I see some nice watches that I like, but 80-90% of them are the silver/stainless steel color. I'm not sure why that color is so prevalent (probably the same reason 40% of new cars are white), maybe a lot of people love it but its not for me.

Let's say I found a watch I really liked, but wanted the case/bezel/lugs (and of course the strap) to be black stainless steel. Is this something a jeweler or watch repair shop would be able to do?

I just changed rooms, and my new neighbor makes noise. It's not much of a problem for other people, but I wake up at the slightest sound or the slightest change in lighting. Because of this, I am not able to sleep properly. I have tried earbuds and earplugs, but they hurt my ears. Can you suggest how I can become a heavy sleeper? Or how to sleep in this environment?

I have followed numerous discussions on here lately regarding extracting oneself from being Google-reliant, and they've all deeply resonated with me. For years now I've been slowly migrating numerous Google-bound things over to my own self-hosted alternatives. I've moved my storage, contacts, documents, and some (but sadly not all) of my calendars to home solutions, fairly easily too.

But the biggest hurdle I've been facing this whole time, the one I've been putting off the longest, is the act of figuring out how to get almost twenty years of mail archive and history on my primary account away from Google and into a space where I can access it separately. I have been steadily changing the main email on my more active external accounts to a self-hosted one, and now only seeing a shrinking handful of lesser-used services still attached to the old gmail. But that history is too precious to me, and I still find multiple occasions where I need/want to reference some communications from long ago.

I've tried searching the web for options, but so far all combinations of my queries are either really elementary "here's how to set up a new email" crap, or else aimed at moving from one Gmail account to another Gmail account. I've been thinking that the simplest approach might be just to set it up as a POP3 account in my mail client (eM Client, for the record), download it all, and then when I finally pull the plug just drag it into the local client archive, and then remove the account from the app. But I figure there have to be others who have done this, right?

This week marks my 8th year of working in IT, and I have been feeling more and more that I am ready to move onto something different. Both my undergraduate and masters degrees were in the arts (Japanese, and Linguistics respectively), and I just sort of fell into IT as a job because I was always good with computers and it seemed like it had a pretty great pay-to-effort ratio. Now that I am approaching the decade mark, I feel like it's not what I want to do any more. Even my current job (which I once described as my dream role) has lost its sheen, and the prospect of spending the rest of my working life having to study and learn new technologies, and keep up with the latest developments just fills me with dread. I don't want to be in my fifties and reading endless documentation to try and understand why MacJibbleGPT is now the preferred way to skilter a virtualised quallock. In short, I would like to relegate my computing to the level of "hobby."

The problem is, I really don't know what I would like to do instead. The last time I had an idea of a career that I wanted to follow was as a teenager when I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't get the grades. Since then I've just sort of fallen from thing to thing, and been a bit directionless, just assuming that IT would be enough to carry me through my working life, and focus on my hobbies for fulfilment. Well my hobbies are now very fulfilling, but they just make the slog of the work day even harder.

So how do I go about figuring out what it is that I want to do? I have done a few quizzes online (via reputable organisations), I've contemplated the jobs of my friends and family, and I still just feel like nothing is inspiring me. There are a few problems that I need to try and work around with finding something new as well:

• At least for the next 6 years or so, I am geographically fairly restricted to being within a reasonable driving distance to my daughter's home
• Shit is expensive, so I need to minimise the hit to my salary
• I do not have the money to get a degree or similar vocational qualification
• I would like stable hours, and not to work weekends or evenings (this is more job-specific than it is career-specific)
• Hybrid working is preferable to full-time in the office or full-time WFH (ditto)

So I ask my fellow Tilderen, have you ever pivoted into a completely different career after several years of investing your time into another? How did it go? How did you go about figuring out what you wanted to do instead? What advice would you have for me, a nearly-31-year-old who still has most of her working life ahead of her?

I figured I would help kick off this new subgroup by starting a discussion on how people with ADHD try to manage it.

I had a late diagnosis a couple years ago as an adult, and I have been working with a counselor to develop some behavioral techniques (in addition to medication). Not all of them stick, which in my experiences is the primary challenge of this disorder, but I've had good results when I do use them.

Primarily, I have a calendar where I put reminders and plan things out. If I have parts of a project I need to get done, I lay those out and assign them to certain days of the week. Working in academia, I live my life a semester at a time and this helps me reevaluate certain goals and it feels reasonable to me to plan out a few months at a time.

One thing I struggle with when it comes to planning is coming up with accurate estimates of how much time it might take to spend something. This was always a big obstacle in my way when it came to planning things out before - I wanted to know the exact time on how long it took to do something so that my schedule would be perfect. My counselor suggested that I come up with an initial estimate of how long something should take based off my intuition, and then double it (e.g. if I think a task should take 30 minutes, plot it out for 60 minutes of my day). This has been great for me because usually it's a win-win. Often, my initial assessment is underestimating how long something takes, so by accounting for slippage in time I can better chunk out my day. On the other hand, if I do get it done sooner I can pat myself on the back and I now have extra time in the day to get other things done.

I wanna find better ways of trying to stay on track with habits. I've tried some different apps and none are working too well. Recently I picked up Sunsama which has helped in terms of reviewing the day and looking at subtasks, but as I've gotten busy with experiments I've kind of lost track of that. What are some things that you do to accommodate the way your brains works?

I recently got this plate at a yard sale and was curious if anyone has any info on it
I did some reverse google image search and couldn’t find much on it.
I’m not sure if this is number 28 made out of so many or number 28 in a set.
If this is a set I’d like to track down the rest and collect them because look how cool it is!!
I also apologize if this isn’t the right place to post as I’m fairly new to tildes.

https://imgur.com/a/6eUt9We

So, if I have stocks that were purchased during the class window of a class action lawsuit, is it okay for me to sell them?

It's not a large amount of money at stake here, but it'd also be nice to be able to recoup some of the losses I had due to the misleading information that caused me to buy the stock and ive filled out the forms but they didnt say anything about future actions just asked when i bought or sold any at the time of the suit. I am not sure if it's okay to sell them or if I should hold them.

Any one have recommendations? This is US stock exchange, and if I did sell they'd be at a loss and I have sold other stocks at profit so I would be looking at capturing the losses on my taxes.

Now, rationally, I suspect the answer is "Of course!". But I'm looking for general advice, if my fellow Tildesians would be so kind.

This question has arisen while investigating opening a Monzo account. Apparently, you can lock away some money for 12 months and get 5.3% AER interest on it - meaning for every, say, £1,000 I put in, I get £50 back, right?

My question: is that really worth it, in the grand scheme of things? Even if I put in £10,000, I'd be locking myself out of that much money for a grand total of £500. I understand that's a lot to some people (even me), but it hardly seems worth it.

Perhaps there's something I'm missing. Perhaps some bad maths on my part or some other type of interest that I don't know about. All advice is welcome and appreciated!

I'm in a fortunate position of being in a reasonably well compensated but very specialised role in the pharma industry, and after some recent layoffs have been casually surveying what other opportunities might be out there.

However, I'm really struggling to get a sense of my market value, as little to none of the salary info on e.g. Glassdoor or published surveys from recruitment bodies captures anything similar to my position.

My compensation is way off published ranges I can find, so I don't know if I have "golden handcuffs" or if the data I am looking to is garbage.

In effect, my position developed organically over a few years, and has bits of middle management as well as governance, project management and individual contributor work. I don't think there is even anyone within my organisation with a similar role, I have several responsibilities which normally you wouldn't concentrate under one individual if you were designing from the ground up.

I'd be really interested if anyone has been in a similar position, or any recommendations to on how to benchmark yourself when it isn't obvious what you should be benchmarking against.

I had my 5th kid a few weeks ago and now have a vasectomy scheduled for early August. Any tips or suggestions for prep or recovery? They gave me some general advice regarding compression shorts, ice, rest...

Related question for those of you don't having kids or firmly decided against kids and didn't get a vasectomy: why not? I'm curious what methods you're using to prevent having kids.

I have an 8 year old blind silky terrier that seems to have all but lost his hearing after last night. I took him out last night and a neighbor unexpectedly set off fireworks. The display lasted for about five minutes and he didn't seem scared. I moved him away, but not completely away.

Since this morning he's been unresponsive to calls and sounds. He hasn't been wagging his tail much, has been bumping into the things in the apartment, and wasn't interested in his leash.

I've got a vet appointment for tomorrow morning. Is there anything I can do to help? Is this a common occurrence? He's my first dog and he just seems so lost

Update (copied from a comment):

His hearing has been improving tremendously. The carprofen the vet prescribed helped a lot, IMO. He's able to hear about 80% as well as he could before, though it takes him a little bit to understand. At least until he takes his medicine, then he can hear a bit better.

However, yesterday morning on his walk his front left paw started twitching and spasming uncontrollably. Poor guy was hopping around, could barely stand or even sit. He didn't seem hurt and there weren't any signs of injury (bee sting, bug bite, cuts, etc.). Took him to the emergency room immediately and they prescribed him some gabapentin. Fortunately the spasms went away and he's running and jumping around again

So,this has been on my mind for a long time and i have tried some available/widely known methods to learn japanese language.So far iam not satisfied with my results.Can someone suggest me some ways that worked for them preferably for free/cheap.The main problem is the letters or characters.i can comprehend and manage to speak a very basic levels of the language mainly from consuming media from japan,some duolingo and such.....
any and all advice is appreciated
Help me out guys

Let's try out this subgroup!

I live in the Midwest, but I'm ~1hr from most rinks. I need to get better at all things hockey, but would love to not have to drive an hour each way and pay ~$20/hr for ice time.

What can I do to improve at home? I've heard of golf balls for handling and passing, but do you have any specific drills that you do? I convinced my wife to get a stick and practice passing with me which has helped A LOT. What do you folks do to practice shooting? What about off ice skating drills?

Videos, diagrams, and specifics would be very helpful.

A friend and their partner got into a heated squabble about bread clips. My friend is a staunch defender of the clip; his partner prefers to tie the end of the bag into a knot. They recently bought a home together, and I would like to gift them a lifetime supply of bread clips. I'm unsure of the exact amount, but I'm thinking whatever amount is visually shocking would be good enough. Maybe 1000, maybe 10,000. I'm having trouble sourcing a suppler. Does anyone know of one? TIA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_clip

Looking for recommendations or ideas of organizations that might appreciate some well-taken-care-of board games. They range in complexity from classics like catan to more complicated ones. My knee jerk reaction is Goodwill but I figured there were other lesser known orgs that might receive direct benefit from them instead.

What do you long term users want to share about the culture?

What about growth plans? The erudite discussion with (presumably) real people is what I love most, but I miss the really niche subs. That needs more people.

I just want to make sure this isn't "eternal July".

I'm pretty high on the cis het side of the scale, but I'm an understanding and individual freedom loving person. I believe "to each their own" and support that strongly.

I'm an elder millennial. While we used LGB slurs casually, I never really meant them as slurs against the community. It's just how my peers spoke. Trans was never on my radar at the time. (Maybe a little, but I figured it was much rarer than it appears to be)

Homosexuality was always easy for me to understand. From a particular instance: "Do you like girls, Jackie? (Nod). Me too. That's cool." End of need to understand. Plus it was about a butt, and a butt is pretty sex/gender nonspecific.

I also always felt honored when people came out to me.

I just feel like I'm having trouble empathizing with trans individuals. I cannot imagine myself in that position like I can with homosexual or asexual individuals. The pronoun thing also wracks my brain. I'm more accepting of "they" as an object, but "they" as a subject for an individual feels so horrid to me.

First and foremost, I don't personally know anyone trans. I'm not sure how to change that without being weird.

Thanks for your support in my learning!

I'm kind of withdrawn and I don't talk a lot but I want to curate a community of chill people to play with. I just started my server and I've got 3 people whitelisted, of which 2 have shown up and those two are family members. And one person who tried to join but wasn't whitelisted, but idk how they got the ip since they're not in the discord.

I have around 300 subscribers where I posted the link, but only 3 people joined the discord (one being another subscriber, bc one of my family members hasn't accepted the discord invite yet but is whitelisted anyway bc duh). I'm just kind of feeling like the kid who invited his whole class to his birthday party but only 2 people showed up. I'm not sure what I've done wrong or if I missed an important step.

I have wasps building hives under the eves on my house. I'm looking for a way to kill them without Raid or other harsh chemicals. Right now there seems to be about 10 hornets starting on this hive. I see a number of other places they've made hives around the house that were removed before we moved in. My current options that I've found so far are spraying with dawn soap/water/garden sprayer or peppermint. It seems a little too high to get a garbage bag around them easily before pissing them off. Any other good ideas?

Over decades, it seems that there has been this evolving body of knowledge surrounding plating and presentation, which can only be absorbed fully, if you've spent several years at a high-end bakery or fine dining restaurant (swooshing a sauce with the back of the spoon, quenelles, 3-dimensional whitespace, etc.).

I'm an aspiring dessert artisan, and I'd like to get up to date on those principles, approaches, and techniques, without having to squirrel my way into the fine-dining lifestyle.

Instagram and pictures in cookbooks are great for inspiration, but I feel like I would improve faster by understanding thought process/vocabulary, than from analyzing finished products.

Any suggestions/advice/resources? (Most visual design books are too general imo)

I only have a vague familiarity with the franchise, does the film stand well on its own, or should I skip it?

I have an AMC membership and hate to let tickets go unused if there is something worthwhile playing, I wouldn't ordinarily consider it if I didn't have the extra tickets.

Hey gang, I’m a rather novice / hedonist tildes user and have just been posting links to uploaded images by hosting them on ibb and then sharing

https://ibb.co/PF5nFf9
https://ibb.co/10pV1wB
https://ibb.co/1GgyWCT

Is there a better place to host and better way to post images?

Thanks in advance. Sorry for any eye rolls I may have caused!

I have taken supplements, but they are not very effective. Honestly, I don't want to rely on medication when our bodies are perfectly suitable with enough sunlight exposure.

I've been researching this for a while and can't find sources that show the difference according to latitude. I stupidly didn't bookmark what I read so what I say is based on what I've read but can't link to any of it :(.

• I gather there is research that around noon time sun exposure (e.g. 11am-3pm) results in greater production. The skin's processes are optimised for that time.
• I am very aware of the risks of skin cancer.
• I read in the UK about 13 minutes for 3 days a week, just between April and September is adequate for vitamin D levels year round.
• I live on the tropic of cancer so I'm expecting perhaps 7-10 minutes. Anything specific to that sub-tropical latitude would be greatly appreciated.

All advice is welcome, but links that I can read, compare and digest myself especially for different latitudes round the world would be perfect.

I'm an avid cigar smoker and thought it might be a good hobby to pick up. Curious about a few of the aspects around doing it.

How long does it take to roll a single cigar? 10 cigars?
Is it that much cheaper?
How much difference is there in each blend? Is it hard to mimic cigars you already like?

I'm starting grad school in neuroscience/biomedical engineering soon, and one of my most dreaded parts of it is inevitably having to develop Matlab code. I understand why people use it -- it's arguably best in class at a lot of engineering tasks, and the matrix-first approach of the language makes it very fast to prototype things if you think like a mathematician/engineer.

However, the language also seems to actively discourage good software practices, and many frequently used scientific projects have atrocious code. Think python dependency management is bad? How about NO DEPENDENCY MANAGEMENT? Yes, that's right, the way you share code in matlab is by importing collections of loose files from github/matlab file exchange. The Matlab neuroimaging code that I have worked has also frequently abused the workspace to share state implicitly between scripts, which makes the code virtually incomprehensible. Instead of using packages to create namespaces, common practice is give function names a prefix and import them into the global namespace.

I know there's multiple large companies that rely on Matlab for their products, so it must be doable; I just haven't seen it for myself yet.

Do you guys have any experience developing in Matlab, and if so, are there any good resources to learn how to build robust software in it? What are some open source projects that have good Matlab code?

So me and my wife have temporarily moved in with my parents to save up for a down payment (boy houses are expensive right now). Their house is in a more rural part of Arizona and they have a tons of trails and fire roads that I'm looking at riding when it gets cooler. I have a Canyon Grizl AL 6 with 45mm tires and a rigid carbon fork. The tires are set up tubeless and have pretty good dry grip so I think I should be fine and I would be less than 5 miles from a car accessible road at all times. I have under biked a bit before but not on a desert trail. I was curious if any riders here have any experience and/or advice for taking a gravel bike on single track.

Hello,

I’m soon to become a father to my firstborn child and have the opportunity to take some paternity leave through work. While the length of time I can take is very generous (as far as I know), I’m truly unsure how much is usually the norm for fathers.

I work in a stable office job, while my wife is self employed and will be taking 3 months off. I am leaning towards taking the week after birth off and intermittently working from home afterwards as needed, as even with leave I would most likely not receive my full 100% pay, which we will definitely need. In addition to the financial impact, my daily work usually consists of stuff that my coworkers would be unable or struggle with staying on top of, and I do not want to put any extra burden on them, or have tasks not completed merely to back up until my return.

Any advice or comments would be much appreciated as I am struggling to figure this out!

In a few weeks I'm participating in a three(ish) day nonstop sailing regatta. My friend and I have been put in charge of making and bringing food and drinks for the entire crew. We also have no idea what we are doing, so any advice would be appreciated!

My first thought is sandwiches/wraps but for morale I think it would be nice to have a variety of things.

We won't have a kitchen/stove/way to heat the food. No fridge, but a cooler full of ice. (It will probably not remain very cold the entire time.)

The primary goal is to sail fast so no stopping to assemble anything complicated- someone might even be on shift sailing and eating at the same time. Probably nothing involving sharp knives as the boat will likely be heeled over and that seems needlessly risky.

What kind of sammies? Brownies or cookies? What are we going to do about caffeine? Are two day old room temp breakfast tacos gross or okay?

Using iem with ANC on the street

Hello!

I'd appreciate knowing how is it to go out on the street using an iem with ANC. Especially when you are on a sidewalk next to a heavy-traffic street or when you are on the subway for example. Does the ANC eliminate completely those types of loud sounds? Or they are still present but just not on the same level?
I ask this because I use IEM with foam ear tips but with no ANC. I feel that the foam ear tips normally makes a good seal and isolate conversations next to me or other sounds in my house. But when I go to the street in those places I mentioned the sounds are still somewhat present, although not at the same level as the music I hear. So I was thinking if I could achieve more isolation using for example a ANC iem.
Any insight would be much appreciated thank you!

i've been climbing for a few years now, and am realising my mindset, patterns, etc need changing. on the other hand i want to continue to enjoy climbing as a hobby, and not treat it like a grueling workout/job/torture.

what do you do on the wall, off the wall, and outside of climbing itself (i.e. daily life) to help you improve?

I have been thinking about buying a fretless bass for a while now to go along with my regular one, and I've just found a pretty nice one that's in my budget. Do you think I should go for it? Sharing your experiences and any tips/advice would be very helpful!

I recently digitized some old home movies from my grandparents and looking through the film I realize I recognize almost no one. This got me thinking, I should go through this with my mother to help me identify family members as she's probably the last person who knows who anyone is.

Obviously I can just make a document with notes ex: 2:53 screen right, great uncle john"
But I'm hoping there's a more elegant solution in which I can keep info with the file and not some auxiliary document that dosent live in the same place.

I could just dump all that info into Metadata but that's maybe the lowest quality solution.
The xray function of Amazon prime video is the example of the best solution in a perfect world. (if you don't know, when you pause or bring up the context menu on prime video, there's a bar that identifies everyone one scene with a matching headshot)

I actually looked into it and there's an API that amazon uses for this called "RecognizeCelebrities" and uses images to train the program to recognize faces and populate it's menu. I'm not sure if it's open source but even if it was, it's over my level to use it practically I think.

The last option I can think of is using a video markup platform like frame.io but that's not really a long term solution.

Any ideas?

In the next few months, I'm going to be on the rental market again for the first time in a couple of years. The last time I rented, I lucked into a very nice condo that was being rented out by the owner, and it was fantastic. We developed a great rapport. I looked after the place and paid the rent on time. She was kind and responsive whenever I had a problem. It felt like we were both getting exactly what we needed out of the arrangement.

She wanted to raise the rent when my lease renewed, but it was a very reasonable ask to cover an increase in her HOA fees. It was significantly less any increase than I had been subjected to on any prior lease renewal, which I appreciated.

After experiencing this, I decided I was done with corporate landlords who use algorithms (i.e., price fixing) to make sure they're extracting as much cash as possible and churning through tenants as they progressively price out more and more people without any regard for them and with no connection to the communities they're hollowing out on the way to more profit.

I ended up leaving that condo for a reason unrelated to the rent increase, and I'm trying to find a similar setup again… but I'm not sure where to look honestly. Pretty sure I found that place on Craigslist which seems to have since devolved into a playground for scammy "landlords" whose dear old mothers have all come up sick in some far away corner of the country so they can't show me the furnished apartment they're renting for 20% below market rate, but if I'll kindly send the deposit, they'll gladly mail me the keys.

Does anyone have any hot tips for how to find rentals like this in major metropolitan areas in the US?

I just wanted to share a handy feature in Firefox that can be used to create shorthanded keywords. For instance, you could make it so that typing "t ~books" brings you to "https://tildes.net/~books". Or "ts banana" that brings you to Tildes search engine, searching for "banana".
I've been using a similar trick on another browser I use for years (Qutebrowser), but lately I've been using Firefox more and a post on the Ferdiverse reminded me that I could do this in Firefox as well.

Instructions

• In FIrefox, open the Bookmark Manager. (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+O , alt: Burger-menu in the upper right > Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks)
• Select a folder where you want to save your bookmark
• Go to "Organise > Add Bookmark"
• Enter whatever name you like.
• In the URL textbox, enter the static part of the url you want to use. Replace the part that can change (like the page name or the search term with this: "%s"
  • Example for switching communities or go to the frontpage: "https://tildes.net/%s"
  • Example for searching: "https://tildes.net/search?q=%s"
• Optionally, add tags seperated by a comma in the tags textbox.
• At last, choose a keyword. This is the word that replaces the static part of the URL when you use the bookmark. For example, I use "t" for the community-switching and "ts" for searching.
• Save you bookmark and try it out. When you now type just the letter "t" in your URL-bar and press enter, it should bring you to the home page. When you type "t ~books" , it should bring you to the books community page.

You can use this feature with any website, so I encourage you to play around with it :)

So I am a member of a social/hobby group that has been doing hybrid meetings with some people attending via zoom. We have picked up a troll who finds a way to join the meeting, waits about fifteen minutes then starts yelling expletives and insults until he is expelled. He doesn't rejoin until the next meeting.

We are not particularly tech oriented people, and I don't personally organize the zoom link so don't have much knowledge about what is currently being done re security.

Does anyone have tips or advice? I know I haven't given you a lot to work with. Thanks.

My wife is thinking about purchasing a soda stream or similar variant for Amazon prime day. I would like to hear the pros and cons of owning one. Are there any costs of ownership that were not apparent? I don't want to buy another kitchen appliance only to stop using it because we couldn't keep up with the maintenance or other required issues. We do buy regularly la croix like drinks from Costco so if there is truly a cost savings that would be great. Thanks for everyone's time and opinion.

Edit: Wow thanks everyone for the responses and insight. I will have to sit down later and work through the posts. I know I will have more questions.

I make candy as a hobby, but don't usually mess with chocolate because I know it can be finicky af. I decided to try making some peanut butter cups as it seemed easy enough, but the stupid chocolate chips would not melt. They went from hard to a chalky mess immediately. I was microwaving them on 30 second intervals at 50% power. I made sure my bowl and spoon I was using to mix were completely dry. Is it because they were sitting opened for a while? I don't know what they want from me

I'm talking about this 2 TB LaCie Portable SSD and this Samsung T7 2 TB SSD. They both have the same ~1 GB/s read-write speed, the same 3-year limited warranty, and the same USB 3.2 Gen2 connector. But the LaCie drive is $369, while the Samsung drive is $130.
Am I missing something? Or is it just luxury tax?

Been lurking for a week on tildes now and I am really glad this place exists. The crow here is exactly what I have been missing on Reddit for a while now.

Having said that, the whole Reddit situation has some-what motivated me to get the balls rolling on an idea that I have had for a while and I am looking for advice on the same.

I have often heard this phrase "Learn programming by building" but whenever I dive in to the resources, I fall flat due to the information overload and the general abstractness that the field has (I appreciate abstractness but here it demotivates me) and I have never found a proper resource that I could follow to actually build something instead of just blindly following tutorials and playing with them.

So, my question is how do I translate "learn by building a project" into a practical framework.

I know of 100 days of swift and I really like that approach however I don't think I want to start with swift or build an iOS app right now.

Search for food banks in your area. There are three in my town and one gets really good product from some of the nicer stores in town. They give us two grocery bags to fill, then usually have two more bags filled with pasta or soup mixes. And that doesn't account for the fresh produce they provide. I've filled my, my sister's, and my mom's pantries from a single visit to the food bank. I never felt like I was taking too much, but I always end up with more than one man can eat on his own. So, my sister gets to feed her kids and my mom can feed the ladies that help her at home. Their hours may conflict with your work schedule, but a single trip can benefit you immensely. Maybe get a friend to go if it doesn't work out timing wise for you.

I'm looking to buy a new device and have started to look at chromebooks to see if it would be a suitable option. My use cases are pretty mundane:

• Online banking and other similar services
• Emailing
• As a tool for GMing RPG campaigns (probably managed through some online service)
• Stream video while traveling (eg Netflix, YouTube)
• Note taking & drawing (possibly with a stylus)
• Occasionally ssh to remote machines

Arguably the heaviest of these would be streaming, but I guess most devices can handle that decently. Since I won't be doing any gaming or heavy dev work (on the actual machine) I figured I don't really have very high hardware requirements. As such perhaps a chromebook would be a good option. There are some downsides, mainly for me that it is heavily tied to the Google ecosystem. Can chromebooks be easily jailbroken and run a lightweight window manager on Linux? If so does the device retain its battery life okish? Could I still use a stylus with the device? Would I be better off buying a cheap laptop and install linux on that?

Finally I've read that Google cancled their Pixelbook 2 last year. Has there been any updates or rumors of it coming back (I tend to like Google's hardware)?

Pretty much, the title.

I have been coding professionally for over 2 decades, been using Git for almost as long ... and to this day, it still feels alien and uncomfortable to use. I keep feeling like I am relearning it all over again. I would really like to find some kind of different resource that helps me to make Git "stick" in my brain, and become more intuitive. Maybe that's just not possible, but I keep hoping.

Meanwhile, my roommate is just starting her journey into programming, and her class just started teaching Git ... and I'm eavesdropping a bit, and they're teaching it okay, but I'm sure there are better tutorials out there for a newcomer.

I am aware of -- and currently reading my way through -- both this recent tildes post and the various tutorials mentioned in it. But I am looking for other recommendations, as well ... and I bet I'm not the only one.

Thanx in advance.

When talking with my therapist, the subject of writing is a constant. My obsessive approach to writing is a source of frustration.

I write well in my first language, and aspire to create short fiction . But I'm an over planner and way too critical of my own writing.

Anything longer than a single page is impossible for me because I'll obsess with editing and some misguided sense of "perfection", cutting paragraph after paragraph until I'm left with a decent micro story that you can read in two and a half minutes. Most of the time I don't even get this far.

So my question is, how can I force myself to be less self critical and obsessive, let things flow, and write longer stories? Are there any advices, books, courses, practices and exercises I can use?

My hypoglycemia issues are not related to diabetes fwiw. That said, I tend to get hypoglycemia a few times a day. If I catch it quick enough and treat, it's usually not a big deal, but if I get too low (maybe once I get into the 50s mg/dl), then after treating (usually about 15 minutes later), I get so. freaking. tired. Like, barely able to stand up exhausted. Currently dealing with this as we speak, and it's very frustrating. My endocrinologist told me it's normal to get tired like this while recovering. I'm curious if anyone else deals with this? If so, do you have any advice for dealing with the fatigue?

Tildes might be too small of a platform for this. If no one deals with hypoglycemia here, please feel free to remove it. I thought with the prevalence of diabetes, it would be likely there are folks who encounter this.