That gets spendy quick. I wonder what the work VDI I have for work would run... 112 GB ram and 12 virtual cores.

Make the effort to have a ‘professional’ email address. It takes... 2 minutes *for free* on gmail etc. Setting up auto-forward from the professional one to the one you watch more often takes... another couple minutes?

It also will come in handy when the Chromebooks we bought them want a google account. There may be a work-around, but I haven’t bothered to try finding it.  Maybe before the pandemic ends I’ll get around to this.  LOL.

Admittedly, that’s a better photoshop job than theirs too....

I’ve had a couple Dell UltraSharp monitors for a decade. They offer a downstream USB to the computer, plus 2 upstream (as you said, keyboard etc). Unfortunately, in this case, if my monitors go to sleep while the KB & mouse are plugged in, the KB & mouse no longer receive power, so waking the monitor/computer back up…

Sounds about right; our first OG dot was part of the christmas gift package from my wife’s company, then my S9 from amazon included a ‘free’ echo spot plus OG echo. The OG echo actually has pretty legit speakers, incl. bass I can hear across the house when the kids listen to something.

Sounds about right; our first OG dot was part of the christmas gift package from my wife’s company, then my S9 from…

These things are fine... for about 6 months. Maybe a little more if you sacrifice something to whatever deity you believe in.

These things are fine... for about 6 months. Maybe a little more if you sacrifice something to whatever deity you…

I actually did something like this for my brothers wifi recently. It still has the randomized factory gibberish password and I guess one of his devices forgot it. Fortunately I did some of the command line magic on my (windows) laptop to show the password (I was sitting at my house, so no way to just check it while…

Worst (and most pathetic) Jack Ryan... EVER. Don’t get me wrong, Affleck was awful, but wow.

I just installed it on chrome (not my primary browser) and I’m not really surprised what I found. One of the favorite restaurants, the brewery whose club I’m in, and a few other sites that have me on their mailing lists (job search sites, the animal stuff store... etc).

I’ll 2nd Wifi Analyzer. I never realized that it had a windows version (not that my desktop is on wifi anymore) but I’ve been using the Android app for years.  Works great for finding a quiet(er) channel....

401k, regular IRA, or i401k if self employed. Though the i401k has to be established before the end of that calendar year... not sure about the timing on the contributions.

California has something similar, sort of. A few years ago they changed the cutoff for Kindergarten to very early September, but they added something called Transitional Kindergarten (TK) for birthdays between that September date and early-December.

Right!?  Speaking of which, I need to find a CC sign-up offer with 0% for a chunk of this years tax bill ;-)

Dude, you’re getting a Chevy :(

Assuming you’re not an idiot out flipping cars in 2-3 years, a 0% loan on a car is literally the cheapest money available. The high-3% on my house is probably the 2nd cheapest.

When I bought this house ~7 years ago I put a 8-10U wall mount rack in the garage and put the multi-port ethernet wall plates in each room. By my count there are currently 10 from the dumb-switch in the garage going to the house. One is the uplink to the router, and the others are available, though it looks like only…

OK... why the fascination with a 401k (of either flavor) in the first place!? Sure, if your company has a match &/or some knockout funds available, take advantage. But what if the company doesn’t match &/or only has a load of overpriced funds? Sure, it’s usually a set & forget automatic savings, and the limits are…

Fortunately, in California, Prop. 13 limits the increase in property taxes per year. Of course, then they tack on the specific bond measures for the school district(s) plus all the other local stuff. And since the bond measures and some of the local stuff is based on a % of assessed value, it sure as sh!t is going to…

When the wife & I were in Hawaii a few years ago something very similar to that picture was parked in the middle of Pearl Harbor. Interesting to finally figure out what it was.