I always preferred the other definition of planet that would make the earth no longer have a moon - instead we would be a dual-planet system.

I'm not an astronomer and so my opinion was correctly ignored. I can still disagree with it.

I have a large external battery that I carry at camp at times. Mostly it sits at my tent getting charged on solar, but I have carried it for an short time to charge my battery while doing something else. The youth at the camp don't carry a phone, but I often get asked to look something up for them so it is useful. Not to mention when there are no adult activities to keep me i entertained.

That used to be more common in the us. However forced air is more efficient (at least traditionally, not sure what the latest is) and most importantly allows for cooling which is needed when the summer gets as warm as the us normally does.

Fortunately for me, one of passions is programming computers, which pays a lot of money. After spending eight hours a day programming computers - who am I kidding? I can't program my computer eight hours a day - Never could. Fortunately, my company gives me several hours of meetings every day and so I can program computers in between and not get burned out. There is the reality of having your passion and your job being the same type. You're gonna get burned out. There will be times when you have to do things that are boring and tedious and you can't put it off until later when you find the energy.

Fortunately, I have multiple passions. When I get home at the end of the day, I couldn't possibly sit down and program anymore, but I can cook a good meal for my family every day. Even cooking I have to clean up after myself, which is, let's just say, not something I enjoy. Often the rest of my family will help clean up, but I have to take a part of that.

I've been playing mandolin for almost 30 years now. I regularly hear someone who is actually good at mandolin playing. I'm just jealous at how good they are. But the reality is, because it's my passion, but it's just something I'm an amateur at, I don't have to be good. I can skip doing those three octave major scales. Many people are better than me - Many of them haven't been alive for 30 years and yet they're a lot better than me. But I can tell by listening to them play that they haven't skipped a lot of the practice that I've skipped over the years. But that's okay because this is just a passion and if I don't feel like it, well, I don't have to feel like it.

So my question is, what is your budget like? And what is your personal passion for piano? If you love piano, there are a ton of online study programs in piano. There are a lot of local music teachers who can teach you piano, the parts you're missing. Firefighter isn't the best income, but I'm sure that you could throw other parts of your life away and thus come up with the money to take a degree in piano.

You can probably find a local college that is willing to give you a music major for a small price. And since this is just something you're doing for fun, you don't have to do that piano degree in a couple years. You can take eight years to get a piano performance major (that is, as a part-time student, only take two or three credits a semester). There is nothing wrong with that because it's not going to be your income in the future anyway.

Do you really want to though? It's an option to get the music major, but you have other options. You are perfectly justified in saying, "you know what, I could do that, but I'm not actually interested in it. I'm going to do something else at a time". Maybe you decide, piano is interesting but taking up too much time and you get yourself a tatting shuttle and learn another hobby which is even more useless than any of the others. More power to you. Or you can start on the piano major and along the way you discover that there's some required class in something that turns out to be become a new passion for you that also turns out to pay a lot of money in so suddenly you switch majors to and you find a new job. Great if it happens and if it doesn't, well who cares you already have a career

I bought a traditional leather belt a few years ago from Hank's Belts. They have a lifetime warranty on their belts, and so far is shows no sign of wear despite daily use. Most of your "department store" belts are made from leather "sawdust" glued together and they will not last since the glue breaks down. Leather itself will last a lifetime. There are several other small companies that make belts with a lifetime warranty. Often local "art fairs" will have some local craftsman who makes/sells belts that are also made of quality leather and will list a lifetime (but you need to know what to look for as some of them use the cheap "sawdust and glue" leather that won't last.

Stirling engines have powered generators. No reason you couldn't run a light on one. However it would be impractical for any real world house use for a long list of reasons in not about to type up.

You should take an active effort to read the intelligent comments of people who disagree with you. I don't know how you hand downvotes and blocking and so I can't tell if this is a comment that is directly at you to change your ways or if you already are doing this and you are only downvoting/blocking obvious garbage. Too many people, when they see a point of view they disagree with, assume immediately that the other person is stupid and that common is garbage. But that is false. It is, however, a very hard bias to overcome in yourself. Something I struggle with, too.

They are outright lying. We have known that for years. The question is can we make any guess about the truth from their lies? A lye often has some truth just to be appear believable and we can read between the lines to guess.

I haven't got an amber alert in a long time. Probably because the first woke everyone up at two AM. Next morning the child was found safe with the parent who had legal custody the whole time. Now they have so many checks in place that the alerts are almost never worth sending

No, Russia doesn't talk about what they don't intercept. 26 flamingo's intercepted, of 30 would be my guess, but that is only a guess and probably wrong.

Large companies still use tape for their large data sets. Tape has some useful advantages that make it worth it in very specific situations.

The first is when you have a lot of data - if you have several hundred of even thousands tapes (likely including duplicates!) then the quantity of data you have backed up is large enough the tapes are the cheapest.

The second - as hinted above - is duplicates. If you don't want the data lost a tape is a good answer to have several copies. While a disk might be cheaper, they are fragile and computers are not designed to swap disks that often. Even USB which is designed for swapping isn't that good: the connector will physically wear out a lot faster than you would expect making the costs much higher to manage this. Plus the labor to plug/unplug a lot of drives will get you.

Third, some tapes come in a write once form. If you have data that (often for legal reasons) you need to store such that it cannot be modified later then tape is often you best answer to ensure the data really wasn't changed. (either by an executive hiding their tracks, or an attacker trying to put ransomware on you).

That said, for most reading this, a few disks in a NAS is better than about 98% of people have and if you have snapshots on the NAS probably good enough for everything (your only risk is fire or theft of the NAS - if you cannot live with this get a second NAS elsewhere, or a cloud backup), similar cost, and has enough other useful features that you want it anyway.

Beware. It is hard to tell from pictures, but my guess is the leather that holds the buckle part on is a low quality leather that will not last for a lifetime. To make this a lifetime belt you may have to replace the buckle a few times.

There needs to be strict scrutiny applied by courts to TOS. And other similar legal terms (ask a lawyer what they are, not me) which all say basically only the obvious things that shouldn't need to be stated at all can be put in them.

If you need more than the basic protection the law already provides for you, then you don't use a TOS, you need a real contract signed by both parties, with both parties having a lawyer on hand to ensure the terms are understood and really agreeable.

By the time you can verify the child is in danger odds are more than 3 hours have passed.

Many claims of child endangerment are really a parent (or grand parent) trying to mess with their EX who currently has custody of the child. The child is not in danger at all. The system needs to spend time verifying that the report is real before bothering thousands (or likely millions) of people.

I can't tell from pictures, but I do not believe the belt in the picture is elastic. It looks like Nylon which isn't elastic and should last for a long time. It will wear out, but with care should last for a lifetime. I've seen elastic belts similar to the above, and those the elastic will get old and wear out in 10-20 years. Belts like pictured can also be made of other fibers (both natural and synthetic), that are not elastic. Some of them will last longer than others - it is important to know what the belt is made of, not just the style.

My Grandpa always had a "hello" mat because he would say hello to anyone, but not everybody was welcome.

Yes, but not as an out of the box solution. Tape drives use standard sizes, and standard interfaces (often serial attached SCSI). You can buy a tape drive and a USB encloser that lets you put your own drive in it and the tape drive will work. You need to make sure the USB encloser provides enough power, is big enough, and has the correct interface, but it will "just work" if you select the right parts and plug them in. Do make sure you read the spec - some cheaper enclosers may not support USB3 data rates which you tape drive may need to work well.

The USB designers made the decision back in the day that they would not design a protocol for CDrom (then important), tape, or other such things. Instead they designed a "here is how to transmit SCSI over USB", which makes it cheap to design USB to SCSI adapters and that is what has been done.

Do you need tape? Do you really need that much data? Archival grade DVDs can store a few GB (an order of magnitude less than the TBs you asked for!), and probably easier to find/source.

I have watched them over time. The different factions have their ups and downs, but near as I can tell none has ever been dominate.

As a US citizen I'm content with whatever the people there want. Full state, or complete independence - either is just fine with me. I'm slightly against remaining a territory if I have to choose, but this is very slightly. However the people need to have a strong preference for something and so far I don't see it.

A large shower with two shower heads. I had that in a previous house. It wasn't as nice as it sounds. Only reason it wasn't a complete water of space is the design of the house (after four remodels) had a weird space that wouldn't be useful for anything else anyway so may as well make the shower a little larger.