• 13 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 20th, 2023

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  • I have three monitors. Two 27" in neutral good configuration, then a third smaller 4:3 monitor (not sure what size off the top of my head) in a chaotic good type setup, albeit on the left side, not the right.

    My desktop machine can use all three, but the two main monitors are usually tuned to my work laptop.



  • I can see those kinds of things working in or near cities, but out where I am - fairly rural - there’s just too many miles of road to install a bunch of speed humps or similar things. It would take a monumental amount of money. They don’t even have shoulders on most of the roads. I admit even I speed when I’m driving them, although I’ll slow down for bends in the road so as not to clobber a deer, cyclist, pedestrian, etc. that might be lurking out of sight.

    (I got into a fun argument here on Lemmy a few months back with someone who insisted horse and buggies should have lights, and I was like, “What happens when you come around the bend too fast and there’s a tree laying in the road?” He just couldn’t accept the problem is the driver, not the horse and buggy. Basically, that’s what’s wrong with drivers in the US: We, as a group, have a bizarre expectation that things will always go to plan.)

    I’m also nervous about these solutions for another reason - I’ve seen towns install those kinds of calming measures in a way that hurts cyclists. In one example, they extended the curbs out to the lane, which does slow down traffic - but it forces cyclists who could previously ride on the shoulder into the lane, thereby further enraging drivers. I had one asshole pass me in that very narrow section some years ago, so now I make sure to ride in the middle of it, so they’d actually have to hit me. They won’t do that because they don’t want to damage their precious car, so I’m safe.

    And I say this as someone that lives in an area that’s actually pretty good for cycling, that is, most drivers are actually pretty good about passing safely and all that.


  • Interesting. Mostly what I see is people slam on their brakes near the camera, then take off again after it.

    My theory: There’s so little enforcement of the traffic laws here, they might as well not exist. You’re almost certain NOT to get caught, so people will do whatever they want and will practically always get away with it. I don’t really want to argue for more cops, but when I’ve driven in areas with more traffic enforcement and visible police presence, people tend to drive much more sedately.

    I drive and ride bicycle, and I would LOVE if the cops came riding with me some time. I see some of them doing the 100 mile ride for charity in our county, so I know they have people on the force who ride fairly seriously. Join one of our regular group rides wearing cycling clothes (not police gear), get another cop stationed ahead in a car or motorcycle…and start pulling over some people who buzz us or roll coal. Word would get out very quickly.



  • Man I want to put LED bulbs in my 1999 model year car, but I don’t want to start blinding people. The last thing I want is for someone to hit me because they were blinded. It seems many LEDs do intend to have similar beam patterns to halogen bulbs, but I’m not sure how well they actually do.

    Our 2020 Mazda has LED headlights, and I gotta admit, they are much better for seeing. We live off the beaten path, not a ton of traffic, but plenty of deer and other animals.

    On the other hand, my headlights in the 1999 had gotten really hazy, and I recently did one of those headlight restoration kits to it, and it worked stunningly well. Since then, I haven’t driven at night very much to get a feel for how much it helped. So maybe I won’t need LEDs. (The halogens in there are relatively new.)



  • I was talking to some friends last weekend, and one of them said that they had previously owned a house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I said, “I love the Outer Banks, love visiting it, but I would never buy real estate there.” He said, “Yeah, it took a couple years for us to figure that out.”

    Of course, the islands are basically giant sandbars, and there’s the sea level rise issue. But I hadn’t considered that the environment is just that much harder on houses - roofs need to be replaced more often, wood rots more quickly, and so on - and that’s not even including a hurricane coming through. When the kind kicks up, which happens pretty regularly there, the house is getting sandblasted. The maintenance costs are much higher compared to an inland house, and I assume insurance is much higher, and so on.

    They rented it out to vacationers to help offset that cost, but they found that they weren’t breaking even - they have to charge competitive rates to get customers, but those rates weren’t covering all of the major upcoming expenses.

    But, there’s still a market for houses there. I imagine the recent images in the news of houses collapsing into the water have to be having an effect, but the bottom doesn’t seem to be falling out like you’d think.




  • limelight79@lemm.eetoLinux@lemmy.mlThe Dislike to Ubuntu
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    9 days ago

    Every time this is asked, I post the same comment. I used Kubuntu for years and liked it, but more recently they started doing things that annoyed me. The biggest was related to snaps and Firefox. Now, sandboxing a browser is probably a great idea, but I wanted to use the regular deb install, so I followed the directions to disable the snap install and used the deb. However, Ubuntu overrode that decision several times - I’d start browsing, then realize I was using a snap AGAIN. Happened a few times over a couple years. If it happened once, eh, maybe an error, but it happened 3 or 4 times. I came to the conclusion I wasn’t in control of my system, Ubuntu was.

    I switched to Debian and am happy with my choice.




  • Milk crates. I was trying to come up with some way using wood blocks to hold propane tanks in the truck bed, then I discovered the milk crates the previous owner of our house left. They work GREAT for 20 lb and 30 lb propane tanks. Easy to strap in, as well.

    I don’t know why someone would want to carry a propane tank in the cab of their vehicle, unless they absolutely had to. I know I did it many time before getting a pickup, putting the tank in my car, and making the trip as short as possible.