Great advice. Here’s another hint for first timers: you’re going to get it wrong. Spend half a day replacing a faucet, following all the instructions and the collective wisdom of YouTube. Turn the water back on and… drip, drip.

Patching drywall, fixing a drawer slide, replacing a loose electrical outlet… No matter how much you read or watch there is some finesse to each. Practice and experience will make it so you get it right the first time more often, and then when you’re an old person like me you reach a point where you can pretty much do it better than the fly-by-night contractor you’d hire.

One more piece of advice. Don’t mess with live electricity. Wall current can stop your heart instantly or start a fire in the middle of the night. Turn off breakers and be diligent about tightening connections and keeping things to code, but don’t be too afraid of it. A little bit of awareness is all it takes. And the first time you turn that breaker back on it may pop, then you’ll see what went wrong and never make that mistake again.

I know I said one more, but here is one more “one more”. Hit yard sales or estate sales for cheap tools. You’ll have to do this proactively and not when you actually need them. Usually you can pick up stuff for pennies on the dollar. An old caulk gun, adjustable wrench, half box of drywall screws… All good to pickup on the cheap.

I know DIY isn’t everyone’s favorite past time, but after the first few things you tackle you might find it actually enjoyable. I know the combination of saving money, securing my home’s integrity, and completing a job well done is something I look forward to.

Why is this posted as humor? Seriously, this is how anyone actually seeking a job should directly translate those phrases.

I feel fooled.

Ok, going to scream into the abyss here…

I had Netscape on my 486DX2-66 with a 33.6 modem. Win 95, along with ICQ, mIRC, some NNTP reader I can’t recall… You get the picture.

Everyone I’ve told this to thinks I must have been out of my mind. But for a period of time that I recall as months I had some sort of phenomenon where Netscape would stop loading a web page (could take 10s of seconds, you know) unless you MOVED THE MOUSE. Continuously. The animated “N” on would freeze and if you didn’t move the mouse the page would just be blank, or partially loaded. Move the mouse, it resumes. Stop moving the mouse, it stops. I used to have to move my mouse in figure-eights, cajoling the machine to not give up and keep downloading.

You’ll think I’m crazy, too. But when I share this story I keep hoping someone, somewhere had the same experience. And maybe, someone who knows what was going on will chime in on some obscure IRQ conflict in Windows along with some optimization used by Netscape in one iteration caused this bug for a brief moment in time.

Awww. You got me in the mood for a cuddle.

See also: Tea time prior to the Trump’s inauguration. The cognitive dissonance between preemptively pardoning your loved ones and having tea with the potential perpetrator is goddamn insane.

Though as I’m typing this I see that maybe Biden was sucking up to his new overlord? Maybe both actions were aimed at keeping his family safe in any upcoming purge.

Not as a united nation, no. I think this is the start of the dissolution of the US as a single entity. The divisions will become clear soon.

Amazing write-up. Thanks for the insight. I appreciate your contrast of the power/money dynamic in “Trump fascism” versus the ethnically driven dynamic in Hitler’s Nazism.

I’m having a moment of self reflection at my gut response of, “I hope FourPackets is right and all the human suffering and death is only due to defacto conditions and government passivity and not active genocide.” Both are awful but I guess this is the path we’re on.

First, I hope you’re right. Still a shitty world but less so than what I’m imagining. The whole “we understand power so we are smart and everyone else is not as smart” is spot on.

But, I think it starts with no intention of gassing the Jews. But after a few generals have been replaced with lackeys, and those “deportation camps” in Texas start to be more trouble than they’re worth, and how convenient it was when that one bunch of them happened to die, a new final solution starts to look more probable. And of course the perpetrators of the new genocide are not the bad guys. They’re making the hard choices. They’re the smart ones and of course it made sense to do it since digging a mass grave was cheaper than feeding 10,000 recently ex-Americans in a camp far away. That’s just good economics, people! You have to think like a billionaire!

That might have gotten away from me, but I do believe there’s a slippery slope and our new President and his orange skinned bff are waxing up the toboggan.

I love this platform. Reasonable conversations with reasonable people. You’ve given me hope, internet stranger. Keep being awesome.

That only goes so far… Being a part of ending democracy and the future for everyone including his own descendants doesn’t get a pass just because he raised a kid.

As for the tone, I would guess OP knows their father better than any of us. I certainly wouldn’t speak to my own father like that but maybe that’s their usual style of banter.

If my own child talked to me like that we’d be done texting and the next conversation would be face to face. Very face to face. But, I hope I’d have the self awareness to at least consider they might have a point.

How did he say “Party Time”? Ruined the joke for me.

And more to the point… Keep the mouth. Lots of opportunity there.

This so much. If you can’t articulate it I’m going to make sure it stays your problem, not mine.

Looks like a Power Puff Girls alternate dimension.

Was looking through some old photos recently and found one of me holding my son as an infant in a shirt I still have. He’s 20.

Granted it progressed from clean and nice to covered in paint as it transitioned to something to wear when doing dirty chores.

But, if I can get an Old Navy shirt to last two decades I think I’ll be good forever. Assuming I can maintain my figure and don’t outgrow them, that is.

Cherish that. Those dinners made with love, devoured in seconds, all in the presence of loved ones, are special.

That took a turn.

Ah, true. The depth of my equine racism becomes apparent.

Did anyone tell the donkey it was vaccines for Senegal?

Just trying to understand whether this was a tragic accident or if the donkey is a racist asshole.

It is a lesson I hope you only have to learn once.