Posts made by Paris

@admiral I've noticed that most of us seem to be in reasonable housing situations this last year.

@auspice Yeah, I've been thinking of getting an air fryer sometime, maybe this summer.

I'm gonna be trying some sort of pork kofta rice deal tonight. Hopefully I don't burn the house down.

@arkandel D and I don't celebrate, partly because we're not xtian, and partly because december is THE worst month for us financially. So it may just be that folks are tight at that time of the month and thus don't get anything and are saying 'we don't celebrate' instead of 'sorry our broke asses are broke'. It's annoying because of the deals right around that time, too.

Usually the start of January is a boost for us so we often get stuff (like my instant pot) then.

@misadventure There's a method called the pot-in-pot method that sort of does this, but I don't have any stainless steel or pyrex bowls.

My new instant pot.

Now I just need to figure out how to cook rice or noodles + chicken in it at the same time.

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

Doubly so because I live in a neighborhood where "firecrackers or gunshots?" is a game we play every summer.

Yeah, I'm really glad we no longer live in an area where drivebys were a real thing. The place before last had bullets in our garage, and one day several struck the rock facing that was covering the wall my bed was against. I couldn't use my legs at the time so I had to lie there flat and hope nothing got through and hit my laptop.

Firecrackers were always nerve-wracking.

I am super glad that our dog is not fussed by fireworks at all (her main fear is moving vehicles and ornery children), as we live directly behind the Strip and thus the fireworks are practically on top of us.

She will bark at the first few because she first assumes they're gunshots, but then completely ignores them when we don't react negatively. We were out on our balcony watching seven casinos fire off synchronised fireworks so it was pretty crazy (people pay thousands to see this and we get it for free, yay), and she was trying to get us to throw her ball for her because she got bored.

She did bark at some folks who went into the parking lot to watch, though.

@wretched If it's your first dislocation, you probably won't need surgery, but you may need PT.

@quinn Yeah, when I showed my docs how I pop my kneecaps back in, they were like, 'that's USUALLY impossible' and quite horrified.

@wretched said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@aria slow clap

During my holidays, i have dislocated my knee! Storytime.

So i decided that I needed to clean a gecko tank, so, I scrub it down in the bathroom, and clean all the fixtures and get it mostly done, and then i turn to leave the bathroom when i feel it.

It's a hard feeling to describe, when a joint does things it's not supposed to do. There's a grinding feeling and a sort of nasty 'decoupling' sensation that part of my brain recording in exquisite detail while the rest of me was flooded with pain and i screamed something incredibly loud and high pitched.

During that time I must have teleported because i was then on the floor, and feeling my kneecap re-couple and pop back into place.

It really is the worst feeling. I was born with congenital defects in my knees and hypermobility in all joints, and so my kneecaps were popping out since I was a kid. It never gets less painful. I got pretty good at jamming them back in, screaming all the while. Eventually I got surgery on one knee, which helped, but never got the other fixed as I moved to the US.

If you can't get a brace next time, get an ace bandage, despite what the doctor says. You need to keep that joint stabilized until you get a proper brace and they do a pretty good job of it.

Also poor Aria.

@wretched Yeah, exactly.

In my case I've been drawing on tablets for years, but I want something that is flat instead of raised as I can't keep my arm raised long enough to do art anymore (aside from very short projects), as after my spinal injury all four limbs are impaired. With the economy being weird, being able to take on more projects with less physical challenges would be nice. :3

@thenomain I was responding to someone who wanted to know about tablets. I myself will probably pick up a bamboo or something later this year since drawing on my screen is harder on my arm.

@taika Wacom tablets are not that expensive and a good starter point, intuos and bamboo are usually the entry-level ones. I believe they have pressure sensitivity.

I am more used to Cintiq, whose products tend to be higher end. These usually let you draw on a screen but are pretty expensive.

Surface Pro tablets let you draw on the screen and have limited pressure sensitivity. These cost between $500 and a grand or so.

(You want pressure sensitivity in whatever you plan to buy as it lets you make more natural strokes, thickening as you press down and lightening as you ease up, much as a paintbrush does.)

At the higher end, you can get 2-in-1 laptop deals with screens that you can draw on. These can run you about a grand.

I have used all of these things in my professional art career. I'm actually moving less toward drawing on a screen and more toward having a graphics tablet at my side as my arm gets tired-- this is less of an issue on, say, a surface pro. However, my SO prefers drawing directly on their Cintiq.

I'm not going to recommend a make or model as all of these options are pretty good and you can use the names as a starting point for something to fit your budget.

I find it amazing how early digital artists are starting now, and while the initial efforts are often eh, give them a few years and they're fantastic and way advanced compared to where we all started when this stuff first hit the market. And especially in this economy, it's a great skill to have, especially if you find a good niche.

My specific gripe is less with the color involved, and more with the values: dark text on a dark background, light text on a light background, etc. I have to play with a dimmed monitor because of a severe light sensitivity (thanks lupus) and that affects how well I can distinguish between text and BG (also thanks lupus, since that's what damaged my eyesight and continues to do so). Just be conscious of that when picking text colors, as some people feel that dark ansi is perfectly visible against black or dark gray, and it only is on some superbright monitors.

Unfortunately, while I am legally blind, I don't use any modification programs or whatever, I just game with my head really close to my monitor and stack stuff on my left.

Just making sure the colors you use make a huge difference, though, on games with ANSI and similar systems. I can't count how many games love to use dark blue on black. -.-

Several of us here have Ehlers-Danlos, iirc, and you may want to take note. I WAS prescribed Cipro a few years ago and experienced EXTREME pain in my tendons and I suspect it might have been behind the rupture of my tumor. My then-doctor dismissed my concerns after I brought up a study that connected Cipro with tendon ruptures.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-warns-some-antibiotics-can-cause-serious-heart-damage-n950606

(Edit: Yes, I have multiple co-morbid conditions. They are all mostly caused by an extremely faulty endocrine system.)

Yeah, I had to get a light brown service dog while most of my clothes are black.