Yeah, steam has definitely done a lot to improve the situation and I’m very impressed with the current state of things.
I just have a bit of a mental block from the last time I seriously tried to use Linux (circa 2009 probably) that I need to get over. A lot has changed since then
Lol, I’ll keep that in mind, internet stranger. I do have a lot of techy friends who I’ll probably offer it up to first, and I haven’t quite ruled out running Linux myself either to keep as my main PC or to use as a media server or something, but I’ll keep you in mind if I’m looking to get rid of it in a few months.
If it does come to that, pay for shipping (or pick it up if you happen to be local) and it’s yours. Feel free to hit me up to ask about it come november-ish if I don’t reach out first. No guarantees it will be available, but I’d rather it go to someone who’s going to use it than be waste
My PC isn’t compatible with Windows 11.
I cobbled it together from spare parts as my wife has upgraded over the years. It was a pretty beefy computer when she first built it, and it’s gotten a couple upgrades along the way, but the CPU and MoBo are probably about 10 years old if not older (it’s an AMD FX-something, I’m unsure of the exact specs, it’s whatever parts were in her bin of cast-offs stuck with a new case and hard drive)
And I’m happily gaming on it. I may not be maxing out the latest AAA titles in glorious 8k epic quality 120hz HDR VR yadda yadda yadda, but I can still run pretty much any game out there on some acceptable mid-to-high quality settings and decent performance.
I’m probably going to have to either upgrade the MoBo and processor come October, or make the jump to Linux (which I’m not exactly opposed to, but I do like not having to fuck with wine and proton to run my games)
It’s a perfectly serviceable board, still doing just fine by me, and there’s no reason it can’t give someone at least a few more good years of use, even as a gaming computer if you’re not a graphics snob.
But if I decide to upgrade, unless I find someone who wants to run Linux on it, or understands the risk of running win10 with no security updates, it’s probably going to become e waste.
One small data point I’m able to offer
My family is polish, were a few generations removed from the old country, no one really speaks more than a handful of words of polish. There’s a pretty decent amount of people with polish ancestry around us in the Philly area, and one thing that kind of sticks out to me is “kielbasa”
The pronunciation around here has been sort of twisted into something like “ku-bah-see” and it’s pretty universal around these parts, not sure how widespread that is in the rest of the country.
I think “kielbasy” is the actual Polish plural for kielbasa, so I suppose that’s part of how the pronunciation got twisted.
Bonus fun fact- there is/was a Polish organized crime group active in parts of Philly that was sometimes known as the “kielbasa posse” which rhymes when pronounced that way.
I’m also pretty sure the pronunciations of “babcia” and “dziadek” (grandmother and grandfather) in my family are more than a bit off from standard polish too, though I think that comes down to more to just us trying to say polish words with an American accent.
My sister went to school in NEPA, so I’ll throw you a couple bones
Weather sure is nice today, heyna?
Wanna go grab a couple-two-tree beers?
The several competing pronunciations of Wilkes-Barre
Throop (pronounced “troop”)
Philadelphia English
I root for the iggles, phils, flyers, and sixers. I eat beggles with cream cheese, and in the summer I’ll get some wooder ice. I go fishing in the crick. If I fall in I’ll dry myself off with a tal, and maybe I’ll hang it on the ratty-ator to dry afterwards. I’ll warsh the mud off my boots at the spicket outside. On vacation I’ll go down the shore. If I need cash I’ll tap mac, perhaps so I can order a cheesesteak (wiz wit) or hoagie. Maybe I’ll see if my friends want to join me, and I’ll ask them "jeet? And they’ll answer “no, jew?” And at the end of the night, after a few citywides, I’ll tell them “I’ll see youse guys later”
You can also replace most of those nouns with “jawn”
I work a weird shift, so my “morning” begins at about noon
Then at the end of the day
On days I don’t work, the overall sequence of events stays mostly the same except I usually don’t usually drink coffee or pack a lunch on my days off, but the times may shift a few hours in any direction. Breakfast gets more elaborate on my days off, and I’m less likely to have a “dinner” since I probably had a big meal for lunch/my wife’s dinner instead of the usual sandwich I pack for work.
Try looking for “cold brew concentrate” it’s not really syrupy because there’s usually no sugar, but it’s meant to be diluted.
I don’t think I’ve seen 2L containers specifically, I think I normally see it in 1qt bottles (which is roughly the same as a liter) but since you’re diluting it it works out to about the same or even more (some brands are stronger than others, and personal preference of course comes into play, but usually I think I’ve seen them call for a 1:1 ratio of concentrate to water/milk, others might be 1:3 and maybe even higher, so that 1qt might be roughly equivalent to a 2l bottle, or even a gallon (roughly 4l) jug.
And if you add hot water, most of them make for a pretty decent cup of Joe, you don’t have to drink it cold.
I remember one time I bought some, and my wife didn’t realize it was meant to be diluted and had been drinking it straight and was wondering why she was so jittery until I caught her pouring a full glass of it. Also solved the mystery of why we were going through it so fast.
Chameleon cold brew is a pretty common (and I think pretty decent, though I’m no coffee snob) brand at least in my part of the states.
That while I’m driving I’ll have to sneeze while driving across a bridge and during that split second while my eyes are closed and I’m distracted by the sneeze I’m going to drive off the edge.
Pizza stone or steel is gonna be your friend here. Let that stone get nice and hot before you put the pizza on it (probably going to want to get a pizza peel too, personally I like a 2 peel system, I build my pizza on a wooden peel, I feel like the raw pizza slides off better, and pull it out with a metal peel which is thinner and easier to slide under the pie)
EDIT: for a little explanation, the idea with pizza stones/steels or brick ovens is that the surface you’re putting the pizza on is ripping hot, and heat is going to transfer from that hot surface to the crust much more efficiently through conduction than it would on a tray in an oven rack where most of the heating is happening though convection of the hot air inside and radiation from the heating elements/burners. The stone/steel/bricks are hefty and have a lot of thermal mass so there’s a lot of heat there that can transfer directly to the pizza dough, cooking it fast and getting it nice and crisp. This is also the same idea as making it in a preheated cast iron pan that someone else mentioned. Depending on the size, if you have a nice heavy griddle that would probably also work well too in place of a steel or stone. You might get some improvement preheating a baking sheet and making your pizza on that, but there’s going to be a lot less mass there so it’s going to lose its heat much faster.
If your stone and oven can do it, also consider cranking up the temperature even higher, pizza ovens cook at pretty high temperatures, 500-700 degrees or even higher aren’t unheard of. A dedicated pizza oven is amazing if you have the space/budget for one. I have a breville pizzaillo (nice oven, probably not worth the price, I got it on a very steep discount) and it can go up to about 700 degrees, I don’t usually go quite that high but I definitely set it way higher than my normal oven goes, and it cranks a pizza out in like 2 minutes.
Before I got that, I also had pretty good luck with a pizza stone on my grill, grills can also reach pretty ludicrous temperatures. I think I’ve also seen some dedicated pizza oven accessories come out in recent years meant to go on a regular grill. I haven’t tried those myself, but they sound like a solid idea in theory.
Most jarred marinara sauce is probably a bit too wet for pizza use, you may want to try a pizza-specific sauce or make your own, or else maybe try cooking your sauce down a bit or maybe straining it depending on how watery/chunky it is.
Also be aware of what toppings you’re adding that might be adding a lot of moisture and think about do what you can to minimize that. Fresh mozzarella should be used sparingly for things like a margarita pizza, for regular pizza use you want to use low moisture mozz (or a blend of other cheeses if that’s your thing.) Mushrooms have a lot of moisture in them and that’s often not immediately obvious to a lot of people. Some ingredients are obviously wet like pineapple (I strongly recommend grilling your pineapple if you use it, drives out some of the moisture and also tastes great) a lot of veggies have a lot of moisture and might benefit from a quick roast or saute first to dry them out a little.
You can also consider doing a red top pizza with the cheese under the sauce to act as sort of a moisture barrier. There’s a couple places around the Philly suburbs I’ve been to that do a spiral of (usually very sweet) sauce over top of the cheese, which looks very cool if nothing else, or perhaps a layer of cheese, then sauce, then more cheese if you don’t like that look
And try to avoid going too heavy on the sauce/cheese/toppings, you can definitely ever load a pizza doing that.
I do 12 hour shifts on a 2-2-3 schedule (one week I work Monday & Tuesday, then I’m off Wednesday & Thursday, then work Friday, Saturday, & Sunday, then the next week I do the opposite)
So technically I guess on average I work 6 hours a day/42 hours per week if we want to get mathematical about it.
I guess it technically gets even weirder since my shift is 3pm-3am, so I guess on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I actually only work 9 hours, and then on the ones where I “don’t” work I actually technically work 3 hours
But that’s all obviously kind of a stupid way to think of it.
There’s also the difference between how I think about it and how payroll thinks about it.
To me, I’d tend to say that the week starts on Monday, so I’d say that I either work 5 or 2 days a week for a total of 60 or 24 hour
But to payroll the week starts on Sunday, so they say either 4 or 3 days for a total of 48 or 36 hours.
Which is a bit of a bummer. 8 hours of “overtime” in my paycheck is pretty nice, but 20 hours would be even nicer.