Today I’m donating my streaming sticks. I got a ONN brand 2k one I bought for 15 and I got an Amazon Firestick 4K I got for $3 from a thrift store because they didn’t know what it was.
And I love the concept of stream sticks, I really do. Too fucking bad that corporate interests got in the way and now everything has to have a bundle of ads at every damn turn. Not even some of the things I’m subscribed to is free from ads because this is the future apparently, we’re here.
Shame because I don’t want to let these go and even if I were to subscribe to Netflix’s ad-free subscription, that’s only one source. Why do that when I can just grab a long HDMI cable, plug it into my desktop and to my TV and I can watch everything that’s there, without ads because of the extensions I use to block ads.
Trying to draw using vector programs such as Illustrator. Prior to settling on my beloved (Paint Tool SAI) I tried to use Illustrator, and despite the benefit of being able to blow up a drawing without losing quality, it just never sat right with me and always felt awkward.
Depends on the style, I think. If it requires any kind of gradient shading or texture, pixel editing software. If you can get away with just lines, colors, and solid shading, vector is good enough but it’ll be easier on pixel editing software.
Nowadays I just work on massive files so that I can shrink them to size.
Dealing with people who have a problem with me, but will refuse to tell me why. Either tell me, so we can discuss it or stop wasting my time. I no longer have the patience with the whole “read between the lines” bullshit.
I’m still trying to learn this. It bugs me knowing someone has some problem with me, yet won’t tell me what it is. It’s the not knowing why that kills me.
wanker!! j/k. your ok. your cool :)
Biological ‘family’.
My therapist told me that family members can’t be replaced. I disagree. They can be replaced. They only become titles but titles also can be ignored.
You don’t have to associate with, acknowledge or interact with the biological family members if they’ve proven to have been a contractual mess of toxicity in your life.
I’ve replaced members of my ‘real’ family and I got better people. People who care and support. I recommend it, to anyone.
Yes, thankfully my therapist doesn’t say that but she does seem to say it’s all on me to deal with and change since I can’t change them, which is fair.
Thankfully I have a few folks helping me escape them, but it’s a slow process.
I finally blocked my mom’s phone number earlier this month. It’s only taken me 7 years since she blew up at me in a way she couldn’t/wouldn’t take back.
It can be a slow journey and you might question it as you go, but it’s worthwhile. And more people than you might expect are estranged from their families. I used to worry that my IRL acquaintances and friends would judge me for it, but nope.
Lemmy.
What is ONN brand?
Onion News Network
It’s Walmart’s generic brand for electronics.
My willingness to creat things for other people.
Less depressingly: the local pizza shop fucked up my order 1 too many times. Faith in them has been destroyed, which sucks cuz they’re a decently priced mom and pop kind of place, but I can only accept a wrong/missing item if I get a refund if it’s not literally half or more of the time I go to your place of business!
Talk to them man. Faith needs propping up from both sides. So invest in it and say, ideally before your next order, what happened and if they please could try. It may seem as much but it may just make your experience better
I already tried that, thus my frustration. Only so many times you can have them respond in an annoyed manner with that “of course we won’t fuck it up” attitude only for it to be messed up in the same way again
My mum.
Those bosses in my game that I keep dying on
Goddam traffic in cities skylines
You just gotta clear the biter spawners around your factory so pollution doest trigger a ton of waves over and over.
Once you get a car drive really far in each direction because nest you have discovered don’t evolve from time passing/pollution/killing spawners. Bring walls if you can and seal up choke points so you get peace of mind and can work on what’s important.
Oh, and look into how to make a BUS. My first playthrough was full spaghetti. The BUS saved my life. There are guides on YouTube
Trains are the way to go
Google. It’s been a long process but I’ve been degoogling little by little for a multitude of reasons.
Keeping in touch with people. I have no idea what causes it but people just stop talking to me. I’ve lost touch with so many friends and family members over the years that in a lot of ways its just not worth the effort to make new ones. Which gets pretty lonely but I don’t see an alternative.
I realize that part of it is my fault as I’m not the best at keeping up with people either, but I at least make the effort with the few friends and family I’m trying to keep so I don’t lose absolutely everyone. The only exception is work colleagues and my mother who I have a strained relationship with.
I’m sure the work colleagues will fade if I ever leave the company, as has happened every single time before. I’m sure you can guess why my relationship with my mother isn’t something I necessarily want to improve.
I’ve received multiple reasons that people never message, usually some variant of forgetting to respond due to being too busy. But what’s especially frustrating are the people that say, I think of you often and things of that nature, but that never seems to translate into, “let’s see how they’re doing by reaching out”. Adding to this is how I’ve never had much luck making friends so it’s not like I’ve ever had a large pool to draw from.
My parents and their endless bigotry.
Electronics with bad interfaces.
Either make your shit user friendly, or I’m returning it. If I have Google how to do basic things F U. You and your product isn’t worth my time.
Same with subscription fees.
Burger King. They’ve messed up orders, burned food, and drowned stuff in mayonnaise too many times to tolerate.
Now I just cook frozen burger patties on the stove, and tell myself that their sides were never all that great anyway.
I think I’m at my wit’s end with “smart” things.
Roomba? It takes less time to just vacuum the place than it does for the fucking vacuum to realize it’s been humping the same chair leg for most of its battery charge.
Assistants?
“Hey Google, open the bedroom blinds”
“Sorry, that device hasn’t been configured yet”
“Hey Google, open the bedroom blinds”
“Sure, turning 2 lights on”
“Hey Google, open the bedroom blinds”
“Sure, opening the blinds”
I gave up on “smart” devices after giving them zero chances. I’ve never bought one.
I consciously avoid having to control any of my smart home devices using voice or other weird methods. Everything is toggled with buttons or fully automatic. This works pretty well for me and voice control is still available but it’s only optional. Sure you might ask why even make it smart then? Because I’m a nerd and because I keep forgetting to turn lights off when I leave. Also smart thermostats are great.
Though I also gave up on my vacuum robot. Due to rearranging some furniture I had to move the vacuum base and let it rescan my apartment. But now for some reason it never gets past the dining room and aimlessly swirls around the table until the battery is dead, never finishing the room scan. On top of that it picked up a small pebble or something and scratched the floor. I had enough of it.
Roomba? It takes less time to just vacuum the place than it does for the fucking vacuum to realize it’s been humping the same chair leg for most of its battery charge.
If you are willing to put in some work, Valetudo is fantastic: https://valetudo.cloud/
My two robot vacuums have been working for 5 years with no intervention other than emptying the bin every 2 weeks and dusting off the sensors when it complains.
Assistants?
Same as above, if you are willing to put in some work, Home Assistant includes a voice assistant and they ship devices now with everything preinstalled so you can plug in and go: https://www.home-assistant.io/green/
I feel the same, but my anger is scoped to cloud-connected “smart” things.
Like you, I can’t stand my iRobot gear. My Roomba hasn’t updated its map in over a year because it always has “some problems” (probably due to pushing everything to the jank
us-east-1data center).On the other hand my recent Aqara gear is very nice but it took me time to finally call it quits on Z-Wave beforehand.
Smart-anything is just a dumb novelty design because rich techie users are about as wowed as dangling plastic toy keys infront of an infant. Nearly nothing is anymore useful when it becomes ‘smart’ and largely gets that title because of it’s capability to connect to the internet and just become another app for data-farming services to nag you over.
These things are just also another way to rob people more money because they’re going to have more models, the company is going to talk down to you for being filthy and not upgrading. You’re going to spend a lot of time dealing with a lot of variables that people already have presented for having a smart device and this is where the argument of “old is always better” comes into play.
DNC
Felt that one
