Jackie's Fridge

I use a Kaweco Sport as my daily driver.

Bonus: Nobody ever “borrows” it at work because it confuses and terrifies them.

No wrong way to take it - my complaints do sound like ye olden days of BT.

I have a pair of Shockz bone conductors and a MiniRig 4, both of which I enjoy quite a bit. I have also run into all of these issues in the past year. My post was mostly meant to counter the statement that Bluetooth is so far ahead of old tech. Sure it’s great, but like any tech, it has fail points

I have a bunch of different wired headphones (an embarrassing number of them) and they just don’t fail. I’ve never had a headphone jack fail on me. The sound is great - no batteries, no connection time, no latency, no compression, literally plug & play. There just isn’t much that can go wrong with them, so for me, BT is a convenience (when I don’t feel like having a cord) but not necessarily an improvement

The key being: for me. Everyone else, if you love BT, keep enjoying it

Reception cuts out of I turn wrong. Headphone batteries are usually flat when I decide I want to listen to something or take a call. Phone wants to pair with every other BT device except the headphones (save for the time it somehow forgets them and I have to dive into the menu and re-pair). Old phone’s BT is starting to get flaky. So much latency no matter what. Sound quality still not there yet.

I do like not having a cord, but literally everything else about bt headphones is a step backwards against simplicity & longevity. I have minidisc equipment from the early oughts that still sounds fantastic on the PortaPros I also got at that time.

Also you kids get off my lawn, apparently

I’d love to say I solved that for myself by not having kids, but I just found other sources of stress.

Greetings Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada…

She vaguely thinks there may be something out there but it has zero bearing on her life. I think that makes her functionally an agnostic atheist.

It has been surprisingly un-stressful so far, probably due to the ridiculously supportive community there. The best part is that everyone’s submissions go live at the same time every week, so there’s a whole new playlist of brand new music to enjoy!

First of all, excellent username. Second, I would love a chance to win the Tomb Raider I - III remaster just for the nostalgia. Third, the cool new thing I’ve done this year is take part in WeeklyBeats, a year-long challenge to create and post a new music track every week of 2024. So far so good! Fourth, I don’t have a decent meme to share but here (if I can get photos to work) is a photo of my void.

Another vote for the T480. I have a T480s running Mint and it’s been lovely. No driver issues and for office/light media creation/consumption it seems to work without a hitch.

A Mary Sue can fail, but those failures don’t usually have a massive impact and are easily reversed without the feeling that the MS had to struggle to earn the reversal.

The more flaws a character has, the more they have to work to balance them out. Readers are more likely on the side of a character that has to work and make sacrifices to make it through the difficulties the plot throws at them.

Random Example: Diana Rowland’s “My Life as a White Trash Zombie”. Protagonist Angel has a criminal record, drug addiction, abusive home life, and generally makes very bad decisions. Because of her life course, she has very few resources (she can’t go to the cops, nobody she knows has money or connections, etc) but she can think quickly and has a sort of desperate resourcefulness. Because everything is working against her, she has to fight for any positive forward movement, and one misstep can be a serious threat - and those happen frequently, undoing any success and forcing her to burn her resources to try a new path. IIRC in one of the books the B-story is her trying just to earn her GED as the main plot around her is utter pandemonium. Just that struggle to graduate high school is a herculean task given the deck stacked against her. Readers aren’t thinking “how will she win”, they’re thinking “well what’s going to go wrong this time?”

TL;DR: If every time your protagonist has a setback the readers shout “can’t she ever catch a break?” instead of “ah she’ll just breeze through this” you should be doing okay.

YOU WOULDN’T DOWNLOAD A MOUSE

Respond to nothing. Block everything.

Same, but I always read it in Nandor’s voice from What We Do in the Shadows

It’s a short series (six episodes so far) but with two more in production: The Devil’s Hour.

Go in blind, don’t spoil it for yourself.

If you like a series that gives you all the clues but none of them fall together until the last episode, this one is dark, brain-bendy supernatural mystery with an excellent cast.

Yeah he tried getting into business but when that didn’t work out he started yelling at clouds.

The Former Guy. He was in Home Alone, starred in some reality show and sold steaks for a while.

Listening to other people, especially to women, is a skill. Don’t spend silent time in a conversation waiting for your chance to speak or be smart or witty, stay quiet and really process what you’re hearing. Imagine yourself in their situation. Accept that what they say is exactly how they feel.

The less time you spend talking, the more your conversational partner will tell you, and the more you will start to understand them, their lives, their goals, and their anxieties.

Knowing and understanding other peoples’ experiences will help you not only make better decisions in your own life, but understand why other people act and think the way they do. You’ll be less likely to snap-judge or make assumptions about others. And knowing more about your loved ones, co-workers, and neighbours will allow you to help them effectively if they need it.

And travel abroad as much as possible - listen to people from other countries and cultures. The human experience is wildly varied and endlessly fascinating.

“SLAMMED” SLAMMED!

Millions of people not voting because it would take millions of people voting to elicit positive change and nobody is doing that is one of the most frustrating things.

Honestly something I got for my partner - a silicone microwave popcorn bowl kinda like this one. I stumbled across it at Goodwill, still brand new.

It’s a medium sized, black silicone bowl with a vented cover - fill a recessed space in the bottom with normal popcorn and microwave for a few minutes.

No extra packaging, no grease, easy cleanup, and you can use cheap (or super nice) popcorn as you like. And it collapses down for storage.