A few months ago in this recurring thread, I shared meeting my girlfriend. Happy to report we're celebrating four months together now and I still feel like I'm in a super healthy relationship....
A few months ago in this recurring thread, I shared meeting my girlfriend. Happy to report we're celebrating four months together now and I still feel like I'm in a super healthy relationship.
This week we're doing an escape room. It's been a while since my last one; I love them and in fact the new startup I'm working on is a b2b escape room product.
My guildmaster started streaming a few weeks back as well, and he's managing a new modded Minecraft server. It's tons of fun and I'm joining him every couple of evenings.
Aside from that I've picked up mentoring and short consultations for programming again. Hackhands, a site I liked a lot, was killed off a while back and that turned me off mentoring completely. But I've started doing it on codementor now and I really appreciate the site's quality and execution. (If you're a seasoned programmer and are interested, DM me for a referral invite).
I'm going to visit New York City for the first time. I'll be going with a friend and it's going to be for a week. The plane's booked, the hotel as well, and we bought tickets to see a musical....
I'm going to visit New York City for the first time. I'll be going with a friend and it's going to be for a week. The plane's booked, the hotel as well, and we bought tickets to see a musical. With the essentials out of the way, I was wondering if some of you had things to recommend or tips, anything to help really ! I bought a travel guide and I'm currently looking at some websites of course but I guess I prefer personal recommendations.
Nice! New Yorker here. I previously made a bunch of recommendations here. One thing happening right now that you can check out is the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. Basically a big street...
Nice! New Yorker here. I previously made a bunch of recommendations here.
One thing happening right now that you can check out is the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. Basically a big street fair with an Italian theme. Also, baseball season is still happening and the weather has been beautiful, so you could check out a game. The Yankees are home this week and the Mets get back to town on Monday.
It's definitely not a novel suggestion, but I highly recommend going to the American Museum of Natural History. I wish I would have had more time there—we only planned for about a half day, but I...
It's definitely not a novel suggestion, but I highly recommend going to the American Museum of Natural History. I wish I would have had more time there—we only planned for about a half day, but I easily could have spent at least a whole day there, and ended up having to rush through quite a bit of it.
We had gotten a quote from a contractor about heating and insulating our garage, because it feels like our entire house is filled with partially used paint cans and other renovation materials that...
We had gotten a quote from a contractor about heating and insulating our garage, because it feels like our entire house is filled with partially used paint cans and other renovation materials that aren't supposed to freeze (canada). It came back a lot more expensive than we wanted, because we will need to trench up a part of our backyard to run new power or gas because the power that's out there now is insufficient for a heater. So that means I'll need to dig up all my haskap bushes (which are only just established) and find somewhere else to plant them for the winter, my hops and bleeding hearts, and try to rehome some roses, alliums and daylilies that are in the path so they don't just end up dug up and dead, and I have nowhere to put them.
Honestly I'm really irritated by it even though it doesn't seem like it should be that big of a deal, and it's totally a privileged problem! We knew we'd need some professional renos done on the house when we bought it, but it's just so irritating to have to run new lines when the garage already has power out there. Why wouldn't they have just put in sufficient power for a heater when it was built? It's not that old, and it's below zero here for like 6 months of the year!
How much DIY are you willing/able to do? Insulation isn't fun but it's pretty straightforward if you use the rolls of fiberglass. I don't know what your codes are, but here in the PNW (I'm about...
How much DIY are you willing/able to do? Insulation isn't fun but it's pretty straightforward if you use the rolls of fiberglass. I don't know what your codes are, but here in the PNW (I'm about 290 km south of the Canadian border), we need to use R-17 or better. I imagine you probably need R-22 or more.
Regarding your electrical, how much spare amperage do you have on the main breaker? I think most newer wiring jobs are 200 amps or better. If you have the spare capacity, consider this:
take a look at the Romex out there, and remember it's color. They color-code the exterior insulation to indicate it's maximum amperage. If it's higher than the amps listed on your garage breaker, you can safely install a new breaker for the garage with higher (matching) amps. If not, consider pulling new wire. You already have conduit running out there for the current wiring, after all. You can buy/rent a wire pulling tool, and remove the old wire and run new, higher amperage wire out there all without digging new trenches. Install the new breaker and you're set! I don't know about your locality, but in many places it does not require permitting to replace a breaker and a single wire.
Now, if you want to do 240v service instead of 120, it's a little harder with multiple wires and breakers, but is doable. Unless you know WTF you're doing, stay the hell away from anything over 240v or anything multi-phase. F-those.
It sounds more complicated than it is. This is easily an afternoon job, especially if you have everything on hand and watch a few Youtube videos first. And don't forget the savings! I fully wired my shed (conduit, Romex, outlets, lights and a breaker) for about $125 USD. Not bad!
This... makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, actually most of it doesn't make much sense to me because I am going to need to research some terms! but the theory of pulling the new wires from my...
This... makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, actually most of it doesn't make much sense to me because I am going to need to research some terms! but the theory of pulling the new wires from my main breaker using the existing conduit seems really smart. I'm going to check out some of the things you said to look at! Maybe I can save some skrilla which would be excellent :D thank you so much!
Glad to help! I hope you're able to save yourself some dollars here. I want to remind you to be 100% certain that you purchase a multimeter or voltage detecting tool. This way you can be certain...
Glad to help! I hope you're able to save yourself some dollars here. I want to remind you to be 100% certain that you purchase a multimeter or voltage detecting tool. This way you can be certain that killing your breaker(s) actually did cut off the juice. Safety, safety, safety.
And (of course) the ever important reminders. I'm not trying to scare you out of any kind of DIY jobs, but I do want to stress that taking some safety precautions will save you a lot of pain and potential serious harm. Play it safe, and save some $.
Voltage is essentially a measurement of how much "desire" the electrons feel to make them flow. Electricity is far more willing to flow through higher voltage systems, so you can see why energy-hungry items like stoves, dryers, etc require 240v instead of the North American standard 120v.
Amperage is essentially a measure of electricity flow. Just like we'd measure the flow rate of a river in cubic meters/sec, amps measure the current. According to OSHA, 2 amps is enough to stop your heart, so 200A service on our homes can be lethal.
Always kill main power when replacing breakers. Always kill power to the breaker you're working on, when inspecting the wires. Always make sure nobody in your house will go turn on the power of whatever you're working on!
I have no paid work on this week so am getting some admin done and catching up on things that have been waiting a while. It's changeover time for my indoor garden (previously here) which means all...
I have no paid work on this week so am getting some admin done and catching up on things that have been waiting a while. It's changeover time for my indoor garden (previously here) which means all the old plants are out and prepping for the next crop: that's a whole load of disinfecting and scrubbing and probably some fiddling about installing upgrades and tweaks to the setup. I'm also hoping to get my 3D printer online so I can start printing designs to be cast in silver (or gold if I'm feeling rich). I'd also like to finish up a few jobs I'm doing as a favour to a friend, which is repairs to some stuff of hers in exchange for time on her massage table. I do love massage, and getting some "free" as part of a skills swap is even better.
Always hoping to rack up a few kms on my bike as well. Will try to cycle over to visit a friend whose daughter starts school full time this week, so she'll be a bit lonely and would probably appreciate me showing up all sweaty and demanding tea.
I missed last week so a bit of a follow up to my dentist appointment. I had my tooth removed last week. It thankfully wasnt at the hospital and was done with local anaesthetic. It was a fairly...
I missed last week so a bit of a follow up to my dentist appointment. I had my tooth removed last week. It thankfully wasnt at the hospital and was done with local anaesthetic. It was a fairly upscale "dental surgery" which was incredibly different to my usual practice which is in a tiny renovated terrace.
The tooth removal was painless and efficient. I'm going to be honest, it was like a horror film from my point of view. The dentist is leaning over me covered in sweat with what i assume are a pair of pliers. He's yanking and pulling. Bits of tooth are being snapped off. Apparently he couldn't grab any more with the pliers so he gets what i think was some sort of drill scalpel because the next time he puts his hands in my mouth there are blood droplets flying everywhere, blood is all over him, me and the dental assistant. Right, bang, done. I sit up, spit, pat myself dry. The dentist is washing his face, the assistant has a look in the hole and apparently he has missed a bit, dentist comes over says no, its (jaw?) bone, gives me an aftercare sheet and home i go. Took all of 10 minutes.
My teeth now sit weird and i still have some residual gum pain but i assume it's just bruising or something and will go away in a couple of weeks.
For something that's happening this week i am finally getting Dupixent delivered! Its the first in a new area of drugs used to treat severe eczema. Previously we've only steroids (oral and topical) to control the inflammation and general immunosuppressants used to inhibit the entire immune system. Dupixent targets specific antibodies associated with skin inflammation and itch which is obviously ideal for eczema. The drug costs $37k in america! Thanks to the NHS its costing me nothing though this has been a double edged sword in the sense i have had to have tried the 4 main general immunosuppressants and have a separate Dermatalogist check my skin. It's been a long 3 years on these general immunosuppressants, which have worked to varying degrees, 1 well, 2 not all, 1 ok but with bad side effects, i spent every weekend of 2018 in bed with crippling nausea because of the latter. I'm trying to not get my hopes up too much but even if it doesn't work there are more treatments on the horizon for eczema.
Good luck with the new medication! I have seborrheic dermatitis (at least, that's what I was originally diagnosed with, but it could be plaque psoriasis of the scalp), and one small patch of...
Good luck with the new medication! I have seborrheic dermatitis (at least, that's what I was originally diagnosed with, but it could be plaque psoriasis of the scalp), and one small patch of psoriasis on my knee. I was prescribed ketokonazole for the sebderm, and Dovobet for my psoriasis. The ketokonazole did nothing this time like it used to when I was a wee child. However, I tried the dovobet on my scalp and I'm lucky enough that I'm completely clear. I've had some form of skin grossness since I was like 5 or 6, and I eventually just gave up after high school and let it get bad (a wound basically began to creep down from my scalp, past my hairline and onto my forehead and I just accepted it)
House-shopping, studying, exercising, desultorily browsing the local job market... and seeing the orthopedist to schedule hip replacement surgery. Even though all the research I've done so far...
House-shopping, studying, exercising, desultorily browsing the local job market... and seeing the orthopedist to schedule hip replacement surgery.
Even though all the research I've done so far says there's no other effective conventional or alternative treatment for loss of hip cartilage, and significant benefits to getting it over with, I'll confess this scares me shitless.
I've managed to get through life so far without any really major surgical interventions, but I've had enough contact with inept healthcare to develop a significant phobia. Get knocked out, carved up, and have chunks of bone replaced with stainless steel thingies? Not a good time, have to be elsewhere! [I did grow up on episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, and there's a hopeful bit of me that wants a better cyborg body afterwards.]
This also really feels like the final demarcation between youthful healthy life and the decline of aging. The debility has meant confronting my own ageism and ableism, and those are not pretty at all.
I'm getting back into my school groove. I finished up community college last spring and had a summer off. At the beginning of the month, my wife and I went to Paris to celebrate our anniversary....
I'm getting back into my school groove. I finished up community college last spring and had a summer off. At the beginning of the month, my wife and I went to Paris to celebrate our anniversary.
And the day after we got home, BAM! back to school. But hey, I'm at a 4 year university as a junior now. I'm just past the halfway mark to achieving a lifelong dream
I'm majoring in Philosophy, actually. I still am not sure what I'm "going to do" with it once I'm done. I enrolled in my mid 30s, for no other reason than to learn because I want to learn. If $$$...
I'm majoring in Philosophy, actually. I still am not sure what I'm "going to do" with it once I'm done. I enrolled in my mid 30s, for no other reason than to learn because I want to learn. If $$$ was my motivator, I would have stayed at my well-paying but shitty job.
School-wise, I don't want to say too much, because I'm trying to keep some space between meatspace me and cybespace me. That said, I live in the greater Seattle-Tacoma metro area.
Now on to some meat and potatoes.
I think going to community college and then transferring to a 4 year school was a great choice. One the one hand, my CC tuition was about $1800 a quarter, and I was able to get my AA without taking any loans. The school itself was great too, especially as an older student. Sure, I was surrounded by 17 year-old running start kids, but I was never mistaken for a prof.
Transferring to a 4 year wasn't very hard. I keep my grades up, and when I applied to local schools, I was admitted to all of them. My choice ended up being a local private one, as they offered me like 85% of a full scholarship. It actually ended up still being cheaper than UW Seattle by a few hundred dollars.
The only issue I've had with transferring has been learning a new bureaucracy and feeling old. The new school has few non-traditional students, and I'm getting asked if I'm a prof at least twice a day by bewildered 18 year-olds. It's not bad, but it is an unpleasant feeling after having been in a less age-homogeneous school.
But yeah, I 10/10 recommend the CC -> Uni route. The money saved is well worth it, even if you're going to a public university.
Congrats! I'm glad you're so far along. I've got a little sister entering CC out of high school with the intent to transfer to the same 4year uni I attended. Unfortunately, she didn't make the cut...
Congrats! I'm glad you're so far along.
I've got a little sister entering CC out of high school with the intent to transfer to the same 4year uni I attended. Unfortunately, she didn't make the cut for admissions for the universities she wanted. Fortunately, this means there's a ton of money to be saved! Just need to make sure she stays on top of her coursework.
If she can hold down 3.5 or better, she can get into phi theta kappa. The membership fee is like $70 for life, but, but! they offer a $1000 scholarship to all PTK members, so that $70 can get you...
If she can hold down 3.5 or better, she can get into phi theta kappa. The membership fee is like $70 for life, but, but! they offer a $1000 scholarship to all PTK members, so that $70 can get you net $2000 in scholarships once she transfers to a university.
Plus, and I cannot verify this for truth, multiple admissions people told me that a CC transfer student with a high GPA is more appealing for admissions than a HS student with "just a good" GPA. So tell her to work hard, get good grades and to explore the classes. It's much better to learn what you like/don't like in CC and get to university with your major already decided. I don't know about your area, but here in WA, our community colleges have their various Associates Degrees aligned with Humanities or STEM degrees. Maximum efficiency and $avings that way.
I've started riding a motorcycle to work. It's a short ride; just about ten miles, avoiding freeways. A mix of "very scary" and "very fun". Hopefully, I'll be less anxious and just get better at...
I've started riding a motorcycle to work. It's a short ride; just about ten miles, avoiding freeways. A mix of "very scary" and "very fun". Hopefully, I'll be less anxious and just get better at it as time moves forward and the miles pile on; in the meanwhile, I've been voraciously consuming Moto content on YouTube (and there's a lot of it) trying to stay as best prepared as I can.
Also, I might be attending a tournament for Guilty Gear Xrd, a 2d fighting game (think Street Fighter's genre). I'm not good, but just being able to play with other people offline is a huge boon. I wish more games in this genre had good online experiences.
Take care. I hope everything goes fantastic for you.
A few months ago in this recurring thread, I shared meeting my girlfriend. Happy to report we're celebrating four months together now and I still feel like I'm in a super healthy relationship.
This week we're doing an escape room. It's been a while since my last one; I love them and in fact the new startup I'm working on is a b2b escape room product.
My guildmaster started streaming a few weeks back as well, and he's managing a new modded Minecraft server. It's tons of fun and I'm joining him every couple of evenings.
Aside from that I've picked up mentoring and short consultations for programming again. Hackhands, a site I liked a lot, was killed off a while back and that turned me off mentoring completely. But I've started doing it on codementor now and I really appreciate the site's quality and execution. (If you're a seasoned programmer and are interested, DM me for a referral invite).
I'm going to visit New York City for the first time. I'll be going with a friend and it's going to be for a week. The plane's booked, the hotel as well, and we bought tickets to see a musical. With the essentials out of the way, I was wondering if some of you had things to recommend or tips, anything to help really ! I bought a travel guide and I'm currently looking at some websites of course but I guess I prefer personal recommendations.
Which musical?
It's Hamilton. I haven't seen any musical ever, so we'll see whether it's a good experience or not!
Everyone I know who has seen it has really liked it; you'll probably enjoy it if you like history.
Nice! New Yorker here. I previously made a bunch of recommendations here.
One thing happening right now that you can check out is the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy. Basically a big street fair with an Italian theme. Also, baseball season is still happening and the weather has been beautiful, so you could check out a game. The Yankees are home this week and the Mets get back to town on Monday.
Please hit me up with any questions!
p.s. Hamilton is great.
It's definitely not a novel suggestion, but I highly recommend going to the American Museum of Natural History. I wish I would have had more time there—we only planned for about a half day, but I easily could have spent at least a whole day there, and ended up having to rush through quite a bit of it.
We had gotten a quote from a contractor about heating and insulating our garage, because it feels like our entire house is filled with partially used paint cans and other renovation materials that aren't supposed to freeze (canada). It came back a lot more expensive than we wanted, because we will need to trench up a part of our backyard to run new power or gas because the power that's out there now is insufficient for a heater. So that means I'll need to dig up all my haskap bushes (which are only just established) and find somewhere else to plant them for the winter, my hops and bleeding hearts, and try to rehome some roses, alliums and daylilies that are in the path so they don't just end up dug up and dead, and I have nowhere to put them.
Honestly I'm really irritated by it even though it doesn't seem like it should be that big of a deal, and it's totally a privileged problem! We knew we'd need some professional renos done on the house when we bought it, but it's just so irritating to have to run new lines when the garage already has power out there. Why wouldn't they have just put in sufficient power for a heater when it was built? It's not that old, and it's below zero here for like 6 months of the year!
How much DIY are you willing/able to do? Insulation isn't fun but it's pretty straightforward if you use the rolls of fiberglass. I don't know what your codes are, but here in the PNW (I'm about 290 km south of the Canadian border), we need to use R-17 or better. I imagine you probably need R-22 or more.
Regarding your electrical, how much spare amperage do you have on the main breaker? I think most newer wiring jobs are 200 amps or better. If you have the spare capacity, consider this:
take a look at the Romex out there, and remember it's color. They color-code the exterior insulation to indicate it's maximum amperage. If it's higher than the amps listed on your garage breaker, you can safely install a new breaker for the garage with higher (matching) amps. If not, consider pulling new wire. You already have conduit running out there for the current wiring, after all. You can buy/rent a wire pulling tool, and remove the old wire and run new, higher amperage wire out there all without digging new trenches. Install the new breaker and you're set! I don't know about your locality, but in many places it does not require permitting to replace a breaker and a single wire.
Now, if you want to do 240v service instead of 120, it's a little harder with multiple wires and breakers, but is doable. Unless you know WTF you're doing, stay the hell away from anything over 240v or anything multi-phase. F-those.
It sounds more complicated than it is. This is easily an afternoon job, especially if you have everything on hand and watch a few Youtube videos first. And don't forget the savings! I fully wired my shed (conduit, Romex, outlets, lights and a breaker) for about $125 USD. Not bad!
Good luck!
This... makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, actually most of it doesn't make much sense to me because I am going to need to research some terms! but the theory of pulling the new wires from my main breaker using the existing conduit seems really smart. I'm going to check out some of the things you said to look at! Maybe I can save some skrilla which would be excellent :D thank you so much!
Glad to help! I hope you're able to save yourself some dollars here. I want to remind you to be 100% certain that you purchase a multimeter or voltage detecting tool. This way you can be certain that killing your breaker(s) actually did cut off the juice. Safety, safety, safety.
And (of course) the ever important reminders. I'm not trying to scare you out of any kind of DIY jobs, but I do want to stress that taking some safety precautions will save you a lot of pain and potential serious harm. Play it safe, and save some $.
Voltage is essentially a measurement of how much "desire" the electrons feel to make them flow. Electricity is far more willing to flow through higher voltage systems, so you can see why energy-hungry items like stoves, dryers, etc require 240v instead of the North American standard 120v.
Amperage is essentially a measure of electricity flow. Just like we'd measure the flow rate of a river in cubic meters/sec, amps measure the current. According to OSHA, 2 amps is enough to stop your heart, so 200A service on our homes can be lethal.
Always kill main power when replacing breakers. Always kill power to the breaker you're working on, when inspecting the wires. Always make sure nobody in your house will go turn on the power of whatever you're working on!
I have no paid work on this week so am getting some admin done and catching up on things that have been waiting a while. It's changeover time for my indoor garden (previously here) which means all the old plants are out and prepping for the next crop: that's a whole load of disinfecting and scrubbing and probably some fiddling about installing upgrades and tweaks to the setup. I'm also hoping to get my 3D printer online so I can start printing designs to be cast in silver (or gold if I'm feeling rich). I'd also like to finish up a few jobs I'm doing as a favour to a friend, which is repairs to some stuff of hers in exchange for time on her massage table. I do love massage, and getting some "free" as part of a skills swap is even better.
Always hoping to rack up a few kms on my bike as well. Will try to cycle over to visit a friend whose daughter starts school full time this week, so she'll be a bit lonely and would probably appreciate me showing up all sweaty and demanding tea.
I missed last week so a bit of a follow up to my dentist appointment. I had my tooth removed last week. It thankfully wasnt at the hospital and was done with local anaesthetic. It was a fairly upscale "dental surgery" which was incredibly different to my usual practice which is in a tiny renovated terrace.
The tooth removal was painless and efficient. I'm going to be honest, it was like a horror film from my point of view. The dentist is leaning over me covered in sweat with what i assume are a pair of pliers. He's yanking and pulling. Bits of tooth are being snapped off. Apparently he couldn't grab any more with the pliers so he gets what i think was some sort of drill scalpel because the next time he puts his hands in my mouth there are blood droplets flying everywhere, blood is all over him, me and the dental assistant. Right, bang, done. I sit up, spit, pat myself dry. The dentist is washing his face, the assistant has a look in the hole and apparently he has missed a bit, dentist comes over says no, its (jaw?) bone, gives me an aftercare sheet and home i go. Took all of 10 minutes.
My teeth now sit weird and i still have some residual gum pain but i assume it's just bruising or something and will go away in a couple of weeks.
For something that's happening this week i am finally getting Dupixent delivered! Its the first in a new area of drugs used to treat severe eczema. Previously we've only steroids (oral and topical) to control the inflammation and general immunosuppressants used to inhibit the entire immune system. Dupixent targets specific antibodies associated with skin inflammation and itch which is obviously ideal for eczema. The drug costs $37k in america! Thanks to the NHS its costing me nothing though this has been a double edged sword in the sense i have had to have tried the 4 main general immunosuppressants and have a separate Dermatalogist check my skin. It's been a long 3 years on these general immunosuppressants, which have worked to varying degrees, 1 well, 2 not all, 1 ok but with bad side effects, i spent every weekend of 2018 in bed with crippling nausea because of the latter. I'm trying to not get my hopes up too much but even if it doesn't work there are more treatments on the horizon for eczema.
Good luck with the new medication! I have seborrheic dermatitis (at least, that's what I was originally diagnosed with, but it could be plaque psoriasis of the scalp), and one small patch of psoriasis on my knee. I was prescribed ketokonazole for the sebderm, and Dovobet for my psoriasis. The ketokonazole did nothing this time like it used to when I was a wee child. However, I tried the dovobet on my scalp and I'm lucky enough that I'm completely clear. I've had some form of skin grossness since I was like 5 or 6, and I eventually just gave up after high school and let it get bad (a wound basically began to creep down from my scalp, past my hairline and onto my forehead and I just accepted it)
House-shopping, studying, exercising, desultorily browsing the local job market... and seeing the orthopedist to schedule hip replacement surgery.
Even though all the research I've done so far says there's no other effective conventional or alternative treatment for loss of hip cartilage, and significant benefits to getting it over with, I'll confess this scares me shitless.
I've managed to get through life so far without any really major surgical interventions, but I've had enough contact with inept healthcare to develop a significant phobia. Get knocked out, carved up, and have chunks of bone replaced with stainless steel thingies? Not a good time, have to be elsewhere! [I did grow up on episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man, and there's a hopeful bit of me that wants a better cyborg body afterwards.]
This also really feels like the final demarcation between youthful healthy life and the decline of aging. The debility has meant confronting my own ageism and ableism, and those are not pretty at all.
I'm getting back into my school groove. I finished up community college last spring and had a summer off. At the beginning of the month, my wife and I went to Paris to celebrate our anniversary.
And the day after we got home, BAM! back to school. But hey, I'm at a 4 year university as a junior now. I'm just past the halfway mark to achieving a lifelong dream
I'm majoring in Philosophy, actually. I still am not sure what I'm "going to do" with it once I'm done. I enrolled in my mid 30s, for no other reason than to learn because I want to learn. If $$$ was my motivator, I would have stayed at my well-paying but shitty job.
School-wise, I don't want to say too much, because I'm trying to keep some space between meatspace me and cybespace me. That said, I live in the greater Seattle-Tacoma metro area.
Now on to some meat and potatoes.
I think going to community college and then transferring to a 4 year school was a great choice. One the one hand, my CC tuition was about $1800 a quarter, and I was able to get my AA without taking any loans. The school itself was great too, especially as an older student. Sure, I was surrounded by 17 year-old running start kids, but I was never mistaken for a prof.
Transferring to a 4 year wasn't very hard. I keep my grades up, and when I applied to local schools, I was admitted to all of them. My choice ended up being a local private one, as they offered me like 85% of a full scholarship. It actually ended up still being cheaper than UW Seattle by a few hundred dollars.
The only issue I've had with transferring has been learning a new bureaucracy and feeling old. The new school has few non-traditional students, and I'm getting asked if I'm a prof at least twice a day by bewildered 18 year-olds. It's not bad, but it is an unpleasant feeling after having been in a less age-homogeneous school.
But yeah, I 10/10 recommend the CC -> Uni route. The money saved is well worth it, even if you're going to a public university.
Congrats! I'm glad you're so far along.
I've got a little sister entering CC out of high school with the intent to transfer to the same 4year uni I attended. Unfortunately, she didn't make the cut for admissions for the universities she wanted. Fortunately, this means there's a ton of money to be saved! Just need to make sure she stays on top of her coursework.
If she can hold down 3.5 or better, she can get into phi theta kappa. The membership fee is like $70 for life, but, but! they offer a $1000 scholarship to all PTK members, so that $70 can get you net $2000 in scholarships once she transfers to a university.
Plus, and I cannot verify this for truth, multiple admissions people told me that a CC transfer student with a high GPA is more appealing for admissions than a HS student with "just a good" GPA. So tell her to work hard, get good grades and to explore the classes. It's much better to learn what you like/don't like in CC and get to university with your major already decided. I don't know about your area, but here in WA, our community colleges have their various Associates Degrees aligned with Humanities or STEM degrees. Maximum efficiency and $avings that way.
Best of luck to her!
I've started riding a motorcycle to work. It's a short ride; just about ten miles, avoiding freeways. A mix of "very scary" and "very fun". Hopefully, I'll be less anxious and just get better at it as time moves forward and the miles pile on; in the meanwhile, I've been voraciously consuming Moto content on YouTube (and there's a lot of it) trying to stay as best prepared as I can.
Also, I might be attending a tournament for Guilty Gear Xrd, a 2d fighting game (think Street Fighter's genre). I'm not good, but just being able to play with other people offline is a huge boon. I wish more games in this genre had good online experiences.