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3 yr. ago

  • I've been extremely healthy all throughout my life. Although that could be thanks to all the vaccines I've had throughout childhood and the annual "needle-sticking" for 20 years in the military.

    If I get sick, it's usually a minor cold, and I only get sick once every 5-6 years, if even that. I've had no major surgeries for issues with my internal organs or anything. Still have my appendix, still have my tonsils. The military did remove all 4 of my wisdom teeth, but only as a precaution, because they said over half of all adults will suffer complications with their wisdom teeth later in life if they're not 100% straight. Oh, my teeth are straight too. Never needed braces or anything. But my wisdom teeth were slightly crooked; enough that the military decided to not take the risk.

    My family is also very healthy. My grandparents lived into their late 80s/90s and died of natural causes. Just went to bed and didn't wake up in the morning. No alarming health concerns or surgeries, etc. My grandfather had a major heart attack once, only saved by my mother who was a certified CPR instructor for the Red Cross at the time. The doctors gave him maybe a few months to live. Just to spite them, he lived another decade, healthy as a horse the whole time.

    My dad just passed away a few months ago, in his late 70s, but it was Parkinson's that took him down. He was so healthy otherwise, he would've lasted another decade or two easily. He never had so much as a heart palpitation; no stroke or heart attack, no major surgeries, etc. He almost never brushed his teeth, yet he still had all his original teeth. (Definitely got some dental work recently, though, to patch them up after 50+ years avoiding the dentist)

    My mother is still alive in her mid-70s and fully autonomous; living on her own in a cabin on a lake. Despite gray hair and a few subtle wrinkles, she still looks like the mother I grew up with for the past 40 years; the years have been very kind to her.

    I was bursting at the seams with energy all throughout my childhood, so I was always running around, climbing trees, challenging people to obstacle courses, and doing parkour long before we had a name for it. I was so physically active, I was the only kid I knew who had 8-pack abs and actual bicep muscles. If American Ninja Warrior was a thing when I was a kid, I would've dominated that show. I never met a person who I couldn't beat. Found out in my late 30s that I have a bad case of ADHD, which is probably why I couldn't sit still as a kid.

    However. The one fatal flaw (literally) I have going for me is that I was so active, I actually broke a bunch of bones in my life. I've broken 8 bones within about 2 decades or so. If this were medieval times, if I was lucky, I'd just be gimpy. At worst, I likely would've died very young of sepsis or attempted amputation or something. My first break was when I was 10 years old, falling out of a tree and breaking my wrist. My worst break was when I shattered my ankle in my late 20s. I would've been hobbled for life if I lived in medieval times.

    I found out recently, those "milk is good for strong bones" ads in the '80s and '90s were completely fabricated; there's no science to support them. Actually, the science shows the opposite effect. Milk makes your bones brittle. Which explains my childhood; milk was my favorite drink and I consumed multiple glasses a day. Yet I broke more bones than anyone I knew. Maybe I would've been okay in medieval times, if I didn't have easy access to milk everyday.

    Also, I had 20/10 vision as a kid (better than perfect vision), but in the 9th grade, I woke up one day and couldn't get my eyes to focus anymore. Ever since then, I've needed glasses. My eyesight isn't terrible, I just can't see fine details more than 5 feet away. In medieval times, I'd have to live with everything in my life being blurry unless it was right in front of my face. That could significantly shorten my lifespan if I couldn't clearly see threats until they were close.

  • I've been maintaining a self-hosted music library for so long (30+ years now), there used to not be any tools for editing metadata. I used to have to go into file properties and manually edit the data for each individual MP3 file. Nowadays, I use Mp3tag to manually edit entire albums at a time. I have ADHD though (the hyperfixation kind), so I've literally dedicated thousands of hours to manually fixing metadata.

    I guess I never bothered to look for more advanced tools to auto-update metadata. I had to go in and manually fix stuff that updated automatically from the Internet in the past, so I guess I stopped trusting online databases. But they've really advanced since the last time I went searching for tools, and their databases are a lot more complete in this day and age. I'm gonna play around with some of these programs and see how well they work.

    I host my music library through Plex, then use Symfonium on my phone if I want to stream my Plex music remotely, just because I like their interface a little better than Plex's.

  • Very true. I also have investments that I've been sitting on for over a decade now. I've been mostly ignoring them, pretending they don't exist until I reach retirement age. My cousin has his own investment firm and he's been handling financials and investments for several members of my family, so I know it's in good hands.

  • I had an actual piggy bank as a kid, where I collected loose change.

    My parents gave me a weekly allowance for doing chores. Although they would forget about it for months on end, and when I reminded them, they'd just give me a $20 bill to make up for it.

    I mowed lawns to make money in the summer as a kid. Also did some farm work when I hit my teens.

    I wrote checks for a lot of things as a teenager. Even wrote a few just to exchange for cash at the bank. I had a debit card, but the ATM charged a fee for withdrawals. Checks were free.

    I joined the US military at 18 years old and their primary banking institution (USAA) would only do direct deposit paychecks, since they only had a couple physical locations across the US. It seemed very high-tech at the time because everyone else in the civilian world were getting physical paychecks they had to manually cash in at a bank. I could only reach my bank through their 24-hr hotline, and I needed to fax documents if they needed any paperwork signed by me. I used to get a statement in the mail for every paycheck, but they stopped that around 2007 or so. Now they're almost 100% online.

    My dad just died a few months ago and I'm in the process of inheriting his house (my childhood home) right now. My wife and I have been living with him for the past 2 years because we couldn't afford a decent house in today's market. I actually needed a blank check for the closing on the house (I'm buying out my sister on her half of the inherited property - using the money I inherited from my dad) and USAA emailed me a PDF of their checks, since I haven't used one in over a decade now.

    Oh, and I'm receiving a pension now. The military did away with pensions in 2017, opting for a 401K-like program instead. But I joined the military when pensions were offered, so I was grandfathered into their old pension program. I get a direct deposit into my bank every month for the rest of my life now, and I retired after only serving 20 years in the military.

    Plus, they're giving me free medical and dental for life because I'm 100% disabled according to the VA. That also includes a monthly VA paycheck bigger than my pension! My wife is also 100% disabled by the VA, so she's getting the same medical/dental and pay deal. She was medically discharged from the military though, so she doesn't have a pension. I was almost medically discharged, but I was so close to retirement and could still do my job, so they put me on a medical waiver and let me coast to the end.

    I'm only in a good place financially because of my military service. They really took care of me. Even gave me food and housing allowances on top of my regular paycheck, so I could afford to eat and rent a house wherever they stationed me. If not for my service, I would probably be stuck in the same position as every other Millennial/GenZ/GenA now.

    Although it does help that I was fiscally responsible. I had a lot of military buddies who would blow their paychecks on booze, clubbing, women, and cars. Especially on cars. Then they leave the military broke and can barely get by. I was an introvert, so I pretty much stayed in my room and saved my income for decades.

  • The director insists the alien plants winning was the original ending he wanted, but he was forced to give the film a happy ending at the last minute. The director's cut gives you the original ending in all it's evil glory.

    There's also an original Little Shop of Horrors released in 1960 that stars a young Jack Nicholson. That film has a different ending than both endings of the 1986 remake.

  • My father just passed in January. He was adamant that we not have a funeral for him. He said there was no point in wasting all that money to shove his body in a hole and leave it there. Instead, he signed up to donate his body to science. As soon as he passed, I called a phone number on a card in his wallet and they came and claimed his body. That was it. Whenever they finish whatever research they're doing, they'll cremate his remains and return them.

    He said, if we really wanted, we could hold a "celebration of life" for him. Just a small barbeque with friend and family to remember him by. He just asked that his favorite beer was left sitting at an empty chair for him.

  • Yeah, and I'm saying everyone who thought he was innocent at the time of the trial has later changed their mind.

  • I mean, he confessed to the murder after the trial ended. Even wrote a book about it. There shouldn't be anyone left who thinks he didn't do it.

  • A few months ago they required that you have a watch history to display the homepage.

    I'm actually glad for this change. I hated the random junk they always suggest on my homepage. I spent ages clicking on the menu on each video and selecting "don't recommend this channel." It took a few years, but I actually got a clean, empty homepage. Then they changed their website and all the videos came back. I had to start over, cleaning out my feed again.

    Now with this new change, my homepage is always clear. Thanks, YouTube!

    For the record, I only watch my subscriptions. If I learn about a new channel, it's through another site/person recommending it. I don't let YouTube recommend me stuff to watch. And I definitely don't watch YouTube Shorts or whatever they call their vertical video nonsense.

  • That's why I said their time travel theory doesn't make sense. The movie doesn't even follow its own logic.

  • Back to the Future had an extremely convoluted time travel theory that didn't actually make sense, but one interesting idea they sparked is that you create branching timelines when you go back to the past. Meaning your present timeline remains unaltered, but you basically skip to a new reality when you time travel. Essentially, they claimed the multiverse exists and you travel across dimensions, not necessarily time, when you used the Delorean.

    Maybe this is why we never meet time travelers. Because our current universe is an unaltered world and any time traveling that happens here just sends people to other universes instead of our established timeline.

    This theory is kind of nightmare fuel when you consider Doc and Marty left Marty's girlfriend on her porch in a dark future and just expected her to be there when they "fixed" the timeline. Nah, bro. You just abandoned her in the darkest timeline. The girl you picked up was an alternate reality version of her.

    *EDIT: Back to the Future, not Bank to the Future.

  • I just sang it with a syllable pause after "Simpsons." Either that, or just slip in the word, "and" at the beginning.

  • "stay away from credit cards"

    I followed this advice in my youth. Never applied for a credit card, never took out a loan, never bought anything I couldn't afford to drop cash on. I thought it would show I'm fiscally responsible because I'm not accruing debt.

    Then I got an opportunity to work a govt job providing communications for the White House; basically, following the president around and ensuring he's able to communicate at press events, etc. I applied for the job and was told I was their #1 candidate...

    ...But they ran a credit check on me and was surprised when they got zero results. I proudly stated that I've never been in debt before, so my credit risk is zero. But according to them, zero credit history is shady as fuck. They said they couldn't tell how well I manage money because there's no history showing regular, on-time payments on credit cards, loans, etc.

    They couldn't tell if I had trouble managing money or not. That made me a potential bribe risk. Someone could offer me tons of money to slip a bomb into the president's podium, or let a suspicious character into the White House, and if I'm hurting enough for money, they suspect I might be willing to do it.

    Literally, my entire history of service in the govt had no bearing on my loyalty. Only my credit score. I lost that job opportunity because I was fiscally responsible.

    I went out and got a credit card that same day. I now have an extremely high credit score, which I keep up by paying all my bills and utilities on credit, then paying off almost all of it at the end of the month. I think it's stupid that I need to put myself in debt, then pay my way out of it over time, spending even more money in the long run, just to prove I'm fiscally responsible. That should prove that I suck at managing money, not the other way around. But that's the broken system we have today.

  • When I was a kid in the mid-90s, I went to Universal Studios in Orlando and experienced T2-3D: Battle Across Time, their Terminator spinoff story. It was amazing! 3D visuals, spraying mist into the audience as machines are blown apart, and there was audience interaction too, where the story would "leap off the screen" and actors would duke it out in front of us. I always wanted to go back and experience that again, but I guess they finally closed down that ride about a decade ago.

  • I don't know about 9D, but I once saw Avengers: Age of Ultron in 4D in a theater in Seoul, South Korea. It was a 3D film with moving seats, smells, and air that would blast in your face.

    During a car chase, you could smell burning rubber, or close-ups of women would have a whiff of perfume or flowers. During a shootout, you'd get fine blasts of air on either side of your face, like bullets barely missing your head. If someone took a hit, the seats would jolt violently. It also poked you in the back if someone was hit from behind. Not to mention, flying in any aircraft felt like you were on a rollercoaster; the seats would raise and lower and tilt in all directions. It was pretty intense. Like being on one of those Universal Studios rides at their theme park, except for an entire film.

  • That's what the founders of Reddit believed when they started. We all jumped ship from Digg because Digg became too corporate and greedy, and Reddit was our safe haven.

    Now here we are, over a decade later, and we're jumping ship again because Reddit has become too corporate and greedy.

    Lemmy has the advantage of being decentralized, with no single person or corporation running it, and you're proposing a Reddit clone, run by an individual? Honestly, I love the ideas you have for Matrix, I love what you've accomplished with it, and I love your optimism for the site. But I've been burned too many times in the past by hopeful honest innovators who let money and power slowly corrupt them over time. Unless you can add your site to the federation, I'm gonna have to pass, even as enticing as your site looks now. I'm too jaded to trust a single entity/corporation to host social media content.

  • I served in the US Air Force for 20 years. You aren't eligible for service with an ADHD diagnosis, but if you're diagnosed after serving - and it's not negatively affecting your job - you can contribute to serve.

    I had suspected for many years that I had ADHD to some degree, and I decided to get an official diagnosis in my last year of service. The military doctors, of course, said there was no way I had it. After all, I had served almost 2 decades without any issues. But I insisted, so I got a referral to a civilian ADHD specialist for a diagnosis.

    The specialist said I had one of the worst cases of ADHD she'd seen in her 11 years as a doctor.

    It was recommended I get medication for it. But I have the hyperfocus type of ADHD and it actually made me very productive at work. While other people would get burnt out from staring at their computer screen all day, I could sit still and do menial, repetitive tasks without rest. I was highly efficient at work and rarely missed details.

    I feel like medication would make me "normal," and then I wouldn't be very good at my job. So I've opted to stay unmedicated. But I'm glad I'm diagnosed, because it helps me to understand certain behaviors I have, and it's good for my medical history. When I stress out and bury myself in work instead of tackling my problems, I know it's because of ADHD and I could resolve it with medication if I needed to. It's not just a personality quirk for me to overcome.

  • I tried to sell my car on eBay back in 2008 - the first thing I ever attempted to sell on their site. I've bought a few random things from eBay over the years, including my car 3 years prior.

    My account was immediately flagged for potential fraud and locked down. The only way they'd clear it was if I photocopied my driver's license and mailed it to them; they wouldn't accept a digital copy.

    I just created a new account and have been using that ever since. I ended up selling my car outside of eBay; I'm never attempting to sell a vehicle through their site again.

  • My go-to can-of-tuna meal is two 5-oz cans (or one 12-oz can), a heavy dollop of mayo, and a spoonful of sweet relish. Stir it all up, serve in a bowl.

    This used to be my standard recipe for tuna fish sandwiches, but then I figured, why add bread? That's just extra calories. I'd rather have a bit more mayo than two slices of dry bread.

    EDIT: I prefer two 5-oz cans because I squeeze out all the water from the cans (open with can opener, use lid to compress and squeeze out water) and it's harder to squeeze out most of the water from the large 12-oz can. Two smaller cans works better. I don't like my tuna watery. My wife does, though; she says it adds a stronger tuna-y flavor to the dish.

  • I use Win+Pause as a shortcut to bring up the system menu in Windows. I've used it so much over the years, it takes me a minute to figure out how to find that menu when I'm using a keyboard that doesn't have a Windows key.

    I also use Home and End about equally. Quick way to scroll back and forth across text or files/folders.