Yup

Par for the course in Boston and southern New England generally speaking. You can have my firstborn if you really need it, but I reserve the right to break your balls forever.

We’re not nice but we are kind. It’s how we keep each other sane when the fuckin sun goes away at 4:30, and the plow just un-shoveled what we just finished shoveling (cue the ice storm to make that snow extra wet and heavy only to later freeze into a foot thick block of ice).

I miss screensavers :(

Ok I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s selling like hotcakes then.

That may be so, but perception is reality. Nobody trusts it. The first thing everyone thinks is “that’s going to bend”. It doesn’t need to be true to sway people’s purchase.

Bend gate 2.0 with a crappy battery for too much money.

Gee, I wonder why they aren’t selling?

I’ve had good success with makemkv for ripping both blu rays and dvs. I’ve not had good success making a duplicate disk though. It can be done but it’s been a very long time. I used to use handbrake in that chain but it got to be too much trouble. I resorted to ripping all my stuff, serving it up digitally, and only taking the disks out when nostalgia hit.

But ya - makemkv and handbrake used to get the job done a long time ago, you can search in that direction. Maybe there’s a newer better way.

I put two identical drives in my build - that was a mistake. I can never tell which is which. :) I’m sure I’ve had each OS on each drive, and if there was a difference in performance - I’ve never noticed it.

I’d put the Linux drive first as you’ll probably migrate to using only that over time. Let windows share. But I honestly don’t think you’ll notice any difference.

Sometimes I’m just out with coworkers but not starving. I used to get a cheese and chicken quesadilla. It used to cost $4 and change. Then they started charging burrito prices - $15 and change for a tortilla, a handful of shredded cheese and 1/4 of a chicken breast. I get there is regional pricing differences - but their costs (at least here) are out of control.

It’s funny how companies just don’t get it.

Fast food has been historically cheap. Chipotle worked because it was fast, it was cheap, and you didn’t feel like you were as much of a fat ass compared to grabbing a giant bacon burger and a bucket of fries.

Now you go to chipotle and pay $20 for a burrito and a soda. Still fast, still decent enough (at least the one near me), but $20 is highway robbery.

OR, I can go across the street to a sit down restaurant, have a first generation Thai guy (who started his American dream restaurant) whip up the best damn drunken noodles I’ve ever had for $12. AND he does this FASTER than chipotle (seriously how does he do it? Must be a magic wok).

Guess where we grab lunch these days.

I loved the first book - like ate it up. Then the books started doing this “let’s build things up forever, and then one two knockout punch the reader”

I get that approach, but it just draws them out for me. I find myself reading entire chapters a going “so what, get on with it”. I actually liked how book 4 ended. I also liked most of book 5, but I felt books 5&6 could have been one condensed book.

7 started off really good, but now I’m at the part where they are barred from their ship and living the underground thug life and it’s stating to drag for me again.

I DO kind of like all the books-it’s just the pacing isn’t right for me. Maybe they were just overhyped for me. So many people love love love the expanse. For me it’s just an ok amusing read.

I’m on book 7 of the expanse. I’m finding this series to be a slog. I almost stopped at book 6, but everyone says the last three are really good and get into more protomolecule stuff. It does get into the protomolecule stuff more, but it’s still a bit of a drag.

I’ve never seen the tv show, but I’m starting to think this is one of the rare cases where the books are NOT better.

:/

It’s funny how differently people can react to a book. I loved Frankenstein. I didn’t find it boring at all, and I thought the writing style worked, and the characters didn’t annoy me at all.

Now take Moby Dick. Man that book was a SLOG, and I hated the entire thing. And people love that book.

Shrug

Sorry you didn’t like Frankenstein. Maybe the next book you read will be your absolute favorite - maybe we are inverses of each other - try Moby Dick? :)

You’re overthinking it. The hardest part is making sure you have a good backup. Get your files backed up, don’t forget about save games and whatnot that might be hiding in random folders. Take a disk image if you know how to do that.

Format the drive. Install an easy to use distro with gui stuff. Mint is great - feels windows-y. Ubuntu works - the drama is real but overblown for someone just starting out with Linux. Fedora desktop is the new Ubuntu. It just works. Gnome is different but many people like it a lot (myself included). It’s not hard to learn. Save the distro hopping and niche distros for later.

Install your nvidia drivers. (Look up Rpm fusion for fedora, mint has directions on their forums).

Install steam. Log in. Buy a game. Install game. See if everything behaves. It probably will. If it doesn’t - spend 15 minutes researching and trying the fix. If you can’t get it to work - just wipe the drive and try another distro. Generally newer distros will “fix” whatever issue you are having.

You can do all of this in an hour or two as a newbie and be playing games from the steam sale.

Honestly the thing I miss most about the latest Linux distributions. I understand screensavers aren’t necessary anymore, but they are fun and should still be a thing.

Silksong mostly. Game is hard.

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Them being cool about the price means:

• I buy hollow knight again on steam (I played it on switch)
• I buy silksong on day 1 without waiting for reviews
• if it’s really good, I probably buy it for a friend someday

Reasonable pricing does not equal lower sales. Greedy pricing leads to lower total sales, waiting for discounts, and screw you piracy.

These are regular people - they understand.

I think (could be wrong), but I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the opposite too. Steam flatpak, or steam itself (via the little steam is updating popup upon steam startup), will update on its own - and my video drivers don’t work properly until I update the entire system (which fixes it every time).

Doesn’t happen often - but often enough for me to catch it. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on…

These stretch your categories a bit - but we have similar tastes in books compared to your list. Here’s my recommendations

• check out Blake crouch - dark matter was a fun read even if it’s a bit of a beach book
• the red rising series - right up your alley, you’ll love it. Book one has a bit of YA feel to it, but they keep getting better and it was still good.
• Enders game if you didn’t read that in school
• what about Stephen king? Some people hate him - but he’s not just horror and his books can be fun. Some are trippy weird. The dark tower series was excellent (although long), and under the dome was good and oddly in this category (without spoiling too much).
• dune
• sphere by crighton - this one was fun, not a masterpiece or anything

I’ll also plug my all time favorites to get you into other genres (from someone who might have similar tastes)

• lord of the rings
• unbroken
• the count of monte cristo
• a man called ove
• the book thief
• Frankenstein
• night

All I wanted was cd quality audio (which I’m willing to pay for)…

You know you’ve screwed up when the lazy people (me) actually get off their butts to switch.