I have had a bunch of little issues which ultimately come down to a knowledge gap, me just not knowing enough about Home Assistant to know where to even look. I've solved most of my problems with persistence and searching for other people's issues, but some issues are just not going anywhere.

It used to be that a project like this would have an IRC chatroom and tonnes of handy experts would be there chatting and helping to point you in the right direction. Now that IRC has largely gone by the wayside where do you all go to have that quick back and forth chatting to get a vague idea of where to go with next steps?

To be clear, I'm not so much asking about where on the system to find logs or the like, I more mean the community of people chatting and helping each other troubleshoot issues.

He will sit on it like this and you can pick it up with him on it, take him on a magic carpet ride, and set him down somewhere else. Best passenger ever, 5 stars

My little Sevvy making a loaf and giving me pretty eyes. People who say you can't take good pictures of black cats need to learn how to use their cameras better.

He super cute with his little harness on, waiting for a skink to make a move so that he can POUNCE!

Most people don't really budget for things that are large on a yearly or even monthly scale, but you can and probably should.

For example, I know that I use my headphones a lot and being without them would be really annoying. Budgeting based on buying them asap because I need them is a really painful way of managing that cost because I can't do anything else at the same time and it is expensive. If instead I set aside a smaller amount while I still have working headphones it is much easier.

My formula for working out the cost is fairly simple. How much does it cost for an item to fill the need? How long do I expect that item to last in the worst case? How much would I therefore need to save per week for that cost to be saved before the current item needs replacement.

My headphones cost around $100. I expect to need replacement not sooner than about 16 months. So I should save $75 per year which works out to less than $2 per week. If I just save $2 per week I will hit my goal of $100 within the year and of something goes wrong earlier I can make the difference up the normal way. If I end up not needing a replacement by the time I hit my goal I can keep saving for a higher cost option or move that saving to another goal to boost that.