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.

https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/how-to-survive-midlife-blues

Depending on how old you are, you might just be hitting the normal midlife low point. It hit me hard in my late 30s and I spent a lot of time reading about it once I found out it was typical. I think a lot of it has to do with the rate at which you’re experiencing milestones and life changes. It feels like you are constantly progressing in your life up to your 20s or 30s and then the time scale suddenly shifts. Things take much longer to advance - saving enough for a house or retirement, that next promotion (assuming you even want one), major family changes, etc.

Understanding that helped me recover somewhat, though it still took a couple of years. I’m still in that lull, trying to figure out what I really even want to do next, but I don’t feel sad about it anymore. I don’t know if this applies to your situation, but I found it really helpful to learn about it.

I’ve never asked for time off, only informed my boss that I will be off. I have only had push back twice. Once, when I was in high school my boss said I couldn’t, so I quit on the spot (nothing to lose in a minimum wage job when my parents were still supporting me). A few years later, a shift lead (who was not technically my boss) challenged me, I told him I wasn’t asking for the day off, I was providing advance notice that I would not be there that day.

The irony is that I now manage people who have an attendance policy. I try to make sure people have plenty of opportunity to plan time off so they don’t have to call out. They’re going to take the time either way, I may as well know in advance.

If your main concern is the US currency or just wanting your money to be out of US-based assets, I believe Interactive Brokers provides a lot of flexibility to move your money between assets and currencies. You’re still going to pay taxes and be subject to all US laws.

If your concern is US involvement in your personal financial affairs…good luck. The US has tremendous influence over the global financial system and no legitimate foreign organization is going to work with you unless you have substantial assets. The few countries that do not respect US influence are not particularly trustworthy and trying to do business with them will put you at significant legal risk.

You could also try converting to physical gold, but the US has confiscated gold before, so that’s not a sure bet.

I could probably get a job at either of my local grocery store bakery departments with that.

I used to work for a cable company. I remember a coworker telling me a long time ago that one of the challenges they used to have was making sure the caller’s TV was tuned to the correct channel. So, the conversation would go like this:

“Please change the channel to 27” (or any other random number that isn’t a locally used channel) “What do you see?” “Nothing…” “Good, change it to 3, now what do you see?” “Nothing…” “Good, change to channel 4” “It works!”

For those that don’t know, there was a long period of time where the auxiliary input into TVs was tuned to either channel 3 or channel 4. There was a good chance that the customer didn’t know which one was correct for their TV and would have assumed that it was already set correctly if you asked.