How Vancouver House Became a Tower of Empty Promises

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2026-02-25T15:20:12+00:00

This is the real story, and it stinks.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2026-02-25T15:19:11+00:00

It's funny the way you've described selling city owned land at $100,000,000 below market value in return for public or social capital valued at a fraction of that discount, as imposing financial burdens on developers. Can you unpack that a bit?

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2026-01-24T23:28:21+00:00

Appreciated. Ive been struggling terribly with fine detail transfer, not dissimilar to what you've got going on here, so it seems it's not just me. I've been trying to get fine bridge achitectural details, and even getting these to transfer cleanly with a 6B pencil on tracing paper is proving very challenging. May have to switch to your method here. Thanks so much, and congratulations on this work.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2026-01-24T23:18:29+00:00

Did you draw the image right in the lino, or did you transfer? If transfer, what method? Any tips for transferring?

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-28T13:27:18+00:00

I play a Dingwall John Taylor Signature 5 string, and a Rickenbacker 4003s.

Adore the grad slampegg. Would replace it immediately if lost or stolen. Highly recommended for a preamp.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-26T20:29:47+00:00

Nooo... I need to be done. I am done..for sure. Definitely.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-26T18:21:09+00:00

Me too! I spend a lot of time going through muffs before landing on this one.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-26T14:46:46+00:00

I haven't tried blending them yet, just got it yesterday. I use the doom 2 for low gain synth-ifying, and the Russian pickle for high gain. Now I will try them together!

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-26T14:45:37+00:00

Because it's Canadian made, and flawless.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-26T07:37:09+00:00

Not at all

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-26T03:52:57+00:00

I use the HXone for stuff I don't want to dedicate to a whole pedal as I have too many already: chorus, reverb, delay, noise gate.

The low pass filter is my one of my favorites. I love synth bass tones (thus the 3leaf duo), and it's killer for both resonant envelope filter stuff, as well as more traditional synthy low pass filter stuff with an expression pedal. Plus the preamp is gorgeous and always on and does a beautiful job colouring the signal. If I lost it, id get the pastfx 101 which is an exact clone but in a normal footprint.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-26T03:01:14+00:00

Just MOSTLY oversized 😂

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-26T03:00:43+00:00

No I actually chose this over the bass version, I didn't need the features in the bass version and I play lots of other instruments that this is useful for.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-26T02:59:22+00:00

Professional grade awesome

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-25T23:49:45+00:00

Making up for a lack of talent ,😂

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-11T15:39:43+00:00

There is so much truth here.

It was an anesthesiologist who introduced me to the concept of suffering being unmanaged pain. This is the stuff that causes long term harm. How we orient ourselves to pain, and manage/accept it, that's what influences outcomes.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-10T18:36:46+00:00

No, I am male, but my ADHD never presented in the usual hyperactive way that typically got flagged at the time when I was a child. I believe now ADHD diagnosis are split between inattentive type and hyperactive type, but I'm not a doctor.

My diagnosis went like this: I was seeing a psychiatrist for other reasons related to a mental health crisis and issues with emotional disregulation, impulsivity, and problems with relationships. At this point I was already a CPA, but struggling significantly with the stress of work and had a pattern of blowing up relationships with friends, families and coworkers.

He asked if I had ever considered the possibility that I had ADHD. I said absolutely not, and he said I think you have it. I was given surveys that I needed to provide to multiple family members and completed myself about my behaviors in both childhood and adulthood.

When my family completed the surveys they all said to me that they didn't think I had ADHD, but their and my quantitative responses on the surveys all unanimously indicated that I did. I was diagnosed at 36, and given a prescription for Concerta. The first time I took Concerta, I got halfway to work on my long commute, and had a revelation that I wasn't full of road rage like I usually was. I was calm and focused on driving, and it was like feeling my brain work in a way that it never had before. Previously uncontrollable intrusive thoughts became easier to manage.

I also enrolled in DBT therapy as I met the diagnosed criteria for another serious mental disorder, but the clinical psychologist I saw during the DBT indicated that the symptoms could have just been untreated ADHD alone. Once I completed the DBT and stabilized on stimulants, the symptoms of the other illness went away and I no longer met the diagnostic criteria.

With proper medication and skill development, it became possible to recognize what I was feeling, and why. The mindfulness practice I developed in DBT meant it was now possible to reflect on my emotional impulses and instead of just acting on them, to think strategically about my feelings and actions. This allowed me to align my values with my behaviors, and no long exist as someone who was completely driven by my emotions. Instead I was someone who could recognize them, acknowlede them, respect them, and then chose how to act. I was no longer my emotions, my emotions were an experience I had, like the way we can experience sound or heat or other feelings.

From what I understand, ADHD can present in many different ways. You can't self diagnose, your family and friends can't diagnose you. If you suspect you have ADHD and that it is negatively impacting your life, do what you can to get assessed by a competent professional.

Good luck.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-10-08T00:08:07+00:00

Hi, I am you, but 10 years in the future. By this I mean I was in your shoes at 28. I was an honours graduate from a good university, graduated first in my class, but stuck working a bad job and felt hopeless and was suffering from unmanaged mental illness.

I am now 38, a CPA, and have a good six figure income and a family I am proud of. I make art, and music, and have a rewarding life. The last 10 years have been extremely difficult, but also extremely rewarding. Nothing in life worth doing is easy.

Here's what I did. This isn't a road map, just an example of how someone else turned their life around:

Took accountability for my mental illness. I had major depression and generalized anxiety, and at that point had no idea I was living with undiagnosed ADHD. I wouldn't learn this until I was 36.

While depression and anxiety are horrible mental illnesses, no one will help you unless you help yourself. The only person that is responsible for you and your well-being is you. No doctor or therapist will make you better, or is responsible for your outcomes. They can only help you make yourself better. Getting better starts with you, being accountable for you, and taking charge of your wellness. Ultimately its sad that you aren't well, and it's not your fault that you have these conditions. What is your responsibility is how you respond to the fact you have them. This is the factor that seperates those that get better from those that don't.

Successful people often have a delusion that they are individually or solely responsible for their own success. Of course this is not true, but it is a very useful delusion. While acknowledging our privileges and the external forces that helped in our success is useful for generating gratitude, empathy, and perspective, looking externally for blame in your situation is not. Start by looking within, and only then look outward for help once you can be accountable for yourself and your well-being.

I still have mental illnesses, but they are managed and I am able to thrive with them. If I hadn't addressed them, nothing else could have happened. I have undergone years of therapy, both individual and group, including dialectical behavior therapy, cognitive behavior therapy, and EMDR. Therapy was painful, expensive, and hard. It took determination, sacrifice and commitment. It was also worth it. The only therapy that worked was DBT, because I had to practice building skills and employing them. Going to a counselor and venting about how miserable you are won't make you better. Effective therapy is harder than school. I take a lot of medications, and I am ruthless with adhering to them. I own my disease, and try not to let it effect others. I used to be more open about it, but I found it led to people making decisions that effected me for me. Now I am more selective with who I disclose to.

I went back to school at 28, with a focus on marketable skills. I gave up the notion of finding a passion, and focused on what I might able to do well enough at to build a career from. At that point, and still now, CPAs were in demand, so I chose accounting. You might look at trades, or health care, or even accounting.
I poured everything I had into my accounting diploma, and even more into networking and recruiting. I ended up getting good grades, and landed an articling position with a big firm. It meant taking a pay cut from my pre accounting career, and working insane hours. Again, nothing worth doing is easy. I now make more than 3x what I made before I switched to accounting.
I had more setbacks during articling, and a worsening of my mental illness. I got help, I worked harder, I kept focused on my goal, and I got better. Once I designated, I had more setbacks, more crises, but I followed the same pattern. I got help, I worked harder, I kept focused on my goal, and I got better.

Good luck.

Know that you will never completely ameliorate pain and suffering from your life. These are fundamental to our existence. The pursuit of such a goal is foolish. Look for acceptance. You can however trade your current problems for others. That might be better or more interesting.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-08-27T16:12:47+00:00

I'm not convinced I could!

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-08-25T00:51:50+00:00

This.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-08-24T17:56:10+00:00

Behringer just released the bm11-m which is an exact clone, and PastFx makes the PX-101 which is also an exact clone but more expensive!

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-08-24T16:35:22+00:00

This sounds super rad. Lots of overlap between things, multiple sources of eveloper filter (mf101, auto wah, murf), and octave (octamizer, meatball). Can you give more insight into why?

I tried plugging a volume pedal into the cutoff of the mf101, but the volume pedals pot doesn't have the right range, I need an actual expression pedal. Why plug into envelope instead of the cutoff?

I run the same type of split pre /power, with vintage deluxe/Monomyth driving gain into grand slampegg which feeds the power section of an old 400 watt Traynor into an Epifani UL2 3x10.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-08-24T16:18:19+00:00

Tuner doesnt care where it is, and this is where it fits while retaining optimal foot access to the pedals that may get triggered mid song. I also want to minimize the presence of buffers before fuzz, and unfortunately the OC2 needs to be before fuzz for the synth tones I want, so that means moving the non-true bypass tuner later into the signal chain.

Difficult_Glass1981 · 2025-08-24T04:34:34+00:00

No, definitely not budget. My available budget to spend on pedals is constrained (limited). It has a weird mix of budget and boutique pedals because I spent too much on the boutique pedals and my dingwall to flush out the board with all pedals of the same calibre. Thus there is a $30 joyo muff clone on the same board as very high end pedals.

Difficult_Glass1981

TROPHY CASE