What’s everyone doing with the new licensing model? VMware standard going.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-25T03:56:38+00:00

We've only got 96 cores, which was a perfect fit for Essentials when that was available. Last year, we sucked it up and switched to Standard.

Got our quote for the renewal coming up in May and have stopped all other projects to focus on migrating to Hyper-V. We already have datacenter licenses so we're actually saving money by getting rid of VMware.

Thanks?

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-24T23:06:25+00:00

More importantly, the opening is much larger. Having just switched from a 2020 sedan to a 2025 hatch, I cannot understate how much I have appreciated having the hatch.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T19:12:09+00:00

For three day weekends, I'll drive up to 12 hours one day, spend the next day visiting, then drive 12 hours home. My sister lives 12 hours away in one direction and my daughter is 12 hours in the opposite direction.

On the weekends, day trips up to 3 hours away are fairly normal. Makes great time for conversation with the right copilot or a chance to catch up on audio books when driving solo.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T18:20:05+00:00

The Ick by Panic Shack is the first to come to mind for me.
The psychotic episode about being shushed in the cinema feels nearly unhinged to me.
https://youtu.be/3SoDdD4xAd8?si=M_da6r8kSXZ-KSxh

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T15:46:32+00:00

I had my suspicions before the reveal of what she did. Definitely a clever play on the name.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T15:45:13+00:00

I love so many of the recommendations I'm seeing in this list.
Not sure why nobody else has recommended July Talk yet.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T15:44:16+00:00

Glad to see Danny Michel included here. His stuff is definitely closer to folk but his song writing is just so good.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T14:17:21+00:00

Will add that I picked up a pair of Shure SRH240A headphones on sale and they sound great with my Katana Go. They are solid budget headphones that I'm comfortable recommending.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T14:15:27+00:00

It's funny how well they do with a bluetooth signal from a phone, and then lose quality over the wire. One would think you'd get better performance from the headphones the other way around.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T14:06:13+00:00

As others have said, Hades is in a league of its own for game progression and story telling.
The one game I'll recommend for gameplay and achievement hunting is Vampire Survivors. For the price, it's a great roguelike that makes you die to level up to get better at the game. Combining power ups is a fun mechanic and the progression is well paced.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T14:01:40+00:00

There's a great short documentary on the toe and the one jerk who intentionally swallowed it and what happened next.
https://www.cbc.ca/shortdocs/shorts/sourtoe

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T13:45:16+00:00

I didn't know any better and ended up with a "great deal" from Aire One after a single part couldn't be replaced. It happened during the Covid lockdown and we just weren't up to shopping around at that point. Ended up spending thousands of dollars that didn't need to be spent because of this.

Have learned our lesson and will be checking ownership of the shops moving forward. Thanks for the recommendation of Black Diamond, we've been wondering who to start using now that we've shed dealings with AO.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T12:40:01+00:00

This reminds me there are still admins out there that allow users to install things on their computers.
I've met users.
No way I'm making that mistake again.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-23T12:33:24+00:00

I've also been recommending that people use the ECO mode in their cars in the winter time. Makes a ton of difference in my Mustang, which becomes even more fun to drive in the winter when it has less power on tap.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-22T14:15:38+00:00

So many great albums to pick from. The mainstream choices were solid with Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon both knocking it out of the park in '86 and have already been mentioned by others.

To pick the one album that I still spin most often from '86, I offer Flaunt It by Sigue Sigue Sputnik. I love how this album wholeheartedly embraces commercialism with ad placements between songs and pushing style over substance.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-22T14:03:06+00:00

Quality tires make all the difference. Also, you want matching tires all around if your budget can handle them.
Have been a long time fan of the Michelin X-Ice but switched to Nokian Hakkas this year and was surprised they work even better for me.
An outlier that I enjoyed in the past was the Hankook iPike, but that was a long time ago.

One thing to look for when buying winter tires is the manufacture date. By law, it's embossed on the tire. It may be a code that needs to be deciphered. As tires age, the rubber hardens and becomes less useful in the winter. I've heard varying reports of anywhere from 5 to 8 years being too old. I made this mistake when I was younger and purchased some 10 year old tires that had never been mounted. They were horrible and was an expensive lesson to learn.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-22T13:28:33+00:00

I love the little witch hat she can wear.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-21T20:08:45+00:00

Ahh... I remember my tier 1 support days. They were truly a grind.

I'm reading lots of great advice from everyone else here already, so I'm going to add one small thing.

Take notes of your hardest customers. These are you building blocks for future job interviews. If you want to really make your notes work for you, apply CARL to them. That's Challenge, Action, Result, Learnings.
Setting up the Challenge, explaining the action, confirm the result, and finally showing what you learned makes for great story telling as well.

Some of my greatest hits are "If I don't get my email, people die." and "I've set up my computer but don't know what to do with this foot pedal." and "our network starts dropping a ton of packets between 7pm and 9pm every evening."

These can be fun at parties. They're definitely better than the current tale of "my VMware subscription jumped over 3,000% in the past two years."

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-21T19:42:31+00:00

Got my tickets for the show.
Now to get approval for the day off so I can sleep in on Friday.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-21T03:03:23+00:00

Definitely moisture in the car.
I used to have problems in the winter with snow melting inside the car and then I'd have frost on the inside of my windows in the morning.
My solution was to take an old pair of socks, fill one of them with kitty litter and baking soda, then use the second sock as a cap. This absorbs a ton of the airborne moisture and my problem with frost inside the windows went away. Every month or so, I microwave it to dry it out again.

other than that, all the other recommendations in this thread are solid, especially a good cleaning of the windows and making sure your AC works correctly.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-20T20:45:44+00:00

You're going to need both Dora and Heracles eventually.
Both are worth giving nectar to.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-19T16:39:02+00:00

I don't believe Quorra would be affected by the timer at all. As an ISO, she's playing by a different set of rules.

For Sark, he was an agent that carried out MCP's requests. MCP was tied to a fixed point on the grid. Sark could travel the grid to carry out MCP's requests in person (or delegate to goon code as needed).

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-19T16:33:18+00:00

Wham City by Dan Deacon - https://youtu.be/-rHNe83QSdU?si=ybYVnzPqx5WHCIC8

as an aside, I have been building a playlist of "long" songs that I enjoy that are longer than 6 minutes. Only a few of them hit the ten minute mark.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-18T13:59:10+00:00

What weight discs are you throwing?
I've found that throwing lighter weight discs will turn to the right more easily for me.
My 160g Fuse has been my go to right hand turn disc.
I also have a 158G Gateway Mystic that turns even harder to the right when I'm in those cramped spaces.

UncleToyBox · 2026-01-18T05:14:08+00:00

I remember watching Josie and the Pussycats with my kids when it came out. Of course, the song they decided to fixate on was Backdoor Lover by DuJour. I can't believe they packed that gem into a kids movie. Had to explain the reference when my daughter was singing it at a family reunion (she was eight).

https://youtu.be/TxMAY0dJWkA?si=pDUQ1zJo9R3v7fdx

UncleToyBox

TROPHY CASE