Thank you. I know exactly the toll that is paid by the survivors and how at peace I feel when diving so I figure sharing it with others can’t be a bad thing. I just hope things pick up steam soon.

Yeah. It’s my favorite place. Love being under water. It’s going to be my biggest trip to date with at least 15 days of diving and 3 weeks of total time in Cozumel.

I wandered into a shop a few months after my wife passed away and was certified a couple weeks later. I went on my first ocean dive a few months after that in Cozumel and then George Town Cayman Islands. A couple months after that I completed an Advanced Open Water Certification in Jamaica where my wife was from. My Rescue Certification was completed about a year after I got started and I want to become an instructor focusing on training teens and young adults who have survived childhood abuse.

My goal is to use my Youtube channel as a funding source so I can provide the training and basic gear for free after I cover my training to become an instructor and acquire everything I need. I’m also planning to donate my time to organizations that help other people who would also benefit from learning to dive.

Editing the video is mind numbing and monotonous but I have yet to find someone else who wants to do it. It’s a lot more fun getting the footage but it had to be done to make things happen.

More than I probably should and a lot less than I will in April. After that it’s going to be even more time in front of a screen editing 30 plus hours of underwater video.

Well if you want uncensored stuff Lemmy is a good place. If it’s not suiting your needs a search for “documenting reality” may fill them. You will know it when you find it and let me just say that you can’t put the rabbit back into the hat once it’s out and running around.

I was working for a guy setting to 2.4Ghz WiFi links up to 10 miles from a tower. I was mainly running the office and doing network tech support with the odd pc repair job. He was working for a conglomerate about 5 hours away. He had an installer who would come through every couple weeks so I would have the equipment configured and ready to go for him, he would also grab stuff that was no longer in service and bring it back to the office.

Anyway the installer quit and I had to drive 2 hours each way to go get the truck. No big deal but now no installer. Had a friend who was smart enough to do the job and learn so started going with him and teaching him what to do and how to set stuff up. We did a couple jobs no problem, our longest connection being 7.5 miles on a mast about 20 feet tall. Get to a site to set things up and could literally see the tower but no connection, owner was no help but he had plotted it all out in software showing we software have a great signal. Ask he could say was just to get more height and get it done. Signal went from barely there to non existent. He had told the woman for months that it wouldn’t be an issue and we would get her setup when her landlord agreed to the equipment install.

Figured out that the issue was that the sector antenna were installed with a 5 degree downward cant. We were slightly above the tower even though it was in line of site we would have needed to be lower down the hillside on another person’s piece of property to get a stable signal then have a couple repeaters to make it work. So here I am with a pissed off woman who was told over and over it would work and I can’t provide what was promised, give him a call and he stopped answering.

I apologized to the woman and told her someone would be back, gave her his cell number, and packed up the truck. Went to the office, locked up the truck, and dropped the keys in the office mall slot.

True loosemeat sandwich. Most people think of Manwhich or something like that. These are not that at all. https://www.langdalefamily.com/tastee.html Just lose the cheese (never got that as a kid since it cost extra) and you will be surprised.

Not my culture by my late wife’s which has a bunch of stuff that is really good. If you ever end up in Jamaica look for a pattie shop, get a beef or chicken pattie (the jerk ones are hot be warned) with a D&G Ginger Beer or Champagne Kola (it’s nothing like coke) they will think you’ve been there before. The Jamaican Easter Buns are nice too, it will look like a fruit cake but the flavor isn’t even close. And the Jamaican Chicken soup is amazing, The whole scotch bonnet pepper (similar to habanero but slightly sweet) with all the vegetables is just amazing. https://jamaicanfoodsandrecipes.com/jamaican-chicken-soup-recipe/

My father would have to admit he didn’t really care and make up for all the bs that happened because of it.

My mother can rot in hell.

I may end up running windows in a VM so I can back up my NAS to BackBlaze for cheap.

I dumped windows on my desktop about 18 months ago because there was no way I was going to use windows 11. My stepson has been using ChimeraOS for about 2 years without issue. And my server was switched to FreeNAS (now TrueNAS) in 2015.

No matter what you do you will still die.

Yep… Still envious at 46, mine is thin while the rest of my facial hair grows nice and thick.

The idea that the person who has the most upvotes, likes, friends, etc. will win the internet

More and more apps messing things up. Companies want you to use an app so they have more access to data and better ability to control your habits driving more money into their coffers.

More radicalization and sensationalization of everything. Use the news as an example. It used to be straight reporting of what happened, now it’s about ratings and how many descriptive words you can use to make the news more dramatic.

Advertising will get worse, more ads, larger ads, more annoying ads.

There will be a bigger divide between the corporate conglomerate internet and the decentralized internet. People who feel marginalized will begin to break away and and the rest of the internet will look at them like they are crazy.

Nice. I’ve always looked at holly bushes or cacti.

Layers.

Plant something with thorns or pointy leaves to block easy access to windows. Even better as a hedge around the whole property. Anti break film on windows. Heavy duty exterior doors. Motion sensing lights. Cameras, +1 for cameras with built in lights that can recognize people and automatically turn on.

Every layer should either strengthen, increase risk of being caught, or make access painful. They will go towards easier targets.

Absolutely. Already replaced the roof, plumbing supply lines, and electrical systems. 18K houses need work but the payoff is huge.

Right now I’ve got about 5600 invested in my solar system. Mainly the racking and then batteries. Once it’s in place I have the option to add another up to 4.8KW. Local power rate sucks for the area. Mid summer the power is around .20 per kwh, the co-op nearby is less than half that. House is all electric and I run a couple servers so it adds up quick.

Google is building a datacenter in the next county over and a few more are coming in elsewhere, they are supposed to provide most of their own power but no one is sure if they are or not. I’ve seen a couple high renewable line upgrades and additions for power equipment which seem to be upgrades for reliability and filtering in the local grid. All the original 230kv lines have been upgraded to 345kv.

I’m in town but my house is ideal for a small vertical axis wind turbine. Generally at times wind is up solar is down, but gotta figure a few things out. One of the turbines that sit along a wall would be great but I have to figure out a design I can make and will be practical.

Ocean. I’m rescue certified and trying to get going as a videographer on a shoestring budget. Eventually going to expand my skill set some more so I can do some mine dives a few hours from where I live. Hopefully get to the point where I can do some cenote dives to play in the halocline.

I’ve got 7.2KW waiting to go on the roof. 400W bifacial panels with Enphase IQ8A’S. I have 3 panels running now and they generally shave 3kwh per day of my bill right now. In the summer peak the same 3 panels shave twice that off. Just have to get the racking materials and a few other things so I can get started.

I’m lucky that I can DIY the whole system where I am at. Hopefully the battery systems will start to drop in price before long.

April 1st I travel to Cozumel Mexico for a couple weeks of diving. Another 30 hours in my happy place (up to 100 feet under water) will be amazing.

Ubuntu 24.04 is doing well for me. I use the cinnamon flavor. Switch the scheduler to performance, before that with multiple apps open while gaming there was stuttering it the CPU load was below a certain amount (Ryzen 5800X). After switching to performance all stuttering was gone.

Liquorix Kernel is something else I am looking at utilizing since I also edit 4K 60FPS video on the same computer.

I was told once many years ago by a retired (kinda) member of a major biker gang the following:

“Getting old ain’t for pussies.”

I was around twelve, he wasn’t lying, I’m forty-six now. All the stupid crap you have done early on in your life will come back around and cause aches and pains. You have to force yourself to keep moving through the pain or you will end up doing next to nothing every chance you get.

My mind has always kept me at home so I can’t say much there, I’ve never been to a club and rarely go to bars. I’m just not a social person.