I always hear about the importance of shopping around for insurance, and I don’t necessarily do it every single year, but probably about every other year

And everywhere I look my quotes are always about the same, within a few bucks of what I’m already paying.

And I guess if you add it all up over the years a couple of bucks a month difference does eventually add up to something kind of significant.

But having been with my current company/agent for a while and having had to use my insurance a couple times over the years, I don’t mind that so much because I’ve found them pretty easy to work with. They’ve paid out when I needed them to without any drama, and they’ve been willing to cut me when, like when I had some billing snafu that was kind of my fault they were saw that I’d been a customer for a while with otherwise perfect payment history and we’re willing to waive some fees that were otherwise tacked on. And jumping ship to save very little money and not knowing if the new company is going to be as decent to work with just doesn’t seem like a smart move to me.

Still pisses me off to no end that my insurance goes up every year though. My car’s not appreciating in value any, and I’m not getting any younger or more reckless on the road, nor have I reached the age yet where my mental faculties have started to nosedive, and I have a very clean driving history.

I’m not disabled, at least not visibly, there might be a bit of neurospiciness going on in the background, but I do have kind of a unique look- shaved head, big beard, curly moustache, and kind of an interesting sense of style, so I get a lot of looks (and, not for nothing, compliments.)

The other day I was dressed up a bit and on my way to meet up with my wife to have a nice dinner. I was wearing a linen suit and panama hat, so definitely dressed a good bit spiffier than most people on the street.

As I was walking down the sidewalk on my way to this restaurant, this little girls’ eyes just kind of lock onto me like I was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen, and she just kind of starts wandering towards me, and walks directly into my path. If I’d been distracted on my phone or something I might have tripped over her.

She wasn’t quite a toddler, but not much older.

I didn’t mind it at all, I don’t really like kids, it was kind of funny, maybe even a bit flattering, but i could definitely see it getting old for people getting that kind of attention for things they’re not in control or proud of.

Kind of similarly, my wife tends to come home from work and get changed right into her pajamas, and I think that kind of flips a mental switch for her saying that she’s done doing stuff for the day, and so she kind of struggles to get any chores done after work or on her days off. She also kind of has trouble sleeping sometimes.

I tend to get dressed and stay that way until it’s time for bed, and I feel that I tend to be a bit more productive at home than her.

And I feel like that kind of helps create more of a mental divide. If I’m up and wearing clothes it’s time to get stuff done, if I’m wearing pajamas it’s time to relax and get ready for bed.

My old dog was a puppy when the local baseball team won the world series. We took him outside after the game, and our neighbor behind us started lighting off some pretty big fireworks.

The first one or two startled him a little, but he saw that we weren’t reacting and quick settled down. Then he started to enjoy them. He’d watch the neighbors light one up, watch it shoot into the sky and explode, and then back to the neighbor, tail wagging waiting for another one.

After that, any time he heard them going off somewhere he’d run around to the windows trying to get a better look. If he could find a good angle he’d happily stand there and watch the entire show.

My current dog just doesn’t react to them at all. We got her at about a year old, so I don’t know what, if anything, her previous humans did to desensitize her, but at most she just kind of groans and rolls over if they’re close enough to disturb her nap. I actually use them as a good excuse to take her for a walk because she is kind of dog-reactive and I know no one else is going to be out walking their dogs during the fireworks.

At least as far as ice harvesting goes, that’s a pretty well-documented historical fact that can be verified.

As far as my friends dad being able to ice skate on the creek, it’s a bit harder to verify what he was doing 60 or so years ago, especially since he’s dead, but he was also the kind of guy who did plenty of crazy things in his day, and that story would be downright tame compared to just about every other story involving him so it’s kind of hard to imagine that that was the one he misremembered or embellished, but I suppose it was possible.

And there are plenty of other little leftovers, like several parks and such in the area where the ice thickness is monitored by the park staff because once upon a time you used to be able to reliably skate and fish on the ice.

I live in an area where ice used to be an industry. Not even a minute drive from my house is a lake where they’d cut big blocks of ice and ship them downstream to stack and pack in sawdust and such to last the rest of the year. This area supplied a lot of the ice for the city of Philadelphia because closer to the city the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers were too dirty and no one wanted ice from them.

This went on until around 100 years ago, maybe even a bit longer, my dad in his 70s remembers his grandmother still getting ice delivered for her icebox for part of his childhood until she finally got a refrigerator.

My friends dad, who was a bit younger than my dad, used to tell stories about how the local creek would freeze over in the winter and he and his friends would ice skate down the frozen creek to get to another town about 5 miles away.

I actively keep an eye on ice conditions around me because I would like to try ice fishing some day. It’s only been a handful of times over the last decade or so where any body of water around here has frozen over enough for it to be possible, and even then it’s only been just the absolute bare minimum 4 inches and I’d ideally want another inch or two before I felt comfortable enough to actually try it.

I’ve never even seen that creek freeze over enough that even some foolhardy kids would be able to try skating on it, I’ve seen it get maybe 1 inch of ice, and even that was a rare occurrence, they’d break right through if they tried.

These are things that people around me should remember or at least should remember their parents and grandparents talking about, not something that’s totally out of living memory, and yet they still refuse to see it.

There’s of course a ton of variables at play here, and I’m gonna preface this by saying I’m by no means a graphics/performance snob and I’m mostly playing older games.

But anecdotally, there have been some cases where Linux has been a night and day difference for me.

My computer is basically 12+ years old, it’s basically the same computer my wife built before we started dating crammed into a new box with a couple upgrades along the way. It has a pre-ryzen AMD processor, and a 2060, so it’s definitely not technically meeting required specs for a lot of games but it’s holding it’s own and chugging along managing to run most of what I try to throw at it on (what I think are) acceptable settings.

I got Helldivers 2 to run on it exactly once on windows, every time after that it crashed on the loading screen when I tried to join a game no matter how I tried to get it running.

Since switching to Linux it’s been playable. Not necessarily the smoothest experience, but certainly good enough for my needs.

That’s probably the newest game I’ve tried to run, I’m cheap and tend to wait a couple years to get games on sale. All the older games I’ve tried to run so far have pretty much run the same as on windows as far as I can tell.

It probably depends on the music festival you’re going to but there was one I used to go to every year

It was 3 or 4 days of day-drinking, eating like crap, staying up late, being outside in the sun on probably one of the hottest weeks of the year while probably not drinking enough water, and sleeping in tents on the ground.

And depending on how the festival is laid out, walking around the grounds from one stage to another, to different vendors and food stands, to your campsite and back, etc. can add up pretty quickly. The one I went to was pretty small and compact, but I still probably managed around 5-10 miles a day walking around, and you may be hauling around camp chairs, blankets, and coolers with you for a lot of that. And I’m not saying that that’s a lot of walking, personally I can do that pretty easily, but it’s more than a lot of people normally do.

I think it’s coming sooner than a lot of people think.

We may even hit it within a year or so if we count the Steam machine and how that launch goes

Less and less people even have a home desktop these days. It’s basically gamers, programmers/IT/etc. types, and old people who refuse to learn how to use a smartphone.

A decent amount of those techy types are either already using Linux, or at least have some familiarity with it from working on servers and such, and it’s only a matter of time before a lot of them switch out of frustration with Microsoft’s enshitification

Gamers are already moving in pretty great numbers, valve has made it so that most games can now run fine on Linux which kept a lot of people from switching previously, and the steam deck has made a lot of people curious about it. And there’s a lot of people who have perfectly serviceable rigs that they can’t “upgrade” to windows 11 now that they won’t be getting regular security updates for 10, and with the price of RAM now, they may not want to invest in hardware upgrades and may turn to Linux to at least squeeze a couple more years out of their system.

And as far as the old luddites go, most of them could probably use Linux just fine. They’re not doing anything besides browsing the web checking their email, and using basic office programs anyway.

I recently switched my parents over to Linux Mint because their computer was just too bogged down with windows 11 bullshit and everything was going at a crawl. They’ve been on it for about a month now and it’s been smooth-sailing.

And I think as more of us gamers and tech nerds get more familiar and comfortable with Linux, more people are going to do the same thing. For those of us who have made the switch ourselves and play tech support for our parents and grandparents, the next time they call you up to come take a look at their computer, bring a Linux flash drive and boot that up for them. Tell them to play around with it a bit to see if they can live with it (I left my flash drive plugged into their computer for about a week for them to play around with it before I installed it for them) show them that libre office is basically the same as Microsoft office, install whatever web browser they’re used to, make sure their printer is working, etc.

And eventually, maybe they’ll even tell their old people friends about it. I can definitely see one of my mom’s friends complaining about how slow their computer is, and my mom saying “well my son put this Linux stuff on our computer, and it sped everything right up” and then boom you got old people getting curious about it too.

There’s a number of ways to get non-steam games to run through proton or other compatibility tools.

I’m not the expert on that matter because basically everything I play is on steam, but off the top of my head Lutris comes to mind

As far as mods, I’m not a huge modder, so again I’m probably the wrong person, but the handful of mods I do use (mostly some basic quality of life/bug-fix things) I’ve been able to get running on Linux without too much drama. No, there’s not currently a nifty tool like Vortex to automate it for you and you have to manually copy files to the right place and such, but most mods tell you that information, so all you need to do is get used to the folders you’re looking for living in a slightly different place than they did on windows. YMMV if you use more complicated mods than I do of course.

I don’t know the knife laws in Italy, especially not for the specific part of Italy this occurred in

But often laws about switchblades and such have to do with carrying them, or occasionally selling them, but often just owning a switchblade and keeping it at home isn’t really an issue

As far as manufacturing, I again don’t know about the specific regulations, if there’s maybe any kind of licensing or something needed, but I know for a fact that it is either not totally illegal to manufacture a switchblade in Italy, or they are *very * selectively enforcing those laws because there are some very well-known manufacturers of them based there (if I had more disposable income I’ve had my eye on a Frank Beltrame stiletto for a while)

I mean, we live in a time when 3d printed guns exist, I’m pretty sure having a 3d printer and ordering filament is probably about as likely to get you on a list as ordering some whistles

But whistles are readily available and cheap, without looking too hard I can get a dozen from them at target for less than $5 with lanyards. Leave your phone at home, pay cash, take a bus or park in the next shopping center over or wear a mask like you’re getting over a cold and a baseball cap and you’re about as anonymous as you can get.

Can probably get them even cheaper if you shop around a bit, if you have a party store around you I’ll bet you can get a bunch there for cheap as party favors for a children’s birthday party goody bag or whatever.

I’m a burly, bearded, outdoorsy dude, and you can describe a lot of my friends in a similar way.

Once upon a time, one such friend had a few trees on his property that needed to come down (damaged by storms, emerald ash borer, etc,) so he made a decision to have a “lumberjack day”

The plan was simple, we’d all show up with axes and saws and other implements of destruction and cut down these trees and chop them up to manageable sizes.

We also all kind of had the same idea that we’d show up in flannel shirts and suspenders in hopes that our one friend (coincidentally my now-wife, though we had not yet even begun to think about dating) who was sort of our unofficial group photographer, would show up with our camera, and we could get some cool shots of us being rugged badasses and maybe a group picture.

Sadly, she had to work that day, so no pictures exist.

I decided for this occasion that I wanted a big ol’ double-bit felling axe. It just seemed appropriate.

Now I could have gotten one from a hardware store if I just wanted a prop, but I did want an actual usable axe. Most new axes you can easily get your hands on these days just aren’t that great unless you’re willing to shell out some decent money (they’re not outlandishly expensive, but certainly more than I could afford at the time as a 20-something pizza guy)

Which meant that I’d be looking for a used axe. This was something I’d already been keeping my eye out for at yard sales and flea markets and such but unfortunately I was coming up empty. So with Lumberjack Day fast-approaching, I turned to craigslist.

And sure enough, I found a guy selling axes. Quite a lot of axes in fact, I suspect this guy had been snatching them up from the same flea markets I’d been hunting at before I got a chance. He’d clean them up, hang a new handle if needed, and sell them. His sharpening skills left a bit to be desired, but I’m handy enough with a file and whetstone so that didn’t matter.

We exchanged some messages, he sent me some pics of what he had, and we arranged a time for me to swing over to his house to buy an axe from him.

So one Sunday morning I swerved over to his house, not thinking to tell anyone where I was going.

From the pictures he sent, I kind of thought he had these axes in a shed or garage.

Instead when I went there and knocked on his front door he invited me inside and told me the axes were in his basement.

I step inside his living room, and this man had no furniture.

We go down into the basement, and every wall and float surface is covered in axes (and some similar hand tools- hammers, hoes, picks, shovels, etc)

I think this may have been some kind of serial killer’s lair.

But, luckily, I did not get axe-murdered that day. Instead I checked out his wares, handed him $60, and walked out with a rather nice vaughan axe that was probably from around the '60s

Took it out to my car, sat there for a minute considering my life choices, and went on my merry way.

Then a week or two later I put that axe to good use at lumberjack day. It’s a good axe, I still have it and find some good excuses to use it from time-to-time.

So anyway, he may possibly be a serial killer, but I do recommend Craigslist Andrew if you ever need to buy a decent used axe at a fair price.

Philadelphia English has this fixed with “youse”

I guess there’s also the Pittsburghese “yinz”

Or the southern “y’all”

Yeah that seems to be the key here, I’m doing a 60 second burn-in time for the bottom layers now, and lowered the lift speed and things are coming out a lot better

I’m still having adhesion issues on about half the plate, but I’m pretty sure I’m just going to need to re-level again to fix that

May still look into a heating solution but as long as they stick to the plate, everything seems to be coming out fine otherwise

I’m worried about your ventilation and PPE situation.

It’s vented outside through flexible ducting with an inline fan, I have VOC monitors around my basement, and I wear a p100 organic vapor and acid rated respirator, disposable nitrile gloves, goggles, and a rubber apron

But do go on being a judgemental prick for no reason. I’m not skimping on safety, but if I can save myself a few bucks not buying a boring piece of hardware I don’t really need, I’d prefer to do that.

That’s money that could buy me more resin, paints, disposable gloves, beer, coffee, ice cream, books, movie tickets, or countless other things that I’d rather be spending my money on.

You know, it’s now occuring to me that I have absolutely no clue what Roblox actually is. It’s been around forever, I’ve been seeing gift cards for it in stores for I’m pretty sure well over a decade, I hear lots of talk about all of the dangers and how addictive it is for kids, etc.

But I haven’t the foggiest idea what the game is actually like. To the best of my knowledge I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a single screenshot of it, at least not one that was clearly labeled as being from Roblox.

And while I’m a childfree curmudgeon in my 30s, I do have a few friends with kids that I see with some regularity, and I’ve never heard any of them mention Roblox even in passing.

I feel like I’m in a really weird bubble of roblox-ignorance, I’m not exactly mad about it, but it feels weird that for as big as Roblox is supposed to be that I’ve never seen anyone talk about the actual game, just how big of a problem it is.

Most veggies in grocery stores are bred for things like appearance and shelf life more than actual quality.

I think tomatoes are a prime example of this.

Tomatoes bruise easily, and people kind of want to buy the perfect, round, bright red tomatoes, not a weird lumpy-looking, funny colored bruised up one.

So big farmers grow tomatoes that look pretty, and are sturdier to better handle being shipped thousands of miles, that will last better on grocery store shelves, etc.

But there’s trade-offs there for things like texture and taste. That perfect-looking tomato may be bland and watery.

They may also be doing stuff like picking them before they’re fully ripe and artificially ripening them with ethylene gas or something later in a warehouse.

When you get tomatoes from a smaller, local farmer though, they don’t have to be shipped as far, or sit around in a warehouse or grocery store as long, so they don’t need to pick varieties based on shelf life and ability to stand up to shipping, and can instead grow varieties that taste good. And they can pick them at their peak ripeness because they’re going more directly from the field to the consumer and they don’t have to rely on tricks like ethylene.

My wife isn’t a picky eater, but when we first started dating she thought that she didn’t really like tomatoes.

But she had only ever had regular grocery store tomatoes.

Until we moved in together and I grew some myself. Then she discovered that tomatoes can actually be really good. Now she can’t get enough of them, as long as they’re good tomatoes.

And I didn’t even grow any particularly fancy tomatoes. That first year that I made a convert of her I just had some regular ol’ beefsteak, Roma, and cherry tomatoes that I picked up as pre-started plants from Walmart or home Depot or somewhere like that, and grew them in pots on the patio of our apartment. Basically entry-level gardening, but that was enough to blow her mind.

Another year I grew, I think the variety was called something like “mucho nacho” jalapenos. We love jalapenos to begin with, but holy shit. That particular variety was everything we ever wanted a jalapeno to be. We had one or two other varieties going that year to have a comparison, but that one stood head-and-shoulders above the others, bigger, a little hotter, and just plain tastier.

And farmers can probably get their hands on even better varieties than whatever I could get at a big box hardware store, and have the know-how to really give them ideal growing conditions.

My computer is basically the same computer my wife built around 12 years ago, as she did upgrades over the last decade or so I just saved her old components and eventually stuffed them into a new box. It was a beefy rig when she built it, and still runs most of what I throw at it with (what I think is) pretty acceptable performance and settings.

So that old motherboard and processor aren’t windows 11 compliant and with the windows 10 end of life I decided it was time to make the switch. Don’t quite have the wiggle room in the budget for a major upgrade right now.

And truth be told, even if I were to do a major upgrade, I probably was looking at Linux anyway. I don’t like the AI bullshit and a lot of the other dumb crap Microsoft has been pulling with 11. I want to get away from the corporate overlords in general. I’ve always been pretty big on FOSS, so really it was just gaming that’s been holding me back and I felt like proton and such the state of gaming on Linux has finally reached a place I can be happy with.

And not for nothing, it’s free, and I’ve always felt like MS charges too much for windows. I’m a bit of a cheapskate, if I can save a buck I’m going to. The F in FOSS is a huge draw for me.

And I’ve had half-baked plans to turn this current rig into a home server/NAS whenever I get around to building a new rig, so that meant Linux was in the cards for it at some point anyway, and I might as well start getting my hands dirty with that now in preparation.