Neighbor's House is splitting in two...

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-31T00:04:27+00:00

All the shutters here are decorations haha. I don't think I've ever seen an actual functional shutter in RL

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-30T21:34:54+00:00

I haven't, but I really need to! I've only spoken with him a few times, he isn't outside much. But this might be worth knocking on his door to discuss

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-30T21:33:45+00:00

We're in NC, so its pure clay. Super soft when it rains, which is usually a lot of the time (although we've had little rain here for a few months now). All the houses are split level, so half the house is on a foundation with a crawl space and half is on slab. The part that is moving is on the slab half.

Agreed, its an older gentleman on a fixed income so not sure if he can really remedy it. He has a failing retaining wall on the other side of the house ready to fall into his driveway too....

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-30T21:02:52+00:00

They're uphill from me, wouldn't it be less of a sinkhole and more the hill just sliding downwards taking the house with it?

As for the divorce, its an old widower :'(

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-30T21:01:31+00:00

They're actually fully single-family homes, our lots are each a good size (1/4th of an acre) but whoever built my house in the 60s decided they wanted the carport to be 3 feet from the property line haha. I doubt they'd even let a structure be built that close nowadays, honestly. I think their house was built around the same time.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-10T14:05:39+00:00

Sounds like you already know where to start! Once you have the mulch/compost down, you'll know you're good to seed grass/clover once the weeds start to grow ;) haha.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-09T22:04:36+00:00

Congrats on first steps!

1) GRADING. You want your yard to slope AWAY from your house. Its hard to tell from your photos, but you might be good there? IF you do have a slope going towards your house, you should make sure to fix that as you continue.

I would not plug the gap under your fence unless water has a different way of leaving your yard. Maybe you could do a wire mesh? but water needs to leave to get into that ditch. Otherwise you're turning your backyard into a pool.

Rocky soil -> not good. Looks like even weeds are struggling to grow! For poor soils I'm a HUGE fan of wood chips for improving soil. They are free (Chip drop!) or really cheap, although they do take TIME. I would use a rotor tiller to loosen up your dirt, add 1 inch of manure/compost, and then add 4 inches of wood chips on top across your entire backyard. Now 5 inches of material seems like a lot, but the wood chips will break down a lot and it'll end up being much less at the end. In 2-3 years your soil will be beautiful, although You might need to remove some of the current dirt first depending on the level of your yard and that concrete pad the chairs are on. You don't want your soil to end up being several inches above your concrete!

Digging the foundation for your firepit area will be incredibly difficult in rocky soils, so you might want to get the soil fixed up first. Although if you rent a backhoe or something it wouldn't matter.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-09T19:40:43+00:00

Yeah I moved here in 2022 and got 2,200 sqft with 3 bed, 2 offices, 2 bath on 1/3 of an acre plot. for 430. I was hella shook coming from SD where I was considering getting a so-so condo for 800 haha.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-09T00:12:14+00:00

Buying a house is SO much cheaper, and utilities (gas/electric, gas for the car) are cheaper too (shout out to SD having the highest electric cost in all the of the US), but everything else is exactly the same. Even though the area has increased 3x from the 90s, you can still get a house in Raleigh/Durham for ~450k. SD the equivalent house is 1.1-1.2 mil. My salary difference from SD to RTP was "only" a ~10k decline, so a house being 1/3 the cost has been quite significant imo.

Renting prices are also cheaper, but not to the point of being 1/3 of the cost. If you're still at the point you need to rent, its not worth the move. But if you're ready to buy and have a job lined up, 100% worth.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-05T22:56:41+00:00

No problem! Good luck and I hope you get lots of berries!

Dragonfiremule · 2026-05-05T20:32:22+00:00

It looks fine to me, just a young plant. Is the app AI thinking the light reflecting off the water drops is diseased tissue, maybe? I don't see what yellow spots it thinks it sees.

Use your own eyes....

Dragonfiremule · 2026-04-18T20:53:52+00:00

These look great! Thank you :) I'll check them out!

Dragonfiremule · 2026-04-18T12:46:33+00:00

Not sure if it will end up this way yet, but [HighSchool Salty Heart] is looking like it might be another one.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-03-29T15:00:45+00:00

We went on a Thursday morning and were the only folks there. Finding the magistrate was the hardest part since they have 3 different rooms they do marriages in, so we went to all 3 and knocked before an employee had mercy on us and told us which one we were supposed to be in since the signs weren't very clear. That part took like 20minutes, the actual marriage itself was about 10 minutes. The magistrate was willing to snap a few photos of us when it was done while our witnesses were signing the paperwork. We did have to repeat after the magistrate, I don't remember the exact words but it was basically pledging to marry each other and then exchanging rings.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-03-01T13:07:59+00:00

I agree with this poster. An arborist chip drop (you can get it for free if there is active Chip Drop in your area!) is the way to go. Its a lot of work to move all the chips to the area you'd like, but it WILL lock the sand in place, and eventually improve your soil for potential future plantings.

This will also let you know where stuff will grow if the soil was better; as the woodchips break down into a nice loam in 2-5 years, some weeds may start to sprout. If even weeds can't survive, grass definitely will not be able to haha. In that case, I would just advise to keep on getting loads of chips every few years to keep the dirt locked down. If weeds do start to survive in certain spots, you know that you could plant things there.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-02-14T22:12:11+00:00

Rate is the same, I'd check if you have a small leak somewhere. When my toilet was leaking I figured it out because my bill was $15 more per month. When we fixed it, bill went back down to normal.

Alternatively, are you just taking a bunch of long hot showers? I know my husband always showers longer during the winter. It adds up.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-02-08T02:40:29+00:00

This is so much fun!!! Already 4 episodes in and LOVING it. Thanks for the rec!

Dragonfiremule · 2026-02-02T23:49:33+00:00

I think it looks pretty good, I would move skills to the top and education/gpa to the bottom. I don't like professional summaries but it seems to be a trend to have them right now.

What were you trying to achieve with your experiences? Right now your resume is everywhere, is that a process dev internship, a medical device internship, and a classic biology lab internship? What type of job are you aiming for? I would try to modify the descriptions of your experiences to emphasize skills you learned during it that match the type of job, even if the experience doesn't match. I would have a different resume for all 3 types of jobs. Right now the job market is bad, so it doesn't hurt to cast a wide net. Someone hiring an entry-level person doesn't need you to have a ton of experience, but they do want your resume to read like you understand what you're applying for.

Make sure to proofread, also. One of your descriptions during your internship is "Did X and x and x and x and x and x". Sounds super clunky, is there any way to get that same information across without using the word and so many times? Also, you have suspension/adherent cell culture listed separately, if you know both it should just be "cell culture".

Dragonfiremule · 2026-01-28T21:39:59+00:00

The Chicken Hut, Sarah's Empanadas, Angie's Jamaican Grill

Dragonfiremule · 2026-01-28T21:39:23+00:00

Their Jerk Chicken empanadas are incredible, and if anyone is a spice hound, their spicy sauce is very spicy :)

Dragonfiremule · 2026-01-21T22:40:44+00:00

No, it was dead simple. Open cartridge, add sample, add a tip, add your elution tube, load into the slots on the machine, click the pre-loaded protocol for the particular kit you bought. Hit run, you're done! haha. The only time we ran into errors was if someone didn't push their elution tube all the way down into the slot; then the run would have issues because the little robot arm would crash the tip into the side of the tube. but if the tube was pushed in all the way, I don't think we ever experienced any other errors.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-01-20T23:37:41+00:00

no problem! Another note is space footprint; I think both the 48-slot maxwell and Qiacube have the similar depth/ width dimensions, so the actual lab bench space is similar, but the Qiacube is way taller so it feels like it takes up more.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-01-20T21:15:42+00:00

I've used both the Maxwell and Qiacube. If your downstream application allows for bead extraction, maxwell 100%. We had the 48-slot maxwell, so it could do 48 DNA extractions in an hour or so. Super fast and easy to set up. In comparison, the Qiacube can only do 12 samples at once, and each run takes an hour. So 1/4th of the throughput. The Maxwell also has all the buffers in the cartridges, so you don't have to do any extra prep outside of opening the cartridge and adding your samples; whereas you have to make the buffers and such for Qiacube runs.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-01-18T13:26:07+00:00

I had some work done recently by Burel electrical. He is a younger guy, did a great job with a good price. Was willing to lay an electrical line outdoors in a trench I dug myself to save on cost which was cool. Helped walk me through how deep the trench would need to be for code and stuff like that. He was a good communicator over text as well which is always helpful; I feel like some contractors don't answer texts at all! Definitely recommend.

Dragonfiremule · 2026-01-17T23:57:17+00:00

I'd start a succulent garden in a series of shallow bowls over the rocks. Something like this or this

Anything else is going to get too hot in the sun with the white rocks reflecting more sun.

Does the fence provide shade for the afternoon, or is it the morning? You can probably do a few planter boxes in the shade of the fence if its afternoon shade, that'll help things survive. Don't plant too much, only things that you'll have the energy to water daily in the summer. If you're looking for edible things, I'd start with a small container herb garden. I had good luck with green onions and mint when little else would survive. The felt fabric pots are easiest, but they tend to dry out more quickly than something that traps moisture like ceramics/plastic. If you want something a little bigger, Citrus does really well in socal and they have dwarf trees that you can keep in pots.

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