I bought this can opener after watching a Technology Connections video, and I kinda love my can opener.

My laptop doesn’t have dust filters, but the fan almost never runs anyway. Like the heatsink is way overbuilt for the CPU it’s attached to. It’s actually quite nice. I’ve never seen it hit 70 degrees. I’ve cleaned it maybe three times since 2016. It really only spins the fan up when I’m watching 60 fps YouTube videos or playing games. And even then, it kicks hard for a very short time and shuts off again.

And again, I bought this thing nine years ago. It’s just a little Acer. And it’s not even a nice one. I paid like 500 bucks for this thing.

Now, my wife’s MacBook that she games on…yeah, I need to figure out how to get the back off so it can get a proper dusting. Fuck you, Apple. Let me work on my stuff, dammit.

There is r/petloss for that. I lost my dog Nike (image link) in 2019, and it devastated me. About a week later, I posted her with this image (ext link: imgur) to petloss.

I don’t think these folks are disgusting for venting about their lost loved ones. It is hard losing a pet. I guess at that time, I wanted someone else in the world to know about her, the life she lived with us, how dearly we loved her, and how much she’s missed. It was a pretty long-winded eulogy. Conciseness was never my strong suit. Different people grieve differently.

But I do believe that you should look for the relevant subs/communities to post about losing a pet and refrain from making that kind of post on those for more general pet posting. At the same time, I think awareness is key. I’d reckon if you’re posting to r/cats or r/dogs instead of r/petloss, you’re probably not aware of it. I tend to assume grieving pet parents aren’t trying to karma farm.

The world is already shitty enough, and I don’t need to bring myself down with that kind of thinking anyway.

I hear this image.

Okie here. Yup.

The dock auto hides lol

And as a multi-monitor user, I’m finding that part to be true. I’ve got my panels set up on each of my monitors exactly the way I want. Plus, controlling the wallpaper independently on each monitor as a built-in feature is dope.

How are your knees?

If you ever feel useless, just know that Edge is available for Linux on Debian and its forks.

I didn’t realize winget was exclusive to Pro. I ran Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 Pro from launch day until I stopped using Windows altogether last year. A Windows 7 Home Premium license was significantly more expensive after Windows 8 launched at 40 bucks, and I needed an OS for my new gaming rig.

Latte. I run Debian so this is Plasma 5. As I understand it, Latte doesn’t work in Plasma 6.

The dock is Latte. I run Debian so this is Plasma 5. As I understand it, Latte doesn’t work in Plasma 6.

I’ve considered this in the past, and I might toy around with it in the future once I get the motivation to

Check your DMs

For the lolz, of course. Like, who is still using the XP start button in '25?

I’m 32 so I was a kid in the 2000s. XP represents a golden age of the Internet to me. A time when every YouTube channel looked different and any random MySpace profile you ended up on was probably playing MCR. Before you had to sell practically every scrap of info about yourself to use nearly any service, and Google wasn’t visibly evil. Ads were mostly “Your friend’s IQ was 44. Can you beat that??” because all the world’s authoritarians were too old to care about the web. You could pretty reliably know you were talking to a person in a chat room, and you didn’t have to do some kind of mental calculus to determine whether it was a bot trying to rob your grandma of all her money in Google Play cards. Pretty well no kid in the 2000s is safe these days. I’m sure most of us said the racial slur or the mental slur or had sexual relations with everyone’s mother after getting shot in Halo. I’m safe. We never had Xbox Live lol But I played a lot of split screen Halo in the living room. Good, innocent times.

Rose tinted glasses and all that, but idk, I feel like we’ll never achieve that again. Everyone was throwing everything at the wall and seeing what stuck. And the tech was kind of in a Goldilocks zone. Just powerful enough to be cool and exciting, but not so powerful that it gets scary.

Except for those damn PS2s being used for nuclear bomb guidance.

And that’s fine. I said I really liked gnome. The only extensions I had were weather in the top bar and dash to dock. I just wanted it to do a few extra things, and I wanted to play around with widgets. Gnome was also a bit too rigid for my taste. Plasma makes tweaking small things a joy.

For me, ootb Plasma felt too much like Windows. I use Windows all day at work so I want my home machines to look and feel completely unlike Windows.

It’s Debian so I’m on 5.

Thanks! I’m using Latte for the dock and Tera Circle Blue for the icons.

I’m a spreadsheet nerd. Not a guru by any stretch, but I love to make spreadsheets. They help me plan and organize things in a way nothing else does. Despite all the websites and apps out there that make budgeting simple, I do ALL of my budgeting and spend tracking in an odt file. It’s been a rolling development for the last five years and I think I’ve got it to its ultimate stage. I’m really proud of my work.

I think what’s really helping me stay on top of it this year is the fact that in December, I spent about a week planning the year in painstaking detail. I built a whole paycheck estimation tool that automatically calculates tax withholding. I cross-referenced employee handbooks to determine pre-tax withholdings like retirement and insurance. I found the 2025 tax brackets and standard deduction. I understand now how our taxes are withheld for the state side. I actually determined my wife is taking out way too little for tax. January is an awesome time to make that catch. By the time I was done, I determined four paycheck numbers we might experience in the year based on various circumstances. I planned out how much I think each of our 26 paychecks will be, when they will occur, and how we will spend them with a high degree of confidence. I gave us a set amount of fun money each time. Most importantly, I found a way for us to make regular deposits into our savings account. I have a plan in place to save $2,000 and pay off a couple of credit cards this year. It ain’t much, but it’ll be a start. And if something goes wrong, having some money stashed away will be a huge help.

So far, I’ve squirrelled away 300 bucks. I feel really good about that.

I also track all of our spending in that file. I spend 5 minutes each night before bed reconciling it to the bank. That’s been a major step forward, too.

More to your point, eating out is hella expensive. I opened a second checking account to give us that kind of money. We buy books and music and games and makeup and food from out on that. If that card runs out of money, it ends. Full stop. At least, it should. I got lazy the last few months of last year and we spent way too much on takeout. But I’m motivated to be better this year. I make myself go grocery shopping. And then I make myself cook even when I don’t wanna. And I put the dishes away and clean the laundry, even when I don’t wanna.

I know that’s just regular adult shit, but I’ve been a hot mess for a while lol

I bought The Sims 3 when it was new. My bedroom was already like a nautical mile from the access point so download speeds were gonna be crap anyway, but I had to run an extension cord into my closet and disable all power saving options so it could sit in the back of my closet for the better part of the week and download my game. I think it was probably 3½ days all in lmao

My old college buddy has HughesNet and says he hates them, but it’s better than the alternative down there. Which, yeah, was a family-owned telephone company that did some dial-up on the side in the '90s and never saw a need to upgrade their equipment. The only reason it got better was because they sold out to an actual ISP. When I moved to Weatherford to finish my bachelor’s degree in 2012, you were required to have landline service to get internet access. The parent company removed that requirement on Day 1, afaik.

I have physical copies of GTA IV and Skyrim on PC because it was soooooo much faster to install them from DVDs, but God help you if you need to download updates. Back then, a 300 MB download was a commitment.

Cox also rules Oklahoma County and its neighbors, but like I said, we have OEC fiber in our neighborhood. I appreciate them being local. When we bought our house, we had a little cash left over from the sale of our old condo. We thought about going with OEC right after move-in, but it was going to be $800 worth of work and they had us scheduled a month out. We needed internet immediately because it was mid-pandemic and neither me nor my wife had anywhere to go to work for a month. The mortgage don’t pay itself lol

I kinda regret having to stick with Cox. I’m squirreling away some cash here and there so maybe we’ll finally jump ship this summer.

If I could do it again, I’d probably stay in Oklahoma because my wife is an amazing person. She moved here from Mississippi. It frequently sucks being a couple of blue dots here. If I had it my way, we’d sell all but the essentials, load my Hondas on a trailer, and pull them with my wife’s truck all the way to the PNW today. But all her family just moved up here a few years ago and she hasn’t been able to see her parents regularly since 2013. Her sister has kids and she doesn’t want to be unable to be involved in their lives. Can’t fault her for that.

I’d steal those kids and run off to the PNW anyway where they’ll actually get an education, but the cops say that’s kind of illegal or something lol idk ianal jk jk or am i

Good on ya for escaping this place. Maybe one day I will too.

Oh, and my great-grandmother, born in 1923, had dial-up as late as 2017. I still cannot believe anyone was still offering it that late in the game, but there she was lol She had email. She got her first email address when she was in her late 70s, but she never learned to type. What a legend that woman was lmao