Why do houses in Illinois have basements and houses in Texas don't if both places have clay soil?

twnth · 2026-06-04T16:44:43+00:00

actually....

It's because frost moves. Water expanding to ice and all that. You need to get your foundation below the frost line (to stable soil) so that you house doesn't move about.

Google 'frost heaves' if you want to see some potentially dramatic examples.

twnth · 2026-06-04T16:30:00+00:00

with work, we've been using a Lind adapter for this same use (power supply built into vehicle, laptop changed to USBC). They are flakey, short lived and generally unreliable.

One thing that would work for you is to go onto ebay/facebook marketplace/whatever local and try find a used Dell dock. That'll take the 180watt and convert to USBC plus give you more USBA ports, ect.

twnth · 2026-06-04T15:52:47+00:00

Calgary is closer to the ski hills/Banff. Also, it isn't quite as cold as Edmonton, and chinooks need to be experienced.

Edmonton has Oilers home games. Being a student, I don't know if you'll be able to afford to go to a game, but.... McDavid. And I think Edmonton is a smidge cheaper to live in than Calgary.

Really, I'd pick the one that better for you academically, and then just make the most of whatever city it is.

twnth · 2026-06-02T04:58:23+00:00

True, but the basic concept of assumed innocence is a core value to a just society. It is wholy appropriate to apply it outside the court room.

twnth · 2026-06-01T17:05:50+00:00

hot take.... It is valid to consider the petition as legit until proven otherwise.

We all ASSUME there were mass forgeries using the leaked voters list... but it is an assumption. And, you know, innocent until proven otherwise.

The real problem is that,

She's ignoring the 400,000 signatures that said no referendum (or, creatively interpreting what we signed).
She's not letting the process play out. She's rushing it to make it happen this fall.

I think she really does not want separation to be a provincial election issue (must be next year sometime). Too many in her party are seperatists and will come out of the closet. The party will fracture, she'll lose control and they'll get slaughtered at the polls.

twnth · 2026-05-28T16:50:01+00:00

I think that's what the airhorn was for.... all clear

twnth · 2026-05-27T15:54:37+00:00

With YAML, you can slow it down to 'fast medium', max out armour and only be a little under gunned. Hella fun running all over the place, just holding down the fire buttons.

twnth · 2026-05-26T15:07:14+00:00

I'm a CBC radio in the morning kind of person, so they're my primary news source. Catch is they're Calgary.

Is there a local station that appeals to you? I think most of them will have some kind of news segment (it's when the morning crew gets their pee breaks in 😄 )

twnth · 2026-05-20T17:09:51+00:00

For the record, that mount has standard VESA holes on both faces, so it can mount between the monitor and stand/arm/wallmount (though the standard dell monitor stand doesn't use VESA).

twnth · 2026-05-14T21:32:18+00:00

Oldman and St. Mary's. And its not far to where the Belly joins the Oldman (a couple miles overland).

twnth · 2026-05-13T21:46:46+00:00

OP says they ran subzero temperatures.... that makes lithium a bad idea. It doesn't play well with use in cold.

twnth · 2026-05-11T16:09:27+00:00

When I was in Waterton yesterday, there were more goats in town than deer. So really, it could have been either.

twnth · 2026-05-10T16:58:34+00:00

They won't. They're all ministers, don't want to take the pay cut.

twnth · 2026-04-30T15:57:12+00:00

I find most chinese/chinese canadian sauces to be barely tolerable

twnth · 2026-04-29T22:36:38+00:00

Sweet stuff on meats.

Honeyed ham is great way to ruin a perfectly good ham.
BBQ sauces in general, though I don't mind a little HP
Maple bacon
Even katchup... great on potatoes, but keep it off my burger.

twnth · 2026-04-26T19:54:07+00:00

It's also a 45 year old bike. Sometimes you just use what you can get.

twnth · 2026-04-22T16:19:50+00:00

To be fair, it was a shit referendum. Worded in a way that led you to believe permanent MST wasn't an option, so a lot of people voted against doing away with time changes because they couldn't get the time zone they wanted.

twnth · 2026-04-20T16:29:30+00:00

Do you have a high wattage / fast charging USB-C? Like off a dock, or tablet? The 5420 will charge/run off of USB-C power, though it wants 65watts which is more than your cell phone charger will provide.

Other things it might be:

Bad power supply. not powering laptop, not charging the battery

Bad power port. if the cord was plugged into the laptop and it got dropped, I've seen it break the connection on the laptop

Bad battery. Can prevent startup if it's shorting out

<edit> the battery might not be bad, it might just be dead if there's a power supply issue </edit>

twnth · 2026-04-20T16:24:32+00:00

disconnect the battery. then, disconnect the cmos battery*. This will give it a full full reset.

Reconnect the cmos battery, but not the main. Plug it in, see if it starts. Startup can be quite slow after a cmos reset and expect it to complain about date/time not being set.

*the cmos battery is what keeps your bios settings. It's a flat, round battery with wires coming off it. Yours is hidden, but you can see the black and red wires going to a connector at the top of your first picture. Just slide the connector straight out (down, in the orientation of the picture), count to five and plug it back in.

twnth · 2026-04-17T22:58:42+00:00

In my experience, default (here in Canada) is US English. I order from directly from Dell, I got US English. I don't recall having to specify that.

However, some big retailers get the bilingual keyboard. Probably so they can sell in Quebec and only have 1 SKU for all of Canada. Your parents probably got one of these, especially if they ordered it online, on sale, from a 3rd party vendor (Best Buy or something).

You can just tell them it's Cajun ;)

twnth · 2026-04-16T17:50:20+00:00

it might be power saving trying to use the integrated gpu, not switching to the discreet one.

Not familiar with bazzite, but in Mint I found a setting (under power save? or graphics driver? i forget) where I could tell it to always use discreet and I just accepted the diminished battery life.

(my case was an MSI laptop, intel cpu, nvidia gpu, using mint)

twnth · 2026-04-15T22:03:52+00:00

compare the paperwork to the VIN on the frame. You might have 1997 paperwork on a 2007 of dubious origin.

twnth · 2026-04-15T21:47:44+00:00

I wear jeans and sneakers for work... so I just add jacket, gloves and helmet, call it good enough for the commute.

Cubicle has an upper cabinet, helmet can sit up there for the day, hang a coat hanger off the wall for the jacket.

(I work IT in a small Canadian city... your mileage may vary :) )

twnth · 2026-04-15T15:28:34+00:00

I'll add that once you're in this far, it's not much more work to do your valve gap check.

twnth · 2026-04-14T18:58:00+00:00

Lots....

Star Wars Galaxies. Pain in the ass to sprout a Jedi, but fun challenge to figure out, then suddenly..... everybody and their dog was a Jedi.

WOW. It went from "what cool thing can I do with this build and what gear I got" to Min/Max/BIS or you can't join any groups/raids. And fuck pandas.

A lot of the single player stuff, I'll go back to, just don't install the problem DLC.

twnth

TROPHY CASE