Part of why cats like you is probably because you don’t like them and seek them out. Most cats are wary of people directly trying to approach them without invitation or greeting. In general cats will find the person ignoring them the least threatening and most approachable.

It never fails that cats tend to flock toward the person that is allergic to them, because that person is typically entirely disinterested in them lol. Not being interested in the cats is likely why you make friends with them so quickly!

While I agree with your sentiment, there is a difference between not understanding and actively disparaging. The former is fine - there’s plenty of stuff I don’t understand, and I just don’t comment on it because I have no business doing so. Where I take objection is when the lack of understanding transforms into bigotry and disparaging remarks.

By all means be ignorant (and I don’t mean that in a derogatory manner - we are all ignorant about various things), but don’t let your ignorance manifest into negativity.

Sleep As Android is hands down the #1 app on my phone I cannot give up. It’s THE reason I could never switch to Apple. I’ve gone beyond basic use and now have it automating things based on sleep actions and I kind of love it.

Honestly, being an adult is pretty similar to being a kid, except you have more freedom. I still have to spend 8 hours a day doing something I don’t particularly love, except on weekends where I get 2 days of free time. I have to take the results of what I’ve done all day and turn them in to other people (homework = bills), but there’s a little leftover for fun time/stuff.

Here’s the big difference, and why nobody can ever convince me that childhood is superior to adulthood - if I decide to make bad choices and have ice cream for dinner, or stay up until 2am on a weeknight, nobody is going to say shit.

The freedom of adulthood that allows ME to decide if I want to make a choice I know will hurt me later is the best part. IDGAF what anyone says, sometimes I want pancakes and ice cream for dinner.

Erm, not arguing that this lady is middle class, but dog insurance cost is not remotely relevant to that lol. I pay that for my dog and make less than 6 figures. My dog is just really important to me, and our last dog cost us thousands and thousands of dollars on vet bills. I’m not going to be blindsided dropping $5k in a day on vet bills again. Our dog has insurance because it seems like the financially responsible thing to do, especially when your dog is extremely active and engaging in sports that it may be injured doing.

In my opinion it depends on the game. Games as good as BG3, with no micro-transaction crap and a bit of updates for bugs and some patches? I would pay more for it and gladly. BG3 feels easily worth $120 to me.

The problem is, other studios will see BG3 able to charge that, then go try doing it themselves, riddle it full of micro-transactions, release it half baked, and then gaslight us by telling us we’re being unrealistic with our expectations.

My neighbor used a leaf blower to dry his car after washing it at 7am on a Saturday. I don’t know that I will ever be able to like that man after this.

I’m not fully de-Googling, however I have been migrating things that Google does badly over to other services. Kagi for search was the latest, and admittedly hardest mentally for me to do. Not because the search engine itself isn’t fantastic (it is), but I’ve been using Google since its inception when I stopped asking Jeeves or Hotbot. Just feels weird to jump ship, but I’m so tired of how bad and enshitified their search has become that I just can’t do it anymore.

I actually have a Proton acct already but only use the VPN. Sounds like it’s time to look further into the other offerings.

Minecraft

Stardew Valley

Baldurs Gate 3

We just finished Prodigy, and are in the middle of Dr Who. Soon we’ll start up House of the Dragon 😊

My husband and I don’t watch TV together a lot, but Sunday nights are the one night a week we set aside for it. I often find myself looking forward to Sunday evenings when we get to catch up on our favorite shows and hang out. It’s also typically the only night of the week I eat ice cream, so it’s an extra treat.

I’m usually busy enjoying my Sunday evenings and don’t even think about the fact that the weekend is ending.

Absolutely this. There IS a scenario in which I would love a “smart” or “AI” fridge, but it’s gotta be damn impressive to even be worth my time.

It needs to know everything in my fridge, how long it’s been there and it’s expiration date, and I want it to build grocery lists for me based on what is low, and let me know ahead of time that I should use something up that’s going bad soon. Bonus points if it recommends some options for how to do that based on my tastes. And I want to do this without having to manually input or remove everything.

But we’re still SO far from being able to do this reliably, let alone at any kind of acceptable price point, and yet fridge makers keep shoving out dumb fridges with a screen on them and calling them “smart”. I hate it.

Honestly, look into the Breeze litter boxes. They’re not automatic or anything crazy expensive, but it really does make a HUGE difference. I’ve been told by multiple strangers “I thought you had a cat?” after being in my house a while because she hides and the box generally cannot be smelled. If you change the pads regularly (i.e. before they are full), replace the pellets 2-3 times a year, and clean the box itself when replacing the pellets, the only smell you will have is from poop. I personally buy the bioplastic dog poop bags in bulk, and just use those to quickly grab and dispose of it.

When we used regular litter the cats tracked it everywhere, flung it out of the box, and it always had a smell, even when cleaned daily. I have none of those things with the Breeze boxes. We were using two when we had 3 cats and I had to replace the pads every 3 days. Now with one cat I replace the pads every week to two weeks depending on whether she divides her usage or fixates on one. We pick up the poop as soon as we notice it, which is usually very quickly because they can’t really bury it as well. I will never go back to traditional litter.

Moats were cool until I learned that toileting holes were often positioned such that the urine and feces wash down into the moat. I’m gonna have to take a pass on that lazy river…

My big wool cloak is my absolute favorite winter garment. It is unbelievably warm and cozy, blocks wind better than any other coat I own, and as an added bonus I can wrap someone else up in it with me to keep THEM warm.

I am unabashedly the cloak girl. Bring back cloaks!

Not really. I haven’t looked into why it caused the issue it did. Presumably it is not actually intentional by MS, and there is some conflict going on that’s causing it. I’ll eventually get around to trying to let it install that update again, but life has been busy :)

I recently had to roll back a windows 10 update because as soon as I installed it all of my startup programs stopped starting up at launch. As soon as I removed it, the problem went away.

No Microsoft, you cannot ruin my Win 10 experience to coerce me into migrating. It’s gonna be a long annoying fight.

Who knows, by then Broadcom may drive VMware into the ground too, making the whole thing moot!

My company is based in CA, and employs me remotely from the Midwest. They pay me above average for my area, but less than they would have to if I lived in the Bay area where they are based. I feel like this works out for both of us! They even go so far as looking at the zip code of every employee when considering raises, and thus far (3 years) I have received an annual raise which is higher than the cost of living increase for my area.

In my situation at least, me working remotely benefits both myself and my company. I just can’t understand why so many larger companies are so adamant about return to office, especially ones in larger coastal cities.

Many of the libraries in my area have all kinds of rental things you can check out! Books, audiobooks, music, video games and movies of course. But they also have a whole tools and homegoods section. Need a weirdly shaped pan for a 1-time birthday cake? Check it out and return it when you’re done. Need a drill to hang shelves in your new apartment? Same thing. It’s pretty awesome. For me personally I love to bake, but I simply do not have room for every type of pan. I only make angelfood cake once a year or so, and those pans are huge. I just use the library one and then I don’t have to store the thing all year!

If you haven’t been to your local library in years, you should make a trip there. You might be surprised what they have these days!