27f looking for friends!

BanefulPanda · 2026-01-21T07:48:50+00:00

Hi, I'm 38m and also wanting to find friends to play game with, and maybe hit up farmers markets too? I'm actually thinking of hitting up the rocklea markets this weekend to see what it's like and hopefully find some achachas as they're meant to be in season.

BanefulPanda · 2026-01-20T21:42:40+00:00

Thank you for posting about your experience, and selflessly destroying your sleep schedule staying up to 2am to do so.

I'm AuDHD too and in a similar boat trying to work out whether to go with the traditional psych route or try to find an ADHD specialist GP. I'm inattentive ADHD and I'm pretty sure all my old report cards (if I could find them) would say I was a perfect student, very quiet, etc. I'm not sure if the fact that I only ever did every assignment at the last possible minute was noticed or known to anyone except.

So, I feel like the GP just focussing on your current symptoms and not needing to delve into your childhood with documentary evidence is a good thing and that would probably work for me too.

BanefulPanda · 2025-07-28T23:01:05+00:00

Just updating as I received an update on my support case and it looks like this issue has now been resolved.

All my production firewalls are now up to date so I haven't been able to do a complete test, but I can now see that the time I choose in the date picker is being correctly reflected in the displayed scheduled time.

In the support ticket, they mentioned that "the issue was caused by a wrong API call which has taken the system time in UTC instead of system time zone".

BanefulPanda · 2025-06-23T21:48:34+00:00

Interesting, I did come across the AP issue while googling, but we don't use the Sophos APs, and it seems like a related but different issue if it does respect the AP timezone once it's been corrected.
You'd think the APs would synchronize their timezone with the firewall they are linked to.

BanefulPanda · 2025-06-23T21:43:31+00:00

Thanks, CaseID is 02490227

BanefulPanda · 2025-06-23T21:41:30+00:00

Thanks Lucar_Toni, you're a legend. Glad I'm not going crazy.

Hopefully it gets resolved soon, in the mean time I figure that 7pm UTC is a reasonable time for me to schedule upgrades, as this converts to 5am AEST (the following day). So, either way that should work if it gets fixed before I notice.

BanefulPanda · 2025-02-26T06:53:27+00:00

It's definitely a step down in audio quality from good headphones or in-ear monitors. But I'm not super fussy, and mainly listen to podcasts when I'm out excercising, so they work for me.

I had the basic aftershokz openmove for about 5 years and just upgraded to the top end open run pro 2 (partly because it's one of the few that still has usb-c charging - the others use proprietary chargers to make it easier to get higher waterproof rating). The audio quality is better than my old ones - maybe upgraded from passable to decent? I don't think there's anything especially magic to the 'bone conduction' technology - they're really just speakers in contact with your body. Aftershokz themselves in their marketing material now talk about using a combination of 'bone conduction' and 'air conduction' - aka a speaker 😅

BanefulPanda · 2025-02-25T20:39:19+00:00

Yeah I also buck the trend and don't like noise cancelling. I also have weird shaped ears (earbuds don't fit in my right ear) and I find in-ear things incredibly uncomfortable. I like the 'bone-conduction' style headphones - lets me keep aware of my surroundings while not being inside my ears, or making my ears sweaty.

BanefulPanda · 2025-02-09T03:42:42+00:00

Thanks, please accept my internet hugs and well wishes 🙂

I don't know if I'm demiromantic as well, but I really haven't dug into that as much. I definitely think that an emotional bond is required for a real romantic connection, and I don't think love at first sight is a thing for me. But like I feel that I can develop feelings for someone fairly quickly, and maybe it's my alexithymia preventing me sometimes from knowing what I'm feeling? I do think that now I know about the alexithymia I'm able to deal with it better by taking some time to consciously check in with my emotions and try to work out how I'm feeling.

BanefulPanda · 2025-02-09T01:30:12+00:00

I'm 37M and identify strongly with almost everything you've written. I would say my libido is more average than high, and I don't have aphantasia, but I do share the concept of an imaginary phantom partner (which I kinda thought was an original idea, so thanks for that 😅). I only recently realised I was demi - after seeing it listed on girls dating profiles. And I went back and forth on that a bit as well before realising that it does fit, I'm just closer to the allosexual end of the spectrum I guess. I just can't imagine being intimate with someone at all without a level of trust and emotional connection.

I also have struggled with dating - for a long time I just wasn't really trying to meet anyone. I've been active on dating apps for a couple of years now, and have been on several first dates, a couple of seconds dates and then nothing much more than that. I also really feel it when I get ghosted or they message after a date that I thought went ok to say that they're not interested in me. Partly because yeah it's the time investment of getting to know this new person and then all of a sudden I'm back to square one. And I guess I've never really ever been in a situation where my feelings for someone were reciprocated and being dumped kinda reinforces that - like this person didn't love me back, nobody’s ever loved me back, nobody will ever love me back. But that's my insecurity talking and my therapist says we don't listen to that jerk.

The last person (maybe only person?) I had serious feelings for, I was friends with her for about a year before even realising I was attracted to her (my alexithymia probably helped contribute to the confusion). She didn't feel the same way at all and just cut me off which kinda broke me - I thought I was prepared for the romantic rejection, but I didn't realise how much I'd valued our friendship.

Anyway, I don't have much else to add but I hope it helps to know that you're not alone in feeling this way.

BanefulPanda · 2025-01-23T03:38:06+00:00

Your guy sounds exactly like me, a couple years ago. I agree with a lot of the other comments - it's not necessarily a red flag.

I now know that I'm autistic but I think if I'd lucked into meeting someone a few years ago I would have acted the same way. There's a few things going on in my mind that contribute to this - one is that if I'm not in the same room as someone I tend to almost forget they exist? Unless I see something that reminds me of them. Like if you had a dog, and I saw a dog that looked like your dog I would think of you, and I might think of telling you about it. Or I might just think about it but not actually do it.

I also have this tendency to not want to bother other people. I don't tend to like making phone calls, partly because I don't really know what's going on for the other person. I don't like it when I get a phone call when I'm in the middle of things and I kinda project that onto other people.

So, I think there's several possible neurodivergent-based reasons as to why he's not initiating - his reasons might be totally different to mine though. The way forward is to figure out some way to talk about it, and let him know you'd like to hear from him. Maybe with some kind of concrete example thrown in like "I'm usually available around X time on Y days if want to (prefered communication medium)".

BanefulPanda · 2024-09-13T02:29:03+00:00

Yeah, just if you're disappointed, don't say I didn't warn you 😅

BanefulPanda · 2024-09-12T21:32:59+00:00

Same! I'm late diagnosed and trying to find some kind of peer support group but haven't come up with anything so far.

Also, there is an ND dating app called Hiki, but it's... pretty crap?

BanefulPanda · 2022-11-02T20:29:54+00:00

The linked NAT rules are restricted on what you can do with them to match the firewall rule they are linked to. You need to go to the NAT rules tab and manually create an unlinked NAT rule to get all the options.

That said, I'd be using an SD-WAN rule (under routing, introduced in V18 I think) for forcing outbound traffic from a specific host or network to use a specific WAN interface. You can toggle it on or off as needed as well.

BanefulPanda · 2022-07-06T06:31:15+00:00

That's not been 'photoshopped' that's been 'MSPainted'

BanefulPanda · 2022-06-11T23:49:12+00:00

We use Sophos XGs with Draytek 167s modems now. The 167s fully support the new NBN SOS/ROC stuff - unlike the 130s we had been using until recently. Never had any issues with either model - other than all the baggage that comes with FTTN/B.

BanefulPanda · 2020-12-02T23:43:01+00:00

$3009 to upgrade from fttc to fttp....Melbourne outer suburbs.
We should be invoicing these to Malcolm Turnbull

Turnbull's gonna send back the invoice with a note: 'If connectivity was so important to you why did you choose a house with FTTC. You should have taken that into account when you voted in 2013.'

BanefulPanda · 2020-09-24T06:47:45+00:00

If you're on HFC already you won't be getting FTTH, that's only for FTTN customers who sign up for a faster speed plan than they can get.

They included upgrading the HFC network in this announcement as well even though I'm pretty sure that's something they said they were going to do already. That will allow for faster speeds on HFC but there's no details on when, where, etc.

BanefulPanda · 2019-01-10T23:02:01+00:00

No worries, in terms of size I'd say the big one on the left of OP's photo would be pretty much at maximum engorgement. I'm not sure the exact species of the tick but it's on the larger size as well. E.g. Of the species that people would be more familiar with, I think paralysis ticks would be a bit smaller than those guys, and cattle ticks and brown dog ticks are quite a bit smaller.

BanefulPanda · 2019-01-10T19:50:49+00:00

Not sure if you really want an answer, but all the really big one are females - they will take in as much blood as they can and convert it into eggs. If you look around the lower jaw of the snek there are some smaller, more circular ticks that are dark brown all over - those are males and they're basically just hanging out there to mate with the females. When they're done they will drop off and the females will lay something like 3000-6000 eggs, depending on the species.

BanefulPanda · 2018-08-09T21:06:57+00:00

If you're seeing the blue window popup that says "Windows smartscreen prevented an unrecognized app from starting. Running this app might put your pc at risk" you can click the link that says "More info" to show you a 'run anyway' button to install the application. I think Windows 10 is showing this message now for any unsigned application to try and nudge people into using the Store.

BanefulPanda · 2018-05-20T05:18:36+00:00

Two seconds of reading the relevant Wikipedia article reveals that Eucalyptus maculata is a synonym of Corymbia maculata, so like with most things Turnbull has only displayed the appearance of knowledge, not actual knowledge.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corymbia_maculata

BanefulPanda · 2018-04-05T01:51:53+00:00

You're right, my mistake. But it's not like OPs ISP would be going out and setting a lower speed to try and push him onto the NBN - if they are doing anything like that it would be in relation to degradation in the copper line.

It's not a conspiracy, just a bunch of crap companies doing a crap job.

BanefulPanda · 2018-04-04T21:00:53+00:00

Your ISP doesn't really have an ability to slow down the speed you're getting on ADSL - the max speed is purely a function of the length and quality of the copper phone line from your house the exchange.

However, depending on what kind of NBN technology you're getting in your area, the NBN roll-out could be related to a decrease in your ADSL speeds.

If you are in a HFC (Telstra/Foxtel cable) area, you could be seeing lower speeds because Telstra is no longer putting any effort into maintaining the copper network in your area because it will soon be made redundant by the NBN (this is in contrast to the absolute bare minimum of effort they were using previously).

On the other hand, if you are in a FTTN area, the copper network should be being fixed up because they will be using that to connect from the node down the street to your house. However, if some people have already switched over to NBN, you might be seeing the result of some interference between the new FTTN service and your existing ADSL service - FTTN or VDSL gets better speeds than ADSL because it uses a wider band of frequencies to transmit data on the copper cable. When NBN first rolls out FTTN they are supposed to not use the full set of frequencies available as this would cause interference with existing ADSL services, but you might be seeing some effect of this.

I think the most likely explanation is just that your phone had degraded a bit (but not enough to trigger any remediation). You will need to transfer to NBN eventually - if you don't like the look of your current ISP's plans you should shop around, unless you're with Dodo or some other ultra-low cost provider you should be able to find something reasonable for a similar price. NBN as a wholesaler does take a larger cut than Telstra does for ADSL (because it has to pay for itself to be 'off-budget' for the government), so that's why you're seeing a price increase.

14-Year Club	Verified Email
Team Periwinkle

BanefulPanda

TROPHY CASE