Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Tuesday, March 9, 2021
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111 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Albatross faceplants to fame on New Zealand livestream .
Yes, it’s funny.
Joe Biden’s dogs sent home to Delaware after ‘biting incident’– report
Sorry to see this but not really surprised. German Shepherds tend to have a very strong territorial instinct. As sweet as pie to anyone in their family, they view outsiders with suspicion and are likely to respond aggressively to any perceived intruders.
@OzarkHillbilly: those dogs are Antifa!
This is awesome. Trump just put out a statement saying that we can’t afford to support any more RINOs, don’t send them any donations, send the donations instead to…guess
Here’s an interesting read that’s worth your time. Christopher Buskirk is a conservative Republican I’ve seen on TV from time to time, and the subject of his piece is something that I’d wager not many folks who frequent this forum have given must thought to.
@Teve:
And doubtless the saps will line up to empty their pockets into Trump’s coffers.
Lindsey Graham: Trump may destroy Republican party but he has a ‘magic’
Some mornings I just can’t make myself swim in the sycophantic sewer of Republican groveling in the hopes of finding a nugget or 2 of info.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Trump could well be dead in 2026.
@sam: that was a smart essay.
@CSK: Not soon enough for me.
That magical time of the year is starting up this week: March Madness, Bracketology. Last second jumpers, rivalries, upsets, and office pools. The only sport that comes close is fall football. I went to a tournament game two years ago. There were parking lot parties everywhere, the atmosphere inside the arena was 100% electric. I remember when I was in school every classroom had a radio tuned to the tournaments.
Pandemic Bill Would Cut Taxes by An Average of $3,000, With Most Relief Going to Low- And Middle-Income Households
@tyrell: I agree. I always am thrilled when there is a Cinderella team that comes out of nowhere to upset everything. I still remember Larry Bird dragging Indiana State to the National Championship. Not exactly out of nowhere since the Sycamores were 33-0 but they were a minor team before Larry and a minor team after. I can’t recall another instance where one player had such an massive impact on a team.
@tyrell:
Even football season is no match for the first and even second weeks of March Madness. I sometimes wonder why we even open the office those first two days of the tournament, especially if there are local teams in the mix.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Melania ‘s obviously a trophy wife, but I seriously doubt that she’s the G.O.A.T.
@OzarkHillbilly: A friend of mine said “that guy is telling women to lose weight? He looks like he’s pregnant.”
Quantum Entanglement
@CSK: she’s pretty, but also kinda weird-looking.
A small piece of history.
That time Hitler’s nephew joined the US Navy to fight his evil uncle is the ultimate family drama
@OzarkHillbilly:..dog bite…
“My dog doesn’t bite!”
How many times have you heard that?
My response: “How does it eat it’s food?”
@Teve:
I think the human face can only tolerate so many surgical lifts and so much Botox. If Melania has much more work done, her eyes will be on the sides of her head.
@Mister Bluster:
Well, some dogs I’ve known seem to inhale their food 😉
@Mister Bluster: My sister always answered that question with a definitive “Maybe.”
@Teve: @CSK: I would not say she’s pretty. Striking? Yes. Attractive? Somewhat. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
@Kathy:
Each of the Pugs we’ve had, inhale their food as did a 100# mutt that I had in my 20’s. He was like a vacuum cleaner. The 3 Great Pyrenees, the 2 Boxers and a 60# mutt were all leisurely eaters. One of the Boxers would take a mouthful of food and take to a different room to nosh and the Pyrs would lay down with the bowl between their paws and snack for up to a half hour.
@CSK:
Who might you nominate? I think of it as “beautiful woman, preferably already a celebrity, marries rich unattractive non-celebrity.” Celebrities marrying each other is a different category.
Let’s see… Sophia Loren? Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy?
@CSK: Holy shit that’s it. Those squinty eyes come from face lifts. She’s also had a chin job and probably a nose job. Go look at that before picture. Holy hell.
https://theskincareedit.com/melania-trump-before-and-after
Fuck Apple voice-to-text is being particularly horrible right now. I got used to android, where you could write an entire novel without typing a word, and this tablet, this iPad is really great in every respect other than the voice to text is so horrendous. I made a comment a couple of months ago on an apple discussion forum about how bad it is and I literally get multiple emails a day from people responding about how they can’t believe it’s so shitty. If I didn’t need a washing machine and a new AC compressor for my car, I would throw this thing in the trash and get a Samsung tablet.
There are lots of particularly terrible things I could mention, but here is a particularly bizarre one. You can say a proper noun, like Matt Damon, and it will get the name correct, but every every every time you have to go back and fix the fact that the second word in the proper noun isn’t capitalized. I just had to fix that sentence because Apple wrote “Capitol ice”. Sometimes it works great, sometimes you have to fix multiple errors in every sentence, and sometimes it just drops multiple words in a row for no apparent reason.
What you just read above? I had to manually fit multiple errors in every sentence, and I just finished this sentence manually because IT got fucked up.
My next tablet will not be an iPad.
@Teve: For reasons I can’t explain, I read that statement “these dogs are antifa!” in an Al Pacino voice.
@Mister Bluster: Does your dog bite?
@OzarkHillbilly, Teve and CSK:
While I am no big fan of Melania, I am also not a fan of having a story about some asshole preacher trying to tell women how to look suddenly morph into shaming a particular woman who was (in this instance) a collateral victim of his reifying bullshit.
@Steven L. Taylor: I just did that out loud and it’s very funny 😀
@Joe: I don’t know if you thought I in particular was shaming her but I wasn’t, I was mentioning that she looked kind of weird and then that she had had work done.
She was a model, she used it to get out of a desperately poor country, were I born poor in Slovenia and a surgery would get me to a manhattan penthouse I would get whatever surgery I had to get and I might not even ask you what the surgery was because we’re burnin daylight here.
@Teve:
Kind of reminds me of a Maureen Dowd throwaway line about Botox users who drop the habit and become Shar Pei’s.
That would be Gisele Bundchen. Of course Tom Brady’s also a trophy husband.
“Who is Tom Brady is also a tour of your husband.” Is how Apple translated that last sentence I spoke. I just might forgo air-conditioning here in Florida just to throw this fucking thing in the trash.
If you use voice to text a lot, don’t even consider buying an iPad.
With the passage of Biden’s Covid relief package the US economic growth forecasts for the next couple of years are ranging between 5.5% to 7%. The WSJ has an article up this AM, that US eco growth will be so robust that it will unbalance the world economy, not sure that this is our problem. Trump promised economic growth of 4% from his trillion dollar tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, but growth averaged a bit less than 2%.
Goes to show, if you want to stimulate growth in the economy, pump money at the poor and middle class, they’ll spend it and mostly spend it in their communities, while the wealthy will mostly save it and a great percentage of what they spend, may not benefit the US economy.
@Teve:
Trophy wife implies that the husband is rich, significantly older and previously married. The difference in Brady-Bundchen ages is pretty normal and neither(?) were married previously. Plus she is worth a lot more than he is.
A friend of mine who is a hardcore Apple guy in San Francisco says what’s happening is that when Google translates voice to text they rapidly establish a connection to a nearby google server with AI powers, and Apple tries to do it locally on the device which just doesn’t work. I don’t know if that explanation is true or not but it makes sense. There’s no way the chip on this iPad has the capability of a Xeon server with access to a network and more sophisticated software.
I have studiously avoided giving any attention to the Harry & Meghan / Oprah sit down but this caught my eye and is wonderful writing: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/harry-and-meghan-the-union-of-two-great-houses-the-windsors-and-the-celebrities-is-complete-1.4504502
@Sleeping Dog: yeah, maybe my claim of Mutual Trophiness makes no sense and it’s just normal status-in-society selection.
I’m not thinking super clearly at the moment, but in my defense, it’s 9 AM somewhere.
@dmichael: A great aspect of Twitter is that it lets you mute words, such that a tweet containing those select words doesn’t appear on your timeline, and Harry and Meghan have been two words I added to my mute list in the last week, along with Greenwald and Cuomo.
@Teve: There’s software called “Fuck Apple voice to text?” Wa! Who knew and how did they get permission for THAT?
@Steven L. Taylor:
Definitely sounds like a Pacino line.
Poor Ralph.
I watched The Firm recently and found it difficult to not say, “diabet-us” everytime Wilford Brimley appeared on screen.
@Sleeping Dog:
@Teve:
I think Tom’s trophy wives are all called Lombardi.
@Teve:
I turn Siri off on all my Apple products because they are convinced that everything I say is “call my father, one of my exes, or the vet.” This would happen even when I wasn’t trying to do anything with the device at all.
I love my many apple devices, but I didn’t know that text-to-speech had gotten good anywhere. I wonder if I would use it if it wasn’t such an unmitigated disaster.
@Teve:
The Biden plan gives people stimulus money in a weakened economy, gives schools money to help them reopen, increases money for vaccines, gives states and localities hit by this pandemic money so they don’t have to lay off workers, gives parents money to help them with raising their children, and gives people sick leave. And 3 quarters of Americans support it, and Erickson thinks both that Republicans should have opposed all of that, but that focusing on supporting a few racist Dr. Seuss books is a better idea.
I’ve rolled Erick Erickson‘s comments around in my head for a while and I’ve tried to come up with different ways of justifying them, but I can only think that he’s just a complete idiot.
@Gustopher:
I’ve limited use for voice commands to my phone. What I would like is a voice control function on Audible and other media players, where you could tell it to pause, go back, skip forward, etc.
@sam:
Interesting indeed. I’d argue that Republican policies and goals over the last 40+ years have made this ideal impossible. It was possible for my family in the 60s and 70s. Has become increasingly impossible every year since.
@sam: Exactly. The Twitter left is ticking me off with all their complaints about this bill. Yes, it’s a shame that the minimum wage increase wasn’t included, but that can be revisited in a later bill.
Yes, it’s a shame that additional unemployment was negotiated down from $400 to $300, but they’re ignoring that the first $10k of unemployment will be exempt from taxation, and it has been extended to September.
They’re complaining about 16 million people at the upper income limits no longer getting stimulus, while ignoring that 26 million people at lower income levels (college students, adult dependents, people married to non-citizens and their kids), will now get it.
They’re ignoring that if your income declined from the upper limits since 2019, you can claim the additional stimulus from 2020 on your tax return, and be eligible for the new stimulus. They’re ignoring that the $1400 is per family member – no smaller amounts for children. All in all, the stimulus is going to more people, and most will get more money than they did in 2020.
They’re ignoring that the Child Tax Credit has been expanded from $2k to $3k, and to $3.6k for children under 6, and this is huge: for the first time, 17yos will be included in the Child Tax Credit, and it will be fully refundable, no matter how much you worked. (In the past, parents had to earn at least $2500 to get the refundable portion).
They’re ignoring that this increases subsidies for ACA policies, no matter your income, and it shores up pensions for struggling seniors. Add to that everything it does for schools, daycares, vaccine distribution, and states and local governments.
It’s a great bill, not a perfect bill (nothing is), but fantastic on many fronts.
@CSK: It’s really weird. I recently saw “before and after” photos of Kimberly Guilfoyle when she was married to Gavin Newsom and now with Jr. She didn’t even look like the same person, and was genuinely pretty in the earlier photos. Same thing when I once saw a photo of Calista Gingrich before she married Newt. Very naturally pretty back then, she now looks like a Stepford wife. It’s almost like these Republican women go through some sort of “Death Becomes Her” process over time.
@sam:
Quibble: afford decent housing, not own a home. Wording matters and in some places an apartment can cost as much as a mortgage payment. There’s also the matter of older folks in retirement communities still working and younger adults in dorms just starting out – they shouldn’t be cheated a livable wage just because they’re not in the market for a house right now. Not everyone wants to be a homeowner either so we need to stop pretending renting is the temporary step toward land ownership and not an acceptable goal in it’s own right.
@Joe:
Melania is quite as bad as her husband, and complicit in some of his worst actions. She was all in on the birther nonsense.
@Teve: From what Apple has said at their developer conferences, they are not against processing remotely but they are against having possession of your actual text. In other words, they don’t want to be in a position where a government could ask them to spy on a subject. Google does not have the same concerns, to put it mildly. Not only do they want your text, it is likely they include what your say in their directed advertising database. After all, they do it for your email if you have a gmail account.
@Joe :
Melania and her people have long marketed her as being the exemplar of this BS. Looks are her whole shtick and they encouraged the MAGAts to view her as The Bestest First Lady EVA!!! She Who is Greater that Jackie O as her brand knows very well people are using her as the standard and gloried in it. She’s no collateral victim when this was how she made her bones – be pretty, be thin and you get/keep that fickle man!
@KM:
I think we can have broad consensus in saying she’s an ugly person, regardless of the fancy wrapper she comes in.
@Teve:
Cynical as it is, I don’t think Erickson’s assessment is even accurate. I think the state of the economy and the pandemic will be a lot more on voters’ mind come next election than the GOP’s manufactured-outrage-of-the-day.
@Monala: Here’s the “then and now” of Kimberly Guilfoyle.
@Monala:
And here’s Callista Gingrich “then” and “now.”
I had the Johnson and Johnson vaccine this morning at Mass. General Hospital. If I hadn’t had to wait the obligatory 15 minutes afterward, I would have been in and out in under 10 minutes. You can park for free for up to an hour in one of the MGH garages (conveniently, the nearest one to the site).
Since like most vaccines, it’s intramuscular, I felt a slight ache in my left deltoid for a few minutes afterward. Nothing now: no bump, no redness, no soreness.
Something interesting about the J&J: Unlike the Pfizer and the Moderna, it was developed late enough to be tested against the variants.
@CSK:
good for you.
Not aimed at you, I think the 15 minute observation period after COVID vaccines, ought to be accompanied by a centurion saying over and over “remember thou art still vulnerable, remember thou art still vulnerable, remember thou art still vulnerable…”
Also, there’s an analogy I find useful. think of the phase 3 trial as a beta test. It didn’t find all the bugs and issues, nor did it measure the full function of the vaccine. That we’ll find with mass vaccination.
@Kathy:
According to what I’ve read, the J&J vaccine will, after 2 weeks have lapsed, prevent illness serious enough to cause hospitalization or death. After 4 weeks, you’re protected. I fully intend to keep observing the safety protocols even after April 9.
Another interesting fact: An MGH nurse who had Covid (and recovered well) said she had a bad reaction to the vaccine. She also observed that this is true of Covid patients in general.
@Steven L. Taylor:..Peter Sellers…
There will be much time and little to do…
@Gustopher:
It sounds like the voice to text feature on my xfinity remote does a better job than voice to text on an iPad, lol (I also own an iPad, but do not use Siri), which is almost criminal considering Apple is a 2 trillion dollar company (yeesh, it has been a while since I checked the market cap of Apple, a 2 trillion valuation is nuts). This is what happens when companies that can afford to spend on talent do not bother to do so (at the end of the day, Siri is code…so Apple does not care to hire someone who can fix the code).
The iPad virtual keypad also blows chunks, again…fixable if Apple wanted to fix but they do not care.
I say this as someone who owns an iPad I use everyday and an Apple TV I use quite often, so I am not the cliché Apple hater, but it is frustrating that they just gave up on making the end user QOL better when using certain gadgets by not fixing the voice to text and virtual keyboard issues.
@CSK: I’ve seen a few articles that people with long Covid are seeing symptoms decrease after the vaccine, although researchers say it’s too soon to know for sure if it’s a significant cure. Link
@Monala:
Well, that’s encouraging, isn’t it?
@CSK:
Of 2022? 😉
Just half-kidding. When this thing started, I figured it would end by Summer, because initially it looked more like flu. Once we learned of transmission by air, and especially asymptomatic transmission, I still hoped it would end by around April 2021, because of masks and distancing and lockdowns. But then we saw what happened.
If not enough vaccines are applied, and people keep lowering their guard, and some of the variants resist the vaccines (even if not enough to put you in the hospital), this thing could go on for another year or two.
@CSK:
I got my second Moderna shot a week and a half ago and still have the bruise.
@CSK:
To be expected. Same as many people reacting hard to their second shot in the two-shot vaccine series. Their already-primed immune systems jump on that second exposure, all gunz a-blazin’.
@Mister Bluster:
Red Green wrote in one of his books:
That is my dog – fact
My dog doesn’t bite – opinion
to help people differentiate between the two.
His show was probably my favourite Canadian show ever.
@Kathy:
Well, I’m hoping that by this summer we’ll be about 90% back to normal. It would be nice to go to a restaurant again. Not essential, but nice. Of course, I’m mindful of the people who’ve died, and I count my blessings.
@Grewgills:
Any other bad side effects? My brother had the Moderna (2 doses) and experienced none. I’m sure he feels fortunate for that.
@dazedandconfused:
I’m going to interpret that as a good sign.
@CSK: Squirrel!
@KM: SQUIRREL!
@Monala: WA! The “then” picture looks like Newt taking his granddaughter out to a fancy dinner. Ewwww!
@CSK:
I go to restaurants so seldom, I don’t even miss it.
Coincidentally, the last time I went to one was in mid-February 2020, as the pandemic was just getting started. It was on a weekend. I had lots of work to do, and lots of cooking. So I went in early to the office and ate breakfast in the coffee shop next door.
It would be nice to go to the movies. But chances are I’ll see Wonder Woman 84 online rather soon. Surely if I get to stay home next week with little to do.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Indeed. Reminds me of Kinko the Clown by Ogden Edsel. Nope, no link. Find your own, y’all!
@Kathy:
The restaurant was just an example. What I miss is not be able to go where I want and do what I wish when I feel like doing so. (Nothing I normally feel like doing is illegal.) Occasional travel is nice. So is going to the library without having to make an appointment for a specific time on a specific day. The freedom to grocery shop without having to wait in line to get in to the store, and then having to follow the arrows, which actually increases the time you have to spend in the place, which is unfair to the people waiting outside.
I realize these are all first-world problems. Generally they don’t bother me.
@Monala:
Calista always reminds me of…
https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/000/774/lime-cat.jpg
@CSK:
By “bad reaction” do you mean a strong immune response for a day or two? Because while it feels terrible at the time, that’s actually a good reaction in terms of future immunity.
@CSK:
No, these are all worldwide problems just now, except in countries where containment measures worked.
I do miss taking my time at the store, looking at new products or things I’ve never used in cooking before. I miss sitting down at a table to leisurely drink coffee on weekend mornings. If I’d been working from home, I might miss the office (aka the COVID death-trap). I get it.
@Stormy Dragon:
Well, she didn’t specify, but I gathered that she was fatigued and achy. I should add that she also said she reacted rather badly to most vaccines. That’s a large part of it, really: individual body chemistry. I’m lucky in that regard; shots don’t bother me.
My sister got her first shot of Pfizer a week ago Monday. She said she felt somewhat tired the next day, but a two-hour nap in mid-afternoon took care of that.
@Kathy:
Complaining about them is first world. But I would add that people facing starvation or the very real possibility of being caught up in a war and slaughtered have bigger problems than most of us not living with those threats.
As to grocery stores: I enjoy them, as you do, because they represent a culinary adventure to me.
@Monala: Perhaps being near the Republican men rots their souls, and that begins to show in the faces after a while. Or plastic surgery. One of the two. Or both.
You can’t stop aging, you can just make it look weird and unnatural.
IN case anyone might possibly be interested (I guess it could serve for future reference), the intestinal prep kicked in yesterday around 9 pm, just as I was driving home from work. It kept going intermittently until I went to bed, then resumed in the morning. For the record, I consumed the potion half at 11:30 and the other half around 14:30.
Today I took the first half at 8 am and the second at 12 pm. It kicked in around 5 pm.
Meantime the insurance says the PET CT has nothing to do with the hernia diagnosis.or treatment -you know, the diagnosis that found misplaced and inflamed ganglia-, and doesn’t want to pay for it. I’m urging my agent to keep up the fight, reminding them how many timely payments I’ve made since 2017 when I switched agents.
@CSK: I got the Moderna shot #1 this morning at Costco. No line, essentially no wait, relatively painless experience all the way around. They had me wait 15 minutes in case I got dizzy, but felt great. About two hours later I got a little woozy, but nothing all that concerning. The pharmacist that administered the shot said her second one left her feeling unpleasant for two days, but I may not experience the same. I’ll find out on April 6th.
I’m gearing up for a computer upgrade, new RAM and a new hard drive, you all behave yourselves until I get back, you hear?! 😉
If somebody could play “You Suck” by Consolidated for bill, that would be great.
@motopilot:
I’m glad it went well for you. The 15 minute wait is standard, AFAIK.
Just heard from a friend in Korea. I now know someone who died from SARS CoV-2. 🙁
Rest in peace, Harvey. Our lives are diminished with you gone.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
You have my condolences.
@CSK:
My oncologist and primary provider both told me years ago that the 15 minute wait is to make sure any allergic reaction isn’t going to be severe. Having had anaphylactic reactions to a couple of medications in my life, I heartily approve of the waiting period. Of course, YMMV.
@flat earth luddite:
I agree. It’s a good idea.
@Jax:
Get a solid state drive. At work, one of these turned my desk ornament into a working computer.
C’mon man, you know the guy or something…..
President Joe Biden appeared to forget who his secretary of Defense is Monday during a White House event promoting two female generals on International Women’s Day.
“I want to thank the former general,” Biden began, “I keep calling him general, but my… the guy who runs that outfit over there.”
The guy who runs “that outfit over there,” otherwise known as the Pentagon, is Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was confirmed by the Senate in January.
“I want to make sure we thank the secretary for all he’s done to try to implement what we just talked about,” Biden said later. “And for recommending these two women for promotion.”
@Kathy: I did. And an additional 32 GB of RAM. I’m seriously already back online!! Still downloading updates and whatnot, but I have never had a windows installation go that fast.
@Bill: C’mon, bill, do you really want us to have to find allllllll of the times Trump forgot someone’s name over the last four years?! FFS.
@Bill: man…must suck that he beat your boy like he owed him money. Actually, he probably does considering how cash poor he is without donations from rubes
@Bill: Oh look!!! Somebody already put it on YouTube. And that one’s only up to 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3e4QoxKIfo
@Jax:
Remember Yo Semite?
@flat earth luddite: friend of mine is an epidemiologist, and in the 15 min wait she would have a vasovagal response and pass out for a few minutes. Then she gave birth twice, and she doesn’t pass out any more. 😀
@Kathy: Pretty much anytime “the jerkwad formerly known as president™ got up in public or typed anything on Twitter, it was spelled or pronounced wrong. It’s like bill never actually SAW the videos or read the tweets.
@Jax: poor dumb Bill 😛
Hamberders, covfefe, and Tim Apple, oh my!
@Jax:
But he said he’s never made a mistake and he’s willing to stake his Noble prize on it!
@Teve: I’ve decided he doesn’t deserve Capital B Bill, he’s always gonna be little b bill. Little b bill who had the imaginary black girlfriend because he thought it gave him street cred. 😛
@Jax:
32 GB of Ram? Overkill?
I went with 16GB in my build but focused on timings.
Did you get an m.2 solid state or SATA?
@Kurtz:
Once upon a time, I upgraded a Win95 Compaq PC to Windows 98. The OS was good, but the computer slooooooowed way down. I then upgraded the RAM from 16 to 32 MB, and it was like a brand new machine.
Since then, I firmly there’s no such thing as too much RAM.
@Kurtz: I’ve had a lot of lag time while editing photos and videos from my drone, and getting memory errors on the stopcodes when it choked while editing. The computer can hold 64, and I like to put them in in pairs, so I went from 32 to 64, both brand new sticks.
And a new 1 TB SATA SSD, I wasn’t real sure exactly what the computer could hold until I cracked into it today, just going off the manufacturer specs it wasn’t very clear. It’s my first MSI computer, so far it’s 4 years old and still doing pretty well. It’s even better after the upgrades, haven’t had any hangups so far.
@Kathy:
Fair enough. I suppose it depends on use case as well. Photo/video editing and content creation benefit from a lot of RAM.
I can personally attest to the difference in os load times between HDDs and SSDs. At boot, with a modern CPU/mobo it was clear.
@Jax:
Awesome! I went without a computer intermittently. If I wanted to write, I went to a library or used the fam’s. I kept putting off building one.
When I was furloughed for about five weeks last year, I built one for my parents because they really needed a new one. I wanted to do a build, but I figured I’d cut my teeth on a basic one for them first.
A few months later, I built a rig for myself. I got a high end mobo and went midrange for the cpu and gpu. It turns out I did it at the right time, because had I waited much longer, I would have been frozen out of the gpu market entirely.
My plan was to grab one of the RX 6000 or RTX 30 series. Yeah…nope. The day nVidia announced the 30 series, a person on OfferUp wasselling the top last generation GPU for like $350. I missed it by 30 minutes. That person made a huge mistake, because they are still going for $1000+.
Almost as bad for me the night Prime Day had the pricing glitches. I saw a bunch of full-frame cameras and super-premium glass selling for $99. It was right when it started, so had I just placed the orders instead of questioning it, I probably would have been among the few whose orders weren’t canceled. Damn.
@Kurtz: I like building them, it used to be one of my favorite things to do! Kinda gotten out of the habit since I had kids. Things have changed a lot since the old Pentium 3’s and 4’s were top of the line. 😉 I’ve been suffering through “off the shelf” rigs until I bought this one with the intention of eventually upgrading it.
@Jax:
Yeah. Kids change everything. Then again, you could make one of them do it. 😉
My first build…i was really careful. Asked a couple of questions on a Discord server. Stayed up all night. Then had everything ready to go… And had to leave for the Dr.
Got back. Took a deep breath. Hit the switch. Nothing. Thought for a beat before I started going back through cables. Finger snap in my brain. Forgot to flick the PSU switch to the on position. POST immediately upon correction.
Deep breath.