Search results

I bought three of these back in 2016. I've had no issues with them except for the fact that reads become slower in parts of the drive where data hasn't been refreshed in a while. For example: For now my kludge for fixing this has been to defragment the drive. I use MyDefrag and the "System...

It sounds like that job is a keeper, and the boss really likes you. You definitely lucked out. I had a great boss on the last job I worked as an employee. The job itself wasn't that great. It was a taximeter repair shop. The pay was low. I really wasn't planning to stay there long term. The...

I'd be in the same boat myself if I had to get a lease. No steady paycheck type income. And no prior leases to use as references. That said, if your dancer friends make all this money they probably have nice bank accounts. Can't they use that as collateral for a lease? Me neither. It was hard...

I'll keep the tablet or Sprint phone options in mind. For now though I should be OK. The current situation is that my mother gets two checks a year for RMDs, and I get one. In addition to that there might be a very occasional small check from various class action lawsuits which we are sometimes...

No, I'm still in lock down. So long as my mother is alive traveling around isn't going to be possible. The issue here is that I can't deposit checks with the PC, only with the mobile app on a phone. I don't know why the bank doesn't let you use scanned images of the check so you don't need a...

I'm reading mixed results on whether banking apps will work. Since that would be my primary reason for upgrading then it might not even be worth my while. Also, if you install a custom ROM do you lose all your current apps and data? That would be a showstopper for me.

A few years ago I got my friend's old S5. I've been using it as a gadget, not a phone (i.e. no cell phone service). I can access the Internet via WiFi so it's fairly useful even without a phone contract. Anyway, one thing it's been great for is depositing checks from home. Unfortunately, first...

How do you even cool something like that? That's a space heater. Air cooling isn't going to work at those power levels.

That's the technical definition but I'll go with Lunar's definition if you want to define a generation as having similar values and characteristics. Those born in 1960 or later tend to be much more like generation X than like the boomers. The baby boomers became the hippies in the 1960s (whom I...

The kind that takes out people the US government deems "inconvenient". All joking aside, in my first year of college I was eating dinner in the dining hall by myself (as usual, BTW-didn't really make any friends) and had a strange person sit down across from me. Not a student. He started by...

As strange as it sounds, some people actually enjoy those things. My mother loved gardening. My brother loves remodeling projects. I liked doing all the concrete work in the yard (borders, paths, patio), even if was murder on my hands. Not thrilled about shoveling snow, but with climate change...

I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. This is coming from someone who last moved 43½ years ago when they had far less stuff (seriously, how much stuff do 15 year olds have?). As far as I'm concerned, my next move will be when they carry me out. The house is paid for, I have more than...

I'll probably do something like that after my mom passes. I honestly won't need the money, but I'll have more space than I need and would welcome the company. It'll also be nice helping out people who otherwise wouldn't have a place to live. The new normal may well be people staying with their...

Historically over the long term housing prices keep pace with inflation. Right now depending upon where you live they're as much as 5 times as high as they would be had they kept pace with inflation over the last 40 or 50 years. Long term that situation isn't sustainable. We're in a game of...

If they do nothing with Social Security, it'll mean a roughly 20 something percent cut in benefits around the time I start collecting. However, I doubt they would do an across the board cut. They'll probably cut the benefits of those getting large amounts by more so those at or under the poverty...

Unfortunately, people usually go in only one direction as they age. The biggest thing is she just lost any desire to walk in late 2017. She had a hematoma in the brain which they fixed. It may have affected her balance, among other things. The reason we put her in the hospital in late 2017 was...

In other news, I don't think I mentioned it here, but I retired in 2017. I've been taking care of my mother since about 2014. In 2017 my consulting gig ran out. There really wasn't anything on the horizon at that point anyway. Plus caring for my mother got more intensive, to the point I probably...

I'm one of them. Yes, I brush regularly. Unfortunately I have a sweet tooth. And for much of my life I haven't had the money to keep up with dental work. Cavities end up becoming root canals and crowns instead once I do have the money to go the dentist. And now the pandemic added a new wrinkle...

I've been in that exact position my entire life. Once I aged off my father's plan in college I had no health insurance. I'm a little less than 6 years away from Medicare. I was hoping Biden would lower the age to 55 or 60 but so far it doesn't look that way. We really need single payer in this...

Actually 2021 was 2020 part 2. Let's hope 2022 isn't 2020 part 3. I've actually given up hoping the new year will be better than the last one. At this point I'm just happy if it's not worse.

That's really the thing I missed the most when I went to 7. That and the fact some 16-bit Windows programs no longer ran under 7. In fact, running those programs is really the only time I boot into XP.

Right now I'm running an A10-7870K that's roughly 5 years old. I was running an Athlon XP3000 with Windows XP well into the 2010s. By that point it was well north of 10 years from state-of-the art. Any newer hardware should age even more gracefully given that processors have gotten faster than...

I doubt I'll have any software in the near future which requires 10 to run on. Also, if I upgrade to 10 don't I lose all my settings and software installations? Last thing I want to do is start over from scratch. My current setup can dual boot to XP. Haven't used XP in a while but I'm curious...

What ever happened to "Windows 10 was supposed to be the last version of Windows ever?" Still using 7 and I have zero desire or need to upgrade.

Actually, it's 31 one genders NY recognizes, not 32.

The big issue for me isn't what a person identifies as. It's the massive amount of confusion, and the constantly changing number of genders, which are the problem. I think NY state now recognizes something like 32 different genders. To try to remember who is what, and refer to them by whatever...

In other news, one of the rare times Trump does something that I actually find praiseworthy: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56424614

The gas prices have zip to do with Biden: https://news.yahoo.com/why-price-food-gas-creeping-221605331.html It's way too early in his Presidency for his policies to have any far-reaching effects like that. The future is electric cars anyway, so by 2030 gas prices will be moot for the majority...

This gives you a good idea of the rates to expect: https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/average-auto-loan-interest-rate They mention that a typical used car loan rate is 9.69%, which is pretty high if you ask me. Like I said, try to see if you can get something decent with whatever...

You might want to start your search here then: https://www.carfax.com/Used-Cars-Under-1000_f1 Better to just buy outright and get the least expensive car you can for now. I'm sure you can find something halfway decent for the amount of your down payment. Once you have steady work, if the car...

Owning a car is a great way to remain poor. Before you go out and spend all that money see what your needs really are. You might be able to get by with an e-bike, for example, especially if most of the time the only thing you're transporting is yourself. Or perhaps look at motorcycles if an...

My understanding with both SARS and MERS is that by the time a person is contagious they're already likely to be very sick, and therefore at home, not running around. The asymptomatic spread of covid-19 is what has caused it to spread far and wide. I'm guessing the various strains of common...

What I'm saying here is catching it and getting really sick from it are two different things. If the vaccines which are only 50% effective are still close to 100% effective preventing serious disease then we're much better off than now. That doesn't mean we just give up masks and social...

One thing to keep in mind is that when the Democrats have done this in the past, it was largely symbolic. In 2004 nobody disputed that Bush won the election. In 2020 there was an ongoing movement, led by Trump, to reverse the election results. Thankfully only AZ and PA even came up for a vote...

The thing is I don't particularly care if Biden distorted facts somewhat or not since all politicians do this during campaigns. Trump claimed when asked that he took the virus very seriously. Now was this him walking back what he said earlier, as he often does when it damages him, or how he...

What we won't know until the data are released is how effective the newest vaccines are at preventing serious disease. While their numbers at preventing immunity are far less than the two dose vaccines, if they're as effective at preventing serious disease they will still be a very useful tool...

There's a difference between inaction due to lack of information, versus spreading outright falsehoods. Trump started off handling the pandemic as well as can reasonably be expected. So did other leaders. Unfortunately, there was a serious lack of information about how dangerous this virus was...

The key here is were any of the BLM and Antifa people involved in insurrection? From my point of view they were just acting like common criminals, rioting or looting, not storming a government building with the intent to overturn an election. If any Trump supporters who were just committing...

Micromanaging is Cuomo's thing, unfortunately. Sometimes a hands off approach is better.

I'll readily admit a lot of the evidence against people, including Trump, might be legally insufficient to convict them in a court of law. However, convictions aside, anyone who took any part in this should be removed from public office, and made ineligible to ever run for public office again...

It'll probably take at least 50% vaccination rates before we even have a chance of achieving herd immunity but at least the daily increase in vaccinations is a step in the right direction.

Far left generally means commies and the like. Give the Dems some time to condemn this. Or borrowing from the GOP playbook, maybe these were MAGAs in far left attire posing as left wing activists. At this point, it seems when one side starts something, the other side takes advantage of it. I...

Well, I think I mentioned somewhere that the day Trump's followers turn on him will be the day he regrets he was born. To paraphrase him, these are very bad people. Not the kind you want pissed off at you.

I briefly turned on OANN. They weren't even covering Biden's inauguration. Instead, they were touting the accomplishments of Trump's term, with Rudy Giuliani stating that historians will eventually see Trump as one of the best Presidents ever. Honestly, if I didn't know any better, I would have...

Thankfully no drama today in DC or at state capitols by Trump supporters. Trump is gone, Biden is President. The national nightmare is over, finally. Maybe now the US can try to earn back some of the respect it lost over the last four years.

It's no secret he was probably perpetuating the "stop the steal" lies to use the office of US President to grift. He does have about $400 million in personal obligations coming due not long after leaving office. This is going to put a damper on that...

There's also the 14th Amendment, Section 3: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress...

Stopping the cash flow is the best way to end this. Without donations, the fringe elements of the GOP can't win elections. That might encourage the Republican voters to select more mainstream candidates in their primaries, or simply get used to losing elections.

Hey, they finally found evidence of election fraud:

Of course some of them are pushing the narrative that this was Antifa dressed up as MAGAs. You accuse others of what you're guilty of yourself. It's the oldest trick in the book. How about the known fact that many of the rioters and looters were from right-wing groups trying to discredit BLM? Or...