VisualStudio is different from VSCode.

The library assistant (not even a trained librarian) had such a huge impact on the culture of my high school. He wasn’t particularly well-liked, as he was the rule enforcer (no playing Flash games on the computers during lunch – I think you could play before school), but he’d put a stack of photocopied NYT crosswords out on his desk at the entrance to the library every morning and so many kids did the crossword.

It’s not just steering kids to books like the quoted parent said; at the schools I went to, it was often non-teaching staff who you felt were looking out for you as an individual, often because you interacted with them mostly one-on-one. Certainly, there were teachers who played a huge role in my life, but I will remember the name of the custodian at my primary school for far longer than I’ll remember the names of some classroom teachers. (I already don’t remember the name of my 2nd or 5th grade teachers, now that I’m thinking about it.) The library is basically the only place you can stash a kid “to do an independent study” (aka let the smart kid amuse themselves), or take a make up test, or hang out when the school elevator is busted and they can’t get upstairs. I guess you can use a “disciplinary center”, but let’s be real.

I’m probably five years younger than you. We had rope climbing but it wasn’t part of the Presidential Physical Fitness Award (which I am seemingly deeply proud of actually having managed in the third grade, despite being crap at pull ups, and I was even worse at rope climbing).

Yes–elementary school (K-3) in Illinois, early 1990s. I was crap at it. We also had gymnastics rings.

I’m pretty sure none of the other schools I went to had ropes or rings in the gym, used or not.

I guess it’s not actually a widget, it’s a silent notification (that shows current conditions plus hourly if you expand it). The actual hourly forecast in the app is like that too, but since you can see the percentage chance of precipitation, it’s less annoying. I switched from the Norwegian Met Office to the NWS in the hopes Norway was just rubbish at forecasting the US, but it’s the same–it’s how Weawow maps the forecast data to icons.

I’d take a screenshot, but unbelievably Weawow doesn’t think it’s going to rain today.

The one thing that bugs me about Weawow is that the logic for when to display rain or thunderstorms in the widget is way wrong. It seems to show the rain or thunderstorm icon at the slightest possibility of precipitation.

I believe the Norwegian weather service (which is the default option, IIRC) does worldwide forecasting.

Twitter had the Arab Spring as this odd formative event, where it suddenly became a source of news information. I think it’s really hard to know how Twitter would have developed without that.

The first time they come is really hard (so much shame), but it gets easier. I’m not going to pretend that I’m not sometimes up at 5am cleaning before the cleaner comes, though.

Just ask around and google. Word of mouth is your best bet for finding someone running a one person business, though you can look at any noticeboards in shops near you–my local coffee shop generally has someone with a flyer up. Yelp and Google will turn up worker-owned cooperatives, which makes me feel better about the ethics of paying someone to clean.

I went back to a trackball maybe two years back and it is glorious. For whatever reason, my family had trackballs growing up and then I never had one as an adult.

Doubtful, though it might be possible to emulate System 6 or System 7 and get it running on Windows or Linux.

Yeah – while I have a deep and abiding love for Ocean, most of my favorite spirits are from Jagged Earth, I think. I kind of like playing the ridiculously complicated ones to figure out how they work, like the Hummingbird one.

I like both “solitaire” solo and play two-handed by myself. They’re different kinds of challenges, which is nice. Most of my board game friends aren’t local so I’m basically constantly on the lookout for things that work well solo.

I am basically permanently obsessed with Spirit Island.

Extremely retro, but currently available on the Mac App Store: Mess O’ Trouble. It was a WorldBuilder game–think Infocom, but with static pictures you could interact with. I believe your choice of Daredevil Dawn or Fearless Frank had some impact on the gameplay if you got far enough, but child me never did.

I’m not a heavy gamer, but I’m content with Manjaro. I don’t dual boot, though I do have access to an older computer with Windows 10. I haven’t had cause to use it for games, though.

I’m guessing what they’re referring to is that it waits to fetch the next page of the timeline until relatively “late”. There’s a definite hitch in scrolling for me when it’s fetching more posts.

That said, I’m perfectly satisfied with Jerboa.

Though not “news”. Studies have been reaching the same conclusion for decades.

I was thinking more solo board games – I have roughly no TTRPG experience, though I’d be willing to try. (I last played D&D probably 20 years ago in high school. It was one of those things that I felt I was supposed to be into, but, when push came to shove, it wasn’t my jam. Now, that was also true of computer games and I like some now.)

Fair. :) What else do you find works well solo? I don’t have many local friends, so I’m either solo or online.

It’s a bit of a learning curve, but I find I like Spirit Island playing two spirits at once better than a single spirit.

If you have Tabletop Simulator, there’s an excellent Spirit Island mod. I believe people organize games there on the Discord (linked from the subreddit…) but I’ve never played with strangers.