I recently had to break up with my best friend. I realized how bad they were for me and my mental health, and it was even bleeding into my physical health (I have a new degenerative issue thanks to stress, oh boy! I guess at least it wasn’t a heart attack..?)

So I’ve been super isolated for a few months now. I only had a couple people in my life at all, and this friend was the only one in my area, and the one who actually talked to me more than weekly whether I reached out or not. We vibed super well together and they really got me. It’s super hard to give that up.

But it’s actually going well? I don’t feel worse, kinda a wash between better and not better, I just don’t have anyone to share my accomplishments with anymore. And the good feels are a huge motivator for me to get stuff done, I have a need to share.

So I’ll try here!

This week I’ve finished a bunch of stuff that I’ve meant to get done! I got my water heater installed (did it myself except electrical, boy is showering at home nice!), I raked most of my leaves into the chicken yard for them to play in, tho the rest decided today and tomorrow are the time to fall so it’ll happen again after all the rain.

And today I finished the new cover for my chicken run, and got it put up right before it started to rain! It’s weather protection over the part of the run I can trap them in if needed, like to repair the main run fence or whatever (I’m in town, fencing them in is required, and my yard is very exposed to elements). During winter they end up stuck in there for extended periods whenever it snows heavily, so it was important to get done before it got cold. Fortunately it’s been shorts weather… it certainly shouldn’t be 70 in November here, but it is… and I’m thankful for it.

I used to have plastic tarps on it, they were noisy in the wind, and only lasted 6 months before they had holes in them and needed replacing. Instead I made my own tarps. I (very roughly) followed this video, but I’m a massive cheapskate and like to reuse what I can. So I got an old crockpot someone was throwing out due to damage that makes it unsafe to leave unattended, and used it to melt all the old candle remnants I’ve been saving over my 40 years of life (ended up being about 6 lbs of wax), strained out all the crap (glitter, dust, paint, etc), and used that for the base. My ex-friend’s mom (screw ex-friend, their mom is still my friend!) gave me a bunch of old bed sheets, so I used that as the structure. I got a sewing machine from 1970 from my dad’s partner which I spent three weeks trying to figure out how to use.

This whole thing cost a grand total of $12, and that was for the gallon of mineral oil, of which I used half. For contrast, last year I bought 6 tarps to cover the same area, and each one was $8-12. And they only lasted one winter. This new thing should last several years.

I used 6 bed sheets that were going to be thrown out, sewed them into a big…. Cozy? Idk. Fitted cover. I attached tie on straps all over it on the inside so it would be easy to attach to the frame or the galvanized mesh (that part of the run is animal proof as it feeds into the coop, I take their safety pretty seriously since they can’t go anywhere else) and then I spent two days in the nude sweating my ass off over hot wax and a hot iron to press that wax into the fabric. HOLY SHIT Y’ALL! It was exhausting and hot and made me throw up four times! Every other sentence out of my mouth was “ah fuck that’s hot!” Because I burned myself again. Also I should have been wearing pants, I burned myself several times with wax dripping off the iron. I mixed my wax heavy on mineral oil because we get midwestern winters here and I don’t want it cracking and flaking in the cold. That made it disgustingly greasy to work on.

I got it finished, and put it up all by myself! (Considering it’s 10x12x6ft at the peak, and the 6 sheets plus wax weighed like half a ton, that’s an accomplishment!). It is not at all perfect, and it isn’t fully attached yet in the front, cuz it was starting to get cold and rainy as I was working, it leaves a lot to be desired, but its so much quieter! It covers so much better! It’s so much less wasteful than replacing what I had!

Now my chicken run smells like cinnamon shit. Scented candle wax is umm.. not super ideal for this use, but it was free. I imagine that will fade in a few days (it did make the 2-day ironing process even more hell, though..)

If I had to do it all again, I would

1. Wear pants
2. not use cinnamon wax at all
3. wax first, sew after (though this old machine wouldn’t have been able to handle that, it barely handled regular seams)
4. get help putting it on
5. umm probably do a better job of measuring… I genuinely eyeballed it after measuring the frame, and it worked out ok. But it would have been better if I was a better planner.
6. probably dip one sheet in the wax, then fold them together and iron? Ladeling it was not a great idea. Getting all the layers of such a big thing was a pain in the ass.

So here’s the thing below! Not terribly impressive to look at, sure, but so much work! you can see I missed some spots where it’s really light, but I’ll fix those on a warmer day. Around the bottom where it doesn’t reach the ground will be reinforced when the cold hits. I have some old siding that I use for that, that way it gets some air movement while still warm.

Next up - building a new, much larger, coop, made entirely from cardboard and reclaimed materials!

Basically I was tagged as mentioned in a comment, one of several in the thread, and got an inbox notification of it. It was about 20 min after the comment itself was posted, in a community I don’t interact with, with a user I don’t think I’ve ever interacted with before.

Not sure if it’s a piefed problem, a cross-talk problem, or just a random bug, but as per screenshot, it wasn’t intended behavior, and I wasn’t meant to be tagged.

I’ll edit this to include a link to the actual thread if desired. Or if any other info is needed that’s cool too.

I don’t have a lot of people to turn to, never really have.. I’ve been pretty isolated most of my life, so I’ve just sort of muddled through by reading a lot and trying to figure out how to deal with stuff on my own.

But I’m not really sure how to handle this. I’m disabled and have been most of my life, and I haven’t really let it stop me for the most part. It gets in the way, but I brute force my way through. Often to my own detriment.

I guess I’m not doing as well as I thought.. I’m applying for a disability upgrade, and one of the things I can submit is statements in support of my claim, letters from the people around me about how my disability impacts my life, and theirs. If this doesn’t sound like a normal disability process that’s because this is the VA service-connected disability process, rather than a normal one.

Anyway, I asked a couple of my closest friends to write something up about how they have seen the impacts, and it low-key hurt my soul to read. Reading how they have been negatively impacted by my limitations, and how they view what I go through has been the worst kind of eye opening.

And I’m not sure how to deal with that, or even where to look.

If you’ve got motherly or fatherly advice, if you’ve been through similar, if you’ve been through something else hard, please feel free to share. Anything helps.

Basically title, I participated in an interesting exchange over the past day or so, and it made me wonder what some of the more useful resources are for men to learn about their bodies, hormones, brains, emotions, support networks, etc.

So I’m interested in websites, forums, video series, books, whatever. Links would be great if you’ve got them.

(Disclaimer: I am not male myself, which is why I’ve no idea, and am curious, but if this gains traction, I’d also just like to have this post be a resource. It’s good to periodically take stock of what’s out there.)

So lately I’ve been working on getting things set up to survive long term. I’m building my whole basement into a hydroponic farm with zero outside help. It’s been a hell of a challenge because I have some major issues with executive dysfunction, motivation, etc. but it’s also something I’ve been wanting to do in some capacity since my early adulthood (I’ve scaled way way way down as life happened).

But I’ve been making progress. A few hours a day, even. It’s not all the things I need to do, and most of them are things I don’t particularly want to do either, but any progress is good progress. Everything I do today is one fewer things I need to do later when the need is more pressing. And that, at least, feels good. Knowing that all I have to do later is move this thing to its final home, makes it easier to make/set up the thing now.

So tell me about some progress you’ve been making that isn’t “as good as it should be” based on arbitrary external metrics, but gets you one or more steps closer to your personal goals (no employment-related stuff please, personal goals are for your own fulfillment, not your company.)

So I just replaced all the important hardware except the GPU, which is an old but functional GeForce 1030. The new mobo is msi b650 tomahawk, the cpu is an amd 5 or whatever, and the ram is all compatible and stuff (at least according to pc part picker; this was my build cherry being popped)

I sorted out the shim error by disabling secure boot, but then the installer blacks out on me. I also updated the bios to the latest stable version (which I’ve heard causes problems on some mobos, but I had the same problem before and after reflashing).

With Rufus making an ISO image, I could choose between options on the live media, install or boot live and then install, plus the troubleshooting (all of these options, including low graphics mode, gave me a black screen that then moved me back to the list after 30 seconds). I tried again with etcher as I read that can help. It made the problem worse and now when I boot to that usb it’s just a black screen and it stays there. Forever. No option list or anything. I tried using the vid card hdmi, but that’s got no output at the moment, I assume because I haven’t installed drivers for it yet.

I’m not sure what option to pick for downloading the media, however, as the gtx nvidia option didn’t work and it’s very unclear what the integrated graphics model is. I just chose AMD legacy for that test. It did not work. I wasn’t able to find an install option that doesn’t have a separate GPU as a default, but I’m possibly dumb so that’s maybe on me.

I tried hooking into the shitty graphics card, I tried removing the graphics card entirely, and I’ve been through every help article on the topic I could find (tho most are for installs that actually did install, and give a black screen on boot) and have tried all the suggestions I could find.

The only thing I did not do is install fedora silverblue and rebase, because frankly I’m not that confident in myself. I’ve only ever used Debian-based systems, I’m not very good with them, and the guide to do it was intimidating, at best.

Anyone have any ideas that I could try to get this beast to load or boot? It still boots into the old Ubuntu install, with errors probably because the hardware changed or smth, but when I remove that drive and try without that backup boot option it still just doesn’t want to go. So at least it’s not an issue with trying to dual boot, which I don’t want to do. I want to overwrite the Ubuntu install on the same drive, cuz it’s a smol 128gb drive. Perfect for isolating my OS.

If I don’t find a solution I’ll probably just boot to the drive that still has Ubuntu and just update it (pc hasn’t been booted in years), but this pc is for gaming so I’d prefer something more friendly to gaming.

I’ve been at this for umm 5 hours now.. so any help would be immensely appreciated.

If you need more info of any sort lmk and I’ll provide whatever I can. :)

Additional info: only one monitor is attached, and that and the wired keyboard are the only two peripherals. Some people have had issues with a second monitor holding the actual screen info, but that is not the cause here. I also don’t have windows on this thing at all, which I know does cause some issues sometimes.

Basically title; how long did it take you to get used to them?

For bonus info for me, how old were you when you started wearing them? How bad are your eyes?

I finally had to give in and get them. My eyes aren’t that bad (I think) but I’m almost 40. I’ve had them made a few times in the past because I have had a prescription all this time (since my mid 20s) but I never wore them. It was more work than my eyes were doing…… probably. Felt that way anyway..

But I can’t avoid it now and I got an additional pink tint added to maybe help with headaches (not directly related to my eyes, I’ve had the headaches most of my life; they run in the family, yay!).. and one eye has a stronger prescription than the other and it’s insanely nauseating. It’s my dominant eye no less. And maybe I shouldn’t have done all the vision changes at once.

How long am I gunna deal with this? I can’t just stop wearing them after a few days this time, because off is worse for reading and I know it and I notice it.

Edit: this is day one of wearing these. It sucks but it’s not like this is ongoing. This is new to me in that it’s physically uncomfortable, but my eyes are legit bad and I’ve known it and I think the prescription might be a bit off but they have been telling me for years if I just wear the damned things my eyes will relax and my prescription will probably change. I do not like the visual changes. They make me sick because I have neurological problems that both cause headaches and intense motion sickness. Like I can’t swing on swings without getting violently ill. -end edit

Greetings!

I’m rebuilding my old gaming-focused beast. I’ve got parts coming today (new mobo, cpu, ram, and cooling unit, everything else I hope to reuse, to keep this cheap as possible), and I’ll be building it up tomorrow (thermal paste arrives tomorrow 😭)

I have no need for this computer to do anything but gaming, as I have others that can’t handle gaming for that. So I’m thinking a gaming-focused distro would be good. However this is nowhere near top of the line hardware, I’m aiming to run mostly cpu-heavy games (stuff like rimworld and oxygen not included), as I really like having way too much going on at once. So maybe that changes things.

I’ve had an absolute hell of a time getting games to run through lutris on stock Ubuntu. I’m hoping bazzite will improve that somewhat. It probably won’t.

But I understand it’s fedora based, which is a big new thing for me as I’ve only messed with Debian-based. And there’s probably a lot I’ve not considered.

So what do I need to know? What would be helpful to know before I start this? Any good resources you can point me toward for gaming on bazzite, like install troubleshooting guides or something that might make this less of a nightmare? (Seriously I can only get a handful of games installed that should be able to run, and that’s with an absolute ton of effort, very frustrating.)

Thanks in advance!

Greetings friendly psychopaths!

This is maybe not the best fit for the comm but it is entirely due to rimworld, as that’s my benchmark. Please let me know if this should be elsewhere; I just figured this would be my best bet for a good and relevant answer.

I need a new computer. The laptop I’ve been playing on hard crashes and needs reboot constantly when gaming (worst with rimworld, where I freeze every 0.5-3 hrs, but oxygen not included and dysmantle both suffer as well and that’s like half of what I want to play rn). And for whatever reason the other computer I have it installed on won’t boot it anymore (I don’t have the new expansion, so that’s not it). It just crashes right before fully loading. Probably the mod loadout but nearly all of these ran on the laptop, so idk what the deal is. Anyway that tower is my Plex server so it was never meant to run games. I got it cuz it was rly rly cheap.

So, I’m not made of money or skill.. quite the opposite. I need this as cheap as possible. If I had any confidence in myself I’d replace the failed components in my 2016 gaming tower but that probably just needs to be gutted at this point (mobo failure) and idk how to build into the corpse, tbh. I guess I can learn but idk if I have the mental energy for that rn. So that’s why I’m here, asking!

Regardless if I buy a tower, repair and upgrade the one I have, or build into the corpse, I’d like to know the minimum hardware requirements to run this specific game decently. Doesn’t even have to be that top-of-line sort of good! Just not constantly crashing my entire computer would be great! Currently about 3-4 years in, at best, I end up with so many entries in my spreadsheet, and so many tps (even with all the performance mods), that my pawns need rim rails just to play at a halfway acceptable speed, and 1x and 3x are exactly the same speed. That’s without even fucking with raids and stuff; just basic base building is too much. Granted they are opulent bases, and I have numerous recreation and hospitality mods, but that’s hardly the point. I’ve never run more than 150 mods at a time afaik and I understand some people manage twice that without this problem. I’m also fastidious with mod order and grouping, in the hopes it’ll improve performance.

So I’m looking for numbers. I intend to go with 32gb ram and hdd/ssd doesn’t really matter cuz I can replace that whenever. I have a dramatically overly large (for what it was running) psu, 800w I believe, so I have wiggle room even if I reuse that. I also have an old water cooling system I can throw in for funsies. I assume those don’t obsolete.

Is there a minimum CPU? What about a good mid-range GPU (I understand this to be overall the more costly portion)? Anything else I’m missing?

It’s not a bleeding edge game, and I don’t tend to play bleeding edge games, so I don’t need it to do more than this. If it can run rimworld well, it’ll do anything else I need equally well (I’ll just have to accept I’m not getting a vr for it)