Sync for Lemmy has a paid version that gets rid of ads. Its developer was one of the most vocal when Reddit started charging developers for access to their API. Sync for Reddit was one of the most popular third-party Reddit apps before then.

Its developer is also absent all the time. They poke their head in every few months, fix a bunch of problems, then disappear into the nether for an indeterminate amount of time.

I actually switched to Voyager because I was annoyed at how difficult it was to get anything fixed on Sync. And of course, Voyager is free.

I turn 42 next month, but my body is beat up from 2 decades of military service. I’m definitely experiencing some “catastrophic functionality” myself.

I’m doing my best. See my other reply here. I’m physically broken, so exercising is difficult.

Ratatouille. How does pulling on someone’s hair control their limbs like a giant mech? I know it’s a cartoon and there’s gonna be some suspension of disbelief, but… there’s literally no explanation or connection to reality. It’s just a thing that happens and they expect us to accept it.

If the dude had a metal plate in his skull and tapping on certain places caused muscle spasms that could be controlled, that would make more logical sense than just pulling on hair. Still not realistic, but it would work better.

Even worse, the young chef Linguini never learns to be an expert chef (or even a good chef). He’s a complete klutz. He’s literally just the vehicle for the rat Remy to cook with. There’s no growth for Linguini’s character at all. You could swap him out for anyone and the plot would be almost identical. It would’ve been better if he actually learned from Remy and became a great chef himself.

[…] but how in the hell or why do you make a robot have a german accent?

Note: Arnold Schwarzenegger has an Austrian accent, not German. He’s from Austria originally.

The accent was addressed in a deleted scene in Terminator 3. Chief Master Sergeant Candy (Schwarzenegger) was selected to be the body image of the T-800 model. But he had a ridiculously over-the-top Southern country accent. The military officials said they didn’t know about that accent, and one of the guys in the room, with Arnold’s thick Austrian voice, said, “We can fix it.”

I spent 20 years in the US military, so I’m in pretty decent shape for my age.

But… the military also broke me. I’m only 4 years into retirement and my legs and back are shot. I exercise as much as I can, but I’m 100% disabled according to the VA, so walking a mile once a day is about the extent of my physical activity. Any more and I’ll be stuck in bed the next day.

Getting old sucks. Getting old with a broken body is even worse.

I’m kind of jealous of my dad. He was super strong when he passed away a couple years ago. He was 79, but it took a team of nurses to pin him down when he would have delirious episodes. (Something they don’t tell you about getting old… If you get an infection, there’s a high chance you might suffer hallucinations and mental confusion. My dad thought he was being kidnapped and poisoned, and he fought his nurses).

But my dad had Parkinson’s, which is a degenerative disease. If you don’t use your body, you start losing motor control and your can never get it back. So my dad walked like 10 miles a day and did a variety of strength-building exercises. He barely had any tremors at the end. He always told me, “If I don’t walk, I die.” Dude powered through a lot of physical activity just to keep going and he was in excellent shape until the end.

Elder (and just old) millennial here. I remember “lol” became a thing because cell phones became a common thing. Specifically, the old flip phones.

Texting on them was a pain. Imagine having to type words with only a number pad. And you only had a tiny digital screen that could only fit a few words on it. On top of that, we were sometimes charged by the character. Or sometimes by the word. Depended on your service.

Everyone was looking for the shortest way to type words and get their message across. So shortcuts like “lol,” “ily,” “wdym,” etc. became common use. As well as a variety of text emojis like :) :D :P or the fancy Japanese ones: (^_^) (-_-;;) etc.

As someone who spent their childhood with their nose buried in books, it bothered me to see this shorthand English everywhere. It just felt lazy to me. To this day, I’ve never typed “lol” unless I’m talking about the acronym itself.

For those who didn’t read the books, Frodo was 33 when Bilbo vanished and left him his prized ring. Then Gandalf took 17 years to go research the ring before he discovered it’s likely the One Ring. When he returned, Frodo was 50. But being a Hobbit, he still looks small and youthful.

Can you imagine starting the Fellowship journey on foot at 50 years old?! Especially after a chill, quiet life where the most exercise you’ve done is tilling your garden. I’m in my early 40s and the idea of walking more than a mile makes my legs and back ache.

I just got an email from NETGEAR about this. (Yes, they insisted on capitalizing every letter of their brand name)

Which was concerning, because I haven’t bought a NETGEAR product in well over a decade and a half and am adamant about blocking ads and junk mail. How did I get on a mailing list for their company?

Personally, seeing a message like this immediately tells me they’re no longer a brand I can trust. I’m gonna keep using my old routers as long as I can.

Interestingly enough, my ISP forced me to upgrade my modem to theirs last year, claiming that I can’t use a commercial modem because none are made that interface with their company’s technology. Once I installed their modem, my VPN refused to connect over WiFi to the new modem. And several of my WiFi devices just refused to connect in general, including security cameras around my house.

Thankfully, I have an old WiFi router that I use internally in my network and my VPN still works with that. So I’m basically routing all my Internet traffic through an old router, which is set up as a bridge and physically connected to my new modem. It’s the only way I can get reliable, stable, secure Internet in my home. Here’s hoping the old router lasts for a very long time.

My first thought was, “Perry the Platypus? Where?!”

Back around 2005 or so, I was stationed in Japan with the US military. A buddy of mine parked his car on the shopping strip in front of the military base’s main gate and then walked to a bar. Later that night, intoxicated, he stumbled back to his car, intent to sleep it off in the back seat before going home.

A gate guard saw him drunkenly ambling toward his car with a key in hand and ran after him. Busted him for a DUI on the spot. Dude didn’t even get into his car and he got a charge on his permanent military record for intent to drive under the influence of alcohol.

I dunno how things work in the civilian sector (I don’t drink at all), but the military doesn’t play games. If you’re drunk and have access to a car key and a vehicle, they’ll bust you.

Again, I make my own judgment call. If something has tons of negative reviews, then I might read some just to get an idea what everyone’s upset about.

If it’s a common complaint about a specific thing, then I’ll decide whether that thing is a deal breaker for me, or not that important. If it’s just a bunch of random complaints, then I won’t trust any of them and make my own call.

But in general, I don’t really pay attention to reviews. I guess Steam reviews on games are pretty much the only ones I ever read, simply because they’re displayed prominently right at the top of every game’s store page. If a game is review bombed, I might read some recent reviews to see what the deal is. But I’ve definitely bought games that have tons of negative reviews, simply because people didn’t give reasonable explanations for their negative reviews.

I don’t trust others’ reviews. Some people rave about a product or service and then I try it and it’s actually garbage. Or worse, you can’t really tell what’s a legit review from a customer and what’s a paid review by someone within the company. Or AI generated.

In the end, I prefer to make my own judgment call rather than trust reviews. So I don’t expect anyone to trust my reviews.

Which is kind of ironic, seeing as I write lengthy movie reviews and video game reviews. But in my defense, I do that purely as a hobby, so I can rave about something I really like (or on occasion, dislike).

I do it for fun and I don’t make money on anything I post. Which, in my opinion, makes it a more pure review because I’m not motivated by pushing a product or meeting a deadline. I’m not required to highlight certain features, push a popular trend, or promote an event or sale. I can just speak from the heart, write whatever I want, and geek out about something I personally enjoyed.

My old ass read this as, “Do I have a drip?” and I’m scouring the image, looking for a leak somewhere.

Goddamn kids and their newfangled Internet slang. Get off my lawn!

tik taks

As a middle-aged man who’s never used TikTok before, this is how I’m gonna refer to it from now on.

Hey, this was from Trudy & Doug’s Patreon last night, from their list of incomplete comic ideas. They’re the duo that make Oglaf comics.

As someone named Coby, I liked that no one else seemingly shared my name. I’ve never run into another Coby in my entire life. Although I know they exist because a simple Google search brings up a handful of people with that name. But every time I hear “Coby,” I know someone’s trying to get my attention.

Then Kobe Bryant showed up and became famous. Now I hear “Kobe!” everywhere I go, and it’s giving me whiplash. I keep thinking people are talking about me, or calling for me, and it’s just people throwing trash into a basket from across the room.

It’s a damn shame what happened to Kobe, but I’m a bit relieved that almost no one seems to be calling out his name anymore. Although I constantly need to spell out my name every time I give it to people, because they always write it as “Kobe” now. I used to get “Colby” or “Cody” all the time. Now it’s just “Kobe.”

As someone who served 20 years in the US military… we created the Reserves so we don’t ever have to enact a draft again. There are enough people serving in the Reserves to cover us if we go to war. It’s our compromise to avoid drafting people ever again.

Heck, I joined just before the Iraq war started back in the early 2000s and folks in the Reserves were shocked to find out they were tagged to go to war first. The active duty military is already running operations around the globe; we can’t just abandon all our bases and active missions to run to war. So we sent in the Reserves first to set up shop and create a stable environment before moving active duty personnel and resources to the region. As an active duty member, working for a deployment squadron at the time, I didn’t actually see Iraq until 2007.

To be more precise, there are career fields in the military that are designed specifically for boots-on-ground operations, and those active duty career fields were technically the first members to go to war. But after an area was secured, then we’d send in Reserves behind them to help set up and maintain local bases and operations until active duty could eventually filter in and take over full-time.