Next you’re gonna tell me their hit album was called “Tabthamping” instead of “Tubthumping!” Where does it end?!

Honestly though, I thought the same!

Yeah, I never understood that either. He was the president of South Africa from 1994-1999. Yes, he kept a lower profile in the 2000s, but I remember even as a kid/teen seeing articles and photos of him in the news. Bizarre.

Now the Berenstain Bears one, I understand. At the same time, I just chalk that up to spelling. For what reason would I need to know how to spell “Berenstain?”

My first name is already uncommon, or even rare. At least in the US; it might be more common in Europe, though still probably uncommon there.

But I always liked the name “Hiram.” Not just uncommon, old-timey as well.

When my brother and I lived together, we definitely texted each other, either via text or Discord. When we only lived in a 2bdr apartment. If we were in each of our rooms, with the doors open, we could easily just talk really loudly if we wanted to. But we typically had headsets on.

If I’m visiting my family, if there’s something I want to show them on the computer, I’ll often just drop it into our family Discord. Easier that way.

Well at least they’ll get to use those fancy blue passports Brexiters were so excited about.

I’m not deep into it, but I’ve been trying to get deeper in with Home Assistant. I have several smart plugs, a smart thermostat, some Google Nest products, and even an indoor security camera.

What drove me to home automation, specifically the smart plugs where it all started, was that I live in an apartment. Most of the outlets aren’t connected to wall switches. So I’d have my various lamps around where the plugs/attached switches are like behind furniture or other awkward spots to reach to. It got annoying. The smart plugs solved that so I could turn them on/off from my phone.

Next, I started placing them on a schedule. So that when I got home (back when I was working from the office), I could come home to a lit house. Or if I fell asleep on the couch, all the lights will turn off at some point instead of being on all night. Or when I’m out of town, I can play with the lights to simulate someone being home.

Then I got a free Google Nest Mini (similar to an Amazon Echo). Controlling the lights from phone was great, but controlling via voice was even better! Because what if my phone wasn’t on me? Or battery dead? How about if I had guests who wanted to turn on/off lights? Now both bedrooms have one, plus the living/dining room. I can control everything from those, by voice.

The thermostat here, though digital, wasn’t even programmable. So I replaced it with a smart one, free from the power company. I can even control from my phone (or voice). Now I can schedule heating/cooling. During a trip, I’ll leave it outside of my at-home temp range to save money. But on the way back home, like from the airport, I can have it start heating/cooling so that by the time I get home, my apartment is ready for me.

Security camera is obvious. I travel a fair amount, so it’s an extra piece of mind.

Altogether, it’s about convenience and ease. These all solve or at least mitigate admittedly minor issues, but still, I don’t have to worry about them anymore. Some, especially the thermostat, even help me save money. And a couple even provide me with a bit more security (at least I feel that way).

So this is instead of the UPS, rather than in addition to?

I’m looking at one now and I’m assuming it’s like a big surge protector type thing. Do UPS have these built in?

It is a homelab, so it’s all basically experimental. I don’t really need any of this.

But yes, I should absolutely just buy a UPS =x

Not getting a UPS for my server. Even though I’m pretty sure one of my VMs got corrupted (it won’t boot in ESXi anymore) after the server shutdown during a brownout several months back. I’ve had a server at home for like 4yrs now. Have experienced multiple brownouts. Still don’t have a UPS, even though I always look for one.

PRC is Taiwan’s largest trading partner (2022 data). And According to this Reuter’s article from a few days ago, China is also Taiwan’s number one destination for investment. So I suppose it’s not surprising that the ruling class has connections to Chinese money and industry.

I guess in some ways, this is similar to the US and China as trading partners, even though they’re geopolitical rivals. Obviously Taiwan has a lot more to fear than the US does if things go south, but I wonder how much Taiwan-PRC economic ties play a role in preventing an outbreak of hostilities.

Though people said the same thing of Russia, especially after 2014 and look how that turned out. Of course, China isn’t Russia. So maybe it does help.

I thought the plane is supposed to be missing screws, not the passengers.

This reminds me of OOF: Out of Office. Like with automated email replies.

Shouldn’t it be OOO? But nope, it’s OOF.

I mentioned on another discussion board that I may have to start factoring in the plane manufacturer as I choose flights. Which is insane in this day and age. Unfortunately, Southwest is the carrier with the most flights and direct routes at my home airport, and Southwest only flies Boeing 737s. Plus, SWA is trying to replace their older 737s with 737 MAX models.

I’ve started flying Delta some last year, but like you said, Delta has both Boeing and Airbus in their fleet. But even if I did only choose Airbus flights with Delta, it’s not like they (and all other carriers) don’t sometimes change planes at the last minute, as needs dictate. Rarely, if ever, would I have the luxury to be like “Nope, nevermind, I’m not getting on that plane,” if that were to happen.

I know air travel is super, super, super safe compared to all other forms of transportation. You’re right that the odds of an incident are incredibly slim, given there are several tens of thousands of commercial passenger flights across the world each day that move millions of people. But boy does it feel like Boeing is aiming to change that, just so they can get some more pennies and dollars here and there. Shameful.

My family got a hand-me-down Tandy from one of our relatives. It would’ve been somewhere between 1992-1994, which was when I was like age 5-7. Looking at photos online, I’m thinking it was a Tandy 1000 SL. They gave us some games with it, but I really don’t even remember them. I know my mom bought some educational software for me. I “broke” this one by trying to install one of the games to it, instead of just running it from the floppy disk. It just wouldn’t properly boot to the OS (don’t even know what OS it was) afterwards. My dad was/is an IT guy but went to school for CS. Using BASIC, he’d program little graphics things for me. Like he did one thing looked like colored laser beams shooting across the screen. Another looked like bubbles floating up.

Our first brand new family PC was purchased in like 1995 (I would’ve been about 8). It was a Packard Bell. It looked like this. We got Internet (AOL) not long afterwards, which blew my mind, even as a kid. I’ve basically had Internet access ever since. I once again “broke” this one, again trying to install some software to it that I found online. It stopped booting to Windows. So I didn’t touch it for months. My dad is a mainframe and servers guy, so he wasn’t much help (even today, he’s not great with desktops) But I eventually found the Windows 95 CD that came with the PC and reinstalled Windows myself. In many ways, that was my first step into my current IT career.

My first computer, as in not the family PC, but my own, was in 2005. A high school graduation/going to college present was an HP Pavilion DV4000 series laptop. I specced it somewhat towards gaming, without breaking the bank, even though it was not a gaming laptop by any means. Was good enough that I could play Final Fantasy XI and WoW on it from campus or Starbucks or wherever. Priorities, am I right?

I never really gave up reddit. I mostly did in the aftermath of the API loss; certainly didn’t access it on mobile anymore (at least not signed-in to reddit).

But pretty quickly I realized that some communities on reddit, such as ones related to my job field, are pretty vital. Unfortunately, they haven’t been replicated to Lemmy, or are still pretty nascent. This goes for some of my interests/hobbies as well. Yes I could “be the change you want to see in the world,” but…I’ve done that on reddit before when I helped found a subreddit. I don’t really care to do that again. There’s one Lemmy community I’m trying to push a little bit, but I’m not a mod there, nor do I have the energy to build a community all over again. Sorry.

Anyway, I go back to reddit as needed. But only lurking, at least until about October, when I started commenting again.

I do try to not spend all day on reddit like I used to. My goal is to only go to reddit when I need information. Like I still do google/ddg searches with “reddit” as one of the keywords. And once I find what I need/want, I leave. But there are times when I catch myself scrolling my frontpage.

Idk. Reddit isn’t going anywhere. Even in May/June, I knew that. Reddit wasn’t built overnight (My account is like 13yrs old); it won’t go away overnight. And the same applies to Lemmy and other sites. It’ll take time before they get anywhere close to reddit, if they ever do. And that’s OK.

I also don’t have a problem with visiting different sites and communities and maintaining separate accounts all around. I have my Beehaw account; I have an account on Lemmy.World, since Beehaw defederated to LW; I have a separate account on Kbin, because I didn’t initially understand that Kbin was just Activity Pub frontend; I have accounts on Tildes and other sites. I have a standalone Mastodon account on an instance. My Pixelfed account is entirely separate. And I do use all of these. That’s OK. I’m not looking for “one account/site to rule them all.” Even when I was mainly on reddit, it wasn’t like that was the only place I was on. Different places have different things I’m seeking or like about them. Reddit just happens to be one of those sites. That’s all.

That’s not even remotely true. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of old-school forums out there, some from the earlier days of the Internet, that still exist. And they’re not all huge. Tildes, the platform OP mentioned, only does limited invitations, and isn’t particularly large, yet is vibrant (reddit post-API certainly helped). You can see here that Tildes has about 25k registered users; I imagine the vast majority aren’t active or only lurk. The same goes for tons of small communities on Discord.

I would agree if Beehaw was just starting off as just another forum out on the web. That’s certainly a hard task to start on from literally nothing. But Beehaw isn’t starting from nothing. As one of the larger Lemmy instances, a userbase has already been established. Of course, not everyone will come over to a standalone site or stick around for very long if they do migrate, but it is entirely possible for a smaller community to exist in a standalone configuration over time. As long as community members find value in it, and as long as admins/mods are willing to help grow the community, even it if is slow, people will stick around.

Not everywhere needs to be reddit, and not everyone wants that anyway.

I still think you’re engaging and charming. Even if you were quiet for the last two days.

Several years ago, when I was more just the unofficial office geek, our email was acting up. Though we had Internet access as normal. At the time, email (Exchange) was hosted on-prem on our server. Anything server related, I’d contact our MSP to handle it. Which usually meant they’d simply reboot the server. Easy enough, but I was kinda afraid and hesitant to touch the server unless the MSP explicitly asked/told me to do something.

I reported it to our MSP, expecting a quick response, but nothing. Not even acknowledgment of the issue. This was already going on for like an hour, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I went to the server, turned on the monitor…and it was black. Well, shit. Couldn’t even do a proper shutdown. So I emailed again, waited a bit, and again no response.

Well, if the server was being unresponsive, I figured a hard shutdown and reboot would be fine. I knew that’s what the MSP would (ask me to) do. What difference was them telling me to do it versus just me doing it on my own? I was going to fix email! I was going to be the hero! So I did it.

Server booted up, but after getting past the BIOS and other checks…it went back to black screen again. No Windows login. That’s not so terrible, since that was the status quo. Except now, people were also saying Internet all of a sudden stopped working. Oh shit.

Little did I know that the sever was acting as our DNS. So I essentially took down everything: email, Internet, even some server access (network drives, DBs). I was in a cold sweat now since we were pretty much dead in the water. I of course reached out AGAIN to the MSP, but AGAIN nothing. Wtf…

So I told my co-workers and bosses, expecting to get in some trouble for making things worse. Surprisingly, no one cared. A couple people decided to go home and work. Some people took super long lunches or chitchatted. Our receptionist was playing games on her computer. Our CEO had his feet up on his desk and was scrolling Facebook on his phone. Another C-suite decided to call it an early day.

Eventually, at basically the end of the day, the MSP reached out. They sent some remote commands to the server and it all started working again. Apparently, they were dealing with an actual catastrophe elsewhere: one of their clients’ offices had burned down so they were focused on BCDR over there all day.

So yeah, I took down our server for half a day. And no one cared, except me.

I’m enjoying Beehaw. I really haven’t looked around at other instances that much, but it’s pretty chill here.

Ooh that’s pretty neat and inexpensive. Thanks for sharing!