I have mullvad and also browse certain Reddit communities without an account. Some of the servers still get through. If you’re using US servers I know there are a few of the NY, Atlanta, and Virginia servers I’ve been able to get through on. I’ve also gotten through on some of the West Coast ones but I can’t remember which ones, I only remember the last 3 because they were the last ones I trial and error throughed while actually paying attention to which servers I was connecting to instead of picking at random.

Thanks! This is all good information and I appreciate you taking the time to write it all out for me!

I did google it, and found a bunch of articles about dual booting with windows 7. I didn’t know if it was still possible or if it would be smart to try for someone with no experience with Linux, so I thought I’d come to a sub where there are tons of people who use Linux daily and could give me some advice about whether I should try it or not. Thanks for the input :)

Thanks! I’ve been interested in Linux for awhile now. I don’t plan on sharing files between the two OSes, and I’m religious about my backups. If I don’t have at least 3 or 4 backups I don’t consider my data backed up :)

I have no idea. I’ve known it for years. All my computer knowledge is self taught so random things I’m fairly knowledgeable on and then there’s things that are common knowledge I’ve never heard of. I’m doing my best out here! I was a sheltered kid who grew up into an adult that doesn’t know anyone tech savvy!

Thank you! This is all good advice. I’ve never actually used a VM but will have to do more research on installing and using one. When you (and everyone else here) say shrink the partition from inside windows, do you mean from within the disk management software? I’m familiar with that, having added extra drives on my other computers. I actually have 3 computers, 2 laptops and a gaming rig I built, but they both have Nvidia GPUs and I’ve heard so many bad things about Nvidia and Linux and I don’t want my first Linux experience to be fighting it out with those. If I like Linux I’ll probably switch one of my other computers over to Linux either entirely or on one of the second drives (both my other computers have 2 different drives).

You sound like a good person. I hope you get out of the motel and into stable housing soon!

Hes been depressed for years. Kept saying its not me, and I kept asking how I could help and he kept telling me nothing. He’s been working with changing his meds around and just hit a new combo less than 2 months ago that he admitted has made him completely numb and because of that/on top of that he’s been drinking more after almost stopping alcohol. Won’t talk about maybe that being an issue, nope, it’s me, I gotto go. (He literally wont talk to me at all. We’ve had one text conversation since all this happened where he basically told me to fuck off and that his mind is made up). He was supposed to go to therapy recently for his depression but he changed his mind. I’m laughing because there’s that sexist joke “men will literally do anything but go to therapy” yeah well he literally just fucked up my life rather than go to therapy and have to deal with his feelings. He claims this isn’t my fault and there’s nothing I could have done differently but also that “I should have known” that he was depressed and of course going to leave me like this. I’ve been depressed my entire life and I’d never do this, so stop lying and just tell me the truth.

Thank you for your kind words. I’m still completely in shock and just trying to process the entire thing. I’ve cried more in the last week than I have in my entire life. Up until a week ago I would have said he was literally the best husband I ever could have dreamed of.

About a month ago I was at the gas station filling up my 24 year old clunker when a homeless guy came up and asked if I would give him enough money for a coffee. I was going to lie and say I didn’t have cash on me, but it occurred to me that I’m one bad day from being in his shoes every moment, so I checked the emergency stash I kept in my car and on impulse just gave him the whole pile of it. Idk how much it was, not a ton, but a handful of ones and maybe a $5 or a $10. And yeah, a week ago, that bad day happened. My husband dumped me via text message, and now I’m very, very close to homelessness in the next few weeks or months if I can’t find a place to go soon. It’s not always drugs, or addiction, or laziness. Sometimes it’s making what look like good decisions and just getting fucked over.

When I was a kid my mom used to get American cheese sliced behind the deli counter all the time and they always gave us the slices in a stack and it never combined.

I can't stand American cheese, nasty fake stuff, but I got cheddar cheese slices behind the deli the other week for the first time in awhile. Instead of just slicing it and giving it to me in a bag like every other time in my life, they individually wrapped every slice in a thin plastic. I got home and was like what in the plastic hell is this? So wasteful and it was a real PITA unwrapping it all.

Agreed! I’m a boring person (that’s why I’m on social media)

I used to work for a boss who would proudly say shit to my face like “it’s my job to get the most out of you for the least amount of money”. I used to respond by flat out refusing to do work saying “you’re paying me $12/hr, you’re getting $12/hr worth of work from me. You want me to work harder? Give me a raise.” We were understaffed and they refused to hire enough people to do the work (our work load more than tripled and they refused to hire any additional staff. Another location had more staff and way less work coming in daily). When my boss started regularly panicking that the work was never done at the end of the day and his ass was going to get handed to him by corporate I was like “huh, that sucks for you, I’m done at 5 and don’t give a shit. Maybe you should hire a few extra people like we keep asking”

Idk, is there universal Healthcare in Tamriel? Lol but I guess I wouldn’t have any money because I’d have died early on, so I’d still be better off without rent to pay :)

My husband and I had a conversation about this once. Why do we always end up rich with multiple houses in video games, when we’re broke AF in real life? Why can’t we transfer some of that into the real world. Then we realized the answer. Crime. We play criminals in video games. Skyrim? I’ll have 300,000 gold and 6 houses by level 40. I’ll also have robbed every single house, every NPC, and shop in every hold. Damned morals keeping me from doing that in the real world.

A knee locking up sounds far more painful than an ankle! I hope you somehow find a resolution!

Nah, my parents wouldn’t take me and when I was an adult I didn’t have money/care enough to go find another doctor who I figure also won’t care. I’m also no longer an athlete (because of said ankle, but now I’m just old and lazy) so it’s not a big deal. If it hurts, it hurts.

When I was 10 I started having issues with my ankle joint “locking” into place. I wouldn’t be able to bend it forward or back (like you need for a walking motion), and would have to roll it around gently sideways and slowly get a wider and wider ROM in my roll until it popped and I could do a straight back and forth motion and walk normally again. As a young athlete, it was a bitch, because I’d be sprinting down the soccer field and mid stride my ankle would lock and I’d be fucking hobbling. Finally at 13 my parents decided maybe it was an issue worth seeing a doctor for. The orthopedic specialist told me he had no idea what was going on, that puberty does weird things to kids heads and it was all in my imagination. Told me by the time my hormones stabilized it would go away, said just wait til 15 or so, I promise you’ll be fine. I’m in my 30s and the fucking thing locked up as recently as last week, so he’s clearly a genius.

FYI GOG lets you decide whether or not to update, and if you update and don’t like the update or it’s buggy you can roll it back. They don’t have as wide a selection as steam, but they have a lot, and they actually have a ton of old games too. I love it for games that I’ve modded and the mods get abandoned, I can play my modded version forever

My mom, older genX, was a stay at home mom with a very part time job my whole childhood. She always complained that my dad didn’t do enough to get us more money, but refused to work because she was the woman.

She also complained to me after I got married that she thought my husband and I would be fun loving people who did fun things, but apparently we had given up just like all the young people. She said it seemed no one young wanted to do anything with our lives anymore, we just worked and stayed at home and were boring people wasting our lives. She said she thought we’d be better but she guessed she was wrong. At the time there were 3 days total a month where my husband and I both had off work, every other day one or both of us were working. We literally didn’t have time to go on vacation or go out to do fun things, we were always working or trying to catch up on errands. Bitch, I have rent to pay, unless you are going to chip in, fuck off, because if you think this is the life I chose think again.