I thought the only thing you need is more cowbell.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
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I thought the only thing you need is more cowbell.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
I was hiking in northern CA in July, and often heard the bells of St. Bovinus of the Hills.
I was in Stanley Idaho back earlier in August. We got up to frost on the roof of the cabin, but the temps were getting into the upper 80s in the afternoon. That was a temperature swing of nearly 60 degrees from the coldest to the warmest in a day. That's pretty typical for the summer in that crazy town.
I don’t understand how people’s sinuses could take it. Later in the year (and super early in the year) we get weird weather where one week the high will be in the 50s, a few days later the high is in the 80s, and then a few days later we’re back to the 50s. It never fails, I almost always get a upper respiratory infection.
You have humidity, we do not. You're more likely to get a nosebleed out here.
No thread about the Queen? Guess I'll mention it here.
It will be a little strange for a while having a King of England. She has been the Queen for as long as I can remember.
The adrenochrome wore off.
God bless her Maj.
https://www.vbforums.com/images/ieimages/2022/09/2.jpg
The UK's collective Grandma.
Was she interesting enough to warrant a thread? I'm sure she's had an interesting life but from my point of view she was always just kind of.....there. No fuss no muss just kind of there. You know?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Yeah, that was a big part of her appeal. She didn't seem to take any big stands on anything.
She took a pretty hard stance of protecting the royal image at any cost.
If only more people were like her the world would be a better place. Now everybody thinks they are God's gift to mankind.
The royal family literally believes that they are a gift to God via the coronation when the monarch is anointed with holy oil. Not to mention the (myth, folklore, etc.) that the family blood line traces back to King David of Israel.
The average TikToker believes this only difference is they can't shut up about how awesome they are, especially the women.Quote:
Originally Posted by dday9
Interesting fact, Our Betty was queen for over a quarter of the life span of the United States.
Whatever your thoughts on the institution of the monarchy, Lizzie rocked.
Lol!Quote:
Originally Posted by dday9
Americans might claim they don't believe in the class system or a monarchy and that is probably true. Not that one doesn't exist but it's more subtle.Quote:
Originally Posted by FunkyDexter
But we are infatuated with the royal family. They are in our news almost every day. Mainly the kids and grandkids. lol
The Queen must have been doing something right because I don't remember our press portraying her negatively. Can you imagine maintaining your position through all the changes in the world from 1953 to 2022. That's impressive.
Now it's time to bring out the royal carriage and have a grandiose coronation. You crazy Brits. lol
It's not really that impressive when you consider that the British monarchy has had like what.....500 years of practice? Most republics and dictatorships of the modern world are youngsters still trying to find their way when compared to the ancient British monarchy.Quote:
Originally Posted by wes4dbt
Well, the heat wave is ending. Only 102 today and going to drop down to 90 tomorrow. Glad the AC and power grid held up. Not sure how well I could handle 113 degrees without some AC. Guess I could have just stayed in my car. lol
Yeah, I saw y’all have a hurricane that is supposed to help cool things down. It is weird to be rooting for a major natural disaster to help offset an even worse one.
lolQuote:
Originally Posted by dday9
Well, that wont affect where I live. I'm about 400 mile north of that. Ca it a long state. SoCal is like another world to us in terms of weather. That is a strange swing in fortunes.
Should be a great day tomorrow (actually today, it's12:05), my son's 50th and my granddaughters 30th birthday party. Now they're saying only 89 degrees. Perfect!!
We lost my wife’s grandfather this morning. He was truly a great man, I can only hope to be half as good of a man he was.
I remember my first trip to southern California back in the day. It was for a business conference held in Anaheim.Quote:
Originally Posted by wes4dbt
This trip took place just months after I saw _Blade Runner_ for the first time, televised in 1986.
When I got there everything was so disorienting and dystopian. The non-Disney hotel was full of signage with Japanese and something either Arabic or Farsi. Oddly there was no Spanish or French as we have on most similar signage we had here back then. One afternoon our sessions ended early with no evening events and I decided to trek over to Disneyland (tickets were cheap back then). The walk over was eerie: nobody else on foot at all and the sun showed deep orange through the thick polluted haze. Breathing was oddly difficult until I finally realized heavy smog was the culprit. In the park there were many unintelligible (to my ear) languages in use.
It was hard not to draw comparisons and see the movie's 2019 as a reasonable expectation of where things might go.
It's been a world of smoke for a week. Usually, whether we have smoke depends on which direction the wind is blowing, but with fires all around, the wind just determines WHICH smoke we're breathing.
We got a bit of rain this morning. We should get more later on this week. That should reduce the fires just a bit.
Sorry to hear it. I hope family is coping well, that can be a hard fact to face in life.Quote:
Originally Posted by dday9
I don't like to look too hard around me when I hear such news. I got some anxiety just from my Internet access going down for 3 hours tonight. We get dependent on it as it replaces separate more resilient systems we used to rely on (copper landlines, broadcast TV and radio, etc.).
Not the same thing at all, but it sucks to get old and sometimes feel fragile.
I can relate. It's a strange feeling when you realize you got maybe 10 or 15yrs max left.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
Just today I was having trouble with my internet so I download some games that I can play offline just in case. lol
I use to enjoy reading a good book but the only books I got now are old programming books and operating manuals. I should remedy that.
I decided I needed gasoline anyway and I could use their WiFi if they were up to check on my outage. Got there: "Sorry no free WiFi any more, cutbacks."
It's a mindset issue though. I need to unplug for more of the day I guess. I think 2020-2021 I was isolating a lot and got used to using the Internet to interact with the world a lot more.
Cutbacks? I wonder how much they are saving by not providing free WiFi?
I realize it would be different for a business, but if I didn't have security on my router, I'd be providing free WiFi. It wouldn't cost me any more than what I am paying now. The only issue would be that there might be enough users that throughput for any one user might be severely degraded. If I had a much faster connection, that might not be an issue, either.
So, what are they saving money on? Were they able to switch to a lower bandwidth connection?
No idea. I know that after 7-11 took over the stores when the oil company sold that part off there were a lot of changes. Or maybe it broke down and they just told the store workers to say it is gone?
I must not be understanding something. Never heard of a gas station providing internet. I mean, it's 5min to pump your gas and you leave.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
I remember a couple of years ago my router went out, it was going to take 2 or three days for them to send me a new one. I felt like a fish out of water, so I went to Best Buy and bought a portable hot spot and paid for like 5Gb of data. lol
It had been nearly as common as coffee shop WiFi around here. Most have a convenience store and sell coffee and crap, and the traveling public often parks away from the pumps for a break. Pretty routine offering at truck stops too. Public libraries, state highway rest stops, and laundromats and other retail businesses like McDonald's offered it as well. I just haven't looked around in a while.
We're lucky if we can get cell service at some such institutions. There's one town that only has cell service in a short range around the visitor center.
It's getting slowly better.
I suppose that it might be that a critical mass of guppies have largemouthed themselves onto the hooks of the oligarchs and fork over a good fraction of a car payment each month on elaborate "phone plan" commitments that include Internet access. If customers see no need then a business has no competitive advantage in providing free on-premise service .
Perhaps what I was expecting to find has already become as nostalgic and rare as public drinking fountains and payphones.
Guppies and largemouth?? An interesting combination.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
Also, you may not be keeping up with the times. I went from phone only to unlimited phone, text, and a fair amount of data while cutting my bill in half. I'm not paying a 'good fraction of a car payment', unless your car payments are SERIOUSLY cheap. I pay $25/month.
Basically, you may be right, but not because people are paying exorbitant sums, but because the costs have gotten cheaper and the services more ubiquitous. It may not make sense for some companies to keep providing the service.
I still find it hard to believe that the service was a significant cost to the business, though, unless it's a hotel.
I'm just cheap, used to paying just $100/year for talk and text with no cellular data. Trying to steel myself for the day when my old prepaid account is no longer grandfathered in by the carrier.
Younger family members are paying $70/month/"line" for several phones. Ouch.
Yeah, I pay about $1,000 per year for my cell service which comes with unlimited data. I cannot justify it, but I also don’t want to switch, so I guess I’m being irrational.
Just changed my Phone contract to Sim Only deal, as my 2 year old phone is perfectly fine and should last for a few years yet.
I now pay £12 a month for unlimited calls & texts + 100 GB Data, happy I switched to Sim only !!
A friend always says "The cost of quality of life is not linear." Meaning, I suppose, that "twice as good" costs more than "twice as much." Diminishing returns kicks in early.
Is that specifically a UK thing? I've never heard of Sim Only before now.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeedSomeAnswers
The closest thing around here might be "bring your own phone." But as far as I can tell the best you might expect from carriers here is some form of one-time "reward" in the form of a "gift card" with no other discounts.
I might be doing SIM Only. I went with a reseller. They give me a SIM for whatever network I want to use, and I brought (and bought) my own phone.
I was using a flip phone up until last year. I only moved over because I wanted to be able to use the phone as a navigation device for a very remote, multi-week, bike ride. The fact that I could often use it to work remotely was icing on the cake. The amount of data per month that I have isn't all that high, but I don't think I've come close to using it. I think I have 12 GB/month, and I'm not sure that I've ever topped 2 GB.
I just avoid videos, but that's easy to do for the uses I have.
Ah. Yeah, I bought my phone and my wife's phone from the Apple store in Metairie then got my cell carrier to give me a SIM card. But I definitely didn't get any kind of discount for doing that, just not having to pay a monthly note on financing a phone.
That may be all there is.
What you can't get Sim Only in the US? I thought they were fairly common, maybe they are called something else?Quote:
Is that specifically a UK thing? I've never heard of Sim Only before now.
When my last contract finished I had paid for and own the phone, so rather than getting a new one I kept it and over here at least you can get Sim Only contracts where they send you just the Sim and you sign a 12 month contract for you calls, texts & data.
I'm not sure whether you can get EXACTLY that. For me, I bought the phone separate, but I don't sign a year long contract. I pay by the month with no contract. Still, they sent me only the SIM, so it is pretty similar.
Yeah, it sounds very similar. The only difference is that I'm paying way more than £12 a month.
One reason I am paying so much is that I am with AT&T, which has the more reliable service where I live. If I were to switch to a carrier that leases AT&T's cell service it probably wouldn't be so bad. My only concern is that I had a friend who left AT&T and he told me that those secondary services work great if you're in a big town like New Orleans or Baton Rouge, but if you live in a rural part of the state (which I do) then I may have some problems. They might not lease the area that I live in or even if they do, AT&T prioritizes their customer's usage of the service so I could see slower/spottier connection with a "lesser" carrier.
Over here, if you're going for a fixed term contract you can generally get a phone included or not, whichever you prefer. If you don't want a phone you can also get a Pay as You Go deal but it will typically be more expensive than a fixed term.
Generally, a fixed term with phone is the best deal because they use the phone as a loss leader to tempt you onto the contract. If you've already got the phone you want then a fixed term without phone is usually the best. Pay as You Go deals are generally for drug dealers.
I've been on a prepaid plan for years, and I never have to add more than $100 USD each year to carry my existing balance forward.
This is a no-data plan and any day I use the phone I get 24 hours of unlimited talk and text and my balance gets charged $2. So if I used it every day it would cost me $730/year for non-leap years, about $61/month.
As long as I don't exceed 50 days/year I just add another $100 annually. I'm a light phone user so I still have a balance somewhat over $200 right now.
Any day that I get a legit call or a spam call that gets past the filter or send a text it costs $2. But that gives me 24 hours to make social calls and texts to family and friends. I can only think of two years when I had to add another $100 and I could probably have just added $50 or something.
I just about gag when I see advertising that shows people dipping pizza into Raunch Dressing. Can't abide slimy dumpster-drippins' condiments.
Saw a cooking show where a recipe used Hellhole Valley Raunch dry packet contents in Shepherd's Pie. They explained that it is 50% MSG and the cheapest way to buy MSG unless you buy in bulk. 25% is stuff like onion powder... with parsley bits as decoration. Another 25% is popcorn salt, but most people buy salt in bulk so that wasn't the reason they used it.
Yeah, for many years I'd just buy $20 worth of minutes and they were good for three months. I never needed more than that. But I just keep the phone in the car for emergencies. But a few years ago I decided to get a smart phone, Because all the cool kids had them. Still hardly use it but now I pay $25 a month. I have a land line at home, with 4 phones attached. So every place I relax there is a phone within reach. I don't want to be carrying a cell phone around with me.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
We prefer the term entrepreneur.Quote:
Pay as You Go deals are generally for drug dealers.
I was a light phone user, but my main objective was battery life, so now I'm a heavy phone user. It doesn't affect my balance all that much, though.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
Onion powder is risky, for me. I avoid it, as much as I can. Actually, now that I think about it, the real risk isn't to me, it is to those around me.Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
I wouldn't want to mess up a perfectly good pizza with some alien sauce, though.
I no longer have a land line, but if I did...there's a phone outlet by the toilet in the bathroom. It lets a person share their moving thoughts.Quote:
Originally Posted by wes4dbt