I don’t announce it, and clearly nobody cares.

Just once somebody told me, confused, “I never seen you leave, but I am seeing you come here for like 5th time. Are you jumping out of the window?” (no), and someone else just noted “Yeah, I’ve noticed that too.”

Not the gift itself, but the response.

First of all, even before Christmas I said I’d prefer NO GIFTS at all. Regardless, my dad got me some inkjet HP printer. I thanked him for it, but asked him that we’d return it. I tried to be respectful, but regardless, he got mad at me and didn’t talk with me for like 2 days.

Later he sent me the money for it and asked me to buy something for it and show him what it was. I do not know why I couldn’t just keep it as extra money, but oh well, it had to be spent on something.
I got a refurbished ThinkPad for that. Pretty good device, by far beating value of HP inkjet. I even got it with a 2 year warranty (without extended) like with a new device, while only 1 year is required.

Even that aside, what kind of gift is “You’ll have to take care of my kids if I die.”?

Perhaps that’s why, to annoy you.

If I remember correctly, GSM900. The shutdown of 2G in my country is set at around 2028 - 2030, so I’d be good for a bit.

In other words, just like with my current phone that doesn’t work with VoLTE on my carrier because VoLTE is a total mess. This once again leaves me with 2G for phone calls. (Although I use LTE-only to prioritize data meaning nobody can call me ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯)
Hell, my carrier hasn’t even yet implemented USSD over IMS which means no call barring settings, no call forwarding settings, no caller ID settings, no USSD codes and just everything else that uses MMI codes. All depends on GSM.

I don’t know why it is accepted that there’s no single mandatory standard for VoLTE that would work everywhere, but I guess people’s ability to put up with BS is just going up over time.
And yes, this impacts emergency services too, with US visitors, for example, even if the devices support VoLTE at home.

I hope for something like the Motorola D lineup. You could take out the original battery and replace it for 4xAA batteries. That’s pretty cool.

A few months ago I was quite happy to finally win one functional handset, Motorola D170, in auction for just around €7 incl. shipping. Unfortunately, I always bring bad luck. The seller unexpectedly ended up in hospital and I got a refund.

The D170 even has a flip-out keypad cover which makes it even cooler. And all of these have extendable antennas.
A picture of D170 for illustration (not the same unit):

Otherwise the most available seems to be D520, but almost all of them are corroded and non-functional because people left batteries in them.

Maybe not what you want, but my solution is email notifications with InstAddr

I’ve kind of been using that way more than disposable email at this point. The app notifications always work and get received immediately.

I am not sure how trustworthy it is though. I’ve been using it for years, even for school and work, which is probably not the wisest, but it’s worked for me better than others.

TL;DR: They used free VPN called Big Mama.

From their FAQ: https://bigma.org/faq.html

How is it possible to keep it free?
The devices of our free VPN customers are used to create a secure peer-to-peer network that our commercial clients can use to securely route their traffic via various global endpoints. As a free client, you will likely not notice any impact on your resources as that happens. The data transferred in the background will be metered by your mobile operator according to your data plan.

Paper!

Haha! Stoopid!

True, additionally guys have holes too.

Just saying…

I think you misunderstood me.

I rather meant that as being something convenient for the situation. Perhaps the most convenient to understand (by others), out of all places.

I didn’t mean that as insult, if that’s what my wording suggested. Sorry.

But as someone else said, my route of lying may be a bad idea.

Perhaps. As I said:

But I am probably the worst person to take advice from.

Ok, you ran to the bathroom out of all places, you can use that now. You could say you felt sick, and then you rather went home because you felt too bad (maybe stomachache), you just forgot to notify someone.
Since you work with food, this could be (hopefully) taken even better. Although… I am starting to feel like hygiene is an illusion, but that may just be with frozen pastry (and region-dependent) ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Anyway, that may work as an explanation for the boss, probably not coworkers. If you’re not friends, perhaps you could try ignoring them outside of work-related discussions.

But I am probably the worst person to take advice from.

Seems like just some short interview by Vice: https://www.vice.com/sv/article/yo1-v14n10/

This comes from the foundation that rescued her, though it’s mostly about the improvements: https://web.archive.org/web/20160302025529/http://orangutan.or.id/ponys-new-life-2/

Original link returns 404 now.
Wikipedia also lists that as their domain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borneo_Orangutan_Survival

Also this low quality footage: https://youtu.be/Qv8NlidN2wg?t=765 (should jump you to 12:45).

From Vice:

It was filmed by a local television crew and in the background of the film when we are unchaining Pony you can hear the madam crying hysterically, screaming, “They are taking my baby, you can’t do this!”

I assume that may be the hysterical crying in that video.

I just found this, so you’ll have to read it too: https://www.the-sun.com/news/3657105/prostitute-orangutan-pony-tragic-story/

Summary:

Idea: In the future where wireless network speeds are high, the OS image just gets loaded into RAMdisk each time.
Marketing: You get the newest OS image on every boot, with all current security patches and no (3rd party) malware, as that would be wiped with each reboot. This will also allow for even higher performance than any SSD.

Anything quick and painless, just like with euthanasia.

I always hate Christmas, so kind of all of them. My mom is a hoarder so it always starts with finding just enough space for that stupid tree. I’d just prefer to be alone in silence.

Maybe when I was a kid and got a new phone. I kind of can’t act happy spontaneously, so I just had this “looking happy and surprised” shit prepared. And it worked, rather too well. My dad insisted on recording me and then putting it on Facebook, and got mad at me because I disagreed with that. I think I just had to put up with it anyway.

2023 - He bought me some HP inkjet printer. I thanked him and explained I don’t need it, so that we could return it. Again, his usual speech about how useless he is, that he shouldn’t have been born, that he always wanted a happy family and never got that, “Other men beat their wives and kids and they still love them. I don’t, perhaps that’s where I made a mistake.” and he can’t be talked to at least until the next day.
Same goes with any disagreement, even stuff like when I don’t want to watch a movie with him.
My mom’s words of encouragement are that I am a heartless egoist like my father, that I should never get married, and how much I owe them because they gave me the gift of life. Former is likely true, I am a piece of shit indeed, but I didn’t decide to be born, they did that.

2022 - Just disappointing because I had better expectations.
It was Christmas Eve night already. I said I’ll take the trash out, but also secretly took my phone, OTG cable, USB extension cord, RTL-SDR and the extendable dipole antenna. I expected OK-ish pass of NOAA-15 and a great high elevation pass of Meteor M2. I thought I could have some fun on Christmas maybe.
Well, I got the APT and DSB from NOAA-15, but I couldn’t detect any signal from the Meteor. I’ve still seen what I think were Orbcomm sats, so it wasn’t fault in my setup.
Well, well, well. My luck - Meteor M2 has died earlier that day.
Bruh… What are the odds…

Hell, I could probably break someone’s skull with my brick phone while using strobe mode on the flashlight to disorientate the other party.

https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=npd