Spyke

Posts

Mossberg chokes

After many years of teetering on the brink of buying a shotgun, I'm finally about to pull the trigger on a Mossberg 500 that my friend is letting go for less than I'd pay for a full tank of gas right now before he moves across the country.

It has the 18.5" barrel, I'm hoping to use it for clays and some hunting, but for the price he's selling it for I have plenty of wiggle room to snag a used barrel off of eBay and still have some left over for ammo.

But most of the listings I'm seeing either don't mention any chokes or only come with one.

So just looking for a little guidance on what brands people have used and like or don't like for whatever reason.

View original on lemmy.world
buyitforlife·Buy it for LifebyFondots

No shoes are truly BIFL if you wear them regularly, but these come close

It may look like a beat-up old pair of hiking boots, but in fact it's a pair of beat-up old hiking boots with new soles, lining, heel-counters, shanks, hardware, laces and one hell of a cleaning and reconditioning job.

Around 4 years ago I bought this pair of Danner Lights. They were worn fairly close to daily, and have some hard miles on them hiking and backpacking.

Sent them in to Danner for their recrafting service. 4-6 weeks and a couple days for shipping later I just got them back.

They're just the tiniest bit snug because of the new lining, but otherwise these are unmistakably my boots that have broken in to fit my feet, but the soles still have treads on them.

Also, Danner customer service was great to deal with. When I shipped my boots out to them, I got the notification that they had been delivered, but after a day or two I hadn't gotten the email from Danner to confirm they received it. I wasn't exactly worried, I figured it would probably take them a couple days to open the box and get my boots checked in, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to give them a call anyway.

After a reasonable number of rings, my call was answered by an actual human.

And one with no heavy accent, who didn't mumble into the phone, and had no attitude problem, and most astoundingly, actually worked for Danner at their office.

But so I asked if there was any way he could confirm that my boots had been delivered to the right place. He took my tracking info, looked it up, and was able to tell me that yes, they had them, because he knew the guy who signed for them.

And then he gave me a direct number to the recrafting department in case I needed to follow up with them any further (I didn't feel any need for that, but after recently going through hell trying to get in touch with anyone at the local delivery hub for a company that was supposed to deliver some new appliances for me with no luck to figure out what the hell was going on with repeated delivery delays, I really appreciated that)

It's kind of sad that I'm so used to automated menus, outsourced call centers, and customer service reps who clearly want to be doing anything else but helping me (not that I blame them, I don't want to work either) that that's all it takes to make a customer service experience feel great.

If I have any complaints at all about my experience, it's that the white stitching around the soles was replaced with brown. I thought the white looked pretty sharp, but these are hiking boots they're just going to get dirty anyway.

But anyway, I'm really happy with my experience, and I'm looking forward to hopefully another 4+ years with these boots.

View original on lemmy.world
cooking·Cooking byFondots

Corned Beef Wellington - Am I crazy?

I was recently struck with a half-baked idea to make a corned beef Wellington.

The inspiration is basically that I have a beef tenderloin sitting in my freezer that I was planning to make a beef Wellington with soon

And St Paddy's Day is coming up, and I was also debating on doing a corned beef.

I have some experience curing meat, I've made my own bacon and corned beef from scratch in the past, so this isn't totally out of my wheelhouse.

But I've never attempted to corn a beef tenderloin (and from my limited googling, I'm not sure that anyone else has ever been crazy enough to try it either) so I'm not too sure what that process will do to a tender cut like this.

I'm also looking for some inspiration on how to sort of "Irish" it up a bit (yes, I'm aware that corned beef isn't particularly Irish, it's still made its way into the Irish American diet as a St Paddy's thing)

Normally I flambe the duxelles with some cognac, so I'm figuring I'll swap that for some Irish whiskey

I also normally wrap some prosciutto between the pastry and duxelles as a bit of a moisture barrier, I feel like maybe there's an argument for using some thin-sliced bacon for that instead (probably back bacon if I can get my hands on it, but that's not easy in the US) and maybe wrap some cabbage into it as well

I normally serve it with a green peppercorn sauce, so I figure I'll work some Guinness into that.

Curious if anyone has any thoughts on this. Anything else you would or wouldn't do with this idea? Has anyone ever been struck by madness before and attempted to corn a tenderloin?

Edit: still brainstorming, maybe some sausage or black pudding (also a tough thing to find around me) mixed into the duxelles?

View original on lemmy.world
dogs·DogsbyFondots

Transitioning dog back into crate

I have a 6 year old malinois (possibly a mix, she didn't come with paperwork)

When we got her, she was crate trained, never gave us any issues going into the crate, happily went into it and let us close the door and leave. My wife and I work different schedules, so normally she was only in there for maybe about 4 hours, if it was much longer than that we always made arrangements for her to stay with my parents or at least to have someone stop by to walk her.

However, she's too smart for her own good, and at some point she figured out that she could escape the crate, and there was no putting that cat back in the bag. No matter how we tried to secure the crate she figured out a way to squeeze out. We got worried that she'd hurt herself trying to get out so we started leaving her loose.

And at first everything was fine, she maybe got into the trash a couple times but overall we had a few good years of her being loose by herself in the house without any major issues. After a few months of having free reign of the house she never really went into the crate anymore and found other "den" areas around the house, so we packed up the crate.

Lately though, she's been getting bolder, stealing things off the counter (she pulled the whole bread box down the other day,) she got into a bottle of vitamins (that was a fun vet bill) etc.

She's not being destructive otherwise, not chewing up the furniture or anything, she doesn't even always eat or try to open any food and such that she steals (I came home to a fully sealed bag of tortillas on the bed the other day, she absolutely could have torn that open if she really wanted to)

And she does get a lot of walks and playtime, nothing has really changed in our routine that I can think of that would account for this change. It feels a lot like she just let the intrusive thoughts win one day to steal something from the counter and it's just snowballed from there.

Right now we're doing what we can to secure anything that seems like it might be tempting to her or that we're especially worried about her getting into before we leave, and we're providing her with some longer-lasting puzzle toys and treats to distract her when we leave.

So far that seems to be working, I feel like as long as we can keep her busy for the first 20 minutes or so after we leave, we're probably ok.

But we're also considering the possibility that we may need to start crating her again in a more escape-proof crate.

So in case it comes to that I'm looking for advice from anyone who's had to do something similar.

View original on lemmy.world
hiking·HikingbyFondots

Cheap hiking boot recommendations

Before anyone jumps on me about good boots being worth the investment I already have a quality pair of hiking boots (Danner Lights) but I'm going to be sending them out to be resoled soon, estimated turnaround time will be about 5-6 weeks, and I'm just looking for a temporary pair to hold me over for whatever hiking I do for the month or so I won't have my main boots. After which these temporary boots will probably go into the trunk of my car as part of my emergency kit to hopefully never be worn again.

Anyone got a favorite pair of cheap boots?

Small checklist I'd like to have:
Wide sizes
Waterproof
Lightweight (though I'm not expecting miracles on that front)
Preferably about a 6" height, I'm flexible on that, but generally I prefer a taller boot.

View original on lemmy.world
3dprinting·3DPrintingbyFondots

Resin printing in the cold

Over the summer I picked up a secondhand Saturn 2 to play around with. Pretty quickly got it dialed in and was getting good prints out of it, mostly miniatures for tabletop games

With the holidays and such I had to take a couple months off from printing, and in that time it got cold. My printer is set up in my basement and right now the temperature down there is usually hanging around maybe 55 degrees fahrenheit (around 12-13C)

And I just cannot get prints to adhere to the plate. The handful that have stuck have come out pretty nice, so my overall settings can't be too far off, but we're talking about maybe 2 or 3 useable prints from a whole batch that I used to come out without an issue.

I'm using grey sunlu ABS-like resin, which is what I was using before and got pretty decent results

I'm using a wham bam magnetic build plate, which hasn't caused me any issues before (well at least not since I figured out that my printer came with 2 plates and that one was already on the machine,) I've cleaned the plate thoroughly and scuffed it up a bit with a brass wire brush. I've also re-leveled the printer using the same process I have since I first got it.

My FEP is also fairly fresh, I replaced it a few months back and only did about 2 or 3 prints before I took my little break from printing

It's possible my settings are a little different, I had to make some changes to my computer and didn't write down my old settings, but I'm pretty sure I had pretty much settled on the recommended settings I'm using now.

So pretty much the only thing I can figure is that it's a temperature issue.

I know some people preheat their resin in some hot water before printing, but personally I tend to leave resin in the vat and top it off as needed, I usually have something lined up to print next so it doesn't sit there very long, and I don't want to deal with the potential mess of pouring it back into the bottle if I don't have to.

I'm also aware of things like the thermalvatband or other ways to heat your printer/resin. That's certainly an option but I'd rather not spend money on another gadget if I can avoid it.

And like I said, the couple of prints that have turned out have actually been pretty good, my only issue is them just not wanting to adhere to the bed.

I'm gonna try cranking the burn-in times way up and lowering the lift speed way down and see where that gets me. If that doesn't work out though, does anyone have any other ideas on things I should try out?

View original on lemmy.world
linux·LinuxbyFondots

Some of my usb ports not working in Mint

Trying to breathe some extra life into my computer now that we're past the windows 10 EoL and I'm trying to install Mint

So far everything seems to be working fine except that some of my USB ports don't seem to be working.

They work in Windows, they work in the BIOS but once I'm up and running in with some of them just stop.

My motherboard is a gigabyte ga-990fxa-u3 (Rev 4.0) running the latest bios version

It has some USB 3.0 ports, and some 2.0, I'm not home right now to double check but I believe it's the 2. ports that aren't working.

I played around with Linux a little bit well over a decade ago but I'm essentially a total Linux noob

Anyone got any thoughts about what's going on with these ports or how to fix it?

EDIT: I got it working, after a bit of fiddling with every just about every setting in the BIOS here's what worked for me, reading your comments, and a lot of googling, I found this solution courtesy of a guy named David A. Jayne in the reviews of the Amazon page for the motherboard

OK, so here are the step-by-step instructions if you need them:

*** Step 1: Updating the BIOS settings ***

  • Reboot your computer, and press the "Delete" key (not to be confused with backspace) when the Gigabyte logo shows on your monitor to enter the BIOS settings. This can flash by pretty quickly, so sometimes it's easier to just repeatedly press delete while the computer restarts until the BIOS settings page shows (see attached screenshot).
  • Use the right arrow key to move over to the "Peripherals" tab.
  • Use the down arrow key to highlight "IOMMU Controller" near the bottom. Press enter, and a box will pop up allowing you to select "Enabled" or "Disabled". Use the up or down arrow keys to highlight "Enabled" and press enter. Your screen should now look exactly like the screenshot I have provided, the "IOMMU Controller" option showing that it is enabled.
  • Press the F10 key to save and exit.

Your computer will now reboot. If you have not yet been able to install Linux (and you probably haven't, if you have a USB mouse and keyboard) do so now. Don't plug your mouse or keyboard into any blue USB ports, as these are USB 3.0 ports and will not yet work. Once Linux has installed (or if it was already installed) boot your computer into Linux and proceed to Step 2.

*** Step 2: Editing /etc/default/grub ***

  • Once you see your Linux desktop, open a command prompt from the start menu. This is usually prominently featured on the start menu, looking like a little black monitor screen. It may be under "Accessories" and will probably be labeled "Terminal".
  • At the command prompt, enter the following exactly: sudo nano /etc/default/grub
  • You will be prompted to enter your password. Please do so. A simple-to-use text editor (nano) will open, and you should see a fair amount of text inside. If the file is empty, press ctrl-x to exit and Google search for instructions for your particular distro.
  • There is probably already a line that says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="", and you will just need to add "iommu=soft" between the quotes. Use the arrow keys to position the cursor between the quotes and add the appropriate text until the line looks exactly like the following: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="iommu=soft"

If there is no similar line already there, you may add it anywhere in the file. If there is a pound sign (#) at the beginning of the line, it will need to be deleted.

  • Once the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line has been edited, press ctrl-o to save it, and then ctrl-x to exit nano.
  • You need to enter one more command to finalize the new configuration, but it varies by distribution.

If you are on a Debian-based distribution (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint...), enter this command in the terminal window: sudo update-grub

If you are on a Red Hat based distribution (RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, Mandriva...), enter this command in the terminal window: sudo grub2-mkconfig --output=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Some information will print in the terminal window. If it says there were errors, go back to the beginning of Step 2 and try to figure out what you did wrong.

*** Step 3: Reboot your computer ***

  • There should be a prominent option on your start menu to shutdown or reboot your computer. You should usually use this, however, if you want to be fancy. you can enter "sudo shutdown -r now" in the terminal window to reboot.

Once you are rebooted, Linux should now be able to access the USB 3.0 ports and will boot much faster as well.

I did find that after that the 3.0 ports still didn't work, but thanks to @[email protected] I still had one more thing to try and instead of "iommu=soft", I tried "iommu=pt" and that did the trick.

Thank you all for your help in figuring this out!

And if anyone wants to explain what any of that all means, I'd love to hear it, because I have no clue.

View original on lemmy.world
tipofmytongue·Tip Of My TonguebyFondots

Movie or show I saw a very small part of about 20 years ago

I really don't have much to go on for this, good luck

Back in the 90s or early 2000s I remember catching a few scenes of a movie or TV show that was playing in the background while I was over a relatives house. I feel like it was probably from about that time period, at the oldest it was maybe from the 80s, and absolutely no newer than about 2004.

The main thing I remember was that at some point it cut to a scene of a cruise missile flying at low altitude over the ocean, and I feel like it might have done that several times

There may have been 2 missiles, I remember them being white, and kind of a rectangular shape (the real life AGM-86 ACLM is pretty close to what I remember the shape being)

I feel like the plot was that there was some kind of a race against time to do something before the missile hit its target and that it cut to scenes of the missile flying a few times, but again I wasn't paying much attention to it and it's mostly just the scenes of the missiles flying that stuck in my head.

I really got nothing else. I feel like my best bet to identify it is if you can show me a scene with the missiles because that's really the thing that has for some reason stuck in my mind since I was a kid.

EDIT: after spending some time googling different missiles, probably getting myself on some kind of watchlist, some other kind of similar-looking missiles to what I remember

SOM
AGM-154
AGM-181 LRSO
Storm Shadow
Apache
Taurus KEPD 350
Wan Chien

That sort of square/rectangular shape of the missile is kind of what stuck out to me as a kid and made the image stick in my brain, I thought they looked cool

The scenes with the missiles flying I'm pretty sure were in the daytime

There may have also been a scene with them being launched from a plane, which tracks because most or all of those I listed seem to be aircraft-launched

It was also definitely a live action movie/show

The race against time aspect may not be correct. I was only half paying attention and probably saw less than 5 minutes of this movie in total.

EDIT2: Never say Never Again is probably the closest answer I've seen so far. Not totally sure that's it, but it gives you a pretty good general idea of what I'm remembering

View original on lemmy.world
dogs·DogsbyFondots

Sunflower (Sunny) being a very good girl camping over the weekend

Sunny is a 6 year old Malinois, as her human companion I'm pretty sure I'm obligated to start off with that so you don't call her a German shepherd.

We had a chance to go camping with some friends on their property over the weekend and she did great.

The first night temperatures dropped below freezing. I'm a firm believer that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate gear, and we managed to stay warm and cozy together in our tent overnight.

She got to spend almost the whole weekend off-leash, a rare treat for this suburban pup.

Her herding and guarding instincts got a bit of a workout, when some new (to her) friends arrived, she gave them a good barking-at until I caught up and greeted them, at which point Sunny saw that they were ok and immediately rolled over for belly-rubs.

The whole weekend Sunny would position herself around camp to make sure that she could see all of us, and if anyone wandered too far away from the group, she would go with them to make sure they were safe.

My friends' property is large, remote, and provides some safe natural backstops to set up a shooting range. Sunny has never been the least bit bothered by fireworks or thunder, and I'm happy to report that she showed no signs of fear at the gunshots (from a hearing-safe distance) but was a little annoyed at it disturbing her midday nap, so we cut our shooting short. I'll be getting her some hearing protection if we ever try that again.

On the ride home, my check engine light started flashing and my car went into limp mode on the highway so I pulled over and called for a tow, I've never been happier to have that premium AAA towing package. Sunny was not a fan of the tow driver strapping our car onto the truck, but again warmed right up to him. Unfortunately she was not allowed to ride in the cab with us and had to ride in the car by herself until we could catch up with our friends off the highway to transfer her into their car. She didn't seem too bothered by that and I think she appreciated the higher vantage point. She got to ride the rest of the way home with her new friends and behaved very nicely in their car while I continued with the tow truck.

After an exciting weekend of hiking, meeting new friends, and new experiences, she spent most of the next day in our bed catching up on some missed naps, and I got to pay for new spark plugs and ignition coils.

View original on lemmy.world
magictcg·Magic: The GatheringbyFondots

What are your favorite weird cards?

Stuff like Shahrazad having you play a side game, Karn making you restart, Aeon engine reversing the turn order, Chaos Orb, goblin game, etc.

I've got a really half-baked idea to just throw all of these wacky cards into a deck to see what happens. Not expecting it to be good, just a fun thing to throw into the mix once in a while for casual play.

Sticking to "real" cards, no need to dip into the un-sets, they've made plenty of strange cards over the years.

View original on lemmy.world
warhammer40k·Warhammer 40kbyFondots

Building my first army

40k noob here, slowly building up to a 1000 point Ork army

So far I have

Ork Combat Patrol
1x Beastboss (80 pts)
2x Beast Snagga boyz (2 x 95 = 190pts)
1x Squighog Boyz (160pts)

1x Trukk (65pts)

1x Killa Kanz (125pts)

1x Stormboyz (65pts)

Which should take me to 685pts

So far I've just kind of been randomly acquiring things based on what looks cool to me in the moment when I see them in a store, which feels like an appropriately orky way to build an army, but I figured I should maybe start applying a little kunnin to my burgeoning WAAAGH

So where would yooz gitz go frum here?

I'm thinking a box or two of gretchin will probably be my next acquisition, which leaves me with 200-some points to fill

EDIT: Based on comments here and a bit of googling, I think I'm looking at getting

2x10 grots
1x Beastboss on squigosaur
1x10 Boyz

Which will get me to 975 points, good enough for me

View original on lemmy.world
asklemmy·AsklemmybyFondots

Does my friend's response rub anyone else the wrong way?

This is gonna be a bit of a weird one, try to keep an open mind.

I went to a nudist resort with a couple friends a few times last year, it was a good time, we're hoping to go back a few times this year once the weather warms up again.

It's not a sexual thing, it's just nice to hang out without pants, no laundry to do when you get home, etc. There are some swingers who frequent it, but they're very respectful about it, they'll ask if you're "in the lifestyle" but if you're not they don't pressure you and let it drop. None of my friends involved in this story are swingers.

I've been kind of floating the idea to a few other friends I thought might be interested. It's a mixed bag, some are open to it, others aren't, not really surprising there, my own wife isn't interested, and I get that it's not everyone's thing.

Two of the people I floated the idea to are a married couple. We'll call them Will and Janet (not their real names.) Will wasn't interested, but Janet was open to it.

The resort posted their event schedule for this year recently, so I've been talking with the friends I went with last year to figure out when we want to go. We narrowed it down to a couple events we're interested in, and I've been letting my other friends who were interested know so we can figure out our plans.

Janet messages me back after I tell her what weekends we're planning on. Said she asked Will and that he wasn't comfortable with her going so she's going to pass.

And that just kind of rubs me the wrong way. Every relationship has a different dynamic of course, but personally I have a hard time imagining telling my wife that "I'm not comfortable" with her doing something she wants to do unless it is something outright dangerous.

Little extra context, we're all in our 30s, we're all mutual friends, it wouldn't be particularly unusual for any of us to go hang out with anyone else in this group. I've hung out with with just Janet before, we have spare keys to each other's houses, and I'm pretty sure my mom regards them as basically extras of her own children, in short we're all close and trust each other.

The other friends I went with last year are similarly close, a couple, we'll call them Erin and Steve. Will's actually known Erin longer than I have, and probably worth mentioning, went skinny dipping with her and some other friends once back in their teens or early 20s. They never dated or anything like that, she's just kind of "one of the guys" the dudes there were gonna jump into a frozen creek naked so she joined them. And Steve is a very chill dude.

Will is also not a controlling guy. This is the first time I've ever heard anything like that from him (albeit second-hand through Janet) very much a live and let live kind of dude. He's maybe a little prudish and old fashioned in his own tastes, but accepting that his tastes aren't for everyone.

I'm not really planning on pushing the issue, for all I know Janet got cold feet and is using him as an excuse, and unless I see any other sign of him getting weird, I'm just gonna chalk it up to their relationship dynamic being different from my own. But I just kind of wanted to see if that rubs anyone else the wrong way.

View original on lemmy.world
auto_repair·Automotive RepairbyFondots

Blower not blowing

I got in my 2007 4runner (SR5, V6, 4WD for you AutoZone types) to go to work last night and got nothing out of my vents. Made for a chilly commute to work.

I'm not mechanic but I know how to Google a problem and can generally be trusted with a wrench or screwdriver if I know what the problem is, so I narrowed it down to 2 most likely issues- bad blower motor (duh) or a bad relay.

So I came home, tapped on those parts with a tiny hammer (allegedly sometimes that works) and poked at some things with my multimeter.

It looks like I'm getting 12v at the connector to the blower motor, so am I right in thinking that's a pretty sure sign that it's the motor itself that's bad? I'd think that if my problem was the relay I wouldn't be getting anything there.

Just kind of looking for a little sanity-check, already ordered a new blower and it should arrive sometime today (prime same-day shipping is a magical thing sometimes) but should I be steeling myself for a cold drive to AutoZone to pick up a relay?

View original on lemmy.world
nudism·NudismbyFondots

For anyone around eastern PA, Sunny Rest Resort has posted their 2025 Calendar

Also of note-

It's their 80 year anniversary

They've chosen not to raise their rates this year

Rates are 50% off during their "shoulder seasons" in May and September

Still kind of dipping my toes into social nudity, but I made my way there twice last year and had a great time and look forward to going back. Last year I camped out for their beer fest and came up for the day one other weekend.

For those who have strong opinions one way or the other, they do have a pretty active community of swingers, I was asked a few times if I was in "the lifestyle," but it never felt pushy and never made anything weird, and everything out in the open stayed pretty much PG except for the fact that everyone was naked.

I've heard that some of the regulars can get kind of cliquey that wasn't my experience, but I haven't been there enough to really comment on that.

Hopefully I'll see some of you around this year.

https://sunnyrest.com/events/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
goodoffmychest·Off My ChestbyFondots

Another damn trump/election post

The other day I saw a post somewhere on Lemmy, it seems to have been taken down or at least I'm unable to find it again, by some dickwad asking, pretty clearly it bad faith, why people felt like they needed the day off from work or school after the election. It was full of him bitching about basically people being too soft if they couldn't handle their feelings being hurt and that sort of garbage. This was basically going to be my reply to that.

I work in 911 dispatch, that should tell you that I'm the kind of person who can handle stress well, i've dealt with some crazy shit both at work and in my personal life, I don't think anyone is going to claim I'm someone who's easily rattled.

And still, despite all of the things I've seen, done, heard, and been a part of, I have never felt as physically sick from stress as I did watching the election results coming in Tuesday night.

I was at work, and in the midst of it as it was becoming clear that Trump was going to win, right around 2AM, I got one of those really insane calls, the kind of thing that makes the evening news and that they make true crime TV shows out of, that normally leaves even a hardened tough guy like me a little bit shaken-up, and all I felt was relief because something finally came along to wrench my mind from the election.

I woke up the next day still feeling sick to my stomach. My wife woke up in tears. I spent the day feeling like I was lost in a fog, and by the next day the fog lifted giving way to a simmering rage that I'm not sure will ever go away entirely. Luckily Wednesday and Thursday were my scheduled days off this week, I genuinely don't think I could have worked Wednesday night feeling like I felt.

I'm an old boy scout, I took the scout motto of "be prepared" to heart, I believe that most people don't really rise to the occasion but instead they fall to their level of training, and all the other sayings and such about preparedness and self-reliance and all of that, and I've prepared myself so that I am rarely at a complete loss of what to say or do in any given situation, I have plenty of training and life experience to fall back on.

No one ever trains you how to watch democracy die.

Or how to handle something like ¾ of your country turning their back on your most deeply-held values either by actively voting against them or by not even caring enough to bother showing up to vote.

And nothing prepares you to look around you in a 911 dispatch center, surrounded by people that people are supposed to be able to trust to stand for justice, safety, law, order, security, fairness, equity, compassion, basic human decency, who are supposed to stand up for and provide assistance to vulnerable members of our community when they need it most, who like to pat themselves on the back for being the "calm voice in the night" or the "thin gold line"...

... And realizing that most of them either don't care or are actively rooting for a man who stands for the exact opposite of all of those values.

For the first time I can remember I feel well and truly lost. I tend to be the guy people turn to when they have a problem because I know how to fix it or I at least know how to find someone who can. I don't know how to fix this, and I certainly don't have a guy for this. I'm gonna keep on soldiering on until I figure it out or I guess I'll die trying, but I really don't know what my path forward from here is going to be. And if I need some time to figure this shit out. I certainly won't think less of anyone who needs the same.

And everyone deals with different kinds of stresses differently and more or less successfully than anyone else. Despite the crazy shit I've managed to deal with, there's other more mundane situations that some people can handle just fine that I can't hack. Put me in a regular office environment with reports, paperwork, deadlines and presentations, and I'd probably be burned out in a week. It's like the old saying about trying to judge a fish by its ability to climb trees.

It's ok to not be ok right now, honestly I think anyone who says they're ok right now is either faking it or a psychopath. Don't be afraid to ask for help, if you have it in you, try to check in on others to make sure they're doing ok and getting what they need too. The only way we're getting through this is together.

View original on lemmy.world
cooking·Cooking byFondots

[QUESTION] What are some of your favorite spicy/super flavorful dishes?

Looking for some inspiration, my wife's out of town this week babysitting he grandmother with dementia, so she's been eating a lot of very bland, old-white-lady-palate-approved meals (her grandmother once described some jarred vodka sauce as being "too spicy")

We're both pretty adventurous eaters and spice-lovers, and I know it's driving her mad by now, so I figured I'd welcome her home in a couple days with a dinner full of all the biggest flavor bombs I can find

Help me light her taste buds on fire, decimated my spice cabinet, and make my toilet tremble in fear of what is to come.

View original on lemmy.world