My wife and I hung out with a couple just a few times. They were cool, but it’s hard enough to find time when my wife and I are both off and awake; lining that up with two other working adults (plus they have a kid) was impossible to do regularly.

I can get along okay with pretty much anybody, but most people I’ve met have proven to be a little too incurious or even hateful for me to want to go out of my way to spend time with. With every passing year, I value my time more and more (as I’m sure almost everybody must) so it’s hard to justify setting time aside for building friendships with people if I don’t naturally want to hang out with them. That having been said, I work rotating 12 hour shifts, so I’m not off every night and weekend like a lot of people are, and even if I am off I may be swinging my sleep schedule to prepare for not being off. A lot of people just can’t understand that yes, I may be off that day, but I didn’t get home until after 0500 and I need to sleep at some point. Or yes I’m off that day, but I need to be in bed by 2000 at the absolute latest because I need to get up at 0230 for work the next day.

I would recommend making a friend or two with neighbors if your work schedule isn’t as shitty as mine is lol. Especially if your neighbors suck less than a lot of mine have. Just don’t force a friendship where there doesn’t need to be one just so you can feel better about asking them to water your plants while you’re away for the weekend. If they’re cool, they’ll do it for you just knowing that they can ask you to return the favor down the road.

I took my now wife window shopping for rings when we were getting close to engagement time so that I’d know what she would want. It was clear that the answer was gonna be yes no matter what, but I knew she’d have a ring preference anyway. She saw prices and explicitly said that she’d like white sapphire on sterling silver. I found a bridal set that she adores which very much did not cost a month or two of salary.

Because we didn’t blow a ton of money on engagement/wedding shit, we’ve had much more resources to support the marriage itself. I’ve heard of regular everyday people spending $3-4k on a fucking ring. We spent 9 days in a few different places in Spain for about that cost instead lol.

I for one believe that the question of whether a food service establishment has rats is very relevant to the business.

The character of the staff and clientele as well as the financial state of the staff as a direct result of how stingy their employer is can also be very relevant. Do you want to eat somewhere if the people preparing your food there will sell their morals and decency? Kinda seems likely that I could pay somebody there $100 to put their pubes into your quarter pounder.

Their opinion on your opinion is more interesting than your opinion. Ratio, my dude.

Now we know the answer to “why is Gamora?”

Dope! I appreciate you taking the time! So it sounds like a slightly less bloated version of 10 that gets more support, but it may not be exactly legal and breezy to obtain for my personal home use.

With the possible exception of finding drivers for a device or two, it sounds like I’ll be better off just pivoting to a Linux distro mid 2025. I have been happy with SteamOS on my docked steam deck with m+kb and controller, so I’m sure I won’t be missing much by picking a popular distro that I can find troubleshooting guidance for when I hit inevitable snags.

Not hating, happy to be educated! I’m not prideful enough to be upset by you taking the time :)

A few questions since you seem to know much more about this than I can probably even find from searching:

• What is “IoT”? What is “LTSC”?
• Other than update support, how is this different from my existing home laptop’s Windows 10?
• Is this free? Will there be obnoxious limitations or reminders to pay to activate?
• Why should I as a medium skill home computer user without work needs opt for this over Mint, Ubuntu, Nobara, Arch, or whatever other distro somebody would insist I use? I don’t need Office.

Edit: most of the following comment regarding suppressors was apparently super wrong. Leaving my ignorance up so the resulting corrections in the reply make sense. Just don’t stop reading after my bullshit comment lol.

In a normal, unsuppressed semiautomatic pistol gunshot, you pull the trigger, a precise little pin strikes the back-center of a bullet, this causes the gunpowder in the back of the bullet to spark and ignite and explode. The projectile portion of the bullet rides the wave of the explosion at supersonic speed down the barrel of the gun, which determines the direction of the path. There is an initial increase of backpressure of gas between the projectile and the back of the barrel, but semiautomatic weapons make use of this to push back the slide, expelling the spent casing and that gas and allowing the spring in the magazine to push the next round into place for the next shot, also significantly reducing recoil in the process.

Suppressors (or “silencers”) work by slowing the bullet down and altering the propulsion gas path. Subsonic speeds means no sonic boom. The downside is that you must manually cycle each round yourself, and you will likely experience more recoil per shot.

Afaik, suppressors are pretty damn hard to legally obtain, so my knowledge of them is a combination of my firsthand accounts with my unsuppressed guns, secondhand accounts of suppressors, a moderate understanding of physics, and some guesswork. I could be wrong about some of this, but this is my general understanding that I carry around with me.