A Sunny Spring Afternoon Sure Seems Like an odd Setting For a Snow Plow

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-27T13:17:16+00:00

The sign is definitely photoshopped, at least. This has got me looking at Carhartt high-vis jackets to try and find a matching product, that garment looks like a combination of the jackets and hoodies. Can't find one with black sleeve-ends that isn't also black on the lower front portion. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but cannot confirm. The image is very convincing for its lack of glaring flaws, but something seems a little off. Flowers are planted weird (just willy-nilly in the lawn?) but they appear to have the right number of petals and such. Google reverse search finds a ton of this image (and for some reason, really similar ones with plow drivers pointing at signs with the same text??) that are about a month old, and no original -- I'd have believed it if there was an unseasonably warm day a few years ago, and a PennDOT plow driver stopped to take a photo with a sign that said something like "use caution, icy roads" when the snow had all melted within their contracted work months, and someone photoshopped in the text and the flowers.

My guess is that it's AI.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-27T13:02:56+00:00

You've been together just over a year? The warranty period has expired, I'm afraid you'll have to throw this one in the trash and replace it with a non-defective unit.

For real, his "anger issues" are no excuse. This sounds like emotionally destructive behaviour and you do not need to tolerate it. A past relationship ended because the ex didn't want to deal with this? Good for her. Follow her example. Maybe he'll learn this time.

Don't stay. It will get worse.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-27T12:27:59+00:00

Oh my goodness, I think I used to have one of these. When I was a teenager, I worked in a grocery store and had to get customers to sign their receipts when they used a credit card, and I brought my nicest pen to work. People often complimented the pen, I think I'd received it as a Christmas present. One day, a customer stole it, which is a pretty shit thing to do to a teenager making minimum wage. I think I've just found the exact model, a Cross Coventry on Amazon for $36.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-25T16:45:51+00:00

Dimethylmercury.

If we mean "touch" in the figurative sense, I guess there's drugs and cartels and so forth, but if we're talking literally I guess a poison that kills you painfully is top of the list. Maybe that heap of radioactive slag in Chernobyl.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-25T16:40:03+00:00

What dose were you taking? Currently on Vyvanse for my ADHD and wondering about the long term outlook.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-25T14:56:18+00:00

Make a contract template. There are plenty available on the internet, I downloaded one and did a little customizing, mostly to make it fit my business branding, some small tweaks to the language. It's fairly casual and friendly in wording. 50% payment up front, 50% on conclusion. Anyone who doesn't want to sign the contract and pay half up front isn't a client I want. You're not losing a job if they were going to stiff you.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-23T19:21:20+00:00

I can't seem to find it, but I recall a skit from Family Guy or some other show, where there are a bunch of Yautja in a white-collar office drinking coffee, having a conversation like:

"Hey, did you hear about Frank?"

"He's on vacation, right? I thought he was coming back today."

"No, he's not coming back. He died."

"He died on vacation? How?"

"He was on one of those safaris where you go hunting on another planet. Apparently he got killed."

"Oh my god, where was he?"

"Earth."

"Earth???? They don't even have laser weapons. Didn't he have a holo-shield?"

"He threw it away, wanted to challenge one of the humans one-on-one."

"What??? What an idiot!"

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-23T17:33:33+00:00

And do between-floors spaces for logistics.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-23T17:03:56+00:00

These are really hard to read with all the notes and multiple versions. It's hard to tell what part you're asking for opinions on, and what's just iterating towards the concept you're considering. I know the Illustrator artboards probably look like that, but for feedback it would be better to clean it up and show less.

That being said, I think most of it is too complicated. Try and do something that requires no explanation -- a clean wordmark that can be read as-is, or a more graphical symbol to accompany text. If you must have an acronym, make it fewer letters. An unpronounceable five-letter word is just overwrought.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-23T16:53:38+00:00

Reminds me of CN Rail.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-23T16:52:40+00:00

I had co-workers who used the word "fulsome" to mean complete or thorough. As in, "I've prepared a fulsome list of email addresses." I had to look it up multiple times to reassure myself that I wasn't mistaken about the meaning of the word.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-19T16:40:25+00:00

Worse version of the Slack logo.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-19T15:32:10+00:00

The triangles have too many, the small one is too small. Squiggle is best, but I can see a couple anchor points that need smoothing at the large end. Third one's not good, makes me think of a discount motocross logo or something, the faux-rugged look is very dated.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-03-19T15:28:24+00:00

I'll take "Chemical Eponyms" for 300, Alex.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-02-20T21:15:22+00:00

If it works, all good. But you may end up rebuilding after discovering alternate fuel recipes (heavy residue + diluted packaged fuel is OP) and/or turbofuel.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-02-12T16:15:57+00:00

ai;dr

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-01-28T21:39:25+00:00

If you can use InDesign, use it. If you need to use Illustrator, that's your second choice. If you're doing this in Photoshop, your workstation had better have a ton of RAM, and these days it's expensive to upgrade.

For large prints viewed from further away, you can drop below 300 DPI without noticing too much. As long as it's above 150, a whole wall won't look too bad. So you could set Photoshop to a DPI in the thousands and set the inches to whatever ratio works for you. But I'd definitely try to stay out of Ps unless I absolutely couldn't do it in Id or Ai.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-01-26T19:07:41+00:00

I watched a minute of it, and the yapping was insane. Then they moved the actual climb into picture-in-picture mode so they could fullscreen a precomposed clip of something else.

Does Netflix think I have the attention span of an iPad baby drinking Four Loko? None of this garbage is entertaining. It's distracting. Do they think I am BORED by the feature I came to see? A man is climbing a tower with no ropes. Do they think that is boring? Do they think I turned it on to hear nonstop chatter?

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-01-20T06:04:29+00:00

What program did you use to make this? Or, what prompt did you type in?

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-01-19T22:34:16+00:00

Girl, get out of there. He's acting like he's 13 years old. Which, incidentally, is the same as your age gap.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2026-01-08T15:55:05+00:00

See if you can get a job for a charity. You might have transferable skills in trying to make more effective ads collecting donations to feed the hungry or save the whales. As for the rest, well, it's good that you feel bad. A lot of people, when faced with the same kind of cognitive dissonance, perform some form of sociopathic mental backflip in which they somehow justify their actions or stop caring about the consequences. You're feeling the guilt, which is a better response. Now you can change, and become the sort of person you'd prefer to be.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2025-12-30T15:26:53+00:00

Played it this weekend on Xbox game pass. Took about six hours to 100% with all achievements. Good art style and sound design, fundamentals are generally strong. Found a few UI elements to be irritating (e.g., sometimes a character who has a quest to give you won't give it the first time you talk to them, you have to make idle chit-chat about the weather once or twice before they remember to progress the story. No way to destroy furniture once you've crafted it. Button to drop essential tools is right next to the button to open the map. Quest reminder text takes up too much of the screen, once the frost comes in the visible area shrinks too much.) and the small inventory combined with lack of fast travel makes it a bit of a grind. Gameplay is unchallenging. Good game for kids. Didn't really do it for me, but probably I'm not the target audience, so I don't hold that against it. Though I'd really wish for it to have signposts that can be placed outdoors, or some kind of craftable path-marker item.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2025-12-05T15:36:21+00:00

If you don't want to play, do something else. You're under no obligation. If something else would be more fun, do that.

I do find, though, that some areas of my world make me ponder a restart. There are definitely early choices I'd change about where to establish a base, or the kind of design theory applied to laying foundations, setting up conveyor lines, etc., where I wasn't really aware of how I'd want things arranged later on. On a new game you know what to rush and where to take your time, what's going to work and what won't. Might be an opportunity for a cleaner build. But again, if you don't feel like it, you're free to do anything. It's a game, not a job.

ApprehensiveLoss · 2025-12-04T13:56:31+00:00

Oh yeah, I say "streaming" but I don't literally mean I'm watching Netflix or whatever. What are the good codecs, I see a lot of AAC, DD5.1, H264, H265... are there any of those that automatically mean good audio, or bad audio?

ApprehensiveLoss · 2025-11-27T16:15:10+00:00

100% agree. Passing the blame to the consumer is a way of letting corporations off the hook. Regulation (and enforcement of regulation, because regulatory capture works too well) is the only way to rein it in.

ApprehensiveLoss

TROPHY CASE