I lucky enough to get my first DSL line in 1997.

Was only paying for 128Kbps down but this was before they actually had any throttling in place, and I was close enough to the DLAM to get 1Mbit down. It was mind-blowing at a time when a 1.44Mbps T1 line was $1000+/month pipe dream!

It was difficult, but awesome.

Donuts are great. Krispie Kreme are hot garbage though.

What qualifies as “basic necessities”?

I’m not sure minimum wage has ever been enough for most people to afford an apartment on their own.

Certainly in the early 90s, even in a low cost of living area, I was working 2 jobs (one part time but a bit over minimum wage) in order to share a 500sqft, 1br apartment with a friend.

And part of the problem with trying to set a level of basic necessities (or a ‘living wage’) is that you have to account for a TON of external factors.

For example, nobody is building affordable, reasonably sized apartments or houses any more. They only want to build 2000sqft+ houses, or 1000+sqft apartments with all the trimmings and amenities. That certainly raises the cost of living.

By way of comparison, my grandparents raised 3 kids in a 998sqft 2-story duplex. It’s wasn’t large but it was a good family neighborhood with a park across the street. And they had 1 smallish (for the era) car. So why does everyone need a bajillion square feet and 2 cars, including a massive SUV to raise their 1 or 2 kids these days? (2 cars I get with both parents working these days, but the trucks and SUVs I see many low income families driving is ridiculous).

And is it fair for the minimum wage to have to be set to a rate that subsidizes the builders who choose to only build that bigger, more expensive housing.

We definitely need changes in the way this is all handled, but it’s not a simple thing. To truly solve the issue will require significant changes in our social structure and philosophy.

Well, like it or not, that’s the system we have right now, and so long as it is, by the time the main election comes around, the only options are a) violent overthrow, b) abstain from voting, or c) vote for the least bad option presented.

I don’t think we’re quite to the point yet where violent overthrow is necessary or justified.

Abstaining just means you accept whatever the outcome is, and thus have no leg to stand on when you don’t like the outcome.

In my mind that leaves option c as the only valid option, with the added requirement of working in between elections towards pushing for changes in the voting system.

I don’t pretend to be a fan of Biden. But despite his shortcomings, he’s still a damn sight better than Trump or RFK Jr. And nobody else running has a snowball’s chance in hell, and most of them are crackpots anyway. So until such a time as we have better options, I will continue to vote for the least bad option.

I’ll have fallen about 3ft, landing directly on my coccyx on a hard tile floor, causing additional damage to 2 discs in my lower back that I’ve already had worked on twice. There’s almost a 100% chance that this will result in my needing to have those two discs removed completely.

So I really, really hope I don’t get instantly teleported 2 feet to the left while I’m sitting here.

Or the pull off tab rips right off, leaving the seal itself perfectly intact.

FMLA guarantees nothing about getting paid.

That depends on your company having some kind of short/long-term disability insurance. Even that sometimes requires that you opt into it and pay a premium, though many companies do include it with them paying the premium.

Avoid, avoid, avoid.

Yes, 100%. It is by far my favorite show.

The first season is rough to get through, especially the first half. But the payoff is 100% worth it.

It’s funny that one show can have some of the absolute worst acting and dialog in TV history, while also having some of the absolute best acting and dialog in TV history.

Even if everything else sucked (and it does NOT), the show would be worth watching just for the character development and story arc of Londo and G’Kar. Hell, just the burning elevator scene is worth watching the whole show for. 😁

Is there some rule I wasn’t aware of that you must own a home in order to give out candy on Halloween?

At 18, you presumably live SOMEWHERE. Nothing stopping you from giving out candy at that residence.

Note: this is not an endorsement that you shouldn’t be allowed to trick or treat at 18. Simply pointing out that your specific argument is bullshit.

I guess typing “less than 1” is too much for you.

When I lived in Silicon Valley in the late 90s, I used to commute on I-280 to Menlo Park. It was an absolute joy of a drive.

There’s a reason it’s often called “The World’s Most Beautiful Freeway”.

Actually the average would be LESS than 1 of each.

There’s a long history of desperate people taking actions that they KNOW will result in their own death/destruction. What makes you think the powers that be in a rapidly failing Russia would never, ever take that chance?

Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Sure, there are plenty of musicians who had a bigger impact on music as a whole, but NOBODY I’ve ever seen was more in tune with the universe than Stevie when he was playing.

As far as I can tell, he didn’t actually play the guitar. He just acted as a conduit to channel music directly from the universe through a guitar. I don’t think he ever once had to pause and consider what to play next when he was improvising, it just flowed out of him non-stop.

He had already started getting even better, having finally gotten sober, and it kills my soul every time I think about what else he could’ve given us had he not gotten on that helicopter.

I’m not even a hip-hop/rap fan, but this album is killer.

This right here. All the UIs these days are so flat! It drives me nuts. I can’t tell where the background ends and a button begins. I’m streaming services in my Shield and Roku, I can’t tell which movie or episode is actually selected. It’s fucking infuriating.

Mostly in a state of stability at the moment.

I recently migrated off of a pair of ESXi servers, and consolidated down to just put my VMs on my TrueNAS Scale server, primarily to save power and generation so that I would only be running two servers instead of four. It’s not as fancy or flexible, but the VMs run and do what I need.

So now my lab consists of:

• 1 Dell R620 w/8x 1TB HDD in RAIDZ2 - backups (backuppc)
• 1 Dell R620 w/8x 2TB SSD in RAIDZ2 + JBOD w/16x 3TB HDD in 2xRAIDZ2 pool - NAS + VMs for Plex, k8s, ansible/terraform, etc. (TrueNAS Scale)
• Unifi UDMPro + 3APs
• Unifi 10Gb Aggregation Switch
• Unifi 24-port POE switch standard

I then have another pair of R620s, plus 2 more JBOD trays and disks as cold spares. I may run the servers some during the winter, but it’s too hot in the garage closet in the summer to run them all without additional cooling.

My absolute biggest complaint with my BMW. The electronic gear shifter. Want to go backwards? Push the shifter forward. Want to go forwards? Pull the shifter backwards. Fucking genius! <\s>