Posts by Nicholas King

I'm reading.

Where, exactly, does it say I can actually live a normal life?

Drew Johnson2 said:And there simply aren't any elementary schools available, nor are there municipal spaces that could be repurposed for this purpose for those few days.
It seems there are nothing but problems and absolutely zero solutions... quite typical, really.

The claim that there isn't enough suitable space is, frankly, nonsense.

Even in the past, high school graduation exams weren't strictly limited to high school classrooms.

William Nelson4 said:Personally, I don't see the issue. It’ll probably end up being handled that way anyway—more spacing, maybe just a handful of kids in a dedicated classroom in Chicago. If they take the CTA to get to school, that's on them. The epidemiologists write the rules, not me.

I'm honestly just sitting here waiting for some official link that says you can "live your life normally in quarantine, just with extra precautions," or whatever that one user was rambling about above.
The whole thing sounds like total nonsense to me.
And this kind of stuff could end up costing people a fortune, or worse, someone accidentally ends up in the crosshairs of someone in isolation because they were nearby. But hey, people love to interpret safety guidelines however they feel like it, especially on a public forum.
If someone finds a link that proves me wrong, fine, I'll eat my words.

Who on earth claimed it was possible to live a normal life there?

How exactly do you envision this working???

I mean, where would the world even be if mere mortals were tasked with guarding state exam papers? Do you actually realize just how many years of experience it takes to handle such a sophisticated undertaking?

Basically, you’re looking at two main ways to handle backups: incremental versus full.

With an incremental backup—which I suppose is the more efficient route—the software compares what’s currently on your backup drive against what’s sitting on your local hard drive, and then it only grabs the files that are new or have been modified (it essentially checks the timestamps for any files sharing the same name). Now, there’s a bit of a catch here regarding how you handle files that exist on your backup but have been deleted from your main drive. You can choose to either keep them or wipe them out entirely. If you opt to keep them, a moved folder will technically exist in both its old location and its new one on the backup—which, in the long run, means you're going to be eating up way more space on that backup drive than you actually need. On the flip side, if you set it to delete those files from the destination, you run the risk of a situation where you accidentally delete something on your computer and the backup program immediately wipes it from the backup too. Quite a dilemma, really.

A full backup, however, just copies everything from your drive to the backup regardless of whether those files are already sitting there.

The most important takeaway here—and I mean this sincerely—is that neither of these methods requires you to sit there and watch it happen. You just set the backup task, let it run, and go about your business—whether that's getting some sleep, taking a walk, or whatever else you feel like doing.

So, depending on how much space you have on your backup drive and your own specific habits, you just configure the task once and then you're good to go.

So, are you basically glued to your PC 24/7?

If you aren't the type who enjoys manually dragging files and folders around the hard drive—which, honestly, sounds like a nightmare—you can just let the system handle the backup overnight while you sleep... then everyone stays happy.

Since you already have an external drive sitting there, I’d suggest looking into some of those free backup utilities and getting everything backed up to that drive.

Most decent backup software—the good ones, anyway—only saves the specific files that have changed since your last run, so it isn't constantly rewriting everything. You can even set it to trigger automatically at some time when you aren't actually sitting at your computer... and honestly (unless your PC is a total piece of junk), it shouldn't cause any significant slowdowns at all.

I feel for you regarding your situation and having to foot the bill for someone else's mess, but honestly—your current plan is full of holes.

Sure, salaries in a place like Washington, D.C. might be higher, but let’s be real: the cost of living—starting with rent alone—is also through the roof. And if you're just looking for jobs that pay slightly above minimum wage, don't expect to see five figures anytime soon; besides, saying you'll "do whatever it takes" usually implies you lack a specialized skill set you can actually monetize. BTW, once summer wraps up, finding work won't be nearly as easy as it is now.

It seems like you've lost your patience and are now reaching for a quick fix. That's a recipe for disaster, seriously.

So, you’re telling me you have steady income streams during that period—like from a Zubic villa?

Honestly, you don't sound like someone with a career where finding work is easy, losing it is hard, and the paycheck is substantial.

Why on earth would you be taking out a new loan just to cover existing ones? Where is this rush coming from? Or maybe... I don't know, maybe you've only shared a fraction of the actual story here...

Selling your soul to the devil is one thing—but when you deal with loan sharks, you’re basically putting your physical safety on the line, too.

Are you honestly, truly certain that you'll be able to keep up with repayments when the interest rates eventually skyrocket to some absurd, predatory level? It's a massive gamble. Unlike taking out a standard loan from somewhere like Bank of America, where a missed payment might just mean a stern letter in your mailbox, dealing with a shark means you won't be getting polite correspondence. Instead, you'll likely find someone like Steve—someone volatile and prone to violence—showing up right at your front door.

Honestly, I’d much rather have world peace and save the dolphins. 🙂

With Adobe Acrobat, you can technically shrink the font size, but—and this is a big "but"—it doesn't actually function the way it does in Microsoft Word. It won't trigger a text reflow where content shifts from one page to the next; instead, you just end up with the exact same text sitting there on the same page, just in a smaller font.

Mind you, if you're dealing with a purely text-based book—something without any complex formulas or heavy graphics—the latest version of Adobe Acrobat (the full version, mind you, not just Adobe Reader) actually does a pretty decent job of converting it back into Microsoft Word.

Is there any way to print four pages onto a single sheet of paper?

placidrider48 said:I doubt Joe Manchin and the Democratic Party will make the cut, but unfortunately, those minority votes are pretty easy to buy off.

Now, I wonder how many seniors are actually going to show up acting like the Republican Party's personal voting machine just because of some "civic duty" pressure? Personally, I think the Republican Party might fall below 50 seats if this whole mess with the infection rates keeps up like it is.

I don't think it’s really about anyone "buying" them—it’s just common sense that minority groups align themselves with whoever happens to be holding the reins of power, regardless of which party is in charge.

I mean, what kind of logic would even support a minority group maintaining an opposition status?

Nothing more, nothing less than "Are you..."...

granitetinker6 said:Honestly, if the Bridge-related party had actually known about this scandal, he would never have made it into a cabinet position.

I mean, let's be real here: the Bridge-related group isn't the Socialist Workers Party, they aren't the Department of Justice, and they certainly aren't some high-end private detective agency—plus, as far as I know, they don't exactly carry crystal balls around, right? So, they could only really step in once the whole mess was blown wide open to the public.

The whole argument just doesn't hold water, much like how it makes zero sense for someone to claim that the Index-related exposé wasn't a big deal; if they were actually legitimate, honest journalists, wouldn't they have sniffed out the scandal way before Black ever stepped into that ministerial role?

...but it *was* out in the open—and by whom, exactly? Was it the CIA, the FBI, some high-priced private investigators, or perhaps just the predictions of that Jazzera prophetess?

granitetinker6 said:I mean, news outlets have always been digging up all sorts of scandals, right? But honestly, the political elite used to just shrug off public pressure without blinking an eye, so actual resignations were pretty rare.

We saw a perfect example back in 2015 when the press blew the lid off that scandal involving Minister Cronin. The old guard over at the Republican Party reacted exactly how they always do—by trying to sweep it under the rug. It wasn't until a third-party outsider actually stepped up and issued a real ultimatum that the minister finally lost his seat.

If the Republican Party had been running things solo back then, Cronin would probably still be sitting in that office today, don't you think?

Well, if they hadn't been in power, he wouldn't have become a minister at all—partly thanks to those little hands raised by the Moesta faction.

granitetinker6 said:Honestly, though, if you look at those fifteen ministerial shake-ups, isn't it actually a win for the third-party movements? Their rise—especially that huge turning point where those outsiders finally grabbed a slice of power from the old guard—is what really changed things.

Once the USA started seeing ministers' proposals getting vetoed, non-partisan leaders stepping up, and even early elections... well, that basically snapped the spine of the political elite's "untouchable" status, didn't it?

The whole bar for political accountability has been raised, and now, ministers are under way more heat from the public, falling like flies over stuff that wouldn't have even cost them their jobs back in 2015.

Actually, I’d argue that those fifteen ministerial departures are primarily the fault of the media.

Carol Newman2 said:What kind of actual value do Josip Đakić or Stevo Culej bring to the Republican Party?

In the MLS, there is a massive scramble for second place right now—it’s intense. When Atlanta United and San Francisco face off, we aren't just talking about a three-point swing; effectively, six points are on the line.

It’s the exact same logic when you look at Culej’s preferred voters—they essentially count twice. If he weren't on this specific ballot, those people would likely pivot straight to The Wall Street Journal's list instead, picking up votes there. Even if we are only talking about ten thousand of those votes, in terms of the total margin, that creates a twenty thousand vote difference.

In my humble opinion, the rising number of infections isn't exactly helping the Republican Party's image right now.

And honestly—it seems like Andrej Plenković can’t stop repeating those "we beat the virus" lines.

A photograph isn't some kind of subjective value judgment—it's a document.