kite

joined 2 years ago
[–] kite 5 points 1 year ago

It's one of the perks of the gig,

I work with first responders of all kinds, and I can't think of a single one who would call that a "perk of the gig". Having one 24 hour shift with constantly interrupted sleep is taxing at best, and once you hit middle age it gets progressively harder as you get older. Throw in having to work multiple 24s in a row and the very real possibility that once you finally do get off, you don't get to go home and rest, you have to go to your second (or third) job - usually one you own yourself, or one owned by a fellow firefighter/paramedic because it's the only way to accommodate the crazy schedules - and play catch-up there. It screws with you mentally and physically, but given the piss-poor pay a good chunk of them make, it's what's got to be done.

Also, I don't know any cops that sleep on OT (I don't have much exposure to that scenario), but a lot of the ones around here sleep on their regular 12s. If I see two cop cars parked together in a median or pull-off, and they are parked facing opposite directions such that their drivers windows are next to each other so it looks like they can chat easily, one cop is almost certainly asleep while the other is standing watch. They don't adjust to the mandatory day/night shift rotations well.

[–] kite 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My diehard republican father was all-in on Vivek based solely on my uncle telling him how "smart and forward thinking" he was. After the debate, my father said, "that Indian guy is one slimey, weasely asshole. He's nuts." So even some trumper-level folks can see what he really is.

[–] kite 3 points 1 year ago

I think you're right. It certainly seems pretty, but it still looks like every other generic 'motley group of ridiculously attractive misfits save ____" that Netflix and its ilk churn out.

[–] kite 3 points 1 year ago

Interesting, thank you!

[–] kite 25 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I have lots of stomach issues and can't eat a lot of foods, which means I mostly eat the same few things over and over. One of the few things I can have reading out is a particular local restaurant's chicken strips, and I'd get them for lunch a couple times a month. They've raised their prices twice in the last 6 months, and what used to be 6-8 strips for$6 is now 5 chicken strips - just the chicken, no fries or other sides - for $10. If I'm feeling masochistic, I'll get myself and my father each one of their chef salads. Two of those are now $27. They are a very, very popular place and usually crazy busy, but since that last hike I've noticed the parking lot at lunchtime is often half empty. This is not a wealthy area, people can't afford these prices. They are going to greed themselves right out of business.

They've also lost every single long-time employee they had. And when I say long, I mean 15, 20 years working there. I watched most of them grow up, get married and have families. Every. Single. One. is gone, and I've seen most of them at other restaurants now. Their staff is now different every time I go in there, and service sucks and orders are frequently wrong. My work stopped ordering food from there for meetings because of it. Greed, greed, greed, with a healthy dose of apparent staff mistreatment. Story of the world at large nowadays.

[–] kite 2 points 1 year ago

How the author of that article threw Aspergers in with schizophrenia and dementia as a possible cause for his decline into acid-tripping cats, I don't even know. Aspergers is apparently very different from what I thought it was.

[–] kite 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Life goes on, regardless of what the politicians say or do.

[–] kite 1 points 1 year ago

He's a good bit older than that and has cancer, and is not able to sit at a computer long enough to learn a new operating system even if he wanted to. Which he really, really doesn't lol. He hates the thing with the fire of a thousand burning suns and only used it for his necessaries.

I'm also not familiar with any other operating system besides windows, outside of a brief foray into pi-hole years ago that I don't remember much about, so I'd have to learn it first. While I'd love to start playing around with Linux some day, unfortunately that day isn't going to be any time soon.

[–] kite 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can't even imagine what that Nazi dude was thinking when he agreed to that fight. The stills I saw from it were hilarious.

[–] kite 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Co-worker at an old job had 2 pugs. Their eyes kept popping out of their sockets. It got to the point where she didn't even take them to the vet anymore when that happened, she just popped them back in herself. She saw nothing wrong with this. In fact, during the time I knew her, those two pugs were elderly and eventually died. She then went out and got another.

I mean.. wtf. Why would you support that?

[–] kite 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Lucky you. I got told by our IT that I'm going to be their windows 11 sacrificial lamb and will be getting it before everyone else to bang out the quirks. It doesn't pay to be known as the office nerd :(

My elderly father's win 10 computer has been absolutely shoving the upgrade down his throat, and I'm about ready to give in and just do it. Telling it to stop notifying him does no good, it just comes right back the next day. Then he won't touch the computer because the full screen upgrade ad freaks him out and he's afraid something is wrong. Screw Microsoft.

[–] kite 11 points 1 year ago

OP, check out the websites about grants ISPs are getting to put fiber in rural areas and see if your area is on the list somewhere (I would try and link you to some, but I'm on mobile and for some reason I have a hell of a time finding those sites while on mobile). You can see below what I've had to deal with for about 20 years, until my area finally got covered by one of those grants a few months ago. I am super rural - like, I am literally surrounded by nationally protected forest and nothing else; it'snot a place I thought would ever be included in those grant locations. It was, though, and I now have Gigabyte internet with no cap, with VOIP, for $74.98 a month. If I'm not using WiFi, I get an actual gig of download speed. If I'm on wifi, it's usually between 600-900MB.

Up until recently, we paid Centurylink about $150 a month for two lines into the house. Each line maxed out at 0.75MB download speed and 0.23 MB upload speed. We needed two lines to even be able to function. Almost 20 years of this, with no other options besides Hughesnet. We tried them for a little while; their equipment cost a fortune, it was about$150 a month, the speed was nearly as bad and they had a 200MB A MONTH CAP. We had to turn off images for websites in order to not go over the cap. Previous to 2004, I lived in a very rural part of NY. We had high speed internet for $69 a month, no cap. I can't remember the speed, but I remember that it took 3 minutes to download a full sized movie. 20 YEARS AGO the internet was better, and cheaper!

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