u/Oxjrnine

I don’t remember what day it happens, but it happened a lot earlier than I was expecting. That day when I couldn’t cook myself a can of soup without grabbing a magnifying glass.

Now I study design at Ryerson University, and I don’t think any of my classes ever talked about the fact that everyone gets old, and we should recognize that fact when we design things like product packaging.

I’m not gonna name the pizza company because this is not a commercial. But I just wanted to share the joy of being able to cook something without having to take a picture of the instructions so I could zoom in.

Canadian five dollar bill for size reference because I didn’t have access to a banana today. Look at how huge the instructions are.

Someone posted a vintage Buick ad on a car group I follow, and it flooded me with nostalgia, but not because of the car.

It made me realize almost no one uses golden hour or blue hour advertisements anymore.

And of course, I ran to Google to find out if it was just my imagination - and no, my fear was confirmed. Car ads use AI generated images or studio images with a trend of trying to avoid that aspirational feeling that we used to get from those old photos from the 1960s all the way up to the early 2000s

Today they want you to picture the technology or the functionality, not the romance.

And if they do wanna show off the curves of the car, they use harsh studio LED lighting instead of natural light.

Plus, expensive photo shoot have been replaced by short video content, which is much more lucrative.

So now that I know it doesn’t exist as much anymore, i’m kind of sad.😢. The world felt like a happier place back when the best way to sell a 1978 Delta 88 was to park on a beach, have a woman dressed in an evening gown, lying in the sand beside a man dressed in a partly removed tuxedo and champagne, watching the sun disappear behind the waves

Someone posted a vintage Buick ad on here, and it flooded me with nostalgia, but not because of the car.

It made me realize almost no one uses golden hour or blue hour advertisements anymore.

And of course, I ran to Google to find out if it was just my imagination - and no, my fear was confirmed. Car ads use AI generated images or studio images with a trend of trying to avoid that aspirational feeling that we used to get from those old photos from the 1960s all the way up to the early 2000s

Today they want you to picture the technology or the functionality, not the romance.

And if they do wanna show off the curves of the car, they use harsh studio LED lighting instead of natural light.

Plus, expensive photo shoot have been replaced by short video content, which is much more lucrative.

So now that I know it doesn’t exist as much anymore, i’m kind of sad.😢. The world felt like a happier place back when the best way to sell a 1978 Delta 88 was to park on a beach, have a woman dressed in an evening gown, lying in the sand beside a man dressed in a partly removed tuxedo and champagne, watching the sun disappear behind the waves

Minor spoilers ahead, but nothing that wasn’t already revealed in previews for Caprica before it aired, so I’m not going to hide them.

Cavil’s famous speech about hating his human body always fascinated me. As probably the most philosophical (or spiritual) of the humanoid Cylons, it always felt like he didn’t appreciate the importance of that organic body. Ironically, it’s the very thing that allows him to mourn what he could have been.

Here’s my theory:

The story accepts that the Cylons became sentient and self-aware, and that’s what triggered the First Cylon War. But what I don’t think the series ever really explored in enough detail the motivation for why the Cylons started pursuing organic bodies long before the Final Five arrived.

Why was becoming organic so important to them?

My theory is that the first truly sentient Cylon only emerged after a human consciousness, or at least a digital imprint of one, became part of a Cylon. The original model needed to have some ability to be AGI, but it was failing at that task. Until a copy of someone’s life was poured into one. That’s when they gained their “spark” or soul, and every sentient Cylon afterward inherited that same foundation.

The problem is that this consciousness wasn’t designed to run on mechanical hardware. It was designed for an organic brain and body.

That means every feeling a mechanical Cylon experienced was, to some degree, mimicry.

They lacked the complex chemistry, hormones, and sensory feedback that originally shaped that consciousness.

You could hug one. It would know that a hug is supposed to be pleasant. It would mimic the reaction of enjoying a hug. But the complex network of turning that new hug into a new experience was severely lacking.

I think they eventually realized that all future emotional growth risked becoming imitation instead of genuine experience. Worse, they may have feared that, over time, they would slowly lose whatever made them truly sentient and going from AGI back to ANI.

>!That would explain why they began experimenting with organic components so early, even before the Final Five returned. They weren’t just trying to look human. They were trying to preserve the very thing that made them alive!<

There are even hints this degradation may already have been happening in the original Cylon

>!If Zoe’s Cylon body had possessed the same emotional spectrum as the original Zoe, her reaction after accidentally crushing her human boyfriend would not have been so muted!<** **

I’m hoping to get some professional opinions from plumbers or contractors.
I tried to hire a home inspector after a frozen pipe burst, but by the time I was able to arrange it, the ceiling had already been repaired and insulated, so they couldn’t inspect the original condition.
My landlord believes the radiator split because I left a window open. I did not have a window open. The radiator itself rarely operated because the apartment stayed warmer than the thermostat setting.
The pipe feeding that radiator ran through the basement ceiling, only a few inches from the exterior concrete block wall and just inside the last floor joist. When the ceiling was opened after the incident, there was no insulation or spray foam visible between the pipe and the exterior wall/rim joist area.
In the photos taken before repairs, the wood along the exterior wall appears noticeably darker than the framing farther into the basement. My thought was that this might indicate long-term condensation from a cold exterior cavity, although I realize there could be other explanations.
My question is this: When you’ve investigated frozen pipes located near exterior walls, is darkened or stained wood near the rim joist something you consider as a possible sign that the area has experienced repeated cold temperatures and condensation? Or is that not something you would rely on? What evidence would you normally look for to determine whether an exterior wall cavity was susceptible to freezing?

Edit: You have to zoom in to see the wood discolouration. The piece of piping where I believe the ice plug occurred is about 2 inches away from the floor joist that is attached to the outside wall and about 2 inches away from the end of the cinderblock it sits above. On the outside the tree roots and the dryer vent are much much lower than where the cinderblock ends so I don’t know if that would be a legitimate source of cold getting in..

So, I felt like buying breakfast today instead of making it. Normally, I get it from McDonald’s because I’m lazy, and they deliver. But I was downtown, so I figured I’d give Tim Hortons a shot.

Now, I’m on a diet, so I didn’t want to eat my entire day’s worth of calories. I ordered just a simple bacon and egg sandwich that, according to their website, is 330 calories.

There is no way that thing is 330 calories.
Each side of it felt like it had been dipped into an entire tub of melted I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. Both of my hands now look like I just attended a P. Diddy party.

Are you supposed to order it with no margarine to get the 330-calorie rating?

It was pretty delicious, but also pretty disgusting. And now I’m gonna have to skip lunch.

No one can deny that the Fords of the 2010s are beautiful, but a lot of that has to do with them stealing borrowing Aston Martin styling cues (which would’ve made more sense if they hadn’t sold the company).

But I was really sad to see the bold horizontal chrome grills fade away.

While Ford was not the only one to use a bold horizontal face to create the illusion of a wider car, it had done it more consistently than most other companies, and when formal styling transitioned into the aerodynamic look in the 80s - they continue to lean into continuous horizontal fronts.

So the 2000s with the bold horizontal chrome faces felt instinctively “Ford”.

That’s why I have a soft spot for that generation of Ford. The facelifts and new generations of the 2010s didn’t feel like facelifts - they felt like face swaps.

The Toilet Paper Experiment

I’ve noticed that a lot of people on Facebook seem to be very upset about the burn ban on the east coast of New Brunswick. I can definitely understand your frustration because you’ve noticed that it rained for several days before the burn ban was announced. On the surface, that doesn’t seem to make much sense.

So, to help explain, let’s do a little scientific experiment about evaporation.

Grab a roll of toilet paper from the cupboard. Place it on its side on a heat-safe countertop or tray, then drizzle it with water until it’s damp. Next, grab a hair dryer or heat gun and blow it toward the loose end of the toilet paper roll, where you would normally tear off a sheet. Keep blowing until the end of the roll starts to flutter.

What you’ll notice is that the outer layer is drying faster than moisture from deeper inside the roll can work its way back to the surface.

Now, the last part of the experiment you shouldn’t do because there’s a burn ban. Do not test its burnability with a lighter. Trust me - it will burn.

That, my friends, is why an area that should be soaked to the bone after several days of rain can still require a burn ban. The top layer of leaves, pine needles, and other fine fuels can evaporate and dry out faster than moisture from underneath can re-saturate the surface because of wind, high heat, and low humidity

Hope that helps with the frustration.

You’re welcome.

I was really excited about ordering this because I’ve heard lots of really good things about it and I have to say I was very disappointed

It was a satisfying meal because comfort food layer of mashed potatoes over a layer of hamburger. You can’t exactly say that’s terrible.

But as far as a cottage pie goes, it was very mediocre

The hamburger layer had no gravy or sauce. The corn layer was just regular corn, not cream of corn. The mashed potatoes were very tasty and they did get a nice crusty top but overall it was kind of bland and a little dry.

So these were originally side tables but I absolutely feel in love with the idea of a split coffee table and they are so big, they work perfectly.

Sadly I had a split radiator pipe on Jan 1st and it soaked the rug, and the thin veneer on the legs is peeling off and can’t be glued back on.

Rather than getting upset, I am going to have fun with it by peeling off the loos stuff, putting wood putty on it. Then painting the tables. I want to go with a colour but can’t decide.

(The other option is to use two in one stain and varnish over the wood putty and it would probably still look like wood. I have a dinner table that I used that trick and still have leftover varnish.

Colour suggestions? (I am getting new pillows too so they could tie in)

So these were originally side tables but I absolutely feel in love with the idea of a split coffee table and they are so big, they work perfectly.

Sadly I had a split radiator pipe on Jan 1st and it soaked the rug, and the thin veneer on the legs is peeling off and can’t be glued back on.

Rather than getting upset, I am going to have fun with it by peeling off the loos stuff, putting wood putty on it. Then painting the tables. I want to go with a colour but can’t decide.

(The other option is to use two in one stain and varnish over the wood putty and it would probably still look like wood. I have a dinner table that I used that trick and still have leftover varnish.

Colour suggestions? (I am getting new pillows too so they could tie in)

I’ve been with the bank for years. I know fully well that if people didn’t have problems and didn’t need my help I wouldn’t have a job. So for my entire career, I’ve been able to keep personal biases out of my conversations, and I’ve had a really great attitude about how clients don’t realize they might be irritating or being silly, etc. etc..

And even now, when I have a difficult client or a client who needs way more instruction and advice - I actually thrive.

but recently tiny little things are starting to cause me to have a micro minute of pure rage.

It doesn’t last and it doesn’t affect my calls (yet) but I am getting irrationally angry over the most petty things.

“Sixty six, triple eight are not on my keypad - why can’t you read off numbers like a normal person?”

“I literally told you not to do that, I confirmed you understood not to do that, then you did that anyway”

“Sure, I can wait for you to go to your truck to grab your card after I had to listen to you complain for 5 minutes about a 4 minute wait time”

The list goes on and on.

Those are all inside voices, and these things never used to get under my skin before.

I’m worried that I might be getting close to the edge of burnout. I’m too old to easily find a different type of job. Any lateral movement or promotions are going to have me doing very similar work. And I’m too young to say that it’s OK because it’s only gonna be a little while and I’m gonna be retired.

So a little advice, what what would be the healthiest way to cope with these feelings?

Do I just let myself have those fractions of seconds of frustration and anger so they don’t build up or carryover, as long as they’re not affecting my calls.

Or are there some techniques where I can go back to not letting these things get under my skin anymore?

Or do I start booking biweekly session at our local smash room?

(by the way, I’m not trying to trash clients. I have genuinely been OK with the fact that they might never have worked in customer service. We have all been guilty of being irritating at some point. And even though negative attitudes are starting to creep into my thoughts, I’m still able to suppress them and handle my calls without bias. - but it is taking a lot of my emotional bandwidth. This post is about my issues and not our clients behaviour)

I just used ChatGPT to create a surprisingly good technical drawing for a small claims case involving my landlord.

Basically, the landlord is claiming that I left a window open and caused a radiator pipe to split. Luckily, I can prove that I didn’t have the window open during the time period, but I was worried that the judge might not be able to visualize the real cause and might think I was just making things up.

So, I requested ChatGPT help me create some technical drawings instead of using generic examples from the internet. Basically, I wanted to show how my apartment’s piping is laid out and that the most likely cause of the split was an ice plug generated in an uninsulated cavity that sits against the outside brick wall and above uninsulated cinder block.
At first, the examples ChatGPT created were terrible, but then I figured out how to fix it. I did a rough sketch, colour-coded it, then gave all my instructions again and told it not to use the drawing to generate the image, but only to use the drawing as a reference for distances.

That little trick made it come out absolutely perfect for what I needed.
So now I’m able to print out several copies and illustrate the different possible scenarios myself that could have caused the pipe to split, then explain, based on my plumber’s explanation, the likelihood of each one, with the most likely one being the uninsulated section.

Using generic examples from the internet probably wouldn’t have been nearly as effective as a visual aid as the ones I was able to make myself.
And I’m actually a pretty decent drawer, but doing this manually would have taken hours and hours, which I really didn’t want to spend on.

forward head posture

For most of my life, I’ve had to fight against forward head posture. I don’t believe I have any defects in my spine. It was more just a coincidence of habits over time.

Back in high school, I had an hour-and-a-half commute, so I often slept with my head pushed forward during those three hours a day on the bus. Then when I went to college, I smartened up and started standing and sitting properly again.

But later in the ‘90s, I got very comfortable with that whole grunge slouch posture thing. At the time it was almost a stylistic choice. But eventually I realized I wasn’t just slouching occasionally to project that attitude, I had trouble standing straight. So I bought those reminder shoulder straps and slowly fixed my posture.

Then came office work and smartphones. So with a combination of slightly poor eyesight and decades of falling into the bad habit of a forward head tilt, it got really bad.

And when I mean bad, I mean it took months to correct. I would go years with normal posture, but then it would creep back to forward head tilt and I didn’t notice until it became painful to stand straight.

The above picture is from the last time I corrected it. Back then I fixed it mostly through exercise, stretching, and a bit of help from a massage therapist to loosen up the muscles.

But this time I’ve ignored it for almost two years, and it’s the worst it has ever been. I am worried that at my age this is going to become permanent.

So this time I think I may need the help of either a physical therapist, and/or a personal trainer, and/or a massage therapist. My work insurance will probably cover one, but not all three.

At this point I’m less worried about appearance and more worried about long-term quality of life. I’m now in my mid-fifties, and if I don’t properly fix this now, I think I’m going to be miserable in old age.

For those of you who had severe forward head posture from years of bad posture and muscle imbalance (not from a permanent spinal disorder) which of the three specialists helped you the most long term?

Physical therapist?
Personal trainer?
Massage therapist?

And which one helped keep the correction more permanent?

So on January 1, I woke up to my living room being flooded.

It was later discovered that one of the pipes that lead up into my radiators was completely uninsulated and against an outside wall.

Because all the hot water pipes run underneath of my apartment, my internal temperature in the winter cannot be controlled through the thermostat so that means my radiators are actually ice cold

I do have to open my windows in the winter because the temperature is actually dangerously warm in the apartment, but I’m always really careful.

Luckily, I can prove my windows were closed that evening but I didn’t have them open at 3:15 for 15 minutes 530 for 15 minutes and 815 for 15 minutes

At that time, the outside temperatures were around -11

But by midnight, they were -17 and around 5 AM they were -25°C

My Landlord is trying to say that I am either lying about having my window open or that having them open 10 hours before the before the split happened is what caused the split

When they tore the ceiling down underneath me, it was discovered that there was no insulation whatsoever protecting the pipes and if you know anything about finish basements, you can’t cover up piping that’s against an outside wall without protecting it

She thinks I’m crazy because she doesn’t believe that an uninsulated pocket between my apartment and then the laundry room ceiling could possibly have gotten below freezing.

I’m gonna be able to prove that I didn’t have my window open, but I would prefer to explain to her that I’m not crazy. An ice plug can create pressure which can cause a split. She thinks the only way a split could happen is from ice expanding in the pipe directly, which is why she thinks it was my window.

Looking more for moral support than actual true advice

Normally, I wouldn’t put my landlord in the slumlord category. My unit is actually very nice. The rent is actually below market value, and even though the rest of the building is a little bit rickety and rundown, it’s kept very clean and repairs are done pretty quickly. But here is the slumlord part: she is trying to get me to pay $6,000 for damages that were caused by two latent defects in the building.

So, a little background.

All the hot water pipes that heat the 10 units in the building run under my kitchen. Because of that, the interior temperature of my apartment is in the high 20s to the low 30s and actually gets hotter the colder it gets outside. It has gone up as high as 34°C. Because of that, I have to vent out the extra heat. Temperatures that hot are actually dangerous.

So the solution has been for me to vent out the extra heat by opening windows for short periods of time and then, at night, using an air conditioner that pumps out the extra heat through a winterized insert. And the reason why I’m so careful about how I vent out the extra heat is that I understand the concept of temperature creep. Even though the heat coming from the floor makes it impossible for the apartment to ever get below zero, a constant draft could cause the wall itself to reach below zero temperatures. I don’t sleep with the windows open when it is below zero and the air-conditioning insert is winterized to make sure no cold drafts come in, only hot air pushed out.

The other reason why I’m cautious is that under my bedroom window and under my living room window is where the radiators are and there is no warm water running through them. The high temperature makes it impossible for the thermostat to kick in, so they’re basically cold pipes up against an exterior wall.

I should also add that my windows are not allowed to be open during my night shift because I work for a financial institution.

So, on January 1, the radiator in my living room split due to an ice jam/ice plug.

My landlord is trying to use the fact that I have to open my windows to claim that I am the reason why an ice plug formed.

The reality is that there was actually a section of pipe directly under my living room radiator that was above uninsulated cinderblock, sealed behind the laundry room ceiling, with the piping in contact with the outside wall, with only a thin piece of wood between it and the brick. And because there was no running water in that pipe, because the radiators don’t ever turn on, it froze.

Now, I don’t believe she truly believes I was the cause because she did not submit an eviction request due to me being negligent, and she didn’t submit a request for damages to the New Brunswick Landlord and Tenant Relations Office. But she did serve me with an invoice for $9,000, and she did try to renovict me by claiming that my apartment needed massive amounts of work. She lost that judgment, and somehow, miraculously, no repairs were actually required in my apartment at all, and I got a new invoice of $6,000 instead.

Now, I would have no problem paying this if I felt I was actually responsible, and I could even acknowledge that maybe there could be a small chance that I could be partly responsible. So I didn’t refuse to pay. I went back to her and asked for the report on how she came to the conclusion that I was responsible. In that report, I asked her if the plumber inspected my air-conditioning unit, and did the plumber take laser temperature readings of the uninsulated piping section before they covered it with spray foam and insulation?

I want to make sure that if we are going to court, she has the correct information in that report and isn’t going to try and claim that my living room window was open, which it wasn’t, and I can prove that.

My living room window was open for two 15-minute breaks and one lunch break. It was not opened after that. I did open my bathroom window for about an hour between 11 PM and 12 AM, which got the temperature down low enough for me to be able to relax and watch a bit of television. The air-conditioning unit was only turned on at 5 AM because it had gotten too uncomfortable to sleep at that point, and the leak was discovered at 9 AM. So the leak occurred somewhere between 5 AM and 9 AM. So even if my air-conditioning unit wasn’t properly installed and somehow a draft came through it, that still isn’t even enough time to create a cold pocket, and it’s also 14 feet from where the pipe split, in a different room.

So, is anyone familiar with New Brunswick landlord and tenant rules? Am I entitled to that report? Am I entitled to have her exhaust all other possibilities? Am I entitled to have her present those possibilities to her insurance? Basically, she’s arguing that correlation is causation.

In any case, if I decide to settle out of court, or if we do go to court, I’m confident she’s not going to win the whole $6,000 anyway. She created the condition where the pipes were at risk of having no warm water going through them, and she’s responsible for the conditions that require hot air to be vented out of the apartment. So whether the cause was due to the uninsulated pipe, or if somehow my insert failed, she has some partial responsibility either way.

Sorry for the word salad

The pictures include a record of how hot it gets in my apartment. Proof that the insert for the air conditioner actually has a higher R value than the window with a photograph of a laser reading of the window and a laser reading of the insert. A picture of the hot water piping that runs under my kitchen, an exterior picture of the air conditioner insert and finally a picture of the section of piping that was not insulated at all that was buried under the ceiling above the cinderblock with no insulation right up against the outside wall.