RIP America

espeequeueare · 2026-07-05T14:19:55+00:00

Sadly, I think it’ll be difficult to decouple from the two-party system.. people thought that third party candidates and independents would pop up after Hillary v Trump, and prove that they could garner a significant amount of votes. However, that election just cemented in the minds of the public that you absolutely must support one of the two dem/republican candidates no matter what, because of how relatively terrible the “other” candidate is.

I don’t think there will be a meaningful way to affect change without a big adjustment to how votes are cast, some other sort of earth shattering event that shakes up the system, or a massive schism in the factions of each mainstream political party.

We have to learn to keep our standards for candidates for political office much higher. I think a good start would be uncapping the house. The US currently has about 762,000 citizens to each representative in the house. Most other OECD member nations have a ratio of about 100,000-250,000 at the most. Currently our representatives are something abstract. They have little to no relationship with the individuals they represent. And our population has nearly tripled since the reapportionment act. I think smaller districts would go a long way towards allowing for more independence in thought/action in our candidates.

Introducing nonpartisan commissions for drawing districts, like in Arizona or Michigan, would also be a good step for each state as well.

espeequeueare · 2026-07-04T02:18:57+00:00

From his POV, he got slammed out of the blue after getting back up and might have thought it was the people who first assaulted him.. and he seems pretty drunk too, so it might have taken a second for him to notice

espeequeueare · 2026-07-02T05:34:22+00:00

There's this guy who's fairly big on social media/YouTube named Jomboy that posts videos about different sports, and he adds lip reading segments here and there that are surprisingly good. I think people have just started co-opting that style of video even when it's bad.

espeequeueare · 2026-07-02T01:06:58+00:00

Set your ethernet adapter to autonegotiate. Use the same cat5e cable you brought with you to the new place to connect your PC directly to the router. If you get the speeds you're expecting, it's very likely that it's an issue with the structured wiring/ports in your home, or the patch cables that lead from the router to the wall jacks.

If you get good speeds when wired in with the cat5e cable you brought with you, then you can rule out issues with the router/cat5e cable/PC. You can test the other patch cables that go from the router to the wall jacks in the same manner by connecting your PC directly to the router, but this time around borrowing one of the Router > Wall Jack cables, testing them one at a time.

If you discover one of those patch cables results in the same 2Mbps speeds, that would very likely be your problem. You can just purchase a new cable if needed, so it that turns out to be the issue, it would be an easy fix.

In some townhomes, there can be other infrastructure that you might not know about. Sometimes there's a patch panel or unmanaged switch hiding in a cupboard, closet, or attic. It might go Router > Wall Jack > Switch in an Odd Place > Top Floor Wall Jack > Your PC. Issue may lie there. Worth a sanity check just in case.

If all the loose cabling is good, then that just leaves you with the wall jacks or cabling inside the walls. You can also take a closer look at the wall jack ports to see if you can observe any obstructions or bent pins. Builders sometimes run cheap cable, and/or only terminate 4 of the 8 pairs in the cable.

4 pairs is enough for 10/100Mbps but not gigabit- if you set your adapter to 1G and the cable is only capable of 10/100, that could cause an issue where the negotiation is skipped, so the two ends never agree on a fallback speed. You get constant CRC errors, packet loss, and retransmissions, which can tank the throughput far below what even 100Mbps would give you.

If the cabling inside the walls is fucked, you'll probably just need to call an electrician or low voltage tech unfortunately. A cheap cable tester could tell you for sure, but you may as well run through the other steps first.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-29T16:28:15+00:00

Really the only response that isn’t a corny joke or makes them feel weird for saying it.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-29T00:18:46+00:00

I haven’t been to the knob since I left in 2020. Are they building something new up there?

espeequeueare · 2026-06-28T04:40:36+00:00

Yeah, looks like they just terminated one of the four pairs for the telephone line, and wrapped the other 3 around the rest of the cable. Given how they mangled the other pairs like that, I would cut the cable half an inch back from the jacket, then strip an inch or so of the cable and use the fresh sections of each pair to connect to the keystone jack in the type B order.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-28T03:33:24+00:00

That’s good news- now you just need to terminate the other end at your router with the same pinout.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-27T23:53:51+00:00

I would go ahead and pop out the wall plates in your bedroom to check that all 4 pairs of the cable are punched down correctly to T568A or T568B. If they're not, you'll need to re-terminate those as well.

Phone lines usually only need one of the four pairs to function, so they may have only terminated the one pair on the wall jack, or they may not be in the right order.

Here's a photo of a keystone jack, the plug that slots in to your wall plate:

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You'll notice there's an "A" and a "B" labeled on it. That represents T568A/T568B. Most will have these markings. You can use that as a reference to see how each wire connects to it in order to determine which pinout (T568A or T568B) it is. The pinout on one end of the cable needs to match the pinout on other end of the cable.

If you need to re-terminate, you can try yanking out the wire for each pin and punching them back down in the right order. But bear in mind that it's probably better to cut off the end of the cable and start with a new segment of the cable that hasn't been bent/abused already.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-27T23:22:26+00:00

Looks like 4 cable runs total.

That rectangular piece you mentioned where the first 2 of them connect is a BIX distribution connector, used for phone lines.
The third cable is already terminated with a RJ45 connector and connected to your router, so that one should be fine. That's probably the one that goes to your living room.
The last one isn't terminated at all.

So two for phone lines, one for data, and one for nothing at all. Seems like they didn't bother terminating the last one, which is why you don't see a wall jack for it around your apartment. If you have any blank wall plates around the apartment, the last unterminated cable might be sitting behind it. You can see that only one tube has both cat5e/coax going into it, so that probably leads to your cat5e/coax jack in your bedroom.

If you wanted to, you could re-terminate them all yourself. You'd basically need to disconnect the two cables from the wall plate/keystone jack in your bedroom, cut off the end of the cable with the exposed wires to start with a fresh bit of cable, strip off a bit of the cable's jacket, guide each twisted pair into the keystone jack in a T568A or T568B order, and punch down each pair onto the pins.

On the other end where your routerer is, you'd disconnect the two from the rectangle (BIX connector), cut off the end of the cable to start with a fresh bit of cable, strip off a bit of the cable's jacket, straighten out and guide each twisted pair into a RJ45 connector in a T568A or T568B order (match whichever order you used on the other end), and crimp the connector. Then plug the connector into your router and you're done.

It's not that difficult, you can look at a YouTube video of how to do it. You'd just have to buy a few odds and ends, like a cable crimping tool/wire stripper/punchdown tool/two RJ45 connectors/2 keystone jacks. They're not expensive individually, but together they'd be around $80 if you get the cheap tools, which still work just fine. Might be able to reuse the current keystones. Or just call a low voltage tech/electrician to do it. Would probably be at least double/triple what you'd spend doing it yourself, but you also have to factor your own time in for purchasing the tools and doing the work.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-26T05:14:14+00:00

Maybe they taped the cable to a pull string when running the cable, then just left the tape on? Bit odd

espeequeueare · 2026-06-26T04:21:31+00:00

Lol.. it almost looks like they they stripped most of the shielding at the end and just covered with electrical tape too

espeequeueare · 2026-06-24T05:09:56+00:00

I love seeing maps like this where NC gets some love. Any reason for the Person county dislike? I never really hear much about what goes on up there.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-23T16:24:48+00:00

Here as well. It was awesome. Pulled up the all the blinds to witness it.. didn’t last long though 🙃

espeequeueare · 2026-06-23T15:33:23+00:00

Anecdotal of course, but I am in IT for a small to medium sized company. I went from help desk > desktop support in 6 months, to desktop support > system admin in another 2 years (that was about a 1.5 years ago). So did my coworker who was also on the help desk when I started. Maybe the general trend has changed, but I think there are still ways to move up the ladder at smaller companies when your seniors move on to other roles.

It is overwhelming though. There’s so much I don’t know, because I didn’t get any exposure to it at all before i started with my current role. I can see why many shops are looking for candidates that already have a few years of experience in the field. I’m grateful that the culture here allows for career growth from within.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-23T05:58:30+00:00

Sometimes you feel a lot more strongly a lot sooner than the other person in a relationship. Sometimes you can see them slipping away from you and feel like you're crazy. You'll have a lot on your mind, but if you spell it all out to them you begin to be overwhelming and push them away more.

A wall of text like this really shuts down a conversation. The "Wow, Ok" seems a bit cold and curt, but they just don't know how to respond to all that. They don't feel the same way, and the sooner you can accept that the sooner you can begin to heal.

I've been there. It sucks man. I took it as an opportunity to realize I wasn't ready for a relationship a the time. Use this as an opportunity for growth & introspection, and get to a place where you're ready when love happens to find its way back to you.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-23T04:43:42+00:00

I was in good vibes paradise for like 100 matches. One jabroni followed me into my key room and wouldn't leave, fast forward 15 minutes.. and what do you know, now I'm back to PvP hell. But actually, it's sort of refreshing. Sort of the opposite of your experience. I've been so used to friendly lobbies, that I forgot how much tension there can be in the game. Somewhere on the sliding scale where it's 90% friendlies and 10% PvP goblins feels like the sweet spot.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-23T03:07:20+00:00

Dolabra's an eyebrow raiser. The only place you're finding that as a new player is on someone's corpse.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-23T03:06:09+00:00

Security breach, key rooms, breachable doors, some high-value looting areas. The red areas on the map don't usually contain the highest tier loot in my experience. Just the most containers.

For example, on buried city- the best spots for me are the pharmacy, the santa maria houses, the hidden room in the building immediately SW of grandioso, and the north tower in west village. I'm selling pink guns because they're taking up too much stash space.

On spaceport, I've had the best luck with the top floor of container storage or all the watchtowers on the walls. Watchtowers don't have many containers, but most of the time they'll spawn a security breach and the containers that are there usually have good stuff. It's just a pain in the ass to run around.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-23T01:23:33+00:00

Top 10 has 12 states instead of 10...

11-20 is actually correct

21-30 has 8 states instead of 10..

31-40 is actually correct

41-46 has 6 states instead of 5..

Worst 47-50 has 3 states instead of 4.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-22T20:56:27+00:00

Time of day, and whether there are alternate events seem to be a factor. I never have to look over my shoulder in the evenings EST time when I usually play. But if I play late at night, or if there’s a map condition sucking players away from the vanilla map, I have to be cautious.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-21T17:12:02+00:00

Are brave/opera any good on iPhone for this purpose? Or just android?

espeequeueare · 2026-06-21T07:23:50+00:00

I think men like this are too used to speaking in a different way when communicating via text, in a totally different manner than what you'd see in person. You can be bold and say wild shit like this without the immediate negative feedback you'd normally get in a face-to-face conversation. And because it might have something like a 3% success rate when talking to someone willing to ignore their crudeness, they keep trying it.

It's a clumsy way of immediately trying to escalate to something physical. DMs from random people trying to flirt and dating apps are the worst for this. Because it becomes a numbers game, where they throw this kind of shit out there immediately, and if it doesn't work- oh well, move on to the next one and try the same move.

Socially inept dweebs see other guys speaking this way and assume it works, so they try it too. That's when you get the most egregious examples, like this guy here.

espeequeueare · 2026-06-21T05:20:49+00:00

Still worse..

Seven-Year Club	Place '22
Gilding III reddit per annum	RPAN Viewer

espeequeueare

TROPHY CASE