While tattoos have become more acceptable over the years, I can’t not secretly judge people that have hand or above the neck line tattoos. Of course the placement, style, and number all play a part in my judgement :) Tattoos on any other body parts don’t trigger me though.

These laws differ widely from state to state and there are different requirements for minors and adults.

One of my most “this isn’t what it looks like” moments? Picture this: it’s dark, I’m in the campus parking lot, and I’m standing next to my truck with a crowbar, trying to break off a locking gas cap. Earlier that day, I’d discovered the lock was stuck and just spun uselessly when I tried to get gas.

For context, I’d bought the locking cap because of a recent string of gas thefts on campus (including from my own truck), so yeah—ironic. Just as I’m mid-pry, campus security pulled up. It looked exactly as bad as you’d imagine. They actually didn’t give me any trouble at all. They asked what I was doing and then went on their way. I suspect it was because I didn’t have any type of fuel container or siphoning gear, I also hadn’t tried to hide what I was doing.

So a little anticlimactic as these types of stories go, but I was relieved when they drove off and the mangled gas cap finally popped off.

I don’t know about it resonating nor was it a single episode, but I still remember the Luke and Laura arc on General Hospital. I don’t know why it intrigued me at the time but I would always stop and watch when they were on the screen.

I use Emby and catalog my music using MusicBrainz Picard. Before Emby I used Ampache but I want to serve up as much of my media through the same interface as possible. Adding all the proper metadata and sorting the music can be time consuming, but it makes all the difference in serving up the music properly. Music is much more varied than Movies or even TV so it is a bit more difficult to get right and there are sooo many artists. MusicBrainz Picard makes it pretty easy though. I will be checking out Beets.io after reading this thread to see if it can help any more with organizing my library.

We have one boy and it didn’t really change our life that much. Some time running him to activities and overseeing homework and such, but our hobbies and friends didn’t change.

Not everyone who has kids ends up feeling this way though :(

Milk Shakes at just about any fast food restaurants. The machines always seem to be down! Pulled up to an Arby’s a few months back to order a Jamoca shake and they said their machine was down. I asked them if I had pulled into the McDonald’s drive through by mistake. We all had a big laugh… but that was months ago and they have now put a sticker on the menu that says their shakes are not currently available :(

Went to a Baskin Robins to order a Chocolate Milk shake and they were out of Chocolate ice cream… on multiple occasions. At least they don’t have a machine to break down!

I run just one Windows machine with some VMs for various services if needed. Less to maintain and have to tinker with.

I installed cable in a couple of apartments I rented. I just made it look professional and nothing was ever said about it. In one apartment town home I even had access to the attic and was able to run cable in the walls. I did have to drill through the floor and door headers in some instances, but it can be done.

I still use Dia Diagram Editor for most things. I just wish it was still being updated.

I have a list of of interesting characters, but sticking to pure “fantasy or folklore” I will go with Aasimar.

I have two IoTaWatts (https://iotawatt.com/) for all the circuits in my home. I also use Z-Wave and Zigbee devices to monitor individual plugs (I love these). I send data from all of this to an InfluxDB database and then into Grafana for displaying pretty graphs. Everything is running on my Windows desktop. The IoTaWatt doesn’t require internet access to work. I have been very happy with the setup and once setup it hasn’t required much maintenance.

The system is also good for recording temperatures, solar power information, and anything else that can make an API call. Not sure why your Z-Wave is falling off the network, for that I use a Hubitat and mostly Inovelli, Zooz, and THIRDREALITY ZigBee plugs.

Crazy idea, but if you can’t get the bandwidth to support a media server like Jellyfin or Emby where you live, what about placing a server at a trusted relatives or friends house that does have access to high bandwidth? You might need/want to help offset a better internet plan for them though. You could then setup a VPN connection to be able to manage the server remotely and sync files and media to it. You could even use it for off site backup.

For me it is Youtube, Lemmy, Verity or Mastodon. Sometimes it is Hacker News or Slashdot.

I back up everything. I use Stablebit Drivepool with duplication for all of my source code, media, photos, documents, music, books, laptop backups, etc. I back that up periodically to a Drobo DAS and 8 Bay USB enclosure setup under Drivepool. I also have off site backup (working on a new NAS which will be accessed over a VPN). I don’t want to spend the time worrying about loosing anything I have put time and effort into. Been there and done that. Drives are relatively inexpensive but can fail without warning.

I bought both Plex and Emby. I started with Plex but had some technical issues related to my machine having multiple IP addresses so I switched to Emby. I tried Jellyfin before switching to Emby but it wasn’t as capable as Plex or Emby (at least at the time) and I wanted something with some commercial support behind it. I have been pretty satisfied with Emby, but do wish it would get requested features added in a much more timely manner.

After looking at other’s lists I think I am missing a good document server. Emby isn’t the best music and photo server so I could look at improving that, but it has been good enough for those purposes that I haven’t felt like going to the trouble of installing anything else.

• Aster: Multiseat software for Windows allows several users to work on the same PC.
• LaunchBox: Frontend for DOSBox, modern PC games and emulated console platforms.
• Blue Iris: Video security and webcam software
• Calibre: E-Book management and server
• Emby: Server for videos, music, audio books, and photos.
• Firewalla: VPN server, internet monitor and control
• Foundary Virtual Tabletop: Online role-playing game server.
• Grafana: Dashboard interface
• Hubitat: Home automation
• Hyper-V Manager: Tool that allows users to manage Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines (VMs)
• InfluxDB: Real-time database server.
• IotaWatt: Open WiFi electric power monitor
• Microsoft SQL Server: Database Server
• Octoprint: Web interface for 3D printers.
• PCem: Emulator for various old 8086 through Pentium PCs.
• SmartSync Pro: File sync program
• SnapRaid: Backup program for disk arrays.
• Stablebit DrivePool/Scanner: Disk pooling, file duplication, protection, disk surface scanner, and disk health monitoring
• Steam Link: Access and play steam games remotely

My ad blocker was working so well I didn’t even realize I had it installed and blocking ads on YouTube. I don’t mind watching a few ads as long as it doesn’t get out of hand.

If I had to speculate and GUESS, based on information I know now and if I give the CTO the benefit of the doubt and assume he was competent (contrary to what I saw), I would say they were having trouble canceling the contract with the third party consulting firm we were hired through. I also think they might have been quietly moving their operations out of state to another infrastructure originally belonging to another company they bought or merged with that had their own IT team and wanted us kept out of the loop. Hiring us might have been a way to reduce our compensation and get us under an NDA regarding the move. When hiring us failed they were able to re-negotiate the terms of the contract with the consulting firm for half of what it was. Again, just a guess.