Been on my own since I as 17. The first few years were rough to say the least.

I worked 2 jobs, 30-60 hrs per week and went to college. I shared shitty apartments with some pretty creepy people. I moved so constantly I ended up paying for a post office box so I could get my mail. I did not have a vehicle (no car) so I rode a bike for up to 60 miles per day. Even all that wasn’t enough without government grants and student loans to pay for college.

Food was something that I ate when I had it. I spent a few months with mybe 4-5 real meals. Cornflakes and ramen where the bulk of my diet for a while.

I took the first professional job I could find. It was terrible but it paid well. I gained 50lbs to be at a healthy weight the first year. The next few years I jumped around jobs until I landed in one I liked.

The last few weeks before I graduated college I met my wife. Her family has become mine over the past 25 years.

Today my income alone puts us in the top 10% of earners. My wife makes close to the same. At many crucual times in our lifes we’ve taken advantage of government assistance. To be blunt, it’s not possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You need a helping hand once in a while no matter how small.

I have gotten flamed a few times for telling the Linux fanboys the hard truth.

If I have to hit Terminal even once with an average setup the OS is not ready for mainstream use. No exceptions. It has to work out of the box on the newest systems.

I use Linux the same way that you have: for a few applications that need a rock solid stable system. Once you get the damn thing setup, it truly is wonderful. Stable, reliable, easy to use. But getting there… Fuck that.

I think I had one clean distro install where everything worked. The PC was 7 years old when I installed it.

Mac did have a better OS than Win 95 -Win98 It was smoother and crashed less.

The difference was that Windows still ran DOS programs, 5.25" floppy disks etc… They made the decision to maintain backwards compatibility.

Mac decided to drop support regularly for what they considered “outdated software and technology.” For example: when USB drives came out they canceled support for 3.5" floppies in their OS. Machines that had a 3.5" drive installed could no longer use it. Put a floppy drive in and nothing happened.

Although Mac was a smoother more stable OS, windows had more functionality and greater compatability. Windows was a far superior product because of it. Even with the regular apearance of the blue screen of death.

Linux at the time also suffered from being a terminal based OS. Too much like DOS for way too long. I used it for specific tasks where it excelled at.

High value crop consultants - good ones can make a surprising amount of money (200k+) This isn’t your dumbfuck row crops like corn and soy. Think fruit trees, nut trees, viticulture, vegetables, organic production etc.

Many college graduates have a job offers their junior year. Anymore you’ll want to have a double major of biology/Ag.

Weed guys can’t pay me enough. 😉

I am an expert in crops. I have traveled the globe to learn about them. I have created new varieties to plant. Landowners around the globe seek me out for knowledge and seeds.

I have priced out Airbnb vs. hotels quite a few times over the past few years at my spouses request. I have never stayed at any of them as they have always been much more expensive for shittier accomodations. It simply doesn’t make any sense to me.

This past christmas, renting 2 hotel rooms at a nice hotel was cheaper than the worst dive of an Airbnb near my in-laws.

My library has booth Libby and Hoopla.

Hoopla is by far the better service. 10 books per month with a huge library to choose from. No waiting for somebody to return it in a line.

I use both mine and my wife’s library card so I am going through 20 books per month. Plus aother 5-6 on Libby.

I am waiting for the same thing. The amount of shit you have to disable, block, or unistall on android is getting ridiculous. It’s getting really old.

Most of the new “features” that either apple or google add anymore are absolute trash. I am constantly having to go through the settings and disable shit.

The stock android is so full of non-romovable crap that a launcher is required anymore.

It’s the same for windows, win11 is only usable with a launcher like startallback.

My wife has a chronic illness with expensive drugs.

Healthcare is around 35% of our families gross income when you include in the cost my employer pays, what I pay, plus deductable and copays.

I avoid going to the Dr as much as possible because I have a separate deductible. If I went for everything I should it would be closer to 40% of our gross income.

Everything is a remake today. I guess that’s what you get when you don’t pay your writers shit.

At my last job all the default company phones where iPhones. So all the windows laptops had iTunes pre-installed by IT on them.

Having refused apple products due to poverty and being forced to use a Mac desktop at a previous job (clusterfuck) I had not seen it in years.

It’s one of the the most poorly designed, confusing dumpster fires of a program around. The company of “it just works” my ass.

I swear it was like 4 different uninstalls to get rid of it. Only to restart and see another mysterious program appear. I have gotten malware that was easier to get rid of.

The Jordanian military has quite a bit of U.S. military equipment like F-16’s and Blackhawks.

They also have 3000 troops stationed. Mainly for support roles and cooperative efforts.

Jordan is a long term ally of the U.S. and honestly not a bad spot to visit if you have a chance. I’ve been there probably a dozen times on business.

Not in the 3.1 or 95 days if I recall correctly. That wasn’t fully unlocked until windows 98.

Around 2002-3 Mac dropped support for floppies even on machines with a floppy drive installed.

Which led to some pretty fun times when I needed to transfer files from a non-networked stand alone apple machine that my idiot coworker had upgraded the OS on without checking the specs.

Media companies, “We are losing money because people don’t want to pay.”

Or just maybe, your product sucks and people are finding alternatives to avoid dealing with you.

Currently pirating or streaming from a secondary site is faster, better quality, and easier to use. It’s really not that hard to figure out.

Most companies don’t bother to setup a shell company. International businesses often have an existing distributors in several different countries.

When one country gets sanctioned a distributor in a neutral country suddenly increases their local sales by the same amount that the one in the sanctioned company used to have.

I used to work in international business a decade ago. I learned about a customer on the Saudi peninsula who purchased a huge amount of product (1,000x more than their entire market). It was strangely enough to cover Iran not that far away across the Persian Gulf.

Sounds like the usual introduction for a new wifi protocol. It’s a niche market until enough devices become compatible. Then a rapid adoption as things reach their normal end-of-life and are replaced.

So wifi 7 will be widely adopted in 5-7 years if it proves stable.

43,560 square feet = one acre.

The square root of 43,560 is 208.71 feet

208.71 feet/ 2.5 feet per step for men = 84 steps.

So walk 84 steps then turn a right angle and walk another 84. One acre is the area contained in that square.

Not quite, in my experience on really cold days my heat pump struggles to keep up. This is expecially true when the outside unit is frosting up. The unit has to reverse and pump heat out of the house.

That’s one of the reasons i run my wood pellet stove on those days. The secondary source of heat takes the load off the heat pump.

Human intelligence is segmented and specialized. People who are smart at few things are usually very dumb at others. A person who can speak 9 languages can’t do more than basic math. An expert computer programmer, who can’t figure out how to keep a plant alive. Etc…

Polymaths are very rare. Very few people have advanced understanding and skills in multiple areas.