[Migrated, see pinned post] Casual Conversation

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A couple of years ago, I started building a house. It was a huge project, and while I didn’t directly ask my friends for help, I quietly hoped some of them might offer. No one did, which was disappointing, but I didn’t confront anyone about it.

At the same time, I was planning a wedding with my wife last year. We invited my entire friend group (about 15 people) and had a great time (August 24). The last time we all saw each other was at a New Year’s gathering—but since then, things have gone quiet.

What’s happened now is that about 7 people from the original group have started doing more things together, but they don’t regularly invite the rest of us anymore. I’ve noticed I’m no longer naturally included. We haven’t had a falling out, but there’s been around 4 months of silence now, and I haven’t reached out either—partly because it feels awkward after this long.

Since then, I’ve also changed my lifestyle a bit. I started going to the gym regularly and I’ve pulled back from drinking, which the group still does a lot of on weekends. So maybe I’ve distanced myself too, without fully realizing it.

Now I feel kind of alone. I have barely any social contact outside of two others from the group who also seem to be excluded. And honestly, it’s been getting to me. At my age (early 30s), it feels hard to find new people to really connect with. I do say hi and chat a bit with regulars at the gym, but that’s as far as it goes. I wouldn’t feel comfortable just asking someone to go out to eat or hang out.

So I’m wondering:

Is this just a normal phase of life and friendship? Was I expecting too much back then? And is it worth trying to reach out again, or should I just accept the drift and try to build something new (somehow)?

I’d really appreciate any outside thoughts or similar experiences....

It keeps getting me if I see posts from my friend group when they go on vacation or trips together and put it on their status. Even if I likely wouldn't have time I'd think it would be cool if they would just ask if I wanted to join? But I don't seem to fit in at all anymore.

My dad was a big model railway guy. His interests were pretty niche, though. He was only really interested in the latter years of The London and South Western Railway. He possibly knew more about this railway than almost anyone else alive, and had pretty much every book ever written on the subject.

When I was very young, I used to get him Thomas the Tank Engine stuff as presents because I knew he 'liked trains'. He'd give me a slightly fixed smile as he opened another pair of Thomas socks (which he would never wear because he just wasn't a novelty sock kind of man).

Eventually, we came to an understanding. He would buy himself an incredibly obscure book about the railways that was actually something he'd like to receive, and I'd just wrap it and give it to him. He'd be happy, I'd be happy, it worked.

My interests are somewhat different. The photo is of a board game called Dragon Pass (this edition from 1980), the first published material relating to the world Glorantha which was eventually explored through the Runequest role-playing game.

But I wouldn't dream of expecting my kids to know, or understand, that this is a thing I've been after for years. I found it this week on eBay, at an acceptable price, and snapped it up. It'll be a birthday present from one of my kids. I'll be happy, they'll be happy.

Does anyone else do this?

I expect that others are in the same boat and that we’ll see a downturn in consumer purchasing very soon.

I’ve been in this weird headspace lately where life is just… strange. On the surface, everything is fine. I go to work, eat relatively healthy, try to stay on top of errands, keep things running — the usual. But underneath it all, there's this constant feeling of dull pressure, like I'm being stretched thin by things that don’t really matter. It’s like I’m always busy, but rarely present.

Every day feels packed, but nothing sticks. I go through the motions, check off tasks, scroll a bit, eat, sleep, repeat. I end the day drained, like I ran a marathon in my head — but can’t really remember anything meaningful that happened. It’s not burnout in the dramatic sense, just this low-grade hum of tiredness and disconnection that never really turns off.

Socially, things have gotten quieter too. I barely see my friends anymore. Most of them are still into drinking and going out — stuff that used to feel exciting but now just feels... loud and repetitive. There was no big falling out. Just different rhythms now. Slower ones. And sometimes I sit with that and wonder if it’s just part of growing up, or if something deeper got lost along the way.

And then my brain starts spinning, usually late at night, when everything’s quiet. I start thinking about the future — and it honestly kind of scares me. Not in a dramatic, apocalyptic way, but in that creeping "things-are-moving-too-fast" way. AI is suddenly everywhere. Wars are happening in the background of our everyday lives. Economies feel fragile. Everything seems more unstable than it used to be, like we’re just pretending things are normal while the ground shifts under us.

And weirdly, my mind keeps drifting back to 2006. I don’t even know why exactly — maybe because it felt slower. Simpler. The internet was just fun and weird, not all-consuming. There were fewer screens, fewer existential threats in the news feed. Boredom existed, but it didn’t feel dangerous — it felt open. It felt like space to breathe. Now everything feels compressed, even rest.

I don’t think I’m depressed. I’m not miserable. But I feel… detached. Like I’m watching my life from the outside, waiting for it to feel like mine again. There’s this quiet emptiness running underneath everything, like background static. Not loud enough to break me, just enough to make everything feel slightly out of tune.

Anyone else feel like this? Have you figured out how to shake it — or at least live with it in a way that makes sense?

If you’ve got a job that’ll take a week, contractors will basically fight for it - but if it’s just something that takes a few hours, it’s apparently a real struggle to get anyone to show up.

I just installed a new kitchen sink and hooked up the faucet and dishwasher for a client. He said they had called eight plumbing companies, and all of them either refused outright or said they’d get back to it but never did. One company agreed to come install it but wouldn’t do the hole in the countertop for the sink, so they would’ve needed to hire a carpenter separately - and you can imagine how thrilled a carpenter would be about a job that takes less than an hour.

This is an incredibly common story among my customers. I’m a plumber by training, but when I went self-employed, I expanded my services to cover all kinds of handyman work. Clearly, I’m filling a niche, considering the amount of gratitude I’m getting from customers. I literally received a gift basket from one just last week. I should’ve made the jump a decade ago.

Allergies, vegan, paleo etc?

I heard there were massive blackouts in Spain Portugal and parts of France. If you can still somehow access the Internet, how are you doing?

How do we consume less content and be more social/productive in a way that isn't concerned with profit?

Hi, I just want to say how happy I am that I finally replaced my old battery which was basically dead with a new one, successfully and I feel happy for it. Right now I'm writing this on that laptop which is charging, but I'm calibrating the battery which is recommended in a manual. Anyone wondering, I ordered it from ifixit store. How is everyone doing?

Trying to live slower to improve my mental health

Posting this here because the metal community seems to be entirely links to tracks and I'm not sure how well received this would be there. Also, I'm open to anything that goes more on the punk rock side of things. I like a little punk in my metal and a little metal in my punk (which is very subjective anyway).

Basically as the title says. I'm bored of my current selection of heavy music and looking for new stuff. To per-emptively get ahead of these answers: yes, I've heard Kittie, Nightwish and Arch Enemy before (actually haven't listened to Kittie since the nu metal days and maybe I should check them out again).

Two bands that I have found in recent years that I absolutely love are:

In This Moment. They started out as pretty much straight metalcore but have a noticeable evolution with each album, to the point that the most recent album sounds like this. Evolution is something I appreciate in a band.

Butcher Babies. Just straight up chaotic. And good shit. And they're even named after an old school punk song. Chaos and attitude is something I also appreciate in a band. Pity that one of the vocalists left though, having two vocalists was something that really set them apart.

Any other suggestions?

Edit: wasn't expecting so many great suggestions here. I promise I'll make my way through each post and suggestion here but it's going to take time. In the mean time, thanks everyone. At this rate I'm going to have more than enough new (to me) stuff to listen to.

We've all met one, whose the worst you've met?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28741527

I enjoy playing modded games on PC. My IT competency is all informal and hands on so I apologize if this is a dumb question or it seems like I have no idea what I'm talking about. What I was looking to do without using a 3rd party software was to have a game playing in any type of windowed, borderless windowed, or full screen display window on monitor 1 while also having the ability to navigate an open browser window or even just navigate my desktop on display 2. This is all a very normal set up I know but the brick wall I hit happens because my ability with a keyboard is a huge gaming retardant for me. So what I wanted to try and set up was for the gamepad and gaming window, regardless of what display monitor it's being used on, to remain as an "up front" and active process while being able to use my keyboard and mouse as their normal operating devices to navigate my dektop or other active program windows simultaneously.

I have only looked into this briefly because it was very evident after searching the internet that there was not a way to natively set up my PC to allow me to game on one monitor using a gamepad while also having the ability to freely navigating other open windows on monitor 2 using mouse and keyboard with the gaming window remaining active.

I'm playing Witcher 3 currently but earlier this year on the same PC and Windows 11 setup, I swear I was able set up Fallout London by editing the setting.ini file to do exactly what I describred no problem. Admittedly I'm usually as baked as an apple pie when playing with games or modding, but I flipping swear by editing the fallout ini it allowed me to set the the window as always on top and active (meaning it didn't move to the background, or pause, or cut the gamepad off when the mouse was used on other dosplay). It was a series of of like 3 lines of true/false display parameters I entered that allowed me to choose how the program would respond when my input switched from the program window's gamepad to the PC window's mouse/keyboard input.

Fast forward to me trying to get the same setup for a modded Witcher 3 and the results of my searching was that it is universally accepted technical impossibility to use a gamepad exclusively in 1 open window program while also using a mouse to navigate a PC's desktop or other app's open windows simultaneously.

My questions are all to ubderstand why this would be so difficult to implement as a standard option you can set in your OS settings? I'm certainly not qualified to actually be questioning this but in my limited understanding of the devices and platforms in play, this really seems like a very do-able and sought after feature.

Pc's with touch screens are basically doing everything I would like to happen but using touch screen inputs and parameters instead of a gamepad's input. What am i missing in this workflow that is brickwalling this from being an actual feature?:

1. Creating an OS native setting where the user can choose how the OS handles active and sleeping windows. For example, option A is to keep the default function of determining active windows based on actual cursor location. No clue how it's programed but basically keeping things as they currently are where the hover over an open window without clicking in it but still be able to scroll with mouse wheel. Then option B would allow you disable the function where inactive windows are relegated to only running background processes.

2. The setting would then require a subsequent setting option to pop up for the user set when the step 1 selection was set to have multiple open windows running simultaneously as seperate active windows. This setting would be for the user to choose between utilizing one input device to control the PC globally as normal or to be able to assigned an installed device to only perform within the limits of an assigned program's window when it is open and active.

Basically I'm picturing this working similar to the way a touchscreen laptop allows you to choose between standard desktop mode and tablet mode. Having the actual keyboard and mouse with global permissions as they always had so they will over ride the controller in its assigned program window for troubleshooting, saftey net in case input device 2 (gamepad or w/e) fails mid use. And the 2ndary input device is only able to operate in the confines of the assigned program window.

It also seems like I have messed around with software or device settings in the past that are already doing this for shit like Android Auto, augmented note pads and their stylus, the already mentioned touch screen displays, and I'm guessing but I wanna say some of the more accommodating accessibility options available for different types of handicapable input devices. I mean shit, don't they have to make all computers capable of being used with only a keyboard or only a mouse option already?

I'm fully expecting the answer to be that Windows and Microsoft are too far in the mindset of fuck what users want to include a feature that will require any added operating/programming costs. But like I started, I know that I don't know enough to know if there are major obstacles engineering this to work.