All I can give you by Jason Lancaster

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46kuUZAPxeQ

Model Railroading.

It’s not the worst, but it requires all the key ingredients - you need to own a home large enough to have a ‘spare’ room, which means you’ve got disposable income. And displaying the trains is almost as much fun as running them, so you end building shelves and shelves, which then sprawl out to the rest of the house. Only to realize you’re missing the ‘key’ one from that set, got to go find that, obviously.

And then of course you can’t throw away the boxes, because that would lower the resale value, so you need to rent a second storage unit. Not that you would ever sell them of course. But your kids will be sitting on a goldmine!

And that’s just the collection portion. It’s a crafty hobby, from making scenery & waterfalls & little trees all the way to the special paints to make the engines look aged. That will need a room as well.

And now that we’ve got the train shelves in the kitchen, you know, I could put a food themed railroad on the table there. Yes I already have the desert themed one in the train room and the prairie themed one in the living room and the snow theme layout in the hallway, but I don’t have a silly one. No of course the Halloween theme one doesn’t count.

74F (23C) I grew up in Florida, which is a very warm state. Now I live a good bit farther north, but my body never adjusted to the cold weather. Nice in the summer, as I don’t need the A/C, but the bills in the winter are rough.

Every week I write my weight on the giant whiteboard in the kitchen. I don’t erase it, just keep the log running all year long, for anyone to see. It’s an amazing motivator.

I was banned from Reddit for the crime of using a different computer to login. Fun fact - there’s no appeal for that one. So I decided I had enough of that particular shit show, did some Googling for something similar to the older Reddit from years ago.

Scottish Shortbread Cookies.

Small story - my grandmother on my mother’s side made these cookies that were absolutely my dad’s favorite. Unfortunately, he & my mom separated pretty early, but they stayed local so they could co-parent. So every Christmas, we could tell if dad had treated mom well that year because either there’d be a ton of his favorite cookies, or none at all.

I used to carry a universal TV remote control with me. It’s simply staggering how often it was useful.

“YOU DRIVE VERY FAST”. Screamed at me out her minivan window by a middle aged Indian woman making a left across traffic in front of me. Still cracks me up.

There’s this scene at the start of War of the Worlds where the hero races his classic muscle car up this tiny neighborhood street at full tilt, exhaust notes at full blast, and I think he even screeches the tires by slamming the brakes pulling into the driveway. Then he walks up to his neighbor and they’re all chill with him. In any other world, the neighbors would have him in handcuffs.

Not a direct answer, but if you ever get a chance - go walk around a self-serve junkyard. This is where cars go when they finally just aren’t worth fixing anymore. It is eye opening. There are cars that you will still consider ‘new’ that have already given up the ghost (mainly Dodge/Chrysler, Hyundai/Kia, & Nissan). And you can’t help but think - WTF are these cars doing here, aren’t these still for sale at the dealership?

Conversely, there are also cars there so old you hardly recognize them (usually Honda, Toyota, and full size pickups from Ford/GM).

I’m super-out of date, so talking about the originals here.

For the Decepticons, I have to go with Devastator / the Constructicons. Something about “We build for EviL” is just so cartoon villian-y that I’ve always loved them. Plus, neon green & purple.

For the Autobots - my first transformers ever were Gears and Cliffjumper - two relative no-name minis, but they have a special place in my heart.

Steam has free voice chat as well. Hardly open source though.

Witcher 3.

Landing my job. I had experience with a relatively obscure piece of software. Turns out the company had been looking for weeks and couldn’t find anyone. The guy I was replacing had a new job lined up, so they needed someone ASAP.

Could you point me to a good place to start learning how to troubleshoot? I added Unbuntu as a dual-boot to my gaming rig a while back, and when it works, it’s great. But as soon as I hit an error, I drop back to Windows because I know how to fix shit there.

Maybe 10 or so years ago, was a real push to convert old malls into apartments or low income housing. Turns out it’s not that easy. Those buildings were built with minimal plumbing, just a few public restrooms and limited water service for the food court. There’s just not enough water/sewer to supply more than a small handful of apartments. You’d have to tear up significant portions of the building to run all new plumbing for all the kitchens & bathrooms. And that assumes the underlying city infrastructure that runs to the mall could even support the new water & sewage demands in the first place.

I’ll grant you, it is a cool idea. It’s just not nearly as simple as it sounds.

Funny, I’ve asked this exact question multiple times, and the answer I always get is that you just get fucked. You pay full price for the first vehicle, and then 90% of full price for every extra one.

Maybe it’s Georgia? I carry the minimum for the state (Liability + Collision), but then bump the Liability because I now live in a high cost of living area. So if I’m in a wreck, I get nothing, but the other guy gets a nice check for his car and his medical bills are covered.

My car insurance would be WAY cheaper for me to just drive one of my shitboxes 100% of the time than it is to split my mileage across four vehicles. But I make it up by being pretty handy. When one of them breaks, I have multiple other cars to drive while I wait for parts in the mail. So I’d still say I come out slightly ahead as far as costs go, but most of my ‘savings’ go straight to the insurance company.