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I’ve actually taken note of my navigational skills over the last couple years… I grew up in one state, and then a few years after graduating college, moved to a different state. When I was growing up, phone navigation didn’t really exist as it does now, cars didn’t have built-in navigation, and standalone navigation devices were slow and not all that great (at least the ones I could afford).

I find that when I return home, even 10 years later, I am able to navigate all the places I used to go unaided with ease, back-roads, niche routes, able to travel for hours without getting “lost”.

When I moved, though, I had very recently gotten my first smartphone, and google maps was very convenient to “learn” the new area. I ended up just continuing to use navigation since it was convenient. I’ve found that beyond the major main routes, I don’t have the same kind of “built-in” navigational skill that I do for my original home-turf. I never really learned the area.

I am moving towards a smart-phone-less life, and I’ve been able to let go of a lot, but GPS navigation remains a sticking point. I need to start training myself to navigate unaided in my current area.

My Dell Latitude 7280 has a similar rubbery coating both inside and out, and the keyboard is really nice, similar to Thinkpad keyboards I remember from the past. It’s also got a magnesium chassis, and seems to be quite durable.

I read a bit more of your comments before posting and it seems like you’re looking for a new, more powerful laptop… At least that exact Latitude model is a few years old, and low-power (and small, only 12" screen), but I’ll leave it here as an interesting note. I use it as a field-capture device for my astrophotography camera that can be powered by a big USB C power bank. Works great for that use, and is small thin and light.

While I haven’t seen him the most times, I am unequivocally a massive Dev-head. I’ve seen Devin Townsend 3 times (4 if you count the virtual concert during lockdown in 2020), but one of them was to travel from the USA to the Netherlands this March to see the one-time live performance of The Moth (I was right in the second row, I get a lot of peripheral screen-time in the live-stream). It was such an amazing experience, I’m going to count that as 10 or 20 normal concerts. I probably also haven’t cried that many happy tears in at least a decade or two. It was also my first time ever leaving the USA, and I really REALLY didn’t want to go home. I’d have happily lived the rest of my life on the Dutch train network.

I’ve been meaning to get to one of their shows, but just never had the chance, or always learned about it right after it happened.

I really wish Грай (Grai) would tour somewhere in North America…

I had never heard of Thank You Scientist before, but they were opening for one of the bands that I really like to go see live (Rivers of Nihil, seen them 5 times so far). HOLY SHIT they are so good. I have no idea how they ended up as the opener for that show, they’re so different from the other bands on the setlist, but I am very glad I got to see them.

I saw Tesseract recently when I went to see Devin Townsend, that was an amazing show.

FxTec Pro1 X… As someone who has spent years searching for a modern-ish phone with a Qwerty keyboard… How has this flown under my radar for 5 years?!?

I’ve completely rethought my phone situation recently and it wouldn’t really fit my lifestyle, but man I am still tempted to keep my eyes out for a cheap one.

You’re not going to get an argument out of me lol. I had a Reddit account for over a decade. I was addicted to the karma system of Reddit, it was seriously negatively impacting my life. I finally deleted my account and moved here recently, it’s been one of the better changes I’ve made in my life. You can completely hide post scores here, and the communities are smaller and less active which drives a more genuine engagement vs the hot-take one-liners, memes, and low-effort post replies.

Reddit can burn to the ground and cease to exist for all I care. It’s become so big and full of hate and misinformation.

My legitimate advice is just… don’t go back and save yourself the headache.

The karma itself is the gamification that increases engagement.

The gated subs, karma limits, etc. are there to cut down on spam, low-effort content, brigading, etc. in large communities to keep the engaged users more engaged so hopefully they spend a few more dollars on silly updoot awards.

It’s all supply and demand, profit-driven decisions. If a feature like karma limits alienates a small number of users, it is still worth it if it retains and engages with more high-value users who invest money in the platform with their ad viewership and direct purchases.

Costco bought RAC in a stunning buyout in 2437 after Costco’s CEO Harambe Memelord Disney Jr. offered RAC’s CEO Squiggy John John John John Johnson a 2-for 1 deluxe latte coupon and an extra big-ass fry.

My original choice was between the BRZ and an MX-5… I don’t have another car, so I needed just the tiny bit more practicality of the trunk and back-seat space. I HAVE in fact taken 4 people in it, though it’s only a last resort kind of thing… It was really tough, because I fucking love convertibles. If I had a more reasonable car, or even the space to park a more reasonable car when I was looking into it originally (I live in an apartment in a downtown metro with only 1 parking space), I’d have 100% gotten a convertible miat.

And I’m only 5’10", but I think I just have a long torso. My seat is all the way down, and there isn’t enough head clearance for me to wear a helmet, which just saves me from the temptation to beat on it at autocross or something, so honestly a positive.

I drive a BRZ, lowered an inch and a half, and I’m tall enough that the seat needs to be as low as it will go so I don’t bump my head on the roof. Stopped at lights, I can look over at regular non-lifted pickup trucks and think “Huh, that guy’s asscheeks are at the same level as my eyeballs”.

I’ve gotten over the feeling of being small while driving amongst traffic, but the stark differences while stopped close to other vehicles is hard to ignore.

I really wish I could buy the new Suzuki Jimny. I saw one in person for the first time on a trip a few months back, and it’s so perfect.

They run a custom vendor-locked distro named QTS, so they’re not really as easy to modify as a normal system, I don’t think you can even install programs like that.

I’ll definitely bookmark it though if I ever get around to building my own solution, thanks!

I have no idea if it’s a QNAP-wide issue, or just some specific models, I haven’t bothered to do that much research. I’m guessing that the discs WOULD spin down if you have that option selected if they weren’t constantly being pinged a couple times a minute. That constant pinging is the part I can’t seem to track down.

An excerpt from a post I was reading while researching this sums it up prettt well: “700 posts about spindown/sleep/standby not working in the QNAP HDD Spin Down Forum. No one seems to be able to resolve it. Qnap clearly couldn’t care less.”

The only solution that I’ve found that seems to work is to install some other operating system on it, which kind of defeats the purpose of buying a turn-key NAS, and is slightly outside my comfort zone right now. I just ordered a kill-a-watt, so I’ll see how much power it’s taking with/without drives and go from there if it’s worth my time to dive into an OS swap, or building a custom rig.

If you can figure out how to get a qnap to spin down its disks, please let me know lol. I’ve been searching for months and haven’t found a reliable solution. I basically only need to access it once a day at MOST, so having the disks spinning away for like 99% of their life sucking down power is something I’d like to avoid. The problem seems to be that even with a perfectly clean slate, no services running, the system set up in their own RAID0 SSD pool, the HDD’s, even with 0 bytes of data on them, are being pinged for access at least once a minute. I’m assuming it’s some log being written to, but it’s not anything visible in the file system, and I haven’t been able to find any solution online, lots of people seem to have the same issue.

I’m tempted more and more every day to just grab one of those low-power embedded ITX boards and build up a custom rig. Other than the disk spinning constantly, the TS-462 does everything I need perfectly.