My ex-water heater rental company from before I moved out in early May has been pestering me to pay an amount which I don't owe them (nor are they telling me why I supposedly owe it, even after I asked them to) and just today I got a "Final Notice" from them with a date of "13/~1/2020" on it...

...yeah...

...I think even the collection agency is gonna laugh at that one when they eventually call.

I haven't scanned it yet but obviously I need to because how do you screw up a date that badly??

It's the computers fault, naturally.

On January 13, 2020, I'll be drawn out of retirement to resurrect this old thread. I'll be a young old man wondering how we ever elected an orange turnip for President and wistfully thinking back of our glory years when the eloquent statesmen G W B ruled our lands.

I predict Shenmue III will have recently been released for the PlayStation 4 and it will be as gloriously terrible as the first two installments.

So after 13/~1/2020 they'll stop pestering you? Or your service will end on that date? And how do you rent a hot water heater? Just buy an on demand system and pay a plumber to install it. As to what I'm doing today, I just installed FF7 on my notebook. All I need is a usb keyboard or a copy of ff7_input.cfg to play.

Actually, in all the things they've ever sent me over the years, the month comes first. So chances are they mean the ~1st day of the 13th month of 2020 as the date upon which they sent me the letter I have.

There's no other dates or such on the letter.

It's a surprisingly common thing in Ontario, Canada... unfortunately. I forget how the practice took off originally, but it's such a stupid and silly thing to do now that these rental companies are doing everything they can to squeeze every last penny out of current and ex customers until they eventually go bankrupt since people tend to know better nowadays.

When I ended my rental with them I paid off my final bill properly and everything, and then after a couple months they sent me a "past due" amount (not an actual bill) of nearly $200. (Keeping in mind that my quarterly rental rate was about $40.)

I told them I would be willing to pay the amount owing if they could provide me with a breakdown of what these charges were for as well as proof that I signed a contract indicating these charges would be owed for those reasons. They've yet to do either.

Even when I initially called them up months ago to ask what would be involved with ending my rental with them, the person on the other end was trying to rush me off the phone, so not only did they fail to explain if any charges would be involved, but they had neglected to record the address to send my final bill to, so if I hadn't called them back immediately following to provide that information they would've had a heck of a time sending me supposedly past due amounts for anything.

Water heater rental companies are a dying breed in my part of the world... and considering how badly they're run nowadays it's probably for the best.

Does that mean approximately January 1, 2021?

I didn't know [or forgot] that you were in Ontario! \o/

When I moved into my own place I had the unfortunate luck of getting a recycled phone number from some guy that apparently owes money. Creditors started calling daily for him, leaving messages on my answering machine. It's been about 3 years, give or take, and they still call. The amount of resources wasted on harassing the wrong person probably outweighs the money owed, and even if it doesn't there should be some legal stance that I can take to make them stop (since they are harassing the wrong person). It's frustrating as Hell. For a while I had an offensive answering machine greeting that basically called them all bad words. Eventually a friend of said person called the number, apparently equally oblivious to him having changed his, and starting lecturing me on a message about how rude my answering machine greeting was. She hung up when I picked up the phone assertively. Anyways, fuck this guy, and fuck "creditors", is all I have to say.

Hopefully they don't start harassing you. Or if they do, hopefully there's something that you can do to stop them. Perhaps it would be worth seeking legal representation. I imagine this can hurt your "credit rating" if you don't address it.

Personally I don't believe in credit. If you can't pay cash for it now [and it won't be worth roughly the same amount later] then you shouldn't buy it.

You know the value of your bike dropped in half the second it came off the sales lot right?

I think he was talking about the value of the money itself (a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow) because of the ability of money to earn more, in addition to politicians counterfeiting inflation.

Oh, that's easy, believe it or not.

If you truly owe money to a company, creditors will harass you forever until you pay it back. If you don't actually owe anything (as is my case) you simply tell the creditor the very first time they call that the amount owing is an error. It's then up to the company who wants this money out of me to either figure out that they've screwed up, or take me to court. Over the amount of around $170 I seriously doubt they would even attempt to do that as it would probably cost them a lot more money to make the attempt than they would get back... but considering how inept they are to not even print a proper date on a letter they sent me I wouldn't completely put it past them.

You know I paid cash for that, right? Even so, I have heard that these bikes apparently hold their value quite well.

I was referring more to the fact that certain items don't really lose value the same as others. For example, a computer, or a car, or indeed a motorcycle will not return the same that you paid for it. You lose money on those even if you do pay cash. Paying credit means you're also going to lose the interest. At least with certain items, like houses, they should ideally hold relative value so that you're only really losing the interest and fees and can turn around and sell for nearly what you paid (depending on the market when you sell).

That said, I'm still not really comfortable buying a house on credit which is why I am living in an apartment for now... Of course, arguably that's even worse because you don't get to keep any value... I digress.

I have called back two or three creditors and explained to them that they have the wrong person. They just say that they can't take my word for it and keep calling. It's absurd, but what can you do? Aside from taking them to court, I don't think there's much that I can do about it. If I do take them to court I'll probably lose a ton of money on it. It's bullshit. The whole system is fucked.

Post the info about the company etc. on a widely viewed public forum, when they try to sue you, they'll be looking for Joe Shmo instead of Brandon McCaig.

Sue me for what? Posting their information on the Web? First of all, they don't tell me their company details when they call, and they don't answer questions if you ask them. They are calling to harass you, not to be harassed themselves. You can reverse look-up their phone numbers though. Secondly, there's no reason to sue me for posting public information in public. Thirdly, if the intention is to shame them into behaving that won't work because consumers don't choose to do business with them. It's private companies that choose to do the business with them. Consumers have no control over their successful or failure (aside from maybe refusing to pay, but then they'll just harass you or whoever else ends up with your phone number... I doubt it really affects their bottom line much at all). The system built on credit is insane. The USA is worst for it, it seems. That needs to be fixed. It's no surprise the US government is living on credit when the entire country is doing the same.

Buy a phone with a blacklist feature.

edit:

I just remembered that my sister had the same problem. She bought a whistle, and when debt agencies called for the wrong person she just blew on the whistle down the phone line.

They stopped calling pretty fast.

Call your phone company and demand a new phone number and explain to them the situation.

I had a similar problem when I got my cell phone. I just ignored them, I didn't want to waste minutes on them. They eventually stopped calling. Most likely the callers bought the debt from a bank and are trying to collect something before it becomes uncollectable. Either ignore the calls or change your number.

I wouldn't buy a house on credit either...

Well yeah, I'm better off having someone gifting it to me

My electric company has stopped allowing me to make automatic payments in part because of a check they never attempted to cash (according to my bank) that they claim bounced.

I've resolved to pay my bill by certified-mailing them loose change until they reconsider. I'm not sure how solid such a threat is...

On January 13 2020, I'll be wishing my brother congrats on his masters degree from Purdue and a happy belated birthday. I'll be discussing what to do with our sister, who having went to Indiana University, is still unconscious in a gutter somewhere smelling like bambam on a bad day. I still will have contributed nothing useful to this community, and the little bastards I will have spawned will be causing hair loss.

I had been repeatedly asked to pay a med insurance bill of 0 Shekels 0 agoras*.. I wonder how much was spent on the monthly mail delivery.

*
Shekel(ILS)- Israeli Currency
agora is 0.01 a Shekel.

So send them a check in the requested amount! You deadbeat!

The two parts of your assertion sounded separate. Vehicles halve their book value when driven off the lot. Even if its got 0km on it.

While technically correct, the truth is that we simply overpay the damn thing.

It happens with many things (except most real-estate). Buy a new TV, and see if anyone will be willing to buy it, even if still unopened in the original box, for the original sale price. It's unlikely.

There's something in the human psyche that makes you not want to pay anywhere near retail for something you perceive as "used".

I find that bizarre for two reasons:

1. The moment you tell them they have the wrong number when they ask for someone other than you, they should stop calling it.

2. How would you even know they're creditors unless they introduced themselves as such prior to asking for the person they're trying to reach? They would ask for the person they're trying to reach first, THEN reveal who they are... unless they REALLY suck at their job.

Actually, something I got in the habit of doing several years ago: When someone calls me and asks for someone who's not me, I don't just say they have the wrong number, I say, "You must have the wrong number, what did you try dialing?" I do this because it helps the person on the other end figure out if they simply dialed wrong, and I can correct them, or if they DO have the right number, I can say, "Well, that's my number but there's no one here by that name." Sometimes in the case of someone clearly calling from an office or call centre, they'll ask how long I've had the number for, and sometimes they'll even ask if I know the person they're asking about, but they never call back following.

I've also noticed that it's really important to never be rude with anyone who's got the wrong number, no matter how ridiculous they are, because it makes it seem like you're hiding something and may just get you a call back from them in the future.

In terms of collection agencies though, most don't have a ton of money to work with, so if they continue bothering you for completely unfounded reasons, just tell them that their information is wrong and that you will file a complaint and subsequently a lawsuit if they continue to harass you about it. That should shut them up since, if you followed through with those actions, it would more than likely shut them DOWN instead.

True, but I digress...

I was simply pointing out that it is base price that's inflated, and the value is way lower, in automotive just like in many other fields.

There's also flavor: I'd pay Kilobucks for a top-notch TV, but couldn't care less for my shoes (while in the end I also pay sound figures for those, meh)

You'd think my wife is at the opposite end of the spectrum.....of course she is!

So, price is what most ones are willing to pay (too bad most for of my customers that is DAMN close to zero).

EDITed for proper quoting.

I have never heard of value just halving when you drive off the lot.

It drops 15-20% sure, but halved? Hardly. You could still sell for more than half the original price even after a year, two if you do good maintenance.

It loses value but not quite as fast as you think.

Well, okay, cut off taxes and that's half, at least here.

Anyway I just think it was an hyperbolic expression, we often use it also in Italy where in the proper context "halved" may be generalized (hyperbole) into "severely reduced" even if not quite halved.

@ kris Asick
claiming via a collection agency for something I don't owe you is a sure way to get in court.

as a certain cable company will find out soon... verry soon that is

If the water heater rental company wants to waste excessive amounts of money paying someone to take me to court just to try and collect a measly $170 which again, I don't owe them, then it's just an even greater example of their spectacularly inept ability to run themselves.

I've been in a courtroom before. I've testified as a witness before. I don't fear it. Heck, that was even for a criminal case. $170 would be small claims so I wouldn't even have to pay for a lawyer, so even if the water heater rental company was able to somehow prove I owe them $170, I'd be down $170 and they'd be down hundreds to thousands for the cost of paying someone to take me to court in the first place.

Thus win or lose, they'd be expediting their ultimate demise, and that would be better for everyone.

Here if you loose you pay for the court cost..
So it's a good way to threaten malicous companies not to send false bills and even more claiming them.

If you try to rip me (or rob me) I'll put you out of bussiness

Even if I lost and by default would be required to pay for the cost of the water heater rental company to take me to court, I actually have a valid argument against that: I already sent a letter to the water heater rental company over a month ago saying I'd be willing to pay the amount if they could provide a breakdown of the cost and produce signed documents indicating I'd be responsible for it.

This is exactly the same thing they'd have to do in the court room to prove I owe them anything, and since I already sent them a letter saying I would pay the amount under those circumstances, the judge would almost certainly recognize that the water heater rental company is simply wasting everyone's time by completely ignoring the person they're trying to collect money from and should be responsible for their own court fees under those circumstances.

The other thing is, water heater rental companies here in Ontario typically don't have signed contracts between themselves and the people renting. I know that sounds ridiculous but it makes sense when you understand what happened in this province several years ago to create the situation that's going on with water heater rental companies right now. As such, the only signed contracts anyone has are for new rentals long after these events transpired. There's also a system in place now to ensure that people buying new properties sign documents indicating transfers of rental agreements for water heaters and such with the contract terms outlined. These documents never existed when I bought my house in 2004, and as such, I never signed anything in the first place with the company I was renting my water heater from. So even if they provide an accurate breakdown of the costs owed, they'd have a heck of a time proving that they had made me aware of those costs in advance of charging them.

...again, this is a company that sent me a final notice that was dated 13/~1/2020...

If I DO get a call/letter from a collection agency (and I'm almost certain I will) I'm also going to file a complaint against the water heater rental company with the BBB and with the Government of Ontario under our Consumer Protection Act.

Send that letter to them again, but registered mail. then you have direct proof you sent it, and they received it.

Can you even send registered mail to a P.O. Box?

EDIT: Just looked at the fine print for Canada Post and you can... *sigh*... trip to the post office it is then.

Fighting extortion is worthwhile even if a particular case costs more, otherwise bees wouldn't sting you. But effectively, animals learn not to mess with them and their honey, resulting in greater benefit in the long run.

They may argue that paying the bill in the past is acknowledgement that the contract existed between you and the company.

I'd check the regulations in your town first.

If they used that argument to claim I owe them fees they never told me about, I can simply argue that they never explained those fees to me and thus I couldn't have agreed to pay them. No contract to spell it out, no way to confirm who's right or wrong about that. This is why verbal agreements are terrible practice. Even if they have their contract terms written out somewhere, (and I'm pretty sure they do but certainly not on any documents they've ever sent me), since I never signed such a thing they can't prove I was made aware of those contractual obligations.

Besides which, I had contacted them about a week before I ended my rental agreement with them and I explicitly asked, "What would be involved in ending my water heater rental?" The person on the other end never told me about any fees associated with doing so and in fact, were rushing to get me off the phone as quickly as possible for whatever reason, to the point where they even forgot to ask where to send the final bill to. I had to call them back and provide that information, so if not for that, they wouldn't even know how to get in touch with me right now.

Yeah... these people seriously don't know what they're doing. It's no wonder water heater rentals are slowly dying off across the province.

BTW: I did indeed send them another letter yesterday, this time through registered mail. I included a copy of the original letter I sent them as well as a copy of the horribly mis-dated final notice they sent me. Willing to bet they'll just ignore it but hey, that's their problem and at least I can prove I sent them that stuff now.

So there's this law, I'm not sure if its canada wide or not, but apparently if your creditor doesn't get in contact with you about the "debt" for two years, they can't chase you down any more.

Wouldn't surprise me if there was such a law, but I doubt it will come into play considering the situation. The first contact the collection agency makes with me will likely be their last since, as far as I'm concerned, I don't owe the water heater rental company anything. It'd be MUCH different if I did actually owe them money and was refusing to pay it because I was a deadbeat or something.

Pay it, and use the waterheater til 13/1/2020. And if they take you to a court, you come with that bill saying you paid your bills up to 2020

Since I don't have a water heater anymore, let alone the house it was installed in, that would be a terrible idea.

Seems legit.

Ahhh haaa, sani flush. Brush your teeth with a brush.

Signs of life after all.

Pretty sweet, but next month you're gonna get a bill....

No I did not. I've been hacked!!!!! Seriously!!!>:(>:(>:(>:(>:(>:(>:(>:(>:( What can we do about this???

regret and cry uselessly as every day...

How is this thread not locked?

So Matthew actually set a timer since that time to unlock this post yesterday? Sweet. It’s a shame he isn’t back yet

Probably he doesn’t even remember this was supposed to happen. Nor does he care. 🤷‍♂️

This is woeird.

[on-topic]I find hard to understand why you, USA people, order the date data in so weird way (month/day/year?) instead the logic way (day/month/year) as most of the World does. Anyway it is quite funny that full time is day/month/year hours:minutes:seconds instead of seconds:minutes:hours day/month/year that is even more logic and more easy to order things.

No, sorry. Date time should be in big endian. YMDHMS.

YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS is the best format. It's 2020-01-15 09:28:00.

Biggest to smallest: years are bigger than months, which are bigger than days, which are bigger than hours, which are bigger that minutes, which are bigger than seconds.

Yep. See? Private Johnson gets it.

As for the rest of you sad sacks! Drop and give me 20!

i can log in

I don't think it was automatic. He posted in the login issues thread at the same time that this thread was resurrected so he was definitely here.

Global standards would be nice. Not just in dates, but measurements as well. meters vs feet.

I prefer Month Day Year because that is what was taught and used for at least 40 years of my life.

I was taught feet and inches. A ruler is 12 inches here. We don't carry around meter sticks...

Also, in 'Murica, the year is an afterthought. Everyone knows what year it is. They don't care. They don't want to see it. They mentally skip it unless it is strictly necessary.

1/17, 11:08AM -6 GMT

We don't do that in the Metric world either. Our rulers are 30cm (very close to a foot) or 40cm.

What's useful about YYYY-MM-DD is that it can be sorted alphanumerically without having to parse the components. Also, it's unambiguous. There are regions that do MM-DD-YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY. With many dates those are completely ambigious so if you discover data like that in the wild you can't know what it means. Fortunately, I haven't heard of any idiots doing YYYY-DD-MM yet. If anybody ever proposes it I suggest we burn them at the steak. That's probably the one scenario that would justify it.

Also, I can finally login again again.

@Enric Johnson
better for a name file.

Although they are more useful for logs or screenshots.

How dare you burn a steak?

I don't know who this "Enric" fellow is, but he sounds like a weirdo... I almost exclusively use that format for journal entries / logs. And file names. I have a bunch of source code files that are snapshots dated with "example202001190958", for example (program "example" dated on January 19th, 2020 at 09:59 in the morning).

Steak is much better well done.

@Elric Johnson
For source codes why don't you use 'git'? Although I think it does not save the dates of changes.

Why not use star date format?

A stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: "41254.7." The first two digits of the stardate are always "41." The 4 stands for 24th century, the 1 indicates first season. The additional three leading digits will progress unevenly during the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal point is generally regarded as a day counter.

Me too.

Star dates do not implicitly sort numerically alphanumerically.

Just because Trump made a "Space Force", (complete with CAMO uniforms may I add), doesn't mean we should use star dates.

2020/01/24 1020hrs

Fun fact: As much as people love to hate Trump, a "Space Force" 1) already existed under the air force. 2) China and Russia already have official Space Forces and have made substantial war research into space weaponry such as jamming and destroying satellites as well as hypersonic weaponry. 3) Just because we ignore space warfare to protect our "feel good" feelings doesn't mean a war won't happen in space. Being under-prepared doesn't make us the good guys.

Neil deGrasse Tyson said about the Space Force, "just because it comes out of Trump's mouth doesn't automatically make it a bad idea."

If Obama had declared it, people would have been hailing him as a "visionary".

I just find it funny that you need camouflage suits in space. ;/

Oh hell yeah.

{"name":"612311","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/1\/31134c960514c0c596a55bc1fc2ef17b.jpg","w":946,"h":2048,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/3\/1\/31134c960514c0c596a55bc1fc2ef17b"}

Looks familiar...

{"name":"612310","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/c\/dc1ad8a673a4b68aad96e13a59b1201b.jpg","w":723,"h":723,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/c\/dc1ad8a673a4b68aad96e13a59b1201b"}

This is hilarious. I didn't hear about it until I read about it here. Honestly, I don't think there's any sense to space warfare. Sure, if there's reason to believe there are hostile aliens within range of us then having a defence force would make sense. Last I checked there was zero evidence for that. As far as Earth colonies waging war in space I don't think it's a reasonable threat to defend against. Firstly, it would be prohibitively expensive. Secondly, it would be impractical. There are maybe a handful of nations on the planet with the resources to even attempt it, and they won't because a conflict between them would likely result in a nuclear threat and stalemate.

You might as well be saying the same thing about submarines.

Imagine having a weapon, that cannot physically be reached by 99% of the countries on the planet.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Space_warfare

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Militarisation_of_space

Also the incredibly named "Rods from God" weapon aka "Project Thor":

https://www.businessinsider.com/air-force-rods-from-god-kinetic-weapon-hit-with-nuclear-weapon-force-2017-9

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Kinetic_bombardment

A simple tungston rod floating in space, launched from a satelite, impacts with as much energy as a nuclear bomb, with zero radiation. Because all the energy is physical, it's also extremely hard to "stop it" because you can't just hit it before it "explodes" like a cruise missile. Imagine trying to "stop" a nuke once it already detonates. A Rod from God has all the energy from the fall itself (so your only chance is stopping or deflecting it very near launch before it gains energy).

China is also pioneering hypersonic missiles. Missiles that can launch from China and hit New York within like 20 minutes. They present an incredibly hard target to stop through any traditional anti-missile defenses. It's like trying to stop a cannon shell (almost impossible)... except >10x faster and carrying a nuclear warhead.

Another interesting one is that the US Navy has been seriously working on rail guns (Quake 3 fans I guess?) And made tons of progress. Like rods of god, the "payload" damage comes solely from the kinetic energy (the mass times speed squared), and they are not restrained to CHEMICAL speed limits (IIRC, typically the speed of sound) the way traditional bullets and cannons are. They're slated to fire like 200 KM in range, with no need for an expensive or complicated failable "warhead", and are also hypersonic in max speed.

I really pray we never use any of these new weapons. But they do represent pioneers of theoretical science combined with engineering applicability. There's also some "good" that comes out of mutually assured destruction... we think. Only time will tell, but there is evidence that the "big three" (USA, China, Russia) have refused to directly fight... even though they've been enemies since WW2 ended. Their only casualities are the numerous proxy wars. Which sucks for those countries citizens, but, at the same time, overall humanity as prospered immensely over the lack of a "real", "scorched earth", "total war" (complete industrial commitment to war effort) since WW2.

China wants to increase its influence for SURE. But hopefully, they enjoy their prosperity so much thanks to open global trade, that they value their cushy lives over that of any gain from warfare and that will keep humanity going. If China commited to total war, their (and our, and everyone else's) economy would completely collapse. We're all too intertwined. We all love music from all countries. We love furniture from around the world. We love art, BEEF, and everything else. To start a new, real war, means slicing the entire world back into "Soviet Union satellites Vs Westerners" at the very least, and at worst, complete isolationism (if we survive at all). So if China doesn't make sweet tasting tacos, they simply won't have them at all, or anything else they normally import.

The complete shock to their citizens daily lives would obliterate any political support they had and end with a revolution. You want to get people in the streets? F!@# with their daily lives.

e.g. War in Syria? Nobody knows. It doesn't really affect them. People say they "support" or "don't support" war or rebels or whatever. But 99% of people aren't in the streets in the USA. Meanwhile, look what happened when Virgina tried to take away their citizens constitutional right to bear arms. Within DAYS almost every single local city government declared they would not comply. Massive protests. Declaration of "gun sanctuary cities". Massive grass root campaigns. Plans to vote out every single member of Congress that approved of the measure. You don't !@$! with people's day-to-day lives. Expect the exact same kind of affect if someone tried to ban "Beef" or "soda" the next day.

If China, Russia, or USA started a real war that fractured the global economy, people would destroy their own governments to get it back. They want that cushy lifestyle over "conquest" of some other country. Everyone just wants to go to work, come home, and watch cat videos on YouTube with their family.

[edit] Also, looks like Matt finally paid the Amazon cloud bill. This sucker is fast!

very good, everyone is mentally prepared to deal with aliens and spaceships. We can now leave the planet and continue destroying all forms of outer life until they are made of cosmic deserts. *sigh*

Looks like the reason the website runs like buttsauce now is every time it tries to update our 6000 post thread.

Looks like someone has a O^2 algorithm.

I don't know if you know there are a group of crazy people that have founded a new nation (I was one of them but no more, it is too expensive to maintain two countries at same time ) and created their own calendar with 13 months and a bunch of extra days (last time I looked there were two extra days). They call themselves Asgardians.

That reminds me. One of my college friends was from "the newest nation in world". He would talk with glowing eyes, it was so cute. He was from South Sudan, which decided it would split off from "Sudan".

Unfortunately, in the years since, I've only heard of civil rights and corruption problems in South Sudan. They've had a lot of trouble setting up a "real" government for years to the point the UN is threatening them to get their crap together.

It really highlights how hard it is to start a new country and how lucky we are to be in a country that didn't explode into corruption the second a power vacuum was created by a new government.

I beg to differ. Corruption is rampant in the US government. The people are for the most part kept stupid and ignorant so they don't know the difference.

You need to remember there is a huge range of corruption.

In "general" the US follows the laws on the books. There's a huge difference between that, and literally killing everyone who says something bad about you.

South Sudan can't even get people to agree what their "government" is, and has for years, still not created a proper constitution. That's corruption and incompetence to a far far larger degree than the USA.

That's NOT saying that the US, and Canada, and other 1st world countries don't have plenty of corruption.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

USA, #23
South Sudan, #179. (SOMALI is #180. The top ranking in corruption index.)

And I'm not BASHING South Sudan. I wish they could have the kind of prosperity we take for granted here. But they're currently, literally, 1 from the absolute bottom in the world right now.

New Zealand #1. We don't need to make NZ great again as we've always been great

Yeah, but I've heard you've got lots of problems with roving hobbits.

"Elric"... now I know you're just toying with me (it'd be cool to be an alchemist though). I do use Git, but for only for software. For personal files, I just have a collection in my documents directory in plain text.

- My brother actually hasn't graduated yet, but he's on the way and learning a lot about the CS field.
- My sister is doing quite well at university, and I'm proud of all she's done.
- I correctly surmised that I wouldn't contribute much to this (or any FLOSS) community.
- I have yet to create the crotch spawn that I forecasted.

I'm busy parenting my daughter (which is a few weeks old) and her 3 years old BigBro ^^

I didn't know you had kids! Congrats!

Water heater rental companies should be more liberal with their time capsule durations. I mean, seven years?! That's, like, last year basically.

Ah, one of these threads. Good to see so many people living their lives and doing new things.

I've been a busy bugger. Bought a house, I work my own legal cases, raising my 10 year old son, and winning the occasional accolade for my photos. I really wish I had the time to do any coding but I fear that ship has sailed.