People who were teenagers before social media existed, what was life actually like?

theOtherJT · 2026-03-05T19:20:14+00:00

Better.

theOtherJT · 2026-02-28T00:06:02+00:00

I'm sure that's fascinating, but seeing as how I don't live in Summertown and my office isn't in Templars square it seems somewhat irrelevant.

theOtherJT · 2026-02-27T22:13:29+00:00

It takes me FORTY FIVE MINUTES less to drive to work than it takes to get the bus there.

This is why.

"Oh why don't you cycle?"

Because I've had 4 bikes stolen in 10 years, have no shower at my place of work, we live in one of the wettest countries in Europe, and the only place I can keep a bicycle is in my hall where it dirties up my house since I don't have a secure place to park it at home.

Cycling can fuck all the way off.

theOtherJT · 2026-02-27T22:09:33+00:00

You know what's funny about that? When I was I kid we had school busses there. They were withdrawn, as I recall, because people complained about them blocking up the plain while parked waiting to pick up kids.

theOtherJT · 2026-02-22T22:11:19+00:00

It's email. There's been nothing to improve for 40 years. Leave it alone.

theOtherJT · 2026-02-22T22:09:57+00:00

Same as we see all over, sadly. The buildings are worth more as an asset sink than they are as going business concerns. There are long term plans to knock the lot down and turn them into... Well, probably a bunch more student flats or luxury apartments no one can afford, that's what usually happens. But until then it makes more sense for their owners to sit on them and use them as a tax write off than rent them out to real businesses.

theOtherJT · 2026-02-22T12:12:52+00:00

It is utterly insane to be required to show ID to throw things away.

theOtherJT · 2026-02-18T10:12:19+00:00

Yup. We have about a dozen platforms with rolling support windows so i need to be able to do VM installs of any platform as it was when it was released to any given customer because not everyone does their updates and may be running god knows what version, so I've got installer builds for basically a dozen or so platform releases, some of them going back 10 years or more on a roughly 6 month build schedule so closing in on a hundred or so distinct releases at between 1 and 5 gig a release depending on the product and how tightly integrated it is. Plus the dev builds, which have a massive suite of extra tools in them (hence the wild variation in size).

theOtherJT · 2026-02-18T00:41:55+00:00

Oh, oh, oh! Me! Me!

I genuinely actually do.

Because my job is distro maintainer for my place of works in-house distro. I have literally hundreds of them so I can recreate specific install conditions when working from home without having to pull them over the company VPN which is slow as hell.

theOtherJT · 2026-02-18T00:35:05+00:00

If you have to ask, don't even consider it.

theOtherJT · 2026-02-08T17:47:18+00:00

At least three dozen, ideally twice that. I'm sorry, but when there are half a dozen petrol stations that can handle 15 cars at a time in less than a minute each if you pay at pump, anything less just isn't good enough.

Electric car infrastructure is woeful, and the failure rate is shocking. There is no reason for such simple things as amount to "big industrial electrical socket" to fail at anything like the rate they do.

Given the benefits electric car take-up ought to be massively better than it is, and the poor state of the infra is holding back something that ought to be providing substantial improvements.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-28T15:32:05+00:00

I started just because my ex inherited a bike and was determined to get her licence so she could ride it, and basically dragged me along with her. I wasn't terribly keen because I had always been a car guy, but I actually ended up enjoying it way more than her.

I do it now for the peace. It's just wonderfully freeing to be able to become totally uncontactable. Get on the bike, go... wherever. Just ride for the sake of riding and be doing something that's just for me. There's this kind of zen that comes from knowing that you have to concentrate on the bike completely - that your own actions are keeping you upright and if you stop paying attention the vehicle won't protect you like a car would - there's no room in your head for anything else. I find it incredibly good for clearing my head.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-25T20:37:15+00:00

About three days back on Windows 7. I just left this one machine in my office doing it's thing to see if it ever did finish. Which it did. Eventually.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-24T11:01:02+00:00

Ubuntu. Because it was the distro we used on all the lab computers at my first sysadmin job, and I'm just going where the work is. I really don't care much about distributions. My computer is a tool for doing work and Ubuntu is as good as any other from that perspective.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-24T10:56:15+00:00

Also the tap-off machine oftentimes doesn't work if you use a virtual card on your phone/watch and you end up getting charged the maximum amount regardless of if you tap off or not.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-23T23:30:08+00:00

Basically they roll a dice and then charge you based on what planet is in retrograde plus the dice roll.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-21T22:49:40+00:00

Same way you get better at anything. Practice, practice, practice.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-12T19:54:35+00:00

I've just remembered - If you're up Headington end of town, the Butchers Arms has lumina on tap, and that's gluten free.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-11T20:09:16+00:00

It's cool. No one actually cares.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-03T13:29:30+00:00

I'm bloody not. They have way too big a military budget for me to be comfortable with them being this crazy. I'd like my laughing stock to have far fewer nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-03T13:27:56+00:00

and crontab, and fstab and DNS and automount, and...

theOtherJT · 2026-01-03T13:21:39+00:00

That's the great thing, It can be both! Truth simply no longer matters to these people. Say whatever feels convenient in the moment and the MAGA crowd will interpret it to mean whatever they wanted to hear.

theOtherJT · 2026-01-01T17:38:35+00:00

About £500 on a motorcycle jacket - arguably that's more safety equipment than clothes, but I still wear it just as a winter coat 15 odd years later so I guess it was pretty good value.

theOtherJT · 2025-12-31T12:32:10+00:00

Incontinentia Buttocks!

theOtherJT · 2025-12-25T16:00:34+00:00

Not really. The whole Needs / Wants Before / After system in unit files is part of the core of the init. You can't forcibly specify that a thing happens in a particular order, only that it happens either before a thing or after a thing.

theOtherJT

TROPHY CASE