When I was a kid, my mom either bought or was gifted a little plush snowman that would say “Happy holidays! Happy holidays!” When you squeezed it. It would maybe get squeezed a few times in December and then put in a bin until the following year. No one ever changed the batteries and it still worked each year for many years. Then it started to run out of juice. And slowly over each year it would sound more and more demonic, but it always played at least once before running out of power. It’s now been more than 25 years and we still check it each year to see if the demonic snowman is still alive. I’m not sure it will ever die if it was never alive in the first place…

This.

I KNOW WHOOOO I WANT TO TAKE ME HOME

Well… Duh?

Even if I look at my own family… My sister has loads of health issues and is financially unstable, so she has decided to be a dog mom instead. My brother is in a situation where he will likely never own a home and will have to rent his whole life, so that’s a no for him as well even though I know he’d like kids. I’m the lucky sibling that has stable enough work that I could buy a house. But it’s a real fixer upper that I’ve spent 3 years remodeling and even when it’s done, I’ll be in my mid 30s by the time I have kids because I didn’t want to have kids in an unstable environment. Most of my friends will not have kids for similar reasons with a few exceptions and those usually involve situations where they had financial help from parents or married someone 10 years older than themself who was in a more stable position. So uh… Yeah that seems to be the state of things at the moment.

Best: twix, 100grand, candy corn, sweet tarts

Worst: bottle caps, heath, unnamed hard candies, tootsie rolls

We drove from Illinois to Florida and stopped at a local chain in Alabama along the way called Milo’s. It had great reviews and people said you had to get the burger with the special sauce or whatever it was called. Let me tell you that this “burger” was very reminiscent of my grade school lunches when they would serve “Salisbury steak with gravy” in the little paper containers that you had to pinch the corner to peel the film off and eat. Now while usually this would be a lesson in how terrible us school lunches are, this is more of a lesson in how bad the food in Alabama is in that the local people think that this is good enough food to pay someone real money for it.

It was honestly some no name brand and I wasn’t able to find it on their site. But I did find this fan that’s almost exactly the same: Lowes High Velocity Fan

The last apartment I had, the AC was old and would always go out a few times each summer. By the 3rd time, I went to the hardware store looking for a box fan, but they were out and only had an industrial fan that was more expensive, like $40. I bought it out of desperation. But looking back it’s one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. Any time the AC went out, id whip out that metal beast and only ever put it on the first setting because the other 2 settings were way too powerful for an apartment. It’s never given me any trouble over the years and has saved us from some very hot weather. If I had known then how good this fan was, I would have gladly paid more for it. It’s currently being used in our house while we do renovations this summer and it’s working like a charm!

I love Lemmy’s love for Technology Connections. It just feels so right!

I mostly make chocolate based candies, but I dabble in other candies from time to time like caramels, candied nuts, candied fruits/ginger/etc. I like to make candies around Christmas time to give to family and friends as they make really nice gifts.

It’s really all going to depend on your tastes and lifestyle. Like I could recommend that you get a dog and start learning how to train dogs as a hobby, but that’s just not going to work for everyone. What’s important is that you explore things and maybe even try some hobbies that could potentially improve your well-being. Maybe you live somewhere near a good hiking spot and you could take up hiking to get outdoors and get more exercise. Maybe you could learn how to cook and explore how to make healthy meals that suit you better. Or maybe you just want to create something and you could take up woodworking or make model planes or something. The possibilities are endless, you just need to decide what you’d like to get out of it.

Personally, I spend most of my time for work indoors on a computer, so most of my hobbies involve using my hands and getting outdoors. I took up a lot of extra hobbies during covid for obvious reasons. So here goes my list of >!hobbies that will maybe give you some ideas:

• Cooking/baking/bread
• Candy making
• Jam making
• Gardening
• Canning (goes great with gardening!)
• Succulents
• Mixology
• Dog training
• Camping/hiking (this one is minimal only because I don’t live somewhere with good hiking spots)
• Board games, video games, and movies during the winter when I can’t go outside

Other things I’ve considered taking up but haven’t for various reasons:

• 3D printing
• Bonsais
• Home brewing

I had known for a long time that I wanted to do something creative. Throughout highschool I was lucky enough to be able to take various classes that would allow me to try out different things. I ruled out music and was struggling to decide if I wanted to be an illustrator of some kind or an interior designer or maybe an architect? But then I took a class called “computer graphics” which was a stupid name for the class. It was actually a class about graphic design and it seemed to fit into everything I do well just perfectly. Looking back it was way more obvious that I should be a graphic designer as I used to do things for fun like doodle out magazine layouts and make weird computer art for icons and things back when that was how the Internet worked. Like what kind of kid does that for fun? A future graphic designer apparently.

I have an all around mutt that we tested and learned that among everything else, he has a good chunk of Lab DNA. But when we really found out that his personality was truly lab was when we took him to the lake and let him off leash. He could have run around the Forrest and chased squirrels which he loves to do, but instead he chose to run down to the pier and jump into the lake even though he had never done it before. Almost as if it was perfectly natural for him. He still hates baths tho 🤣

Gabe said it best! “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”

I’m not your mate, bro!

I’m not your friend, guy!

I’m not your buddy, pal!

It’s framed very inaccurately in the news as well. You’ll see articles about how ford reports people aren’t buying their electric lineup. Meanwhile the dealership is marking them up so high that they are now priced too high for the target market. But the articles never mention that part

There was a time when I was a kid that my parents were struggling with money. It was an ongoing struggle that lasted more than a decade and they still haven’t fully recovered from to this day. Anyway, I was aware of their struggles and as soon as I was old enough at 16, I went and got a job. I made less than minimum wage and my hours were severely limited due to state laws about employment under the age of 18. So I was still going to school and making barely anything, but whatever I didn’t use, I put away in the bank. Skip ahead to when I’m 18 and I’ve saved a few thousand dollars. My parents had a few particularly rough months and didn’t know how they would pay the mortgage that month, so my mom asked me if they could borrow some. I still remember how embarrassed my mom looked while asking me and I remember thinking that I didn’t know if I would ever get that money back. But I agreed. It was a bit of an emotional ordeal, but they did pay me back eventually and my parents still have their house. So all in all it worked out for the best.

Too expensive and unhealthy. I have 1 cereal that I like to enjoy every now and then, but it’s now reached $9 for a small box. It’s just not worth it anymore. These days at the grocery store I buy what I actually need and then check the stuff I don’t need to see if there’s a sale. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $8 for a single bag of chips/cookies/cereal etc.