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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • shalafi@lemmy.worldtoMildly Infuriating@lemmy.worldThe shrinkflation
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    2 days ago

    Wife doesn’t like burgers, had never been to Steak n Shake. (Must be a Filipino thing because she cant’ cook 'em either.)

    First bite, “This is the burger I have been looking for!” She loved the seasoning so much she bought 2 bottles, $5 each.

    Forget what we paid, but it was on par with McDonalds, including the $5 tip. The restaurant itself and waitress kinda sucked, “Do you have coffee?” “We’re out.” So make some? This is a restaurant. Something else basic was out, I forget. But the point stands, a proper sit-down meal was the same cost as McDonalds, except delicious.

    And don’t start me on local Mexican dives and trucks. I can get 3 deluxe street tacos for $10, less than some of the gross combos at McDonalds. And that place is a little high!



  • In the 90s and early 2000s I had to reboot my PC multiple times a day and reinstall the OS at least once a month. I remember freaking out when Windows 2000 went 30 days without a reboot. Computer’s been a bit slow and wonky lately. Realized I had no idea how long it’s been up, rebooted, fixed. No idea when I last rebooted my network stack.

    Dead and dying hard drives were a constant hassle. My SSD has been through three PCs, without even reinstalling Windows. I just moved it, and it just worked. No idea how long I’ve been on this install, 8 years at least. I’ve got external USB drives in a faux-RAID array that have been cooking for 5 years, no problem. Everything burned electricity, got stupid hot, burned everything else out.

    I was one of the original installers of cable internet. Couple of years later found me doing tech support. People were mystified at the concept of a website being down, yet their internet worked. Sites went down daily, even major ones.

    We were constantly bombarded with viruses and malware. It was a nonstop fight to keep your machine clean. Now, I’ve only installed AV on company computers as a CYA thing since Windows Defender works great. (Also, as another security layer.)

    I can pick up my phone and call anywhere in the US, free. Ever heard the words interlec or intralec? You needed a math degree to calculate long distance charges, so you’d just dial and pray it wasn’t too bad. And pray the call went through. “We got a bad line! Call me back!”

    A car with 100,000 miles was considered garbage. Power train warranties were 36K and that was astounding. Now they’re 100K and more. My wife’s car is a 2014 and my truck is a 2004. No one had 10-20 year old vehicles unless they were collectors or gear heads.

    Shall I go on? :)












  • You got the original explanation, but grok was taken up by computer nerds way back in the day. It’s not merely understanding a thing, in the book or the slang. To grok means to completely wrap your head around the subject, not merely surface level understanding, really feel it down deep.

    As to Musk’s obsession? He wants to be seen as the cool kid, the smart hacker, the guy who groks what’s really going on.

    Honestly it’s a great name for a search engine or AI. And now he’s actively ruining it like everything else he touches.

    BTW, Stranger in a Strange Land is an excellent book. I laugh when people call Heinlein a fascist for writing Starship Troopers. “So, how about that hippie book?” Heinlein’s books examine various government and economic systems, “What if it worked this way?”