cRazi_man
I’ve got a pre-paid, burner sim card for bullshit like this so I don’t have to use my real number for anything.
Keep a bullshit number, bullshit email address and keep bullshit name/DoB. The pro-tip there is to start valuing your privacy and stop giving companies your data.
- Safety razors - I’ve got thick growth and I was spending more and more on expensive multi-blade razors trying to find a decent shave without the blade going dull after 3 uses. The answer was to have less, better quality blades rather than the expensive trash in the market. A safety razor multipack costs a pittance and has lasted me over a year. Each blade is 2 sided and can be flipped. And when you’re done with it, it can be recycled with no plastic waste. There’s literally no down side if you wet shave.
- Electric screwdriver - it doesn’t matter how much DIY you do or how rarely you make IKEA furniture, you still need an electric screwdriver.
- Brain hacks - your brain and body are predictable physical objects that are programmed a certain way. If you take the time to learn how they work, you can use that to your advantage. e.g. If you know that procrastination isn’t a time management problem, but rather an emotional regulation problem about the task that’s due; then you can start addressing the cause. Or if you want to build a new habit, you can combine it with something you like, to make you look forward to it (e.g. pick a TV show you really want to watch and only allow yourself to watch it while you’re on the treadmill). Or realise that discipline and motivation are finite resources in the day. There’s too much info to cover here, but I learn about these things from podacsts mostly:
https://www.drlauriesantos.com/happiness-lab-podcast
https://www.schwab.com/learn/choiceology
https://youarenotsosmart.com/podcast/
- “Good enough” tech - You will save a lot of money if you define your use case for tech and then buy a product that is good enough to do the job (and preferably secondhand). I’m currently writing this out on a laptop I bought last week for £150 from eBay, brand new condition Dell, Intel 8th gen i7, 16GB RAM and half TB NVME drive. My gym TV is a £30 IPS Dell monitor with a Fire TV stick.
- Facebook Marketplace - make a dummy account for a facebook marketplace. I have bought tons of “like new” things in brand new condition (e.g. a whole home weights gym setup) for a fraction of brand new price. Also if there’s anything I want to get rid of, then I just post it for sale. I have had a completely worn out, cosmetically destroyed desk that I posted online for £1. Someone came and collected it the same day. It saved me a trip to the junkyard by having someone come collect it and saved the waste by going to someone who will use it. 2nd pro tip: never post anything for free. Scumbag entitled people monitor facebook for free deals and you will have a bad time. Post things for £1 and you’ll get serious people who will be grateful.
- Accept what you can’t change - your life will be much better if you stop spending energy pushing against things you can’t influence. Traffic cop walking away after giving you a ticket? Accept the hit and walk away. You took a risk not paying for parking, it didn’t work out. Go home and tell your spouse about it; then move on with your life.
It is such a blessing to have unrefined taste. My brother is an audiophile and has fallen into this hole. I can’t tell the difference. I got cheap bookshelf speaks for the TV and that’s good enough for me as an upgrade from the TV built in speaker. My 15 year old PC Logitech speakers are doing great. Anker earphones had good enough reviews from soundguys.com. I listen to my brother’s speakers with his lossless music and it really makes no difference to me. It has been great for my wallet. I mostly listen to podcasts anyway.
Make one yourself. It’s not very difficult if you have some tools, and you’ll be able to make any customised layout with whatever buttons you want. I’ve made a bunch of them myself (check my post history and scroll all the way down).
In fact, my old home made hitbox is sitting unused in a box and I can sell that pretty cheap (if there’s interest in paying for delivery from England).
Plex is on the Native Synology app. Sonarr, radarr, etc are in containers. The Synology NAS intermittently stops being accessible. I haven’t been able to figure out the problem. I find it impossible to troubleshoot network problems. I think it is my router. Restarting the router seems to fix it. Factory resetting the router didn’t solve the problem.
In summary: my wife is fed up and wants Netflix back.
If this ends up being the place someone is able to offer support, I’ll add some details:
Equipment:
Virgin Media Hub 3 (set to modem only mode) -> TP-link AX73 | AX5400 -> LAN connection to Synology with static IP set in Synology settings.
Synology has the Plex app (native Synology version from the Plex website). Alongside that I’m running the following Docker containers:
GlueTUN project with surfshark VPN. This runs qBittorrent, Prowlarr and FlareSolverr (I used (this guide)[https://drfrankenstein.co.uk/qbittorrent-with-gluetun-vpn-in-container-manager-on-a-synology-nas/] and (this guide)[https://drfrankenstein.co.uk/prowlarr-and-flaresolverr-via-gluetun-in-container-manager-on-a-synology-nas/])
Media fetch project containing Sonarr, Radarr, and Bazarr.
This seemed to work fine before I added the Arr’s. Even after I added Arr’s it worked fine initially, but now for the past few weeks it has been causing constant problems that are solved by restarting the router (once or twice a day).