Personally I like Vera best because it’s a unique name that sounds pretty. However, as someone with a long name as well, I just let my friends call me whatever they want so long as I agree with it. That’s sort of how nicknames work; you don’t get to choose but if your friends are respectful enough, you can approve of it.

Back in college and grad school I used Adobe Acrobat to read all class materials and write notes/highlight texts. One of the benefits was that it was easy to search for key words. You could search your own notes/comments and you had the option to copy the highlighted text so it was searchable.

The pro version also has OCR features so you can do the same with scanned text. I wouldn’t pay for it now considering Adobe’a anti-consumer policies, but you can easily find a bootleg copy.

And if you enjoy reading print outs, you can print the pdfs along with all your comments and highlights.

Edit: Forgot to mention this was all on my laptop since typing and reading is a lot easier oh that than a smartphone

Surprised PBS shows aren’t mentioned more here, especially not Mr. Rogers Neighborhood being mentioned.

So in no particular order:

• Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood: great show for teaching kids to how to navigate emotions and complex situations like death and discrimination but in ways they can understand

• Sesame Street: similar to Mr. Rogers but more for younger children

• Bill Nye the Science Guy: Made science accessible and fun for children. Good way to build a sense of curiosity and desire for experimentation

• Zoom: similar to Bill Nye in that it made me what to try all the activities they shared. Lots of fun games, recipes, brain teasers etc to keep kids busy. The fact that it had an all kid cast made it more accessible as a kid. Highly recommended since it seems less remembered than other PBS shows

Non-Educational:

• The Simpsons: this may be divisive but I grew up when they were super popular and I believe it helped develop my sense of humor. The earlier episodes were also pretty wholesome

• The Avatar (Last Airbender and Korra): well written show that is based on many East Asian cultures and touches on themes of depression, genocide, war, and hope (among many others). One of my favorite shows to this day

Can you use an aux cable? Just thinking of old school solutions

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Is a dedicated mp3 player out of the question? Would be a simple solution that doesn’t require any internet access for when you’re in areas with poor reception.

Never went to the big cons but I recently went to a small local anime market. Went with a friend who goes to a bunch of those events and had a lot of fun!

Some tips if you go

• Bring water. It gets hot in there and I couldn’t find any vending machines so I was dehydrated
• Eat first. The venue had two food places and both were super crowded. Was like a 30 min wait for mall food court food
• Be prepared for the smells. The stereotypes are true. Some people smelled so bad there. I wore a mask but I could still smell some people
• Go with a friend. It was a lot of fun and way less intimidating
• Start small. Same as going with a friend. Less intimidating and more doable.

Never heard this song before but it looks like “Don’t Hurt Yourself” by Beyoncé fits the bill.

The accent isn’t heavy at all. Surprisingly not very racist, or at least, not done well at all.

I’m more concerned about his delusional rambling in which he thinks he alone prevented a war between India and Pakistan.

I’d disagree on Pedro Pascal"s performance. I thought he did an excellent job as Joel. He was nominated across multiple awards for that role.

As for the movie/character you mentioned, I had never heard of it but will check it out. I’m assuming you mean the 1984 version which seems to have better audience reviews than the 2024 Netflix TV series adaptation.

Fair. I’d say the bond between Joel and Ellie is wholesome in a world that everything and everyone is out to get them.

Wrote this in another thread but I love the found family trope and Spy x Family totally fits that bill. I wrote a few other examples below.

Movies

• Logan
• Ice Age
• Wild Robot
• Up
• Despicable Me

Shows

• The Last of Us
• The Mandalorian
• The Witcher
• Daddy Buddy (this one is an anime on Crunchyroll. I highly recommend this if you liked Spy x Family. Revolves around 2 assassins who accidentally wind up with a 4 year old)

Cool thanks! My goal is to install Linux on a laptop I don’t use frequently to make sure I can set it up with all my apps. Will have to try this once I get around to installing Linux.

I was hoping the Linux app would work like Windows Phone Link in that I could answer calls on my computer using my computer speakers and microphone. I guess using the speakers on my phone is an easy solution, but I don’t like taking my attention off my computer to make phone calls. With my current set up, I can make and answer phone calls directly from my desktop.

Yeah I replied to another comment saying I’m surprised how cheap lower capacity SSDs have become. It was only like $100 more than a comparable HDD.

It’s been a long time since I’ve upgraded the storage on my PC so I am surprised at how much cheaper SSDs have gotten. The fact that a 4TB WD Black SSD is only $100 more than the HDD one is pretty crazy to me. With that in mind, if OP is willing to spend more money, than the SSD is definitely the way to go.

One thing to note, however, is that Option 1 only has expansions for 3.5" storage (i.e. HDDs). So if OP does decide to go with Option 1, they’ll have to take the 1TB SSD it comes with and replace it with whatever they buy, rather than adding additional storage. Option 2, however, only has m.2 expandable storage so using only SSDs for that computer would be a lot easier.

I guess 2 TB is also relatively small. However, considering that OP only mentioned one specific game their child wanted to play, I think it’s not an unreasonable amount of storage.

If their kid also wants to do things like download/edit movies, graphic arts, or other storage heavy activities then of course they could go for a larger storage. It all depends on their needs and budget.

Option 1 will work for a while. The only thing you will need for the near-ish future is larger storage. Games nowadays take up so much space and 1 TB won’t last long. Would recommend buying a 2-3TB HDD while you’re at Microcenter. They may even be able to install it for you

I checked them and GoHarddrive but they usually only have enterprise hard drives and like I said in my post, those would be too loud to sit right next to me.

Thanks to everyone who replied. Majority of the responses were to buy now if in US (which I am). So I bit the bullet and just bought them.