I hear that. It’s insidious how it whispers back at you when shit hits the fan, even if you haven’t thought about it in months.

Yup. I’m still living paycheque to paycheque.

I’m at a prime age for “midlife crisis” I just need my finances to agree that I can have.

Got a new job last winter, I’ve gotten two raises since. Maybe I’m moving in the right direction? I hope so. (I’m a bit less than 5% above where I started after 11 months)

I like the new job too. So IDK.

I can imagine.

You should too. You can do it, I believe in you.

Okay, I’ll just say it.

Everyone has it rough right now. Mostly because we’ve been thoroughly railroaded by corporations for most of our lives, but still.

Everything sucks.

That’s a very normal reaction. You’re putting your life in the hands of technicians and engineers, to build, maintain and service the aircraft so it functions, qualified inspectors to certify that the plane is safe to fly, and pilots to fly the aircraft, and you, safely to your destination. Pretty much everyone you’re putting your life in the hands of, you’ve never met, never will, and it’s unlikely you’ll even know their names.

It’s a lot of trust to put into people you don’t even know, to keep you alive in your chair in the sky.

If that reality doesn’t at least give you pause, or some concern, then I’d be worried there’s something seriously wrong with you.

Rest assured that statistics are on your side. It’s far more likely for you to get to your destination without any significant complications then it is for any complications to happen, including any that might lead to a crash or a fatality. Statistically, it’s comfortably one of the safest, if not the safest, method of travel.

There’s nothing wrong with having some apprehension, fear, or worry, over placing your life in the hands of complete strangers; despite how qualified each and every one of them might be, they’re still strangers.

All I can say is, if you’re bothered by it, learn how to parachute solo. It’ll take a while, but learn it. Then just pack your own parachute any time you fly. Problem solved. If you lose confidence in the pilots to keep you alive, bail.

Thanks. I think a lot.

Probably too much

Not a stupid question.

Between the training required for a solo parachute jump, and the cost (and more importantly) weight of the equipment, plus the relative safety of commercial flights, it’s simply not justified.

In more than a few cases we’ve seen airliners make emergency landings that are gnarly, but the majority survive. In more cases than I can count, there’s checks and balances that ground flights because of safety concerns either at the departure point or at the destination (icing, high winds, etc), or due to mechanical concerns.

It’s rare that a fully inspected and functional aeroplane will fall out of the sky, and we do everything in our power to ensure that all planes that leave the ground are fully inspected and functional. Short of a freak occurrence, like a fast forming weather phenomenon, there’s so many checks and balances that airliner crashes are exceedingly rare.

So not only is a crash rare, there’s no guarantee that a crash will be fatal, usually the pilot can at least get the plane on the ground without killing everyone aboard, and the fact that it’s a massive amount of extra weight that requires training that the average person doesn’t have, there’s little point and nearly nothing to gain from doing something like that, while it would have significant downsides on flight efficiency and increase the costs of fuel per flight due to the extra weight.

Then there’s the consideration of, even if they were able to successfully parachute to the ground, what then? It’s pretty much a guarantee that nobody has a radio, and that you’re far enough away from civilization that your cellphone doesn’t work, so now you have hundreds of people spread out over potentially thousands of miles of terrain/water/whatever that you now need weeks to search and rescue everyone. Taking weeks on search and rescue, pretty much guarantees that you’ll find people who landed safely, then died from exposure to the environment.

On the flip side, if everyone is in the plane when it crashes then all you need to do is find the plane; everyone will be in that general area, whether alive or dead.

There’s just too many downsides to having parachutes on board to make it feasible.

Wait… It’s how much? For online access?

And others are more??

I’m a dedicated PC gamer, so I’m out of the loop on what’s happening with consoles, but this seems nuts to me

Upvote for bitwarden. I love that service.

I especially love that you can host it yourself if you want. I don’t do that right now, but I did in the past for a work thing. It’s great.

I got Yt premium as a side effect of the Google one thing. I don’t necessarily need the extra space I got the Google one thing for, but I’ll probably keep it because I’m too lazy to clear out my storage and the side perks like Yt premium are probably worth more than I’m spending on one.

As a fellow Canadian, I also cannot vote in the US election, but I support this message.

To my American neighbors, please make a plan to vote.

Just keep repeating the same companies, they can pay for relief each time.

I don’t really see a problem.

The sponsorships should be for companies that thrive because they make products that increase global warming (or use them), which is most companies, so I digress.

It should also be an involuntary thing. Getting a natural disaster assigned to you should be a badge of shame, and any company named for it should be obligated to help with relief efforts.

Given the negative PR and cost for providing relief, I’m betting that quite a few would clean things up pretty quickly so they don’t earn the badge of shame. Maybe enough to slow or stop global climate change.

But all of this requires that we care more about people and the climate than we do about corporations and their profits. Since it’s been made clear that the government is basically bought and owned by corporate interests, this will never happen.

The solution is to supplant the existing government with one that actually represents the interests of the people that live in the country, not the corporations.

Were the ghosts friendly?

Fair enough. Local admin is generally not something that I would want to restrict from people, especially those that are, or at least, should be, more knowledge than most.

I’ll fight for that right for people most of the time.

Some users I would say should not have it, but generally developers are not those people. You know the ones.

I try to be understanding with my software brethren. We’re different sides to the whole. Ying and yang, so to speak.

That said, I’ve gotten some brain-dead requests from you developer types.

I’m not saying all of you are the problem, but there’s definitely some of you that need to learn how things work.

As IT/network/security, using a well known port for something that’s not what is supposed to run on that port, is inviting all kinds of problems.

Especially the very well known ones, like ftp, ssh, SMTP, http, HTTPS, etc (to name a few). People make it their mission to find and exploit open FTP systems. I opened up FTP on a system once to the internet as kind of a honeypot, and within a week or so, there was someone uploading data to it.

No bueno. Don’t use well known ports for things unless the thing that well known port is known for, is what you want to do.

Traitor.

I had to pay the cat tax. I couldn’t tell the story and not include something.

The cat distribution system has been good to us.

This is a well known phenomenon. The cat distribution system.

Happened to my partner twice in the last ~10 years or so. The first was Zora, a black/white lady who was very chill and liked to stare at people (usually me, but yeah). Very friendly and outgoing. She was distributed to my partner at a bus stop. Anytime someone visited while we had her, she would go and greet them, since we’re pretty sure that she was convinced that people only ever came to visit her to give her pets.

She played fetch, ate fries and Cheetos… She’s a great girl. She passed away a few years back and I still miss the little shithead.

Then we were distributed shadow. His nickname is manager, because he tells everyone what to do, and occasionally where to go. He’s got sass when he needs it and he’s our fluffy little man. When he was distributed to us, he basically showed up at our door and when we opened it, he came in and made himself at home. He’s a very distinguished gentleman, and demands the freshest food, tastiest treats, and only the prescribed 82.475 pets in any one petting season. If you slow down or stop at any point before this quota has been satisfied, he will glare at you like he’s about to end your life if you don’t resume.

He’s got a little white spot on his chest that looks like a bowtie, so he’s always ready for a fancy party. He doesn’t like guests though, and when anyone new shows up, he will depart quickly and won’t be seen for at least 4 hours after the guest leaves.

His hobbies include windows (mostly looking through them) and trying to eat any food I may have.