I forgot I even did this but I’m coming up on 10 years in just a couple weeks.

I’ve been getting better at making small but meaningful changes to my life by recognizing that a lot of it is simply habit/routine, making an earnest effort at thinking of ways in which I can modify them, and making an earnest effort at applying them.

Very generally: Think of something I do that I might want to curb, think of why that thing is what I do, think of things I could do that would impede on my ability to do those things, and implement those changes.

Couple specifics:

I’m fond of beer. I don’t binge or anything but if it’s in the fridge I’m probably gonna grab one every couple of hours, and that’s not too healthy and kind of a waste of money, so now, when I buy beer I just toss a couple cans in the fridge and put the rest in the cabinet above the fridge. If I run out I’ll toss a couple in the next day. Now I drink a lot less because I’m not gonna drink warm beer and when I open the fridge I see the scarcity and tend to just shut the fridge and walk away.

I’m an introvert and I love reading about things and events, non-fiction crap, walking around on Wikipedia and stuff. It drives my wife up the wall when I’m doing and I don’t blame her because I’m bad at listening when I’m not giving my full undivided attention, so I removed all my phone chargers except for the one in the bedroom. Now, I just set my alarms and plug in the phone, walk into the other room, get out of that headspace, and engage my wife in conversation.

I just thought it’s funny that AI can’t determine I’m talking about memes. It’s like, look, Gemino bro, all I use you for is making Garfield and Shrek comments

I actually googled that to try to pull a screenshot and the AI summary told me to go to a doctor

Giving me Don Hertzfeldt’s Rejected vibes, if you haven’t seen this it’s hilarious and is probably slightly older than Youtube. There’s irreverent, and then there’s this

fully autonomous

How about ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’

Tech bros reinvent the button smh

It’s kind of fun like 3D jigsaw puzzles but I’d honestly rather not be fixing things so much. We got this new place, inspection turned out fine, but turns out previous owner didn’t find a single stud and used 1" screws on everything in the drywall. Had to redo all the closet shelves, hang closet doors, you name it lol

I think the half of the dash and the entire center console on a G37 was about the trickiest thing. Center console lid has a little gear-driven mechanism and you need to flip the entire console upside down to fix, but I needed to stop everything and go to the dealership for a little plastic cog.

But we’re in the middle of moving into a new place and our dishwasher was leaking so I pulled the entire ‘tub’ yesterday and inside front panel off to see if fitment was an issue, mostly wasting time while a couch was scheduled to be delivered, so I stopped the dishwasher project to assemble the couch (power reclining thing), then had to put the entire thing back together afterword (one of those Maytag ‘chopper’ models with a built in food disposal thing). But to pull the tub I had to remove the heater blower and chop chop thing and the control board and the water jets and all that… And then I realized a new dishwasher is like 500 bucks lol

I wouldn’t call it a skill but I’m really mechanically decent (3D puzzles and Rube Goldberg aptitude, that kind of thing), and my visual memory is really good, so I have the uncanny ability to tear apart household appliances, do something else for hours or days, then return and slap it all back together about as quickly with no leftover mystery screws. I just look at the shit all strewn about, and can somehow recall the very last thing I was holding and work backwords

It’s pretty wild to think they took this long to prohibit using US-based software for such sensitive information

Purely anecdotal but I tend to avoid any sensitive hardware purchases off of Amazon because they suck at packaging things a lot of times and I’ve had more than a few DOA components because they just tossed the box into an even larger box then apparently yeeted it down a flight of stairs

Edit: I should add that I live 10 minutes from a Microcenter which plays a large part in my overall pickiness, but that said, when I’m looking for something sensitive to handling and needs to be purchased online I stick to computer hardware retailers solely because they love packing peanuts and bubble wrap as much as the components love them