Random thing you loathe right now.

Get some gum

Please don't go back to smoking. It's never too late to get BACK onto the wagon. Gum, popping peppermints, or just creating a healthier habit to *replace* the bad one all could help. If you need something to do with your hands, get one of those stress balls. (They even come in all sorts of fun shapes!)

I'd suggest giving this a read.

My wife and I both quit in 2008, and it was largely due to this book. I'm not really one for self-help books, to be honest, but this book really makes you see the entire proposition of smoking in an entirely different light. We both quit after years of smoking, cold turkey, never rebounded, and never even looked jealously at people enjoying a smoke break. It really helped.

bekkilyn wrote:

Please don't go back to smoking. It's never too late to get BACK onto the wagon. Gum, popping peppermints, or just creating a healthier habit to *replace* the bad one all could help. If you need something to do with your hands, get one of those stress balls. (They even come in all sorts of fun shapes!)

Or hulk out and tense up every single muscle in your body for 5 seconds all the while envisioning yourself angrily stomping out a pack of smokes. I’ve been doing this when I get the urge to drink. It’s really meant to be a stress relief exercise but it has a similar effect on unwanted urges.

When your company thinks that an intelligent way to respond to a ransomware threat is to block Twitter.

IMAGE(https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fill,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_center,h_675,pg_1,q_80,w_1200/jzkfk424xdxmdjddyvr5.png)

Ransomware is a correct way to describe twitter.

Went to the dentist for a cavity. That's not even the loath. That went well. Got lost in the middle of the city. Couldn't get to the parking I paid ford. Forgot my mask and sprinted to the dentist in a sweat since I was very late at this point.

I hate driving in the city.

New Jersey.

My biologic (type of a medication) that I take monthly is hitting me hard this go-around. I feel like I have the flu, but my temp is on the lower side of things, so I know it's not actual flu/covid. Just gotta get past the next few days and it should be fine. I sometimes wonder why I take this medication because it's an injection and I hate needles, but then I remember that it allows me to move around (relatively) freely. Just right now I am feeling poor enough I can't really do anything, but well enough I have just enough energy to -want- to do something.

Hypocrisy, inconsistency, toxicity.

I broke our coffee maker carafe last night as I was rinsing it out. This should be a $20 problem, but the model is discontinued and it's impossible to find a replacement anywhere.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I broke our coffee maker carafe last night as I was rinsing it out. This should be a $20 problem, but the model is discontinued and it's impossible to find a replacement anywhere.

Even if you can find a replacement, there's a very good chance it doesn't quite fit correctly. Coffee maker companies have been very successful at making this a "time for a new coffee maker" problem.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I broke our coffee maker carafe last night as I was rinsing it out. This should be a $20 problem, but the model is discontinued and it's impossible to find a replacement anywhere.

As a teen I was loading the dishwasher and when I shut it to my horror the coffee carafe shattered. My mom came into the kitchen with a look that made me know I'd f-ed up. Without a word to me, she reached up into the cabinet and pulled down the carafe she'd saved from the previous coffee maker that broke. No harm, no foul, and also one of the most on-brand moves she's ever made.

Agreed that it should be a $20 problem (or vindication for hanging on to things), but thanks for bringing back a memory that makes me smile.

My WFH setup is in my garage. It is 55 degrees Fahrenheit (16.5 C) in here today. I'm freezing! I have one of those big energy-wasting electric space-heaters shooting at me full blast right now and it's like it's doing nothing.

This may be of interest, ThatGuy42. Most insulating wool in the world. Worth every penny.

I have a little house spider that lives next to my fireplace and she's produced her second egg sac over the course of a couple months, and so this is the second time I've had to take the eggs away from her, and I just find myself feeling so bad about it because she's been such a good and protective mother, but the alternative was hundreds of baby spiders in the house. If I could have put them all outside to live happily there, I would, but house spiders aren't acclimated to the outdoors and she would die prematurely. While I know I did the right thing for maintaining my household, I still feel bad that I needed to do it.

That is much more wholesome and caring than pretty much any problem I’ve ever personally had to deal with.

Have to put another cat down this weekend, second since the pandemic began, and lost another one about a year before that.

F*ck cancer.

Mixolyde wrote:

Have to put another cat down this weekend, second since the pandemic began, and lost another one about a year before that.

F*ck cancer.

Terrible. We lost 2 last year, so I know how you feel. It f*cking sucks.

Applying for a job. Now I get to spend a month thinking of reasons I don't qualify but other imaginary people do.

Come on brain, 2020 doesn't need your help.

r013nt0 wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Have to put another cat down this weekend, second since the pandemic began, and lost another one about a year before that.

F*ck cancer.

Terrible. We lost 2 last year, so I know how you feel. It f*cking sucks.

1 here. I miss her all the time. We are talking about getting a new kitten this weekend, which i want, but am still missing my old Kisa(3 months gone).

Stealthpizza wrote:

Applying for a job. Now I get to spend a month thinking of reasons I don't qualify but other imaginary people do.

Come on brain, 2020 doesn't need your help.

Hang in there. I just got shut down on a job I thought I was perfect for. It feels so sh*tty. The whole system is messed up. Just do your best, know it's rigged, and don't attach your self worth to the process.

SallyNasty wrote:
r013nt0 wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Have to put another cat down this weekend, second since the pandemic began, and lost another one about a year before that.

F*ck cancer.

Terrible. We lost 2 last year, so I know how you feel. It f*cking sucks.

1 here. I miss her all the time. We are talking about getting a new kitten this weekend, which i want, but am still missing my old Kisa(3 months gone).

Yeah somewhere around 3 months is when we started looking after losing our first cat. Our other cat was definitely missing his sister and we wanted him to have another furry friend to play with.

I know it's trivial, but getting the run around from two different mega companies (publisher/retailer) as they each blame the other for not giving you the preorder code you were supposed to get, especially when the bonus was the only reason you bought the game to begin with.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Stealthpizza wrote:

Applying for a job. Now I get to spend a month thinking of reasons I don't qualify but other imaginary people do.

Come on brain, 2020 doesn't need your help.

Hang in there. I just got shut down on a job I thought I was perfect for. It feels so sh*tty. The whole system is messed up. Just do your best, know it's rigged, and don't attach your self worth to the process.

Same here. Great job where for once I had all qualifications, and I had a first call that for some reason felt all wrong. Not anything I or she said, just felt off. Never heard anything back after that

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Hang in there. I just got shut down on a job I thought I was perfect for. It feels so sh*tty. The whole system is messed up. Just do your best, know it's rigged, and don't attach your self worth to the process.

Donald, is that you?

master0 wrote:

Went to the dentist for a cavity. That's not even the loath. That went well. Got lost in the middle of the city. Couldn't get to the parking I paid ford. Forgot my mask and sprinted to the dentist in a sweat since I was very late at this point.

I hate driving in the city.

As someone who only got my driver's license about 6 years ago and only drives sporadically, I always find it funny that it took a lot for me to get over my nerves of highway on-ramps and windy suburbs.

But then once I got comfortable with driving, I found highways and narrow windy roads to be fine and it was in-city driving that I fret over - tons of one way streets or intersections with weird rules or unexpected dead ends. Even the GPS doesn't solve the problem - it will tell you to turn left at the next intersection, it won't tell you that you are forced to turn left if you are not in the far right on the intersection right before it, meaning you have to deduce by looking at the road that you have to stay right and then have one block jammed with cars where you have to somehow get into the left lane. And then most people around you are driving in this city every day so every one second hesitation from you gets tons of honking. I dread it.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Hang in there. I just got shut down on a job I thought I was perfect for. It feels so sh*tty. The whole system is messed up. Just do your best, know it's rigged, and don't attach your self worth to the process.

Yeah. Obviously there are things to improve on when it comes to applying for jobs and interviews. However, as someone who has both been to many job interviews and been on the hiring side myself, the fact of the matter is that contrary to what they believe, most people are just going with their gut and then taking that bias and interpreting it onto your resume. I guess that might come off as a bit of a doomspeak, but the point is that you shouldn't assume you are a crappy candidate because you never got a callback. Hell, sometimes they already have someone lined up for a job but protocol requires them to go through the process anyways.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Stealthpizza wrote:

Applying for a job. Now I get to spend a month thinking of reasons I don't qualify but other imaginary people do.

Come on brain, 2020 doesn't need your help.

Hang in there. I just got shut down on a job I thought I was perfect for. It feels so sh*tty. The whole system is messed up. Just do your best, know it's rigged, and don't attach your self worth to the process.

That’s great advice!

Ugh, a conversation with my elderly neighbour that started out about how we could help each other replacing a storm-damaged fence suddenly took a wild Q-anon curve. He went from discussing fence-posts to how "the negros" are filling up ICUs, how this probably means the virus (since it was manufactured) is maybe targeted based on genetics, and--when I unequivocally shut that down as hard as I could bring myself to do to an 80yo guy--then started on ballot fraud.

It took a hard-redirect to get him back on the fence, and once again he was perfectly pleasant. What a weird experience.

You should read the graphic novel "Berlin", about the city and it's people in the inter-war period. Lots of resonance.