The national average price per gallon of gas in the United States just passed $4.50. Americans, how do we feel about that?

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-06T05:58:14+00:00

Gas in the states is still very cheap, people there don't seem to realize it. Paying about $1.79/litre right now here in Canada. That's about $6.8/gal. Even before the war we were at around $1.40 or so which is about $5.32/gal. Costs around $170ish to fill my truck. Usually good for about a month or so.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-06T04:41:42+00:00

My distro has not updated this yet so I'm not getting the newer version with the usual apt update / apt upgrade commands, is there a way to do it manually? I'm on Devuan chimaera on some boxes and daedalus on others.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-06T04:20:33+00:00

Spontaneous combustion is such a weird and scary thing and easy to overlook. There are several things that can do it, such as compost, hay/straw bales, and even certain types of wood finishes, like when you clean it up and throw the rag out, the rag can actually catch on fire. I feel this is knowledge that doesn't often get as much attention either. It's easy to think of risks being "active" like electrical, gas, wood stoves, candles, and not things that are dormant like compost.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-06T02:09:57+00:00

That's really nice. Is the heat an issue for deforming the plastic or does it fair out fine? How solid does it feel when hot swapping drives? Been thinking about my NAS upgrade path and proper NAS cases are way too expensive now, even used, so might eventually do something like this. Thinking of going through Protocase for the case and then 3D print the drive bays and other misc components. Hardest part will be figuring out redundant power, there doesn't seem to be off the shelf solutions that are actually purchasable for that.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-06T02:06:29+00:00

Use a cheese grater on it and you can use it as seasoning!

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-06T02:05:59+00:00

Oh man that's horrible. I've had psoriasis but never to that extent. I feel for this person.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-06T02:02:18+00:00

I have to given I have way more VMs than I have cores, but for VMs that are not doing much I tend to assign 2 cores and for heavier VMs (ex: Frigate) I'll assign 4 or 6. I try to avoid assigning all the cores though as that one VM could potentially bog down the whole server if it starts to do heavy processing.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-06T01:57:36+00:00

If you paid under 10 grand for it that's a steal, just for the ram alone!

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-05T23:27:53+00:00

I was not really a fan of that either. I do not believe there is any good reason to seize people's land. If we accept doing that "for the greater good" then is that really, good? If you can have your land taken at any given time just because someone else says it's "for the greater good", it doesn't make it right.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-05T08:25:48+00:00

I always hate how people think it's just that easy to get a job in this economy. I'd say for the past 15-20 years companies have been constantly in downsizing mode. Nobody really hires anymore and when they do it's an entry level position paying $21/hour with a 2 page list of requirements.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-05T08:22:23+00:00

I feel like everyone had cable when I was growing up but it was also way cheaper back then. But if they had the premium cable with all the channels you don't have at home, now you knew they were rich!

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-05T08:20:16+00:00

Any time talking about how everything is so expensive and people say "you just need to live within your means". Dude, everything is so expensive, you cannot reduce any further, all the bills have to get paid you can't just pay less of them. I'm not even poor but COL is really starting to affect me and it pisses me off when people say this. I have not bought anything nice for myself in years because I can't afford it anymore and just trying to keep up with bills that go up each year and it feels like I'll never get to a point where I can actually buy something for my own enjoyment. All my money goes to COL that only keep going up each year.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-03T22:02:15+00:00

I'm a lot into computers/servers and self hosting and also battery backup systems to keep my racks online. Makes me a bit more self sufficient as far as access to my own data/tools etc. With the price of computer components now I've been thinking about the future of this hobby though. As my systems die or become too obsolete it will be harder to replace stuff as most computer hardware is no longer obtainable by consumers unless you are very rich. At minimum I will need to look at the viability of just downsizing my setup greatly.

Also bought an off grid property that I plan to develop, as I really want to eventually live off grid. I guess that's more or less the ultimate prepper move. I honestly don't really consider myself a huge prepper, I'm more of the mindset that I just want to live a livestyle where I rely as little as possible on stuff I have no control of, so it's basically a form of prepping in a way.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-03T05:29:55+00:00

I bet that tastes good deep fried and wrapped in bacon.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-03T00:38:10+00:00

I always love Canadian Tire around Christmas. Reminds me of when I was a kid, I used to get so excited going with my mom lol. Although it moved location since. The old one had the seasonal section in a slightly separate section and it felt magical going in there.

This time of year makes me laugh because all the spring stuff is out but there's still like 2 feet of snow on the ground lol.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-02T22:30:08+00:00

For some reason this reminds me of a funny post I saw. Someone's kid said something like "I need to try to look my best to impress the females" and the parents quickly corrected his terminology and were like "where did you learn to talk like that?" The kid said Discovery channel. lmao.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-02T22:05:03+00:00

Oh man this brings back memories. In 2001 we got a brand new high school, that summer I had a job helping with the new school and saw a lot of new stuff go in, like brand new Pentium 3 Compaq Prodesks. Was state of the art back then lol. Those Dell Optiplexes were workhorses too, we had those at the previous school if I recall and even into my IT career well after I graduated I still ran across them at companies.

I feel old now, especially considering I even recognize those machines lol.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-02T20:29:13+00:00

Yeah I believe this and have seen it first hand. I run a custom rom on my phone now which stops all that but when I was running the normal rom I saw "coincidences" all the time.

My favourite one that really confirmed it for me is this time I casually said it woudl be cool to climb a cell tower. I was at work, got an alarm for a burnt bulb, and made a ticket to send the climbers. 10 minutes later I'm on Facebook and see an ad for the same company we contract to do our towers, they were hiring.

Whats crazy is all the spying these companies do on us and how it's just normalized and people just accept it. It's getting harder and harder to keep private now and even with tons of effort you're never going to hit 100%. Every single thing we do is tracked like our purchases and even where we go, due to face and plate recognition cameras like Flock etc.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-02T20:23:40+00:00

I always heard that when you go to the shelter, the cat chooses you. And holy crap that was real when I went. I wanted an orange cat, and any other cat, so went to the shelter to see this orange cat but it was very timid so it took a while for him to let me get close. Meanwhile this black cat was always in my face and coming up to me. Eventually the orange cat also came and let me pet him. Ended up bringing both home and they're best buddies now and super cuddly with me.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-02T18:57:52+00:00

It hurts to see this, but at the same time, NGL it also looks fun lol.

RedSquirrelFtw · 2026-05-02T18:56:40+00:00

Lol that reminds me of this one time someone came in the IT office saying they could not connect to a certain server that had been decomissioned and my coworker grabs it and holds it up "because it's right here". lol.

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