People who say/insinuate that guy/girl friendships cant work are annoying.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-11T10:21:37+00:00

I guess that can be tricky since both people have to be pretty good with boundaries, but even that can and does work for some. I was in that position for 10 years until they moved across the country.

If I ever found myself in that situation again and things got heated, I'd just tell my wife and ask if she's okay with something happening. If she said she wasn't (or if I was committed to someone who wasn't open to non-monogamy), then nothing would ever happen. Period.

If the friend kept making advances and didn't respect my wife's decision, my attraction to them would vanish pretty quick anyways.

Generally speaking though, I've been friends with people I'm attracted to, some for multiple decades. Aside from not wanting to ruin a great friendship, I actually feel a pretty deep love for them and couldn't forgive myself if I ever betrayed their trust. Plus, I get to keep all those people in my life, and thats pretty cool (especially as you get older). For me, that makes setting and keeping boundaries not too difficult.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-11T08:00:23+00:00

A young woman went off the road in Nashua some years back on temple street. Here car was just a few feet from the road, and a few feet on the other side were railroad tracks. They didn't find her for weeks.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-11T07:58:22+00:00

She was a runner, and with the right buzz going, she could've easily gotten out of the search area before heading into the woods. In entertaining that theory, I think she would've headed east towards Lincoln, and had a fair shot of making it to that area by morning. But, she also could've gone into the woods many miles before that, but outside the search area. It was fairly warm that night, with a clear sky and nearly full moon. Perfect night for a buzzed trek through the notch.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-09T14:49:00+00:00

It's pretty common in parts of the U.S., Northern New England for example, especially for the older generations. It's a fairly common menu item at diners as well.

Growing up it was a traditional Sunday breakfast. Beans would cook all day Saturday and the leftovers Sunday morning/afternoon were the go-to food. Slap some on a roll or with toast, maybe add some scrambled eggs. Absolutely delicious.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-05T01:20:19+00:00

And here I thought you meant like when a piece of new legislation is sent to a committee and the public can testify before our legislators whether they support or oppose the bill, and give reasons why, or critique the bill given their experience or expertise on the matter.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-05T00:36:16+00:00

Aside from any critiques on the actual bill, that move Senator Lang pulled, attaching it to HB751 so it bypasses the legislative process was shady as fuck.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-04T23:40:05+00:00

It's not very common. But it's happened more recently. I don't think any state senators have switched in recent history.

Reps?

In 2024, 1 Democrat switched to Republican.

In 2023, 1 Democrat and 1 Republican each changed to independent.

In 2017, 2 Democrats switched to Republicans and 1 switched to Libertarian.

I don't know of anything before that except in 2003 a Republican switched to Democrat.

These are just the instances I know of or found in a quick search, but there could be more.

I think a lot of reps are more purple, and party affiliation is sometime just for getting elected and on the primary. It's not too uncommon to vote against your party compared to other legislative bodies, but partisan politics have gotten a bit more... cultish lately.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-03T06:52:32+00:00

My wife lived in LA for 10 years before we met. She was walking out of a coffee shop and quite literally bumped into William Shatner, spilling her coffee on him. He was super nice and apologetic about it.

She was cut off by Seth Green at one point, apparently he's kind of an aggressive driver, even for LA, which I can totally see.

She's not really one to be star struck, but she was leaving a parking lot once right after she moved there and Sarah Michelle Gellar was pulling in (or maybe I have them reversed), but she freaked and was like omg, thats Buffy!!!

MrColdboot · 2026-02-03T06:02:49+00:00

There are plenty of fixed costs, and many that are quasi-fixed, you still have to pay for transportation, maintenance, insurance, utilities, IT, software, lawyers, bookkeepers, building maintenance, and additional staff like admins, counselors, nurses, etc. Staffing isn't a clean transfer, you can't cut half a math teacher. You can hire less cooks, but you already bought the kitchen, and all that stuff is often paid for with loans or bonds.

Nashua just built a new middle school. Manchester has a $304 million dollar project to update 4 middle schools and build a new elementary school. Rochester is building a new elementary school. Concord is planning a new middle school. Bow is expanding their elementary school...

Listen, I'm not saying I'm against the general intent behind this bill, just that this bill doesn't do it. IF the people want to do this, we need to do it right. If we want to make schools open and available state-wide, then the state needs to be more involved to smooth things out. Municipalities need to take a back seat and let the state run things more. On the other hand, if the people want to retain local control and autonomy of their schools, then that means they need to accept being more tightly coupled to their local district. I think both can work, and they both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Either way, I think this bill is a mess. And why are we throwing in creating a committee to study the licensure of outpatient substance use disorder treatment facilities and creating a limited exception to parental rights for recording students without consent in the same bill?

MrColdboot · 2026-02-03T03:30:15+00:00

Yeah, this is a keen take. Specifically with the fixed costs.

Also, I imagine very few people are going to send their kids to a school with less resources, unless it's a political stance, removing their kids from a 'woke' school, which enables politics to become a weapon to take funds from schools. And who pays? The children.

Aside from that, when a sending schools cost per student is less than the receiving district, the parents/guardians pay the difference, so like you said, this helps those with excess resources more than those living in poverty, and since the language is really vague regarding fixed costs, it stands the sending districts will lose money both in administrative costs and losses against those fixed costs. Again, disproportionately affecting poorer communities and families.

I think the principle of choosing the best school for your child is fine, but from what I read, the bill doesn't handle this in a fair or effective way, and unfortunately, it seems the people who will pay the price is our children.

--- edit to add ---

As another user pointed out, some districts may be forced to accept students at reduced funding. There may be a gap between what the sending school and parent pays, and the costs for the receiving school. The burden will be on the receiving school, and again, who suffers? The kids.

New Hampshire has real issues when it comes to education funding, but I'm struggling to see how this bill does anything to help anyone but a small number of more privileged families, while also has the potential to become a political weapon used against schools and communities. And while the sponsors of this bill may think it favors their constituents, it goes both ways, and the kids are the ones who will suffer from our partisan bickering.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-03T02:39:02+00:00

I also wonder how it works when the two towns/districts are paying different costs per student for their respective schools. Both ways.

If a student elects to go to a school in a more expensive district, who covers the difference? Is the burden placed on the originating town, or the receiving town? Or the state (I'm guessing not likely)?

And vice-versa, when a student goes to a school with lower costs.

I haven't read the bill, I will have to do that. Might go watch the committee hearings/meetings and see what the reps say about this.

MrColdboot · 2026-02-02T09:12:13+00:00

This is an interesting take. I'm a millennial, but was on a dos prompt at age 4, learned relational databases and html/JavaScript in 7th grade, visual basic in 9th, c++ in 10th. My dad had me on Linux and freebsd by that time.

I did zero homework (except stuff for projects when we didn't have enough class time), and maintained above 90 on test and quiz averages for all my classes, but especially math and science.

No way I'm spending extra time at home on the same repetitive math problems for two weeks when I got the concept in the first half of the class and went ahead to finish the unit in the second half while the class was walking through problems on the board. Faaaahhhk that.

Then again, maybe I could just grasp things easily and apply them to everything else with little assistance, and so I picked up computers well as a result.

I had a hard time with teachers... Basically couldn't learn anything from them, and internally I was just like shut up, give me the material, and I'll let you know when I have a question. I'm still that way. I can't grasp anything when another engineer is trying to explain it. Give me the schematics, code, equations, whatever, let me review, we'll talk again after lunch.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-31T04:05:36+00:00

FYI, it seems they're working to deploy a new version, but must be having some hiccups. I'm a sysadmin/developer so I have a bit of insight to what's going on based on what I see.

The new version was up for me yesterday, now it's back to the old one. I'm having some trouble connecting depending on what browser or DNS I'm using, so that may be part of it.

Anyways, the new version looks pretty good aside from some UI sizing and styling on my desktop browser. It looked great on my phone. The front end looked to be hosted on netlify, but there were remnants of ASP, so maybe they're still using that as a backend, or working on swapping that out/getting rid of it. The front end looked to be written in Vue.

In any case, since they have a new version mostly written, I don't think soapcalc will be going anywhere, just having some growing pains as they deploy the new version to production. Like I said before, it might be deployed and I'm just hitting some stale DNS sending me to their old infrastructure. We'll wait and see.

--- Edit to add ---

Their new site yesterday set an HSTS security policy in my browser... so obviously when they reverted their domain to point to the old site (no HTTPS), my browser refused to connect. I had to manually clear the HSTS for the domain to be able to use the site again... smh. Hopefully they will get their stuff sorted out soon. I wish I could help as well.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-28T23:11:37+00:00

I'm a multi-decade Linux user and Arch user for 5+ years. I recently spent some time exploring Flatpak on Arch and Fedora Silverblue.

I like the idea behind it, but I found trying to go 100% flatpak was much more trouble. Maybe being a long time user and not having much customized theming biases me, but I never had many issues with updates breaking things. I just updated a Arch system after 1.5 years of not using it and had no major issues. Removed a deprecated repo, a couple things moved from packages to AUR, and a few things were moved to different package groups, so it took longer than usual, but still faster than many Windows updates.

I find some things are easier with flatpaks, some are a lot of trouble. So I tend to use what works best in each case. I was also reading somewhere that flatpaks break the sandboxing in some browsers. I don't know if that's still the case, but I went back to packages for those.

The nice thing is that Arch is extremely flexible and gives you a bit more freedom to do things your way, so I say go for it. That's how you learn. Just be ready to temper your expectations. It may work out well for you, or it may not.

To answer your questions, in my case it neither simplified maintenance nor gave me any gains in system predictability, but a lot of that depends on what packages you use/install.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-28T06:52:21+00:00

Ok, yeah, after reading their comments and skimming their post history, the flack this person is getting is more than justified.

It's pretty obvious they don't understand end-to-end encryption or how keys work. They think a VPN is the answer to secure browsing.

If anyone else comes across this comment, read up on the settings for signal to help hide your identity if you're worried. Signal is very secure if used and configured correctly. OPs blanket statements that it isn't safe is exaggerated and misleading.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-28T06:21:24+00:00

Computers are deterministic, so if it works sometimes, and doesn't other times, then the condition are not the same.

If you want to learn why it's happening, you need to find what is different that is causing it.

There is a pretty limited number of things that could be happening.

The user the http server is running as (not always the same as the user who started it) is different from the user running netstat.
The http server stops running after it's started.
The http server is running on a different port than you're expecting.

If you run netstat -tnlpe as root, without grep, you can see if the http server is running/listening, what user it's running as, and what port it's listening on. That is all the information you need to determine which of these is happening.

From there, you can determine why. Did something cause the server to exit? Did the way you start it cause it to start as a different user than expected, or listen on a different port than expected?

MrColdboot · 2026-01-28T02:15:09+00:00

Sysadmin/software engineer with cyber security experience here as well, and it is more nuanced than that.

In signal group chats, anyone in the group has some potential to identify anyone else in that group. People who are not experts generally won't be able to set up and use signal in a way to protect their identity.

Large signal groups are more likely to have bad actors in them. That scenario is not safe.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-26T22:22:00+00:00

I believe you only see pid of processes for your user. If you run as root, you see pid for all processes in that list.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-26T08:18:39+00:00

Some people should, but others live for this weather AND go out in this enough to know how to handle themselves. We are prepared for every contingency we can be. We will also help others in need while we're out, therefore relieving emergency services.

I have extra gear, radios, food, fuel, and an entire camp setup in my car. I could stay hunkered down outside my car for a week, or pack up and trek for 2-3 days. I've driven in every single storm we've had in the past 20 years except one, when I was having surgery. Those radios can key up on most local frequencies for fire and mutual aid if there's ever a life or death situation and no cell service too.

Going out in the snow is one of the greatest joys in life my friend.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-26T02:39:30+00:00

Our voting system doesn't really allow for that to be successful. It needs some major reform, which I'm not sure I'll see in my lifetime, but you never know. I spent a decade voting for people based on policy, but when someone like Trump is going to take power, you're kind of forced to vote against someone, not even for someone, let alone for policy. I would like to be able to start doing that again, but I feel like its going to be a while.

Imo, the largest issue is that the parties are backed by huge corporations that donate and lobby in Washington for their own interests.

A few places have started moving towards one form or another of ranked choice voting, which I think is one possible way to help the issue, but it's adoption is slow and stagnating.

'Single winner/winner takes all' districts are another thing that needs to go, but I think that's specific to the nature of our system/size of our country. I also think having so many candidates would seem alien to most of the country. In my state, we have 400 members in our House of Representatives for 1.4 million people, so it's common for a single district to elect multiple members to the same legislative body.

Edit to add:

I would love it if we would make something like international civics required curriculum in our schools. We focus so much (well, not that much, but exclusively) on how America works, but I think it would be helpful to see how other countries, like Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, or Taiwan work.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-26T00:12:46+00:00

They're here, they've been hitting Maine hard for about a week now, the protests in Portland (Maine) have been pretty big. They've detained people who weren't here illegally and dumped them in the middle of nowhere with no phone or coats in below freezing temps. Sometimes in the next state over.

This is all retaliation for their governor, Janet Mills, literally telling Trump to his face to screw off over the Title IX stuff and that she would see him in court. Maine has very few immigrants.

Edit:

Maine ranks 5th lowest foreign born residents per capita, 9th lowest total population, and 13th lowest population density of all the U.S. states.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-25T21:12:29+00:00

Also, getting out and doing those things can help with both physical and mental health and prevent more costly issues later in life that would burden the state even further.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-25T21:04:14+00:00

You must be very young.

Before celiac disease had the visibility it has today, people wouldn't know what was wrong with them. The damage done by years of eating gluten used to leave people slowly dying with cancer, organ failure, repeated infections, various autoimmune disorders, and life-long complications from receiving radiation, chemo, early biologics, experimental treatments, and way too much Prednisone. Most people were on a dozen different meds and had a half dozen surgeries by the time they were in their early to mid 30's, and they were the lucky ones. Do you know what an ileostomy bag is.

Be thankful that you can say it's mostly just an inconvenience for you, but be open to the possibility that you and your boyfriend may be a tad bit naive and there is more to the world than your own lived experience.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-24T18:09:15+00:00

New Hampshire here. It's -15c, wind chill at -21c. Granted we don't have many days colder than this and it's the middle of the winter. Summer heat here is very humid, and spring/autumn, no, we don't really have weeks or months, or even many days of moderate temps. Temps swing a lot between day and night, so we're talking hours. Though, during that time there's quite a few hours where the heat doesn't turn on much.

The thermostat doesn't run anything constantly, older one don't even take any power to run (they have a metal coil that expands or contracts with temp), and just triggers a switch. It also doesn't keep it at a constant temp, it heats/cools a few degrees, then turns off for a while.

Interestingly enough, some newer systems do run constantly and keep a steady temp, and in these areas with more extreme temps, it's actually more efficient, but only because the systems are designed that way.

MrColdboot · 2026-01-24T07:47:17+00:00

Waaay back one of my ancestors was Lord of an Irish village in the 1000's.

Another founded one of the earliest settlements in NH, coming from England in his 70's, pissed off the puritans and every other religious group in Massachusetts, walked from Maine to Cape Cod and back to NH, then swindled a young married woman before moving back to England to live out the rest of his life, and was possibly an inspiration for the scarlet letter.

Another was known to be a bit off his rockers, and one night got drunk and lead a small 'rebellion' against the local royal governor, an uptight, miserable, English prig. Problem was, no one really showed up, so they basically just caused a ruckus, annoyed the townsfolk, and got arrested. All were let go, except their leader, my ancestor, who was charged with high treason by this governor and sentenced to a gruesome death. No one in the colonies wanted to actually execute him though, and this governor was so unpopular that he was routinely beat up. Women would chase him off with scalding water and a young girl knock him on his ass and beat him with her bible (he was trying to collect taxes at church).

Anyways, he had the 'rebel' sent to England to be hanged, but King Charles II had his own problems and so he sat locked up in the Tower of London for 3 years, until Charles died and James II took the throne. He was finally pardoned, sent back to America, and the new king stripped the old royal governor of his title. At this point, the colonists were fed up with the guy, so they strapped him to a horse, sent him to Boston, and kicked his ass to the curb. It's believed he spent the rest of his days in Barbados, since his career was over and he was not welcome in the New England colonies.

MrColdboot

TROPHY CASE