u/fimgus

First time having a pilonidal cyst. It’s been really painful for the last three days and it doesn’t help that I also managed to catch a cold. I went to urgent care today and they said it’s not ready to drain and they put me on antibiotics instead, but from the looks of this sub, I don’t know if that will be enough. When do I know if it’s ready to drain? Should I go back to urgent care at some point?

I’m 23 and I work as a music teacher. My job is literally me doing what I love and I make $35 an hour. Because my hours are not standard though (I can’t teach kids while they’re in school or day camps during summer), I have to teach either in the evenings or the weekends. To get my money and hours up, my boss offered me a bunch more hours which at first seemed like an awesome deal. I really enjoy my job, so when he tried to warn me about working every day of the week, I just shrugged it off.

Turns out working every day of the week doesn’t mean working 7 days in a row. It means working 28 days in a row. Actually it means working indefinitely. I don’t care how much you love your job, this shit sucks and is not sustainable. Even if some days are short like 2-3 hours, not having a day off kills you. I am 23 and I feel like I’m 54. I’m sleeping 9 hours a night and still feel constantly tired. I have no time to run errands so every single day is just go, go, go, go, go.

Rant over. Please don’t get yourself into your situation no matter how much you love your job. It will make you hate it.

Ughhhhhh.

I recently had a reckless driving charge and I luckily got it downgraded to a speeding ticket through my lawyer that my family has been using for decades. He's a really old sweet southern guy. His assistant emailed me the bill (which somehow ended up in the spam folder), and I asked how I should pay it. They said that credit cards would incur a 4% fee and so I asked if there was another method, to which they replied a bank transfer. I should have realized that this was fishy at this point but I went ahead and paid the $550 bill to the name listed, which was one I didn't recognize off the bat but I assumed it was going to their financial person or whatever.

They then told me that the transfer didn't go through correctly and that they would be sending the money back. They then sent a different address to send the money to. I thankfully never sent them the money again as I wanted to wait for the money to come back first. This whole time they were being polite and weren't misspelling words, all while using the exact same email address and signature as in the beginning.

About a week goes by and I never get the money so I call the lawyer's office and they tell me they have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. I tried forwarding the email chain to the email address and they don't receive it. I then sent it directly to the lawyer's email address and he got it and said that they have zero record of any of the emails once the bank transfer was mentioned.

I then spent most of yesterday in an absolute fiasco ultimately ending in me filing a police report. The bank says they can't get my money back. The lawyer called me today and said that he wasn't hacked, as his email is "encrypted" and mentioned how he can't receive videos or large attachments through it (????). He told me I still owe him the money but I need to close out all of my bank accounts and reset all of my passwords. He says that the hacker got into my computer and spoofed his assistant's email address which doesn't even make any sense.

I don't even know if it's worth it to try to get another lawyer to get the $550 back, but that's not pocket change to me. I'm only 23. It won't be the end of my life but I'm still pissed about it. I asked him if I could at least get more time to pay the bill, to which he said yes but he's not budging at all.

His assistant's email had to have been hacked right? He denied it over and over again when I brought it up but I don't even understand how a hacker could enter into an email chain using the same email address? What do I even do? Am I the fool whose money has parted?

Edit: some people are confused about the spam folder thing. The legitimate lawyer’s office did receive my initial replies to the email, and they had previously sent me a letter of representation using that email. I should have told them that the email ended up in the spam folder, but that was the actual bill that they sent and they received my replies to it.

Hi all,

I've been playing guitar for about 12 years and I actually teach music full time, mostly guitar at a rock-themed music school. That being said, I play pretty much everything but "true" jazz and I really want to improve my skills so I can teach it better. I understand 2-5-1s and I've learned a few standards, but I really want to perfect my soloing and learn what the actual techniques are behind that bebop sound.

My playing is very melodic and whenever I solo over jazz backing tracks it's very obvious that I am just playing by ear. I did one year of jazz band in high school, and that's because my school was so underfunded we couldn't afford it the following year. I want to be able to actually think like a jazz guitarist.

I am honestly not that familiar with the deeper cuts of jazz, the only jazz I actively listen to is New Orleans swing (Bob Crosby and the Bobcats) and I am absolutely looking for recommendations of records I should listen to. Any Youtube channels that teach jazz soloing are also something I'm interested in.

I think my biggest area of weakness at the moment is that I rely so much on my ear, and when I'm teaching my students to improvise I preach the same thing. I know there's other styles though and I want to have a better understanding of actually soloing to chord progressions rather than treating the guitar like an alternative to a singer's voice.

Thank you!

Hotshots all seem more expensive. Is it just that they're American or is there something else to it? Would it be more worth it to buy a nashville tele and mod it or go for a hotshot? I'm trying to buy used.

I’m a big tree enthusiast and a frequent user of the VA big trees database. I love love love love big trees and am fascinated by natural ecology and old growth forests. There’s quite a few really impressive trees in the region, and it makes me wonder if there’s any tract of forest that best resembles what the 757 looked like a thousand years ago.

I saw on a Wikipedia article that claimed that there’s some old growth on the north landing river preserve, but the reference doesn’t mention it.

Obviously humans have completely altered the ecosystem down here but I am really interested to see what the most well-preserved spots here are