All I can give you by Jason Lancaster

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46kuUZAPxeQ

Publix. They’re in that middle bracket where I can still afford to shop there and yet they also seem to pay their employees a living wage.

Model Railroading.

It’s not the worst, but it requires all the key ingredients - you need to own a home large enough to have a ‘spare’ room, which means you’ve got disposable income. And displaying the trains is almost as much fun as running them, so you end building shelves and shelves, which then sprawl out to the rest of the house. Only to realize you’re missing the ‘key’ one from that set, got to go find that, obviously.

And then of course you can’t throw away the boxes, because that would lower the resale value, so you need to rent a second storage unit. Not that you would ever sell them of course. But your kids will be sitting on a goldmine!

And that’s just the collection portion. It’s a crafty hobby, from making scenery & waterfalls & little trees all the way to the special paints to make the engines look aged. That will need a room as well.

And now that we’ve got the train shelves in the kitchen, you know, I could put a food themed railroad on the table there. Yes I already have the desert themed one in the train room and the prairie themed one in the living room and the snow theme layout in the hallway, but I don’t have a silly one. No of course the Halloween theme one doesn’t count.

74F (23C) I grew up in Florida, which is a very warm state. Now I live a good bit farther north, but my body never adjusted to the cold weather. Nice in the summer, as I don’t need the A/C, but the bills in the winter are rough.

Every week I write my weight on the giant whiteboard in the kitchen. I don’t erase it, just keep the log running all year long, for anyone to see. It’s an amazing motivator.

I wish we had better tracking for all the times this happens.

I was banned from Reddit for the crime of using a different computer to login. Fun fact - there’s no appeal for that one. So I decided I had enough of that particular shit show, did some Googling for something similar to the older Reddit from years ago.

I have zero medical qualifications. But I largely skip dinner these days, and I do feel healthier.

Is it actually doing something different to my body chemistry - doubtful. It’s probably just a lower caloric intake combined with hey, I sleep better when I don’t have indigestion in the middle of the night from eating something delicious before bed.

Scottish Shortbread Cookies.

Small story - my grandmother on my mother’s side made these cookies that were absolutely my dad’s favorite. Unfortunately, he & my mom separated pretty early, but they stayed local so they could co-parent. So every Christmas, we could tell if dad had treated mom well that year because either there’d be a ton of his favorite cookies, or none at all.

$5,000 off on a truck that starts at $63,000 isn’t exactly my idea of a “big discount”.

I used to carry a universal TV remote control with me. It’s simply staggering how often it was useful.

“YOU DRIVE VERY FAST”. Screamed at me out her minivan window by a middle aged Indian woman making a left across traffic in front of me. Still cracks me up.

There’s this scene at the start of War of the Worlds where the hero races his classic muscle car up this tiny neighborhood street at full tilt, exhaust notes at full blast, and I think he even screeches the tires by slamming the brakes pulling into the driveway. Then he walks up to his neighbor and they’re all chill with him. In any other world, the neighbors would have him in handcuffs.

Not a direct answer, but if you ever get a chance - go walk around a self-serve junkyard. This is where cars go when they finally just aren’t worth fixing anymore. It is eye opening. There are cars that you will still consider ‘new’ that have already given up the ghost (mainly Dodge/Chrysler, Hyundai/Kia, & Nissan). And you can’t help but think - WTF are these cars doing here, aren’t these still for sale at the dealership?

Conversely, there are also cars there so old you hardly recognize them (usually Honda, Toyota, and full size pickups from Ford/GM).

I’m super-out of date, so talking about the originals here.

For the Decepticons, I have to go with Devastator / the Constructicons. Something about “We build for EviL” is just so cartoon villian-y that I’ve always loved them. Plus, neon green & purple.

For the Autobots - my first transformers ever were Gears and Cliffjumper - two relative no-name minis, but they have a special place in my heart.

Steam has free voice chat as well. Hardly open source though.

My company is European. Although all our templates are written in English, the check-language is set to Italian. So, pretty much every single word.

And yes, every time a new template comes out, we have to go through block by block and reset them to English. But even then a bunch slips through. Usually takes about a month to filter all the filters out.

9 Parchments - Surprising gem with some depth and a lot of replay value. Reminds me a lot of the Harry Potter universe. We fire this up almost every weekend. I recommend setting friendly fire to ‘self’ instead, as it encourages actual cooperative play.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Shredder’s Revenge - this is just a hack n slash quarter eater, but it’s mindless fun.

I assumed it was a lack of bots. Which is a good thing.

That, and we skew heavily towards introverts. So we’re not going to talk unless you hold a knife to our head.
Them: “How’s it going”?
Me: looks at shoelaces quietly, unsure if they’re talking to me or the empty wall behind me.

Witcher 3.