• 0 Posts
  • 61 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: August 14th, 2023

help-circle













  • It’s a great idea, but don’t forget about how these people are going to get support in the future. If something breaks, most helpers (computer shops, kids friends etc) are going to be Windows users.

    Mint can do automatic updates, but both my laptop and PC have had serious issues with version upgrades. My laptop, which is Mint only, asked me to remove a load of software before upgrading, then booted with loads of errors and had to be reinstalled. My PC was mostly fine, but had no sound. It turned out that Mint switched from Pulse Audio to Pipewire, or vice versa, and the old audio manager left config files behind.

    They were both annoying issues more than anything else, but would be difficult for the people in your scenario to get fixed.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to put you off, just checking that you’ve thought of the downsides :)


  • If, as others have said, programming languages count, I’d go for Cobol. As I understand it, lots of big banks still run on it, so there’s good money to be made. It would probably help me to learn other programming languages too.

    If it had to be a human language, I’d be tempted to go for Russian or Arabic because of the potential threats, so translation opportunities, or Welsh. I’m Welsh, but really struggle with learning Welsh, especially when compared to French and Spanish.




  • Oh, it’s my time to shine! 😁

    Some of this is quite gruesome, so don’t read it if you’re squeamish.

    I’ve got a serious health issue that’s lead to lots of other health problems. As you can probably imagine, I’ve been in pain quite a few times.

    Years ago, before I found out about my health issues, I’d been out drinking with friends, and one had taken his shiny new bmx with him. I thought it was a good idea to have a go, but promptly fell off and landed on my elbow. I took a deep gouge out of the side of the joint, and it wouldn’t heal properly. About a month later, at an outdoor music festival, some dipshit had rollerblades attached to his rucksack and managed to swing the whole thing into my elbow, bursting the wound open. That one hurt quite a bit.

    I went to the dentist once with a cracked tooth. The dentist didn’t realise that it was infected, and tried to pull it out. They assumed that the anaesthetic wasn’t working, so gave me more and tried again. Four times. On the bright side, I went back to work afterwards, not realising that I was high as a kite 😆

    Since I’ve been ill, I’ve had some interesting ones too.

    I had a kidney biopsy that went wrong. A biopsy is taken by cutting a small hole above the kidney as you’re lying down, inserting a ‘gun’ that grabs a small piece of the kidney, then closing the hole. Because of the risk of bleeding, you have to lie still for eight hours. I’ve had a few biopsies, so after a few hours I knew something was wrong. My back and my lower abdomen were burning and in lots of pain, so I called the nurse. There was a feeling like I needed to pee really badly, like past the point of bursting, but I couldn’t, and it kept coming and going. Eventually I managed to go, but it was agonising, and I passed something solid. The doctor came and gave me a mild sedative and I was catheterised. It turned out that they nicked the kidney during the biopsy, and it bled into my bladder. My bladder was then blocked by blood clots that only had one way out.

    My favourite one though was the ‘helpful’ doctor.

    When I found out about my illness, it’s because I was in a seriously bad way. I had multiple organ failure, and was put into a coma. When I came out of the coma, I had several different lines going into my body where they had been giving me things like meds and fluids. One of the lines went into the right side of my neck but was due to be changed. This is where the helpful doctor came in.

    He brought a colleague with him to show him how the procedure worked, so explained everything as he was doing it. He told the other doctor that changing the line is quite straightforward, and explained that you have the option to give the patient some anaesthetic injections to make it less painful. He then explained that as it’s mainly removing and replacing some stitches, giving the anaesthetic would actually mean giving more injections and needles than just doing the stitches directly, and would be more painful. Then proceeded to cut into my neck with a scalpel.

    Apparently he’d forgotten that cutting would be more painful than a needle…



  • I really enjoy reading, but I can’t picture a scene, or what characters look like. It can be a bit confusing at times, but doesn’t usually take away from the enjoyment.

    As an example, my favourite sci fi author Randolph Lalonde (great independent author, buy his books 👍) had a scene in a recent book where some characters had a shootout in a warehouse that held several spaceships. The ships were all at least a few metres long, so the warehouse was huge. In my head, everything was centred on a small area around the characters, and I could sort of picture them being within a few feet of each other.

    I couldn’t picture any details, it was as if he had written that ‘the man stood near the woman, and pointed the gun towards the crates’, even though the scene was well written with good descriptions. My brain couldn’t translate the description into a layout in my head.

    I still really enjoyed the scene, but every now and then it was as if my brain realised that things should be further apart, or one character should be taller than another, for example.