What I heard on the news is that the crew received replacement phones with no SIM cards. So… thanks for nothing, friends?

Or do the crew have their own SIM cards or internet access on board?

It happens with liberals, too. Having said that, people really do need to go outside, get away from the 24/7 media feed, talk to actual people, and apply some critical thinking on their own. None of us is the main character.

Barracuda by Heart

I’ll sigh, shake my head, and think, “That figures”. And then I’ll go to work, like every other day.

I’m from small-town Iowa originally. My grandma made many of these “Midwest Salads”.

I went back for a funeral a few years ago. The was a reception/lunch at our old church. I got a serving of something that looked like jello with cream cheese on top, seemed interesting. But no, it was jello with mandarin oranges in it, and it wasn’t cream cheese, but about a quarter-inch of Miracle Whip on top, sprinkled with grated carrots. I took a bite, smiled, turned to my wife, and said, “I’m home again!”

The Republicans need a reboot

That sums it up. I’m conservative, but the GOP is such a train wreck now I just can’t support them.

I thought all the comments about “Bester” were about Bester from the Firefly episode “Out Of Gas”. Guess I need to check out Babylon 5.

How about Mozilla’s VPN? Is it not just Mullvad under the hood? I ask because I use Mullvad, but I would also like to support Mozilla.

During the pandemic, I stood up a Jitsi server on Linode and we ditched Zoom for our weekly family get-together calls. Sometimes the audio was not quite as good as Zoom.

If you set up SSL with LetsEncrypt, your call is encrypted “in flight”, but is apparently unencrypted for some portion of its travel through your server.

If it’s a one-on-one call, the two parties are connected directly and skips the server.

I haven’t used it in a while, but end to end encryption was still experimental a couple years ago. It didn’t work on all devices. Something to look at.

Jitsi Server works pretty well on a $5/mo Linode Nanode, so it’s worth trying. Especially if you get their $100 credit on sign up, you can try hosting it for free for a couple months. It’s available as one of their Marketplace apps, so it’s easy to set up.

That sounds like a commercial. I’m not affiliated with Linode, except for being a satisfied customer.

Forgot to mention ham radio guys and firefighters.

I never try to help others coil their cords/rope/hose. Everyone has their own way to do it, and you can never convince them otherwise.

Yes Yes Yes! I loved Hail Mary! I also enjoyed The Martian, both the book and the movie. I liked Artemis, but not as much as the other two. Weir does a good job telling a story from the first-person point of view. The sarcastic tone of the main character in each story may not work for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

In general, Ubuntu is my go-to when I just want something that works and is reasonably stable. Just pick the spin with the Desktop Environment that you like. I'm using KDE Neon (I realize Neon isn't an Ubuntu flavor or spin) on my daily driver laptop, and Ubuntu MATE on my desktop. I also have an old netbook that usually gets Xubuntu, but currently has Fedora 37 XFCE as an experiment.

It sure is nice that we have to option to distro-hop, either on bare metal or in a VM.