Thanks for the summary. I signed up for it just in case, but don’t think I’ll end up using it. I have a similar experience with Mastodon, but then I was never really into Twitter, either.

I share your feelings on the importance of open platforms. While reddit may have been shitty for a while, the whole third-party apps thing was an eye-opener for me, and started me thinking about (and moving toward) open source.

My next big challenge will be to de-Google, but I’m increasingly up for it. Problem is I have a ton of site identities associated with my email address there, so we’ll see how that works out.

The most galling part of it all for me is knowing that it’s all political theatre of the worst kind. I feel like we’re all just playing our parts while the unrelenting assholes of the UCP use the cover provided by this misdirection to further their tear down of our health care system and enrichment of their petro-buddies. The maga stuff is a perfect buffet line of sewage from which this government carefully selects their next target to generate more outrage and keep Albertans distracted. Fuckers.

Looks like my childhood. Loved this cake!

I feel for you. We have always had a lot of pets (4 cats, 2 dogs atm) and dealing with their end of life stage is heartbreaking every time. Just grieve your loss however you need to.

We always take comfort in knowing how much our departed friends brought to our lives, and, particularly for our rescues, how much love and care we were able to give them. Our relationships with them are a gift.

Take good care and trust that you will know if and when the time is right for another one in your life.

I agree that if you’re finding it hard to go in every day it may be time for a change. The main strategy I have used is to try to get clear on what you want, what you would consider to be need-to-have vs. nice-to-have. You can do this by making lists of things you like where you are now and things you don’t. The things you like are what you want to try to replicate somewhere else.

The main thing is to try to be more about moving toward something you want, and less about moving away from something you hate. Not always possible, but good to strive for. Otherwise you could end up repeatedly changing jobs to get away from bad people and drama, which, as many others have pointed out, will always be there to some degree.

I wish you well in your search. Stress is a real killer, and sometimes we don’t know how bad it is until we’re out of that environment. Trust your gut.

Sounds like a great experience! Congrats.

I switched from full-time windows to full-time Linux with Pop_OS and haven’t looked back. I’m very happy with it and enjoy finding FOSS alternatives to my former go-to apps. So far so good. I’m also keeping an eye on Vanilla OS as that sounds like a very cool project that is headed to beta by summer.

I’m tuning up the sole of my #5 bench plane so I can use it for more reliable edge jointing while I continue my half-hearted search for a #7 plane.

When I’m done with that I am going to start work on a Morris chair using plans from Norm Abram’s New Yankee Workshop. I’ll use mahogany and plan to make my own leather cushions. It will be my winter project, I think. :)

I used to be responsible for the app portfolio in a 1000+ user company, and every 3 years or so I would go back out to the market and try hard to replace Adobe, just for PDF operations. Couldn’t do it because so many products were integrated with them, often in ways we could not reproduce with other products. The best we could do would be to pay for a different product for 1/3 of the cost for Adobe, and then still end up having to carry a significant number of Adobe licenses for cases when integration failed with the other product. No-win situation, and just easier to stay with the evil we knew.

I hate them.