The first Jack O'Lanterns were carved from Turnips (or arguably rutabagas)

According to legend, Jack was a wicked man, who managed to cheat the devil himself, and as a result, Satan agreed that he would never take Jack's soul to hell.

However, being such a wicked man, when he died, Jack found himself unable to gain entry to heaven. He pleaded with the devil to take him, but he reminded Jack that per their agreement, he could not take him to hell, and so with nowhere else to go, Jack would be doomed to wander the earth for all eternity.

Jack asked the devil to at least give him a lantern to light his way, and the devil tossed Jack a burning coal, which jack stuck inside of the turnip he had been eating when he died to use as a makeshift lantern.

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When my wife and I first moved in together, we had a small apartment without much room on our patio for Jack O'Lanterns. Undeterred, I went back to the original concept and started carving turnips, which fit much better on the outside of our windowsill.

To hollow them out I use a forstner bit that's a little bigger than the LED tea lights I stick in them.

I think they have a lot more character and are a lot creepier than pumpkins.

My friend's kid has recently developed an interest in video games, but he doesn't currently have the budget to get her a console or gaming PC, so he's been asking to borrow one of my old consoles.

I was thinking instead that I might throw him together a little emulation machine, either out of a raspberry pi or a mini PC. It's probably been about 10 years since I last went down this particular rabbit hole and built myself a retropie, so I'm not too sure what the current state of things looks like, so I wanted to see what kind of hardware people would recommend these days

I remember my raspberry pi struggling to handle N64 games, not sure if that situation has improved much since then, but that has me leaning towards a mini PC, but of course PC hardware prices have gone nuts this year (not that raspberry pis are much better these days)

So just trying to figure out what the best bang for my buck would be or what specs I should be looking for in a computer. Ideally I'm hoping for him to be able to emulate everything up to about Wii/PS2/Xbox, and ideally not spend much over about $200 (plus the cost of some controllers and such for them)

Not opposed to building a PC for the purpose, I do have an older graphics card kicking around I could throw in it, I want to say it's a GTX 980 that I think should be more than enough for these needs, but no other spare hardware at the moment.

It may look like a beat-up old pair of hiking boots, but in fact it's a pair of beat-up old hiking boots with new soles, lining, heel-counters, shanks, hardware, laces and one hell of a cleaning and reconditioning job.

Around 4 years ago I bought this pair of Danner Lights. They were worn fairly close to daily, and have some hard miles on them hiking and backpacking.

Sent them in to Danner for their recrafting service. 4-6 weeks and a couple days for shipping later I just got them back.

They're just the tiniest bit snug because of the new lining, but otherwise these are unmistakably my boots that have broken in to fit my feet, but the soles still have treads on them.

Also, Danner customer service was great to deal with. When I shipped my boots out to them, I got the notification that they had been delivered, but after a day or two I hadn't gotten the email from Danner to confirm they received it. I wasn't exactly worried, I figured it would probably take them a couple days to open the box and get my boots checked in, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to give them a call anyway.

After a reasonable number of rings, my call was answered by an actual human.

And one with no heavy accent, who didn't mumble into the phone, and had no attitude problem, and most astoundingly, actually worked for Danner at their office.

But so I asked if there was any way he could confirm that my boots had been delivered to the right place. He took my tracking info, looked it up, and was able to tell me that yes, they had them, because he knew the guy who signed for them.

And then he gave me a direct number to the recrafting department in case I needed to follow up with them any further (I didn't feel any need for that, but after recently going through hell trying to get in touch with anyone at the local delivery hub for a company that was supposed to deliver some new appliances for me with no luck to figure out what the hell was going on with repeated delivery delays, I really appreciated that)

It's kind of sad that I'm so used to automated menus, outsourced call centers, and customer service reps who clearly want to be doing anything else but helping me (not that I blame them, I don't want to work either) that that's all it takes to make a customer service experience feel great.

If I have any complaints at all about my experience, it's that the white stitching around the soles was replaced with brown. I thought the white looked pretty sharp, but these are hiking boots they're just going to get dirty anyway.

But anyway, I'm really happy with my experience, and I'm looking forward to hopefully another 4+ years with these boots.

I was recently struck with a half-baked idea to make a corned beef Wellington.

The inspiration is basically that I have a beef tenderloin sitting in my freezer that I was planning to make a beef Wellington with soon

And St Paddy's Day is coming up, and I was also debating on doing a corned beef.

I have some experience curing meat, I've made my own bacon and corned beef from scratch in the past, so this isn't totally out of my wheelhouse.

But I've never attempted to corn a beef tenderloin (and from my limited googling, I'm not sure that anyone else has ever been crazy enough to try it either) so I'm not too sure what that process will do to a tender cut like this.

I'm also looking for some inspiration on how to sort of "Irish" it up a bit (yes, I'm aware that corned beef isn't particularly Irish, it's still made its way into the Irish American diet as a St Paddy's thing)

Normally I flambe the duxelles with some cognac, so I'm figuring I'll swap that for some Irish whiskey

I also normally wrap some prosciutto between the pastry and duxelles as a bit of a moisture barrier, I feel like maybe there's an argument for using some thin-sliced bacon for that instead (probably back bacon if I can get my hands on it, but that's not easy in the US) and maybe wrap some cabbage into it as well

I normally serve it with a green peppercorn sauce, so I figure I'll work some Guinness into that.

Curious if anyone has any thoughts on this. Anything else you would or wouldn't do with this idea? Has anyone ever been struck by madness before and attempted to corn a tenderloin?

Edit: still brainstorming, maybe some sausage or black pudding (also a tough thing to find around me) mixed into the duxelles?

I have a 6 year old malinois (possibly a mix, she didn't come with paperwork)

When we got her, she was crate trained, never gave us any issues going into the crate, happily went into it and let us close the door and leave. My wife and I work different schedules, so normally she was only in there for maybe about 4 hours, if it was much longer than that we always made arrangements for her to stay with my parents or at least to have someone stop by to walk her.

However, she's too smart for her own good, and at some point she figured out that she could escape the crate, and there was no putting that cat back in the bag. No matter how we tried to secure the crate she figured out a way to squeeze out. We got worried that she'd hurt herself trying to get out so we started leaving her loose.

And at first everything was fine, she maybe got into the trash a couple times but overall we had a few good years of her being loose by herself in the house without any major issues. After a few months of having free reign of the house she never really went into the crate anymore and found other "den" areas around the house, so we packed up the crate.

Lately though, she's been getting bolder, stealing things off the counter (she pulled the whole bread box down the other day,) she got into a bottle of vitamins (that was a fun vet bill) etc.

She's not being destructive otherwise, not chewing up the furniture or anything, she doesn't even always eat or try to open any food and such that she steals (I came home to a fully sealed bag of tortillas on the bed the other day, she absolutely could have torn that open if she really wanted to)

And she does get a lot of walks and playtime, nothing has really changed in our routine that I can think of that would account for this change. It feels a lot like she just let the intrusive thoughts win one day to steal something from the counter and it's just snowballed from there.

Right now we're doing what we can to secure anything that seems like it might be tempting to her or that we're especially worried about her getting into before we leave, and we're providing her with some longer-lasting puzzle toys and treats to distract her when we leave.

So far that seems to be working, I feel like as long as we can keep her busy for the first 20 minutes or so after we leave, we're probably ok.

But we're also considering the possibility that we may need to start crating her again in a more escape-proof crate.

So in case it comes to that I'm looking for advice from anyone who's had to do something similar.

Before anyone jumps on me about good boots being worth the investment I already have a quality pair of hiking boots (Danner Lights) but I'm going to be sending them out to be resoled soon, estimated turnaround time will be about 5-6 weeks, and I'm just looking for a temporary pair to hold me over for whatever hiking I do for the month or so I won't have my main boots. After which these temporary boots will probably go into the trunk of my car as part of my emergency kit to hopefully never be worn again.

Anyone got a favorite pair of cheap boots?

Small checklist I'd like to have:
Wide sizes
Waterproof
Lightweight (though I'm not expecting miracles on that front)
Preferably about a 6" height, I'm flexible on that, but generally I prefer a taller boot.

Over the summer I picked up a secondhand Saturn 2 to play around with. Pretty quickly got it dialed in and was getting good prints out of it, mostly miniatures for tabletop games

With the holidays and such I had to take a couple months off from printing, and in that time it got cold. My printer is set up in my basement and right now the temperature down there is usually hanging around maybe 55 degrees fahrenheit (around 12-13C)

And I just cannot get prints to adhere to the plate. The handful that have stuck have come out pretty nice, so my overall settings can't be too far off, but we're talking about maybe 2 or 3 useable prints from a whole batch that I used to come out without an issue.

I'm using grey sunlu ABS-like resin, which is what I was using before and got pretty decent results

I'm using a wham bam magnetic build plate, which hasn't caused me any issues before (well at least not since I figured out that my printer came with 2 plates and that one was already on the machine,) I've cleaned the plate thoroughly and scuffed it up a bit with a brass wire brush. I've also re-leveled the printer using the same process I have since I first got it.

My FEP is also fairly fresh, I replaced it a few months back and only did about 2 or 3 prints before I took my little break from printing

It's possible my settings are a little different, I had to make some changes to my computer and didn't write down my old settings, but I'm pretty sure I had pretty much settled on the recommended settings I'm using now.

So pretty much the only thing I can figure is that it's a temperature issue.

I know some people preheat their resin in some hot water before printing, but personally I tend to leave resin in the vat and top it off as needed, I usually have something lined up to print next so it doesn't sit there very long, and I don't want to deal with the potential mess of pouring it back into the bottle if I don't have to.

I'm also aware of things like the thermalvatband or other ways to heat your printer/resin. That's certainly an option but I'd rather not spend money on another gadget if I can avoid it.

And like I said, the couple of prints that have turned out have actually been pretty good, my only issue is them just not wanting to adhere to the bed.

I'm gonna try cranking the burn-in times way up and lowering the lift speed way down and see where that gets me. If that doesn't work out though, does anyone have any other ideas on things I should try out?

Trying to breathe some extra life into my computer now that we're past the windows 10 EoL and I'm trying to install Mint

So far everything seems to be working fine except that some of my USB ports don't seem to be working.

They work in Windows, they work in the BIOS but once I'm up and running in with some of them just stop.

My motherboard is a gigabyte ga-990fxa-u3 (Rev 4.0) running the latest bios version

It has some USB 3.0 ports, and some 2.0, I'm not home right now to double check but I believe it's the 2. ports that aren't working.

I played around with Linux a little bit well over a decade ago but I'm essentially a total Linux noob

Anyone got any thoughts about what's going on with these ports or how to fix it?

EDIT: I got it working, after a bit of fiddling with every just about every setting in the BIOS here's what worked for me, reading your comments, and a lot of googling, I found this solution courtesy of a guy named David A. Jayne in the reviews of the Amazon page for the motherboard

OK, so here are the step-by-step instructions if you need them:

*** Step 1: Updating the BIOS settings ***

• Reboot your computer, and press the "Delete" key (not to be confused with backspace) when the Gigabyte logo shows on your monitor to enter the BIOS settings. This can flash by pretty quickly, so sometimes it's easier to just repeatedly press delete while the computer restarts until the BIOS settings page shows (see attached screenshot).
• Use the right arrow key to move over to the "Peripherals" tab.
• Use the down arrow key to highlight "IOMMU Controller" near the bottom. Press enter, and a box will pop up allowing you to select "Enabled" or "Disabled". Use the up or down arrow keys to highlight "Enabled" and press enter. Your screen should now look exactly like the screenshot I have provided, the "IOMMU Controller" option showing that it is enabled.
• Press the F10 key to save and exit.

Your computer will now reboot. If you have not yet been able to install Linux (and you probably haven't, if you have a USB mouse and keyboard) do so now. Don't plug your mouse or keyboard into any blue USB ports, as these are USB 3.0 ports and will not yet work. Once Linux has installed (or if it was already installed) boot your computer into Linux and proceed to Step 2.

*** Step 2: Editing /etc/default/grub ***

• Once you see your Linux desktop, open a command prompt from the start menu. This is usually prominently featured on the start menu, looking like a little black monitor screen. It may be under "Accessories" and will probably be labeled "Terminal".
• At the command prompt, enter the following exactly: sudo nano /etc/default/grub

• You will be prompted to enter your password. Please do so. A simple-to-use text editor (nano) will open, and you should see a fair amount of text inside. If the file is empty, press ctrl-x to exit and Google search for instructions for your particular distro.
• There is probably already a line that says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="", and you will just need to add "iommu=soft" between the quotes. Use the arrow keys to position the cursor between the quotes and add the appropriate text until the line looks exactly like the following: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="iommu=soft"

If there is no similar line already there, you may add it anywhere in the file. If there is a pound sign (#) at the beginning of the line, it will need to be deleted.

• Once the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line has been edited, press ctrl-o to save it, and then ctrl-x to exit nano.
• You need to enter one more command to finalize the new configuration, but it varies by distribution.

If you are on a Debian-based distribution (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint...), enter this command in the terminal window: sudo update-grub

If you are on a Red Hat based distribution (RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, Mandriva...), enter this command in the terminal window: sudo grub2-mkconfig --output=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Some information will print in the terminal window. If it says there were errors, go back to the beginning of Step 2 and try to figure out what you did wrong.

*** Step 3: Reboot your computer ***

• There should be a prominent option on your start menu to shutdown or reboot your computer. You should usually use this, however, if you want to be fancy. you can enter "sudo shutdown -r now" in the terminal window to reboot.

Once you are rebooted, Linux should now be able to access the USB 3.0 ports and will boot much faster as well.

I did find that after that the 3.0 ports still didn't work, but thanks to @your_paranoid_neighbour@lemmy.dbzer0.com I still had one more thing to try and instead of "iommu=soft", I tried "iommu=pt" and that did the trick.

Thank you all for your help in figuring this out!

And if anyone wants to explain what any of that all means, I'd love to hear it, because I have no clue.

Few years back I decided to go back to the original concept and do turnips for my Jack O'Lanterns, and what can I say, I love the little guys.

They also fit on my windowsill a lot better back when I was in a small apartment without a proper front step/porch to put them.

I really don't have much to go on for this, good luck

Back in the 90s or early 2000s I remember catching a few scenes of a movie or TV show that was playing in the background while I was over a relatives house. I feel like it was probably from about that time period, at the oldest it was maybe from the 80s, and absolutely no newer than about 2004.

The main thing I remember was that at some point it cut to a scene of a cruise missile flying at low altitude over the ocean, and I feel like it might have done that several times

There may have been 2 missiles, I remember them being white, and kind of a rectangular shape (the real life AGM-86 ACLM is pretty close to what I remember the shape being)

I feel like the plot was that there was some kind of a race against time to do something before the missile hit its target and that it cut to scenes of the missile flying a few times, but again I wasn't paying much attention to it and it's mostly just the scenes of the missiles flying that stuck in my head.

I really got nothing else. I feel like my best bet to identify it is if you can show me a scene with the missiles because that's really the thing that has for some reason stuck in my mind since I was a kid.

EDIT: after spending some time googling different missiles, probably getting myself on some kind of watchlist, some other kind of similar-looking missiles to what I remember

SOM
AGM-154
AGM-181 LRSO
Storm Shadow
Apache
Taurus KEPD 350
Wan Chien

That sort of square/rectangular shape of the missile is kind of what stuck out to me as a kid and made the image stick in my brain, I thought they looked cool

The scenes with the missiles flying I'm pretty sure were in the daytime

There may have also been a scene with them being launched from a plane, which tracks because most or all of those I listed seem to be aircraft-launched

It was also definitely a live action movie/show

The race against time aspect may not be correct. I was only half paying attention and probably saw less than 5 minutes of this movie in total.

EDIT2: Never say Never Again is probably the closest answer I've seen so far. Not totally sure that's it, but it gives you a pretty good general idea of what I'm remembering

Sunny is a 6 year old Malinois, as her human companion I'm pretty sure I'm obligated to start off with that so you don't call her a German shepherd.

We had a chance to go camping with some friends on their property over the weekend and she did great.

The first night temperatures dropped below freezing. I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate gear, and we managed to stay warm and cozy together in our tent overnight.

She got to spend almost the whole weekend off-leash, a rare treat for this suburban pup.

Her herding and guarding instincts got a bit of a workout, when some new (to her) friends arrived, she gave them a good barking-at until I caught up and greeted them, at which point Sunny saw that they were ok and immediately rolled over for belly-rubs.

The whole weekend Sunny would position herself around camp to make sure that she could see all of us, and if anyone wandered too far away from the group, she would go with them to make sure they were safe.

My friends' property is large, remote, and provides some safe natural backstops to set up a shooting range. Sunny has never been the least bit bothered by fireworks or thunder, and I'm happy to report that she showed no signs of fear at the gunshots (from a hearing-safe distance) but was a little annoyed at it disturbing her midday nap, so we cut our shooting short. I'll be getting her some hearing protection if we ever try that again.

On the ride home, my check engine light started flashing and my car went into limp mode on the highway so I pulled over and called for a tow, I've never been happier to have that premium AAA towing package. Sunny was not a fan of the tow driver strapping our car onto the truck, but again warmed right up to him. Unfortunately she was not allowed to ride in the cab with us and had to ride in the car by herself until we could catch up with our friends off the highway to transfer her into their car. She didn't seem too bothered by that and I think she appreciated the higher vantage point. She got to ride the rest of the way home with her new friends and behaved very nicely in their car while I continued with the tow truck.

After an exciting weekend of hiking, meeting new friends, and new experiences, she spent most of the next day in our bed catching up on some missed naps, and I got to pay for new spark plugs and ignition coils.