Random thoughts...

Athonite wrote:

Markus1987 wrote:I just got rid of my smart phone this week and changed to Nokia 105, a normal cellphone with only Calls and  Messages in it. It also has FM radio.  NO INTERNET, WHATSAPP, YOUTUBE, FACEBOOK... I basically got tired of having any social media in my phone, and also got tired of using internet with it. 

I need only those basic functions from my phone. When I want to use Internet, I use it from  my computer or in the library

I want to do this, but my wife keeps giving me heck for even mentioning the thought. I ought to just go do it, if I ever think of it when I have the chance...

In my honest opinion, If you feel to do it, go for it. I've been without a smart phone for over a week now, and it has been very freeing. It's my experience, and I'm not gonna start to use smart phones again   . I'm not gonna say what others have to do.

I like my Smart Phone because of 2 games I like to play in my downtime.
No social media on my phone though - I've literally disabled all apps I don't use.
____________________

Newsy. "Be informed. Not influenced."

I've decided to give this news organization a chance, just because of that slogan.... but it didn't take me long to realize their bias.

Someone needs to fix their slogan...

Newsy. "Be informed. (by left leaning coverage) Not influenced. (by anchor opinion, but by left leaning coverage)"

I use my smart phone mostly because I use the online radio stations (ie, Google Play Music, Spotify, Live 365) when I take walks, which is frequently.

My wife and I are just outside Roanoke tonight.  We will be here for a couple of days to pay our final respects to my aunt.  I came up to visit in June after not seeing my aunt, uncle, and a cousin in many, many years.  I am now glad that I did since my aunt passed away on Monday.

Markus1987 wrote:

Andreas89 wrote:So apparently my wife's contract ended during her parental leave, and they didn't exactly do their best to reach her at the time. The legal protection for parents is pretty generous in German labour law, so we didn't think much of it. There's lots of laws that nullify certain portions of contracts. Not in this case though.

Not that much of a disaster, but still... weird to realize that my wife has been officially without a job since May this year. And now the only reason we are still in Germany is because I work here. And to be honest, I'm getting a bit bored and tired by this stressful job. But well, let's see how things develop.

By what reason it ended? Do you know what exactly happened? I'm just curious, because having a parental leave is her legal right. Tough situation nevertheless

Well, it's just that if you have a contract until point X in time, and you take parental leave beyond X, your contract will simply end if you don't renew it.
And the personnel department did an extremely lasy job trying to reach my wife. But well, it's not the end of the world.

Grr... water heater!  I attempted to turn on our water heater when we moved Friday into our new home to discover that it does not work!  I called their support line, they diagnosed the issue, sent me a new part (which arrived yesterday), I installed the new part... and still nothing!  The neighbors are going to start complaining about our bad smell soon I'm afraid!

Our water heater broke several years back and I remember taking an ice cold shower before going to work that day....not fun.

Oh dang!  Well I work from home so I can get away with skipping showers here or there.  Thankfully my parents live not too far away and we can shower there. 

What are you complaining about, there's a lake nearby right?

There are a few actually!  Well the new parts just arrived* so hopefully that'll do the trick and we won't need to resort to bathing in the lakes.  It's actually raining today so we could just run out into the front yard in our bathing suits too...

*holy cow how'd they get here so dang fast?!?  FedEx, I am impressed!

Update:  I AM MAN.  I BRING FIRE TO HOME.  

Kerrick wrote:Update:  I AM MAN.  I BRING FIRE TO HOME.  

ME WORK HARD FIVE DAYS A WEEK! SWEEPING GARBAGE FROM THE STREET!

The joys of trying to place a service call at work.

*asks for the city and state*

her "Nocalana"
me "May I have the state please?"
her "Nocalana"
me "Is Nocalana the city?"
her "Winston Salem"

*seconds later, I discovered that she **meant** NORTH CAROLINA*

I don't think you needed to confirm she was from NC after that.

Me and my new Avatar after watching the Jets lose to the Browns...  and watching them lose their backup Qb to an injury...now down to their 3rd string Qb.

I guess Joe Namath really did sell his soul to Satan! Lol!

A little meme I made

I'm starting to get more and more into extreme-ish metal territory. Now I get to check out all those bands that I have dismissed for their vocals over the past ten years. Just as long as there's enough melodic vocals of course ^^

Oh boy... I hope your bank account is ready!     There's lots of great extreme metal out there...  Let me know when you're ready for recommendations!  

Cool! I'll let you know via facebook. For now, I can finally starting to get into stuff like Wilderun, Turisas, Aether Realm and (I think) Borknagar. But some more specific recommendations would be nice.

Right on!  Yeah just let me know and I will try to come up with some good recs. 

Oy, this morning started off with a bit of a stress...  We bought some used washing/drying machines off of Craigslist and I installed them yesterday.  My wife put into the washer a first load this morning and came back to find water ALL OVER the floor.  For some reason, our house's washer/dryer connections are backwards so for the machines' doors to open properly, I had to cross their hoses and cables across to the opposite sides.  I think it was too far for the washer's drain hose and once it filled with water, it fell out and dumped water everywhere!  Sigh...  Thankfully we haven't gotten to putting in new floors down there yet so it's just bare concrete.  But it was still a major hassle...

Andreas89 wrote:I'm starting to get more and more into extreme-ish metal territory. Now I get to check out all those bands that I have dismissed for their vocals over the past ten years. Just as long as there's enough melodic vocals of course ^^

That's just what happened to me as well. I liked the music, but just couldn't get in to the vocals. I guess it was when I heard Mortification or Renascent for the first time that I realized the greatness of this style. And from that time on it really has been a blast .

Andreas89 wrote:Cool! I'll let you know via facebook. For now, I can finally starting to get into stuff like Wilderun, Turisas, Aether Realm and (I think) Borknagar. But some more specific recommendations would be nice.

You should also check Wintersun and Wolfheart. I love both bands

I could always appreciate the style, at least at an instrumental level. I think the main reason for this shift is that I appreciate lower register vocals in metal, and they aren't that common in power metal. They're more common in metal styles that also apply non-melodic vocal styles. But nowadays I can stand those way better, I'm not suffering through them anymore.

And yeah, Wintersun... that's what got me into this mess in the first place

I'm still hitting the gym regularly, but I'm 2 weeks + since I've hit the bench press.
My left shoulder finally gave me a heaping pile of "nope".
The flat bench hurts too much to do... And going with a lighter weight isn't scratching my itch.

Last time I had a shoulder injury from lifting, was about 2013. I resorted to a Plan B then and it worked well... Went back to it recently, and again, it works great.

Granted, my incline is more like an incline-shoulder press hybrid, but it boggles my mind a little bit that the flat bench hurts, but doing this, doesn't hurt whatsoever.