limelight79

No, the original argument was about not even leaving a voice mail, just expecting someone is going to answer their phone every time it rings regardless of the situation.

How do you like your Z8?

I'm currently rocking a D750 that I bought in ~2018, but with the pandemic when I didn't take many pictures, it's still practically new (less than 20k shutter clicks, if I remember correctly). I'm now using it professionally to do real estate photography, and considering an upgrade, and keeping the D750 as a backup.

I actually think the Z6 III would be best for me at the moment, being slightly smaller, lighter, less expensive, and slightly better low-light focusing ability (you'd be shocked at how often I run into that issue, especially in vacant houses). But the Z8 offers better video resolution, so it would future proof a bit more, if the company I contract with ever decided that 4k-60fps was no longer sufficient.

On the other hand, the DJI Pocket series offers high resolution and frame rate video for much less, and has a built in stabilizer, so the camera video might not be a factor at all.

We actually have a camera store nearby, so I intend to go there and try them and see. I'm a few months out from any purchase though. I'd also want to get the Z series lenses instead of using the adapter.

We've had a couple long outages. It's especially an issue for us, as we're on a well, so if the power is out we also have no water.

We have a generator with a transfer switch that will run the pump and water heater and some other things (fridge, freezer, pellet stove, lights, etc), but not the main heat or air conditioning. But we also have an RV, so if we can get water from the house, we can use the RV as a lifeboat, running the air conditioner or furnace. The fridge in it runs off electricity or propane. We've done that a few times, mostly in our previous house - we haven't run into a long enough outage at this house to need to do that yet. (I suspect they know we're on wells in this area, so we have some priority in getting power restored.)

It really sucks, I know.

How do people listen to this and go, "Yep, he's great!"

I just don't understand it. I know, cult, but... Wow.

This is insane. Why wouldn't they leave a voice mail? Why do you expect people to be available at all times?

For example, what if I'm in the middle of a bike ride when this person calls back? Or driving? In the shower? Taking a dump? In a sensitive conversation? On the phone with someone else?

This is the whole point of voice mail. There are plenty of reasons people might not answer the phone, even before the "spam call" issue comes into play.

Your "basic logic" is extremely flawed.

We've gotten a few of those catalogs, and I looked through them out of curiosity. It always seemed to me that their prices are high, or at least no better than other sources.

I don't remember specifics, but a few things I looked at were cheaper on Amazon or other sources; often it was the exact same item with a different brand name on it.

LOL Sorry, I had to laugh. I started with Slackware back in the 90s, and I finally moved away from it in 2017 or 2018.

Installing it is easy. Where it starts to get headachy is dealing with dependencies when you install something that isn't a standard package. (I remember, I wanted to install the Ubiquiti Unifi software, and I was just like..."I do not want to deal with this.") Then, I'd get nervous about updates, "What is this going to break?" And that's bad from a security point of view.

I understand they do have some dependency management now, so it might be better than it used to be.

I ran it on my desktop, laptop, and my server. The laptop and desktop got switched first, initially to Kubuntu until a few years ago, but now they run Debian. The server was last to be switched from Slackware, and for that I went to Debian. (Debian on the laptop and desktop came later.)

Don't get me wrong, I loved Slackware, and subscribed to the automatic CD delivery for years. But Debian has just been so much easier to maintain, and more mainstream, so more things are packaged for it. It's pretty rare that I can't find a .deb for a piece of software.

Avoid Tuya wifi devices. They're nothing but trouble, requiring all kinds of hacks to get working locally, and even then can still be a headache.

If you really want the lock, try to see if you can run the Tuya cloud cutter on it, so it'll be a truly local device. Then control it via HA, using a VPN or HA Cloud if you need remote access.

Fortunately you won't be anywhere near them!

Oh she is, but it's not just her - the AI is beautiful, too, and the detail on the set pieces, like the desk a few days ago, is incredible.

I will admit wondering why she way using the desk backwards the other day (drawers were on the side we could see, but she was sitting at the other side).

It's a Broadway play now.

We visited a few years ago, had some time before our show started, so we just walked around Times Square. I just wanted to take in the atmosphere for a few minutes. One of the most famous places on earth, thousands of people, all kinds of things going on.

I probably wouldn't go there regularly even if I lived in the city, but occasionally it'd be fun. And my wife would want to go to a lot of Broadway shows.

There's nothing like it in DC, for example. But then people in DC rarely visit the Smithsonian.