That's what I heard about Chevy's, too.
What strings are you referencing here? Is the financial counseling mandatory?
Not everyone is eligible for this, but that's kind of a different issue.
In parts of California you are allowed to ride on the freeway shoulder. AFAIK it's only legal when there is no reasonable alternative.
I've done it a few times
it's not ideal, but it's not horrible, mostly because you don't cross on/off ramps (it's just from one exit to the next). In my case I did it because the multi-use path I was planning on using was temporarily closed.
I have been on a different ride where I crossed on/off ramps (I should have taken a different route!), and that really sucked.
Only tangentially related, but it's often accepted that there is no Nobel prize in economics. There is a Nobel memorial prize in economics (link), but as it was set up after Nobel's death it is in a slightly different category.
Once I was biking home over the Golden Gate bridge and I saw two Osprey VTOLs fly under the bridge, pretty close to where I was standing. It was pretty awesome.
Hobby 1: Ballroom dancing
No I'm pretty sure Strictly Ballroom is a completely accurate portrayal of ballroom dancing.
Whatever you decide for your laptop, I'm a proponent of a barebones off-site setup if you're trying for 3-2-1 backup or similar.
I use a raspberry pi 3 with a single HD (ZFS) retaining some number of daily/weekly/monthly snapshots. Daily rsync, everything over WireGuard+VPS (TailScale would work too).
From our experience in the US, the birth is nothing compared to the financial drain of the other expenses. And at this age, childcare dwarfs all the other child-related expenses.
We have great insurance and don't rely on family for childcare though, so the math is very very different for someone with "free" familial childcare and no/lousy insurance...
Others mentioned virtualization
I have had issues with COW filesystems (btrfs), as COW does not always play nicely with VM drives (extreme fragmentation and very poor performance).
People often complain about San Francisco's public transit
and to be sure, it's not perfect by any means (multiple separate agencies doesn't help). But the historic streetcars are pretty neat!
They're painted with the livery of various historic streetcars from all over the country (and a few international, I think). Best of all, they run alongside the modern fleet
same route, same fare.
Richard P. Feynman
I think the same is true for a lot of folks and self hosting. Sure, having data in our own hands is great, and yes avoiding vendor lock-in is nice. But at the end of the day, it's nice to have computers seem "fun" again.
At least, that's my perspective.