the so-called “First Lady of Star Trek” recorded an entire library of phonetic sounds, allowing her voice to be used in future products outside of Star Trek and, quite possibly, as the computer voice in Star Trek: Discovery.

Source: https://nerdist.com/article/the-late-majel-barrett-may-voice-star-trek-discoverys-computer/

Alternatively…

Lizard babies, space cheese that makes the ship sick, yeah, I could see this going down in VOY.

Refurbishers on eBay

Ah, well, that limits things a bit then.

I have refined tastes when it comes to laptops, but I’m also cheap, so lightly used high end models are right up my alley. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any [brand new ones] I would stand behind that are in that price range other than maybe a Macbook Neo, but you specifically ruled out ARM (they’re also not supported by Ashai Linux yet, either).

Sorry.

Are you married to a new one?

I pretty much exclusively buy used ~3 year old Thinkpads which meet all of your specs and then some. My last two were X1 carbons (7th gen and now a 9th gen). Each cost me about $450.

Interesting or useful?

I don’t think I have any really interesting ones, but the most useful one I have for people is “Always On”.

Basically when I see that tag, I can mentally prepare myself and roll my eyes before reading. Basically it’s for people who just do nothing but preach at you regardless of the topic being discussed. It’s…pretty useful.

Linemen are some crazy hard workin’ people … I hope their off days are filled with good whiskey and agreeable women or men as needed.

Definitely. In modern society, they’re right up there with firemen, paramedics, etc as far as “thank you for your service” goes.

When they’re working near me, I always offer them cold drinks or snacks. That’s something I started doing during the earlier mentioned two week outage when they finally got to our area. The temps were in the mid 90s, the air was swampy, and I was roasting in shorts and a t-shirt. They’re out there working in heavy protective gear. I appreciate them as much as I do not envy them which is a LOT.

rained like a cow pissin’ on a flat rock,

I absolutely love this brand new sentence. Or, at least that’s one I’ve never heard before.

Sustained straight-line high winds scare the bejeezus out of me. There was a derecho in my area many years ago. Didn’t seem too awful at the time and in the midst of it, but when it was over, we were without power in a heatwave for almost two weeks. Fun times.

Glad your electric co is on the ball.

Ever lived in a small town? Drama and gossip is fun

Yes, I have, and no it’s not. It’s just all there is except for high school football, making more kids, and the same drama and gossip but on Facebook. IMO that’s why small towns are so toxic once you get past the thin veneer of “small town charm”. Couldn’t wait to leave the one I grew up in.

And after re-reading OP’s opinion, I starting to see the parallels.

That’s really cool. Must have missed that post.

Is that reading from a rain gauge or rain barrel or what?

I’ve got 4x55 gallon rain barrels and have wanted to add a sensor so I could check how full they were from Home Assistant. So curious where you’re getting your graph data and if that’s something that might help me with mine.

Hank Hill, apparently.

I don’t use Facebook and use all the ad blockers, but apparently I’m still tracked by IP.

When my SO and I started dating, he hooked to my wifi one day and immediately started getting ads on Facebook for various lawn care products. He’d never had those come up before, lived in an apartment all his adult life, and has never searched for any kind of gardening supplies.

I, on the other hand, do have a lawn that I take care of and frequently shop for various landscaping stuff. But he gets the ads for them.

I feel like this is the kind of joke Frasier would have told Freddy when he was a kid.

Wait, what?? Those are a thing?

I’ve seen some rechargeable smoke detectors but never had a reason to trust those. Everything else has used the old school 9v.

I read the punchline as “Frasier: In Space!” and would watch that.

Literally this.

Twice a year I fill in as DBA when our lady graybeard Oracle DBA takes vacation. This month is one of those times. Yay me.

For my org, it’s just the massive in-house developed line-of-business application that’s tightly coupled to Oracle that keeps us chained to it. It’s technical debt from top to bottom, and has been accumulating steadily since the early 2010s, but no one seems willing to start replacing it.

The new projects typically go with Postgres, MariaDB, or if all else fails, MSSQL. But the Oracle monster in the closet isn’t likely to leave any time soon.

If only 9 volts were that price, I’d stock up for the smoke detectors for the next 5 years.

For everything else, I bought a bunch of rechargeable AA and AAAs a while back and those have been great. Haven’t used a D battery in years and a C battery for decades. I assumed they stopped making C’s.

(Jealous Scotty noises)