What's the most expensive thing you broke as a kid and what's the story behind it?
JCPhoenix @ JCPhoenix @beehaw.org Posts 30Comments 382Joined 2 yr. ago
JCPhoenix @ JCPhoenix @beehaw.org
Posts
30
Comments
382
Joined
2 yr. ago
Like 5yrs ago, I took a drug test for a new job. A few days before they called me, offering me said job, I had taken a gummy or two. Because I didn't think I was going to get the job. They scheduled me for the drug test, but I pushed it out as far as I could, like 3 weeks, and I passed. Now it's not like I was consuming THC regularly. It'd probably been months since the last time I'd consumed any in any form. I don't know what your habit is like, but if you're in a similar situation, you might be OK.
And even if they do detect it, that could be a false positive. It happens. Then they make you take another, right? Maybe push that out a little, too, to give your body more a little more time to get rid of it.
Is the idea something to improve your and/or your coworkers workflow or processes? Because that'd be good at least.
Busy week at work. I took Monday sick as I was tired and just mentally not there. But that didn't really change that I had a lot to do this week. At least I was able to get things done and make headway. My title has "manager" in it, but I manage no one but myself. But I felt like I actually did a lot of managerial and even pseudo-supervisory-type work this week. I'm starting to understand why my boss made me a junior manager at work. It only took me a couple years to understand it. That said, I still don't want to be a director at this place. It's not the right place for that level of responsibility. I still probably wouldn't manage anyone (nor do I want to), and the pay wouldn't be commensurate with what an actual director in my position would make. And I'm supposed to be leaving anyway...if the government would hurry the hell up with all the processing and checking for this job I was offered literally 10mo ago. My current employer knows about this new job, but thank god their cool with it and understanding of my situation.
Aside from work, not a lot going on. My dad suggested I visit my parents for Mother's Day as a surprise for my mom. So booked tickets today. Decide to use points for once, so it only cost me like $60 RT on Southwest. Which is damn good, considering that's only like two weeks away. I didn't go anywhere this month since my Feb/March travel was way more costly than I expected, and I just zeroed out the credit card I used for that, so a cheap trip to see my family in May will be good.
For this weekend, no Formula 1, but there is an IndyCar race I'll be watching. I've seen F1 communities on Lemmy. I assume there are IndyCar ones, as well. Anyone have recommendations on active communities for IndyCar?
A motorcycle back in the late 90s when I was like 9 or 10?
We were at a dealership because my dad was thinking about buying a motorcycle. At one point, they put my younger brother on a motorcycle because it was cute or whatever. After they took him off the bike, and my parents and the salesguy moved onto another motorcycle, I wanted to try. So I did. And I tried to be careful, knowing it could fall over.
Getting on was no issue. And getting off was no problem either. Until I was like a few feet away from the bike..and it fell over. Shattered the windshield.
Even though it was an accident, the dealer tried to get my parent's to pay up. And I think my parents would've been willing to pay something...except the dealer wanted, I believe, $800. The bike was probably only a few thousand bucks -- I actually have no clue how much the bike was, but, as an adult, I know how much bikes are. No way a windshield was a third of the price of the bike. Not in the 90s, not today. So my dad and the dealer got into a shouting match. We left, and the dealer tried to get our license plate number as we drove off.
Nothing ever happened with that. No cops were called or anything, as far as we know. Besides, the dealer should have insurance for these situations. But since I wasn't supposed to be on the bike in the first place...I got in tons of trouble. Got my ass beat by my mom, got grounded, couldn't go to a sleepover I was supposed to go to...
Definitely the most expensive thing I broke. At least based on what the dealer was demanding.
The DNC has been later in August in the past, according to this page on wikipedia. Same goes for the RNC.
But I don't know if Ohio's law has always been this way or if it's newer. Either way, it sounds like in the past that various states have had provisions for this scenario, knowing that this could and did happen. So if I had to guess, the issue is that, like many things in our political system, we relied on traditions and cooperation to maintain the system. And of course, Republicans for the last 8yrs (longer than that, really) no longer want to do that. They'd rather see it all burn down in the name of DJT.
That's exactly why I got a UPS! The electric lines to my building are overhead instead of underground, so sometimes weather makes things flicker.
And I'm using ESXi 6.5 still. There were free licenses available, but I think for the CyberPower UPS software that I'm using, it requires a non-free license. Luckily, there are license keys floating around the Internet.
A friend and I did consider buying a proper license (I have access to non-profit pricing), but with Broadcom's recent pricing changes and massive increases for VMWare products, that's probably not an option anymore. I think VMWare also pulled the free personal-use licenses, as well. I may eventually transition to Promox (which I do have on another server) or something else. Broadcom really did a number on VMWare =/
On the work front, I absolutely had no motivation to do anything on Thursday or Friday. Like I just sat in my chair all at home, sitting on social media/news/games. I really try not to play games during the workday, but I was just completely sapped of all motivation. Idk what the deal was with that. Not like the first half of last week was a hard work, either. At least, I was able to find some motivation and work on some things today.
I finally bought a UPS for my homelab server. Only 3-4yrs after first getting the server and like 6mo since a momentary voltage sag from the wall/mains power caused the server to shutdown unexpected and corrupt one of my VMs (at least, that's what I think happened). And this UPS even interfaces with ESXi to automatically -- and ideally, gracefully -- shutdown in case of a loss of power. I think I'll test that this weekend.
Also did and filed my taxes yesterday (Sunday). At like 5am. Because what else is there to do at 5am on a Sunday, other than taxes? π€·π½ββοΈ
There's a chance it could still happen. I live in Kansas City and voted No. While spending public money on a private endeavor was certainly a big issue, I think a lot of people were more POed with the way the teams and county/city went about this. There were almost no concrete plans on remaining sources of funding, potential traffic/parking/public transit issues, if the affected businesses in the proposed district would even sell off their land and properties, and more. Plus the fact that the selected location seemingly appeared out of nowhere. For months, there were two other locations -- one of which is literally almost entirely parking lots and empty space -- that were being talked about. And of course the implicit threats of leaving if the vote failed. There was also the rushed vote. There's no reason this had to be voted on this instant. This could've wait until the November election. People rightfully saw this was a bad way to go about this.
I think if the teams and city/county go back to the drawing board, change the location, come up with more concrete plans, lessen the amount of public money going in (like maybe not have a 40yr tax), get the teams to agree to stay the whole term -- the teams weren't even guaranteed to stay the whole term of the tax -- and just in general make it more appealing to people (the Chiefs were going to use their cut of the money to improve/build out more premium suites that average people will never see/use), people might be willing to vote for it. It'd still be a close call, but I could see people saying Yes if everything lined up.
Another option is for the teams to go across the state line to Kansas. Which I'd have no problem with that. If Kansans want to pay, let them. It's their money, not mine at that point.
Banning lobbying would mean no one would be able to talk to a politician/official about an issue. Not even writing your local officials, proposing a local ordinance to making bike lanes or spending money to fix-up/improve a local park. Because that's lobbying. You're asking a government to wield their official power and/or spend public money, for your (and potentially others') benefit.
Even lobbying groups aren't necessarily bad. The Sierra Club, EFF, ACLU. These are American, but I'm sure there are equivalents of these in other countries.
So banning lobbying doesn't really work. Now if you're talking financial contributions and gifts and nice dinners from those who lobby, yeah that probably needs to be more highly regulated or stopped altogether. Generally speaking, any kind of quid pro quo.
But just talking to a politician should not be made illegal. In democracies, talking to people, talking to politicians, and trying to convince them to align with your view is the name of the game.
I think pirating educational materials is less morally bad than pirating entertainment.
College textbooks, for example, are insanely expensive. I once paid like $300 for a single chemistry book. I never made that mistake again. Not because I pirated; I just started buying used or past editions. It's not like chemistry for a 100 level class is cutting edge stuff. It's the same ideas and knowledge we've had for decades or a hundred or hundreds of years. It's all public knowledge at this point.
But you may need the book to do readings and assignments. So if you can't afford the book, even used or past editions, then it makes sense to turn to piracy. I would sometimes grab the library reference copy of a textbook and just go crazy with a copy machine. That might technically still be piracy.
Entertainment, on the other hand, isn't really required at all. So to me, that's worse.
That all said, 99% of the stuff I've pirated is entertainment. My immorality is only bounded by the size of my SSDs!
Nope, this was in the Midwest! Missouri, to be somewhat more specific. I do know our principal (who I didn't mind) was often in the lunchroom. Maybe she was from the south? No clue.
No talking during lunch. This was in a public elementary school in the early/mid 90s, at the first school I attended through second grade. Literally the only school I attended that was like that. It was so fucking stupid.
Of course, kids tried to talk to their friends, whispering and such. I got in trouble once because a teacher saw me whisper to my friend who asked me a question and so I got moved to sitting with older kids I didn't know for the rest of the lunch period. That was the first time I got in trouble at school, so I was crying.
Never understood why we couldn't talk. I think because it'd eventually get too loud in there? Which, who cares? Didn't matter; family moved and I switched schools. Where it was totally normal and acceptable to socialize during lunch.
When I was in 8th grade year, right before the end of the year in one of my classes, we ended up having a substitute teacher. For some reason, she and a few of us were talking about poker and that we, the students, didn't know how to play.
The next day, she brings in cards and chips and is trying to teach us how to play! She did say that she probably shouldn't be doing this, but continued anyway. Interestingly, this was in Utah, in a suburb of Salt Lake City, which is the capital of the Mormon church. And she herself was Mormon. I always thought it was funny that our Mormon teacher was teaching us how to gamble in school!
I know some airports have similar Amazon convenience stores. But they're not staffless; there's still at least one person at the exit. Sometimes even another person at the entrance. Yeah it's quick for me since I'm not waiting in a line or being rung up (though I rarely see people in them compared to the traditional convenience stores), but is the company really saving money? Not that I really care if they are or not, but seems pointless if they still have to staff the stores.
It was around the mid/late 90s. Maybe around 96 or 97, so I would've been 9 or 10. We had a computer at home, and my brother and I played games on it, but we didn't have Internet. One day, my dad who works in IT, installed AOL and on our computer and paid for it. And he set up an account for me and showed me how to use it. And I was blown away. Eventually. even though I was a kid, I'd hang out in Star Trek chatrooms, created mailing lists for like a kids writers club, and ofc started playing online games. Eventually even had my own website on like GeoCities, handcrafted in HTML.
I have a TP-Link Kasa indoor WiFi camera. This one in particular. It's not a self-hosted camera that uses an NVR or anything. It's accessible from the Kasa app on iOS (and Android). It requires a microSD card to store footage.
There is a cloud subscription option to recorded footage, but it's not required. I am subscribed though, because if a camera is stolen/broken during a break-in or something, there goes all the recordings that one might need.
4 day weekend! Company is closed today for Good Friday (Easter is on Sunday). And then I'm taking Monday off because why not?
My work is doing an NCAA college basketball bracket tournament. I'm currently No. 2, but there's a good chance I can reclaim that top spot again. As long as I'm top 3, I get a little bit of prize money. All off of 10min of picking my bracket! ...and admittedly knowing a little bit about college basketball.
With my job offer -- that I received 9 months ago -- they finally got around to scheduling my drug test, which I did on Wednesday. Still waiting to hear back about my background check stuff. It's with the government and requires a clearance, so it's taking forever. I did check in with my contacts last week; all they said was that things are still under review. I will say it's very hard at times to keep motivated in my current job for this long. At least my current employer is aware of this job offer and also understanding and supportive, so that takes some pressure off of me. Not everyone knows, but I'm not having to hide it from the people who need to know (which I did for almost 6mo). Still, it's still a weird limbo to be in.
Otherwise, it's still pretty chill.
Honestly, Amazon is perfectly fine. Or if you're lucky enough to have Micro Center near you, that. PCPartPicker checks multiple stores, so that's not a bad place to start, at least for current and historical pricing information.
I've never used it, but I know people who've used Facebook Marketplace for used computers/components. I've used eBay before plenty (even sold parts there).
Edit: You can also go direct to some manufacturers. EVGA often sells brand new and sometimes "B-Spec" components, often at a good price. I purchased a brand new PSU from them directly and got a great deal on it.
Lil Wayne is a goddamn genius. That whole song, honestly.
Oof. Sorry to hear that happened. Vehicle repairs suck.
I do remember my parents talking about $800 for the windshield specifically, but maybe they were just simplifying out of anger. With the dealer, with me, whoever. It very well could've been the estimate for the total damage. I can certainly imagine some dents and scratched paint. And yeah labor is often the highest cost.