Data transfer is a mess afaik, big reason I tend to buy my cables in different lengths, if it’s long I know it’s for charging, short it’s for data. Some manufacturers do mark the cable ends with their capabilities (ugreen for sure does this, just checked my power ones are marked 240w and my data a marked 10Gbps), my stuff is mostly older though so I don’t have a bunch of different data speeds to worry about.

I’m with you though, I’ll take it over a bunch of different proprietary cables.

I use both, debian on servers and old machines, arch on my desktop. Arch being rough is way overblown in my experience, the install script makes it straightforward to setup and it’s been pretty much painless since I switched to it two years ago, I had experience with debian before that. Both arch and debian have fantastic documentation available.

Debian and derivatives, in my experience, are really well supported so that’s a plus. Age of packages has never really bothered me and cases where I want bleeding edge there’s options for that.

Both are solid options and I don’t think you’ll be upset either way, if you can I’d try both.

I haven’t looked at Nix in detail but you got me interested for 3d printers in particular, already have my klipper config in git if an SD card fails on me, going to have to look at doing that for the os too.

My partner does and I have no idea how they stand it, for ebooks, my library works with my kobo so it’s either that or epubs. I can do a tablet for ebooks but I find the phone way too small.

Libby is supported by a bunch of library systems on android, used KOReader for ebooks on android too.

If it’s really bad (sometimes you just can’t get a good grip), you can break the seal by pushing the lid up or prying a bit, there’s tools that do just that, I’m totally guilty of leveraging it a bit with a crappy butter knife.

Track everything you eat, even when you’re in a good place, keep tracking. I have ADHD so I’ve found it best to treat it like I do financial tracking, it becomes habit very quickly and apps like waistline make it super easy to enter, especially if you’re in the habit of weighing everything.

I have to minimise the smacks kept in the house, and what we do keep tends to be “better” or at least less calorie dense. I don’t deny myself cravings, but I’ll follow servings and budget for it in calories. Waistline averages out calories over a configurable period so I don’t sweat going over one day, all balances out over the long term.

Therapy helped a lot, if only to help me have a healthier relationship with food, my therapist has a lot of experience with addiction & substance abuse and food can absolutely be a drug (which is not acknowledged enough imo). Between that and getting treatment for ADHD I’ve managed to get back down to one of the lowest weights I’ve been as an adult. I’ve tried to make it a lifestyle change which I credit heavily to success as well. My partner having a health scare that forced them to review their diet also helped tbf, but we were already on that path, was just some extra push.

What you eat can help too, fibre being a big one. Make friends with legumes, add them into your cooking. I like chickpeas and lentils, will add them into a lot of dishes I cook. Use seeds too, ground flax tastes great and adds a lot of good fats, sunflower and pumpkin seeds go well in salads. I like to do meals that can serve leftovers, stuff like soups & stews are great because they don’t have a lot of active cooking (you throw stuff into a pot and let it simmer for a while). Higher quality calories are helpful, tell you that personally I’ll feel fuller longer eating some porridge with flax and fruit in the morning than the occasions I’ll grab a McMuffin or something.

The later games can be immersive if you don’t use map fast travel imo. There’s a few mods like better carriages and boats that give you a lot more travel options, I like sign fast travel too. Find it makes me explore a lot more instead of just rushing to the next objective. It’s not quite the same but I find that + survival helps a lot (and combat gameplay overhaul, but depends how much you’re ok modding core gameplay elements. I totally run combat mods on morrowind when i replay it, I’m not a purist when it comes to how people want to play a game)

My first experience with morrowind was on the xbox and I played the hell out of it, wasn’t until years later I finally bought a pc copy. I found Dread Delusion captured some of that immersive alien world feeling that morrowind did for me as a kid.

Do you care about having decent enough devices to enjoy it or do you just buy the cheapest pair of earbuds to silence the world around you?

I have some nice headphones and a decent enough dac/amp (subjective obviously, I tend to go for good cost/performance), to me there’s a floor I’ll want to use, cheap Sony buds were mine. If it doesn’t absolutely destroy the music (tinny, compressed, etc. Crap devices can really make things unpleasant, there are cheap buds that aren’t crap).

Do you have favorite albums or do you just hit play on a random playlist and zone out?

It’s all mood dependent, I do absolutely have favourite albums, but I often listen to a playlist of albums either my partner or I have found.

Do you ever listen to music just to enjoy it and nothing else?
Yes, definitely.

Do you talk with passion about your favorite songs/albums/artists?
All the time, my partner is also really into music so we talk about it all the time. I totally share albums and stuff to colleagues and friends, I tend to listen to a lot of different genres so have a bunch to chose from. I tend to have more favourites in terms of recent listens, some exceptions though.

Do you spend time searching for music?
Yeah, all the time. Some weekends I’ll just browse bandcamp and find albums that sound interesting to me. Totally a couple’s activity for my partner and I, very regularly share finds with each other or things that we might think the other would like. Sometimes also do playlists up of stuff we think might expand the other’s listening, different genres or styles we might have missed or glazed over.

Music is art to me, I love looking at the evolution of genres, hearing influence between genres (some genres have similar roots and cross over, but also really interesting to hear totally unique takes). I like collecting records if only for the large format, some albums have amazing art on them. I do also use music as a coping mechanism, was something I used to help handle undiagnosed ADHD for years, would always have music on to drown out surroundings.

I was totally expecting something like crust pants, I like what you’ve done with these. I’ve got a few older pairs I’ve patched (or at least attempted to lol) with boring fabric, can’t stand throwing otherwise totally fine things away.

A lot of companies require parking so you can pull out of a spot as a safety thing, it’s just second nature to me even though I haven’t had a job that requires it in years. It’s easier to see traffic that way, larger vehicles especially it’s just way easier to park that way. I’ll usually pull through if I can, but not always an option.

For the work I did, safety wise it was so that no hitches were sticking out into traffic (pedestrian or vehicle), being able to maintain eye contact with other drivers and pedestrians and for evacuation in case of emergency.

It was one course (had a you fail the course if you got a sub 40% on the final) and I was able to rewrite the exam in the summer, loss of structure killed me coming from hs. Was definitely a wake up for me as well, had study groups and roommates in subsequent years which helped me (and unhealthy quantities of caffeine)

Got diagnosed with ADHD around a decade after graduating, which explained pretty much everything looking back.

Same vein, the Canadian/Laurentian Shield has areas dating back as far as 4.2 billion years, recall a geo prof in uni suggesting it would have been extremely tall, Wikipedia suggests 12km.

Stuff gets unreal to me at geological timescales.

I’ve used the wired equivalent of the Logitech g502 for a while, and my partner has the wireless one, I liked them as well. I’ve used Logitech, steel series, Razer and Saitek mice over the years, started with a Logitech G7, and there’s a reason I went back to Logitech mice after using some of the others. Imo you can’t really go wrong with one of their midrange models with a decent sensor, won’t break the bank and found them fairly reliable.

As a bit of an alternate, I know you prefer wireless, but I’ve been using a Ploopy Mouse for few months now. I don’t do online fps stuff anymore, but was great for FPSs (some boomer shooters mainly) and RPGs it’s solid, been playing a lot of Diablo 2 recently and it’s great. It runs qmk so it’s customisable however you want, sensor seems decent and the entire thing is open source, designed for user serviceability.

There’s a few styles, here’s one from Walmart, they’re super cheap. Style I’m familiar with has these sort of notched feet to ensure they stay together but without touching the ice.

It’s apparently the only thing named for that dude pronounced that way too, Dalhousie University as an example. Wiki page has an etymology section that has some suggestions as to why, it’d sound weird to me though pronounced the other way.

So, I like loose leaf when I can, but will totally use bags, I grew up with Tetley so that’ll always be the tea I’ll use for some basic iced tea. Yorkshire gold reminds me a lot of Red Rose, which is the other really common bag tea (and I swear is what my grandmother uses for her water intake). Recently, have some bags from Genuine Tea, it’s a Canadian brand and some of their blends are pretty good, there’s an elderberry hibiscus one that’s great to just toss a few bags in a pitcher and cold steep.

Going to mention more types of teas rather than brands that I’ve liked in the past, there’s a lot of variety and tea (like quality coffee) can totally have a wide range of flavours depending on region, age, processing etc. By no means an expert, I just like trying things.

I like Lapsang Souchong sometimes, can have a strong smoky flavour, don’t have any more but we had some first flush Darjeeling tea that was fantastic. I had some nice white tea as well, but you need to be careful, turns super unpleasant if you over steep it or have the water too hot, should be floral and lightly fruity, not pine needles.

Otherwise, I personally like oolong and pu’erh tea the best. I tend to brew tea quick with an excess of leaves, but you’ll use the same tea leaves multiple times. Pu’erh can have some earthy subtle flavours, and apparently totally changes as it ages (it’s fermented if I recall).

I bought a Brother colour laser last year (which on the outside looks identical to the monochrome one I bought 17 years ago that lives with my parents), zero issues, which pretty much has been my experience with printers on linux (also tried a ~5 y/o & 25 y/o HP LaserJet, one being the cheapest thing I’ve ever used, other being old office equipment, think I tried the Epson ecotank and photo printer my mil has as well)

Pretty much every person I know in Canada has an electric kettle and every single office I’ve worked in has one, my kitchen has 15a outlets which is still 1800W. I have a simple gooseneck kettle that I usw mainly for coffee, it’s only 1kW and holds around 750ml, it’s not blisteringly fast but it’s boiled before I’ve ground my coffee.

The whole “120v is holding us back from having kettles” is way overblown (technology connections has a video on electric kettles).

Colour based terms are super cultural too from what I’ve been told, stuff like red being bad and green being good isn’t universal so imo it’s not a bad idea to use more explicit terminology.

Beyond that, if you go into reporting and the like, red/green colour coding for indicators isn’t accessible (colour blindness isn’t uncommon, last job I had a few colleagues with red/green and one with blue/yellow, I was told that making them very distinct shades helps a lot), people also print stuff out on monochrome printers (there’s old data viz wisdom that suggested designing for this) so I prefered symbols when I did more of that work, still suggest it when I get asked to review things.

It’s not terrible advice tbh, even just hand sketches are solid for getting ideas down, makes it easy to translate to cad. It at least helps me think things through and the like.

Get a few pencils with different leads (some harder stuff like 2-4H and an HB) and some nice paper and you’re good, but really anything works, totally have a mockup of my garage on a whiteboard planning where I want to put stuff.

As for cad packages, freecad, as far as I’m aware there are some architecture workbench plugins, and there’s a tech drawing workbench. Coming back to cad after a while I found it super easy to pick back up (coming from solidworks at least)