponding reversion script to negate tie changes) like privacy.sexy to disable unwanted features of Windows.

All that said, it sounds like your first Linux experience had been somewhat typical, with some bumps and learning involved. I applaud you for the effort 👏. Keep learning and keep trying to move more of your workflow to Linux. The past five years has brought a lot more from being Windows only into Linux then ever before.

China=Bad

TikTok does what every other social media app does (which is 100% legal in the US, thanks to corrupt leaders and law makers), but:China, so: Bad.