MrVilliam @ MrVilliam @lemmy.world

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7

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666

Joined

2 yr. ago

If you're any good with STEM stuff, look into power plants. I had to be a basic laborer to get my foot in the door but shifted to water chemistry. It took a lot of effort, but eventually I got in as an operator and have since gotten a couple of raises and a promotion. The downside is the schedule of rotating shift work, but that's why they pay so well. On nights and weekends, it's just me and two other guys running the ~750MW power plant, sometimes running our asses off to keep it running on the grid, but usually just keeping up with general preventive maintenance, minor upgrade/replacement projects, calibrations, and responding to alarms.

Another option especially right now is to look into data centers. Learn refrigeration cycles, UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply), and refresh your mind on chemistry 101 and physics 101. I interviewed at and got an offer from one but turned it down because they were offering $40/hour plus up to 4% bonus while I was at $42/hour plus up to 10% bonus, all while HR was kinda being shitty with me during negotiation. So I walked away and contacted the supervisor and manager I interviewed with and thanked them and let them know that I thought they were great and that it was the money and disrespect from HR that made me reject the offer.

In a span of like eight years, I did this 4 times to go from $11.25/hour to now $52/hour. All with a gen ed associates degree from a community college. The best time to look for a job is when you already have one. It's your safety net. It enables you to walk away from the table when negotiating after crushing the interview. You are also interviewing them to see if they're worthy of your valuable labor. They have no revenue without workers like you, and they have no profit if they pay you what you're actually worth, so understand that technically every offer they extend to you is a lowball offer. Having the confidence of knowing this makes you appear competent enough to merit higher pay. They will look at candidates and remember that you were the one who had the sauce and stuck out.

Also supply chain, egg prices, Biden "I did that!" sticker. Damn lazy avocado toast is killing diamonds with tiktok.

Marriage isn't for everybody, and that's okay. As long as you aren't stringing partners along who are looking to get married when you already know that you aren't, then your choice doesn't seem to be hurting anybody.

I'm 35 and married. Sure, tastes change, but my wife and I chose good partners in each other; we won't hate each other or get irreparably sick of each other, we make a great team, and we understand each other's limitations and are mature enough to ask for help. We let each other in. There is security and stability in marriage. I'm not great at meeting new people, so not having to go on another first date again is a huge relief for me. Making a good first impression is fucking exhausting. In contrast, I know how my wife is feeling pretty much just by glancing at her, and it's really fulfilling to be on the same wavelength as my partner like that, especially because we're also open communicators who can share the honest, fucked up feelings without worrying about judgment. So we're basically each other's therapist, but we share housework and meals and money, and we snuggle and kiss and fuck. I can understand that that's not appealing to everybody, but it's hard for me to imagine a version of myself who doesn't want this. But again, it's not for everybody, and it's perfectly okay to not want it for yourself.

It's really funny to me that he chose "Ted". When's the last time you met a Ted who didn't suck?

I literally just cleaned out a closet like a week ago and came across an old firetv stick lol. Are you my assigned CIA agent? Because if so, you're a lot cooler than I assumed you'd be.

Whoa, I've never heard of this as an option. I watch YouTube on my PS5 and the ads are insane. How hard is this to set up and use? Would I just find smarttube somewhere online on my computer and then send it to the onn box via USB into the apps folder or something?

I have two possible solutions then, each with their own drawback.

Solution 1 is to nationalize media. The closest realistic thing is something we already have: libraries. The drawback is that content is massively limited and it's pretty inconvenient, but the cost is bundled in with other nationalized services like firefighters and the postal service.

Solution 2 is piracy. The drawback is that it's illegal and you risk prison time and huge fines, but the cost is either free or relatively cheap in exchange for less chance of getting caught, and the selection of content is damn near everything. There is quite a bit of work at the onset, but it is reasonably convenient to enjoy.

There's an alternative. Because of exclusivity deals, you think a monopoly would be good for users, but with a monopoly then the company could charge $200/month because customers literally have nowhere else to go. A better system would be significantly reduced exclusivity so that 1st party media is the only exclusive content. This way, there would be more than 1 or 2 options, but way fewer than what we currently have, and the 5 or so companies remaining would compete based on their own original content, customer service, quality of service, and UI. Streaming apps with only one or two interesting pieces of original content could license out to all of the remaining few streamers and shut down their dead app. I know the quality dropped like a fucking rock, but a few years back people were excited to be subscribed to Disney+ for Wandavision and The Mandalorian. 5 years ago, people were excited to be subscribed to Netflix for Stranger Things and Orange is the New Black.

I was frustrated af a few nights ago trying to find X-Men First Class. Days of Future Past is on Max. X-Men, X-Men: The Last Stand, the 3 Wolverine movies, X-Men Apocalypse, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix are all on Disney+. So where the fuck are X-Men 2 and X-Men: First Class?! To watch the X-Men movies (which are all from the same studios), paying for 2 streaming services isn't enough?!

Based on actual ticket prices, from producers that expect to triple their investment I guess. Us idiots are fantasizing about ~10% while they're hitting triple digit percentages.

For now. My knees and back ache, I don't understand a lot of new slang and memes, I have pairs of "good socks", and it'll all happen to you one day too.

But if we assume a movie that made a billion dollars, and assume a high ticket price like $20, then that's 50 million tickets sold. That math only checks out if each person paid $0.01 per worker. If we cut out useless executives, that number goes way the fuck down. So yes, let's pay artists directly, and we'll save money at the same time. Even if it were a tenth of a penny to each credit per viewer, that's $50k on average, which is higher than the actual average wage for crew.. I know actors and directors make more, but that's why I'm not going so far as to say we should only pay $2 for a ticket.

Honestly, this assumes that the content is even worth that. The older I get, the more conscious I am that my time left is constantly shrinking. Do I really wanna spend 3 hours watching a shitty movie? Do I really wanna spend 6-12 hours watching a shitty season of a shitty show? Nah, I'd rather enjoy an active activity than passively pass the time. I'll pay a little for the little amount of content I care about at a time to be presented in a convenient way. I'm probably not gonna pirate until they make it impossible to cycle between services, and I'm sure that's coming within a few years. Get ready for 2 year contracts for Netflix, $8/month ("for the first 6 months" in tiny print).

Let's assume that this hypothetical movie had 2,000 people working on it, which isn't a crazy number to assume. You think people should pay $2,000 to watch a movie?

Agreed. I'm just kinda surprised that I'm cool with something that sounds so terrible on paper. Ultimately, if it does become the norm, I'd expect another renaissance of indie titles, but probably PC only at first at least. If the only way to play games becomes subscription bundles which would obviously come with a paywall for devs to get access to customers, it gatekeeps smaller devs out. Until these same execs see that lost revenue and create an indie tier subscription with fewer hurdles to get your game in it, so that's totally gonna be like 80% shovelware.

So basically, it's pretty okay right now but it's gonna be a bloated, greedy, saturated shitshow soon just like streaming services are. Wonderful.

As a 35 year old guy with a full time career and a wife, my gaming time is pretty limited. I no longer want a game to be 100 hours long because that will take me like a year to get through. I want other things. So for me, subscription gaming weirdly makes sense. I've heard the xbox version is great but I'm doing the playstation one. I've tried a bunch of older games that I didn't get around to when they were newer like Celeste and AC black flag. I've tried some newer ones here and there too. For the cost of like 2 new games per year, I'm trying like 30, and I don't feel the pressure of "I paid $60 on this" to make myself finish a game if I'm not that interested. I got like 2/3 through Ghost of Tsushima and then realized that I wasn't really having fun anymore so I just stopped and moved on to another game. I'm not playing the most current shit, and not a whole lot of AAA stuff, but other than Spider-Man 2 idk if I'm really missing out on anything. Especially because every game ships broken as fuck and takes a few months and an open letter apology to be worth a damn anyway.

Not defending corporate greed at all here, I'm just saying that right now, for me, at current price and service, I fucks with it. I'm sure it isn't such a good value for people who play all the time and are constantly just waiting for new games to come onto the catalog, but I'm more worried about games not being there long enough for me to get my fill lol.

My favorite is when there's a countdown to hit skip, but it stays on zero and plays for an extra couple of seconds without letting me skip, and then another ad plays with a fresh skip countdown.

Or yesterday, when the video locked up because it was apparently time for an ad, but the ad wouldn't play. So I gave up and tried to play a different video, but none of the videos would play because there was still an ad that was supposed to play at me and it wouldn't play. So I stopped watching YouTube for the day.

Hear that, YouTube? I gave in to your bullshit adblock crackdown and the ads actually make your videos unusable. Fix your shit. None of us would mind brief, infrequent ads, but your greed is fucking the whole platform to the point that regular people are looking for a competitor. You did a Streisand Effect to adblock extensions, so now everybody knows about them. You squeezed creators into doing sponsored videos because you stopped paying them. You harassed us with non-stop pestering about YouTube TV and YouTube Red or premium or plus or whatever the fuck it is this year. You've forgotten what the point of YouTube originally was. It used to be a place for regular people like YOU to host a video, and now it's pretty much just small businesses doing the 21st century version of public access TV.

This late stage capitalism is really pissing me off. Everything keeps getting shittier and more expensive.

No receipt, but I have the pending Aldi and Giant charges on my bank app! I got my wife something for Valentine's at Giant, but if you ignore that it's a total of about $55 for the groceries like I said.

It doesn't look like much, but this was probably like 20 pounds of groceries. This wasn't a full week of groceries because I was using some stuff I already had on hand in addition to this, but that's also why it's so much cheaper than the price range I said is typical. Some of this was ingredients for oatmeal or overnight oats, but I already had a big thing of oats at home. Some of this was supplies for my lunches I pack but I must have had enough bread at the time for my sandwiches, etc. Whatever sweet potato black bean thing I was cooking used two cans of black beans, a whole 3 pound bag of sweet potatoes, and probably 4-5 tomatoes. Maybe we had rice with it which we would've had on hand like the oats? But remember it's just feeding two people for us, so this easily makes us a few days worth of leftovers. OP said that they are only feeding themself, so shopping and cooking for two will be a closer approximation than your expectations while shopping and cooking for four.

I don't usually take pictures of my receipts, so I unfortunately don't have evidence of a typical weekly trip. It's almost always more expensive than this because I usually wouldn't choose a vegetarian option for a big batch to have lots of leftovers. For example, I am cooking a big batch of clam chowder right now, and because Aldi didn't have chopped clams, I had to go to Giant for that, so getting stuff for lunches and breakfasts and clam chowder all cost about $55 this time. And I don't expect to need to get groceries again until probably Friday or Saturday. 5 cans of clams aren't cheap, but they go a long way when you're stretching it with cream, carrots, onions, celery, and potatoes!

I don't really target a specific calorie goal. We eat until we are no longer hungry. Rest assured, we aren't starving lol. We just really like vegetables, and they're relatively cheap compared to meat and processed stuff. I think it would be clearer if you saw the sizes of some of the things you see on the receipt. Like "sweet potatoes" doesn't explain that it's 3 pounds of starch yet it's only $1.59 lol. "Vine tomatoes" for $2.89 was 4-5 medium size tomatoes. Idk why vine tomatoes are so cheap compared to tomatoes without the vine, but I'm not complaining. For comparison, if you shop at a typical store, you can get 6 pouches of gushers in a box for a similar price (usually more), and that's less than 1/3 pound of food. Cooking really saves a shitload of money at the cost of some time, but you also choose leaner portion sizes because the sooner you finish that food, the sooner you have to cook something else.

I know kids make this way harder, but that's not something OP has to worry about right now.

I was in an okay job and was looking for something better a few years back. I told nobody that I was looking. Having the resume I had was impressive enough to get an interview. The place was about 2-3 hours from home, so 4-6 hours round trip plus about 2 hours of interview, it was my whole day. And it paid off. I'm now making double what I had been making, and they got me relocation assistance which effectively paid for me to move, so I'm only about 15 minutes away now.

When you already have a job, you have the power to walk away from the table during the interviews and negotiations, so you have the power to fight for an actual improvement instead of just taking whatever you can get. When your resume has value, you start interviewing companies to see whether they're worthy of having you, and that's a really interesting shift in power dynamic that I wasn't expecting.

There's always a better job out there. It's foolish to think that you somehow already found the best job possible. That having been said, I'm not fully understanding your desire to leave since it seems like just minor issues in an otherwise great place. It might help to just get fulfillment from hobbies in your free time and maybe share discussion of that hobby with your coworkers to show positivity and passion. They don't have to be your friends, but they'll probably get off your back when they hear that you're an actual person and not a quiet labor robot. You shouldn't have to appease them, but it's a pretty simple adjustment to make yourself happier there.