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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 1st, 2023

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  • Soulseek >>>>> piratebay by a wide margin for music.

    Only place I’ve found like 90s underground Memphis rap demos and obscure black metal and shit that’s not even on spotify.

    I’ve been building my own collection for years. I have around 8k albums.

    My friend does the same and is up to 38k albums. I connect to both of our libraries via Plex.

    For everything else I use private trackers and torrent. I’ve also built out huge movies, tv, anime libraries with my friends.









  • One thing I’d add is a whole house surge suppressor.

    I saw the power lines arcing to either each other or the bamboo outside our house last week during a bad storm.

    A whole house surge suppressor is only like $100, I’m gonna get one soon and install it. I saw it’s best to install it as close as possible to the main incoming power lugs, one lead on each leg of the split phase 120/240.

    A UPS will protect against surges but it’s just a good idea with how many appliances and devices have circuit boards in homes these days. Like your furnace, oven, washing machine, game console, TV, etc.

    I had an insane surge last winter so it’s a long time coming haha. I woke up and half my circuits were off. I measured 170v to gnd on one of the legs. Power company and fire dept had to show up to fix it.

    Power is ehh not great where I live.

    Edit: for your point about a NAS failure. If that were to happen, since I use unRAID, I could just throw the disks on any Linux PC and my data would be fine.




  • I saw a dog sitting in the middle of a busy road. Clearly wasn’t a stray, but just lost and confused and all the cars were just driving around it. I got out and lead it to the sidewalk, but my car is still just sitting idle at the intersection. Cue people honking at me to move, because of course. Some drove around me. Finally one dude hops out, tells me to move my car while he holds the dog, then I do the same for him.

    The dog has no collar or tags and at this point we’re like well idk what to do now because this is clearly someone’s dog. We poked around a little bit, then call the cops for them to deal with it. Cops show up, say they can take it to the pound to see if it has a chip. We’re literally all picking up this big 80 pound dog into the back of a cop car when a lady comes running down this big hill and is like “that’s my dog”



  • My friends don’t have it set up. Some of them are friends of friends, and people I don’t talk to regularly. I’m not going to try and convert them. It’s also a bit more complicated via tailscale or VPN reverse proxies and Plex “just werks”. If there’s anything beyond just installing an app and clicking an invite, a bunch of people who use my library are going to have a hard time. Like my dad, he’s pushing 70. My friends would also have to do the goofy networking setup for it to work for me.

    I’m also not even sure if people I share with have means of installing. My one friend who uses my library a lot does it through a Samsung TV. That involves sideloading the app to install jellyfin.

    Lastly, like I said, music. Plexamp is one of my #1 used apps. There’s a lot that goes into that beyond just being able to play media. It curates playlists depending on what you just listened to or gives you similar artists, similar to how Spotify makes a “radio” after playing something.


  • Something that’s getting glossed over in these comments is the ability to easily watch or listen to friends’ media.

    I have my own library with about 1k movies, a bunch of anime and TV, and 10k albums. But I have like 6 or 7 friends with libraries even larger. My one friend has 37k albums, they all have thousands of movies I never even heard of, etc. It really makes it like my own mini streaming service, and I love throwing on a huge music library on shuffle via plexamp while driving to/from work.

    I paid like $70 for a lifetime pass years ago, so I’m along for the ride I guess. I really rely on the music aspect of it, I haven’t had a spotify subscription in like 7 years.

    I know they changed a lot lately, and particularly what pisses me off is how vague and how they intentionally obfuscate how their model works now. I have friends that for years used my library, and recently have been like “I saw Plex started charging now so I stopped using it” and I have to be like “no it’s still free because I have a lifetime pass”. It’s definitely just to trick people into getting monthly subscriptions.






  • I didn’t go with speed queen because they’re nearly double the price of all other washer/dryers. I know they’re built like tanks and don’t really fail, or if they do they’re easy to fix. But I’ve also heard they can be tougher on clothes and wear them out quicker.

    Ultimately ended up going with Maytag. It’s been solid for the past 6 months, no issues at all and I got a free 5 year warranty from the small local appliance store I bought it in, so maybe check them out opposed to the big box stores. They fix it if there are problems, not Maytag.

    Also look for one with a “deep fill” option. All new washers have a federal requirement now that makes them “high efficiency” which really is just using way less water and spraying them for an hour. Whether this fully washes your clothes is a bit of a debate, but I guess that’s how most are in Europe now. The “deep fill” option is supposed to be if you’re washing bed sheets or very soiled clothes, but I still use it to soak my clothes.