palordrolap

I don’t make resolutions because when I did, I never managed to keep them.

That said, I do have an unwritten list of things I’d like to do in the new year. Like may be lose a little weight. And I really need to go for my eyes testing.

And then there’s the whole philosophy of “why next year? why not now?” and “tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life”.

For the eye test, I’ve no good excuse, but I don’t want to walk to the place and find they’re closed for the holidays. For the weight, I’d have to throw out a lot of food first. Not the greatest excuse there either, but waste not, want not.

(Can you see why I never managed to keep them previously? Yeeeah.)

Depends what you mean by “ability” and “travel”.

If you’re asking whether I’m able to move about within my house, then sure. Beyond that, things get murky.

Does agoraphobia count as a disability? What if, for sufficiently short periods, it’s bearable, but ultimately it crushes?

I’ve walked the 15 minutes down to the dentist’s office and back (I’m lucky to live so close) a handful of times in the last couple of years (not so lucky with my teeth I guess), for example.

Or is this more about “Can [I] afford to use those modes of transport which take [me] to far-off places on a regular basis?”

Now we’ve got to define “far-off”. In theory, I could probably afford to take the bus anywhere within the county on a regular basis. And if I did, there’s a travel pass I could buy that would reduce the cost somewhat.

Taxis? Maybe once or twice a week if they remain relatively local.

Airline flights to foreign countries (or distant ends of the same one), which is probably what this is all about? I’d have to dip into savings, and those should probably be spent on more important things. So, no.

LMDE’s system is the same as regular Mint. I’ve been on LMDE for a few years but was on regular before that.

YSK/PSA: If you’re on Mint, Mint’s apt is not Debian’s apt and while they work similarly for common use cases, they diverge pretty quickly beyond that. Both are installed by default but Mint’s takes precedence.*

Case in point: I was looking for which package - specifically one that was not yet installed - contains a certain command line tool and Mint’s apt search does not find it. Debian’s does. **

On the other hand, Mint’s apt has way more subcommands than the default one, which have been useful on occasion.

* Mint’s is at /usr/local/bin/apt and Debian’s is at /usr/bin/apt; The default user $PATH puts /usr/local/bin before /usr/bin.

** FWIW, the tool is/was sponge and it’s in the moreutils package.

If you have more accessible money right now than the poorest person in your country would ever need to survive to the age of country’s life expectancy, then you have too much money.

If you think of: the maximum fines leviable by your government for committing a crime; as mere inconvenience - rather than a life-ruining financial burden - then you also have too much money. (Weird punctuation for easier parsing).

These two things may not be mutually exclusive.

Given the Alpha ideology’s interpretation of Alpha and Beta, I once quipped that I’m a Gamma male and owning it, but having had a long while to think about it, that might get me confused with The Incredible Hulk. And since I’m too old for sticking my arms out horizontally and saying things like “neeyowm”, pretending to be a Delta is out of the question too.

Behold, I am Epsilon male. Do not perceive me.

Well, I have a bunch of stuff around here that serves no real purpose that I’m otherwise sentimentally attached to or think might be useful some day, but I’m not sure I have many duplicates, even loosely speaking.

The best(?) example is probably the fact I have 3 CRT TVs, none of which I use regularly. One is the main house TV but, since I don’t use it much, I’ve never felt the need to upgrade it. The other two are portables that I’m keeping for if I ever get back into 8-bit computers.

Relevant

The last time I decided to lose weight, I basically cut out all sweet things after meals and avoided regular snacking. It took a while to get used to not having those things (he said, with enormous understatement) but nowhere near as long as it did to lose the weight, so the good habits did lock in for a while, and the weight did eventually come off.

I allowed myself low calorie drinks whenever. The more water in them, the better. Tea with sweetener not sugar is my usual poison, but I switch it up with squash depending on mood and time of day.

A change in medication and slow fall back into old habits has got the BMI back over 25 again, so I intend to employ the same tactics again in the new year. Once all the Christmas snacks I’ve been bought are gone, anyway. *cough*

If I wasn’t snacking and still needed to lose weight, I’d probably try reducing my portion sizes. One less potato. Smaller chops. One less sausage. etc. but I can’t vouch for that because I’ve never needed to go that far.

“Uncle Grandma”

Emotional daaaaa

Someone who thinks that it’ll be easier or more efficient to wring out if it’s 1.4 times as long. And who has a bad memory. And who thinks the first two times were surely a fluke.

Internet memes had led me to believe that the correct verb and noun in this scenario are, respectively, “tonguepunch” and “fartbox”.

This is the limit of my knowledge on this topic and it’ll likely stay that way.

The eyes of the Cryptkeeper puppet in the TV series Tales from the Crypt are the same two eyeballs that were used for Chucky, the doll from Child’s Play.

I wash them whenever I’ve dirtied enough for a full load, and if I don’t, I’ll often throw the bathroom mats in there with them. Frankly though, still nowhere near often enough. If they pass the sniff and squint tests (smell and look fine), I’m usually OK using them again. And again.

There was already a towel wash pencilled in for this week or next, oddly enough, before this question showed up, or else it might have shamed me into considering it. Other laundry is first in the queue though.

As for throwing them out? Never had need in the 20+ years I’ve had my own towels, and some of those were hand-me-downs.

I remember one particularly large brown bath towel starting to fall apart at my parents’ house long before I moved out, and I still kind of miss it, which is kind of funny.

Now, washcloths made of towelling material - I’ve ruined a fair few of those with careless wringing. PSA: Don’t fold them diagonally before wringing them out.

The Grinch is green. Trump’s the Orinch.

5 - 3 = 2. So I have ten buckets. Checkmate!

Had to look up the logical fallacy because I thought there must be a name for it. It’s called “affirming the consequent” or “fallacy of the converse” among other names.

Knee-leeks and spear-leeks. Delicious.

I still backup my files the most basic way, that is, create an archive locally, connect external storage and copy it there. Then disconnect external storage. The archive is made onto a separate internal drive and I keep the most recent one there, so I don’t even need the external one for minor accidents.

I think only once in the last decade or so have I wanted (but never needed) to pull something back from external, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

The main downside to this method is that it doesn’t de-duplicate, so keeping several takes a lot more space that it would do otherwise.