…yet.

Calm down Don Corneo.

In far-flung new-build land, you might have to drive into my neighborhood to access any of those. And don’t bother taking the bus, because there are probably no bus routes either.

That was actually a positive to me, I had it built in a semi-rural ex-urb. Nearest city is about 30 miles away.

Can’t speak for the quality of the build, other than it’s been four years, and the only issues are ones I expected (the floating floor is cheap and I’ll have to replace it in the next few years, and the exterior stain is peeling on trim bits and needs a touch up due to Colorado sun and weather extremes).

A 50 year mortgage is just renting with extra steps and additional responsibility.

Working on this now. Not sure if I’ll make early retirement, but I plan to have my house paid off inside the next 2-3 years. I’m in my early 40s, and the house is my last debt. Everything else is paid off other than monthly revolving spend. And the house is a new build, was constructed in 2021, so shouldn’t have any major issues for quite some years. Also have a fully paid off solar and battery setup to keep electric costs low (I pretty much just pay the grid tie connection fee monthly, no usage billing).

Hoping I’ll be able to retire by 55 since I’m tired of the grind, but if it doesn’t happen, it won’t be the end of the world.

I use utterly unique and very long passphrases for the most important stuff (banking, mortgage servicing, email, etc.), 2FA for those and most other things, and just throwaway crap passwords for things I don’t care about (web forums and most everything else).

Toss on some mushrooms, spinach leaf, and a bit of ground beef or sausage and you’re good to go.

Every accusation is projection.

No illusions on my part. RAID5 NAS with periodic disk archive backups.

• Books
• Audiobooks
• Retro game ROMs
• FLAC music collection
• Movies, TV, and anime series

Got what I need locally and intend to keep it that way. I’m sick of sites like Amazon with “Buy Now” buttons that are really “rent now via restrictive terms and only via devices we approve until we decide you no longer need access.”

Neat write up.

Power consumption is a big reason I ditched my full size server for an AMD mini-PC. Way more efficient with a tdp of 25w, and idles pretty low (sub-10w, I forget the exact wattage).

I’m not really doing a lot with it, it’s mostly for Plex and Jellyfin, and I’ve got a separate VM hosting home assistant. It’s running Proxmox, and plenty of headroom if I needed more VMs or containers.

Basic headset would be good for sim racing.

I use an AMD mini-PC with Ryzen 5700u, 32GB RAM, connected with my home NAS. Similar software stack, the server is hosted via Proxmox, no issues.

I have a Zigbee antenna. Will have to double check. I’m pretty sure the lights work with the antenna, but scenes are only possible if you’ve integrated them (generally via hue through something like Homekit).

I’m a terrible cook personally, but my wife is fantastic at this stuff. Just FYI, you want a delicious cheese sauce, all you need is some milk or half & half, butter, and cheese. If you want it thicker, use less milk, or add a bit of cream cheese. Heat at a simmer and keep warm.

If you let it cool, it will firm up some and makes for a good cracker dip.

This is why it’s a great idea to refuse to install everything that’s possible, including smart switches, cameras, lights etc. that rely on the good will of some company to keep running.

Even then you can get fucked over. I’ve used Hue smart lights for years, and back when I bought them, you didn’t need an account to use them, just an app and network connection. Years later, they forced an online login for the app, requiring you to be online to interface with the bulbs. You can kind of work around it with Home Assistant, but you still need the account now to add the bulbs, and I don’t think scenes work without an account either now.

Before you read The Daughters War check out The Blacktongue Thief. And if you like that, I’d also recommend Between Two Fires. Christopher Buehlman is fantastic.

The Daughters War

Holy shit, what a great way to find out there’s a prequel to the Blacktongue Thief. Which also fits in this thread.

I was about to die.

Worse, I was about to die with bastards.

Buehlman has an incredible way with words and with giving characters an absolutely unique narrative voice.

After a certain tipping point, stupidity en masse becomes indistinguishable from malice. The result is more important than the intent.

Thanks, for some reason when I was looking at post earlier it was just the screenshot, no link. Maybe it didn’t load properly, happened to me sometimes with Lemmy.