Otherbarry

That could probably be its own post, people have pretty strong opinions on that haha.

Me personally I’ve always been partial to Mario Kart 64 (& I know lots of people hate on it). It has just the right balance of speed and driving mechanics that make it a good racing game. Later on remember playing the follow-up on the Gamecube (Mario Kart Double Dash) & I never really liked that one, it just feels kind of slow/sluggish compared to 64. Like it’s trying to be a racing game but it just runs too slow IMO.

Yes of course, I meant as a general idea of what you’d aim to do lacking any other information beyond the fact that the bomb itself fell in the local downtown area (going by the post itself).

Thing is if a bomb dropped that close most people will not know what the scale of the bomb was, what the design was, how far exactly they were from the blast radius, whether it’s ground / atmospheric, wind direction, all that stuff. In that short amount of time you’d just need to run into the nearest still-standing shelter & figure things out from there.

Hopefully with some extreme luck the bomb would fall just as you were walking/driving past your nearest fallout shelter and can easily get in. Or you’re a prepper and aren’t far from your homemade bunker with supplies, radio, and whatnot.

Say there is a nuclear explosion in the downtown of my US city.

If it’s that close you then essentially you’ll need to decide whether to die quick or slow :/

If you’re actually planning on surviving you’d need to stay in an underground bunker or something similar for at least 3-5 weeks to be safe enough to travel outside (and we’re assuming you have clean sources of food/water, bathroom, etc, during that time). If you make it that far then afterwards you’d likely want to go outside & get as far away from the radiation zone as possible.

Coincidentally the basement of my work building actually has a fallout shelter sign from back in the day so the basement might survive a blast but I don’t see how I’d make it 3-5 weeks without being extra prepared for that beforehand.

I turn the water off.

Growing up we used to live in a house with what I swear was the smallest boiler ever so the hot water would only last for maybe 1-2 showers before needing some time to get hot again. So leaving the water running meant no hot water midway through the shower, or forcing the next person to wait to take a shower.

It’s a habit that stuck with me ever since, I’ve found that I don’t really need the water running the whole time anyway.

Doubt it, kind of assumed once the mesh breaks the chair is done. Maybe someone handy with that stuff can rig up something to fix a chair like that?

To be fair the mesh seems pretty strong, mines hasn’t broken thus far.

Years back I bought a used Herman Miller Aeron, it was way out of warranty but also way cheaper vs buying new. Totally worth it, I do like mesh chairs and the Aeron is one of the best in its class. Plus it has a ton of adjustable levers if that’s your thing.

The only thing I screwed up was the sizing, those chairs come in different sizes and I probably should have gone for one size smaller but it’s not a big deal. Sizing is something to keep in mind when chair shopping, they’re not all one size fits all and you may want something specific to your height/weight for better support.

No, not since high school / moving out of the house. I did live in the house for a few years after high school while commuting to a local college and working part-time (full-time during the summer), that certainly helped me get on my own feet even if it wasn’t specifically financial.

My parents weren’t particularly wealthy. At one point they had even declared bankruptcy so I didn’t try too hard to get any school loans through them let alone anything else regarding money.

the web page essentially accuses me of being a criminal and asks for my bank records. No way in hell.

Yeah don’t bother doing that. All that will accomplish is them gathering even more information on you, they rarely/never actually unlock your account & let you use it again. You’ve been permanently blacklisted on their service, just move on. And honestly you don’t need Paypal anyway.

Similar stupid thing happened to me too I think about 10-15 years ago, I was using virtual credit card numbers that my credit card company was generating for me & Paypal thought that was suspicious enough to close my account & permanently blacklist me LOL.

Fun fact: I did learn over the years that I can temporarily create new Paypal account(s) as long as I don’t use the same mailing/billing addresses or credit cards/bank accounts. But then it’s just a waiting game, they usually figure it out eventually and close the Paypal account yet again.

It’s the same here in New Jersey, or at least the city I’m in. Recently a fire inspector came by the condo building I was living in & failed ~ 60% of the units because they still had the old style replaceable battery smoke detectors. Apparently going forward we are/were supposed to be using sealed battery smoke detectors & replace them entirely every ~10 years when they stop working.

EDIT: Not sure if that’s OP’s problem unless their alarm company is so cheap that they keep giving OP really old detectors to replace with.

I’ve been fully onsite basically the whole time, including during the pandemic, for me it’s been fine. Gets me out of my tiny studio apartment and keeps my work life at work. Also free A/C / heating at work.

The commute is also part of that decision making - for me the commute is a long walk outside to/from work every day. All that walking around outside sort of levels me out mentally & gets rid of any stress I had, not to mention the exercise.

In the northeast U.S. Zillow and their related sites (they own a few real estate sales/rentals sites) is where the majority of rental listings show up. Though keep in mind those are also markets with tons of real estate brokers doing the listings & whatnot. Plenty of owner/landlords also use those sites but I’m not too sure if it’s the same in other parts of the U.S.

Those Zillow sites also have room / roommate search listings but a lot of people tend to join local Facebook groups for that or maybe use apps for that.

Seems mostly dead for apt rentals / roommate wanted type stuff. I used to use it years ago but nowadays it’s mostly scam posts and no one I know would use Craigslist for finding roommates / looking for rooms. The site itself has a reputation for having shady posters so people tend to avoid it.

Screenshot the QR codes & save offline to a USB disk. Alternatively some people do print them but that only works for people that have printers or access to one. Same with the 2FA backup codes.

Or less ideal you can save them somewhere secure on your desktop/laptop/whatever, just keep in mind if you get hacked or get malware/whatever then it’s game over.

Wow that’s a useful list of things they accept for recycling. It’s a total PITA to recycle anything electronics related in my city especially stuff like computers & hard drives let alone cables. That may end up getting me inside a Staples more often than once every year or two so maybe their plan is going to work.

Oof, yeah I’ve seen buildings like that. In NYC in the Lower East Side inside some of the older buildings you walk up one flight of stairs then walk the hallway across the length of the building to the other flight of stairs. That sort of setup feels so much worse vs just toughing it out up a column of stairs.

It was fine. In NYC roommates and I have been in different apartments that were both 5 and 6 floor walkups. This was when we were in our 20’s - early 40’s. Thing is that after a few weeks you don’t really notice the stairs anymore. Bonus is your legs will be pretty strong!

Sure we also had to lug groceries/laundry up the same flight of stairs, a bit annoying but nothing unusual. Didn’t have a car either so all that stuff would get carried x amount of blocks from the apartment or even a subway trip.

In my late 40’s / going into 50’s I’m not so sure I’d still do those type of walkups anymore.

PS - Yeah pay for movers when doing moves in/out of walkup buildings, you really don’t want to do that yourself. It’s fine when you only need to go up the stairs once/twice a day but repeatedly for a move is much harder.

Perhaps you’re overthinking this? In the house you can go barefoot, keep socks on, and/or wear slippers/loafers.

When you go outside you put on shoes.

So yes most people would have a shoe rack or just keep their shoes placed near the door. If you have multiple doors sure you can consider keeping extra pairs of shoes there or some sort of in between like outdoor slippers/something for when you just need to go check the mail or whatever.

If you get .flac, .wav or similar lossless music, you should could encode that with opus.

Fixed.

Unless you have a strong stance against people storing lossless files of their music? But I don’t think that’s quite what you meant :)

True, but add-in cards are going to be around for a long time after that for the people truly desperate for USB-A ports on a new desktop.

For a while at work I had to use a add-in card in a Win 10 desktop just to have a parallel port for the ancient label printer we were using.

Something like that is more likely to work if it’s the same exact hardware, an XP image applied onto a totally different system is likely going to BSOD when all the current drivers it has installed suddenly stop working. And XP being XP, you’re not going to find new drivers for new hardware.

A lot of these XP machines running other hardware also have their own specific drivers and long unsupported proprietary middleware installed that won’t transfer onto new systems easily.

But I do agree with you on the disk image, if only the hard drive on that XP system dies then that’s an easy fix. Worst case OP would have to hunt around for an IDE drive if that desktop is particularly ancient.