Yep. My household is WFH 100% and we moved to a small town (Iowa). We’re not especially high-paid for the tech industry, but we are above the local median income by almost 10x. We try to spend with local businesses as much as possible to help get money into the local economy, but there’s only so much locally-made/available stuff.

I live in a small town, and I love it. Rent is cheap, I can bicycle to the grocery store, and it’s just 30 minutes from a major city where all the cool stuff happens! The only downside is nobody wants to commute to my place for house parties

Same! I consider that last bit a win, a couple of times a year is enough for me.

if your small town has a small town theater

We did, but they didn’t make enough to stay in business. One of the local churches bought it instead of paying to renovate their place of worship. I haven’t been over there, but I assume their youth movie nights are top-notch.

some of these American travel trailers

Can’t forget the boat! For reference, while this isn’t typical, it’s not uncommon. That’s a pretty small travel trailer and boat. I’ve seen this setup with much bigger trailers and boats several times.

Part of the issue there is that for a large number of people the ‘few times a year’ are major holidays when everybody else wants to tow their house-sized RV and boat to the lake for a day or two. The rental fleet just isn’t big enough to service the surge demand.

FTA:

The so-called plug-in systems involve routing the direct current generated by the panels to an inverter, which converts it to an alternating current. They can then be plugged into a conventional wall socket to feed power to a home.

So, yeah, almost certainly illegal in pretty much any grid-powered home in the US.

The basic problem is that if the grid power goes down the inverter can back-feed the grid enough to electrocute the people who are working to fix it.

Utilities require an approved isolation system of some kind that prevents that happening. They are pretty strict about this for various other technical and political reasons too, but evidently it is mostly a safety concern.

I’ve got some good locations at home for panels, and about 500W in panels that I use for camping, but the equipment I’d need to handle easily and safely consuming the power at home is kind of expensive (just running an inverter and a battery for an isolated system is easy enough, I’ve got all that, but it’s not cheap to seamlessly connect it to my home power system). Would love to have a safe and approved system like what is described in the article.

He has claimed the bathroom sink as his bed. While this is very convenient for petting the cat while using the toilet, he tends to sleep in the morning and evening which is also the most likely times I want to brush my teeth.

Fortunately, the kitchen sink is just around the corner, so it is not necessary to disturb the adorably sink-napping cat.

I’m good, I guess.

I was listening to Cats in the Cradle the other day and the message was hittin’ pretty hard.

I’m reaching the end of my mid-career stage and I work pretty much all the time, and have never had friends as an adult. Looking back, I’d just advise y’all young guys to value time spent with friends over trading your time to get nice stuff. Fun with your friends and some shitty gear is better than nice gear and no friends.

Indeed. I like ‘Earthporn’ too, but I think it should be all nature pictures that look like genitalia and suchlike. Rocks or trees that look like penises for example.