I started playing with Linux in the late 90s while I was in grad school. Slackware 3.x. I think I might have tried one or two others, but since I was somewhat familiar with Unix, Slackware was the easiest for me to learn.

I got them via CD ROMs; I’m pretty sure they came with a book on Linux (I think it included several distributions on CDs). I don’t think I have that book any more; I likely got rid of it long ago as it was badly out of date. But my memory is that it was published by Que, a publisher that I had good experience with on other topics. (dBase III, for example) I’m pretty sure it was this one…leave it to Amazon to still have it.

I recall recompiling kernel because it was “so much faster” (I cringe at myself now for thinking that - it probably wasn’t even true on my Pentium 133 machines). I also remember spending time trying to get X-windows configured, but I was successful. I think I was using fvwm95 window manager, a Windows-like experience. I started using Linux essentially full time pretty quickly.

A few times I got frustrated with Linux and tried to switch back to Windows, but the headaches of Windows always quickly drove me back to Linux. Linux is not perfect, but Windows is even worse.

With Tasmota on the S31, you can disable the ability to turn it off. I have a few set up that way to prevent them from being turned off.

I wonder what the wifi access in the school is like?

Page 3: Wireless infrastructure at all buildings, in 2015.

I have no idea why I remember mine, 520009. Haven’t used ICQ in many years; I didn’t know it was still up.

A guy at work did something like that. Went on vacation for a week, just never returned. Didn’t return phone calls or emails. Eventually he popped up on social media about 6 months later and some coworkers spotted him and got the story. If I remember correctly (which I may not), I think his girlfriend convinced him to stay, so he did, and he just ghosted his job.

Isn’t it about time to fire up your space laser?

I run it on my Debian server that uses my 15 TB RAID5 array as storage. (When I built it, 15 TB drives were a dream…now I have a 12 TB drive in my desktop computer that serves as backup to the array.)

I mainly serve it out to the client on our DirectTV streaming device. Works fine, other than I wish the intro skip plugin would be able to give me the option to skip on that client (the only way it works on the Android client is to have it skip automatically).

I have an old S9 right here on my desk. I cracked the screen, and took it to one of those screen replacement places, and he asked if I had insurance. I told him I didn’t, and he said, wellllllll it’s going to be a lot more expensive than you think to replace this screen.

That wraparound screen they had was basically also the frame of the phone - you’re not so much replacing the screen as you are moving the rest of the components to a new phone body. I wasn’t sold on value of that wraparound screen in the first place; this didn’t improve my opinion of it.

We put a plastic screen protector on it and a new case, and I used it for a few months until we were ready to upgrade phones.

This is fascinating. I’m reminded of a Mormon guy I (barely) knew that was murdered. If he didn’t have the chance to complete his ordinances, well, I guess no kingdom for him - through no fault of his own. Does he get a pass or is he screwed into lousy second heaven for all eternity?

The story: He was murdered by another Mormon guy over a woman. Murderer thought the woman was his last chance to find love and decided he was serious about it. It’s likely he murdered another guy the woman was dating a year or two before, but that case was ruled a suicide and closed - by the time the known murder occurred, all evidence had been destroyed.

Update: They kicked me out of the meeting. The employee’s first-line supervisor was still in it, and it was really short - they basically asked if the employee could do the job remotely or not. It sounded like they were going to approve the request. This whole meeting setup is very strange; it’s never happened before on any accommodation request I’ve been involved with (maybe half a dozen over the years). Maybe they review a few at random or something.

Some kind of miracle, I know. Actually I got more messages, but many of them were either spam or never even made it to a date.

Welcome to the Dull Side.

Thanks. Part of me wants to find an employer similar to yours, the other part of me is like, hey, I’m planning to retire in like 7 years.

There’s a LOT of concern over what this return-to-office plan will do to staff - we think quite a few people will find other jobs. A few have said so out loud; who knows how many more are planning the same quietly (of course, some people also talk a big game, but when push comes to shove…will they really?). We’re also running into more issues hiring; another manager I know had a candidate decline because the position wasn’t remote and they didn’t want to move here. When I talk to candidates, it’s now the first thing I check, even before I schedule the interview - no point in wasting time for either of us if it’s a non-starter.

It’s kind of weird - we only have to go in once a week, which actually isn’t that bad at all - for those of us who already live in the area. But it’s harder to convince people to move across the country to a high cost of living location so they can sit in their apartment 4 of 5 days each week. But we have to support the local Popeye’s fast food joint, I guess.

Yeah…when I got the first IDE drive, it was like, “Wait, I don’t need to low level format it?”

“Oh what a mess we weave when we amiss interleave!”

Back when I was in online dating (I got married in 2010, so it has been a very long time), this is how it seemed to work in the hetero arena:

• Women (by which I mean, legitimate accounts from women who were actually looking for dates): Get 1,000,000 messages, approximately 999,900 of which are dick pics.
• Men: See 1,000,000 ads, of which about 3 are legitimate people looking for dates.

So, both could be true in relation to the image.

I remember a guy once telling me that basically you have to respond to EVERY AD and hope something sticks. I never did that, and I felt bad for what the women must have had to deal with when I heard that. I had very limited success - dates with, at most, two or three women, and none of those really went anywhere. I ended up marrying someone from work instead.

Anyone else remember having to set interleave on an RLL hard drive? “First you have to low-level format…”

How I imagine that would go:

I have a meeting later today for an employee who requested a reasonable accommodation to work from home for medical reasons, and it was declined (by the people who review the RA requests, not by me). The employee, like the rest of us, have been doing the job for over four years from home; how can anyone possibly make the case at this point that they need to come into the office?

The meeting description has a sentence in it that clearly states the medical documentation was sufficient to support working from home. So why are we having this meeting?

I, of course, completely support her request and will argue for it, if necessary. I wish I could come up with a similar justification for myself, honestly, but I cannot, and I’m not going to game the system and possibly affect people who really do need it.

(Our employer’s whole return-to-office thing is driven by outside forces that have little to do with our work. I suspect our leadership would continue work from home if they could. Unfortunately their supervisors do not agree.)

Most cars I’ve used with it won’t lock until you put it in drive or start moving at a certain speed; I assume that’s because of incidents like this one.

Yep, we had a cat that would always go for the sink. Eventually I tried putting the water fountain away from the food, and she mostly stopped getting water in the sink.

Before I learned this, I had another cat while I still had a fish tank…I’d get home and find him on top of the fish tank, drinking the water coming out of the filter. The lid on that tank was not very solid, and I was SURE he’d fall in at some point, with disastrous results, so I got him a fountain water dish, and that stopped his fish tank escapades.