Repeatedly asking something firmly instead of letting it go is demanding. Just stop getting into online fights with people over politics. You will not change their minds. Demanding they give you proof will just cause them to dig their heels in further and you will be the only one getting upset and angry, not them.
I disagree.
I am neither upset nor angry.
After her first comment, I politely asked for evidence. Her response included an insult. She also left a laughing emoji on my comment. It went on like this. The insults grew worse. The laughing emojis kept coming.
The friend whose post the discussion was taking place on told L that my requests for evidence were entirely in line with a reasoned debate. She asked L to stop the insults. L did not provide evidence. She did not stop the insults. I continued to ask for evidence.
Eventually, my friend asked us both to drop it. Several hours after that, L made a few more comments. She insulted me in the first comment. Then, at long last, provided what she believed was evidence for her claims. This was screen shots of Musk claiming what he had done and the money he had saved the government.
Unless you uncritically and unthinkingly believe everything Trump and Musk say (as L does) his claims are no more evidence than hers are. Rather than politely pointing out that L had once again insulted me and explaining how Musk’s unverified claims prove nothing, I have kept silent. My friend asked me to drop it.
It’s not just politics. In this post, from another thread today he refused to watch a video that his sister sent him because he didn’t know what it was about. He describes the back & forth with her where she stated, “Just watch it”, which is a confirmation that she sent him a video (so not a concern that she was hacked & this is a malicious link) but he still wouldn’t back down & watch it until he got his ‘proof’.
What are you talking about? Proof has nothing to do with it. My sister always thinks she knows the solution to any problem I have. The fact that she doesn’t know all the facts, knows significantly less details than I do, or contradicts the advice of professionals is not relevant.
So when she sent me a link to a Youtube video that is clearly a woman giving a lecture, I strongly suspected it was more worthless advice. I asked what the video was about and I should watch it. Rather than tell me what the video was about or giving any reason I should watch it, she replied “Just watch it”. If there was anything she could have said to actually make me want to wacth the video, she would have said it. So, she confirmed that the video was not something I would want to watch but something she thought I should watch. Having no reason to watch the video and not wanting to start another argument, I didn’t click the link or reply.
Yes, you do, for sure. Yes, I’m aware that SSDs can fail, and that AFAIK data recovery services can’t generally fix them the way they can often fix traditional HDDs (albeit usually at astronomical cost!). Any disk should be backed up, including RAID arrays, because though they’re mostly immune from individual drive failures, redundant RAID configuration are not immune from data corruption from other causes.
Anyway, at this very moment I’m backing up my (possibly) sickly HDD, which so far has exhibited no other problems. I already have an older backup but I don’t want to overwrite it in case the recent problems caused some undetected data corruption – another full CHKDSK found no problems but I don’t trust Microsoft! Two backups is always better than one!
Now I’ll feel more comfortable continuing to use the computer until I get around to swapping out the HDD with an SSD.
Followup: After running for five and a half hours, Macrium Reflect popped up the message: “No space on destination drive”!
Damn! I had omitted to delete a different backup of something else on that drive, thinking it wasn’t that big, but actually it was nearly 400 GB.
Fortunately, Macrium Reflect is a really great backup program in multiple ways. It didn’t abort, it just gives you an opportunity to select a different destination to continue the backup. I deleted the useless 400 GB old backup and simply gave it the same destination device and folder it had before, hoping it would be smart enough to just continue.
Nope. It created a second separate backup file for the remainder. But since it does differential and incremental backups, it’s pretty good at linking different backup segments as one backup image. In fact, it’s sufficiently elegant that I can select either the main “-0” or the “-1” appendage to explore the image, because each one links back to the other.
So all is well, except I’m pissed off at myself for creating this unnecessary segmentation – all complexity introduces the potential for error!
But now I can compute in comfort until I manage to replace this old HDD.
ETA: Yikes! I see that the power-on hours count for my system SSD is nearly 46,000 hours, and B1 is 199. B1 is the SSD cell wear leveling count, and is the average number of times that each cell has been rewritten. I don’t think 199 is particularly high at all, but I will reflect on the psychological fact that the older you get, the more surprised you are that stuff you thought of as “almost brand new” is actually a lot older than you thought!
My (South African) bank, SubStandard Bank has approximately the worst website imaginable. I’ve been involved in web dev since 1999, and although I am primarily a back-end/server-side developer, I know how to write HTML, JS, Kotlin, Dart, whatever. A bunch of tools. A large bunch.
You fucking fuckers, motherfucking Mary the mother of Christ, can you fuckwads produce a website that meets the basic standards of useability? No? Then fire your entire dev team and hire someone who can. Oh, and fire your mobile dev team because a clown show representing a fucking bank is probably not a great idea.
Thank you for reading my rant.
(To be fair to SubStandard bank, I received excellent service from the Zimbabwean Standard Bank, so my misplaced loyalty went to South African Standard, who have a very similar logo. My fault for not doing my research)
Oh, and yeah. I could move banks. But they are all super-shit here, it’s a case of “the devil you know”
So I have lived in my current place for more than 20 years. It is a rural setting. Very quiet. No crime to speak of. Until a couple nights ago.
I have (had) a locking mailbox at the top of my long driveway. I cannot see it from my house, which is very secluded. I last retrieved my mail on Tuesday the 25th. I use Informed Delivery and there was nothing scheduled for the 26th. However, there were some items scheduled for the 27th.
Mail delivery here is often late in the afternoon, so I went up to the box to grab the mail around 4:30 p.m. yesterday. And found… no box.
Well, eventually I found the box. It had been slammed off its metal post, the lock drilled out and then the unit flung alongside the road. Ruined.
Happily, I learned today that the thieves did not profit from their misdeed. No mail was in the box at the time it was vandalized.
My dog kicked up a fuss around 11:30 p.m. on the night of the 27th. I had no idea what burr was under his saddle at the time, but he was going nuts with barking and raised hackles. Now I know.
My business is heavily dependent on the mail service. Getting a new mailbox installed is a top priority. I have a good handyman and he will take care of it as soon as I have all the necessary bits and bobs assembled. Altogether, replacement is going to cost around $700, between the new box, mounting post, new motion sensor lighting/camera and so on.
I fucking hate thieves. And I am so. Damned. Glad I have a substantial gate at the top of my driveway to discourage any additional thieving bullshit.
Vileness abrew, indeed.
That stinks! When I lived with my parents in Fort Washington, our street was popular for mailbox baseball. We would routinely find that all the mailboxes had been destroyed. We never found a good solution.
In my last apartment, I had three packages stolen in the first month I lived there. It would have been more, but after that I told everybody I knew not to send me packages and used my Gobhi’s apartment as the address I had packages sent to.
My Rant
Besides all the major bad things happening, my television reception has been just terrible this week. For the past few days, I get MeTV (channel 2.1) and then nothing untol channel 3. There are several channels between 2.1 and 3 that I watch regularly. Retro shows classic Doctor Who. Heroes & Icons shows the Adam West Batman and Lynda Carter Wonder Woman. Catchy shows old sitcoms all the time.
Also on Retro is Dracula’s Kung Fu Theater. I have not been able to watch it as I am usually travelling to my Gobhi’s in New Jersey on Friday nights. Tonight was going to be the first time as it airs Friday nights at 10, I may be able to stream it for free. I don’t know if I can do that on my smart TV without buying additional hardware.
bah.
I downloaded the proper app. I tested it earlier and it worked fine. I turned it on after 10, I see an epsiode of The Saint instead of Dracula’s Kung Fu Theater. I am confused and disappointed.
Thursday evening we arrived home and noticed it was a bit cooler. Even the floor in the bathroom was cold. Since we have underfloor heating, the floor usually feels comfortable.
Friday morning I called the person responsible for the heat and said that the temperature in our condo is lower than it’s ever been since we got the new heating system. We have 3 thermometers inside our place and have the history in the app for the last 18 months, so this was not just my opinion.
In the app I could see that Thursday morning the temperature started diving. I was told that it’s typical when the weather changes that the inside temperature takes a while to respond. This I know, because it’s part of the fun of having underfloor heating. It’s very stable. But it takes a while to respond to big temperature swings.
This morning when I went out I found a letter in my mailbox. One of the valves on the heating system has failed. The repair company has been informed, and will get back to us as soon as possible. We may need additional heating until the heating system is fixed.
And this is a 3 day weekend for us. So more time at home.
I just got an email from Dell asking me how much I’m enjoying my new computer, which as some may recall I bought recently. I looked though my email records and it was delivered on Jan 10.
Unfortunately the email was a multiple-choice survey and didn’t leave me the option of actual feedback. If it had, here’s the feedback I would have left:
The computer is very nice. I unpacked it and it has the lovely smell of “a brand new thing”. However, here are the facts.
This thing runs Windows 11, and Windows 11 setup requires setting up a Microsoft account and then going through an unstoppable process that requires internet access which in my case requires either WiFi access to a WiFi system that I’m sure it’s not compatible with, or else wired access through an adapter that I’m not sure it has a built-in driver for.
Thank you for your interest and concern, Dell, but really, the only reason I bought this thing was so that I could run applications no longer compatible with Windows 7, which currently is only the income tax filing software I use. I have no interest in this computer otherwise.
So here’s the thing, Dell. I love new toys but I detest Windows 10 and 11. And this is the thing you should know when asking about how much I love my new Windows 11 laptop:
I haven’t even turned the fucking thing on yet!
Letting people know that the March thread is up:
My wife’s Dell has a dying battery, and apparently isn’t going to be able to be upgraded for Windows 11. So she ordered a new laptop, a Lenovo I think, from Costco in December. The new laptop is still in the box, on a table next to the front door. At least you opened yours up.
Ha! I’m sure your wife considers computers to be simply a tool, not a toy. As an officially certified nerd, I absolutely think of computers as toys, which is why my failure to activate this thing surprised even me.
I think it’s because of the double-whammy factor of Windows 11: (a) there may be issues getting everything set up, which sounds like work, and (b) the end result is going to be, well, Windows 11. The only reason I have this thing is for regrettably necessary future compatibility.
Duly noted. I fucked up, I actually meant to make that post in the March thread.
It’s all good, just wanted to give credit to the poster who made the new thread. 
I had to unsubscribe from the AskReddit sub. One too many threads asking, “how do you feel about [the latest controversial thing Trump did?” I couldn’t take it anymore.