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My “adopted” family (in-laws) and I have been heading in that direction and sending trial balloons for years.

This year, snacks, a pair of socks, and a couple bucks.

We got them gift cards for a restaurant we all adore.

We all are doing just fine, in our respective worlds. We’ve managed to stay geographically close, ish, and do holidays etc together at somebody’s house. That’s the important part.

Took me more years than it should have to realize that, but let’s say my wife’s family has taught me quite a bit over the years and largely changed my perspective on many things - this included.

Don’t fucking fly.

Not bc climate change, but bc no human has ever gotten off a commercial flight. and been in the best possible condition to face whatever they were flying to.

People are miserable, and concentrated in a small space they’re doubly so. Add to that convincing security theatre puppets that my CPAP is actually medical equipment, and that no, the meds that make sleep possible are not prohibited (liquid max be damned)… Hell with that.

I can get from my driveway to Chicago Union Station in two hours or less from my driveway. The LSL can have me in Albany ~12h later. Given that I was forced to make that trip quarterly in a past life, trying to fly WN would have forced me to go via BWI or ATL and taken the same damn amount of time all considered, with lots more stress.

Train gave me a decent sleeper car for less than plane fare for the two of us, even on WN. I arrived ready to get to work, versus a lil jet lagged and angry at people in general. Yeah, train was a no brainer.

Obviously not an option on all routes, but worked well for me.

• A Long December (Counting Crows)

• Soul Asylum’s cover of Rhinestone Cowboy.

The former is ever relevant, the latter is somehow both a total reimagining of the song and true to the original.

Yeah, I date myself with both of those. Yeah, I was probs in HS for both of them.

That, and Good Riddance / Time of your Life (Greenday). I understand it was supposed to be a sarcastic dig at a woman. But that’s not how audiences largely heard it, and it became the legit, totally unironic anthem of a certain generation that I am abs not a part of.

Also… There’s a completely random punk band no one but me has ever heard of (Ruth Ruth), and their album Laughing Gallery has been by my side at some of my lowest points over the years. Wish I could let 'em know the impact they had in making sure I pushed through some of the worst periods.

Oh, so instead of snoozing, the only option becomes “turn off”? That won’t end well.

Don’t mean to jump on you, and I’m sure that would work for some. But for those who are past that point… Less so.

All the fucking time!

I had a run of several good years where I was able to get out of bed after a few alarms.

Prior to that, and recently, it’s been “automatic behavior” that is damnably difficult to control.

Context, significant sleep disorder here - but setting that aside, you’re not alone.

Stuff I tried and discarded, but that might work for you

• $friend please call me until I am awake enough to have a conversation

• Boss, please ping me a ton of times in the AM (requires understanding and/or them to know what’s going on)

• Alarms all over the damn house .

• Alarms locked inside of analog safes and other related silliness.

What worked ultimately, was a comb of meds and an amazing partner who helped support me through the various diagnoses, and etc. that came with it.

Sometimes, I still bump it be an hour, but I know that I did it. From where I sit, the idea of having no recollection of the 7:00 that you reset, but waking up for the 7:10, well that sounds likely to degrade going forward - and probably at the worst moment possible.

Last week was positively brutal to me, for a bunch of reasons. As the week wore on, my loving and persistent partner is the only reason I made it to the office. Two things net saved my tail - meds made a real difference once we sorted doses and such, but I would absolutely NOT be a productive professional today if not for my wife.

Some days, she just nudges when she hears the alarm go off. Some days, she has to hit me with a brick to get my attention. Neither is ideal, of course, but a supportive and loving person who is right there and knows how hard to shove you; and what to do when shoving that hard isn’t enough. is life changing.

I know what works for me, open to a chat, might give you some ideas.

Yep. I have no context for the site it’s found on, so no idea what it’s the time of.

TL;dr - Did you actually just allege ‘crisis actors’ played victim’s families? That’s not just wholly unsupported, it’s also wholly offensive to most people, and certainly to those who have connections to any of the victims.

First, let me state for the record that the entire situation is positively out of control - especially in light of the recent comments from one of Israel’s minor ministers. I don’t disagree that it appears to be headed towards full-blown genocide. I don’t disagree that the folks being killed in Gaza are NOT the ones responsible for the attack, nor connected to the same. We are entirely on the same page there.

What I take exception to, however, is your absolutely unsupported statement regarding ‘planted fake victim families.’ First, because if one is going to make an allegation that inflammatory, one should ensure clarity. Who are you alleging is fake? The victims? Their families? Both?

I make light of the word choice and clarity, not just because it matters, but because I find it exceptionally unlikely that you could support any of the statements your words ‘could’ convey. When some asshole killed numerous children in a school, a certain subset of the population whined about ‘crisis actors’ for some years afterwards. I’ve heard similar allegations in reference to victims of Hurricane Katrina, and even in reference to Uvalde.

All of them are pure garbage, which places your allegation on exceptionally unsteady footing - In the improbable event that you are able to support that allegation, I’ll happily hear out whatever evidence you’re able to present.

Until then, there is no need to peddle conspiracy theories, too-vague allegations, etc.

I call BS - with notable exceptions for a particular omnipresent retail chain whose ToS was recently updated so they could do substantial tracking of your traffic.

A company I work with is wholesale migrating both internal and external accounts to a third-party auth provider in whom I have very little faith. That is a concerning security risk.

Using open wifi hotspots is hardly a best practice in any world, of course, but I’m hard-pressed to believe that it takes precedence over, say, ticking the boxes on NIST CSF or PCI compliance. Or just plain old “shoulder surfing” which has always been a risk in public, but becomes much more concerning given we all have a computer screen in our hand constantly and it’s often full of data useful to someone with ill intent.

They might not get your pw or 2FA codes, but knowing your username is plenty for them to convincingly call you later, pretending to be from the bank. “Now that you’ve changed your pw, the system will send one extra 2FA code to your device as a test. Please read me the code when the text message comes in.”

Right there with ya. This spring, I moved an hour or so north-northwest, though my primary motivation was escaping the political climate I had been in. Expected to get more wintry winters as part of the deal as well. That seems not to be happening, to say the least. We’ll be in the 70s and possibly 80s until at least Thursday, and I don’t hold out much hope for it to cool down meaningfully.

It is when you then use the events you witnessed to testify and roll up the people who were directly and proximately responsible for that nightmare.

I do not think that her participation was so critical to the events as to mean “but for” her actions the plot wouldn’t have existed. I do think that “but for” TFG and Guiliani’s participation, those events never would have happened.

Seems fair to me that she gets a lighter sentence, and the plotters responsible for the entirety of the conspiracy get justice.

Also, she’ll certainly never practice law again when all of this is over. Minor credit blemishes are enough to fail C&F in some places, can’t see a state bar overlooking this.

If binaries aren’t pre-built, compiling it yourself is not particularly difficult (assuming it’s a decent repo that’s well-maintained).

• Readme often has a list of dependencies and basic instructions. On linux, build steps might look something like make && sudo make install, possibly with a ./configure thrown in beforehand. You can, of course, run configure where present with a help flag to see all available options, and change them as you like, but many programs ‘just work’ with the default options on a variety of platforms.

• Before that, you have to install the dependencies. Often, it’s a copy/paste command in the readme, and on Debian might look like sudo apt install libsomething libsomethingelse libsomethingelse - the overwhelming majority of the time, that gives you the correct versions (may be part of package name)

• Otherwise, you can make several times, and if you read the errors, it will often tell you what’s missing and you can iterate through the deps that way.

• I don’t suggest building the dependencies initially. It might be necessary (If memory serves, you still need to drop the PCRE library source in a specific place for Nginx to find, for instance, but the build process also builds that). It’s usually not necessary, and if you delve too far down it can be a frustrating experience.

I’m not in the habit of building for windows, as the only computer I run it on is my work computer, but there may be instructions for that in readme as well. If the dependency installs fail, you’ll have to search your distro’s package manager to find the correct name of the package on your distro, but once it’s present you should be able to proceed from there without problems (in well-maintained projects)

If it doesn’t build, you can always open an issue on the GitHub - there are no stupid questions, particularly if you search issues/closed issues first for keywords in the errors you see. The vast majority of projects are run by decent people who respond reasonably and/or some community member will jump in with an answer.

For some languages, the build steps look very different - Maven projects in Java come to mind. I don’t love that tool, but it’s less evil than some of the alternatives. OTOH, if it’s rust, the build steps are very quick and painless - including installing Rust in the first place.

You’re 100% correct on principle. The problem is that given our electoral system, third parties end up taking votes from viable candidates, and we end up with terrifying people running things.

We can’t change the electoral system, because we’ve never actually had an Article V convention (Constitutional Convention) so we don’t know what would happen there. We’d get an entirely new constitution, and it would not be a better one. You’ve probably seen how dysfunctional our republicans are, I’m not about to let them tear up e.g., my right to free speech or a fair trial.

Given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, what would come out of that convention would be provide zero protections for anything.

But yes, we need third parties. I just don’t see a plausible way to get them without taking on an amount of risk that most people aren’t willing to take.

Seconded - I spent maybe $30 on the journal (might be a knockoff, but it works) and intentionally got one with card slots as well. No carrying a wallet required, self-contained, and when I think of something to do/search/etc it goes in there immediately.

I started with Midori notebooks in A5, and realized I love the paper, but the binding just didn’t work for the way I write. Switched to Rhodia spiral bound 80gsm and haven’t looked back. Wouldn’t call myself “organized” per se, but far more than I ever have been and I no longer lose the random things I think of. or end up with 500 notes on my phone and no idea what’s in each.

I’m sorry you were in that position, and I hope you’re doing much better now?