Lost Life 2 APK – A Captivating Emotional Adventure
Lost Life 2 APK offers players an intense and emotionally driven adventure that will keep you engaged throughout. The game is known for its dark storyline where every decision has consequences, creating an immersive experience.
Key Features of Lost Life 2 APK:

• Emotional Storyline: The narrative focuses on complex emotions, making each choice meaningful.
  
• Simple Yet Engaging Gameplay: With easy-to-learn mechanics, the game is accessible to all players.
  
• Stunning Visuals: Beautifully designed scenes and characters enhance the gaming experience.
  

links to artists who do awesome covers for books

https://www.artstation.com/mosqi

The Pope met JD Vance and then immediately died. I don't blame him.
There are no good Popes.

I'm a man of few luxuries, or rather, I take them where I can: a cheap office gym, 6 speaker stereo in the car (the standard, I just tune it), and a LOT of french press coffee each week. Naturally, I'm horrified at the threat of tariffs, isolationism, and global warming coming between me and my caffeine fix, but more on that in another post. Another luxury I deeply enjoy is home automation.
At this point, I have very little automation at home. Roombas never became "affordable" to me, smart bulbs ALWAYS lose WiFi connection, smart speakers are a privacy nightmare, things like Keurigs turned out to be "razor and blades" model style thievery with no small amount of microplastics thrown into the mix.
Automation I love: AM / FM clock radios with cassette or CD AND the "appliance outlet" so you can turn on a light or coffee maker when the alarm goes off! Programable coffee makers. Smart power-strips with timers and gadgets. Remote controlled lighting set-ups and the kind of FM transmitter multi-room audio installations we just don't see anymore. Someday I'll put in a multi-room intercom with retro-phones and ambient music, but for now, please accept this amazing video about the history of the Mr. Coffee. Not sure I like the idea of my water coming out of a plastic reservoir to get poured over various sketchy metal alloys, but hey, the tech is super cool!
I like the sideline about how restaurants switched over to automatic pour over coffee makers too because the percolators were burning too much coffee. Very interesting.

Been a while since I had time to post, so apologies for today's post dump! Here's a couple cooking tips (1 really) that merited their own separate post.
I read a TON of frugal tips about saving food waste and scraps to make other dishes. That's great and you should do that, but what I don't see are a lot of tips about how to make your existing food go farther. Here's a few:

1. You can stretch damn near anything, in terms of cooking. A broth becomes a soup when you add a can of beans and it becomes a stew when you add a can of beans and a cut up potato (or any other starch).
   
2. Making a bread, a cake, anything that's baked? OFTEN you can bulk up the recipe by adding rolled oats or additional flour. Many baking recipes are very forgiving and you won't need to increase your leavening agents (baking soda, eggs) until you approach 2x the original recipe. If you batter / dough looks dry as a result of bulking up, add a little more water (SLOWLY!).
   
3. On the reverse side: don't forget if you're cash strapped, you can cut back. Oil substituted for butter. Cheaper oils for more expensive. Less eggs or egg substitutes (careful). Water instead of milk typically does no harm save for a bit of flavor.
   
4. Back to bulking up recipes, don't forget to add pasta or rice (3/4 to fully cooked) to soups, sauces, and anything else you can. A cut up onion is cheap and goes a long way too, while adding flavor.
   
5. Baked goods can often be modified by the addition of nuts and dried fruit (raisins, craisins). 
   
6. Not a "bulk up" tip, but don't forget that you can make a variety of desserts that consist of little more than slow cooking rice or oatmeal with a lot of sugar, topped with whatever fruit you have on hand.
   

Just a few recession lifehacks:
(Mostly parenting related, but still...)

• Volunteer or free event for you or the kids? If its for the kids, get their free t-shirts a size (or 2!) up so they can wear them longer. They can swim in the shirt for the day (or you can do the fancy early-90's tie at the waist), then they'll have the shirt for a while. Event shirts are good to help cover all the colors you need for spirit days at school, if your kids' school does that.
  
• Buying kids shoes? Buy a size up, stuff the toes with newspaper, they'll grow into them quick enough.
  
• Goodwill stores have a dollar tag sale on Sunday mornings. You can get a specific tag color for just a dollar. You have to get their early and be quick because the resellers (employees call these "regulars" and "vultures") will mob new merchandise, even getting into fistfights, all the while scanning items with their cellphones to see what they can resell them for. Man, I just wanted pants for work!
  
• 2 tips in one: Becoming a reseller (don't) or at least using their app - Haven't dug into it much yet, but online forums suggest ScoutIQ or Scoutly to scan bar codes in the wild (thrift stores) to identify items for resale. Things like sealed media also don't need to be resold... you can take them to a retailer like Target or Walmart to return ("it was a gift, I don't have a receipt") for store credit. Big retailers will flag you over a certain number of returns per quarter, but if you do this a few times year to buy special groceries, holiday gifts, or work clothes with the credit, it could pay off for you. I have absolutely done this in the past, sans the app, just returning sealed DVDs to big retailers. -- I also hear that eBay app might have this barcode scanning function? I"m not sure, let me know if you have experience here.
  

I hit up the Dollar Tree the other day for a few items, here's the latest analysis:

1. Gnocchi - I swear, legit gnocchi and it's made in Italy per the package. It's shelf stable, vacuum sealed with a best by date over a year out. No excessive preservatives. Cooks for 2 minutes max in boiling, salted water. I would definitely look into cooking it in a pan with a little water instead, but I'd have to research this. Served 4 hungry people. I will absolutely be buying a few of these for the package on my next trip, great deal at $1.25 a package.
   
2. Pizza Crusts - Pre-cooked, shelf stable, crispy pizza crusts. We tried out a couple of them and they worked fine. The kids like it. Feels like some of those super crispy “Sicillian-style” pizzas I’d get in Bergen County growing up.
   
3. Hunts Tomato Sauce (in a can) - Good value at $1.25, not great value. You can find cheaper tomato products at some grocery stores or Walmart. Didn’t like that it had high fructose corn syrup (less than 2%), but the taste and consistency was fine and the whole family enjoyed the meal regardless.
   
4. 14 inch pizza pan - Did the job! Worked fine with the pizza crusts mentioned above. The pizza crusts say to place straight on the rack, no pan, but considering how crispy they were on the pan, I think the bottom would be like a cracker if I put it on the rack and maybe the top would be half cooked. May have to do some more experiments. Dollar Tree cookware is a pain, in that you need to get the label glue off of the food surface, so you’ll need some pot scrubber compound or something food safe to do that with.
   
5. Hot Sauce - One entire brand of hot sauce was just a few days from best by date, so I did not purchase. Most of the hot sauces are in plastic, not glass, You get a much better value per ounce at your grocery store. I will keep looking at Dollar Tree in case I find a deal, but in general I did not and would not buy hot sauce there. The brands looked good though, if Dollar Tree was the only convenient store or you just need a small bottle on vacation or something.
   
6. Kids Ankle Socks - 3 pairs for $1.25, entirely synthetic. Decent patterns and dark colors. Bought, would buy again. There's a definitely lack of crew socks and absolutely no calf socks at our Dollar Tree, however there are sleep shorts, panties, and "footed leggings" if you are looking for those things. The leggings were probably $3.
   
7. Kosher Salt (large grain) - Nice size container, $1.25, good enough value. Might do better at Walmart per ounce, but this was pretty good.
   
8. Iodized Salt - Great deal! On sale at $0.79 per canister, I bought 2 for baking.
   
9. Epsom Salts - Some selection, $1.25 apiece, could be good for bath bombs, soaks, or DIY laundry detergent. Did not buy this time.
   
10. Washing Soda - No washing soda at the Dollar Tree, so no DIY laundry detergent today.
    
11. Borax - $1.25 for a middling amount, ok deal, not great. Lavender scented, which is pretty much a deal killer for me. Did not buy.
    
12. Baking Soda - I have seen baking soda at Dollar Trees, but it's usually not a good deal. Did not see any on this trip.
    
13. Soap Bars - Lots of popular brands, Yardley for one. Dove as well, I believe. No Kirk's, which is my hypoallergenic go-to soap, and no Ivory which is my backup. If you're following the DIY detergent thread, also no Fels Naptha.
    

FreeDOS, the free, feature-heavy edition of DOS, Disk Operating System, has just released version 1.4. That means new features!
https://allthingsopen.org/articles/getti...andidate-1
From FreeDOS:

Quote:FreeDOS 1.4 Release Candidate 1 is an up-to-date version of FreeDOS, with a focus on stability. This has a ton of new changes and fixes since FreeDOS 1.3. This includes updates to the installer and version updates on many programs such as fdisk, format, ldebug, jemm, bwbasic, dojs, dog, nasm, curl, mkeyb, edlin, blocek, htmlhelp, fdnet, more, fdimples, and others. Read our change log for a complete list of changes since FreeDOS 1.3. A very recent FreeCOM (the FreeDOS command.com shell) did not make it into FreeDOS 1.4 RC1 because it was released on the same day as FreeDOS 1.4 RC1. Altogether, we believe these updates will address the bugs that people have complained about since FreeDOS 1.3.

https://writerbeware.blog/2024/04/05/the...licensing/

Watch out for this scam.