It feels pretty easy when all you have to do is observe and give occasional instructions.

Most people are pretty bad at guessing the amount of effort someone else needs to complete a task.
Most people also have enough empathy to ask how much effort it was instead of telling you what they experienced and assuming it was the same for you.

Unfortunately, some people will still think a headache is painless because they are not the one experiencing it.

The holocaust was legal, hiding Jews to keep them alive was illegal.

Following the law does not guarantee you’re doing the right thing.

I miss the comfort of having a single OS (not multiple distros to choose from), and a father who would reinstall the OS when I broke it too much again.
I miss the Macromedia Flash games, bringing games to school on a floppy disk labeled “homework” (then discovering I’d only brought the shortcut).

All of this is just nostalgia, and while I miss it, I’m happier now with my Linux Distro.
I’ve customised the desktop environment, broken the OS and reinstalled it myself (several times), and copied games to another device while forgetting to copy the folder containing my save files.
I guess some things stay the same.

Cat on my lap

I once wrote a 2 line, 10 word script that had 9 bugs in it. I’m not overly proud of that one.

I met someone who had been given a PHEV company car. They had been driving it for 6 months, and I was the first person who informed them that their car could be plugged in to charge. They thought it just charged itself while driving.

I doubt this is an isolated incident.

Many companies and councils are trying to look more green by making the switch to EV, but don’t want the “risk” of an actual EV. I believe they are the main customers for PHEVs, and they are also the least likely to recharge them.

I’ve even heard of people deliberately refueling and not recharging because they have a company car for fuel, but would have to pay for electricity themselves.

Walk in, remove light. Now none of the switches control the light.

McDonald’s found liable for excessively hot coffee

Written on a window: “Please use door ->”.

The window only goes down to waist height, it doesn’t even look like a door. I really want to know the story behind that sign.

€120M compared to his promised $700B (€600B) bonus is 0.02% or (assuming 365 days per year, 12 hours per day) is equivalent to 56 minutes of work.

It has about the same disincentive as a $7 fine for a minimum wage worker.

This is only considering the bonus and ignoring any income on top of that. He can afford it without even thinking.

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Grease nipple

The other problem with hyperfocus is that along with not controlling when it happens, we also can’t control what we’re hyperfocusing on.

I failed university because I spent the first 2 weeks making a Minecraft mod. University was more important and also very interesting, but I just couldn’t stop.
I’m still pretty proud of the mod though.

The correct answer is sleep. Brain will disagree with that too.

My 94yo friend is still going strong. His advice is to keep moving. Even just going for a short walk does more than you realise.

Look after your eyes, ears, and back, and always wear the recommended protective gear. People who say you look stupid using the correct technique or wearing protective gear will either die first, or regret their decision after it’s too late to do anything about it.

Most of all, learn from other peoples mistakes. You don’t have enough time or luck to make them all yourself.

My house has a landline phone connected to the internet modem via a VoIP box. My entire house has battery backup so the modem, router, and phones stay on during a blackout, but the equipment my modem talks to (I’m assuming somewhere on the street) does not have a battery backup, so the phones are still useless in a blackout.

If you intend to install both, install Windows first. It has a habit of overwriting other bootloaders.

When you install Linux second, it should install a bootloader that will let you choose which OS to boot each time you turn on the computer.

Always backup data you care about. Installing an OS carries some risk of data loss.

House insulation.

I live in Australia where the minimum insulation required by law is a long way below inadequate, and many cheap contractors go below the minimum because it’s so hard to prosecute them.

I already had solar and a house battery, so the next obvious step was replacing the insulation. With my already very low electricity bills I cant say that it literally paid for itself (although it would have without the solar and battery), but it has made the house so much more comfortable. On some summer days, the AC would be using 7kW and barely keeping the inside temperature down to 30°C/85°F. Now it uses 3-5kW and the whole house stays comfortable.

Also, finding and patching the massive gaps from the previous “landlord special” house extension made a huge difference to the temperature of that room, and explained how lizards had managed to get inside.

I’m using an old thinkpad with Ubuntu Server as the OS. Almost any OS will do, but Ubuntu server has a single button to install docker during the OS install, so it’s easy.

I’m using docker compose instead of docker so that I can look at and update any scripts, and don’t have to remember anything. For the file sharing, I’m currently upgrading from Samba to Copyparty - the best software I have seen in a long time.

I’m also using WireGuard and Syncthing to duplicate the storage to an identical laptop in a family member’s house, rsync for weekly backups, and calendar reminders to do a monthly offline backup (automated with a script except for remembering to connect and disconnect the external drive).

I doubt you need all of this, but an old laptop with docker has so many options that you might start adding more stuff just because you can. I’ve also added HomeAssistant, Immich, and even a Factorio server to the same laptop using docker.