jms

The first time we tested cutting the power back in the day, the backup generator didn't fire! Turns out someone had pushed the big red stop button, which remains pushed in until reset.

That would have been a major problem if we'd had a nighttime power outage.

After that we ran regular switchover testing :)

The other time we ran into trouble was after someone drove a car into the local power substation. Our systems all ran fine for the immediate outage, but the power company's short term fix was to re-route power, which caused our voltage to be low enough for our UPS batteries to slowly drain without tripping over to the generator.

That was a week or two of manually pumping diesel into the generator tank so we could keep the UPS batteries topped up.

We were once enjoying a nice picnic in a park when it started raining bees.

It turned out their was a drone above us attracting bees (not sure if it was the sound or if it had disturbed something), and every time a bee got struck by a propeller it would fall down onto us.

So a flamethrower may not even be necessary! Poor bees :(

One thing I've found helpful is that you can find out the current UV levels for your location, e.g. https://www.arpansa.gov.au/our-services/monitoring/ultraviol...

I live in the antipodes (near the ozone hole), am fair skinned, burn easily, and have had low vitamin d levels when I've had them checked.

I cover up or am very careful with sunscreen when the UV is high, then try to do the opposite (no sunscreen, lots of exposure) when UV is at lower levels. The idea is to generate vitamin d at safer times while avoiding skin cancer.

I also supplement with vitamin d pills.

It goes against mainstream advice that no sun exposure is good exposure, and that getting a tan is not healthy. However I never "tan" my hands and they don't look any darker, but I've never burned them, even though they're the place that will get the most sunscreen rubbed off. Ditto for feet.

I've been living in Australia and New Zealand, and have been terrified of sun exposure - during peak times (summer mid-day) it's scary how quickly you can burn.

However I also have low vitamin D.

My current strategy is to check the UV levels (I've got a widget on my personal dashboard) and whenever the UV levels are moderate or below, I try to get as much sun exposure as possible - shorts and t-shirt, or topless.

I then cover up when the UV levels are demonstrably high.

My theory is that low levels of exposure are very good - you get your vitamin D, whatever else you need, and your body starts to build an appropriate amount of melanin.

The worst thing to do is to avoid sun all the time, then suddenly get massive UV doses.

I've noticed that my hands very rarely get burned compared to other areas - my theory is due to constant exposure that part of my body is more resistant compared to the pasty areas.

My key point is that you can view the UV rating and protect yourself appropriately - e.g. high caution summer-midday, zero caution winter mid-day.

Not extremely unlikely if they were identical drives from the same manufacturing batch. It's good practise to use diverse manufacturers or at least batches when adding disks to a raid array for just this reason.

I had to laugh at the commonality of experience. My toddler bathtimes often involve negotiations as to which vehicles he's allowed to bring in too!

Keeping his brand new fire truck complete with electric flashing lights and siren out was last night's big challenge.

Blind people who use screen readers usually turn up the speed to something unintelligible to the rest of us.

Maybe reading a computer screen is a simpler task than talking person to person, but it's an interesting datapoint!

I made a command line music playing frontend. It has a list of all my music as a flat text file, then if I run "music" it shuffles randomly, or I can add a regex as an argument to pick the files from the list. It works surprisingly well - given my folder structure I can just type in "music <artist>" or "music <genre>" or "music <specific song>" and it just does it. It also has a flag for turning shuffle mode on or off.

Very simple, but very comfortable for me.

I also created my own TODO / dashboard app, where all tasks are on a schedule (do this every x days) and I can enter a value each time I complete a task. These then show up as graphs on my dashboard - helpful for tracking weight etc. I also graph a bunch of random things automatically in the same system (how many unread emails I have).

It also tracks how many tasks are overdue so I can measure my general ability to get stuff done, and if it gets overwhelming I can tweak the settings so it just shows me a few things (or more realistically I tweak the task to either not need doing/tracking, or I slow down it's cadence).

How do you see things playing out now that we're near 0 interest rates and in some cases negative? Will governments continue to be loose via negative interest rates, through some other mechanism, or will they be forced to tighten policy?

In theory as you approach zero smaller changes produce bigger results in an aysmptotic fashion, but in reality lenders have margin to think about.

Maybe the zero rates will take into account lenders margin, and once that is taken into effect the rates will reflect the asymptotic curve.

If you're in a high UV area and you want to try something like this, use a UV tracker so you can be informed about the risks.

I have a widget on my phone that displays the current level and estimated burn time, and can pull up a graph of estimated & forecast (turns out cloudy days DO generally block a lot of UV).

It's great to be able to get as much skin exposed as possible during the low UV periods for gentle UV exposure, then know when to cover up & sunscreen during the harsh periods.

To help support this, keep an eye on a UV tracker. I used to be terrified of the Australian sun, but with a UV tracker I know when it's safe to be outside for hours with no sunscreen, and when the danger levels are extreme.

https://www.arpansa.gov.au/our-services/monitoring/ultraviol...

I used "Regularly" and it worked great. I've now upgraded to my own system which plugs into my dashboard and can generate graphs. Each time I complete a task I can give it a score, which is then graphed. I just use it for my weight, but you could use it for anything.

I should really tidy it up and promote it!

I actually agree with both you and the parent poster - this is a real problem.

My position would be that you still need assistance programs as well as the UBI for people like the above, but I'd treat it as a health issue rather than a poverty issue.

I think this is where you really do need a paternalistic government for people who need the guidance, but it should be the exception, not the rule. Let's respect peoples choices for themselves and only step in if necessary.

I'd argue that Alice is either addicted or mentally ill, and supported living facilities or similar would be the way to go. She would still be entitled to her UBI, which would be her route out of the system once she no longer needs to spend it on drugs.

So I'd say that UBI will never completely replace all government programs, but it should be the default and go a long way to reducing the need for existing programs.

If I were implementing it, I'd start with a low amount (well below the cost of living) and increase it over time. I'd leave the current support programs in place. The current programs are means tested anyway, so the hope would be that as UBI increases, use of the current programs would reduce, and we would have time to reorganise them as needed.

This would also give us a chance to measure the effects and get real world data as to the impacts on society and government incoming/spending.

I guess the real question would be how much it would all cost. My gut feeling is that short term it would decrease productivity as people wouldn't feel the need to work so hard, but long term it would increase productivity as people will be able to invest more in themselves.

So what if someone spends it all on whiskey or oxy? They're maximising their own preferences. If they were addicted to alcohol, sudden withdrawal can kill.

One of the big reasons for UBI is the belief that an individual can better assess their own needs and wants, and procure them more cheaply than the government.

This is partly a moral/philosphical stand - the tension is between giving individual freedom in the form of money, or giving freedom via paternalistic methods where the government decides what is best for you. It can be argued either way.

I do agree it would be wise to have systems in place to trickle the money in daily instead of monthly - this would help your concern of people blowing all their money at once (but not prevent them spending on what was most important to them).

I also think that just UBI will never be enough - there is a place for targeted government support - healthcare, addiction (part of healthcare), mental health (also part of healthcare).

Some big wave surfers do. Apparently it's pretty disconcerting, as you need to let go of the air you're holding before taking a big breath on the device, which may or may not work...

Looks like they were super experienced body surfers wearing swim fins - the guys that would usually be doing the rescuing.

It sounds like the bigger problem was that they got lost in the sea foam - couldn't see where they were going.

You're absolutely right about the suffocation risk due to foam/bubbles though.

I once got tanned on just half of my face, skiing.

Apparently I took much longer going up the lift with the sun on my right than I did coming down :)

To help control my sun exposure, I use UV widgets on my dashboard.

They help me know when I can expose as much skin as possible to get gentle exposure everywhere, and when I'll burn in 5 minutes.

It's interesting, the heat of the sun and the actual risk of burning don't seem to be 100% correlated.

I find it really helpful to have actual knowledge of what the sun is doing at any one time, instead of having to guess and under or over exposing myself.

I've listed the widgets I use below for Australia, I'm sure you can find them for your location too.

https://www.arpansa.gov.au/our-services/monitoring/ultraviol...

https://www.cancer.org.au/preventing-cancer/sun-protection/u...

I'm a fair skinned Aussie, who doesn't really like sunscreen.

I can 100% understand nl's position - skin cancer is really prevalent here, and the sun can be incredibly harsh. The skies here are usually completely cloudless, and we're affected by the ozone hole too. Skin cancer is a big deal here. The aboriginal people are very dark, which should be a big hint as to the amount of UV we get, and that will have been selected for from before the ozone hole.

I keep track of UV levels on my personal dashboard, so I know when it's dangerous or not. Previously I was overly cautious, but now I can enjoy time outdoors with skin exposed without the worry of burning, and get gentle UV exposure over my whole body for the vit D.

Personally I prefer to cover up rather than use sunscreen. I don't like the feel of sunscreen, and when covered up there is no risk of the sunscreen slowly washing away. I do use sunscreen on exposed areas, such as hands, face, and feet.

Here are the UV widgets I use.

https://www.arpansa.gov.au/our-services/monitoring/ultraviol...

https://www.cancer.org.au/preventing-cancer/sun-protection/u...

I use different desktops for different tasks/clients and have a script that keeps track of which one I'm on.

Using the desktops is an extra bit of information I can use to give context to the robot to help with tracking.

Have you come across arbtt? It's a script that pretty much does exactly the same thing, but comes with a few extras for categorization and analysis.

Download an export and import it into gnucash. It remembers previously processed items. It's a manual process, but much easier to do a monthly export than record items one by one.

I'm thinking of doing the same! Living in Sydney at the moment, but am an NZ citizen. Looking at Northland or Taranaki for the kitesurfing :)

Could I ask you a bit more about Northland? My email is in my profile.

Sounds like you were winded https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_the_wind_knocked_out_o...

Of course being winded could induce panic too, but not being able to breathe in that circumstance has a physical cause.

You can get SLS free toothpaste. Unfortunately the tubes I've found are also flouride free, and they have Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate in them, which I assume is similar to Sodium Lauryl Sulfate.

SLS is only used to make foam when you brush your teeth. I promise I won't think any less of your toothpaste if it doesn't foam!

Hill Operations | Linux Sysadmin, cross skilled with PHP if desired | Sydney , Remote within Aus/NZ | Part-time

Small software development agency. Ongoing sysadmin work maintaining and upgrading a fleet of servers for our clients. PHP work also available if you're interested (and would be a plus), but the primary role is systems admin.

I think most cookbooks make cooking extra complicated so that people feel like they're getting value from a recipe.

I've found a few simple cookbooks with small ingredient lists (4 - 10 things) and very simple instructions. Initially it felt like a rip off, but you know what? Everything was super tasty.

I'm doing OK :).

I've got one large client who I basically subcontract for, then a handful of other clients I work on a less regular basis. About a 50/50 split between the large client and the rest.

I earn less than when I was working full time, but love the freedom to spend my time as I like, and to have the time to work on my own startup projects. I'd earn more if I took the freelancing more seriously and made an effort at sales and marketing, but as it is I'm thinking of scaling back to concentrate on my own projects more.

Retainers or any other regular monthly income are gold.

May I ask where you are roughly? I'm planning to buy a house in a cheap rural location (in NZ), but will still need to spend time in the city for work. I'd love to pick your brains - my email is in my profile, and I'm happy to buy dinner in return.