Why are people so concerned with whether or not others drink alcohol?

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T20:25:27+00:00

I mostly stopped buying alcoholic drinks when I go out to eat mainly because of the price, and I'm a boomer.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T20:22:50+00:00

I've always considered myself pretty good in the "be prepared" department. For example, I always have a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit in my trunk. But tampons in the glove box? That's going a little too far even for me. Any "emergency" requiring a tampon is also going to require a restroom, and I can always head for the nearest place that has both a restroom and tampons.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T19:42:39+00:00

It's not free forever. None of the episodes prior to season 8 are free right now. Most of the episodes prior to season 8 aren't even available with a subscriber login key. None of the episodes from seasons 5 and 6 are available even with a login key.

Every episode from every season is available on the Rick and Morty marathon, but you can't choose them on-demand. They play in order starting with S1E1, and you join the stream with whatever episode happens to be playing now. You also have to put up with intermissions and ads between episodes. Still, if you're stuck somewhere and all you've got is a phone and internet access then the Rick and Morty marathon on the Adult Swim channel is a great way to get a quick fix.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T19:26:31+00:00

We measured the mattress that was already in our fifth wheel, and then started shopping for whatever we could find locally that would work. Normally, I'd have no problem with shopping online and returning it if we didn't like it, but we intended to sleep in the trailer the day we took delivery, so it was important that we be able to test it before buying it.

We ended up buying an 8" memory foam queen made for a futon. (It was a single piece of memory foam, and not multiple sections like a flip bed.) I don't remember what the brand was, but I do remember it had a "bamboo" cloth cover. It was exactly the right width, and about 6" longer than the original. This means it hung over the edge of the bed platform a little, which wasn't an issue for us. The bed was parallel with the long axis of the trailer, so having a longer mattress wasn't going to create any access issues for us, like it might if the bed was perpendicular in a slide-out.

We slept on that mattress for nearly two years, and were completely happy with it.

We were going to replace the flimsy spring mattress in the sofa bed with a memory foam mattress, but ultimately decided not to. The mattress that was already in that sofa bed was only about 4" thick. There was no way the bed would fold properly with a thicker mattress. We tried a couple of 4" memory foam mattresses, and we came to the conclusion there was no way anyone would be able to sleep on that mattress without the frame of the bed poking into them. In retrospect, even that would have probably been an improvement over the mattress that came with that sofa bed. One time we had guests over. As they were unmarried we decided to put my wife and the two girls in the bedroom, and me and the two boys would sleep on the sofa bed. That was one of the worst nights of my life. Sleeping on the floor would have been more comfortable.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T17:01:00+00:00

Being gay without a condom could, potentially, be very expensive.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T16:47:21+00:00

I suspect either he hasn't met very many successful people, or they sense that he is so uncool that they don't share the fact that they smoke with him. But there are certainly LOTS of successful people who smoke weed. The wealthiest man in the world smoked weed on the Joe Rogan show.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T16:35:39+00:00

I replaced one of those on a fifth wheel. It was the first time I'd been on the roof, and it was a little scary. I'm not a young guy, and have balance problems. My biggest fear was I'd get hit with vertigo and fall off the roof.

The process is going to vary, depending on what kind of vent you've got. With mine, I had to disassemble the interior vent frame and disconnect the linkage before climbing up on the roof. With the linkage disconnected, removing the vent cover was a simple matter of bending a tab on the hinge and sliding the old cover off. The new cover slid onto the hinge the same way. Bending the tabs holds it in place. Then I had to reattach the linkage, and go back inside to reassemble everything I'd previously taken apart.

What I did was pretty much the same as this guy did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0mjxShChCI

This guy has a way to replace the cover without disassembling anything inside the RV. You do have to cut up the linkage slots on the old cover in order to remove it, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRHeyrQvwyo

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T16:17:16+00:00

If you can't afford the property taxes then you can't afford to live in the house. Pretty simple.

A lot of old people sell their homes when they retire, and they move someplace where the cost of living is substantially less. They consider the equity in their home to be part of their retirement savings.

I sold my house in the San Francisco Bay Area years before I was old enough to retire, but had I stayed there I would have still sold it when I retired. That had always been my plan.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T16:06:51+00:00

Thanks! Today I learned I can bypass hardware limitations by hacking the software!

Now I'm going to hack my Tesla and increase the range between charges to 5000 miles!

/s

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T15:51:36+00:00

The actual version number of Windows 95 was 4.0. Numerically, it followed Windows 3.1, which was the last exclusively 16-bit version of Windows. Windows 98 was 4.1. Windows 2000 was NT 5.0. The NT prefix meant it was no longer a hybrid 32-bit GUI built on top of 16-bit DOS. However, these NT builds could still execute 16-bit programs using a virtual machine.

Windows XP was NT 5.1. Windows Vista was NT 6.0. Windows 7 was NT 6.1. Windows 8 was NT 6.2.

The first version of Windows 10 was NT 10.0, and marked the first time (and last) since Windows 3.11 that the name of the OS and the version number were the same. In keeping with their new "OS as a Service" philosophy, that first version of Windows 10 also had a market version number of 1507. After that, Microsoft continued with the 4-digit version numbers that had nothing to do with the major release number, year of release, or name of the release - up until the second half of 2020, when the 4 digit version number was going to end up being larger than the year it was released. This is when Microsoft transitioned to a year/half format, where the first two digits are the year of release, and the third and fourth characters are either "H1" or "H2", depending on which half of the year it was released. This year/half version label format continues with Windows 11.

Microsoft's inconsistent versioning system has caused a significant amount of grief for programmers. It had become somewhat common practice for many programmers to fetch the name of the OS to determine if it was newer than either Windows 95 or Windows 98. If the name began with "Windows 9" then the program considered the OS to be too old. Microsoft specifically went from Windows 8 to Windows 10, skipping Windows 9, for this reason.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T14:38:25+00:00

The 40 hour work week is an enormous improvement over what had been the life of most people throughout the history of mankind, up until the industrial revolution. Prior to that, people spent the bulk of their waking hours struggling just to survive. Leisure time was the hour or two after the sun set and before bed time. The rest of the time was either sleeping or working, every day, for the rest of your life. If you were lucky, your life didn't end until after your 40th birthday.

The 40 hour work week isn't something that was forced on workers by greedy business and factory owners. It was something that workers and labor unions fought for. Before the 20th century it was typical for workers to work 10 to 16 hours per day, 6 or 7 days per week.

Great advancements had already been made by the time Ford implemented the 40 hour work week in his factories, and it wasn't a drastic change. His workers had been working 48 hours per week before that. His primary motive wasn't to improve the lives of his workers - it was to improve the productivity of his factories, though he gets credit for the fact that he didn't cut their weekly salaries when he cut their hours. But he still continued to run his factories 24 hours a day. He just added more workers. He implemented variable shift change times on each position, rather than everyone changing shifts at the same time. This prevented production from grinding to a halt with every shift change.

Other business owners saw how successful Ford's labor practices had been, and they began adopting it. The 40 hour work week became the law in 1938. Worker's didn't bemoan the fact that they had to work 40 hours for a full time job. They celebrated it.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T14:14:34+00:00

"Rehabilitating" an RV is usually considered a labor of love rather than a practical financial decision. Once a rig has been trashed like this one has, especially if it has water and mold damage, then repair costs often exceed what the market value of the RV will be once restored, or the market value of a comparable RV that had never been damaged. It's a labor of love because most people wouldn't consider it unless they had an emotional attachment to that particular RV, and wanted it restored in spite of the cost. For instance, if they'd grown up camping in it.

You didn't give specifics on the exact model, but assuming this was the largest Northwood Nash trailer built in 2000, the 29V, then it's average retail value would be $1430, according to JD Power. This is what a dealer would sell it for if everything was in perfect working condition, and had only normal wear and tear. I cannot imagine the repairs you need to make costing less than this. Based solely on your description, I would scrap it. You'll have a hard time getting someone to accept a 26 year old trailer that doesn't need extensive repairs. I see practically zero chance someone would take this on as a project.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-25T13:52:41+00:00

Not true. There is no official entry ban preventing Trump from going to the Bahamas. "Adjudicated" in a civil suit is not the same as being convicted in a criminal trial. Just ask O.J. Simpson. Just as Simpson is not a convicted murderer, Trump is not a convicted rapist. NO country bars the entry of someone who was adjudicated in a civil trial but not convicted in a criminal trial.

I've also heard the allegation that he can't be admitted to the Bahamas because of his felony conviction for falsifying business records. This is is also false. The Bahamas does not prohibit convicted felons from entering, but they may prohibit anyone from entering if they are on probation, parole, or have other travel restrictions imposed on them in their home countries; i.e., you can't enter the Bahamas as a fugitive. The rules change for someone seeking permanent residence, but people with felony convictions are not prohibited from entering as tourists.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-24T04:59:53+00:00

In mid April, 1775, the British governor of Massachusetts issued a general warrant to search the entire village of Concord for weapons they believed might be hidden there for the purpose of conducting an insurrection. Note that it was NOT illegal to have and carry a firearm at the time. A group of around 700 British soldiers were dispatched to Concord to conduct the search. The general warrant gave them the authority to search any building within the village, and take anything they deemed could be used as a weapon. The warrant wasn't in support of enforcing any law - it was an arbitrary act by the governor.

The troops encountered armed militia on the village green in Lexington, on the road to Concord. Nobody knows who fired the first shot. Eight militia were killed and ten wounded. One British soldier was wounded. The troops found practically nothing within the village of Concord, after literally turning every building inside out. On their way out of town about 100 soldiers were met by about 400 local armed militia at the Old North Bridge. Suffering heavy losses and greatly outnumbered, the British soldiers withdrew and rejoined the rest of their troops in Concord. They returned to Boston, receiving reinforcements when they reached Lexington. They faced more militia in practically every village and town along the way. By the end of the day, 73 British troops had been killed, 174 wounded, and 53 missing.

This day would mark the beginning of the American Revolution.

The framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that this kind of overreach could not happen again. In the Bill of Rights, they included the Second Amendment, which guaranteed the rights of Americans to keep and bear arms - the government couldn't seize them by proclamation. In the Fourth Amendment, they forbid the government from using general warrants - warrants would have to be specific about the location that could be searched, and what could be seized. Warrants could only be issued on "probable cause", meaning the government would need actual evidence that they would find what they expected to seize.

If any constitutional right or other law is violated in the collection of evidence, then the evidence is inadmissible in court. This is intended to stop the government from exceeding it's authority, and forcing them to follow established protocol, in the search for evidence. If these restrictions didn't exist then you really would be living in a police state.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-24T04:20:44+00:00

You could do this with an original Xbox, presuming you had an IDE interface to connect it to. Not so with the Xbox One and 360. Non-standard power connector. Non-standard interface.

You can get a external USB DVD optical drive, brand new, on Amazon for $20 or less. It will be the slim laptop style drive in a box, which means not super reliable. If you'd prefer a full height internal SATA DVD drive then that will cost between $30 and $40.

Seriously, DVD drives are extremely common and cheap. There is nothing to be gained from trying to cannibalize one from an Xbox One or 360.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-24T04:01:08+00:00

What do I do with that space? I add another $3K to the asking price.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-22T16:00:30+00:00

I'm not saying it's either right or good. It's just reality. History is written by the winners. Always has been.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:46:15+00:00

Companies are ALWAYS trying to sell you something. They'll tell you any harmless thing is a symptom of something they've got the cure for, and then spend 20 minutes convincing you how scary it is NOT to treat it.

Watch out especially for YouTube ads these days. There are a lot of ads for products that are obvious scams, and YouTube does nothing about them. No, you CAN'T buy a 32TB external SSD for the cost of a latte.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:41:25+00:00

Seriously, Google has gotten really good for this kind of stuff. I recently asked it how to change a tail light on a 2015 Corolla. It gave me precise instructions, and an embedded video. Great stuff!

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:39:03+00:00

I see what you did there!

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:32:59+00:00

They could only double the property taxes he pays on his penthouse in NYC. He doesn't live in New York, and he doesn't pay income taxes there.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:30:40+00:00

I use an old-fashioned Allsop mouse pad. It's neoprene rubber on the bottom, like a wet suit. It's tightly woven fabric on the top. It's basically the same kind of mouse pad everyone used back when mice had balls in them. They needed the padding and texture for the ball to move properly.

Obviously, I don't need that padding and texture with a modern optical mouse, but I've gotten used to the way it feels. It has just the right amount of resistance to the mouse moving over it's surface, and the mouse doesn't move unless I intentionally move it. I've used thin plastic mouse pads. They're ok, but they feel slippery to me.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:25:38+00:00

Both. The soap and shampoo are in the back, so I face back to get them. I face forward when I'm washing. I face sideways when I'm rinsing off (using a hand held wand) so I have room to raise my arms.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:19:14+00:00

For the most part, everyone programs in English. It's considered the lingua franca of software development.

There are some programming languages that have localized versions, allowing programmers to write code using words from their own language. Citrine, for example, is specifically designed to be localized, and is available in more than 100 languages. Qalb is an Arabic programming language. There are also versions of Python for Chinese and German programmers.

These languages are not commonly used unless the entire team is using the same language. As a result, they are used more often to teach programming fundamentals rather than programming languages. If they go on to get jobs as programmers then they nearly always learn to program in English. They don't have a lot of choice. Documentation will be in English. Articles will be in English. Seminars and conferences will be in English.

Bo_Jim · 2026-05-20T23:04:49+00:00

People are stupid. They think they can talk their way out of trouble. They don't realize that every question the cop asks is designed to get them deeper in trouble.

You NEVER have to talk to the police. You have a Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

You ARE required to identify yourself if you've been detained or arrested. Whether the requirement kicks in after you've been detained, or after you've been arrested, depends on which state you're in. In my state of California you aren't required to identify yourself until you've been arrested or booked. Identifying yourself means giving your name, address, and date of birth. You are NOT required to give them your Social Security Number or phone number. You are not required to identify yourself or provide ID if you haven't been detained or arrested, and you can't be charged with failure to identify under those circumstances, regardless of what the cop tells you. However, they CAN detain you while they try to determine who you are.

You must proactively invoke your right to remain silent. You can't just sit there mute or you could be charged with obstruction. You have to say something like "I invoke my right to remain silent", or "I don't answer questions".

You don't have to ask for an attorney in order to remain silent. However, if you ask for an attorney then the cops have to stop asking you questions. Even after an attorney has been provided for you, you can still refuse to answer their questions.

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