That is a bummer. BMW owns them now ans I LOVE the media controls on ours. Simple & straightforward.

Corporate “motivational” nonsense. Leave the woodpile higher, write everything in pencil, drink your most expensive wine first. Some companies base - quite literally - everything on these nonsense blurbs.

That, and the way many [past] jobs tried to cover up the lack of compensation opportunities and bumps by things like basketball courts, restaurants on “campus” (sigh), goat yoga… I can’t feed my family with a basketball court at the office. I guess I could feed them a yoga goat but I surmise it would be frowned upon.

Thank goodness for WFH. Never going back.

It’s a lyric from the song Jeremy by Pearl Jam.

I’ve worked remote for 4+ years and could not see myself going back. I love being able to leave a meeting and hang with my wife & kids, even for 5 minutes, it makes my day better.

That said, many of the people that report to me are part of a co-contractor whose policy is essentially structured to force low performing assets into the office. I’m not quite sure how I feel about that, but in my role, I’ve seen it be successful for them.

I remember, long ago, going to breakfast with a group of people that partied HARD the night before and laughing that “we’re paying for last night” as we ate and laughed only to go do it again that night.

Now I drink two whiskeys and need 3 business days, four Xanax’s and a metric ton of Pedialyte to even raise my head from the pillow in bed. I’m in my late 30s. It’s usually better - for me at least - not to drink at all. Mileage definitely varies.

I’m in the same boat and state of thought here. I’ve got a monster Plex collection on an unnecessarily large NAS… But; I pay for Spotify, YouTube and Proton. I use them all, I see value and still use a piHole, uBlock and all that stuff like nothing changed. More power to you.

After years as a family plan subscriber, I moved my personal (1k+) passwords off of LP after the last – and most egregious – breach. I have quite a bit self hosted in my environment but Proton Pass interests me as I can get my wife and son in it easily as we already have the family plan. Lemmy is loaded with tech savy, so my question is; same devil different form? I’ve tried BW but it wasn’t condusive to the whole familys use (at least not a few years ago).

All the ignorant [American] ass wipes that bemoan and slander Mexico: They’re more progressive than the USA. I know that scares the republican snowflakes. I’m glad women’s rights matter more in some areas. It should have always been about all human rights, but I’ll stop being nieve now.

I’m over here in my wife’s Hyundai smoking weed, having unprotected sex and drinking hard liquor. I can’t wait for my targeted ads. Served to me on my prison issued JPay translucent tablet. Thank god for technology.

Yep, I agree about Chase. And the same could be said about Amex with the changes in perks + the Centurion lounges always being full. I have been an Amex customer for a long long time and regularly call to get my fee partially waived (it’s hit or miss). I stay for their customer service. It’s second to none. To answer your question, I travel a lot. I do gov consulting work so it’s all reimbursed :)

It’s a cat and mouse game to achieve “the best” rewards. It’s made this way on purpose and they change monthly/on a cadence (as you most likely all know). I always look around to research and modify our usage per expenses.

That said:

• Amex Platinum for travel (hotels, flights)
• Chase Freedom for gas (rewards are sometimes targeted)
• Chase Sapphire for streaming, bills and randoms because I like their points incentive(s)
• Citi Simplicity for balance transfers, since they tend to target my family for generous offers (like when we had to buy a new living room :/)

Other than the Citi card, we pay our balances. Our rewards points are pretty built up at this point and we’ll use them for things like vacations, or vacation add-ons, rentals or gift cards for the kiddos.

That was a well thought out and utterly terrifying take. I believe many of the points you’ve made will indeed be true, much to my chagrin.

Honestly I’m glad I’m not the only one. I’ve got a NuPhy %75 on order + a few I rotate as daily drivers and I’m opening and closing the pre-order page for this one now, over and over. Why are we like this 🫠

Agreed, I meant expensive for personal use. Everything in the AV space is pretty hard on the wallet :)

It’s primarily used in audio/video from my experience. They’re quite expensive, or they were when I last interacted with them: https://www.rossvideo.com/control-systems/routing-control/ultritouch/

Honest comment with a bit of a question buried in here this novella… I use Google devices; Pixel Pro’s, Pixel watches, Nest hubs, Nest thermostats, etc. This is a understood agreement (not symbiotic) between me and the behemoth that is Alphabet: I pay them for hardware, and use their “free services” that are heavily subsidized by pillaging my data. I know the hardware does it too, and I’m paying.

I’ve switched most of my networking and cameras to UniFi, my browsers are all Firefox… The question is what’s next? I dislike Apple iPhones but like my wife’s MacBook, but I’m a nerd. All of my devices need to “play nice” in their respective ecosystem. I’m tired of having the inbox app, hangouts, etc only to find Google has grown tired or doesn’t care and scraps them.

When the iPhone 15 comes out, I was getting the wife that and myself the Pixel 8P. Now I struggle. The “ultra” premium phones (we both care most about camera) are few and defined. I don’t want to jump to Apple, it’s the same thing, just packaged differently. Ugh.

Don’t judge me… I never use exclamation points unless the context is absolutely fitting. Aka, %1 of my email and text, if not less, uses it. It’s like I’ve saved it for it’s original meaning. My wife isn’t a fan of this.