It seems to be still unclear if for instance nowadays both Kath Soucie and Sandie Schnarr gave temporal or permanent restraining orders to Adam Muth...etc.

My tire blew up.

I hit on the curb and it instantly just blew up. Had my wife and kids with me, we had just been 50km away, bought also groceries and on our way to vote in elections today. It happened just when we got to the school where you can vote.

My wife went to vote and then went home with the kids while I started looking searching a number on the internet for a towing service. It took my car to the tire service which is about 2 km away. My car doesn't even have a spare tire, seems to be common with more and more newer cars (I have an electric car).

The silver lining is:

- It happened about 2km from our home, so my wife and kids could walk home. I'd hate to think if it had happened earlier when we were 50 km away from home.

- It happened at a low speed (20-30 km/h) in a safe place so no injuries to us or the car. I drove maybe 20 meters without the right front tire to park the car.

- The towing service appeared in about 45 minutes even though it was Sunday. I was afraid it would take several hours.

- My car insurance will cover at least the towing. Not sure if it covers anything else, like the price of one tire?

- I guess I need to buy a whole new set of (4) tires, but I feel that is ok because these were almost 4 years old already so I guess it is time to buy new ones anyway.

It could have been so much worse, but I guess I had a bit of bad luck too as I apparently just happened to hit the curb where there was one part of it missing and there was a sharp edge sticking out of it.

Today I got Return to the Sender two physical letters from for instance voice actress Kath Soucie.

My mom once said that it’s easier to maintain for instance cats rather than humans by reinterpreting her own words.

So whomever answers her mail didn't add them to the "fan pile"?

My trusty work/gaming laptop since 2018 (Dell Precision 3530) is finally breaking down. :(
Or, at least its fan has now started making such a rumbling noise this week that better retire it now before the fan really gives up.

That's not the reason why life sucks. I just received my "new" laptop from my employer... and it is a Dell Latitude from 2020/2021. Wheee, an old laptop replacing an even older laptop! I checked that some sites selling used laptops are selling this Latitude for 300-400 euros or so.

But even that is not what I am bitching about. I checked the battery condition ("powercfg /batteryreport" in the command prompt)... and it is 52.1% of the original capacity. Shit! Even the older 2018 laptop it is replacing has a battery in a better condition, 70.1% of the original capacity. (Their original capacity is about the same, 68 Wh).

So now the work laptop I still like quite much gets replaced by a barely newer one whose battery is in a much worse condition. And I specifically asked for a laptop with a good battery life because I have to quite often use it also on battery, e.g. if a customer calls or I get an alert while I am away, last week twice that happened, I was driving on a highway when I got an alert or an urgent call from a customer and had to pull over to the side and start doing something with the laptop sitting in the car. Not a good thing if I run out of battery in such a situation. Or, it may be I need to make a 200 km train trips for my work every now and then, and I'd like to be able to use the laptop there too with battery.

I am going to ask tomorrow if I can get a fresh replacement battery for this (I think it costs a little over 100€ or so), I can even swap it myself, seems to be very easy just a few screws and remove a cable). Somehow I fear they say no, I am supposed to be happy with what I get... fjuck!

Frankly, I'd prefer if they replaced the fan on my 2018 laptop (fan + heat sink costs around 40€ I think) and I'd keep using it, since other than that fan, it still works perfectly fine. And it even has a discrete NVidia GPU, something that the 2021 laptop doesn't.

I am now running some sort of test with this 2021 laptop, how long the battery lasts from 100% with moderate load (EDGE playing a Youtube video full screen, causing a 10-20% CPU load), so I have something concrete to whine about tomorrow.

You use your employer's work laptop for gaming? Isn't that a bit ... dangerous? Even if company policy permits it, there's still a risk that the next gaming-related update (Steam/ Galaxy/ EA App/ Discord/ Denuvo/ anti-cheat/ graphics drivers/ whatever) will break something work-related. Good luck explaining that to your boss and/or customers. "Uhh, ever since activating low-latency gaming mode, I can't access my company's network via VPN anymore. So sorry, guys." :-D

No because it is two different OS installations on the same computer that don't interact with each other. The work Windows partition is encrypted etc. and has only work-related stuff installed on it, plus a more strict enterprise level virus scanner which spies the employee for the employer, like what is running and installed on the laptop.

The other partition (OS installation) can't naturally see the encrypted work partition, and it is also hidden from the work partition, just in case.

And no the company policy doesn't really allow it, the work laptop should only be used for work related stuff, not even visiting a news site or Youtube on your coffee break, but people do that too.

Neither does it allow one to install Linux on the laptop instead of Windows, but two colleagues of mine did it anyway and the boss is aware of it, and did point out that is not allowed but didn't demand them to revert back to Windows. And the company policy says Windows is the only OS used on the laptops... but some people have Macs because they don't want to use Windows apparently, go figure.

So... yeah. I justify my actions by the fact that then I am willing to take the work laptop with me to 4 week summer vacations etc., so I can do some work related stuff then when the need arises (something that some people can't do or need help from me, which still sometimes happens). If the laptop could only do strictly work stuff, I wouldn't carry it with me in my free time.

I guess it helps the company is quite small so they may, and pretty much have to, trust employees' judgement a bit more than Tesla or Google or IBM.

So I was looking at prices for new graphics cards and found out that the 16GB version of the RTX 5060 costs over 50% more than the 8GB version. That is insane. €267 (before VAT) for the RTX 5060 8GB is not too bad but the 16GB version's price is not palatable. Will take a look again at cards when the RX 9060 (XT?) releases ten days from now.

why the frig is everything esp food getting so expensive ?

Labor costs (necessary to at least not let workers, the badly paid ones in particular, fall even further behind just said increasing costs of living), climate change (lower yields, higher production costs), tariffs / trade wars, the few countries controlling supply chains (China in particular) exercising said control, disruptions caused by conflict, diminishing available resources, higher or shifting demand (and as prices increase and people look more at the cheaper products, the prices of those only increase more)... And, of course, the large companies taking advantage of it all as an excuse to increase their profit margins while the smaller players are driven under.

Same old same old, the world and everyone in it keep getting put into nice neat little boxes by the usual suspects: social media/the msm/public schools/useful idiots(npcs). And the whackiest thing is so many see it as a good thing.

"Oh I like avoiding serious topics and drama so this is good" "Toxic shit should be kept out of x/y!"

All according to plan. So many are afraid to chat about serious topics (in a somewhat civil manner) anymore, instead relagating themselves to their echo chamber of choice to feel all warm and cozy and avoid finding an actual middle ground with their fellow man...the mainstay of online conversation being insult slinging and memes. And we (including myself, on occasion) get all the dumber for it as time goes on and those with more control line their pockets.

All the above combined with easy access to information(now easier with 'ai' searches) and drip feeding of 'fact checked information' by a limited number of 'credible sources' ensures the bulk of mankind are no more than livestock. This blatant and somewhat bleak picture (plus the fact I get lured into participating in said system from time to time) makes me all the more eager to find good things about life in general and remain as optimistic as I can. Hopefully someday the world will give us something more substantial to smile about? I hope so. Until then, I mumble and grumble.

*tinfoil 3 piece suit off*

Nevermind.

Just a reminder that the nuclear clock is 1min. to midnight.
Keep doing NOTHING - Tic-Toc.

Well, to stop dangerous climate change it probably already 10 past midnight. Mankind is such a burden to the planet, that even in a radioactive zone like Chernobyl, nature flourishes more than outside of it, because there's no pressure of human presence on nature. Our way of exploiting the earth is more dangerous to nature than radioactivity left on it's own.