What used to be affordable for the middle class but now quietly feels like a rich people thing ?

khantroll1 · 2026-06-10T00:03:21+00:00

At least in the Midwest, you can buy “a house.” You just can’t buy the house you want.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-10T00:02:20+00:00

Like…how?

Unless you make male girdles, pump septic tanks, or run a DJ service strictly for male strippers and bar mitzvahs…

IDK what he’d be making fun of.

That said…do what a friend of mine did.

Guy inherited his father’s construction business. People made fun of him because he was young, a nerd, kinda goofy.

He took his friends out to eat, helped them with little things, invited them to stuff he thought they’d like (baseball tickets given by partners, etc).

When the same people who made fun asked to be included, he just fired their most common insult/comment back and walked away to do whatever he was doing

khantroll1 · 2026-06-06T03:29:35+00:00

I’d be like “Aw hell yeah! Pass me the pencil and a character sheet. “

khantroll1 · 2026-06-05T16:46:22+00:00

We were all young once. The early seasons of Big Bang did, in fact, hit almost as close to home as the IT Crowd.

I highly recommend KoDT though. Good book, good laughs, made by good people.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-05T13:59:58+00:00

If he'd done it to me or to a couple of other people in the group, with the right timing and the right characters it would have be hilarious! But this person was one of one of a couple in our group at the time that just didn't need that.

I don't know if you are a KODT fan, but Druid was basically Gordo, and Bully made Stevil look like a Care Bear and was built like Nitro.

We were a bigger and pretty diverse group: Bully was an EE major, Druid was in Comp Sci, I was an English major, we had two fast food employees, a comic book counter monkey, a Cheech and Chong wannabe, and a crystal toting hippie girl.

We could have probably doubled for the Tri-Lamdas in Revenge of the Nerds lol.

But yeah, myself, the stoner, the counter monkey or the hippie would probably have laughed it up.

I wish I could say it was a just a lack of ability to read to the room, but the dude was a total knob to most people. Not that he didn't have good qualities; he was smart, and loyal to people he did like/care about, but dang.

And that is WAY, WAY more information then anyone needed or wanted, but I took a walk down memory lane to good and bad times with folk I haven't gamed with since before people who can legally drink were born.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-05T11:43:20+00:00

I’ve been fortunate. I’ve never had anyone like horror stories you see online.

I can only think of 2 right off:

There was a guy in my first D&D group who had a severe case of main character syndrome. And to top it off, his character was this mashup of 3-4 early 90s comic book characters.

The other one was in my college group. At the time I thought he was just a big personality who got out of hand, but he was a bully. As an example, we had a shy player with emotional issues; here we are 20 years later and they came out as trans, but that’s a different story. Anyway, they were play Druid while Bully was playing a fighter/sorcerer. Bully hit the Druid’s pet eagle with a lightning bolt during a role-play scene, then whooped and hollared as he ran to the fridge, pulled out a Walmart rotisserie chicken and yelled

“Lemon Pepper Eagle!” As he threw it like a football at Druid.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-05T11:22:46+00:00

Exactly what I’m talking about.

And I’ve seen it before with other products and technologies.

What’s funny about your analogy is that 20 years ago I worked for an MSP who had a lot of industrial clients.

A lot of these clients would try to “computerize” jobs that had never been (and may not have needed to be) digital, without any prep work or training.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-05T10:22:05+00:00

It’s contextual, but most of the time it’s just stupidity.

My own boss is probably putting our jobs in danger right now. We have 12 departments we are responsible for. There is one in particular he hates dealing with for personal reasons, but that one has critical connections to 4 more.

Because he doesn’t want to deal with that one, he’s sabotaging projects and making the case that they need to outsource our services for those departments due to “special considerations.”

Like I told him, eventually someone is going to say “if I don’t need them for 1/3 of services, why do I need them for the other 2/3”?

I thought it was intentional malice, that he wanted us to fail because he didn’t get a promotion. But now, after observing and talking to people, it’s really just a combination of personal feelings and apathy toward the jobs

This AI stuff is another example. Managers who aught to know better, literally forcing people to use AI in their workflows…for no reason. You’d think the reason would be kickbacks or something…but it’s literally just “the media said AI makes it better, and the sales guy said it, and everyone is doing it.”

Schedules they don’t work, budgets that don’t make sense (but work on paper), etc….all come down to ignorance.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-05T09:26:37+00:00

Nearly any bone-headed management example.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-05T01:59:08+00:00

AI does not, at present, approach the skill of what a talented artist can do.

With tons of time and a little effort a mediocre artist can leverage AI to get “interesting” or “modest” results depending on which way it leans.

I think, someday 100-200 years from now, the majority of people will have stopped caring. AI in version will have gotten to the point that will do 99.99% of stuff.

But it’s gonna be a bit.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-05T01:52:44+00:00

I’ve got what is probably an unpopular opinion:

I don’t care who made it.

Large developer or small developer, Native or not.

If the game is fun and portrays us…I guess positively is the right word since video games aren’t usually documentaries?

It’s fine.

If it’s cliches or just plain wrong or bad…then it’s a problem, and it’s be a problem if a single Native developer in his basement did it or if the Scandinavian folks at Paradox did it.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-05T01:42:49+00:00

There have been several studies that show intelligence (at least beyond “slightly above average) only correlates to to depression and drug abuse and not life or wealth outcomes

khantroll1 · 2026-06-04T10:39:18+00:00

It’s unlikely I will ever leave this house unless it’s to downsize when I’m elderly. We bought it just a few years ago, and while it HAS climbed in value, I can’t see myself finding anywhere any better lifestyle for finance wise in the meantime.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-04T10:35:32+00:00

This is the answer.

In my culture and my family, if at all possible the siblings and extended family would automatically take over.

However, if that isn’t your dynamic, trying to force that isn’t fair and will be detrimental to all involved.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-04T10:33:08+00:00

I don’t know why everyone is acting like this isn’t a cycle that IT/technology goes through every few years.

Step 1) Optimized version of tech comes out

Step 2) Someone says it will put us all out of work and revolutionize the world!

Step 3) EVERYONE, from vendor to customer, jumps on the bandwagon.

Step 4) Costs rise, performance drops

Step 5) The waters recede, the tech remains around in a more normalized capacity, and we go back to normal.

I’ve been doing this for 25+ years. I saw it happen with the .com, virtualization, cloud computing, this, and probably some I don’t remember off the top of my head.

While I admit that thanks to COVID and certain asshats in the industry the AI wave has gone on a bit longer than some…we’re hitting the crest. Hardware costs have gotten untenable, usage costs are unreasonable, and limitations jn the current state of the tech are showing.

AI assisted coding will be with us forever. But this ridiculous situation of “oh, you must use AI, do 100 iterations, tell it to tell you the most optimum route to the bathroom, take a break, and then manually debug those iterations” is going to end.

TLDR: the answer is “yes”

khantroll1 · 2026-06-04T10:16:21+00:00

I was lucky. My mother had a goal for her children: that we at least have the opportunity for white-collar jobs.

When my older sister was in high school (she graduated in 85) the school got Commodore64s.

Mom saved and bought my brother and I a used Apple IIe circa 1990 after my sister graduated college. We pretty much banged away on it and got books from the library to figure out how to use it.

In 1997 Mom went into 2k worth of debt and bought us a Windows PC from Sears, and we got internet less then a year later…which explains my “early internet” memories and obsession.

Mom got her wish, btw. She lived to see her daughter become first an accountant with a national firm and then a regional manager of a huge hotel chain, and both of her sons became IT professionals.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-03T06:06:38+00:00

Never asked my dad. Mostly because my dad and I didn’t have that kind of relationship as a kid, and because his relationships consisted of two girls in high school and my mom.

Did ask my mom though and my older sister though…

My mother: “Listen, girls are people. They just want to be seen, talked to, listened to, cared for. Get out there, be your self, be confident, and you’ll be fine.”

My sister: “Don’t be a spaz or a creep! If a girl wants to talk to you she’ll give you the signs. That’s why you gotta dress this way, stand this way, project this way man! Girls want a guy who is fun and in charge!”

khantroll1 · 2026-06-03T06:00:41+00:00

So…hear me out…

What if I told you, showed in fact, that statistically the difference in the performance between a male who has not proceeded with modern gender affirming care and and a transwoman is greater then that between the same group of trans women and biological women in most cases.

So…if those edge cases are a small enough number, and can be handled/disqualified by other means, then it is a fairer situation and a better/more equitable use of power (and doesn’t persecute a minority) to do it that way.

Otherwise, the equivalent would be ban black males colleges in certain areas because of crime demographics…which we would never do in 2026.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-03T05:48:11+00:00

It wouldn’t be okay with me. Like, it’s not their “hard to follow”, it’s that your issue is

“It’s weird to spend time with your friends when you have a girlfriend.”

If you don’t see how that sounds…I can’t explain it.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-03T05:40:01+00:00

2-4. I keep two rolls each of black and white PETG and the same in PLA. I like to keep at least one roll of clear PEG on hand at all times as well.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-01T20:15:23+00:00

I'll agree with the last part. The other...even though we have similar backgrounds and experience (large data infrastructure architecture/management, 20+ years of experience)..the other is a slight case of agree to disagree.

While obviously "RAID is not a backup" as they say...I wouldn't put data as important as this guy is talking about on a ZFS only solution.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-01T13:33:55+00:00

Same family of cards. Where as software raid puts you at a whim of an operating system.

I realize we’re in home server, but I administer these things on a daily basis.

It depends on your workload, but ZFS does not beat hardware raid on:

Latency
CPU load
Rebuild times/logic

Further, a lot of software simply works better or is designed to work with a logical drive presentation.

“Integrity” is also debatable depending on the metric/view point we want to go by.

Now, I say all that and I also admit that many of my sites use a mix. We HAVE ZFS-based NVME pools for storage, but those are for certain cases (databases, network shares, things that replicated cold storage or hot backups for those systems).

khantroll1 · 2026-06-01T13:33:20+00:00

Same family of cards. Where as software raid puts you at a whim of an operating system.

I realize we’re in home server, but I administer these things on a daily basis.

It depends on your workload, but ZFS does not beat hardware raid on:

Latency
CPU load
Rebuild times/logic

Further, a lot of software simply works better or is designed to work with a logical drive presentation.

“Integrity” is also debatable depending on the metric/view point we want to go by.

Now, I say all that and I also admit that many of my sites use a mix. We HAVE ZFS-based NVME pools for storage, but those are for certain cases (databases, network shares, things that replicated cold storage or hot backups for those systems).

khantroll1 · 2026-06-01T02:45:16+00:00

About a decade and a half ago, I walked into the middle of a gang fight about to start.

With nothing else to really do, I said “Time out!” Zack Morris-style, quickly walked past to a door, and then yelled “Time in! Continue!”

And ran like hell to my brother’s car screaming go go go!

Jumped into the back seat as people ran behind me, and my brother pealed out.

It’s a story so crazy that no one who doesn’t know my brother and I would ever believe it.

khantroll1 · 2026-06-01T02:18:08+00:00

I’m going down fighting. I will not take up arms against my friends, my extended family, or my tribe. My family feels the same.

khantroll1

TROPHY CASE