Posts made by Auspice

@macha said in Dead Celebrities 2020:

Chuck Yeager. First guy to fly faster than the speed of sound, 97.

One of my first heroes.

So if you hear a boom tonight, that's just Chuck breaking the sound barrier one last time.

Oh no

@ganymede

By having a cut-and-dry syllabus, I don't even mean in difficulty.

I mean by being cut and dry. Make it clear what you expect. Make it clear what's going on and when. Make it clear what deadlines are.

I had one professor decide to get all cutesy and instead of 'Week 1, Week 2, Week 3-' etc, it was 'Prism 1, Prism 2, Prism 3' and the references would be stuff like 'While working on Prism 3 refer to the droplets you submitted in Prism 1 and....' ('droplet' being a specific part of an assignment in Prism 1 that was never used as a reference point any other time)

NO ONE knew wtf he meant. And he'd go out of contact for days on end and often just be like 'This is only my second class with this syllabus! I'm still working out the kinks!' ....while still not giving an answer. 9 times out of 10 in that class, I just guessed what I was supposed to be doing and crossed my fingers. Me and a few other classmates ended up collaborating on our work so much because we just felt helpless.

@ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

She refused to yield, so it ended up having to go to mediation.

So, I'm going to be a professor in a few weeks, and y'all have me spooked.

I had like, 3 bad instructors out of the grand total. And in each case it boiled down to pure ego.

One who did the whole 'I don't give As to show that you have room to improve' (and so he BEGAN his grading at 90 and sharply went down from there). The lady who refused to acknowledge outside issues. And then the guy who would outright yell at us. He one time goaded a girl into speaking her mind and then yelled at her to shut up as soon as she started to do so.

I am PRETTY SURE you will be none of these things.

My best instructors were the ones who gave me honest, thorough feedback. Who were willing to take the time to talk to me when I had questions. Who provided a cut-and-dry syllabus (really, there is no need for cutesy shit with a syllabus: there's a reason there's a formula. it works and people understand it).

@aria Ugh, I'm sorry.

It sucks when you have to do that sort of shit.
I had to run a grade up through the department heads once. Because it was something we had to host on an external website. That website was down the day the instructor went to grade my work (aka something completely outside of my control), so she gave me a 0. She refused to yield, so it ended up having to go to mediation.

Sometimes people are stubborn in really shitty ways.

So I've been in a drug study for a medication for fatty liver disease (https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/terns-pharmaceuticals-announces-safety-and-pharmacodynamic-results-of-a-phase-1-clinical-trial-of-tern-101-a-liver-selective-fxr-agonist-in-development-for-the-treatment-of-nash/).

I must be on the medication itself. My liver enzymes were actually almost too high to qualify at the start of the study, but I got accepted in.

The nurse that I see for it told me yesterday that as of my bloodwork two weeks ago, my liver enzymes are normal. So I must be on the actual medication and it is working. Without any side effects (for me at least but overall the drug has limited side effects from what I read in the initial paperwork).

This is super good news, esp for someone who has other complications that lead to struggling with weight-loss (hypothyroid and pcos).

My grandfather had a stroke yesterday. He's in the hospital. Supposedly he's doing OK. But I know his health has been really poor of late in general.

He is 90.
These things happen.
But I still hate how circumstances have meant I've only seen him once in the past five years.

@Testament

I'm sorry to hear it. He was, indeed, a good cat.

Finally - finally - got the official offer for the job.
This is real. It's happening.
I still have to make it through December, but come Jan 4th I'll be employed again. Doing the sort of work I love. Working from home (possibly permanently as opposed to just during covid; during the interview they said it was going well enough for the team they were looking at making it a permanent transition). Making more than I did at my last job.

I found this pattern and I am absolutely making it.

If I have yarn left over / if it's not too tricky to make, I might be willing to make one or two for cost of supplies/shipping for anyone interested (this is all post-holidays since I've got a few gifts to make for people!).

Speaking of those gifts:
I'm delving into mini embroidery to make a necklace for my mom. I've meant to for ages, but I'm gonna finally give it a shot. :X

@Aria said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Auspice You get an upvote for the recruiter bit, not the ouchy bit.

In the meantime, if things get really bad, check into dental schools near you. Texas is fucking huge, so there may not be any right in your city, but...

I thought I needed a root canal once when I didn't have insurance and ended up at UPenn's dental clinic. The wait was an absolute pain in the ass, the appointment ridiculously long, and I fortunately only needed a filling. (Technically two, as I had somehow gotten a cavity in the crevice between two molars that spread to both?)

All in all, I went through their endodontic clinic, got a round of X-rays, passed through the regular clinic for the fillings, and got a cleaning. With a sliding scale based on my low-but-not-poverty salary? ~ $90.

I paid more than that last year for a fucking mouthguard with the "enhanced" level dental plan I have with my employer.

Worth the time to make the drive if things get urgent, IMO.

I already checked and (understandably) covid means they aren't accepting people at the school clinic right now. It was actually the first thing I checked!

So I was running errands today and had the Spotify daily drive on and my npr snippet said that the testing they've done has shown that while kids have fallen behind.... It's not as far as they'd feared. Like to a surprising extent. But that yes more at risk students are the ones further behind.

Still overall it sounds like the people looking at these numbers are pleasantly surprised by what they're seeing and hey that's a bit of good news of late yknow?

@Sunny said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Auspice

tooth infections can be lethal. I know you don't have the money to go to the dentist, but if you start running a fever, please go to the ER. I know it's a financially bad idea, I know that it's panic-inducing, I know it's hard, but please please don't take too many chances.

I know they can. And I'm monitoring for fever. Right now it's just pain.

I just need to hold out until February. I'll have insurance again (no contract to sign yet but I discussed stuff like pay rate, pay schedule, insurance offerings, etc with the recruiting firm today) and be able to shop for a place that can knock me out while they shove their hands in my mouth.

@Ganymede said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Yes? Seasonal and tree nuts.

If your pain is non-localized, it's possible that it is related to allergies. I've been starting to get intense upper tooth pain in response to seasonal allergies, and I've been told that is because of the sinuses above your teeth getting enflamed and swollen. Else, it could be a sinus infection of some sort, which will do the same thing.

Lo, when I took a round of antibiotics, the pain went away. But, yeah, it sucks donkey balls.

Oh no. It's localized. I know this tooth is bad. I was supposed to get a root canal and all that shit a year ago but I had major panic attacks over it.

I wish it was like allergy tooth pain. Then I'd just pop some benadryl and nap it off. >.<

Gonna pick up more Tylenol and some of that numbing shit while I'm out running errands.

@Ganymede said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

My tooth can kill me now I'd be totally ok with that just to not be in pain anymore.

Do you have allergies?

Yes? Seasonal and tree nuts.

@silverfox said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Auspice

Could you have someone "virtually" holding your hand? A friend standing by on Zoom or such?

When I went to the dentist last year (and managed to get the deep cleaning that was gonna lead to the other work before I noped out of the rest), I went to a place that offers TV and music and a blanket and I had a friend I was texting.....I still barely managed.

They were really nice and if I could afford it I'd try going back there to see if maybe I could manage. But a) can't afford and b) they closed their office last month.

My tooth can kill me now I'd be totally ok with that just to not be in pain anymore.

(I started trying to find a free dental clinic but then my total utter fear of dentists kicked in and I can't do that shit alone. Especially because if I had to be conscious while someone touched this tooth rn I'd probably hit them. A lot.)

@Aria

So I'm part of this site (Influenster) to sample, review, and post about on social media. I mean, hey, free shit (look they won me over years ago when they sent me a box full of tic tacs okay).

ANYWAY.
A couple weeks ago I got a couple tubes of Wella's colorcharm Paints in one of the new colors (Fuschia) to try out and... I'm really surprised by it. Like, I dyed my hair pink once years ago. Once because it faded so fast and it was a pain to keep up. I've had it in about a week and a half now, multiple washes, and it's barely faded.

https://www.wella.com/professional/en-US/hair-color/color-charm/paints#/?_k=swasdh

I wanted to share cause I know a number of people on here dye their hair and this brand might be worth trying out. They're like, $7 a tube on Amazon (as compared to my usual preferred Pravana which runs like, $20 - MUCH MORE AFFORDABLE).

Taskmaster is the best thing ever

Tooth pain.

I just want to sleep forever.