Carbon dating proves dinosaurs and humans didn't live at the same time.

Humans and dinosaurs are STILL living at the same time now. The dinosaurs never died out, we still have some of them with us today called "birds". https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=are+birds+dinosaurs

What interest rate are you using for the calculation?

I threw in 10% without a lot of thought. I know that is controversial/variable. This article: https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-stock-market-return/ says that if you just pick a boring Vanguard S&P500 index fund you would have make 9.9% interest over the last 30 years (1993 - 2023).

It must be a really high interest rate

One of the things I would try to get across to younger people at the start of their careers is how awesome "index funds" in the stock market are. I am absolutely floored that a lot of people have no idea these exist and are super safe and useful.

And I know it is extremely difficult out there for people to save any money, but if you can just get $5 or $10 into a mutual fund it returns free money to you forever. That's kind of crazy and amazing. And a lot of people don't know it is even possible to get 10% returns on your spare change in your pocket or whatever you have.

if I put 2000 dollars away in savings every month, which would be insane, 10 years from now I'd barely have enough money to buy only a modest home

At $2,000/month, at the end of 10 years you would have around $400,000. That's a healthy down payment for a decent home pretty much anywhere, even in a high cost of living area.

You can use the calculator here to see these numbers: https://www.nerdwallet.com/calculator/compound-interest-calculator

Also, I feel like it is important for non-home-owners to realize that the average down payment is 13% of the price of the home. In other words, if you want to purchase a $1 million home the down payment is $130,000. Article here: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/how-much-you-need-for-a-home-down-payment-its-not-20percent.html

Using your $2,000/month hypothetical savings, you would have the down payment ready for a $1 million home in 4 years. If you are able to find a home for $500,000 you are willing to buy, then you would have the down payment ready in 2 years.

Backblaze app crashes during install https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2F3l2l6o8omrad1.png%3Fwidth%3D574%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dbd5a89edce0d8069a9effe1d490776c614561c2c

Okay, so just focus on this one issue. Personally I think you should let everything else go and just focus on this one problem you have.

You should be able to install Backblaze. The installer simply copies 4 or 5 executables to your disk, and possibly 1 or 2 configuration files in a folder Backblaze owns are getting written. So if Backblaze says the installation is incorrect, it is because <something> blocked Backblaze from placing those executables on your system.

So what you are looking for is anti-virus, firewalls, whatever you are running that prevents Backblaze from copying executables to it's own folders. Personally I think you should let everything else go and just focus on this one problem you have until it is resolved.

I wasn't aware of the B2 option. I'll take a look at that.

Ok, so the best part is you can just go in and "enable" B2 totally for free in your already existing account! And use the web browser to upload a few files to play with it. The first 10 GBytes is free.

To enable B2 in your existing account, sign into your account at secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm and after signing in, up at the top click on your email address name and pull down the menu and go to "My Settings". At the bottom you can enable B2 by clicking a single checkbox.

ALL THIS DOES is show you more menus on the left (that control B2). I'm serious. And if you don't like it, just uncheck that one checkbox and the menus are hidden away again. None of this is fatal or "one way". B2 co-exists with Personal Backup in literally 30% of Backblaze accounts. And it is utterly, totally free to enable and play with.

The only reason those menus are not shown to Personal Backup customers by default is that they might confuse the people not great with computers. They aren't required menus to operate Personal Backup so we just wanted to make it "simple" for those customers. But the B2 functionality is actually ALWAYS TURNED ON for your account. All that menu item does is show you the B2 menus.

The "metaphor" here is after you enable the B2 menus, you can "create a bucket". A bucket is the same thing as a "backup" in Personal Backup in that you can have as many buckets as you like (for free). Then after you have a bucket, you can upload files to it with the web browser. Or point a 3rd party tool listed on this page at the bucket to fill it with files: https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/integrations Make sure you scroll down and see all the choices.

Disclaimer: I formerly worked at Backblaze as a programmer and was part of the group that decided on the "Exclusion" vs "Inclusion" model.

I also accidentally included some top level directory that ended up excluding important directories because their exclusion list is not easy to work with IMO.

You might look into the "Advanced Exclusion Rules" which allow you to exclude a top level folder but INCLUDE folders underneath that top level folder: https://help.backblaze.com/hc/en-us/articles/220973007-Advanced-Topic-Setting-Custom-Exclusions-via-XML But just a warning that isn't easy to use or friendly for non-computer-experts.

I'm trying to wrap my head around why they don't just give you an option to specify which folders you want backed up

The idea was "ease of use". The only design we could come up with that didn't involve constant, never ending configuration changes by the customer was to backup everything by default, and then exclude things Backblaze knows the customer can get back other ways such as the Operating System. But if Backblaze Personal Backup doesn't know what something is, the safest choice is to back it up. And allow the customer to add a few exclusions if they really wanted to, but honestly customers aren't supposed to be constantly adding exclusions, that would be clunky as heck.

This especially works well when customers add new folders filled with valuable data. Backblaze swoops in and automatically backs those new folders up within an hour or so, without any configuration changes.

Another thing that shapes the product is Backblaze wants to operate on the original data in it's original location in a wholistic fashion for the entire computer. In other words, it isn't a "file transfer program" where customers carefully prepare one folder with a copy of all their valuable data and Backblaze only backs up that copy. Backblaze really wants to just hover around in the background (undetected) on a computer for years and years keeping a customer safe without customer interaction. Without the customer re-arranging their data for the backup to work.

This next part is also important: many non-technical customers don't have any idea how much data they have, and it would stress them out not knowing the cost in advance. So Backblaze Personal Backup is a "fixed cost" no matter how much data the customer has. This is to reduce "sales friction" to non-technical customers. Some people mistakenly think the "all you can eat" model is attempting to attract the world's biggest data customers, but that's not it at all. It is to make Backblaze Personal Backup "easy, simple to understand, even the billing part".

So Backblaze Personal Backup is targeted at two types of customer: 1) people who aren't all that great with computers and don't have the technical ability to select which folders should be backed up and they don't even know HOW MUCH data they have to backup (which is fine and these people DESERVE a backup product), and 2) technical customers that have the ability to configure a backup correctly, but are busy and have other things to do and don't want to spend any of their time managing their backups.

Backblaze got so many requests for a more powerful/flexible/scriptable product that eventually we created Backblaze B2 (which others have mentioned here). It essentially is many of the Personal Backup protocols that operate behind the scenes, but cleaned up and published as APIs for 3rd party products to use in various ways. Files uploaded by Backblaze Personal Backup and Backblaze B2 are intermixed on the servers in the Backblaze datacenters, the servers store them the same way and essentially think they are the same thing. Backblaze attempts to focus Personal Backup on "automatic no configuration" and for customers that require a more powerful feature set they are pushed towards Backblaze B2. And any customer that is advanced enough to setup their own backups by selecting folders knows how much data they have, so B2 can charge per GByte and most customers actually save money that way. B2 is less expensive than Personal Backup for the vast majority of customers. You pay extra for the convenience of Backblaze Personal Backup.

It's been a really nice blend of product offerings. Before Backblaze B2 existed, certain customers would approach us and we had to say "no, go away", LOL. That was painful. Now the answer is always "yes".

Disclaimer: I formerly worked at Backblaze as a programmer frequently involved in support cases, so I'm biased and you should keep me honest.

Backblaze support has a history of being unhelpful

Yikes. I do not agree. Is that for you personally or that is what you "heard" somewhere?

Backblaze support is a huge point of pride at Backblaze internally. I've attempted to contact support at other companies and received absolutely pointless ("turfing") responses a week later after contacting them. Backblaze support isn't like that. Backblaze support is free to customers (included in the subscription, or even without a subscription), and yet the Backblaze support employees work shifts to cover 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and every single last ticket is responded to within 22 hours (the maximum, in practice it is much faster than that including live chat Monday - Friday). They take covering Xmas day, New Years, 4th of July, Thanksgiving day very seriously.

When I worked at Backblaze, my cubical was about 50 feet from where the Backblaze support group sat, and I worked support cases with them at least once a week for 16 years. They are extremely good at what they do. Our job as Backblaze programmers was to always log enough information on every customer's laptop so that Backblaze support could understand and solve every customer issue. If Backblaze support couldn't understand a particular customer's issue, Backblaze engineering added more logging.

If any customer (including you) ever doesn't receive total and complete understanding of any issue what-so-ever, just be polite yet persistent with support. Backblaze isn't some 1 million employee faceless organization with impenetrable bureaucracy. The entire company is about 350 employees and the first line support group is maybe 20 of those at most. (With "2nd line" being every last programmer that works at Backblaze which is another 90 employees.)

I worked multiple support cases where the CEO of Backblaze was in personal contact with customers explaining the situation to the customer. This is a 350 person company, not Amazon or Google or Facebook.

Prenuvo whole body MRI scan

Thanks for that pointer.

One of the the things that company claims to scan for is "Absent kidney", which is near and dear to my heart. I discovered (at age 45) that I'm missing one kidney. Technically one of my kidneys is tiny, either a genetic defect or strangled at birth, but either way I have one functioning kidney of normal size and function. The discovery was accidental, I had no complaints, it was an ultra sound for a totally different issue where the ultra sound technician sits back, looks at me, and says "Is there something you want to tell me? About your kidneys?" LOL. Thus I found out I'm never going to donate a kidney, because I'm down to my last one. It also helps explain certain blood test results that are ever so slightly out of whack.

If MRIs weren't expensive and insurance costs didn't guide so many medical decisions, here is what an early diagnosis of my kidney condition would have changed: I wouldn't do as many "high impact sports" when I was in high school. It is a minor life adjustment, recommended by doctors for patients with only one kidney. Not an invasive and dangerous procedure to fix something. But absolutely a current recommendation by doctors for people in my situation. Lack of testing prevented me from knowing about that and taking the recommended path.

I have this idea that everybody with enough money (and we're not talking about millions here, more like a couple grand) should get a whole slew of tests and X-rays and body scans maybe around age 25. That is to establish a "baseline". Store those results away in a safe place. From when the person was a full grown adult but a lot of stuff hasn't degraded or broken yet. So that later, when let's say your spine has an issue or a blood test gives an elevated response you can look back to the "baseline" to know what has changed and by how much.

I developed this idea because MULTIPLE TIMES in my medical history doctors have used old scans they just "happened to luckily have for unrelated reasons" to compare my most recent issue to a baseline from some random X-Ray 10 years prior. One example is I had a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs). They were able to bring up an old chest X-ray and see that much of my CURRENT lung damage was actually present from 10 years prior, not from my most recent pulmonary embolism. I had the issue for my whole life, I just wasn't medicated for it because doctors/insurance companies aren't big fans of pro-active tests to diagnose dangerous, life threatening conditions.

Now I'm on a drug now (for life) that helps prevent future pulmonary embolisms.

There are blood tests to determine if you have one of the genetic conditions that causes pulmonary embolisms and will have that condition your entire life. Explain to me why this blood test isn't done on every 15 year old in the United States? The lack of testing is killing people, straight up. You know how they don't recommend birth control pills for women who smoke? That's pulmonary embolisms. You know the number one way women die in childbirth? Pulmonary embolisms. One more risk factor could be established for EVERYBODY if they just did a $12 blood test at age 15 years old.

there are many fake 4K dash cams

If you go to https://www.reddit.com/r/dashcam and look over in the right side bar you can get very reliable recommendations. Based on their recommendations, I got https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SRQH4R7/ for $90 just for when I'm travelling for rental cars.

It's small, plugs into the cigarette lighter or USB power, and seriously, the quality is great. You can see a timelapse I did of a drive and pause it and read license plates here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLFefHiMCTE (make sure you use the "gear" icon in YouTube to dial up the resolution to max).

OK, so could one then push e.g. copyrighted or dubious material to random accounts' backups

Just to be clear, an account is defined by one email address, then it can have zero, one, two, or more separate backups inside of it. Take the example of a person with one Macintosh laptop and a Windows gaming PC. They have two separate backups inside of their one Backblaze account. Each backup has a friendly name, if you go into your Backblaze "Settings..." where it says "Online name for this computer:" that is actually only the cosmetic name of the backup, not of the computer, and you can set it how you like. This means each of your online backups appear with a different name after you sign into the webpage https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm, and you select which backup you wish to restore from, then choose the file to restore.

The scenario you are describing is where a "new separate backup for a totally new different computer" would appear in somebody's account, it doesn't push the files to the inside of one of their existing backups. And the person pushing the new separate backup cannot even force it to be licensed (paid for), that has to be done by the account holder (with username and password). So it would be a free trial inside of the account, and expire after 15 days and be automatically deleted.

copyrighted or dubious material

All encrypted (on the laptop before sending) in a way that Backblaze or anybody else cannot read. Backblaze (on the server side) doesn't even know the filenames, they are all encrypted. This also describes essentially a whole lot of Backblaze Personal Backup backups, pushed by the customers themselves on purpose. It is harmless to the account holder (other than if they do a restore during the 15 days of free trial before it is automatically deleted and are shocked). It is all just encrypted personal data.

It is a lot of motion and wasted bandwidth for no benefit, it isn't abusable.

Now, I'm not saying Backblaze doesn't have a bug here. If a bug has been introduced where Backblaze is accidentally placing new backups in the wrong people's accounts on ANY regular basis where a random non-technical person clicking buttons in the GUI can stumble into that scenario, then that should most definitely be fixed by the web programmers at Backblaze (and quickly). In normal operation this absolutely should not occur and should be prevented.

I keep wondering if this means that anyone can sweep across those download URLs (or installer names) to get logged into random accounts, and what kind of trouble that could enable.

The way the client works is it can push files from your computer into the Backblaze datacenter into an account, but installing the client doesn't give you the ability to sign into ANY account (yours or anybody else's), or to restore data. At least not without prompting you for your username/password which the client does for certain tasks like restores.

So the risk here isn't gaining access to anybody's else's account. The main risk is pushing data from your girlfriend's laptop INTO a different account that your girlfriend cannot restore because she doesn't have that username/password. And the person that does own that account would be able to restore those files. I'm hoping Backblaze support immediately rectified that (which they can do) which is Backblaze support can quickly delete that backup out of the incorrect account.

when we tried logging in today to her Backblaze account, the site would accept her login and password, but then would ask her to log in again pre-filling the unknown address in

Yikes, that is odd. Try going to a totally different computer, or your phone with a web browser (not the Backblaze app, just a regular web browser) and have your girlfriend sign into https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm on that new device. If that problem persists the Backblaze web programmers need to figure it out and fix it. And if you don't get positive confirmation of that from Backblaze support respond here and I'll reach out to them myself.

Even if signing in from a different computer (or phone) works, Backblaze engineering needs to fix whatever is causing that thing of changing up to a different email address after signing in. Like I'm unable to wrap my head around what is going on there.

This sounds like a new bug that was introduced, but I don't have any internal knowledge of what is going on with the web logins. I have noticed in the year after I left Backblaze they have been re-writing the website including the account login pages (the site that is "unlocked" for you once you get past the https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm page). I can tell because they reversed a few of our "absolute rules" about easy to use, clear web UIs we carefully guarded and enforced for the 16 years I did work there.

I'm really torn between really appreciating these in-depth, long, detailed explanations, and being really frustrated that I don't want explanations, I just want Backblaze to work as expected.

I hear you.

That was the entire charter when we started. In 2007 we asked our non-technical friends why they didn't backup, and they said they couldn't get through the technical setup of it. Too complicated, too many questions they didn't know the answers to.

So the attempt (and we possibly failed) was zero configuration backups. Successfully double click the installer and be backed up safely for life. No configuration required. You never notice Backblaze is running. A customer never takes any action, never configures anything, never signs into any account, never knows it is running at all, and is completely kept safely backed up.

The target audience was "not IT people". As far as we could tell, anybody that worked with computers or had a professional job as a programmer or configured Linux for a living was completely, totally, 100% already backed up. There is zero market opportunity there, it was an already 100% saturated market. The "green field" here was people who could barely launch a web browser and just wanted <somebody else> to completely handle all the details of keeping them safely backed up.

There are some silver linings of this cloud. (Ha! "cloud". LOL.) Backblaze had to solve two issues: 1) friendly easy to use client, and 2) really large amounts of storage for low cost. That #2 was really hard, but now that Backblaze B2 exists, anybody, anywhere, world-wide can write a backup client with 1 programmer that is easier to use than Backblaze Personal Backup and just works, never fails, and is less expensive than Backblaze Personal Backup. No data centers to spin up, no 200 employees to hire, ANY 1 programmer can build this, I swear. I'm an idiot and I built one with a lot less available information and infrastructure ready. It's a very straight forward program, if a file is added to a computer or modified on that computer the backup program uploads a copy to the datacenters. The operating system itself keeps track of "last modified time" of a file, this is super-totally straight-forward I assure you. The hard part was the hard drive supply chain and datacenters and 200 datacenter employees. Now everybody else, world-wide, is utterly free of that.

The 2nd mover advantage is massive here, anybody can build a backup client now that works tons better than Backblaze Personal Backup. And they should do so. They will be rich.

Disclaimer: I formerly worked at Backblaze as a programmer on the client you install, and I can explain this.

Turned out that the app said it was logged in to an email we don't know.

Okay, so the email address you sign into https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm with is not how the app authenticates or binds to a backup in the Backblaze datacenter.

When first installed, the app generates a file on your computer, you can find it here:

On Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Backblaze\userPub.pem

On Macintosh: /Library/Backblaze.bzpkg/userPub.pem

You can view the contents of that file with a text editor such as WordPad on Windows or TextEdit on the Mac. That is the PUBLIC half of a public/private encryption key pair (the PRIVATE half is in the Backblaze datacenter), and that is how your backup is authenticated and bound to a backup in the Backblaze datacenter. Then in the Backblaze datacenter there is a mapping from each privateKey to email address that you use to sign in here: https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm

So what occurred is you got a userPub.pem from a pre-existing account on your computer.

So there are a few different ways you could have ended up in this situation. The most common is let's say your girlfriend bought her computer used. Even though it may not have had Backblaze fully installed, if that one "userPub.pem" file was left over from the previous laptop owner, you would absolutely end up in this situation.

The solution to that is simple and you did it: uninstall Backblaze using the uninstaller, not manually deleting anything, use the uninstaller. Then make absolutely sure "userPub.pem" is gone from the computer (it will be, but we're in extremely cautious mode here), then reboot (that guarantees nothing is holding userPub.pem around). Now if you download a NEW INSTALLER from https://secure.backblaze.com/update.htm (don't use any previous installer you had) then it should allow you to bind the backup to the email address your girlfriend uses to sign in here: https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm

Okay, so there are other ways your girlfriend's backup can get bound into another email address. One of which is if she got the Backblaze installer from somebody else. Now the INSTALLER is the same, it's the NAME OF THE INSTALLER EXECUTABLE which magically can bind a new install into a certain account. So as long as the installer is called "install_backblaze" then it is generic and won't do this. But if it is named something like "install_backblaze-akf135" then don't use that installer, it is already bound to an account with an internal unrecognizable "afk135" (this isn't the email address, it is always a fixed number of characters and has nothing to do with the email address). Or if you want to use that installer, just remove the "afk135" out of the installer name before running it.

The explanation of the magical installer names is an attempt to make Backblaze easier to install. If a customer creates their account at https://backblaze.com then they are presented a download which names the installer THEIR ACCOUNT token so the customer doesn't have to re-enter their username password in the installer yet again immediately after creating their account. It was meant to take a couple of clunky steps out of the process in the common use scenario.

EDIT: one more thing...

I would have walked away once more, but my gf had already paid for a year

You are never, ever financially committed. If you first uninstall, then sign into your web account at https://secure.backblaze.com/user_signin.htm and delete the backup (it is under "Preferences") then just open a support ticket, explain you want a pro-rated refund, and they will click a couple buttons and refund your money. So if you say only used 1 month of the 1 year subscription, they would refund you the 11 months, no questions asked.

smartass.

I am not trying to be a smartass, or disrespectful.

The planet is dying, and quickly.

I think being specific is helpful here. I assume by "planet" you mean "the people (and animals) that inhabit it"? Because the planet will be fine for long time to come, with or without us.

There are limited resources.

Some resources are limited (fossil fuels, other various things like helium), some are absolutely not limited (sunlight, we have plenty, and it keeps streaming in, we have a never ending limitless supply of it).

For the things that are limited, they are running out at some "rate". It's like an hourglass that will run out, but I don't know of anything that is going to hard run out within the next 50 years? And I'm being serious and genuine about this.

The solution isn’t to keep living when there is no ability to even do so.

We're human, we always try to keep living because we enjoy being alive, spending time with loved ones, having fun experiences. Eating nice meals, listening to music. And it ALWAYS ends the same, everybody dies. They always have, from 2 million years ago until this week, everybody dies EVENTUALLY. But MOST people don't give up their limited fun time on earth "early" just because they know how it ends up (which is 6 feet under a tombstone for everybody).

I’m not in fucking pain, you idiot.

Are you sure? I mean this from a caring place: your words make it sound like you are really emotionally torn up over climate change. To some level which scares me because the response you are suggesting is extreme and 99.999% of the time reserved for people in a lot of pain.

the world is dying

The question in front of us is: in what timeframe? Scientists have all told us the sun will engulf the earth eventually. So yes, I agree fully, the earth is doomed. But the exact date of when the earth becomes unbearable is still an open question. Heck, it might be next year if China invades Taiwan and the USA launches nukes. We all go up in a blaze of our own stupidity. It might be sometime after that.

The only reason to give up and not see how the next 10 or 20 years turns out is an internal chemical imbalance called "depression". The antidepressants are to make it so you aren't in so much pain during that time. They aren't to fix climate change.

I don't know if you have ever known anybody in the hospice program, but I have. And the way hospice works is the doctors diagnose a person at having 6 months or less to live. Everybody agrees on this, including the patient. What happens next is important... the patient is made as comfortable as possible with whatever drugs are required for that, with a focus not on curing the patient but on giving them the best quality of life for whatever short time they have. The person then spends their remaining time with loved ones. Try to think of climate change like that. Please stick around with us for a little while longer.

you’re wrong. suicide is the most logical outcome to the climate crisis honestly

I really hope you see someone about that. At least talk with friends or family you trust about how you are feeling. Depression can OFTEN be improved nowadays with modern anti-depressant medication. What feels like "no way out" right now can be changed to "a reasonably happy life" with treatment, I swear.

One of the earth shatteringly important (very very positive) things that has just occurred in the last couple years is solar energy is now less expensive than fossil fuel energy. I don't know why people don't realize how important this is, but my theory is that it was such as slow, long time coming event nobody noticed when the tipping point occurred. The wholesale price of fossil fuel generated electricity is 5 cents/kWh and the wholesale price of solar generated electricity is 4 cents/kWh. Electric power companies are now rolling out grid-tier level solar farms because of this. And I don't mean "planning to roll out", those solar farms came online last month! With more and more coming, at a truly amazing rate.

Here is why that is so amazing, such a game changer: going forward it is no longer about the environment, political, or doing the right thing, or saving the planet. It is about greed, and greed points the entire industrial complex towards solar, not fossil fuels. Now, you won't see the atmosphere cleaned up in the next 24 hours because of this, it will take YEARS to make enough solar panels and decommission the fossil fuel plants. But this is a really big darn deal, and now it is inevitable, it really is. At 6 cents/kWh for solar power that wasn't the case, you had to "give up money" to save the planet. Now, you can actively want to screw the planet but you STILL want more solar power and less fossil fuel power. This is huge, and it just occurred within the last two years. It used to be a PERFECTLY VALID argument between "save money right now today" vs "save the planet in the long run". Now that has vaporized, you get to save money no matter what, nobody wants fossil fuel just for the "fun" of it, they were trying to save money. Now they save money by not using fossil fuel.

And see, it isn't "finished". Solar panels will get even more efficient like they always have been progressing towards. Fossil fuel will get more expensive to extract from the ground. So the FINANCIAL INCENTIVES are unstoppable here.

This won't save us entirely. But it slows down the pace of destruction, and that gives us a little more time. Enough time that you should maybe wait around and see how it all turns out in 20 years. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Haven't really looked at any hvac unit, yet. Would take suggestions for this, too for a 2 car garage.

I put a Mitsubishi 2 ton (24,000 BTU) mini-split heat pump in my 2 car garage. The "heat pump" part means it either cools or heats the garage. The "outdoor half" is very slim and fits under the eave on the other side of the garage wall from the "indoor cassette" part.

The unit requires 220V electrical, but the circuit breaker panel was right there in the garage so that was inexpensive to have an electrician add the circuit.

The 2 ton is overkill depending on your local climate, but I live in Austin and it gets really hot here for months at a time. Adding the ability to climate control our garage is AMAZING, practically life changing here. In 110 degree August heat, the garage might be 115 degrees, and so is the inside of a car that is inside the garage. So in the summer we would climb into our cars and start rolling down the road while the car air conditioner struggled for the next 10 minutes to make the car comfortable. Now we climb into the cars at a comfortable 72 degrees AND THEN open the garage door and drive down the road perfectly comfortable.

Also, working in the garage is now pleasant. Before I had the unit, I literally might drop something on the ground in 115 degree garage heat getting out of my car, look at the item on the ground, and say, "I'll pick that up in a few months when the temperature is sane" and walk into the main house just leaving the item laying there. LOL. Now the garage is an oasis where I can work on projects, and just open the garage door to take the project out to the yard or whatever.

The nice part of a totally independent mini-split is I can set the temperature separate from the rest of the house. Like maybe keep the garage to not rise above 80 degrees at any point (not allow it to become 115 degrees), while the house is kept at 72 degrees. Whatever you want.

One thing to consider in advance depending on which unit you buy is that many units come by default just with a remote control, which I find annoying. I added an optional "EcoBee" wall thermostat (extra $200) that is hard wired into the Mitsubishi heat pump and also ties into the house's WiFi so I can monitor and control the temperature from a Smartphone. I didn't realize this feature when I had it installed, but the EcoBee alerts me if say the garage door is left open when climate control is "on" with proactive alerts to my phone saying, "There is an issue, your mini-split is running full tilt for the last 30 minutes and cannot seem to get the temperature down to where you want it."

the information is actively showing concerning results ... mass shootings and school shootings are way up compared to "the good ole days"

One of the things that is very hard to get across to people is how statistically afraid they should be about a danger that is trending "way up" but still extremely small in comparison to other dangers.

The chance of a child dying in a mass school shooting has gone UP by a factor of 3 since 1990 from 5 deaths each year to 15 deaths each year on average.

Each year an average of 37 children die of heat stroke after being left in vehicles.

Each year an average of 7,000 children die in car crash fatalities.

Every death of a child is tragic. Every one. Parents are right to want fewer mass school shootings. But parents should be twice as worried about leaving their kid in a hot parked car, also be 466 times as worried about their children riding in moving cars.

I'm a physician and I would struggle not to pursue treatment of an incidentaloma.

I'll support you whole-heartedly with this very anecdotal, non-statistical, story. I met a guy through very close personal friends who was fatFIRE (at least 7 years before I was), extremely well off. Super nice guy, very rational, very thoughtful. He told me the following story...

So as "wealthy" due to his recent sale of his family's 3 generation long business, he became interested in the concept of spending more money on healthcare to possibly detect early issues in order to live a little bit longer. He also wanted to invest in different companies. So he invested in a startup (they already existed and approached him) that did a ton of medical tests for wealthy people to detect possible issues. As part of this he went ahead and signed up for the service, and took all the tests, and THEY FOUND SOMETHING.

I think it was a narrowing of an artery near his heart, but I don't remember fully and I'm not a doctor and it isn't important. What is important is the next step was for them to go in through his groin and insert a camera to go up and investigate. Which then almost killed him during the procedure. The good news (I guess) is it was a false positive from the earlier test. There wasn't any actual issue, the camera scoping of the artery showed it was totally fine. So the whole thing was a massive waste of money, time, and almost killed my acquaintance, LOL.

He survived (obviously to tell me the story) but his take away was this: even though he KNEW all that information about "don't overtreat it just because you found it" he still plowed down that path and made all the mistakes. He laughed when he told me that.

So this is an incredibly "real" issue. I take it seriously enough to worry about MY OWN reaction faced with the same new information, LOL. But I still want the raw information, not hidden from me.

US Preventative Services Task Force maintains a list

Good link, THANKS!!

It's about the domino effect of testing.

I understand the concept. And for entire populations it might even be a valid way of figuring out what is "worth doing" or not.

However, the idea that "more information" is bad (so don't do the test) because SOME patients take unnecessary steps afterwards based on that information bothers me. For wide guidelines trying to improve the outcome for whole populations while simultaneously trading off the financial costs it is great. But if an individual can pay for their own tests (taking large economies of scale and cost entirely out of the equation), plus has some statistical training of their own, plus depending on that one individual's ability to process information... then I don't like a "one size fits all" testing recommendation.

For example, get the imaging that shows the aortic aneurysm, and don't get any surgery. It's just information, it doesn't FORCE the patient to make a fatal mistake in treatment. It is just something to possibly watch and monitor going forward. Additional information. Heck, maybe do fewer impact sports or some other extremely conservative, non-invasive precautions.

Sometimes I ask two doctors, and they recommend two diametrically opposed paths forward with the same information. Each with great conviction of how correct they are in their recommendation. Now I am ABSOLUTELY NOT saying one doctor is wrong, it is often way more subtle than that involving tradeoffs the two doctors "weigh" differently with their own biases. It just means it is hard to trust "one size fits all" recommendations for additional information through testing.

Tell them you can be there within 1 hour of them calling.

This is one of my favorite hints for any patient in a larger city. I accidentally discovered it when I lived about 1 mile from where a very particular test was given. My appointment was 2 months out, and I casually joked, "Well, if there are any cancellations, I can be there in 5 minutes." They called me the very next day for a slot that day!

Ever since then I have made it clear to doctors my schedule is flexible and I'm nearby. It can be hit or miss, I think half the time the person doing scheduling doesn't bother actually remembering or writing that information down anywhere, so it is as if you didn't even offer the flexibility in time.

You should have a well trained primary care doctor (family med or internal med) who stays up to date on screening guidelines...

This is a good "go to" answer that is also safe advice to give. "Ask your doctor." And it is probably pretty close to the best any of us can really do. Now what if your doctor isn't perfect, forgets something, or has a bad/busy day? What if you ask two doctors and get two different answers?

I really feel like there should be a convenient compilation of published risk vs reward for various screening procedures. Somebody had the example of a colonoscopy perforating the colon killing the patient. That's a really big risk and absolutely should be factored in to whether you should do lots of extra colonoscopies! But MRIs are often denied or delayed for cost/insurance reasons, that's the cold hard truth of the matter. For example, insurance companies often "require" physical therapy for <blah> time before "resorting" to an MRI, which seems pretty obviously backwards if you want optimum care. Clearly if the MRI might result in additional knowledge you would do that first, right?

You should try to be cognizant of what your healthy baseline feels like and go to this doctor when you feel there is a real deviation from that.

Again, this is a good answer and probably the best any of us can do. But there are some flaws in this system. A friend of mine's "baseline" was wrong. He had always had the same libido, and didn't realize his testosterone levels were very low. Turned out it is a (common) tumor on his pituitary gland. It is a very simple, safe blood test to determine your testosterone levels, why isn't that done at least once when each person is 20 years old just to ESTABLISH the baseline?

There are ABSOLUTELY a few tests that are done proactively to monitor health before the patient figures out something is wrong/off baseline. For example, taking blood pressure, basic blood panels, women screen for breast cancer, colonoscopies, etc. So clearly the medical field is not diametrically opposed to proactively finding things before the patient figures it out themselves. All we (the patients) are asking for is if there is any additional tests that are both safe and also that MIGHT help.

Here is another example: there is now a blood test for cancer called "Grail/Galleri". None of my doctors had even heard of it until I told them. (I only know about it because my friend helped develop the test.) Now this is still early, you can get this test but insurance won't cover it. The danger is the danger of any basic blood draw, so it is really VERY safe to take the screening test.

Should people take the Grail cancer test once a year? Heck, I don't know. But my doctors sure as heck didn't carefully evaluate whether to recommend it to their patients like me, they hadn't even heard of it. That's what us patients are dealing with at this point. We don't know what we don't know. I'd kind of like to see a long list of possible screening tests with their risks of taking the test listed.

cure what ails 'ya. Especially excitability disorders. "Snap out of it!" Whap!

As demonstrated by this (comedy) scene in the movie "Airplane": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0GW0Vnr9Yc

That makes so much sense now, thank you for answering!

I’m sober now! Almost 2 years.

Good for you.

One of the quotes I have always liked is "If you have problems every time you drink, you have a drinking problem." The way I interpret that is if you are one of the people that has negative outcomes from the same identical amount of alcohol (or drugs) that others consume just fine, you should abstain. It's not a free pass to see others drink the same amount or more, it is how it affects you personally. From a young age, one of my friends got in fist fights when he drank (like almost half the times he drank, and it didn't seem to take very much alcohol to enable this behavior), so he gave up drinking VERY early in life (a very good decision).

most luxury hotels ... If people would admit to climate change and its effects the value of all that would drop to zero in an instant.

That isn't how hotel property values work. If the ENTIRE BUSINESS is catering to people who want a nice view of the ocean for 1 week, as long as the hotel hasn't actually slid into the ocean yet then it has value as a business renting out rooms.

Even if I believe Florida will be underwater in just 10 more years, I'll still go visit there for a week, have some nice meals, enjoy the sunsets, and come home. I'll pay the hotel for the nights I stay there. And heck, I'll do it again every couple years!! Admitting that Florida will be gone eventually mostly would affect individual home owner's property values. Not hotel businesses.

drop to zero in an instant

Even with individual property owners it is more like a gradual decrease in value that takes years. A close friend of mine lived one full city block back from the cliff overlooking the ocean in California. One day (5 years ago) 3 feet of cliff sandstone fell away down onto the beach when it rained pretty hard. Now everybody knows that city block of houses is doomed, the only question is "when"? If it is a scenic and pleasant place to live for 10 years, somebody will take the gamble at some reduced price to live there. My friend chose to sell, but the buyer knew the risks and still paid almost a million dollars for the house.