5 Things You Should Know – Part 394

Here are 5 things you should know.

1. Adopting a child is not like getting approved to adopt a puppy. It’s a long and often heartbreaking process, and flippantly suggesting that someone ‘just adopt’ shows ignorance of that fact.

Adoption is a tough process. If you want a baby, odds are you’ve already been through the heartbreak of infertility. You have to go through education and approval, often pay a lot of money, and then still have a substantial risk of the birth parent backing out or worse, deciding they want the baby back after you’ve taken it home. If you want to adopt non-infants, these aren’t kids coming from pristine backgrounds here. They are almost always going to have special needs or mental baggage to work through; they may grow up and reject you and go back to their birth family. When you foster you have to accept that the kids are coming to you from bad situations (and sometimes from other bad foster homes), that you don’t get to keep them forever, and that the real goal is to reunite them with the parent who lost them in the first place.

2. As long as the meat came up to temperature (165 deg F), pink turkey meat – even with pink runoff near the bone – is safe to eat according to the USDA.

Avoid a potential fight and / or sending the turkey back into the oven. Source: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/wcm/connect/d177e22b-0799-491b-88ff-d3ecc18f09f2/Is_PInk_Turkey_Meat_Safe.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

3. Everyone has unwanted intrusive thoughts. Label it, accept them AND their unimportance and the anxiety behind it, let it “float” with you to decrease their instances, and expect them to come back.

It’s a waste of time and only makes us more anxious when they’re just automatic and originate from our anxiety.

Do not: Engage with the thoughts in any way.

Push the thoughts out of your mind.

Try to figure out what the thoughts “mean.”

Check to see if this is “working.’

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/living-sticky-mind/201907/unwanted-intrusive-thoughts

4. Google stores your location history, even though that can be shady, you can use it to your advantage to prove your whereabouts.

To access it, simply go to your Google account page, data, and personalization, activity control then clicks on location history. Go to manage activity. Here you should be able to select a date and look at where you were that day.

5. If Comcast tries saying your modem/router only supports up to 7 devices, that is a lie.

An experience: “I just recently contacted Comcast to help with the modem issues I was having. Note that I have a modem/router combo from Comcast.

Instead of proposing to have a technician look at it or sending a replacement, the first thing the representative tried telling me is that my 200 mb/s plan can only support up to 7 devices and that I should upgrade my service plan. I have about a dozen IoT devices like smart switches and Alexas around the house. The rep tried telling me my bandwidth is an issue since I have so many devices and that I should upgrade to a gigabit plan to support up to 20 devices.

I know this is wrong. The number of devices alone doesn’t dictate whether or not your internet is slow or dropping out. However, how much data each device is using simultaneously could have an effect. This could be verified by understanding from Comcast if your service’s bandwidth is being maxed at all. If it’s not being maxed out, the number of devices isn’t the issue.

So, if you are having issues with your Comcast internet and they immediately say you need to upgrade your plan because you have more than 7 devices connected, please be skeptical. Ask if your connection is being maxed out frequently. If it isn’t, your plan isn’t the issue and they are simply trying to sell you a new package so that you pay them to fix their problem.”