Reverse first-world problems: What *good* thing happened to you today?

[lxskllr]

Stopped to get fried chicken and found a brand new felling wedge in the road...

 

[IronWing]

Those are very handy if you ever lock your keys in the truck.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Lol that's a random thing to find, well I guess not so random, someone probably set it on their tail gate and forgot it was there when they left.

Been there done that with safety glasses. Managed to find them again when I retraced my steps.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So for the longest time the way my internal network was setup is each device/server had it's own .loc domain. That's just how I originally did it many years ago. This turned out to go against convention and ideally I should do host.domain.loc where domain is just a name I pick for the whole network.

As a total side note, browsers over the years have gotten a bit more picky about wanting HTTPS, especially for forms. Makes sense, but for local stuff the warnings were getting kind of annoying. Could do self signed certs which I did for some stuff, but still have to deal with THAT warning now, although it's one-time per browser/session.

So..... to kill two birds with one stone, I converted my whole network to using a subdomain of a domain I own. But I went further, and also set up a wildcard cert and use DNS based validation, which was a pain to setup but I got it going. The local sub domain doesn't resolve to anything on the internet, but on my local home DNS server I have a zone for it, so it resolves to all my servers. But the way it's setup, I can still pass cert validation.

It's oddly satisfying seeing valid HTTPS certs for local stuff such as my dev server and password manager, and no longer seeing the annoying drop down warning in forms.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

This is a ridiculously minor thing, but I got a tickle out of it anyways.

I use a special roof repair tape that costs about $20 for a 25' roll. It's a type of aluminum on a self sealing polymer backing. Once it seals down and bonds to a surface, it's almost impossible to pull free. I use it for all sorts of things around the house and yard, not just roof stuff since it's completely weatherproof and permanent.

I had a need for some yesterday and the last few inches on a roll fit the need exactly with no cutting or trimming. Basically the same size I would have cut it to off a larger roll.

Silly, I know.

 

[pmv]

Finally fixed this stupid computer clock. Seems it _was_ the CMOS battery after all, as I initially thought - just turns out that every one of the batteries I got from the poundshop were rubbish and hence didn't solve the problem, even as I swapped several of them in, one after the other. It's been causing problems for weeks. Finally tried a battery I found lying around that I got off Ebay literally years ago, and the problem is solved.

I need some sort of watch-battery-tester.

 

[lxskllr]

Multimeter should work for testing batteries.

 

[MrSquished]

Here's a reverse first-world problem. I have copied and pasted the recipe for J Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipe for San Francisco style Vietnamese Garlic Noodles from the NYT cooking section for all of you to use it.

INGREDIENTS​

Yield:4 servings

• 4tablespoons unsalted butter
• 20medium garlic cloves, minced or smashed in a mortar and pestle
• 4teaspoons oyster sauce
• 2teaspoons light soy sauce or shoyu
• 2teaspoons fish sauce
• 1pound dry spaghetti
• 1ounce grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano (heaping ¼ cup)
• A small handful of thinly sliced scallions (optional)

PREPARATION​

1. Step 1
   Melt the butter in a wok or saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant but not browned, about 2 minutes. Add the oyster sauce, soy sauce and fish sauce, and stir to combine. Remove from the heat.
2. Step 2
   Meanwhile, bring 1½ inches of water to a boil in a 12-inch skillet or sauté pan over high heat. (Alternatively, heat up just enough water to cover the spaghetti in a large Dutch oven or saucepan.) Add the pasta, stir a few times to make sure it’s not clumping, and cook, stirring occasionally, until just shy of al dente (about 2 minutes short of the recommended cook time on the package).
3. Step 3
   Using tongs, transfer the cooked pasta to the garlic sauce, along with whatever water clings to it. (Reserve the pasta water in the skillet.) Increase the heat to high, add the cheese to the wok, and stir with a wooden spatula or spoon and toss vigorously until the sauce is creamy and emulsified, about 30 seconds. If the sauce looks too watery, let it keep reducing. If it looks greasy, splash some more cooking water into it and let it re-emulsify. Stir in the scallions (if using), and serve immediately.

 

[MrSquished]

Even if my date doesn't go well, this place has some of my favorite beers, including tremens on draft, and some of my favorite smoother pilsners, peak organic happy hour and tenement. Plus a live jazz duo

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Bought two 'smart' plugs a few years ago. No idea how long. Never could get them working and tossed them in a corner to be forgotten. Which is what I did.

Was digging through some stuff yesterday and found them. Just for giggles and frustrations, I tried again. Guess what? Got 'em working.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I finally soft launched my forum that I had put on the back burner for like... a decade. Finally finished up everything and launched and got 1 registration within a few hours so at least I know the process works. It uses a fully custom account system as the original goal was to integrate it with the game server login but I ended up downsizing a lot of online projects as it was becoming too much to manage it all after I bought my off grid land and wanted to spend more time working on that instead.

But still wanted at least a forum. I have a feeling it's going to be dead and the old timers might not even come back... but I feel good for at least following through and finishing it. Some of the posts date back to like 2002ish so it's cool that I was able to preserve all that.

Basically combined 4 forums into one.

Still lot of misc background things to tweak and test but overall it's working ok. Once I'm confident I will send mass email to all the users.

 

[Fenixgoon]

I am getting better at fencing

 

[IronWing]

I am getting better at fencing

Barbed wire is a pain in the butt.

 

[highland145]

Kinky

 

[Fenixgoon]

Barbed wire is a pain in the butt.

Sport fencing I mean 😛

Also, I have an external SSD that was godawfully slow due to USB cable shenanigans. Got it up from 50MB/s to 350MB/s. Not as fast as an internal, but still about triple the speed of my external HDD. So it's an improvement

 

[igor_kavinski]

Once I'm confident I will send mass email to all the users.

Where do I sign up?

Is there an 18+ section?

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Few weeks back I ordered something and during checkout I scooped up the 30 day Prime trial to get the widget a few days sooner and some other perks ... seems like it was on a Prime only sale that knocked another few dollars off. I wasn't even sure they'd honor it since I had already done it once this past year.

A few days later, I logged back in and there was a blurb about 'we're offering you another 30 days free'. I thought it was just letting me back in on the second trial. But after following it though, they really did extend it another full 30 days.

Purchase was in November, so the 30 was towards the end of December. The extension puts it towards the end of January. I don't why they offered it and I don't know if they'll do it again, or if there is some way I can trigger it.



They kicked the free shipping level back up to $35 recently and I've placed a few orders in the $25-30 range that are now free during the trial.

 

[lxskllr]

They kicked the free shipping level back up to $35 recently and I've placed a few orders in the $25-30 range that are now free during the trial.

You pay for amazon shipping? I can always find something I'll use to get my minimum high enough for free shipping.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Where do I sign up?

Is there an 18+ section?

https://www.anyf.ca (used to be https://www.anythingforums.com way back in the day, decided to shorten it)

No 18+ section though. Opted to keep it family friendly.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Fidelity has this Bloom thing you put on your phone. Sort of a savings account type thing, but they send you a Debit card that earns points. I used it few times, then tossed the card in a drawer and left about $10 in the account figuring I'd close it out the first of the year.

Tried to log in yesterday and had all sorts of problems. Thing kept crashing, wouldn't take my ID, logged in to the main Fidelity site, and so on.

Got fed up, dumped the thing off my phone and reinstalled it from the store. When I finally got logged in again, there was a banner with a $5 Welcome bonus message. I figured that was just generic. Nope. Logged in this morning again and found the $5 deposited.

Hey, don't laugh, that's a couple of gallons of gas or about 3 dozen eggs.


So why did I keep $10 in it instead of closing it out earlier? They also do a 10% match on your first $300 in deposits to them each year. So in January, I'll toss'em $300, get the $30 bonus, then cash out.

 

[PlanetJosh]

I ate a cheese stick today. Good taste, convenient and the thin wrapper is easily folded up and with some scotch tape around it compressing it to a tiny little bundle it can be put in the trash can with taking up very little space.

 

[IronWing]

The manic phase of winter depression has arrived.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Bought an el-cheapo Epson printer a few days back. Logged in today to check some details on the listing and found a $20 promo discount available. Popped on Chat to ask about it. After repeating my question about six times to the offshore rep ... does this promo apply to my past purchase? ... they finally got it and applied the $20 credit to my account. I'll use that to knock down the price of the overpriced ink refills.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Bought an el-cheapo Epson printer a few days back.

Are you writing a book?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Finally feeling like I'm getting somewhere with the wood stove now that I started on the flue pipe. Everything is just dry fitted now as there's a few parts I need to return and swap for different sizes and I just want to make sure I don't start making holes in anything until I'm 100% sure.

The contractor for chimney still busy though but I really hope he can come before it gets too cold, as ideally I'd like to run this setup by him to make sure I did it right before I get the inspection. Stove pipe is kinda awkward since it feels like all the connections are going the wrong way but it's supposedly normal. Has to do with creosite/condensation build up, so it runs down the pipe and does not go into the seams.

Still need to do heat shields but based on my distances I technically don't need them so might be able to get away running the stove before I install any. Been thinking of the best approach as I do want them to be easy to remove if I want to get back there for any reason. If I find the wall doesn't even get hot I might even just plaster that wall so it looks nice and leave it as is. But I think I will still put heat shields no matter what, will give me peace of mind.