- tbyehl parentIn my town some of the police cars have darkly tinted plate covers.
- I started a new job a couple months ago and a week hasn't gone by where I haven't said "For less than we're paying annually for [some software / SaaS], we could buy three Synologys sized to do that thing, at least as good if not significantly better, with a high-availability cluster on-prem plus a remote replica, with no more administration overhead than we have now."
And invariably the conversation turns to hardware specs. SMDH.
- > Maybe drain it, replace it with different animals that are friendly, and then refill it. I’m only sort of joking.
It's not a zoo. Jungle Island might be more your speed. Staff have chastised me for rubbing the kangaroos' bellies, saying they really don't like that, but in my defense he rolled over for me to do it. YMMV.
What lead me to appreciating the Everglades was randomly deciding to go to Shark Valley / Bobcat Boardwalk Trail on some cold day in February. The annoying bugs were mostly gone to wherever they go when it's cold, the 'gators were lounging around trying to catch some warmth, and the anhingas and other water birds were quite active. I caught a guided walking tour somewhere and what really stuck with me was how every tiny rise in elevation up to a few feet completely changes the ecosystem. I'd lived in Florida practically my whole life until then and never really "seen" that but from then on I could never not see it. I left 15 years ago and whenever I drive home for a visit, crossing that threshold into southern Florida where I start seeing it again brings me comfort.
- > People are getting chickens because they think it'll be cheaper than store bought eggs. Spoiler: it is not.
The joke is that the first egg costs $X,000. But these have been weird times.
On low-end feed it costs about $0.55/week to keep a Golden Comet alive and I can buy them at 18 weeks old for $20. If one is extremely frugal in sheltering and containing them, doesn't experience any losses to predators, illness, or wandering off, and retail eggs hold above $0.20/ea, a small flock can conceivably break-even during its second year.
That pile of assumptions is unlikely to hold up but everything I've spent on chickens the whole time we've had them is less than the carrying costs of our two dogs over that time. And the dogs have never provided us food.
> The local farm store has changed their policy to not sell less than 4 chickens
The first year we raised chicks the minimums were 6. Best advice to anyone starting out is to buy 18 week pullets or mature hens cycling out from a pastured egg producer at 18-24 months. Raising chicks is much more challenging and attention-demanding than keeping mature chickens and if you manage to keep them all alive you'll still be $20+ into them before they start laying.
- I love my smart plugs and power strips! Mostly not for lighting or other high-touch purposes, but I do use a few Lutron Caseta plug-in dimmers for lamps that aren't on switched outlets as the remotes can go in a standard Decora-style wall plate and they work regardless of the hub being online.
I've got Zigbee and Wi-Fi/Tasmota outlets running the heating and lighting for my chicken brooders[0], my partner's plant lights, fish tank lights, probably more that I'm forgetting. At our cabin the mountains, an outlet + temperature sensor combined with Home Assistant's Thermostat helper gives us temperature control over an extremely basic window A/C unit and we cast an HA dashboard to a nearby Google Home screen. A smart power strip controls all of our "cabin intra" -- router, cable modem, LTE backup, etc. HA automations monitor them all and restart anything that stops working, and a Tasmota rule ensures that nothing can gets stuck in the Off state due to automation failure or operator error.
- There are more modern versions of such things that can do ATSC / QAM for full HD. I picked one up that takes multiple HDMI inputs with the idea of transmitting a couple outdoor cameras to our TVs but got sidetracked with the realization that none of the coax in my home is convenient to any of our TVs.
- But how will I know that I'm just 500 miles from South of the Border? Or 250 miles from the next Buc-ee's? Or be reminded not to diddle my daughter[1]?
- You think the person I replied to is persuadable?
And, if your distro had you enroll a MOK key and failed to bless all your kernel modules, FOSS or not, then it's still broken. That was also my experience the last time I tried, with the module(s) required to get a Coral TPU going. There existed a hook script that was supposed to do the needful but it wasn't working on that module and I couldn't make sense of it.
- > they really have fun with it.
Isn't that, like, everything? The first time I saw them it was because they were here, it was affordable, and I dug that Malcom in the Middle song, so why not? The second time was just because they're fun. There will be a next time and it will again be just because they're fun.
And I'm still not sure I could name another of their songs.
- Weird how young-ish people in a particularly dense urban setting with plentiful public transit and many DMV offices to choose from — TIL: several exclusively for AAA members — may have a different lived experience than, say, older people in a rural county roughly half the size of Rhode Island with no public transit and a single DMV office.
Tho the county I refer to barely has any black residents so there couldn't possibly be any racial motivations. Just like the nearby restaurant plastered with a bunch of "rules" in giant lettering on the exterior, such as "No sagging pants", isn't owned by a racist. /s
Ruby Bridges is still alive and younger than our last president.
- Why should I be interested in any of what you're going on about?
My GMRS and Technician licenses issued on the same day not quite two months ago. I'm interested in immediate family communications, communicating with people in my area, and potentially calling for help from nearby strangers. I only decided to get the Amateur license because I realized the valley in western NC where we have a home does not have a GMRS repeater but there is an Amateur club running VHF/UHF, and figured I'd have better luck convincing them to add GMRS by joining their club than as an outsider.
A cheap Chinese UHF/VHF/GMRS HT with a knock-off NA-771 reaches as far as my family needs.
And FWIW, the top feed on Broadcastify the past few days is coming from a VHF repeater on Mount Mitchell (N2GE via W4HTP due to lack of Internet).
- They don't leak your address, they sell it.
https://postalpro.usps.com/mailing-and-shipping-services/NCO...
- My longstanding theory is that achieving peak *nix nerdom requires having a window manager that makes one's workstation completely unusable to anyone else.
I've long been happy with what Windows provides natively. I kinda wish that Win-Z provided a few more horizontal split options that make sense for 32:9, but reality is that I have Fancy Zones installed to provide the layouts I thought I'd like but I never use them because it's usually for console stuff and Windows Terminal has its own tiling system.
- Beware that the relay may flap on boot with this exact setup.
https://github.com/IOT-MCU/ESP-01S-Relay-v1.0/issues/1
https://github.com/IOT-MCU/ESP-01S-Relay-v4.0/issues/1
https://rabbithole.wwwdotorg.org/2017/03/28/esp8266-gpio.htm...
- Espressif sell bare chips, modules with castellations for soldering to a PCB, and complete boards that typically contain a module. Some 3rd-party boards use a bare chip. Some 3rd-party boards also have castellations, as do Picos sold without pre-soldered headers. 3rd-party modules are also a thing.
Here's a pic of a module and several boards that demonstrates all of that.