Mint on my desktop and Pop on my laptop…so that part seems accurate for me.

You can pressure cook frozen chicken in an instant pot.

Oh, that makes sense!

The tall one in the back looks a little inconvenient. Are you growing native prairie grass in there?

Not even a little bit true for me. I listened to pretty much only country at 14 and I don’t listen to any country now, not even the stuff I liked then. By 16 I had switched to mostly rock & alternative. I will still listen to that occasionally, mostly for nostalgia, but it isn’t on any of my playlists. I suspect most everything on my regular playlists came out after I was 30, but it continues to shift forward over time. I suspect eventually most of my current playlist will age out too.

I bought the first one for $20. For the second I’ll play on Game Pass, if it is available, or again wait for $20. Maybe even less if I forget about it, which I might.

Someday, that’s what we’ll be sold as “The Singularity”. Some company like Apple or Google will offer us ascendance into the cloud, but we’ll actually just become digital slave labor.

I streamed it on Game Pass for about 30 min and was bored and quit after the first level. I’m not really the target audience, but I still expected more.

It drives me nuts that my state has “deregulated” natural gas. All natural gas in the region is supplied to every home by a single company (the same one as before deregulation). I pay at least $35 a month all year just for the privilege of being connected to it.

BUT, I don’t actually do business with that company. I get to pick from a dozen companies that all provide front-end billing for my natural gas. They advertise how much they will charge per therm used (plus an admin fee), but that price is on top of what I pay to the company actually providing gas. If I have an issue with the gas, the supplier comes out to deal with it, not the company I pay every month. And, I have to change companies every 6-24 months to maintain the advertised rates, otherwise they increase my cost after the new customer price expires. Its fake competition that added an extra step to the process and increases prices compared to the regulated version that used to exist.

The free version is nice and easy to use, but I think you need the paid version to do custom programs. Luckily, they have a reasonably priced lifetime subscription price, unlike a lot of the apps owned by major companies.

There’s a bit of a learning curve for setting up complicated progression programs, but that’s because it has a huge amount of flexibility. For example, you can build a 4 week progression plan with heavy days and light days where the weights are all calculated on a custom scale and it will provide some recommendations, but you still have to pick all the options you want.

My preferred app (Fit Notes) is Android only and doesn’t have any of the fancy features you mention.

My second favorite app (Personal Training Coach) does appear to be on Apple and has lots more features. You can pick between many popular lifting programs or setup your own. Programs can be built with progression plans and timers and can increase weight after a successful session, hold weights if you are unable to complete a progression, or reduce weight after multiple failed attempts.

• Holistic
• Double Click
• Table Stakes
• Jump Ball
• Blocking & Tackling

I’m in the process of (very slowly) migrating my household from Windows to Linux and am currently testing Nextcloud as a replacement for OneDrive. In my case, I set it up using pikapods.com because I want offsite storage. The server part of the setup was incredibly easy because the host did all the work.

Getting my Linux client setup was kind of a pain (especially compared to the Android and Windows clients), but everything seems to work ok so far. Of course, I’m only backing up a small amount of data so far, so I can’t comment on the efficiency or speed for a major backup.

I use it to help me come up with better wording for things. A few examples:

• Writing annual goals for my team. I had an outline of what I wanted my goals to be, but wanted to get well written detail about what it looks like to meet or exceed expectations on each goal and to create some variations based on a couple of different job types.

• Brainstorming interview questions. I can use the job description and other information to come up with a starting list of questions and then challenge the LLM to describe how the question is useful. I rarely use the results as-is, but it helps me to think through my interview plan better than just using a list of generic questions.

• Converting a stream of thought bullet list into a well written communication.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some exploits that have already been discovered that people have been sitting on in anticipation of support ending soon.

I had to type a bit to check, but found that I mostly use the right shift if the letter I’m capitalizing is on the left side of the keyboard. Oddly, it wasn’t 100% though.

5 forever!

I was thinking about this one too. Not sure if I’ll buy it, but it’s the only one I’m considering at the moment.

Another vote for Freetaxusa. TurboTax might be marginally easier to use, but it is far more expensive and Intuit is a horrible company. If you hate filing taxes (because of the complexity), that is because Intuit and H&R Block lobby congress to keep things complicated so they can sell you their products.

I use a budget app for tracking income and spending on a transaction basis and then keep the rest of my finances in spreadsheets.