Neither of those companies produced consoles when I was 8. But of the those, I only ever owned PlayStations (PS2, PS4). So, Me_irl too I guess?

Edit: Forgot I had a PS Vita too.

My last PC I ran for, I’d guess, 7 years. Built a new one about a year ago.

I could see upgrading the GPU in a few years. But otherwise I’ll probably run it until it breaks. Hardware has a pretty long useful life these days. Assuming you don’t run an OS that pushes planned obsolescence.

I’m accustomed to the imperial system. But agree that metric is better.

Some metric stuff I have no trouble with. I have a good spatial sense of the distance of a mm, m, and km. And can do a rough miles to km (and vice versa) conversion in my head. I have a good sense of how much a kg is and similarly can do a rough conversion to and from lbs in my head. But while I understand that a gram is 1/1000 of a kg, if handed a small object and asked to guess how many grams it is, I’d fail miserably.

Celsius I can’t ever remember the conversion, but I’ve had enough exposure to it that I understand if it means cold/cool/warm/hot weather.

Reporting in with a hassle free printer like some other commenters.

I have a Canon monotone LaserJet MFP I bought at a big box store with no prior research like four or five years ago. Been great. Always just works.

Yep, been running it for a couple years at least? Mostly ZigBee and Zwave devices. For lights, some other powered devices, temperature control, and in-house location tracking.

It’s not always intuitive, but always figure it out eventually. There’s a homeassistant community at [email protected] which might be helpful if you have questions.

Was kind of surprised how long my list ended up.

Burn Notice

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Schitt’s Creek

Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise, Lower Decks, could see Strange New Worlds in the rotation in the future)

The Good Place

Community

The Expanse

Firefly

Parks and Rec

Ted Lasso

Long time and still current hater of all things Apple here.

I have to use a locked down enterprise managed Windows 11 laptop for work. If given the choice of that or a locked down enterprise managed Mac, I’d switch in a heartbeat.

Here’s an HDD synth project for that very thing I saw the other day! Though probably won’t work for your use case, admittedly. It’s intended for retro systems and goes in an ISA slot, and isn’t available for sale yet anyway.

YouTube video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sASOfpzPjxg

Project page: https://www.strifestreams.com/hddsynth

I have a PC that I use as a router. It’s power setup is inverter > lifepo4 battery > battery charger. Relevance here is that it’s a “dumb” setup insofar as the PC can’t manage the battery.

What I did to help with battery health is figured out how long the battery should run the PC and have a scheduled disconnect of the mains power for about half that time once a day. Not as good a solution as something that can maintain a ~80% charge, but better than leaving it at 100%

It’d work for an old laptop too, and can be accomplished with a cheap aquarium light timer.

Yeah, I realized how it was problematic pretty quickly after posting.

Mostly I agree. I have no kids and won’t (vasectomy), and I’m a bit on the antinatalist side. Not so far in that I think people should never have kids. But reproducing at the rate we do is unsustainable and thus unethical. So there’s a bias there.

I do think maternity and paternity leave should be given. And some grace should be allowed for small things. Like having to come in a little late or leave a little early for having to pick up/drop off kids, that kind of thing. To a point. If it’s causing more than a minor burden to coworkers, then that’s a problem.

But getting preference in scheduling, time off, etc? I don’t agree with that. I shouldn’t get the short end of the stick because they have a kid.

Edit: In reading some of the other comments, I saw a common sentiment which I’ll sum up as “don’t blame the parent, blame the system” which I can agree with.

I also had a “chose to breed” line in my last paragraph. I softened the language there, because it’s not always a choice.

I got a chuckle out of “swap boil”

I know some folks in the SCA. Which I had no idea stood for “Society of Creative Anachronism” until just now. It’s a bit too much for me, but I’m glad they exist.

TIL the UK has publicly available hygiene ratings. I like that.

There’s one in my neck of the woods too. And I’ve gone before. Been a while though, didn’t even occur to me as an option. Thanks for reminding me!

Are there any you’ve gone to in the Midwest that you thought were particularly exceptional?

Thanks for all the recommends!

California Extreme looks cool! I live not too far from a retro barcade and it scratches this itch a little. I bet I’d enjoy this. I’ll keep an eye on it.

I do like board games and tabletop RPG’s. Not sure if I do enough to travel out to one of those but it made me think there are probably some in my neck of the woods I could check out, and indeed there are. So, still helpful!

I think I would love DEF CON. But the price of admission is pretty steep. But that helped me remember a friend telling me about SAINTCON. Also a Cybersecurity convention, in Provo Utah. Not cheap, but about half the cost of DEF CON. Provo is most certainly not Vegas. But I don’t need it to be. I can go to Vegas pretty much anytime. Was just there this past weekend, in fact.

That does appeal to my interests! And I love Portland and have some friends that live there too. I’ll try to make that happen.

This looks awesome! Thanks for the recommend.

In fairness, before I speak to it. I haven’t been to any type of gaming con/expo, big or small. But I’ve seen pictures and some video of PAX and it gives me the same kind of vibes as comic con, which made me iffy on those types of events.

Your description piqued my interest so I checked them out. I want to go! A month is a bit too soon (just got back from a trip) but I set myself a calendar reminder to check it out next year.

Edit to add: The con is April 17 – 19 @ Crowne Plaza for any curious passersby.

“See, I’m not really an atheist but agnostic. It means I’m not to be expelled from this community as a heretic”

I identity with this. When I was younger I identified as agnostic, as I saw it as a more socially acceptable option than atheism which allowed me to not have to pretend to be religious.

But I’ve identified as atheist for many years now. In my case by the time I did, everyone of significance in my life was nonreligious.

TIL