He was an incredibly talented artist. I think his father deserves most of the blame for Michael’s bizarre behavior. Most adults would struggle with the pressures of fame and performing that he spent his whole life under from the time he was like 10 years old. Joe recognized that his kids were talented and then proceeded to squeeze every last red cent he could out of them. No wonder Michael snapped.
It happens but it’s rare. My wife initially asked me out. It wasn’t that I was afraid to ask her out. My first marriage was really bad. I was still working through that and didn’t feel like I was ready for a relationship.
For the sake of honesty, I told her pretty much exactly that. She almost changed her mind. Too many previous dates that were either “divorced” or “getting divorced” only to eventually discover that their wives were not at all aware of this sudden change in their relationship status.
Instead, for whatever reason she said, “That’s ok. We can just go have some fun. No pressure at all.” That was 8 years ago.
Be the kind of person you would want a relationship with. This applies to friendships as well as romantic relationships.
Also, don’t be afraid to shoot your shot, OP. You ever been to a trap range? The clay pigeons are gonna keep flying even if you’re not shooting at them. The only way you stand any chance of hitting one is to aim in front of it and pull the trigger. If you miss, it’s no biggie. Another one will come flying along shortly.
They knew each other vaguely in high school. She moved away for college and came back to her home town to visit famlly some years later. He probably sings and taught himself to play the guitar.
I often VPN to my home network while on the go. The overall web experience is so much worse without DNS level ad blocking.
We just watched it for the first time in forever. My wife and I were both like, “Yeah. This movie is weird.”
There’s actually a name for people who perceive proper punctuation as being passive aggressive. They’re called “morons.”
Edit: in the name of further research I asked my wife, who is a non-punctuation texter, what she thought about this. Here’s what I got.
Me: “If someone sent you a message that had a period at the end, would you think they were angry with you?”
Her: “Like now? No. When I was younger? Yes.”
Me: “Why would you think that when you were younger?”
Her: “Hmmm. I don’t really know. I guess because women tend to read between the lines, even if there’s nothing there. And because people like to have something to complain about and little miscommunications are an easy target.”
Me: “Ok. So why doesn’t it bother you now?”
Her: “Probably because I met you and you always use punctuation. You know <mutual friends husband>? She knows when he’s mad at her just based on specific words he uses in texts or just the way he says something.”
Me: “So if you start using punctuation, I should be concerned?”
Her: “Like if I say “I’m fine.” With a period and everything?”
Me: “Yes.”
Her: “Yeah. That means I’m not fine.”
Me: “That’s a lot of pressure to put on a period.”
Her: “True.”
Me: “But you already know I’m going to infer nothing from that. I probably won’t even notice.”
Her: “Yeah. I know. That’s why l would just tell you.”
Me: “Fair enough.”
Her: “You’re just one of those people who says exactly what they mean. There’s no cryptic message or anything.”
Me: “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Her: “It is kind of nice actually.”
“Can we have comfortable flights on airplanes?”
“No.”
“Can they at least be affordable then?”
“Yeeaaahhhh… No.”
“OK. How about the existing passenger trains? Can they be…”
“Nope!”
Those Protectli Vaults are neat little devices.
It definitely makes it more difficult to switch endpoints manually. I have multiple VPN connections with different exit nodes configured for failover in case one (or more) of them is unreachable. I don’t run into geoblocking issues very often but I also don’t route all my WAN traffic over VPN. Just some of it.
What you can automate depends on your routers capabilities. Mine is a Mikrotik which does have fairly extensive support for custom scripts. However, detecting Geoblocking is probably going to involve parsing HTTP responses which is beyond the capabilities of almost all consumer grade routers. You would have to effectively do a MITM attack (aka deep packet inspection) in order to accomplish that on something other than the client device.
TLDR: I manually change routes to a different VPN if needed but I very rarely run into Geoblocking issues.
/*
By all accounts, the logic in this method shouldn't work. And yet it does. We do not know why. It makes no sense whatsoever. It took three weeks and numerous offerings to the programming gods, including using one of the junior devs as a human sacrifice, to unlock this knowledge. DO NOT LET HIS VIOLENT AND UNTIMELY DEATH BE IN VAIN! Touch this at your own peril.
--jubilationtcornpone 12/17/25
*/
public async Task<IResult> CalculateResultAsync()
{
// Some ass backwards yet miraculously functional logic.
}
I exclusively use my router as the VPN client for a few reasons. There are multiple services on my network that use the VPN. I’ve got static routes configured which effectively act as a kill switch and I can use QOS to prioritize traffic. It’s pretty much set it and forget it. You can use any VPN service as long at they offer a protocol your router supports. I use Proton via WireGuard and have for years.
Once again, I would like to thank stupid politicians and greedy media conglomerates for their contributions to media piracy. If not for all their hard work, we would still be playing Russian Roulette with shitty DIVX rips on Limewire.
learn prompts engineering
“Can you please do it right this time? Pretty please?”
Why not just use what you have until you can afford to and/or need to upgrade? SAS drives are more expensive because they typically offer higher performance and reliability. Hardware raid may be “old” but it’s still very common. The main risk with it is that if your raid card fails, you’ll have to replace it with the same model if you don’t want to rebuild your server from scratch.
I’ve been running an old Dell PowerEdge for several years with no issues.
My oldest child is the only one who calls me by my first name. When I adopted her, I told her she didn’t have to call me “dad” unless she wanted to. I’ve heard her refer to me as “dad” when she thinks I’m not in earshot.
“Just need a few more million tons of bombs bro. Then the NVA will finally realize that WE’RE the good guys bro.”
– Robert McNamara (Probably)
Management often views software engineers more like machines that spit out code rather than actual engineers who design software. I can’t tell you how many projects I’ve been on where someone up the ladder is unhappy with the time estimate given to complete a feature so they either bring on a contractor or pull a team from another project
Invariably, the additional “help” makes a giant cluster fuck and the people who are actually familiar with the code are now stuck having to scrutinize every PR and fix a ton of defects rather than contributing to feature development. Then the feature takes twice as long to develop as originally estimated. Management scratches their head, shrugs it off, and repeats the same mistake the next time.
I’ve heard it called a “suicide plug”. A common use for them is back feeding power from a generator into your homes electrical panel during extended power outages.
It can technically work but comes with major safety risks such as:
The proper way to do it would be to have a transfer switch and generator plug installed. The transfer switch guarantees that when you’re running on gen power, you’re not back feeding through the transformer out to the power line.
I find being honest with myself to be easy anymore. It’s not something I’ve always been good at but I’ve worked on it. Understanding myself is still hard at times. If I’m feeling a certain way about something, sometimes I have to pause for a while to think about why.
Example: the wife and I have an argument about something (which is rare) and I take offense to something she said. She never says anything with the intent of offending me. I know this even though I’m feeling angry. Instead of just reacting in anger, I like to put a pause on the discussion, be alone for a while, and think about why I was offended.
The reasons vary but I pretty much always figure it out, after which I’m ready to resume the discussion with, it nothing else, a little more clarity.