Echeveria's recent activity

  1. Comment on Headlamp tech that doesn’t blind oncoming drivers—where is it? in ~transport

    Echeveria
    Link Parent
    I've had the same experience in my hatchback. Somehow, with the height my eyes are at when I sit down and how my mirrors line up, it feels like every single SUV and truck has their lights at the...

    I've had the same experience in my hatchback. Somehow, with the height my eyes are at when I sit down and how my mirrors line up, it feels like every single SUV and truck has their lights at the perfect height to reflect in all of my mirrors and perpetually blind me. That combined with a bad case of astigmatism has made me absolutely hate driving at night.

    7 votes

  2. Comment on I hate alcohol. Totally hate it. in ~talk

    Echeveria
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    I sympathize with what you're going through, even if I haven't lived it myself. My dad was apparently effectively a functional alcoholic at one point, but he stopped after my mom told him she...

    I sympathize with what you're going through, even if I haven't lived it myself. My dad was apparently effectively a functional alcoholic at one point, but he stopped after my mom told him she wouldn't have kids with him unless he gave up drinking. I'm 29 now, almost 30, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen him have a drink in my lifetime. He does enjoy non-alcoholic beer, though, and over the years those options have grown a lot (it's surprising how many restaurants have it on their menu now, even).

    I was on antidepressants on and off from age 16 to 23 and had strict orders from my doctor to not drink at all while I was on them. I did once, accidentally (didn't realise there was alcohol in the punch at a party), and it ended up being a horrible experience. Even though it's only been a few years since all this happened, I remember it felt very isolating to not be drinking because that still hadn't really been normalized at the time. My classmates in college never invited me anywhere because they all wanted to go drinking and I couldn't, so making friends was extremely difficult during those two years (and ten years after graduation, I don't talk to anyone from there anymore). When I did go out, turning down alcohol turned into a contest of who could convince me to have "just one drink"... The peer pressure was unlike anything I've ever seen even now, years later. People wouldn't let it go until I went through half of my fucking medical history with them to "justify" why I didn't want to drink. I think situations like that are part of the problem - for each person like me who doesn't back down and refuses to drink, how many more cave in because of peer pressure, and then keep doing it again and again, and don't know how to regulate themselves because of how often they end up doing it?

    People are a lot more open and candid about not drinking nowadays compared to before, and I'm really happy to see it. I have a lot of friends who openly talk about not drinking because of addiction issues in their families, and not even wanting to chance it at all because of how destructive it can be. I respect that a lot and I wish more people were willing to speak up about it. There's also a lot more options for fun non-alcoholic drinks now, so you can still have something nice when you go out with friends or whatever but you don't want to have any alcohol.

    I hope your stepkid is able to overcome their addiction and comes out of it a healthier and stronger person.

    7 votes

  3. Comment on What was it like choosing your own name? in ~lgbt

    Echeveria
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    I picked out my current name while I was still identifying myself as agender rather than as a trans man, but it kinda just stuck. I couldn't figure out something else that I liked better that...

    I picked out my current name while I was still identifying myself as agender rather than as a trans man, but it kinda just stuck. I couldn't figure out something else that I liked better that wouldn't be incredibly weird to other people, otherwise I would absolutely have named myself Sidonius which is probably my favourite name ever. (I'm using it as part of my pen name instead, which I guess works out in the end.) My main rule was to not pick a name of someone I already knew, family or otherwise.

    The first name I have now was partially meant to be gender-neutral at the time (it's a different gender in different languages and I thought that was cool), but it was also just a name and spelling I really like anyway. My middle name choice I owe to wanting to keep an A name (my deadname started with A and, though I hated the name, I was attached to the way I sign my As) and a fairly well timed song on the radio in my mom's car one day. It's Latin though, and not everyone gets it right. When I was still deciding on names, I looked up advice aimed at parents picking out names for their kids and one of the suggestions was "if you want to give your kid a weird name, make it their middle name and give them a more average first name" which sounded reasonable to me, so I decided I'd roll with that.

    I do kind of wish I'd thought about my first name choice longer, though. The name I have now is male in my first language (French), but I currently live in a mainly English-speaking area where that name usually reads female, so that's been a bit of a problem.

    8 votes

  4. Comment on I made a mistake, I started using Reddit again in ~talk

    Echeveria
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    I've been on and off Reddit for the last ~10 years and it's pretty much been going downhill the whole time. I kept my current account solely to check in on a couple small subs that I still follow...

    I've been on and off Reddit for the last ~10 years and it's pretty much been going downhill the whole time. I kept my current account solely to check in on a couple small subs that I still follow and occasionally participate in, but I definitely don't use it like I used to. I stopped browsing on my phone when third-party apps were all taken down because I refused to use their app instead of RIF, and I always said I'd leave for good if they killed Old Reddit because that's the only layout that doesn't look horrendous to me.

    I left a lot of larger subs I was reading because they all just turned toxic, and sadly I had to leave a lot of hobby subs too because they devolved from actual discussion about the hobby to post after post of "look what I just bought lol" and people humblebragging about all the stuff they have. A lot of threads nowadays are full of bots stealing replies from other users for karma farming or just using AI for all their posts. It feels weird to browse Reddit and feel like I'm in a room full of robots talking to each other instead of being able to have conversations with other people.

    Your experience is definitely a frustrating one, and I get the feeling of hoping it'll become like the old days again someday, but unfortunately, the only direction Reddit is going in is even further down.

    10 votes

  5. Comment on Detransition is gender liberation, too - Here's to never being satisfied and forever changing in ~lgbt

    Echeveria
    Link Parent
    Thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it! Because of the reaction I got online and within the trans community when I talked about my experience, it took me a while to feel comfortable with...

    Thank you for the kind words, I appreciate it!

    Because of the reaction I got online and within the trans community when I talked about my experience, it took me a while to feel comfortable with the idea of sharing it more openly. I realised, though, that it was important to share, both to be able to give other guys more realistic expectations of things and so they wouldn't feel like something was wrong with them like I did back then if they were dealing with the same thing. After I started posting on the Reddit sub I mentioned, a couple other guys chimed in with similar experiences to mine, and over time I've seen a few others who've gone through the same thing and said our posts helped them feel less alone. Though I rarely look at Reddit anymore, I left my account up to preserve those posts, and still check in on that sub from time to time.

    Something I realise I didn't bring up in my original post is my experience with my current friends circle, most of which met me partway into my transition. They were actually a lot more helpful than I expected them to be throughout all that, and not for the reason I expected either. Sure, when I still looked very androgynous they did question if I was a guy or a girl, but when I told them I was trans and T was just taking a while to do its thing, their reaction was more along the lines of "well, puberty took a while for me, it's normal that it takes a while for you too" and they left it at that. They were so nonchalant about it that it made me realise just how ridiculous it is to expect to pass as male so soon, and how it's even more ridiculous that that entire concept became the expectation/norm in the trans community.

    4 votes

  6. Comment on Where are you on the spectrum of vacation planning? Detailed to the hour or floating like a leaf in the wind? in ~travel

    Echeveria
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    I find a few things I'd like to do where I'm going, and plan ahead for those (buy tickets as needed), but that's about it. I aim for one "major" activity a day to give myself time both to enjoy it...

    I find a few things I'd like to do where I'm going, and plan ahead for those (buy tickets as needed), but that's about it. I aim for one "major" activity a day to give myself time both to enjoy it and to do other things as well. I travel to the same places often to visit friends so I have ongoing lists of places to visit there, but I don't pressure myself to go to as many of them as possible. I travel mostly to go to concerts, but while I'm away I also really enjoy museum and art gallery visits, so I always plan for a couple of those too. Too much planning stresses me out though, so that's why I stick to one planned activity per day.

    As an example, my trip to London last year looked like this on paper:

    Day 1: Nothing major planned that day in case of flight delays making us arrive late
    Day 2: Meeting with two friends living in London that I usually only see every couple of years when we all get together at an industrial music festival in the US
    Day 3: Meeting with two friends from the Netherlands who were going to be visiting London at the same time as us
    Day 4: Trip outside the city to Royston because my partner wanted to visit Royston Cave
    Day 4: Natural History Museum visit because I really wanted to see the Titanosaur exhibit
    Day 5: Peter Gabriel show
    Day 6: Tate Modern and Sky Gardens
    Day 7: Nothing planned that day, we'd figure it out later

    ...but in reality we did a lot more than just those things - those were just what we needed to plan ahead since we had to get tickets and arrange meetup times/spots with other people. We spent most of the second day wandering around record stores (which started after I found out Third Man Records opened a London location since my last visit), found a great little Georgian restaurant down the street from the Natural History Museum after our visit, and ended up using the last day of the trip to do a bit of extra shopping and go back to an amazing Indian restaurant we found on our first day there.
    I kind of learned my lesson on day 6 though, as I figured both visits were planned far enough apart to manage both (Tate was booked for 10 AM-ish for a special exhibit to start the visit with, and Sky Gardens was booked for 9 PM), but we spent so long at Tate Modern that we had to rush a bit to make it to Sky Gardens on time.

    The last time I went to Montréal I only got through about half the list I'd made of places to see and things to do, but at the same time it gives me more reasons to go again and see what I missed. I also bookmark places I really enjoyed (good restaurants and etc.) to return to on future visits.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Online shopping - how convenient is it actually? in ~life.style

    Echeveria
    Link Parent
    Yeah, in situations like that, online ordering just becomes a lot easier. In a way that also makes said hobby more accessible to people that aren't near the areas where events are held, though, so...

    Yeah, in situations like that, online ordering just becomes a lot easier. In a way that also makes said hobby more accessible to people that aren't near the areas where events are held, though, so I don't view that as a bad thing.

    1 vote

  8. Comment on Online shopping - how convenient is it actually? in ~life.style

    Echeveria
    Link Parent
    When you start paying more attention to it, you really realise how bad it's gotten. I see so many sites nowadays with those popups that are like "someone in X country just bought this item!" or...

    When you start paying more attention to it, you really realise how bad it's gotten. I see so many sites nowadays with those popups that are like "someone in X country just bought this item!" or huge timers saying a sale is ending soon (it never really ends, though) to pressure you into making impulse decisions. That sort of thing personally just turns me off from buying there entirely, but far too many people fall for it, sometimes without really realising it.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on Detransition is gender liberation, too - Here's to never being satisfied and forever changing in ~lgbt

    Echeveria
    Link
    Trans guy who once almost detransitioned here. I relate a lot to Devon's experience when it comes to the societal pressures placed on trans people and on those who choose to detransition. There's...
    • Exemplary

    Trans guy who once almost detransitioned here. I relate a lot to Devon's experience when it comes to the societal pressures placed on trans people and on those who choose to detransition.

    There's a stubborn stereotype among trans people that testosterone is magic for trans guys and everyone who takes it passes as male in record time. I'd never known a guy who didn't pass completely after a year on T... then I decided to transition myself, after realising (thanks to my psychologist helping me through it) that yes, I was indeed trans. Though my parents brought me up in a fairly gender-neutral manner and never denied me anything on the basis of "you're a girl, you can't have/do/look like X" or whatever, society unfortunately did not treat me the same way, and I felt out of place from the day my body started looking obviously like a girl's body because I felt like it was doing these things out of my control. I don't remember this, probably because I blocked it out, but my mom recalls me having a literal nervous breakdown when I had my first period. She said I cursed out basically the entire world and kept trying to understand what was wrong with me that made me deserve to suffer like this. I was nine years old, and in my tiny French Canadian hometown in the mid-2000s, no one had any idea what trans people were, much less the right words to describe them.

    When I transitioned, I discovered the hard way that T was going to take its sweet time with me. I knew from the start I'd probably look a bit like a twink and would never end up hypermasculine-looking simply because of genetics, but this was ridiculous. I was over two years in, even having had top surgery by that point, and I was still being addressed as a woman with zero hesitation by literally everyone I met. That took its toll on me mentally, and I became a bit of a recluse because I was so anxious at the idea of leaving the house and immediately getting misgendered. Every time it happened, I was forced to face my body's failure, and I hated being reminded of it. It took me over four years to be able to pass consistently, which is basically unheard of even in the trans community. (I never figured out why it took so long, as I never managed to convince my former doctor from the trans health clinic to actually run the tests I needed to look at my T levels and absorption rate since he believed, like many others, that I "wasn't making enough of an effort to pass", and that it was all in my head/all my fault. After I left that doctor behind, I never got an endo to actually look at what was going on - the one I got referred to quietly closed down his clinic a few months later without telling anyone (I found out six months later when I tried to book a follow-up) and judged I wasn't one of his patients worthy of being transferred to another endo. Eventually the problem resolved itself, but only because enough time passed for my body to actually do what it was supposed to do.)

    When I thought I would get support and understanding for what I was going through, I instead got the opposite; the trans community shunned me for "making them look bad" and told me I couldn't talk about my experience because it would scare people into thinking T doesn't work, and I often heard the words "if you want to be a man, why aren't you making an effort to look like one?" I did my best considering the hand I'd been dealt - there's only so much you can do to look like a man when you're 160 cm/5'3" and have a DD chest that even binders can't fully hide. I left my local trans community when a similarly non-passing friend was banned from the support group we were both a part of because their "lack of effort at presenting as a woman" (which was really just a similar situation to mine of hormones taking forever to do their thing) made others uncomfortable. I knew they'd come for me too eventually, and that just cemented the fact that I was never going to be accepted for who I was.

    I thought of detransition a lot, and even posted on a detrans sub on Reddit for a while. It wasn't that I didn't want to be a man - I did! - but if transition had failed me and I wasn't being accepted for who I was because my body wasn't good enough at looking the part, then what other options were left? I spent a while weighing out which option would be the lesser of two evils long-term: to keep trying and hope eventually I'd look like a man enough for the rest of the world to take me seriously, or to admit that I failed what everyone else was able to do seemingly effortlessly (from my perspective) and go back to being a woman for the rest of my life. I ended up going for the former, because the thought of having to live as a woman again felt like an even worse version of hell.

    Seeing what detransitioners went through also made me worry - so many of them were told they were making trans people look bad and that they were better off just continuing to perform as something they weren't. I knew from the beginning it wasn't about making trans people look bad (not for most, anyway, though some do decide to go that route, unfortunately), it was just about figuring out what worked for you specifically, but a lot of people from outside the detrans community don't see it that way. I also had a friend at the time who detransitioned and that opened my eyes to their situations a lot. There were a lot of people who realised it wasn't right for them, or that the transition was just a way for them to avoid facing something else, or who - like me at the time - felt like it wasn't working, or felt a lot of societal pressures, and were debating if they were "better off" stopping.

    In the end one of my friends ended up having a similar experience to mine, and I did find support on one Reddit sub where a few other guys had also had slow transitions (shoutout to r/FTMMen) which helped me realise I wasn't as alone as I thought I was. My foray in detrans spaces and experiences with detrans people makes me wish they were heard more, and makes me wish that society didn't demonize gender exploration and the realisation that sometimes things don't work for you as well as you thought they would. No one should be attacked for saying that or sharing their experiences.

    20 votes

  10. Comment on Online shopping - how convenient is it actually? in ~life.style

    Echeveria
    (edited )
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    For those of us with niche hobbies, sometimes buying online is the cheapest option, or even the only option depending on location. I enjoy building model kits (no Gundams, but more mecha musume...

    For those of us with niche hobbies, sometimes buying online is the cheapest option, or even the only option depending on location. I enjoy building model kits (no Gundams, but more mecha musume type kits), and most of the time, even accounting for shipping fees and taxes (inevitable on international shipments here in Canada), it often ends up being cheaper to order from Japan than buying it locally, if that same kit even makes it to a local shop. Most of my kits are either from Kotobukiya or from smaller Chinese companies, and the two places in the nearest city that stock model kits only stock Bandai kits. Same idea with some of the parts that my partner needs for his game console restoration hobby - those little electronic bits are often cheaper on AliExpress, and most of the other sites selling them are sourcing from Ali anyway.

    I'm not really bothered by how long it takes a delivery to arrive. When I order my kits from Japan I just send them by boat and they arrive ~45 days later. It's the cheapest option and I'd rather do that than pay more for it to arrive faster. My main issue with deliveries is just making sure I'm awake when it arrives, since I work night shift and sleep until mid-afternoon. The post office holds a lot of stuff for us (my partner is also on the same schedule as me), and the couriers here have very predictable schedules, so that helps.

    I avoid Amazon as much as possible and would rather buy locally if I can. The nearest city is half an hour away which is reasonable to travel since we regularly go that way anyway (for groceries, my plants and plant-adjacent items, overall anything that needs to be bought in person), but it's a different story for my family which is much more rural than we are and an hour+ away from anything even resembling a small city. While there are shops there, Amazon can be more reliable and faster for a lot of stuff they need. In remote communities here in Canada (think the territories and very rural Newfoundland type areas), they're very reliant on Amazon because it's just easier/faster than traveling hours to a shop and maybe not even finding what you need. Amazon is also, to my knowledge, one of the only places that doesn't upcharge for delivery to the territories, which is a major advantage to people living there.

    It's definitely easier to get carried away shopping online, and that can spell trouble for people who are prone to impulse purchases. Shopping addiction is very real and for a lot of people it started online and spiraled from there. Making sure you're only buying things you really need and that you can budget properly helps a lot on that front.

    As for safety, the one time I had my credit card number stolen wasn't even linked to an online purchase, but to an in-person one (at least I'm fairly sure it was, since I didn't use that card for a week after going to that location and then ended up with a fraudulent charge). I noticed it right away since I get transaction alerts to my phone, locked the card immediately to stop other transactions, and called my bank right away. It was resolved in maybe ten minutes at most, and I got a new card a few days later. If I hadn't noticed it that soon though, it could have been much worse.

    4 votes

  11. Comment on What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking? in ~food

    Echeveria
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    I made tonkatsu on Sunday for the first time in a while and it was pretty tasty. My partner had bought pork cutlets specifically for me to make it with. We had some left over, so yesterday I made...

    I made tonkatsu on Sunday for the first time in a while and it was pretty tasty. My partner had bought pork cutlets specifically for me to make it with. We had some left over, so yesterday I made a slightly altered version of my miso ramen and had the rest of the meat on top of that, among other things. It turned out pretty nice.
    This is the recipe I use for tonkatsu, if anyone else wanted to try. That website is my favourite when it comes to finding Japanese recipes.

    3 votes

  12. Comment on Hey, monthly mystery commenters, what's up with the hit-and-runs? in ~tildes

    Echeveria
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    Late to the party here, but... there's a few reasons I end up not following up to comments. The main one is that I sometimes just forget I commented something, or I read the comment and don't...

    Late to the party here, but... there's a few reasons I end up not following up to comments.

    The main one is that I sometimes just forget I commented something, or I read the comment and don't reply immediately, but by the time I remember, it's been too long and I feel like it would be awkward. (I'm either very forgetful or this is another sign I might have ADHD.) Having been told off for necro-ing threads on forums in the past, I always worry I'm going to accidentally do it again.

    Though I browse on my phone, I tend to just bookmark stuff intending to get back to it later (and then by the time I do, it's been too long to comment; see last paragraph) because I don't like typing long text on my phone. I only turn my computer on about once a week, so that gives me less opportunity to comment on anything to begin with.

    I'm also not an anglophone (French is my first language) and the process of trying to translate my ideas in a way that makes sense is just exhausting sometimes, and some days I just don't want to bother with it. My work environment in daily life is mostly anglophone and I deal with enough misunderstandings/mis-translations there that I don't want to do the same online too.

    Lastly, I came here from Reddit where this sort of thing isn't looked down on like it apparently is here (which I didn't realise until I saw this post), so I guess it's force of habit to a point. On Reddit there's also not much of a point in commenting on posts older than a couple of days unless you're in a very small sub where that's the norm, so often I'll see something interesting here but stop myself from commenting because the post is too old, or as I said previously, by the time I can actually get back to a comment to reply properly, I feel it'll be awkward because the post/comment is too old by now.

    I didn't realise this was considered such a big problem/faux pas here. I'll try to do better.

    3 votes

  13. Comment on What a bunch of A-list celebs taught me about how to use my phone in ~tech

    Echeveria
    Link Parent
    Something that's been a source of friction with some of my younger friends is that they're used to being always online from growing up with smartphones, and thus expect people to respond to them...

    Something that's been a source of friction with some of my younger friends is that they're used to being always online from growing up with smartphones, and thus expect people to respond to them immediately pretty much whenever and get impatient when they don't. I'm only a few years older than them, but I remember when I was younger, you'd talk to your friends while you were both on the computer, and when you/they logged off MSN Messenger or AIM or whatever, that was it - if you wanted to keep talking, you called them or waited to see them at school the next day. I don't like the idea of being constantly reachable so I've limited a lot of that in my life. My parents, brother, and partner are the only people I get priority notifications from; everyone else can wait. There's a lot of sites I only check on my computer now, partly because of this but also partly because I hate using a device as small as a phone for long-form typing and such.

    Similarly, a big thing that's helped me is that my laptop doesn't live on my desk. It's stored away on top of a little shelving unit under my desk. Having it there means "going on the computer" is an intentional activity again, rather than something I do out of habit because my computer is right there when I sit at my desk and then I end up wasting time on it instead of doing what I intended to do when I sit down.

    18 votes

  14. Comment on I'm getting top surgery! in ~lgbt

    Echeveria
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    Congrats! I had my top surgery three years ago and it remains one of the best things I've ever done for myself. My experience in regards to the healing process is different than what yours will...

    Congrats! I had my top surgery three years ago and it remains one of the best things I've ever done for myself.

    My experience in regards to the healing process is different than what yours will be, as I didn't have drains (my surgeon was no longer using them) and I went for nipple grafts (which, in case you get them, it's normal that they look kinda gross for the first couple weeks).
    Here's a few things that could help you for the rest of the recovery experience, though:

    • You will have very little range of motion and strength in your arms for a few weeks, so prepare accordingly. My surgeon's instructions were that the maximum I could raise my arms was to the point where my upper arm was horizontal (elbows in line with the shoulders) to avoid stretching the scars (which they still did a bit, but as they healed it became barely noticeable). I got a stepstool so I didn't have to reach up in my kitchen cabinets, and got extra pillows so I could sleep almost fully upright as I wasn't allowed to use my arms to lift myself off my bed. A neck pillow does wonders for that too.
    • Don't hesitate to ask your wife for help. It makes a world of difference to have someone staying with you who can help you out, especially the first week or so. I stayed in a hotel room with my mom and stepdad for the first five days after my surgery and I really appreciated having them there with me. My apartment at the time was too small to host them comfortably so this was the best option. (The hotel pillows were too mushy and she had to pull me out of them a few times because I couldn't push myself up...)
    • Get some comfortable clothes that you'll basically live in until you can put proper clothes on. My combo was zip hoodie + pyjama pants, and a few cheap button-up shirts for when I didn't want the hoodie but couldn't pull T-shirts over my head yet.
    • Your scars will look terrible for a while and you might find yourself wondering if they'll be this visible forever. They will not. Be diligent with the aftercare and they'll fade quickly. 3 years later, mine aren't very visible, and the scar tissue has softened up.
    • Cleaning yourself will be tricky. Baby wipes will be your friend for a few weeks. You will feel gross after a while, and the first shower you can take is going to be the best shower of your life. I couldn't shower until about 2 weeks post-op as the incisions and grafts couldn't get wet (and if you go for grafts they tell you not to face the water for another couple weeks... something about the water pressure on the grafts if I remember right). I managed to at least wash my hair in the sink but I needed my mom's help for that.
    • Food and snacks: I stocked up on pre-portioned snacks (yogurt cups, bags of Ritz crackers, that sort of thing) and made big batches of food to portion out and freeze for later as well. Making a big batch of soup, pasta sauce, curry, etc. is pretty simple and I could just reheat a container in a pan while I had rice or pasta cooking in a pot; just stir every once in a while, and your meal is ready in 15 minutes or so. If your wife can cook for you, that makes this part a lot easier.
    • Pain meds are likely to make you constipated, so prepare for that and get some laxatives or something along those lines. For obvious reasons, don't drive while you're still taking pain meds. I took the meds for the first ~3 days only, but I have a higher pain tolerance so your experience may vary.
    • On the subject of driving, if it's relevant to you: I had to alter some of my usual driving paths as the still-healing incisions affected how much I could turn my body. I had to avoid roundabouts and anywhere I needed to reverse into for a while because I physically couldn't rotate myself properly for shoulder checks, and became very reliant on my mirrors for changing lanes and such. Living in Germany, this is likely less relevant to you as it was to me because you'd have easier/better access to decent public transportation (I live in eastern Canada and this is not the case here), but still worth keeping into consideration. (I was cleared to drive two weeks post-op.)
    • Not mandatory but I recommend it: once you can wear proper clothes again, try everything you own at least once. I had quite a large chest (DI was also my only option) and having it gone made a huge difference in what kind of tops fit me properly. I had to swap out like half my wardrobe post-op. (For perspective, I went from a North American 36DD to nothing.)
    • Depending what your work is like, be very clear to your surgeon about what your duties entail so they can gauge your recovery time accordingly. My surgeon would send people in office jobs back after ~3 weeks off, but my job is very physical so the progression from time off, to light duty with very strict weight limits in regards to what I could handle, to a progressive return to my normal duties took almost 3 months. (It helped that I was/am on good enough terms with my supervisor to be able to explain what surgery I had done, and because a relative of his is also a plastic surgeon, he had a better understanding of what my recovery required.)

    Sorry for the wall of text, but hopefully some of this helps!
    I don't have much advice about the cats, sadly, as that's not something I had to deal with during recovery.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on What do you use to manage your music library? in ~music

    Echeveria
    Link
    I use Windows currently so I'm not sure how helpful I'll be, but I thought I'd still share what I use. I used to use Winamp, but then development stopped so I started looking for other options....

    I use Windows currently so I'm not sure how helpful I'll be, but I thought I'd still share what I use.

    I used to use Winamp, but then development stopped so I started looking for other options. The main things I wanted that Winamp couldn't do were multiple genre tags for music and being able to split up artists so a track with multiple collaborating artists would show up under each individual artist's files instead of its own artist listing or whatever. Eventually I stumbled onto Musicbee and that's what I've been using since. For larger libraries it works a lot better than Winamp did. Mine isn't huge by any means (~10k files) but I still feel it's a noticeable improvement compared to Winamp. I will admit I do miss Winamp sometimes though, and I'd be willing to switch back to it if those features were added in later.
    Musicbee can apparently run in Wine but requires a few tweaks - I'm looking at switching to Linux myself soon (I don't intend to stick with Windows past 10) so I'll have the opportunity to experiment with that myself eventually.

    For adding and fixing tags I still find Musicbrainz Picard to be the best for the job, and for finding album art I use a little program called Album Art Downloader. It can fetch all albums in a folder without an image file for the cover and then run searches for all those albums, which makes the process a bit easier on me.

    I get my music mainly from physical albums (vinyl, CD, tape) and Bandcamp downloads. I do have the physical equipment to play all that media but I also like having everything accessible digitally for the sake of convenience. Most of my files are either CD rips or Bandcamp downloads - my turntable doesn't have a USB connection and my tape deck isn't rigged for cassette rips either (perks of having a setup with some equipment being older than I am). I prefer FLAC files over other formats. I have everything digital on a 5 TB external drive right now (using only 1 TB of it right now but I wanted extra space for the future) and I'd eventually like to set up a NAS server at home for music and other stuff like TV shows. I'm also one of those people still using a portable music player - the Sony Walkman NW-A105 has been great in the year and a half I've had it so far.

    I do have Spotify as well (I share a Duo sub with my brother) but a lot of what I listen to isn't there or disappears from streaming every so often... I'd much rather own what I want to listen to. It works well for music discovery, though, and I do buy anything I really enjoy to support the artist. For music recommendations I've also had a Last.fm account since 2011 that's pointed me to some cool stuff in the past.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on Gambling, and my rambling on why gambling advertisements should be illegal in ~talk

    Echeveria
    Link Parent
    If you want to be able to avoid sponsored bits in videos, try installing SponsorBlock on your browser. It'll automatically skip sponsors in videos, though it relies on user reports so there's a...

    If you want to be able to avoid sponsored bits in videos, try installing SponsorBlock on your browser. It'll automatically skip sponsors in videos, though it relies on user reports so there's a chance it might miss a few. You can report it yourself if there's a sponsor in a video that no one has reported to them yet. I've had it installed for a while and find it really useful.

    https://sponsor.ajay.app/

    3 votes

  17. Comment on What would you change about your past if you could? in ~talk

    Echeveria
    Link
    In an ideal world I'd have been born a guy instead of having to go through this whole transition thing, so probably that. If I was stuck in the same body and couldn't change that, then I'd go back...

    In an ideal world I'd have been born a guy instead of having to go through this whole transition thing, so probably that.

    If I was stuck in the same body and couldn't change that, then I'd go back to my nine-year-old self and tell her not to hide her depression and go talk to a doctor, or at least to her/our parents. I hid my depression and suicidal thoughts until I was 17 because I didn't want to burden my family with another child with issues, and I'm convinced if I'd been able to seek help back when it started, I'd be better off than I am now. It's been a long and exhausting process trying to get to the root of my issues and trying to overcome them. I've made a lot of progress and I'm proud of that, but I wish I'd done something about it sooner.

    6 votes

  18. Comment on The Reddit protest is finally over. Reddit won. in ~tech

    Echeveria
    Link Parent
    I found it pretty telling that in the early days of the API change announcement, the reaction many people had wasn't "oh no, how am I going to access Reddit after this?" but rather "thank fuck I...

    I found it pretty telling that in the early days of the API change announcement, the reaction many people had wasn't "oh no, how am I going to access Reddit after this?" but rather "thank fuck I finally have an excuse to leave this hellhole once and for all" (paraphrasing here, but I'm sure you get it). I think a lot of us, myself included, stuck around out of habit even if we no longer enjoyed the site like we used to.

    That whole fiasco made me revisit my Reddit usage and whether I felt it was really adding anything of value to my life or it was just a cause of stress and unnecessary distraction. I realised that, outside of a small handful of subs, it really wasn't worth it anymore. I check said handful of subs maybe once a week now, but I know the clock is ticking for Old Reddit the same way it did for third-party apps, and once that goes away then I'm just going to finally delete my account.

    12 votes

  19. Comment on What "lost" web page would you like to find again? in ~tech

    Echeveria
    Link Parent
    I spent so much time playing these games as a kid! Happy someone else remembers them. Here's a tip for you: download Flashpoint here and search for Orisinal. Have fun!

    I spent so much time playing these games as a kid! Happy someone else remembers them.

    Here's a tip for you: download Flashpoint here and search for Orisinal. Have fun!

    3 votes

  20. Comment on Why did you select your username for Tildes? in ~tildes

    Echeveria
    Link Parent
    I have a couple that I almost lost because they were planted in poorly-draining soil at the nursery I bought them from. Unfortunately I lost one before I realised the problem, but I replanted the...

    I have a couple that I almost lost because they were planted in poorly-draining soil at the nursery I bought them from. Unfortunately I lost one before I realised the problem, but I replanted the other two I bought that day in larger pots with proper cactus soil hoping it would leech some of the water away, and it worked! Now they won't stop growing!

    Yeah, I've neglected mine at times too, but being desert plants, they're used to extreme conditions, so they're a lot more hardy than you'd expect. I still try not to overdo it, though. The grow lights have made a big difference with mine and I'm happy I invested in that setup.

    2 votes