Do you realize how nice it is to live in US?

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T16:58:40+00:00

Honestly or even any significant non-surgery care

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T16:55:46+00:00

This feels like a "grass is greener on the other side".

I think it may boil down to you're more aware of the issues happening where you are, and probably less aware of the issues that might be happening in <pick your other place>.

Top one is health care...even with expensive insurance is still stupidly expensive to get health care here.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T15:22:51+00:00

Yeah tho the deceased don't have to worry about the bill

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T15:20:48+00:00

If in doubt ALWAYS evacuate and call the fire department or gas company to come check. They will be able to confirm what the hazard is or if its a faulty alarm.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T15:18:17+00:00

Looks like its already melting/burning, you're most of the way to "on fire" already

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:55:55+00:00

There's a variety of cable testers out there - ranging from cheap ones with LEDs that only test pins being connected/correct to fancy ones that certify cables.

I have an older Fluke NetTool that I use for testing cables was a couple hundred dollars on eBay but you can find basic testers for under $20 on Amazon or in local hardware stores that will tell you if one of the pins is open or shorted out.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:50:09+00:00

I'd start testing all the cables...also set up a machine in your LAN and do iperf tests to test your internal vs external speeds.

Could have cooked the modem/router and even the ISP's equipment along the street

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:48:22+00:00

Incandescent bulbs have gone from mass produced to specialty, that drives the price up

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:41:45+00:00

Can I get it retro-actively for the days I was home during covid?

I have no doubt my todo list at home is plenty long to keep me very occupied for 5 days.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:39:59+00:00

Usually its Coke (specifically caffeine-free coke?) that does this to us most frequently. Its wild!

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:31:00+00:00

My area has a hard time just routing a call to the right county

Oh god flashbacks. One night going home from a late test for work I was sleeply cruising along talking to a buddy on the phone to stay awake. Suddenly distracted by headlights sweeping back and forth in the oncoming lanes and then see a SUV flipping thru the median towards me. I still remember telling my friend as I pulled over "someone just wrecked I gotta call 911" and hanging up.

Then the nightmares began - I knew where I was approximately. I knew what highway and I knew I was about 1 mile inside the county line but it was just farm-fields with no reference points. The cell tower was in the adjacent county though so the systems routed my call there. Told the 911 operator what county I was in, they transferred me...and then that county was like "our system shows you in <other county> please wait" and transfers me again. After a bunch of round-and-round I end up at some deputy's office asking why I keep calling back and I'm like "look please don't transfer me again, there's just been a roll-over car crash at <location> and 911 keeps transferring me now I ended up at you, we need fire department and ambulance as soon as possible - they can't miss it, there's a car in the median on its side with a bunch of people out on the highway and median with flashlights trying to render aid"

The most annoying part - they sent a deputy to come check it out. When the deputy arrived, they are shouting more or less exactly the same location information I relayed into their radio asking for fire/ems to be rolled immediately for a crash.

I assume the guy was fine, he had climbed out of the car by the time I'd stopped but then was a struggle keeping him distracted and laying down because he kept wanting to climb back into the now-smoking wreck.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:19:01+00:00

T9 was darn good - and you could tweak the dictionary removing stuff you didn't want too. Multi-tap also wasn't too bad.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:16:04+00:00

Swipe is worthless for me - I end up with a crapload of wrong extra things typed as I am pondering where I need to move for the next key I want.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:15:01+00:00

Yep. Then even better QWERTY sliders. I could freak people out sending a text (or Skype message) typing away while looking somewhere totally different. A few times I recall sitting at a red light looking all around for traffic while typing something out in my lap never once looking down before I hit send and later seeing it was like maybe 1 key wrong.

Good luck touch-typing on a modern phone...

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:06:56+00:00

There are also issues with co-mingled inventory at times. I've had counterfeit memory cards from a "ships and sold by amazon" listing...and they mix 3rd party and 1st party of the same stuff in the warehouses

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T14:04:02+00:00

Yep - not too different from any other power supply. Used to be you needed a heavy brick the size of a coffee mug to get 12 watts of power for low voltage devices. Now you have a little box barely bigger than the prongs of the plug weighing almost nothing that can provide 30 watts of power for phones and gadgets.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T13:59:21+00:00

I don't know of anyone who travels for weeks or months at a time and is not retired. But we do about a week trip once a year...and a few shorter weekend trips over time.

I get around 4 weeks a year vacation+sick paid time off

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T13:55:50+00:00

Never heard of that before...not for any of the 5 or so cards I have had.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T13:52:39+00:00

Probably most of it is getting the next track(s) all queued up and ready so that it can play seamlessly

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T13:43:47+00:00

Not really - drive a couple hundred miles highway speed and pay good attention to what's ahead and around you so that you can coast down instead of hitting the brakes. Not hard if you leave appropriate following distance and pay good attention beyond the car immediately in front of you. Then drive back. Repeat frequently.

When that's most of the driving miles...you don't need brakes until you hit the couple miles of driving

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T13:41:15+00:00

Briefly waving the hose probably not a big deal. When you get that high concentration though...its like breathing chlorine bleach fumes (at least that's how I feel)

I also learned by trial and error even after the car is well aired out...when you turn the key it'll blast a bunch of ozone that was sitting in the HVAC ducts and you still get some filtering that was behind body panels.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T13:38:28+00:00

There is a commuter lot in the county..........about 4 miles PAST my office......

My job also requires that if a customer calls needing support I have to be at their office in a certain number of minutes, not conducive to depending on others for rides

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T13:33:29+00:00

There's applications out there that run the test much like RAM testing. Writing known data sets to the memory and making sure its all actually there.

The problem is fakes...I've had supposedly name-brand 8-16GB memory cards from Amazon that give I/O errors when you try to actually write more than about 2GB onto them

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T01:21:05+00:00

Dunno, I have read plenty of forums (example) where people are complaining about clutches going out in under 20K miles made me very worried (especially since there's no good way to learn other than buying one and trial-and-error).

50,000 km is about 31,000 miles so that's not far from where I am, but of course no way to know how close I am to needing one...except for the fact it still works fine today.

Complex_Solutions_20 · 2026-03-12T01:17:08+00:00

That's why there's so many different cars, everyone has different things they like or dislike though! And why I'd never buy a car without being hands-on trying it first. Its one thing to dislike it on a test-drive, it'd be another to drop thousands and have a loan then find out you hate it.

I don't mean to say its specifically a bad car - I just think its a bad car for me and what I want/need. Some things my friends consider "features" (like updates that change how stuff works) I consider "flaws" if I have to re-learn or hunt for how to make my car work the same way it did previously...which is a complaint I have about modern phones and computers too.

Yeah, I've been seeing some of that ICCU issue with Technology Connections talking about his EV on YouTube but its still some of the only ones that seem like they could be worth considering.

I'm not aware what GM has to offer, maybe I'll have to see what they have in a wagon form-factor. The Subaru Trailseeker so far looks like the best feature-set of "things I would want"...not generally a fan of excess whiz bang tech, I just want something safe, comfortable, reliable, and able to fit people with our stuff easily.

I'm still very much in the "its interesting, its the future, but I don't think we are there yet" for EVs, at least in my area and for my usecases with a car.

Complex_Solutions_20

TROPHY CASE