Excellent Dag. Love me some good old noisy floppy disk noises!
I had a 128 mac my parents bought me for Xmas in 84. I ended up trading it to my brother for his Apple 2 (bought for him when it first came out in the 70's) because he had tons of games for it, and I had little on the mac.
I also learned programming on Apple 2's in 7th grade...an elective summer school class. Does that earn me double nerd points?

#XMAS JAMMIES - Video WTF christmas card has been added as a related post - related requested by eric3579.

Yeah, the music is good, but I think if my family held Xmas in Thailand every year it might go farther towards making me want to go more often (not that I could actually afford to).

Oh god yeah, plus it's EA so you'll probably start out with no weapons and have to buy everything with microtransactions.

BUT... this flips a switch in me marked "playing with my snowspeeder against AT-ATs on xmas day as a kid", and I love it for that.


@ant and @Ashenkase, I would pay an unholy amount of money for a new X-Wing/TIE Fighter game. Throw in oculus support and I'd probably sell my house to pay for it.

I heartily concur sir, as the last 2 months in a row have netted me two (count 'em) 2, perfectly functional as the day Sony made 'em, sports walkmanz (in Sony yellow), one with, one without AM/FM radio, both cassette players fully functional as the day they were made to last forever.

Uhhh, the am/fm receivers in those things?? Long and strong, highest quality imaginable.

The goddamn things are indestructible and 2 aa's last longer in one of them than in any device made since that requires em...

Uh....one was 5 dollars new in the box from a garage sale, one form a thrift store for $4.04. Incidentally, when these things were on the top of Xmas lists new...they cost about $125-$150 US back in early 80's dolla-Do the math, bitches.

I wear your grandma's clothes, motherfuckers!

Oh and Yogi, I'd hasten to guess if you ever had a chance to converse with SM whom you've so smugly dismissed and relegated to some corner of your mind behind a door you've never opened, that yer nutsack would shrivel as much and as fast conversely, as the Grinch who stole xmas' heart grew that day when he looked-down on Whoville...

Lived in Ontario (28 years), Brisbane, Australia (5 years), Alberta (7 years), and now Texas (14 years).

Agree with pretty much with Boneremake on Alberta, gets more points than Ontario. My Australian experience was good, in both the city and rural (blew an eardrum due to infection in Longreach QLD at Xmas... the doctor was drunk when they wheeled him into emerg, but he was a gentle, caring drunk).

Small things in Ontario are manageable - anything requiring stuff beyond typical emergency room patching up in more rural locations (my definition - anywhere far enough from Toronto that you can't see the nighttime glow, so north of Newfenmarket sort of) is quite lacking (v. long wait times for things like weekly dialysis, MRI, even open MRI, GI tract scoping, ultrasounds, contrast X-rays etc). Parental unit #1 with diabetes requiring 3 times a week dialysis almost snuffed it as there were only 4 chairs in the unit 14 miles from home, got on the list and had to wait for someone to die before getting on the team. Finally snuffed it when they shut down these 4 chairs and the new unit was now a 90 mile round trip 3 times a week for man who could barely walk or see. Died from exhaustion, not diabetes. 2nd parental unit needs an MRI for some serious GI issues, can't keep food down, losing weight rapidly. Wait 4.5 months and we'll see if we can get you in. I'm having her measured for the box.

Having said that, the situation is easier to describe in Texas, the land of excess (excessive wealth and excessive poverty).

Good health insurance plan, preferably through employer with lots of employees = wait times for advanced procedures measured usually in minutes or hours, sometimes days, but not weeks or months. You get taken care of, and your birthing room at the local maternity ward looks like the Marriott (just Couryard though, so no mini-bar or microwave).

Mediocre or no health insurance plan = pray you never get sick enough to require more than what you can buy at the CVS or splint up by watching do-it-yourself first aid videos on youtube, because an unplanned night in the hospital or a trip to emerg in the short bus with swirly lights followed by admission can, for many, wipe them out or sure eat up Bobby's college fund. No exaggeration. I have insurance, but for a reference point, one night in hospital (elective) for a turbinectomy (google it people) including jello and ice cream came in at $14,635. Yes, one night. 24 hours. Do the math. An emergency room visit for a forearm cut requiring 13 stitches (and I didn't even bleed on their white sheets - just cut through the skin to the fat tissue) was billed at $2,300 bucks. Our new baby tried to exit the meatbag as a footling breach, so emergency C-sectioned him out, and one extra night in hospital (2 in total) - all up, billed at just shy of $24K. We now have 3 full service hospitals within 5 miles of our house, and a full service children's hospital in the same radius. And they just started building another. Somebody's making money. If you don't have insurance, or your insurance is shitty (huge deductibles, huge copays) you will eat much of these types of costs. Rule: cheaper to die than get sick.

Ontario and AB might have longer wait times, but even an 83 year old woman in a rural Ontario village with no pension, insurance, income or large stacks of cash can (eventually) get the health care she needs without spending unjustifiable amounts of money. Happy birthday mom.

My 2¢

SO uh....mom probably did abandon it or thought it fine, if it had been in any real danger of predators chances are good there aren't toooo many black bear
bobcat, lynx, cougar, or coyote in Hudson NY, river town (har)...smallish, quaint, lotta antique shops...cops with terse tones t'wards defenseless animals (probably bullied in school, hope he doesn't have kids). Why call animal control, free the little guy and let him loose back into the food chain, he/she looked fine innit?? Not like it was frikkin' choking on those xmas lights.

Looks better than most MREs'...Stock-up for protracted food shortages to come near you and celebrate Xmas every day under martial law!

from: VideoSift SiftBot <siftbot@videosift.com>
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"*dead"

No, it's not the autobahn, and that's why the speed limits are ~100kph. If it was the autobahn they would (and should) be higher.

But people drive at or around the speed limit. That is reality.

I'm not some insane person who thinks we should be able to drive at whatever speed we like, but I would like to see a more reasoned debate on this. I 100% agree that there are plenty of roads in NZ that should have a lower limit*, but as I said earlier, why aren't the cops speed checking those roads?

And on the flip side, there are plenty of roads that are perfectly safe to drive on at 110kph, but it is politically unpalatable to admit that.

* After my xmas holiday, I drove home over danseys pass. There are signs at the entrance: 4wd only, no boats, no caravans.... 100kph speed limit... insanity.

I agree that you should do everything you can to avoid hitting someone even if it's their fault.

My point is that in the situation portrayed here, there was nothing he could have done. Even if he'd been at the speed limit, he was still going to t-bone the other guy.

And he wasn't doing 10mph over the limit he was doing 7kph over the limit (barely 4mph).

Meanwhile, the other guy is sitting at an intersection on an open stretch of road. He could have waited another 5 secs and been perfectly safe, yet he pulls out across oncoming traffic. THAT is an actual, genuine problem on NZ roads.

The reason this ad is being shown at the moment is that the police in NZ have started a crackdown on speeding. There used to be a 10kph tolerance (to allow for the fact that focusing on keeping your speed exactly at or under the limit is more dangerous than actually paying attention to the road), but now it's 4kph and this ad is trying to justify it.

What really irks me is that I drove about 1000km over xmas, all over the South Island, and the ONLY place I saw a speed check was on the main highway. The straight, flat, wide, can-see-for-miles-in-either-direction highway.

Meanwhile on the narrow dangerous winding sections? Not a cop in sight.

Thank you for re-titling, I thought it was improper to make a title NSFW no matter what you feel about the subject.
My constitution was written by EDUCATED zealots that understood their way of thinking was not how everyone else thinks.
We've had numerous discussions about where I live, I guess it just goes in one ear and out the other, huh?
It's funny, you seem to have 0 faith in anything human, so I don't know why you would mind...but you are partially correct...I have a deep respect for thought, and a severe lack of respect for faith. Faith is belief in something you can't prove or know, and I see that as idiotic, but I don't have it out for those with faith. Try to see the difference. I know, it's a difficult concept.
You certainly don't seem comfortable or in control from your comments here, or sane or healthy. What you write is all angry complaints (often about your lack or loss of control) and insults mixed with unintelligible Ching-speak. You often sound like an angry and abused 13 year old douche of a girl that got a thesaurus for Xmas, not a thoughtful, reasonable, caring, or thinking adult to me...I'll give you passionate. I'm fairly certain I'm not in the minority with that assessment, just saying.
.....and the video still doesn't work for me...perhaps that's for the best...I really don't want to listen to Feinstein. She disgusts me.
Edit: did you mean rectification? Considering the source, I could not be sure.

marry xmas and peace on earth

*✨ Love to You and Yours, Merry Xmas NR & MBBB ✨