I get nostalgic thinking about WC2 on the Mac. I was a teen then, and loved Blizzard for putting the effort into a Mac release. I don't remember how I found IRC and #macwarcraft, but between dial-up internet, coordinating games on an IRC channel, trading IP's, and submitting game results to manual leaderboards, clan wars, trash talking, etc. What a great time it was :)
I'm a huge critic of the mouse with the charger port on bottom, but that was the 2nd gen magic mouse released in 2015. Is there another mouse that had charger port on bottom?
Can you clarify how it is easy to get out of a ticket afterwards?
In my experience from sitting in a traffic court a couple times (in Washington state), the only people who get out of a ticket are those who have squeaky clean driving records for 10+ years, and those who have lawyers. But most people can't afford lawyers for traffic violations.
I quit my job two years and four months ago. I'd worked non-stop for twenty years (10+ at the last company) and was getting three weeks of vacation time per year. I'm in my 40's and finally decided that I wanted to enjoy some of life while my body was still in shape. Watching the savings drain out is hard, but what's harder is thinking about going back to the grind and never having any time for myself again.
I worked for a small contracting company that did work for several larger (but not FAANG) companies for >10 years. I quit 1.5 years ago after being burned out for quite a while, and I'm enjoying life for now. The thought of going back to work is a little stressful, and I'm holding out for as long as possible :)
Reasons for my burn out:
- Unreasonable expectations from stakeholders. "We need x, y, and z done by Friday" with no regard for developer input on what that actually entails. Not all projects are like this, but some are. It's fine when it is rare, but the more frequent it is, the more burnout it causes.
- Frequently changing requirements, or total shifts in what needed to be built from one week to the next.
- Working on projects with outdated dependencies and never given any time to refactor to support updates (i.e. working on an Angular 4 project when Angular 12 is out).
- As a contractor, it always feels like you need to perform, or the company you're working for will drop you.
- As a contractor, the clients' internal FT devs have seniority and will make decisions that are not always in the best interest of the project.
- Abruptly being moved (without much input) from one project to another takes a toll, especially when you care about what you do.
- Not enough vacation time. For most of my 20's, I got two weeks a year. For most of my 30's, it was three weeks a year. That's not really enough time off to enjoy life.
Why '98? Just curious. It seemed pretty young then. Most people on the internet in 98 had 28.8 or 56k modems. I feel like things were getting better until 2010-ish.
The reason why melting permafrost is considered a global catastrophe is that it's a feedback loop that will accelerate warming. There is massive carbon that has been frozen in the permafrost. Permafrost melts > the organic matter decomposes > more CO2 released into atmosphere > warming happens faster.
Buying discs doesn't protect you anymore. Almost everything requires a server connection and they can require you to upgrade to play.
I have a physical copy of Overwatch 1. When Overwatch 2 came out, it was an "upgrade" to Overwatch 1, and they simultaneously killed all Overwatch 1 servers. Nobody can play Overwatch 1 anymore.
Maybe Nintendo Switch is the way. It seems physical copies only protect you on platforms where offline use is standard.
"Archers seem to 'get it'" is like saying "Mac users seem to 'get it'". There are good apples and bad apples in every user group. I've been hunting for 30 years. Some years I hunt with a bow, muzzleloader rifle, or modern rifle – some years I have hunted with all three of those. Archery has changed a lot in the past 15 years, mostly due to the internet and social media. The number of archery hunters has exploded, and with it there has come a lot more good/bad apples.
Archery also has seen the most applications of technology the past 20 years. My newest bow cost more than my newest rifle.
You are somewhat right that hunters are not "saving money on meat." Some years we do and some years we don't. But a big attraction is just knowing where your food comes from (at least some of it). Processing it yourself.
Population tanked around 1900 due to no regulations and massive human population moving west and everyone shooting deer on the way.
Conservation movements (mostly by sportsmen AKA hunters) led to regulations (each state now has a wildlife or game department to set hunting seasons) and a shift away from harvesting anything to mostly just harvesting bucks during short seasons.
Recent downward trend is due to several things:
1. Loss of habitat due to humans. Mule deer are known to migrate hundreds of miles, and there are a lot of highways to cross. Winter habitat is being paved over for human progress. (Cool video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIAyb-1uwTg)
2. Chronic wasting disease is an issue in wild mule deer populations with no cure (similar to mad cow disease)
3. Harsh winters can take a toll and really slow any chance of mule deer population growth. Certain places in Wyoming this year had 100% fawn mortality (every deer less than a year old died due to the harsh winter, see: https://www.wyomingnews.com/rocketminer/news/state/what-s-in...).
4. The internet has enabled a lot of out-of-state hunting, by making it easier to find places to hunt (Google Earth, OnX, etc.), learn how to hunt better, and understand the regulations, so there are more hunters on the landscape with better technology. States manage for this and limit the number of hunters and shorten seasons.
5. Predator re-introduction/recovery as well as many states that have banned certain types of predator hunting. This can be a touchy subject among hunters. A lot of people are okay with deer and elk being hunted but not wolves, cougars or bears.
I've been deer hunting for 30 years. My experience is with mule deer and black-tailed deer on the west coast and Rockies. Not much whitetail experience, but I do know that whitetail deer in the east and south don't have as many predators and do well in agricultural landscapes. They can have two or three fawns each year so their population can grow quickly. Mule deer inhabit harsher landscapes (mountainous terrain mostly).
"Coast redwood are adapted to fire and other disturbance. Seeds germinate best on mineral soil as is exposed by flooding, fire, or wind throw for seed germination and establishment."
"The fire return interval in coast redwood forests varies drastically with latitude, microclimate and distance from the coast. In general, forests that are further north, closer to the coast, or located on mesic sites tend to burn less frequently."
- schools with no ability to deal with bad behavior
This leads to young adults who think they can get away with anything?
Baltimore is one of the worst places I’ve visited for work. Everyone in the office told us visitors to stay on the main streets in downtown.
Baltimore City, MD - Single-Parent Households with Children as a Percentage of Households with Children (5-year estimate) in Baltimore city, MD was 57.45%
I’m sure there are plenty of good single parents out there, but a lot of these kids aren’t getting a good foundation for life?
I know many teachers, and I frequently hear how behavior at schools is the worst they’ve ever seen. It seems like it’s only getting worse.
Massive water usage, lowering river levels drastically. Some don't even reach the ocean anymore (see the Colorado River, from Wikipedia: "Since 1960, the Colorado has typically dried up before reaching the sea, with the exception of a few wet years."). Aquifers are running low (here's some info on that from 20 years ago: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-103-03/).
Pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.
Massive land use for mono-culture farms, displacing whatever wildlife and native plants were present before the farm. Add more farms and you'll have less wildlife.
Everyone switching to plant-based diet sounds nice, but is really not going to fix much. Unless you can change farming to not be so resource intensive? There are just too many people.
Reminds me of something that happened to me... I take nature photos for fun and post them on my website and various photo websites over the years. A biologist for a National Park asked if he could use one of my photos on the cover of an internal publication. I thought that was cool, and sent him a high res file to use.
Years later, I was googling something related and surprisingly one of the first links I click on was using my photo. I emailed that company and politely asked them to remove my photo, as I never gave them permission.
I do more googling / image search, and find that the National Park put this photo on their Flickr page in a photo collection that said "these are all public domain images and feel free to use them anywhere."
Alamy (stock photo website) now shows my photo covered with their watermarks and has it for sale ($20 for personal use and $199 for marketing). Sent a message to the NPS asking them to remove my photo from their Flickr public domain page, and never got a response. Oh well.
Logging and converting the trees into lumber for building isn't free from a carbon perspective. A modern logging operation typically has several large diesel-powered heavy machines to cut down and move the trees. Then the logs are transported by diesel-powered semi trucks to a mill. The mill has many machines to move logs, cut them, and remove some moisture (kilns). Once they are cut, they are loaded onto more diesel powered trucks and delivered somewhere to sell.
Back at the site of the cut, piles of slash (all of the branches) are left on the ground to rot, or sometimes piled up and burned.
How long will the buildings made of wood last? Eventually they are bulldozed and hauled away to a landfill.
I started shopping pretty regularly at Home Depot after buying a house about eight years ago. I used to be surprised after paying when the alarm sounded as I walked out the door. I would stop and turn around, and usually a cashier would wave and say "you're okay!"... or just wave impatiently... or there would be no cashiers. It got to the point where I had a little bit of dread every time I walked out the door ("Is it going to go off this time?")... It is somewhat embarrassing to have other customers look at you like you must've just stolen something.
After a few years of this, I noticed the cashiers don't even look at the door anymore when the alarm goes off. I've never seen a security person at Home Depot.
I'm more likely to buy tools and parts online now. Home Depot has become the last resort unless I need something immediately, or need raw building supplies. Because I don't want to feel like a criminal moments after paying for what I'm carrying.
The book is not very good. It sounded interesting so I bought it – and it was the first book I've read where I was so disappointed that I wrote a one star review on Amazon. The review was rejected.