I got more time to experiment in the kitchen and work in the garden.
My dog and I get to spend more time together.
Less car traffic.
Not having to get up at 6 am to go to class! I can attend college from my comfy couch lol
Absolutely nothing. I thought working from home would be cool, but it gets really lonely and I especially miss going to class in-person. Online learning sucks.
I get to spend more time with my cat and she’s loving it!
I guess lower gas prices as a side effect is a good thing.
Just imagine what another year or more of lockdowns will do. Yes, they are talking about going that far.
Normalizing remote working now will allow me to travel more after the pandemic is over. I'll likely be able to spend more time on the road, while doing less driving as I won't have a daily commute and I'll be able to combine weekends in the same region into a single trip.
And I don't think we'll have another full year of lockdowns. It sounds like there's a good chance vaccines will be widely available by next summer, if not earlier.
I've saved money because I'm hardly ever exposed to "impulse buy" scenarios, have only had to fill the tank three times in the last 7 months, less water is being used to wash clothes (because who cares if you're working from home in your pajamas), and I can take a nap on my lunch break if I want (and my woofie loves it!)
@quixotic_life - The pandemic made me impulse buy even more! I now have a gaming PC setup including the tower, three monitors, and fancy lighting...for a total of a little over $2,000.
Learning to cook (more/better), and bake (breads, flatbreads, pizzas, adjaruli khachapuri (from country of Georgia)).
Yoga. Biking. To burn off said cooking and baking.
Dang! @Mike403 ~ That's a heafty chunk of change! But, oooooh pretty...
@Mike403 After just building a new PC last year, I'm curious how long this one will last me. I had my last PC for about 8-9 years before I decided to build a new one.
@FlyingToaster - I had a free computer I got from school that wasn't good for gaming, but was sufficient to do my school work. I was gaming on Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch. I was bored during the COVID lockdowns and decided to create a new gaming setup. This will last for many years with the exception of a new graphics card every now and then.
Not exactly an impulse buy, as I had been looking forward to it for a while, but I bought a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 when it was released earlier this year. I've enjoyed flight simulators on and off over the years, and this one has some really detailed graphics, covering the whole world, pulled from Bing Maps.
@FlyingToaster - Looks good.... it's on Steam, so I'll wait for a sale. I never pay full price for Steam games.
Oooh @FlyingToaster ~ That actually looks way cooler than I thought it would. My idea of a "flight simulation game"...
... was based on what was available forever ago (my brain needs an upgrade~ lol)...
TBH, I knew there were better things than these available, but not by much.
I didn't know they had ones where it looked like what you'd see looking out of an actual plane or where you could "fly" anywhere in the world! Does it let you go to remote places too, or is it mostly limited to cities/populated areas? And is it at all "mission based"? Or is just flying/not crashing the objective?
edited | just a plane 'ol typo ~ lol
@Sideon that sounds cool! Improving cooking skills is always a win
It's a great intelligence test. It has taught me a lot about my fellow Americans.
It's enabled me to avoid other people, which I consider a great benefit.
@BJC - Just stop showering. That'll keep them away.
@FlyingToaster - I changed my mind. I bought it now. It looks like this one might actually be worth the full $60. Now I'm waiting for the game files to download.
Too be honest, I don't think anything positive will come out of this. The benifits at first like the air getting cleaner and less traffic seem to be going away pretty fast. In California we had our worst fire season despite the fact the covid shutdowns were supposed to help the environment.
@FlyingToaster - I'm still downloading the flight sim. I started it 6 hours ago. I must be downloading from the slowest server in history. Red Dead Redemption 2 only took a few hours to download.
@quixotic_life There are no missions in Microsoft Flight Simulator, and you can fly anywhere in the world. One of the significant things about this new version is that it uses Bing Maps data to create scenery & buildings around the world, whereas older versions & other flight simulators would require custom scenery for buildings & things. People can still make custom scenery (such as airports, etc.) for this one. I like just flying and seeing the scenery, and practicing landing.
@Mike403 The initial download does take a while.
@FlyingToaster - This was my very first flight simulator I used to play on an old PC I owned as a kid. How times have changed.
@Mike403 I used to play Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0 a long time ago, late 80s-early 90s and I remember it looking like that
@FlyingToaster - That one came out in 1984. That was considered realistic graphics then. Having 3D rendered shapes was unheard of at the time.
@FlyingToaster - All this time spent downloading and the game doesn't work. I get the loading screen then it crashes back to desktop.
@Mike403 Sorry to hear you're having trouble with it. I wonder if one of these pages could help: https://flightsimulator.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015879160-How-to-troubleshoot-crashes-CTDs-at-the-loading-screen https://thedroidguy.com/fix-microsoft-flight-simulator-2020-crashing-1137821
When I first installed it a few months ago, it was sitting at the load screen. I read online about initially running it as Administrator, and that fixed the issue (and I didn't have to run it as Administrator anymore after that). I'm not sure if that's something that would help in this case.
@FlyingToaster - I got the game to run by updating my GPU drivers. Now I can't figure out the controls. It tells me to press NUM pad 0 to take off from the runway, so I press it and instead it changes the camera to outside the plane....then I crash.
@FlyingToaster - I paired a PS4 controller to the PC and I can fly the plane using it. Keyboard controls don't work for some reason.
@Mike403 Good to hear you got it running. I usually play it with a joystick, though I use the keyboard for some things. I've been in the habit of using F5-F8 for flaps and G for landing gear, from playing earlier versions, but I think my joystick can control those too.