I’ve been using RockAuto forever, and even now it would be my first choice, but with the reciprocal tariffs coming, it might be harder.
Remember, the biggest parts retailer in Canada is still Canadian Tire and PartSource. The few times I’ve needed parts that were too heavy to ship like batteries and stuff I goto PartSource. My mechanic sources all his parts from PartSource as well.
I just bought next year’s stuff on RockAuto: air filters, wiper blades, Wix oil filters etc. Even with shipping and exchange it was massively cheaper than any Canadian option. I’m sure the reciprocal tariffs on auto parts will affect that but that’s why I ordered ahead.
I’m all for buying Canadian, but none of this stuff is made in America and any Canadian site isn’t getting the bulk discounts RockAuto is getting.
Edit: With all the wildfire smoke my cabin air filter was black with soot. Couldn’t believe it. My air filter didn’t look any better. Just a gentle reminder to check them if you’re around wildfires.
My family has lived in Quebec since the 1700s. Part of the first wave of Irish immigrants to arrive via New York and move north into Canada. I find it hilarious we got pushed out because we’re not French.
My family is from Quebec’s Eastern Townships, which used to have a much larger English-speaking population. Over the years, most of my relatives moved to Ontario or Nova Scotia, while some stayed in Quebec.
At my grandmother’s 95th birthday recently, the conversation somehow turned to immigration. A couple of relatives who own businesses in Quebec started talking about immigrants and even some of their own employees. The level of hostility and prejudice in their comments genuinely shocked me.
That experience left me with the impression that anti-immigrant attitudes are still deeply embedded in parts of Quebec society, even if they aren’t always visible in public. So nothing about this situation is surprising to me.
They’re completely different areas, someone posted a Google maps link of the area. In fact satellite view has been updated so you can see the devastation of the area. Picture 2 doesn’t show that area, the mosque in question had it’s dome blown off and you can see down inside the building now.
Picture 1 is clearly taken from a building, you can see the rail at the bottom of the picture. Most likely this building has ceased existing so Picture 2 is most likely a drone shot of the area.
Anna’s archives Z-lib so everything on there is also on Anna’s.
Really excited about the 2 projects that popped up. Claw Code is porting from Python to Rust which will be interesting. And OpenClaude will use an existing codex login to operate on Gpt5.4 which I’m looking forward to playing with during the long weekend.
Using codex on Gpt5.4 with x-high reasoning got me similar results to ClaudeCode on Opus. So I’ll be interested to see the results
First couple weeks on ozempic: “Why is my stomach so loud? What do you mean I haven’t eaten in 3 days”
Ditto, I have a year of Gemini Pro, and a year of Perplexity Pro for free, but after using Claude for a month I’ve come to realize that Gemini is a moron, and Perplexity is just as bad.
Claude isn’t heavily sanitized, Anthropic doesn’t delete old chats it views as sensitive.
Well I’ve done most of those except for using an immutable distro, and quite honestly have zero interest in running one.
Just this past year I’ve setup a media server using a bunch of servers I nabbed from work, did unraid because I’ve been toying with the unraid idea for years. Learned and fell in love with Docker. I avoided it like the plague for the better part of a decade. Now I run damn near everything in docker containers. Started using home assistant quite recently actually, my wife got annoyed with the heavily sanitized results she was getting with Gemini for Google Home. So I setup M5Stack ATOM Lite ESP32’s around the house acting as microphones that I then use with home assistant to ferry the query to the Anthropic API and the result to the nearest Google Home device. It’s a work in progress, but happy with the results
I bought an ice cream scoop on Amazon… I don’t know why, possibly because the reviews stated that there is no ice cream this scoop cannot scoop. My ice cream is always too hard to scoop, this scoop is heavy as hell, is not heated in any way I can see but it cuts through the most rock hard ice cream like a hot knife through butter and my brain can’t fathom how. It also makes effortless balls of ice cream.
I, as a sane person enjoyed watching the game being 100%'d by someone else.
So my wife’s Chinese and her company donates money to this Chinese Peace Organization. So they get free tickets to some event and my wife gets them because she’s actually Chinese and it looks better if a Chinese person attends than a bunch of white people. So I get dragged along.
And it’s for the anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre. Which I’d never heard of, but I did know her father has a hatred for Japanese people. And this is the reason why. So lots of PR bullshit, speeches, and boring crap. And then they invite some PRC guys up on stage. And in a room full of mostly Cantonese people: starts a long winded speech in Mandarin. He talks extensively about Taiwan and then talks about Japan and how they’ve spent more money on their military this year than in the past decade, and how Imperial Japan is rising again.
And then we watch a movie that I found entertaining but far too long. And its about the massacre. So my wife’s crying for awhile and I guess she had family including her father that were around for this incident.
And I kept trying to imagine the Japanese people that I know and work with… in the movie. There’s no way, I dont think its possible for the Japanese people now, to ever be or want to be like those portrayed in the movie. But the Chinese consul dude really believed it was going to happen again.
I mean isn’t this right in line with the Republican/Conservative playbook. Smart well educated people rarely vote with them, so the easiest way to stay in power is by keeping the populace dumb. Those with money will invariably invest in a private education, meaning those qualified to be politicians will be, and if they’re not they and their drug dealing brother can move to Ontario and be premiere.
Are you painted blue while doing this?
I use Gemini for my web searches now. But still donate to the WMF. In most cases I just want an answer with the least amount of bullshit. Even using Startpage to get Google results without Google bullshit, it’s annoying. My wife demands sources, and Gemini will provide those as well.
This was my issue but one day I found out about LinOffice a project that will run office in a container and the windows appear on my KDE desktop as apps. So I looked into it deeper and it says it works alongside something called WimApps (https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps) that lets you also run office but more importantly will work with Creative Cloud. It’s seamless, it’s like I’m running Photoshop on windows. Closing apps can sometimes be wonky but it runs everything I’ve thrown at it.
My parents are in this 4 of 10. They watch Fox News, donate regularly to the Republican party even though they are Canadian, they do not donate to the conservative party of Canada (I dunno), call me every time Carney does something they dislike because I voted Liberal, and still spend a good chunk of their time in Florida where they own property and are proud of it.
Trump has become an unpopular subject as my sister will lose her shit at family gatherings so they no longer mention his name. But are big supporters!
Devil’s food cake
Edit: This lacks the reddish mahogany color created by baking soda, this is likely made with Dutch process cocoa.