When I did it, you could opt out electronically for 5 years, but a lifetime opt out requires you to mail a printed form. I'm guessing the lenders have something to do with that and are banking on most people not having a printer.
Edit: Or having to deal with paying for a stamp and putting something in the mail.
But yes, I love their 90s clip art.
After I graduated college and got my first place on my own, I had my desk set up in the corner of the living room with a long HDMI cable strung around along the baseboards and into the TV. It was clean. It was a Vizio 37" panel from 2011 so it had no smart features. I kept a Logitech keyboard/trackpad combo on the coffee table and that's essentially how I had a smart TV running full blown Windows 8 Pro in 2013. Tired of desk gaming? I got a DualShock 4 and a Bluetooth adapter so all I had to do was turn the controller on and walk to the couch. Sometimes, switching my sound device did mean saving and restarting my game. Some games handled the Alt + Tab to the Control Panel just fine. I put a Blu Ray drive in my computer too so with some software, I used it as a Blu Ray player.
These days, I have 10 TB on board so I keep my movies stored on my disk, and I stream them over my local network. I'd like to build a proper always on NAS one day, but for now, my gaming PC is also my network share.
If we're sharing our dogs, here's mine.
It wasn't a successful day at the park if he doesn't sprinkle 15 molecules of pee on every tree at least a few times. He also marks the benches, despite my efforts to stop him. He's very rude like that.
He just turned 2 years old a few weeks ago.
Bold thing to say when your house is flammable.
A screenshot I saw somewhere.
If you're just now learning about him, I both envy and pity you.
I hope not. We already have a serious mouse problem as it is.
Of course. He headbutts everything though so it's nothing special
The anti-natalists have a point.
I've been playing a lot of Minetest. I have Minecraft, but I really love the old school vibes of Minetest. Plus, there are way too many materials in Minecraft. Minetest is super simple. Love it for that.
I've been pining for Stardew Valley again after putting it down for a while. I also started a Thousand Year Door run in August so I might actually finish that. Or maybe some old school Animal Crossing if I'm gonna be couch gaming on the Wii.
I started Earthbound last year, and I've really been wanting to sink the time into it, but I really think some kind of handheld emulator would be the best way to experience it. I've got an old PSP I think would make a great handheld NES/SNES emulator.
I've also been wanting to revisit the original PS1 Resident Evil trilogy, which I have on my PS3.
tbh I'm spoiled for choice and I don't know where to start lmao
I was a Romney voter when I was 20 and a Johnson voter at 24 so I feel that.
tldr, very long - I did NOT become more Republican with age.
When I was a teenager, I was full on opposed to homosexuality. It happens a lot when you grow up in a hard-R farm town disconnected from everything in the armpit of SW Oklahoma. When I got to college, I met a few gay people. I didn't even realize they were gay until I had known them for several months. The image of a standard issue homosexual that I had in my mind was pride gays...so I had this mindset that, "I wouldn't mind the gays if only they didn't shove it down my throat." Young Christian me would not think critically about that statement or its reflection upon me for a long time. When I realized that gay people were just, like, normal people, I started to move away from the right.
But, hey, I was beginning my deconversion from Christianity (I remember saying around 2013 that I can see why it is just as hard not to believe as it is to believe), and that was causing me to rethink how I felt about abortion. Mostly how it pertains to the size of the government. And hey, I can't be pro-small gubmint while also wanting it to be involved in healthcare decisions. I was also rethinking how I felt about weed. In 2014, I told my then-girlfriend something along the lines of, "If doctors say there can be a real medicinal use for it, then I don't see why we shouldn't study it." So now, I'm for abortions and weed, and I'm against the left for coming for my guns. Guns I don't own. Btw, I've never owned a firearm. So by 2015, I was a registered Libertarian.
And then Donald Trump was elected. I had mixed emotions in 2016. I actually really liked Bernie a lot. But I also watched a lot of Sargon of Akkad (as much as that pains me to admit). So I was kind of all over the place. I had a job and was paying for my own health insurance. I stopped taking my ADHD meds around this time because they were $70 a month at a time when that kind of money made or broke my month. The promise of socialized healthcare was incredibly appealing to me. And then the Wasserman-Schultz emails got leaked, and it became obvious the DNC stabbed him in the back because they wanted to run Clinton that bad. But I thought even back then that Trump was a bastard. But as I hadn't acquired much in the way of strong critical thinking skills, I hadn't realized just how bad he'd be. Still, thinking both candidates were very weak, I voted for Johnson. Trump won here by like 30 points so it didn't really matter who I voted for. One of the values I like that I've always held on to is that I exercise my right to vote however I want, no matter which way my state goes. Change doesn't happen if everyone who wants it sits at home and lets everyone else decide for them.
It took two years of Trump to make me a registered Democrat. Still, I was a 2A Dem. And at this point, the Oregon community college and Sandy Hook had already been shot up. Then Pulse and Parkland and Las Vegas happened. And I really started changing my feelings on guns. I read more about Columbine and VA Tech. And I began to think that maybe not everyone should be allowed one.
Then Uvalde happened. And you know what? What is a ragtag group of dad bods with AR-15s going to do against the military might of the United States government? Nothing. If people are using 2A to mount an overthrow of the regime, the regime is probably considering nuking its own cities to quell the rebellion. The Second applied at a time when a musket had a low chance of hitting a target from 20 yards. So fuck the Second Amendment. The Founding Fathers had lots of great ideas that hold up today. The idea that anyone who wants a gun should have one so that the people can keep a tyrannical government in check is NOT one of them. The states do maintain militias. We call them the National Guard.
So let's recap. In 2012, my views were:
Yay:
- Guns
- God
- Beer, I guess? I was told to like it.
- Whatever my parents told me to believe, really.
Boo:
- Abortions
- Trucks
- Gay people
- The homeless, they deserve it
- Whatever my parents told me to hate, really.
Now, my views are:
Yay:
- Gay and trans people (didn't know about trans people in 2012)
- Trains
- $25/hr minimum wage because $15 ain't enough anymore
- Single payer healthcare
- Housing subsidies, and I say that as a homeowner
- Immigrants
- Reproductive freedom
- Police reform
- Weed. Fully legalized.
- And just about everything else my parents told me to hate
Boo:
- God. He kinda sucks, but if religion makes your life better, go for it.
Fuck:
- Ronald Reagan
- No really, Nixon and Reagan ruined everything
- Those giant lifted trucks
- The Second Amendment. It should be repealed
- The DNC, especially after '16 and '24. We should be finishing up President Sanders' second term right now.
- The police
- Beer. If it's an "acquired taste," then it fucking sucks. Give me my whiskey neat instead.
- The Anti-Choice movement
- Cars, and I say that as a car enthusiast.
For context, my wife is always criticizing how I don't add enough salt to the dishes I cook. I also have no tats. She does.
But at least you can always add more salt lol
Wait, you're telling me other countries have long processes for immigrating? I'm shocked. SHOCKED! Well, not that shocked.
Save your money, y'all. You might need it if you ever need to flee to Canada as a refugee.
Amtrak currently runs trains on the freight tracks, but as Amtrak essentially leases the privilege of using the tracks at all from CSX and BNSF and Union Pacific and the like, their traffic gets heavily deprioritized to freight trains. You can totally catch a train from Fort Worth to Los Angeles, but it will take a few days longer than driving, will be almost as expensive as flying, and the train will be delayed many times for freight traffic.
If the federal government nationalized the rails, put them under the care of the FRA, properly funded Amtrak, and gave it a healthy advertising budget to let people know rail is the clear choice for medium length trips (like Chicago to St. Louis), there's no reason we couldn't send passengers on the same rails and with the same priority as freight trains. They're perfectly safe, and the reason we've been hearing about so many train wrecks lately is the degradation of work conditions for rail workers. Longer trains and longer hours make for more dangerous operating conditions and more frequent wrecks.
And while the trains wouldn't run 190 miles an hour, many long, straight stretches do exist, and it's not unheard of for a train to be running 80-100 miles an hour on those stretches. That kind of speed is very doable for passenger rail. Hell, some Amtrak trains are capable of 150 miles an hour.
My point wasn't to use 150 year old rails. It's that the rails already exist so it doesn't need to be a decades-long multi-trillion dollar project. It's highly unlikely that any of the rails in use today are from the 19th century.
I only have one. It's built for a few thousand square feet, consumes nearly 1 kW, is about as loud as a vacuum cleaner, and will raise the temperature of the whole house a few degrees.
But damn, does it WORK.
This specific video has helped me buckle down and get shit done so many times. I've even made loops of songs I have copies of on my computer for this kind of thing. The repetition OH MY GOD it tickles my brain in just the right way so as to boost productivity. It's great how that can cancel out the ADHD when I have deadlines looming.
Video game music does the same thing. Death by Glamour gets me in the ZONE.
You have to be really careful opening doors. He's bolted a few times. He's only ever made it to the end of the patio before he stops like the grass is made of lava. It makes it pretty easy to walk to him and catch him. Still, I don't want to risk him ever getting brave enough to actually go so I always shoo him away before I open the door.
He loves to reach up at the things he wants. He realizes doors are the way outside so trims to all of our exterior doors are covered in scratch marks. This is how he learned to open the door between the kitchen and the garage. That door gets locked now. We just leave the key in the chamber on the other side.
Smart little butthead.
We social distance, usually wear masks in public, and stay up to date on our vaccinations. But all it took was one lady with a mean cough on a two hour flight a week ago to ruin that...or so we think.
The timing really sucks. I had plans for my weekend.
At least, I thought it was that one when I shot the picture
I've wanted to visit Seattle for years. But up until recently, we've always been suuuuuper broke. Finally, a decade into our careers, we're both in our early thirties. Considering kids, not planning for it, not rushing it. We didn't get to travel in our twenties, but in the last few years, our combined incomes have beaten inflation by a pretty good margin. My wife because she's unwilling to settle and looks for a new job as soon as she feels undervalued. Me because my workplace has been investing in its current staff and doling out regular raises.
I've been telling her for years I want to visit Seattle. So for Christmas, she surprised me with Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins tickets in Seattle. Then she arranged accommodations with this awesome view of the Puget Sound pictured above, a rental car, and lots of things to do. On her own. She just wanted me to pick out a few places I might want to eat. She did like 99% of the work of planning a vacation.
All of this following last year when, for my birthday, I got to buy a car I've been wanting (a manual '97 Honda Prelude) and a new GPU to replace my R9 290.
All of that, and she's the one that chased me. I wasn't even in the dating pool. She approached me. Said I was cute. Asked me to help her move into her new apartment eight years ago.
Now I'm in fucking Seattle because this woman loves me so much she plans out entire vacations and concerts for me. I just sat on the balcony with a cup of coffee before she woke up and cried. She is so good to me.
If only I could! Someone turned on the PlayStation 2 graphics. But here's the view my wife and I were greeted with last night.
Foggy, cold, and rainy with a hot cup of coffee is legitimately how I could start every day. Dreary weather is my heaven. Anyway, we're gonna see what that Ublic Market Center is about before we go home.
This thread has convinced me to play Outer Wilds.
My picks are:
- Game: Portal 2.
- Book: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- TV show: Bojack Horseman.
- Movie: The Shawshank Redemption.
