And they still put the ingredient on haphazardly.
Half the time I need to manually rebuild my burgers because the ingredients are slapped together like they’re assembling a burger from across the room. You’d think this “burger” would be easy to get right.
I was stationed in Germany with the US military once, just 30 minutes from the French border. My American coworkers visited Paris and complained that everyone there were snobbish assholes. Every time they tried to ask someone for directions, they got ignored at best and insulted at worst.
My wife and I went to Paris a few times and we had the complete opposite experience. We both took several years of French in high school, so we had an extremely basic knowledge of the French language (thanks, American public schools! 🙄) and we tried to speak to people in French.
Every time we spoke up, they would notice us struggling and immediately switch to English for us. And then they were very helpful. Turns out, my coworkers were just speaking English to French people and expecting a response in English. Which insulted a lot of French people, so they ignored them.
TL;DR: Speak the local language as best you can and French people can be very nice and helpful. Just assume they’ll speak English and you’ll get some rude responses in kind.
I was an IT professional for 20 years, fixing and replacing phones, computers, tablets, etc. I can’t tell you how many devices I had to replace because people didn’t take basic care of them.
Sure, your phone might survive being submersed if you take care of it right away, but abuse over time will still shorten its lifespan, especially if you’re carelessly using it with wet hands. I’ve definitely replaced phones because people used them in damp environments and let water get into the ports without immediately cleaning it. Modern tech is not invincible.
It’s more a pet peeve of mine, as the guy who had to fix or replace these devices for so many years. Give your IT guys less work; take better care of your expensive phones!
Gottem.
And by “him,” I mean me. 😅
Do you go outside?
I do, but I always make sure my hands are completely dry before touching my phone. That’s an expensive piece of tech! I’m not gonna risk getting moisture in any of the ports.
Who touches their phone with wet fingers?!
Hmm, this looks interesting. And you can’t beat the free price tag. I’ll check it out.
This is why I stopped watching TV. I can only watch a show at a set time period and had no idea if it’d be a good episode or a rerun? I might jump into the middle of a storyline with no context for the characters or the plot? I have to wait a whole week to find out what happens next? No thanks. My ADHD won’t allow for that kind of scheduling, plot confusion, and potential disappointment.
I collected movies and TV shows for a while, so I could watch whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Until online streaming became a thing.
Even then, streaming services couldn’t guarantee access to my favorite movies and shows forever, with streaming licenses being a temporary thing that could expire. So I eventually dumped them all and went back to collecting my own movies and TV shows.
I eventually ripped my whole collection to my computer and set up a Plex server, so I could stream my own private movie, tv show, and music collection. I now have access to my media library anywhere in the world! Better than any public streaming service.
My wife and I are re-watching House, M.D. (2004). It was a comfort show back in the day and it’s been over a decade since we watched it. We’re watching a handful of episodes each night.
I like that it’s kind of a Sherlock Holmes mystery show, except instead of solving crimes, they’re solving medical mysteries. (Get it? Holmes… House…) It’s the only medical drama I’ve ever been able to get invested in.
I got into Scrubs (2001) once upon a time, but that was more comedy with a side of drama than a true medical drama show. I only saw 4 seasons of that show back in the day, so I need to re-watch it and actually finish it.
It’s taken me almost forty years, but I finally got around to watching Dragon Ball (1986) for the first time ever. I’m starting with the original series and marathoning the entire franchise, including all the movies and specials. I just finished season 1 last night.
Of course, I’m watching the original Japanese version, in Japanese. Not the bastardized American version that censored and edited large parts of the story.
I never watched Dragon Ball as a kid, but I was aware of it. When I lived in Japan for a few years, a buddy of mine got into the show and I sat in for a few episodes. One character was charging an attack and I watched as he spent 3 whole episodes charging it up… then missed. I very quickly checked out after that.
But… Dragon Ball is a huge cultural phenomenon that’s been around literally since the year I was born (the manga started in 1984), so I figure I need to at least watch it once.
Let’s see… I’ve also got my hands on the Max Fleischer’s Superman shorts. They’re 17 eight-minute cartoon shorts made between 1941-1943. I’m about halfway through that collection this week.
It’s kinda cool seeing the classic Superman who was just a bit stronger than an actual human being, not the invincible god he is today.
In one short, he was crushed by falling rubble and it drew out tension, like he might not be able to survive it. In another, he couldn’t redirect an asteroid heading to Earth by sheer strength alone, so he had to repair a giant magnet that pulled it to Earth in the first place and have Lois reverse the magnet. It’s kind of cool seeing actual stakes in a Superman cartoon.
My wife and I binged the Vampire Chronicles movies a few days ago. Those include Interview with the Vampire (1994) and Queen of the Damned (2002), the first and third stories in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles book series, respectively.
I also just found out there were two TV shows based on the Vampire Chronicles series: Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (2022) and Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches (2023). I might have to track those down.
My wife and I also watched The Imaginariun of Doctor Parnassus (2009) for the first time ever. It was Heath Ledger’s final film before his unfortunate passing, and they had to re-write the plot to explain his absence in parts of the movie they hadn’t filmed yet. They literally cast three other famous actors to play his role, then rewrote the plot to explain how his face changes in those scenes. It was pretty cool.
I was a little late this year, but I did my annual watch of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) earlier this week.
I always feel bad for Linus. He somehow mixed up Santa Claus and Halloween and now expects a “Great Pumpkin” to rise out of the most sincere pumpkin patch and give gifts to the good kids. Every year, he misses out on trick-or-treating and Halloween parties because he’s sitting in a pumpkin patch, waiting on the Great Pumpkin. In this special, he even drags along Sally, Charlie Brown’s little sister, and causes her to miss the holiday festivities too.
And that’s what I’ve watched this week.
Are you retired or young?
I’m retired AND young… well, relatively speaking. I retired 3 years ago, at 38 years old. I’m 41 now.
I was in the US military for 20 years, earned a pension, plus 100% disability through the VA. With the passive income and benefits (free medical/dental for life), I can afford to be fully retired now. I’m not filthy rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I make enough to live a quiet, relaxed life and have my basic needs met. And that’s good enough for me. Plenty of time to indulge in my many hobbies. And I have ADHD, so I’m always finding new and interesting things to deep-dive into.
I actually started a movie review blog about 6 years before I retired. I ended up taking a hiatus from it shortly after retirement and just haven’t been motivated to get back into it lately, despite all the movies and TV shows I watch regularly.
I switched to reviewing video games sometime last year and have been mostly keeping up with that; although it’s been over 2 months since my last review. I should probably make a new post soon, or declare another hiatus. 😬
I’ve been playing it this morning. Virus scan came back clean, and the game has been interesting so far.
That’s cool, no reviews yet then. Not a problem!
I play a lot of games (over 4,000 games in my Steam library) and I’ve made a hobby of reviewing them here on Lemmy over the past year. I especially love horror games. I would love to give it a playtest and provide constructive feedback.
It’s up to you if you’d like me to also post a review of it here on Lemmy or wait until a finished product is available. You can see my post history to see the kind of reviews I write, or you can check out my blog where I’m archiving my reviews here. Easier to browse the history of posts on the sidebar at that website.
Ahh, I knew it was one of the creators. I thought Spielberg was involved with it. My bad.
Gremlins 2 was the best one!
Steven Spielberg Joe Dante and Chris Columbus didn’t want to make a sequel, but pressure from the studio to profit off the popularity of the first one forced them into making a sequel. So they decided to have fun with it. And it got wild! And super silly.
They even parodied the first film several times. Like the movie critic who tore apart the first film as an awful piece of garbage… until some gremlins attacked him and he changed his review. Or when Kate started rambling about another holiday ruined by finding a dead relative.
It was pure comedy, and so much more fun than the first one, which kept the tone pretty serious. The first film is kind of boring after watching the sequel. It’s one of the rare examples of the sequel being better than the original.
I really hope Gremlins 3 lives up to the antics of Gremlins 2. They’re mischief makers; the silly violence and mayhem suits them better than a straight horror genre.
Say what you will about Idiocracy, but President Camacho knew his country was suffering a problem and he found the smartest man in the world, hired him, and put him to work to resolve it. If only we could get Trump to care this much.
I served in the US Air Force for 20 years. During my service, the government went through a shutdown twice. Both times, USAA offered to deposit our paychecks into our bank account, claiming they knew the government would be good for it. USAA has been pretty good to us in times of crisis.
As a kid in the '80s/'90s, my hair looked exactly like Will’s from Stranger Things. When my peers pressured me to change my hairstyle in 7th grade, I tried a bowl cut. It was the same, just the bottom half was shaved. Looked super ugly.
In 8th grade, I tried a buzz cut, which seemed to be pretty popular with my peers. A little longer on top, tight on the sides, tapered in back. Back then, I think I asked barbers to cut it as a #4 on top, #2 on the sides. It was extremely low maintenance; I could just shower and towel dry and my hair was immediately dry and perfect for the day. My hair was so extremely thick and soft, people joked that I had fur instead of hair. I had a lot of comments that touching my head was like petting a puppy, or a bear pelt. My hair also grows straight out of my scalp, so if I took too long to get a haircut, I started getting a bit of a mini-'fro.
Then I joined the US military at 18 and got the buzz cut professionally trimmed every couple weeks. My hair grows extremely fast and we had military hair regulations that had to be maintained, so I constantly needed to touch it up. I changed my cut to a #2 on top, #1 on the sides, with a little extra length in the front. Of course, still tapered in the back. The military doesn’t allow block cuts, you have to taper the ends.
I spent 13 years with a buzz cut in the military. My wife spent most of those years begging me to grow my hair out, but I kept telling her I can’t; military regs prevent me from having long hair. Finally, she showed me a picture of Captain America from the Avengers movie. Claimed he was technically military, but he had longer hair styled in a way that was still within regs. So I agreed to grow out my hair like Captain America.
Unfortunately, I had started balding a bit in my late 20s. My hair was getting thinner and my hairline was receding. I didn’t have enough hair in the front to style it like Captain America’s, so I combed the front back and over to a side, giving a bit more lift in the front with what thinning hair I had left. I grew out all the hair on top of my head and parted it to one side. On the short side, I buzzed it right up to the part, then kept the sides buzzed short with a taper in the back. I would tell barbers to buzz with a #1 up to the part, then go “skin” on the sides and back, tapered on the back.
It worked fine for the last 7 years of my military service. Then I retired and spent nearly 3 years struggling to figure out a civilian haircut. I had spent so long adhering to military regulations that every time my hair got a little shaggy, I’d panic and get a military haircut again. But I also didn’t want people to immediately look at me as a military guy when they met me. Short hair made me look much older, and as I was just starting my 40s, looking older is not what I wanted anymore.
Finally, I just shaved my head. A complete reset on my hair. I figured, if I’m completely bald, I’m going to have to go through an awkward regrowth period, so I’ll be forced to deal with it instead of being able to fix it on a whim. I was fully retired after my military service, so I didn’t have to worry about looking presentable for anyone. I basically just holed myself up at home; no one saw my bald head except my wife. I should note that I have a wrinkly scalp that looks like a scrotum, so the bald look is really ugly on me.
After nearly 6 months of letting it grow wild, I finally got a trim. I parted my hair to one side and cleaned up around my neck and ears, but left the rest. My hair is still growing straight out of my scalp, so I need a little hair product to comb it down and hold it, but otherwise, it’s been holding a side part pretty well.
I also grew out a beard for about the past 4 months. When I retired a few years ago, my chin had a white spot to one side, and in the 3+ years since then, it’s spread to my whole chin. So my beard is salt-and-pepper with a solidly white chin now. I don’t really care for the beard, but my wife likes it and I get compliments on it from others, so I keep it trimmed neat and maybe an inch long. It definitely helps to hide the fact I was former military, since we couldn’t grow beards while serving. And it adds a unique character to my look.