It’s made intentionally hard though. Try buying The Expanse Blu Ray collection for example. Season 4 literally only comes region A locked, and is not playable on non modified Blu-ray players if you’re in the EU. I was excited to buy it after getting a decent Blu-ray player so I could rewatch it with my partner who hasn’t seen it, but something dumb like that does put a damper on things, so we haven’t even bothered with it, despite downloading it.

I can talk to people fine, though I don’t enjoy doing it with strangers at random places. I just hate phone calls. It’s not entirely rational, no doubt, though I still object to the silly stupid remark it’s “mental illness”.

Calling with IT professionals is extremely inefficient when discussing technical details where correct settings (ip’s, ports, paths etc) matter. At best a call here is only useful to indicate the urgency of the mail that was sent.

So, you agree that the statement that it gets easier with exposure is nonsense? Or do you mean to say that every one who disagree has mental health issues? Because you’re talking about a decently large chunk of people here.

Disagree. Part of my job entails calling people (and I even started at a phone helpdesk 20 years ago) and I still despise and loathe calling on the phone with people I don’t know for making appointments or getting quotes. To the point it will probably impact my health since my dentist only takes appointments by phone. (Before my sister in law worked there so I could DM her to ask her directly)

Exposure doesn’t always make it easier.

I know it can be cheaper but I wanted nice Niko sockets that fit the same cover plates I used for my lighting switches and power sockets. It’s a house, not an office, so paying more for things to look like I want them is also worth something, for me.

When you’re renovating that expense is relative imo. And the cable is relatively cheap imo. Nice wall sockets for them are super expensive though. 200 euro or thereabouts for 500m of cat6, but 20 euro per outlet pair adds up. Definitely still worth it, because like expected there’s more stuff to connect.

Spending time on it, stops making it free. I’ve used Linux on off for more than 25 years now, but always switched back to Windows because in all those previous instances something weren’t working well enough on Linux. I’m not blaming Linux for this and will at some point try again as I dislike what Windows does in the background.

But my time is not ‘free’.

And practically I mostly find using Windows extremely easy. Being in IT specifically for my knowledge about Windows obviously helps there. I follow the notices they send out for my job, so know how to turn off or prevent many of the user annoyances quickly.

Some reason being that if you don’t maintain a certain temperature in your house you’ll get mildew problems.

Dried pasta is far superior to fresh pasta for most dishes.

I don’t mean to give you unrequested advice so apologies if I come across as dismissive of your experience. I just feel like I can add some points that people in your situation might benefit from.

And that is to not chase love in itself. I found that as I got older I also accepted that I would grow old without a romantic relationship. Though I did invest time in my friendship relationships, and that did work.

While being somewhat saddened by it, I accepted that the chances of me finding love through dating apps was low, in particular because I don’t want to have kids, which obviously is a deal-breaker for many people. So my approach there was to just try to enjoy the moment without expectations and without judgement. If I got a match I’d try to have a fun conversation, if it was fun I’d try to set up a date, and if that was fun I’d keep it going. Just going for having an enjoyable time at that moment without expectations. It made even the dates that weren’t going anywhere long term enjoyable experiences, with the occasional opportunity for physical intimacy with someone who was on the same page about expectations. I could have lived like that but just got plain lucky this year I think. For me it still feels amazing to have happened so I’m not going to type lies and say it will happen for everyone. But I went into this relationship with no expectations either so regardless of what happens in the future I will treasure what is happening now, as I’m a relationship with the most amazing woman who adores aspects of me that would often be things other dates told me made me seem immature and obsessive.

So, you and people that relate to you, I genuinely wish you happiness and good things. In all aspects of life. But please don’t give up on meeting new people if you can, you might make someone else happy just by existing. Or if not you could at least give them a nice date.

That screen didn’t exist in Win XP. If it had, it would have been a different shade of blue. This is either Win10 though I suspect it’s Win11.

Once they’ve reached your desired ripeness you can slow down them getting overripe in the fridge.

Yeah, I get surgery sometimes is pushed unnecessary but in my case my femur head made me have a FAI angle of only 35 degrees. Which caused physical damage to the point of oedema, osteoporosis, a cyst and shredded connective tissue. No PT is going to solve that. Recovery took over a year but at least I can now train 4-5 times a week again when before I was lucky if I could go once every two weeks.

And fuck chiropractors. I’m still angry at my former physician for referring me to a quack who cracked my neck for something that literally was a congenital problem with my femur head. I suppose I should have gotten a second opinion but I brought this up from when I was twenty untill in my thirties. It was only spotted when I got a full body RX for something else.

Oh I know not to fight when something is lost, but in nogi my shit just gets wrecked superfast because it’s so explosive and people treat your neck like it’s a handle.

I’ve been doing martial arts in general for almost 30 years now, and I definitely was too careless when I was young. Bad advice about injuries where I got sent to a chiropractor instead of a surgeon meant I already had to get hip surgery before I had turned 40. (Bad FAI angles aggravated by trying to break through the pain, for over a decade, since I believed everyone I was being lazy and soft) I’m luckily more careful now, but there’s still days where I’m in pain just from walking or driving my car.

BJJ will keep you mentally young but your body will start feeling a lot older. Upside is that it’ll be able to do more cool stuff.

Remember that you can tell him you’re too poor for that. Because even to get in the supporting classes you need to be quite a bit more than just “wealthy”.

Say you need to go work and it takes 15 minutes by car. By bike takes 30 minutes. Great, very doable if weather allows.

But wait, you need to drop off and pick up your kids for whom you could only find a daycare spot somewhere that isn’t on you way to work. The shortest distance by bike forces you through the centre where other bike and school traffic means it takes another half hour on top of your journey. By car you could take a ring road so it only adds 7 minutes. (This road exists for bikes too, but since the difference in max speed with a bike it’d take even longer)

This is not even taking shopping into consideration. Or hobbies or visiting friends and family.

I’m all for reducing car usage and I try to do so when I can. But cars do have a purpose and free up a LOT of time for you to actually live your life with your family.

Not everyone can ride a bike safely. Injuries happen. Permanent problems happen. To deal with this you need good public transport. Even in Europe this doesn’t exist unless your entire world is a large city.

I wish I could say the same but if you want to date you have to here. I despise and absolutely hate how you have to you use a phone number to register. And then every contact you have can add you to a group so everyone there now can have your number.

I’ve had a stalker before and I hate that stuff like that makes it trivially easy for her to get my number again. I literally can’t understand how women are okay with absolutely shitty systems like this. I really can’t repeat enough how much I strongly hate WhatsApp and how everyone else thinks it’s so good for exactly the reason that I hate it. It’s too easy to send messages despite me never giving you my number to begin with. SMS is the same but you can’t add me to a group without my permission and share my number with a group of people I don’t know.