No, it should work fine, but a backup is always a good idea.

It’s not like Windows where it has to install a bunch of new drivers via 7 reboots. It just sees the new hardware and uses the correct drivers.

I have no idea why I remember mine, 520009. Haven’t used ICQ in many years; I didn’t know it was still up.

Someone created a system with the acronym ASIA here at work, and every time someone says it, I hear “It was the heat of the moment…” in my head.

A guy at work did something like that. Went on vacation for a week, just never returned. Didn’t return phone calls or emails. Eventually he popped up on social media about 6 months later and some coworkers spotted him and got the story. If I remember correctly (which I may not), I think his girlfriend convinced him to stay, so he did, and he just ghosted his job.

Okay, thanks.

A recent experience here has made me think of the phrase “conveyor-belt health care”. I think I made that up, but I may have heard it somewhere and forgot.

In my case: I had major pain in my neck that was leading to numbness in my arm and hand. I didn’t even bother with my primary care physician, I just scheduled an appointment with a back pain specialist. The back pain place is extremely efficient and has been very good about treating the pain…but not once have they raised the topic of, “What caused this and is there anything we can do to prevent it in the future?”

And, I don’t want to detract from them, they are absolutely excellent at that treatment. But it’s get in, get in the OR or exam room, chat for a minute, see you in 5 weeks. My appointments generally take 10 minutes or less when the doctor is in the room.

Years ago I had issues with my neck - which turned out to have the same root cause, but the symptoms were very different, so I didn’t connect them - and multiple primary care physicians told me to take advil, even after I told them this was a recurring issue. Irritating experience, to say the least. “Hey, I’m stuck on the couch and can only move in agony for a few days two or three times per year.” “Take Advil.” Conveyor belt moves on.

I know we hate chiropractors here, with good reason, but it was chiropractors (who are also physical therapists, which might be the difference) who actually looked at the X-ray or MRI, found the underlying problem, and came up with treatment plans involving various exercises to attempt to solve the underlying problem. The MRI was ordered by the back pain specialist, so they had the imagery and could have found the issue. Why is there no room for that kind of analysis in our “legitimate” health care system?

Conveyor-belt health care.

I’ve never heard this before, so that’s interesting. Is the public option worse health care in some way?

The worst part is that many of these people would help you if you needed it - if you were, say, in a car crash, most of these people probably would help you out. But…for some reason…extending that help to a more general sense just causes them to start frothing at the mouth.

I ride bicycles, and when I ride on Sunday mornings, I’m always amused by the thought that some drivers are probably on their way to or from church when they decide to pass me dangerously close, just for fun or to teach me a lesson or whatever the hell their justification is.

Yeah, you’re probably right. I was dumbfounded.

I run it on my Debian server that uses my 15 TB RAID5 array as storage. (When I built it, 15 TB drives were a dream…now I have a 12 TB drive in my desktop computer that serves as backup to the array.)

I mainly serve it out to the client on our DirectTV streaming device. Works fine, other than I wish the intro skip plugin would be able to give me the option to skip on that client (the only way it works on the Android client is to have it skip automatically).

I have an old S9 right here on my desk. I cracked the screen, and took it to one of those screen replacement places, and he asked if I had insurance. I told him I didn’t, and he said, wellllllll it’s going to be a lot more expensive than you think to replace this screen.

That wraparound screen they had was basically also the frame of the phone - you’re not so much replacing the screen as you are moving the rest of the components to a new phone body. I wasn’t sold on value of that wraparound screen in the first place; this didn’t improve my opinion of it.

We put a plastic screen protector on it and a new case, and I used it for a few months until we were ready to upgrade phones.

Even Go Fund Me came out and said, uh, wait, funding health care isn’t what we really intended for the platform.

I recall one of the coaches of a major league baseball team had some major illness and had set up a GoFundMe for it…the team decided to cover it, fortunately, but…come on.

I don’t know how anyone can seriously claim there’s nothing wrong with our system, but they do.

One guy said, in earnest, that it’s a good thing that our medical system is so expensive - because that means it’s a good system. (This was in response to me saying that I think our technology and care are pretty good; it’s how we pay for it that’s the main issue.)

How do you even respond to that? I just ignored him. Does he think Europe has cut-rate health care? Canada?

This is fascinating. I’m reminded of a Mormon guy I (barely) knew that was murdered. If he didn’t have the chance to complete his ordinances, well, I guess no kingdom for him - through no fault of his own. Does he get a pass or is he screwed into lousy second heaven for all eternity?

The story: He was murdered by another Mormon guy over a woman. Murderer thought the woman was his last chance to find love and decided he was serious about it. It’s likely he murdered another guy the woman was dating a year or two before, but that case was ruled a suicide and closed - by the time the known murder occurred, all evidence had been destroyed.

Some kind of miracle, I know. Actually I got more messages, but many of them were either spam or never even made it to a date.

Welcome to the Dull Side.

Yeah…when I got the first IDE drive, it was like, “Wait, I don’t need to low level format it?”

“Oh what a mess we weave when we amiss interleave!”

Back when I was in online dating (I got married in 2010, so it has been a very long time), this is how it seemed to work in the hetero arena:

• Women (by which I mean, legitimate accounts from women who were actually looking for dates): Get 1,000,000 messages, approximately 999,900 of which are dick pics.
• Men: See 1,000,000 ads, of which about 3 are legitimate people looking for dates.

So, both could be true in relation to the image.

I remember a guy once telling me that basically you have to respond to EVERY AD and hope something sticks. I never did that, and I felt bad for what the women must have had to deal with when I heard that. I had very limited success - dates with, at most, two or three women, and none of those really went anywhere. I ended up marrying someone from work instead.

Anyone else remember having to set interleave on an RLL hard drive? “First you have to low-level format…”

Most cars I’ve used with it won’t lock until you put it in drive or start moving at a certain speed; I assume that’s because of incidents like this one.

Yep, we had a cat that would always go for the sink. Eventually I tried putting the water fountain away from the food, and she mostly stopped getting water in the sink.

Before I learned this, I had another cat while I still had a fish tank…I’d get home and find him on top of the fish tank, drinking the water coming out of the filter. The lid on that tank was not very solid, and I was SURE he’d fall in at some point, with disastrous results, so I got him a fountain water dish, and that stopped his fish tank escapades.

Oh it’s worse than that. Much of the Milwaukee’s main line was electrified - over 600 miles worth - and the electrification was removed in favor of running diesels.