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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • That’s the route I took. I recently bought a 48" 4K monitor, hooked a mini PC up to it, and now I stream my movie and TV show collection through Plex. I still have Internet access on my “TV,” but I’m in control of what pops up (I block all ads on my home network). I just use a small wireless keyboard and mouse instead of a remote.

    I haven’t actually owned a TV since about 2008. I have better media options through computers, and the technology just keeps getting better. Cable and public access television are a pain because you’re constantly bombarded with ads. With my own computer, I can circumvent ads and get a solid viewing experience.



  • Coby@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlHow do I cope with my father hating me?
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    7 months ago

    There are already a lot of good answers/opinions/experiences/etc. here and I don’t want to rehash all of that, but I will mention this:

    If you’ve heard the expression, “blood is thicker than water,” you should know that the original unedited expression was actually, “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Basically meaning that the friendships (covenants) you make in life are stronger bonds than the family you just happened to be born into.

    You can’t choose your biological family, but you can choose your friends and (non-bio) family. Don’t let people drag you down just because they’re related to you. Cut the dead weight out of your life, regardless of relation, and live your best life. If your dad doesn’t care about you, then why should you exhaust any energy caring about him? He hasn’t earned your attention, nor the attention of his grandkids.

    My wife came from a poor trailer trash family and felt obligated, as the only person who made something of herself, to attempt to support her grandparents (who raised her), mother, and 3 siblings. But it only led to greed, gluttony, and dishonesty. Eventually, she had to cut ties with most of them because they started to feel entitled in sharing her “wealth.”

    We had to draw the line when one of her pregnant sisters was about to have her baby taken away by the state. (I believe it was her 4th one the state had taken from her at this point; she had been deemed an unfit parent, but kept pumping out kids regardless.) My wife’s family tried to guilt us into adopting the kid, just to keep him in the family. She finally put her foot down. Taking in illegitimate children from her family was just trapping her with the burden of her siblings (who were already trying to pawn off their kids to their grandmother). My wife cut ties and now only speaks to her siblings (and mother) if they call. But she makes zero effort to stay in touch otherwise, and she won’t give them anything except functional Christmas gifts - the one time of year she indirectly contacts them.

    My wife had deep-seated anxiety for years, worrying about supporting her deadbeat family. Now she’s low-contact and made a rule not to support them financially. She’s living stress-free now and is in a much better place for it. Their lives are their own and she refuses to feel responsible for the horrible choices they’ve made.


  • Coby@lemmy.worldtoTechnology@lemmy.worldReddit now blocks signed out VPN connections.
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    7 months ago

    come on we all go to reddit when we need to find some information because its almost always guaranteed to be there

    Most of us dumped Reddit when third party apps went away. I personally haven’t been back to Reddit since creating a Lemmy account. Screw that place; they don’t deserve my patronage anymore. Or anyone’s, for that matter. Continuing to use their content is justifying their shitty business practices. It’ll never get better if people keep enabling it.

    Also, what specific info are you searching for that Reddit can provide? Their search function has always been garbage. Or are you referring to general content and/or subs that don’t have an active userbase here yet?




  • When I was a kid, it was one and done. I grabbed a clean towel from the bathroom closet every day. Even though I was clean coming out of the shower, I also knew that showering loosens dead skin cells, which I was rubbing all over the towel. Over time, those skin cells would decompose, giving off a musty smell. I learned that from my dad, who almost never changed his towel. Ick. It made me extra paranoid about reusing them, so I swapped towels daily.

    When I became an adult and had to do my own laundry, I realized just how miserable it was trying to wash 7 towels every week. (Why did my mother let me use so many towels as a kid?!) So I started reusing them. I used a towel for a week before throwing it in the laundry.

    Now, I’m recently retired in my late 30s and shower every 2-3 days (or anytime I leave the house). Since I’m not showering as frequently, I will reuse a towel for about 2-3 weeks before replacing it. If I go to dry off after a shower and the towel smells a bit musty, I’ll toss it on the floor and grab a fresh towel instead. I think I’m on week 4 with my current towel, but it still smells clean, so I’m not too worried about getting a few more showers out of it.




  • I love tinkering with computers. Building, fixing, upgrading… software, hardware, networking, it’s all fun. I enjoy the troubleshooting process and the satisfaction that comes from solving a problem. I spent 20 years as an IT guy in the US Air Force and I enjoyed every minute of fixing computers while serving.

    Now I’m recently retired and I could easily make 2-3x as much money working IT in the civilian sector, but… I just really enjoy doing it for fun. I don’t want to go back into a corporate environment and be told how and when and what to fix or upgrade.

    My wife and I are planning to build our “forever home” (the last home we ever plan to live in) and we’re in the design phase right now. I can’t wait to wire the place for modern computer systems. I’d like to build my own server suite in a cold basement room and then network the whole house so I can automate tasks anywhere in the house. Open all my curtains from an app on my phone, answer the door, play music in any room (or all rooms) through an intercom system, stream movies/TV shows/video games to any TV in the house, etc. I’m definitely building a giant theater room in my basement, at least big enough to hold a dozen people, maybe more.

    I’m excited for the possibilities that wiring my own house present. I also want to make it upgradeable over time, in case better standards for technology come out. Maybe run all cables through PVC pipes in the walls, so I can easily push new cables through without having to tear apart the walls.

    Yeah, I’m really enjoying retirement as a former IT guy. I could make more money going back to work, but then I’ll have less time and freedom to engage in my hobbies. What’s the point in having more money if you don’t have the time to enjoy it? So I’m living off my govt pension now, which is more than adequate for me to live comfortably, and I’m just enjoying retired life.


  • For me personally, video games are interactive stories. I love movies and TV shows, and being able to have some level of control over the action is an amazing experience for me!

    I’m also not competitive and don’t care so much about scores, rankings, or online multiplayer vs. games. Just give me an intriguing plot and let me be the protagonist in it. I’ll play that game for hours on end.

    I don’t like games that are essentially movies with a few interactive scenes between clips, though. It has to be really interesting if I’m going to sit through a game like that. I’m here to play, not to watch. The only series that’s been interesting enough for me to deal with hundreds of cutscenes dispersed every few minutes throughout is the Metal Gear Solid series.

    I realize I don’t speak for the whole gaming community, but this is my personal view.






  • Yeah you should let your stuff cool before washing it… but how many of us do that?

    I used to love putting hot pans in the sink with cool water. Loved the sizzle and steam it created, and it was faster than waiting for it to cool down.

    Then I would complain about all my pans being cheap and warped. I couldn’t cook evenly because there was one bulge that got direct contact with the oven and the rest of the pan rocked back and forth and either burned or undercooked all my food.

    Until one day, my wife pointed out that putting a hot pan in cool/cold water causes them to warp. She got mad at me because some of the ruined pans were actually expensive quality brands. I’ve learned my lesson; no more hot pans in the sink for me. Let them cool a bit before you wash them.


  • I don’t use shower gel. I’m so hairy, my shampoo is used all over my body. Does the job just fine.

    For deodorant, I use Old Spice, the Fiji scented one. I brought my wife to the store and asked her to bring me a deodorant scent that she enjoyed, and this is the one she landed on.

    I make sure to use just the deodorant type, not the deodorant/antiperspirant. The antiperspirant stuff sticks to my armpits and clothes, and takes a few days to fully scrub off. I don’t sweat enough to bother with it.


  • Coby@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.mlWhere else on the web does everyone hang out?
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    8 months ago

    As far as socializing, Lemmy is pretty much the big one nowadays.

    Well, a little Facebook too, to stay in touch with friends and family, but I use F. B. Purity to remove ads and other features I don’t use on Facebook (gaming, marketplace, reels/stories, etc.), plus an extension in Firefox to block Facebook/Instagram from snooping on my other browser tabs. Don’t want them building a profile on my browsing habits to customize ads for me, or to sell to third parties.

    I also use Discord with my wife and a few close friends, so we can arrange an online video gaming night once or twice a week, and stay in touch the rest of the time.

    Before Lemmy, I used Reddit a ton. Before that, I was a moderator for a forum called CommGuys.net (formerly 3C0X1.net), which was a forum for Air Force service members in the IT career field. The former site URL was our Air Force specialty code that designated the generic IT career field, but it changed in 2009, splitting into several different codes for different specialties, so they changed the site to CommGuys; short for Communications Guys, which is what they used to call IT professionals in the Air Force. Nowadays, they call them Cyber Guys, because we’re more cyber/web focused and less communications specific. But when social media sites were officially unblocked from Air Force computer networks in 2010, military people ran over to Reddit and Facebook and our forums practically died out, so the site owner finally shut it down.

    Oh, and to officially date myself, my first social media platform was MySpace, which I didn’t even get involved in until after I left home and joined the military. Social media was not a thing in my childhood, and most of my childhood was without Internet. It didn’t become popular/commonplace until my preteen years, and content was sparse for many years after that. I did use AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), MSN Messenger, ICQ, and a couple others in my teen years, but that was basically direct messaging with friends through the Internet before everyone had cell phones.

    Even as a teen/young adult, IRC was more of an “old nerdy IT guy” hangout spot, so I rarely got involved with it, despite joining the IT profession in the military. I expected it to die out as more advanced web functionality approached, but I guess some people really like the classics, and it’s surprisingly still a thing today.

    Oh, and 4chan was a great site back in its early days, but then too many young kids started joining it and taking the “free speech” jokes seriously, so now it’s become a breeding ground for fascist misogynistic alt-right extremists. We used to joke around about that stuff, testing the mods to see what our censor limits were, since 4chan liked to advertise itself as the only place on the Internet where you could speak your mind without being silenced or banned. And, well… some people really pushed those boundaries to the extreme and eventually turned the site into a cesspool.


  • Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) is one of the most popular shows in the franchise (and definitely meme’d to death online). With a stellar cast, interesting development of characters, and fascinating action and psychological stories, it helped build a modern setting for the franchise to grow into.

    Also, it’s one of the only series that received a modern sequel series (Star Trek: Picard). Sure, there are occasional crossover episodes between series, but TNG was so popular, they got most of the old cast back to reprise their roles decades later. So if you’re invested in the characters of TNG, you get to see what adventures they’re up to years after leaving Starfleet.

    ALSO also… TOS and TNG are the only two series to get full-length feature films made alongside their respective TV shows. (Even the modern reboot films are set in the TOS timeline, following the characters from that show.) So if you’d like to see TV show characters on the big screen, TNG will give you those big budget productions along with your show.

    The first TNG film (Star Trek: Generations) actually has Captain Picard running into Captain Kirk from TOS, who got stuck in some sort of time anomaly in space. It was awesome that they found a way to do a crossover between the two series, considering they take place almost 100 years apart from each other in the Star Trek timeline.


  • Coby@lemmy.worldtoNo Stupid Questions@lemmy.worldMilitary Time vs 24hr?
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    8 months ago

    I spent 20 years in the US military. I had to quickly learn “military time” in order to function, as we were taught 12-hr time growing up in school. I was surprised when I traveled the world and discovered that everyone else uses “military time” (read: international time) as well. I guess Americans just really wanna do their own thing.

    I exclusively use military time nowadays. If someone doesn’t understand the time I stated, I’ll correct it to 12-hr time on the spot, as converting is super easy. Just count back 2 hours and drop the 10’s digit by one; e.g. 1600 = 4 PM. 2200 = 10 PM. Etc.