Seconded, I use a Define 7 and it’s fantastic. Best big black box I’ve ever owned.

You piqued my interest and holy shit, Spotify money laundering is wild.

Bingo. My first table saw was a heavily used Ryobi direct drive. It was noisy at hell and hard to use with precision, but it only cost $25 and helped me figure out if I wanted to get into woodworking or not.

Seriously, if you’re just getting into this, you don’t need to drop $1000+ on a SawStop. If you have the money, fuck yeah, get one. If not, just use proper technique, tools, and PPE. Be extremely careful as even the cheapest, most underpowered saw will take multiple fingers off in less than a second. If you’re not scared, get scared. I’ve been doing this for over a decade and my table saw still makes me wary. That’s a good thing.

I just stumbled over your post at random. I use Voyager and it’s great…

And they’re all out of ideas!

This you?

Not a lawyer but a guy with shoulder problems from teenage antics. I just want to add that you really need to aggressively pursue treatment for that shoulder. The better you handle it now, the more you’ll thank yourself.

Insert Tubgirl.flv

If you don’t know, I don’t know if I’d suggest looking it up.

Ooooh, that sounds like the Göta Canal, making you Swedish! The Masurian Canal was built far too late to be correct but my brain was fixated on the uselessness aspect.

I think you’re referring to the Masurian Canal, so you could be in either Russia or Poland.

Seriously. If these “media pros” are actually concerned, it appears my personal server adheres to higher standards than their industry.

No no, you really weren’t off base. Even if they were owned by Walmart, I doubt they could do worse.

That’s great, I’m glad you got some deals!

The thing about them is their low wages and reluctance to train their employees meant high-end goods were often priced very low. Levi’s jeans were $10-15 a pair while designer jeans were priced at $5. I recall someone donating a batch of Hermés scarves. None of the pricers knew the brand, so they put them out for $1 each. I bought them all for 50% off (employee discount!) and hit eBay. This kind of thing happened weekly so the employees were always looking for things we could resell. We made less than $20k/year, that’s how we scraped by!

I’m not sure how other stores are, but mine was a great example of being a penny wise and a pound foolish.

So, I’m not trying to be the “ackshually” guy.

Value Village isn’t owned by Walmart.

Buuuut, you’re still right. They’re absolutely a shit company. I was an assistant supervisor at Value Village a couple of decades ago. First, they’re 100% for profit but advertise in such a way that consumers believe they’re a charity. What they do is buy donations from charities by the pound. Any donations accepted at the store on behalf of a charity are paid at a drastically reduced rate, so of course they push HARD for customers to bring donations directly to the store.

The shit cherry on top was the stores lying to charities about the quality of received goods to avoid paying. If clothes, for example, were soiled, they’d refuse to pay for the entire batch. Stores would find a few dirty shirts, claim the entire cart was crap, claw the money back, and sell the rest of the cart.

The company makes a HUGE profit but pays their employees peanuts. Our head cashier had worked for the company for eight years and capped out at $7.25/hour in 2003, about $14 today. One year, they announced no raises, no reason given. My then girlfriend and I discovered the owners had purchased a cabin in Northern California for use by the c-suite douches. The store manager was pulling in $60k a year, plus bonus, in a very low cost of living area. Me? $8.25 per hour.

What else? They incentivize under staffing by making a supervisor’s paltry bonuses tied to their staffing budget. Staying at budget meant no bonus. They had to come in under budget for any bonus, and the more “savings” the higher the bonus. I got chewed out when I first started scheduling because I used all the hours allotted in the budget. The store went from a shit hole to being fairly respectable but it would eat into my boss’s bonus. Her maximum annual bonus? $2.5k.

So they may not be owned by Walmart, but they’re the Walmart of thrift stores. Fuck those guys.

I’m also disabled. We tend to refer to this as the “disability tax”. Anything that could potentially be billed to insurance or for which there are no other options is incredibly expensive. If we can’t afford it or don’t have insurance, we’re always welcome to go die under a bridge somewhere. Gotta pay for the owner’s yacht.

I always wonder how IPtorrents is still running. It’s a bit bigger and has a less than savory reputation, so I figure it would draw more attention.

Same, I just signed up. Here’s the URL for anyone else interested:

https://www.patreon.com/yuzuteam

Fuck Nintendo.

Translation: look into my eyes.

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As someone also with a largely mysterious, if diagnosed, medical condition, have you tried meditation?

Just kidding! I get tons of well meaning, often worthless advice, but that’s by far the most common. I’m like, bitch, I meditate so goddamn much I’m giving the fucking Buddha pointers. Meditation is the only reason I’m not throwing you (and maybe myself with you) out the window right now.

If I may give you one non-medical suggestion from someone who has been there and to some extent still is there, it’ll get better as long as you don’t give up. You have to be dogged about improvement and it won’t be fast or easy, but it’ll be there if you put in the work. People who don’t understand will think you’re being crazy and obsessive, telling you that you need to just come to terms with your condition. Coming to terms is a part of it, but there’s always, always something to try. Improving my condition is my biggest hobby and primary job.

I’ve been plugging away at improving my health for four years now and went from barely being able to function to being 80% normal. I’m working full time again (I know, oh joy) and I can do a lot of the things I used to be able to do. You’ll get there, just keep at it. Let me know if I can help or if you ever need to talk, even just to vent.