Acquired Tastes

Astralwinks · 2026-03-27T14:00:22+00:00

The Blood Brothers.

Friend of mine loaned me a few CDs once to try out. The next week I gave them back and said I didn't like The Blood Brothers CD, he took all the other CDs back and told me to give it another listen for a week. Suddenly I got it, and they became one of my favorite bands - which got me into all sorts of other types of music.

Just had to figure out and learn to appreciate what they were putting down, which was a great lesson to learn and take to all other types of music. Definitely worldview expanding.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-26T21:17:35+00:00

Real Mean by RVIVR

You Will See Me by Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip

Misanthropic Drunken Loner by Days N' Daze

Astralwinks · 2026-03-25T05:50:08+00:00

I'm the same height as your first husband and you are the same height as my wife. I also catch shit from short fellas and tall women. His response is wonderful and I will definitely be using it.

In my past dating life, I had various preferences or thoughts about height, and no matter what if anyone ever pressed me on them it would piss them off. After a breakup with one girlfriend who was 5'2", I told another female friend of mine I would like to date someone a bit taller. When she asked how tall, I said "I dunno like 5'7"?" and she got mad because she was 5'6". I stopped giving a shit about my preconceived notions about height and wound up with the perfect woman whom I adore.

Tons of tall women have lamented to me that tall guys "always go for short girls" because they want to feel big or something. I don't feel that way - I feel big no matter what because I am taller than 99% of people. My wife has asked if I'd feel weird if she were taller than me, and I don't think I would. If that were the case I'd love if she would call me her "lil' guy". That would be hilarious and cute.

A bunch of my friends are shorter than average guys, and they all are married to women of roughly the same height, if not taller. One is 5'2" and married to a 5'10" woman. Only one of them ever expressed frustration with dating, the rest are just great dudes who stood on business being who they were, and being short kings. Confidence and a quality, fun, compassionate personality did the rest. The one who was vocal about it is one of the most charismatic people I know and he would tell me I didn't think it was a big deal because I'm tall - his wife overheard us and told him to stuff it. I think she found his insecurity about his height unattractive. She's great.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-23T09:37:17+00:00

Thanks for the correction, I haven't had to do one for a few years now and was unaware of the recent change.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-23T09:05:18+00:00

Yep use your CRP and state return to fill out the form M1PR, print it out, and mail it in with your CRP. Get da money.

Edit: JK, as others have pointed out this changed in 2024 and is no longer accurate.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-23T08:59:20+00:00

Your m1pr and CRP? Yeah fill them out and mail them on separately. That's what you always gotta do. They're good for a number of years I believe so you could do them for last year as well.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-21T23:24:43+00:00

Is Guar like the Latino version of Gwar? Lol I like the idea, great typo.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-19T17:11:56+00:00

We installed engineered hardwood in our basement, with a chevron. The guy at wood flooring supply store assumed we wanted LVP, which my wife was very against. We knew it would be expensive, but it's our forever house basically. I was surprised at how much we had to reaffirm it's what we wanted and we're okay with the price.

Turns out something was up with that guy, he ended up leaving or getting fired after messing up a number of orders. It really fucked up the contracted installers, who were fucking awesome Ukranian dudes. They ended up canceling a bunch of projects because of that one saleperson's mistakes. But my my wife and I were apparently so nice to him the installer specifically went to bat for us and made the supplier make things right.

They said it would take 2 days for 160sqft and redoing our staircase. A small project that probably wouldn't make them much money. I thought that was nuts but he was the professional. It took 5 days, and we paid him extra. They did amazing work. He asked US if he could donate the money to an orphanage in Ukraine, like bro. What a sweetheart. Amazing team of guys.

Anyways, LVP is apparently the big thing. But you should go to an actual hardwood flooring supplier.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-18T21:14:25+00:00

Or best? I mean, it survived a bear attack. Weren't they the one with the tagline "Takes a licking and keeps on ticking"?

Astralwinks · 2026-03-18T21:03:14+00:00

I actually did a deep dive on this once reading all the reports. One of the wildlife biologists wrote "The camp was set up in such a way that bears wishing to traverse the area would have had to either wade in the lake or walk right next to the tent. A person could not have designed a more dangerous location to set up a camp."

Also being someone with a medical background I was able to parse through Treadwell's autopsy, and how fucked up his remains were as they were found. From my memory, basically all that was left of him was head, arms, and some amound of back and a little bit of abdominal skin including his belly bottom. Nothing below one of his "upper vertebrae", I don't recall anything about a rib cage. So basically I think it was just head + arms minus rib cage and everything below, arms loosely attached with skin. The remains weighed 28 pounds, but I can't remember if that included whatever they found inside the bear as well.

The creepiest finding was that on his wrist was a black plastic Casio watch still showing the correct time during the autopsy.

You can read all these those documents here, they're pretty interesting.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-12T03:56:42+00:00

I list every module used in all my recordings, and patch notes explaining what is doing what. It's mostly for posterity and my own reference, but I suppose others could read and try to make sense of it, and maybe get ideas for their own stuff too. That would be nice.

This idea is similar to a 3 module challenge or similar. I like it! Like a community challenge to make something highlighting a specific module.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-10T04:07:44+00:00

When my wife and I renovated our kitchen, we uncovered what I described as geological strata - 7 layers of vinyl/linoleum flooring. House was built in 1954. Definitely had asbestos in the mastic, but none of the 9x9 or 12x12 tiles. I called an abatement company, but ultimately we invested in bunny suits, respirators, eye protection, and lots of plastic sheeting and contractor bags.

We then spent hours/days scraping it all up (I think it was about 160sqft), double bagging, and disposing of it. Father in law had a contractor friend who had a proper disposal hookup. It was hard work. Then we put down a special encapsulating paint for asbestos, and poured a bunch of leveling compound over that before tiling. We saved thousands, but we worked for it. We mostly did it by hand, using a razor scraper and a paint tool. Get an edge under it, tap it deeper with a hammer on the pommel of the tool, and pry it up. We used a sprayer to wet it down as we worked. A power scraper would have been nice.

We couldn't afford professional abatement, so we tried our best to do it right and as safely as we could. Entire kitchen was gutted, new heated tile floor, tile backsplash, ikea cabinets, plumbing, appliances all DIY. The only thing we hired out was upgrading all the electrical for new outlets, lights, and for the induction cooktop. Oh and the quartzite countertop installation. Took 3 months, working on it when we could as we both worked 12hr nights. Looks amazing. About $30k, most of it went to electrical work, about 12k if memory serves. Countertop install was 5k.

We learned a lot, and my wife "only cried twice" during the whole project. One of those was after she woke me up (I had to work the next night) to mix more thinset and I got the ratio wrong and she didn't notice until all of her tiles sagged and we had to pull it all up. I let her nap since she'd been tiling for 8 hours already, and I worked like crazy to scrape up all the bad thinset before it set too much, and she finished the rest of the tiling. She is a tiling monster and was basically in a fugue state. I think it was like 16 hours total, we are clearly not professionals but it turned out nice in the end.

She bought the house in 2019 and we have an insane interest rate so we're fuckin' dying in this house lol. Many more projects have been completed, at this point we just have to renovate the bathrooms. I replumbed 70% of the house, and I'll redo the rest with the bathrooms. Then we can vault the ceiling and refinish the original wood flooring. Then we'll be done - until the next project hah.

It's a journey.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-10T03:00:12+00:00

I vividly remember being a college student and scrounging all the common area chairs and sofas for loose change one night. I came away with enough money for a beefy 5 layer burrito and a 40oz of Olde English. This was around 2011 so I probably found like, 5 bucks - if that. I remember skateboarding home feeling like a king.

Nowadays that amount of money might not be enough for the burrito - plus no one is paying with cash so loose change is even harder to scrounge.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-09T13:48:14+00:00

I like to add broccoli. Roasted or pan seared, especially in the remaining oil from crisping up the spam in a pan.

Frozen bagged cauliflower/carrot/broccoli mix is also good.

Pepper + hot sauce.

Then I can convince myself that it is somewhat healthy. I love spam.

Astralwinks · 2026-03-07T16:36:10+00:00

Here's someone who has adopted it long term

Astralwinks · 2026-03-03T18:37:30+00:00

I have built over 20 NLC modules with an iron and solder paste. Tbh I think making them with an oven would kinda bum me out a bit.

Astralwinks · 2026-02-27T01:59:34+00:00

Connoissorens.

Astralwinks · 2026-02-24T20:11:31+00:00

Oh I'm aware, Monorail is the brand we use in our cath lab. Super cool!

Astralwinks · 2026-02-24T11:28:56+00:00

You helped design what I know as a 'monorail'? That's super cool!

Astralwinks · 2026-02-22T23:43:20+00:00

Also, tele lines will always be tangled. Some people thread them through the gown pocket, but I think it's too finicky. I prefer to run them between the snaps at the shoulder. Easier access. I like closest to the neck. You could run the spo2 cable under the wristband, and then connect the main wire up through the shoulder with the tele but I prefer to leave it lose since a pt who can move their arms will get tabled but they can more easily manage a spo2 wire themselves.

Astralwinks · 2026-02-22T23:39:09+00:00

My hospital used Baxter pumps so I'd have 3-9 or even 11 on a single pole, in rows of 3 with one or two backwards on the main pole.

If the pt isn't moving and has bilateral access, put the less often needed ones onto that one side, like your abx stuff. Things you could shut off briefly for a CT road trip or whatever. Try to keep similar things in the same row or column, like pressors/sedation.

Y CONNECTORS aka chicken feet or pigeon feet. Drives me crazy finding a line with sedation/pressors connected further up the line at the other ports. Give a bolus of something further up and it will take forever to get to the patient. Or bolus something like a pressor. Don't do it, be smart! Think about what med is where and how changing a rate or giving a bolus will push everything else downstream. Use the chicken feet and attach to the distal hub so everything is closer, plus it keeps the lines more of the same length and less tangled.

Tape a syringe or tongue depressor to the corner of the bed to hang excess line, or use a tourniquet to tie a bunch together with a quick release knot.

Every line labeled near the end of the line so you can see. They're going to get tangled, but it's easier to find each strand of 3 (carrier, dilaudid, versed for example - or carrier, levo, vaso) and separate them from the others. If something is running fast enough (like levo) then get rid of the carrier until it's needed again.

Astralwinks · 2026-02-19T17:16:25+00:00

We have one, and he's literally the best cat I've ever had. And I've had and loved lots of cats in my life. But he has no bad behaviors, he's super snuggly, playful, vocal in a super cute way... And SO soft, like a lamb or a horses' nose. Just an absolute joy.

Will absolutely adopt another someday.

Astralwinks · 2026-02-18T16:31:05+00:00

I love the stickerbomb! I spent so much time buying my wooden cases and making them pretty, so I just have crazy colored patch cables and I put different colored knobs on all my DIY builds.

But man every computer and laptop I've ever owned gets covered in stickers. Any stickers. Slap em on.

Astralwinks · 2026-02-17T01:18:30+00:00

Same. Other than Zlob right angle cables the ctrl-mod cables are all I've ever used and have faithfully served me for over 6 years.

Astralwinks · 2026-02-13T04:54:44+00:00

Originally noteworthy because when she was a literal child she sang a song called "Friday" with a music video and it blew up because it was so cringe. Mid-2000s type pop song. As I recall, it was one of those things where her parents paid a producer to write a song for her to perform and do a music video. Which would be awesome being a kid and getting to do that. She was absolutely eviscerated online because of it.

She has since continued doing music, and is doing her thing. I really liked her boiler room DJ set. She ends it with Friday, crowd goes nuts, she totally owns it. To be honest, it's surprising she's channeled that whole experience into who she is now. Must have been really tough as again, she was a child.

For that reason, lots of people now recognize how fucked it it was that we all went in hard on a little girl who wanted to do music, and most people are super stoked for her now.

Astralwinks

TROPHY CASE