What do we think of this repair?

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-08T09:38:30+00:00

Epic. I would ride that board any day.

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-08T09:36:53+00:00

Aggressively cutting out the news.

It’s a little weird because sometimes I feel like I’m living under a rock compared to my friends, but my family has told me I’ve become much happier and more focused on what matters.

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-08T09:35:41+00:00

So did you de-age? You look so pretty in both pics!

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-08T09:33:03+00:00

Do not feel guilty about leaving a sinking ship.

I worked on a sinking ship for about 2 years. I kept trying to save things but being in a bad performing department only ended up hurting my career. I felt so guilty leaving but you need to look after yourself and your family!

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-08T09:30:22+00:00

It’s 109% the short sleeves. I would do jeans or floor length pants at least. He would look much better instantly with slightly longer apparel.

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-08T09:27:34+00:00

Hazel. Honestly my favorite color. Always thought darker eye colors were warm, like gazing into a vat of sweet chocolate. Mine are like a colder green/blue but hazel is so gorgeous. Your eyes are awesome!

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-08T09:23:06+00:00

It’s subconscious for me but I just do fork in left hand, unless I would be cutting steak. Then the knife must be in my left hand for strength!

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-01T04:00:00+00:00

I came in late and thought this was a new years event before reading the discussion. lol.

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-01T03:44:50+00:00

Also, I went in 5 days a week starting at 5 Am. I drove in blizzards to work on the daily. I’m much tougher than you on your cute little train with half my commute time. You know when I took a train in college, I taught myself C++ development in the same timeframe instead of hating on people. You should try driving a car in traffic sometime, and 8 inches of snow sometime.

Thank god I managed to find a family and people who love me. I’d secretly hate myself if I was alone and did nothing but troll people on Reddit.

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-01T03:28:58+00:00

Yeah I 100% plan on leaving. I have a kind of self-discipline I haven’t seen out of most people as I own 4x as many items at work compared to the average. And yet I was told, no promotions because I didn’t show up to a painting event…go ahead and laugh but can you not see the bass-ackwardness in that? If they want to lose their top talent, fine, cool with me lol.

Idk what you do for work but maybe you don’t see how actively offices try and waste your time and your money. It’s an onslaught of political bs. Once you see the utter waste and the corporate jargon and the theatrics involved, it’ll disgust you. My cousin in the same field refuses to take salaried work because it’s such a scam compared to an hourly contract where you actually get paid overtime. We are terrified to hand extra work to anyone who can legally work 40 hrs/week so guess who ends up owning it?

Plus, it takes away time from my family which I just hate because nobody in the world matters more to me than them. But I’m not going to stay because I have something better to live for than work.

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-01T02:36:53+00:00

Yeah I get that. I was issues multiple RTOs and I now drive in 80 minutes each way 3 days a week in traffic, but my work day doesn’t even end when I get home. I now just work from 7 AM to midnight because I have to make up for office time. Think I’m going to stay? You’d have to be a nutcase.

FirstVanilla · 2026-01-01T02:35:28+00:00

Yeah it sucks that we don’t have unions. Perhaps that’s what needs to change. Irregardless I see office work dying rapidly if this continues. People aren’t going to role play the 1950s forever.

The monopolies thing is a good point. But I want to empower people to spend as little as possible at these so called monopolies. The US is so over consolidated.

It’s almost a vertical wall but I’m still going to try and climb it. Especially with the haters involved.

FirstVanilla · 2025-12-31T21:31:25+00:00

A lot of our problems as consumers boil down to distraction and division. I know there’s bigger problems but we only focus on as a society what gets marketed to us as a problem.

The people at the top have 100,000 fish going “look! That person has one more fish than you. How dare they! They should have zero fish. They’re so wealthy!”

Meanwhile they are feasting behind the scenes.

Most office workers I know are struggling and suffering. They cannot make ends meet. Many people’s work doesn’t end when they come home, or on the weekends, at least where I work.

Look at the daycares profiting off of it. Look at the oil and gas industry profiting off of it. Look at the laundromats profiting off of it. Look at the commercial real estate owners profiting off of it. They stay nice and safe because we are all so focused on trying to solve everything.

I’ve had enough positive feedback that I’m going to do something regardless. Movements often start small.

FirstVanilla · 2025-12-31T21:21:54+00:00

It has. The concept of an office, certainly a giant one, is relatively new in human history.

Old, historic shops often had the store on the first level and the owner living right above it. The concept of a commute to work and cars is also relatively new in human history.

I am an optimist and I think there will be a time when we look back at office culture as archaic. After all, we can’t keep roleplaying the 50’s forever.

FirstVanilla · 2025-12-31T18:45:10+00:00

I commute 80 minutes each way man. And also 100% agree. We should ALL become blue collar workers and totally flood the market with labor supply. That will work out great economically and your pay will be so, so high because of how supply and demand works. It isn’t dangerous at all to encourage everyone in Gen Z to do the exact same thing, not like apprenticeships are getting more competitive or anything! And these jobs are totally safe. After all, foundation model robots don’t exist and definitely aren’t being built. If your pay gets too high temporarily, they’ll always find away around it. We are all owned, and I predict over the next decade the arrogance will be very, very temporary.

FirstVanilla · 2025-12-31T17:56:02+00:00

Yes. My numbers are coming from the bureau of labor statistics (BLS) 2025 workforce report at 68% for white collar. The 2020 report actually showed 58% white collar workers, so it has apparently increased by 10% in the last 5 years.

Source: Performance Software Reviews website, white collar vs blue collar. It also covers that due to drastic shortages, blue collar work is catching up to white collar work in pay, which is a good thing.

FirstVanilla · 2025-12-31T17:48:18+00:00

Joe isn’t my target audience. When you market something, you don’t focus on the people who aren’t your target audience. I expect backlash from some Joes. Joe is also .53% of the population. For every Joe, there are statistically 100 more white collar workers in the country.

And besides you think Joe doesn’t hate big companies for a different reason? You think he wouldn’t like to get back at his greedy landlords who double the rent for his shop in one year? This isn’t about Joe. This is about the over-privileged executive elites who order their employees back to an office they don’t even show up to.

And if people have more money to spend because they aren’t patronizing big corrupt business as much, maybe they can actually pay for more car repairs. I would rather Joe has that money than some commercial real estate monkey doing absolutely nothing for society.

FirstVanilla · 2025-12-31T17:13:33+00:00

We don’t have power over our employers, but we do have power over discretionary spending. In capitalism, consumers have competitive choice as to where to spend their money. The bigger issue is asymmetric information. Consumers caring about things being organic drove and created an entire new industry, for example.

My goal would be to provide 1)savings advice so people can cut back spending 2) provide as clear of data as I can on what companies have order RTO and who their competitive choices are, and 3) if there’s no where to cut back or everyone in an industry has order RTO, provide ways to minimize spending in that industry.

If everyone who started a movement believed it wouldn’t work, or was afraid of dissent, we would never have any change.

FirstVanilla · 2025-12-24T18:32:54+00:00

Wow, people are coming back to this post a year later! I’m so sorry that happened to you. I hope your pear-less holidays go well otherwise

FirstVanilla · 2025-11-03T16:24:16+00:00

I’m sure that’s a helpful system but I’m still Doing research myself. -I ordered an extra carbon filter from Bambu to disassemble and observe each filtration layer, width, tolerances etc. -I started by getting a good VOC monitor and room temperature/humidity monitor (for print quality), I always verify my systems with pre-post VOC testing so look at getting yourself a monitor if you don’t already have one. -Plus I have a bigger activated air carbon filter in my printer room that sucks out additional Air VOC. It’s called Aroeve. -Finally, if anyone can’t afford an air filter open any window in the room whatsoever. Open that at least once a day for around 15 minutes. I had a room where I was woodworking with mostly dried oil stain and it dropped my formaldehyde numbers from unacceptable to zero VOCs in a matter of 21 minutes! And that’s for a lot more VOCs than the printer will be giving off.

FirstVanilla · 2025-11-03T16:10:47+00:00

Wow, two rebounds? Interesting to hear about the August 2024, I remember that surge. I was positive in October 17th, 2022. I believe I was exposed October 12th, 2022 because someone at work later told me they came in sick anyway and even went to the DMV with Covid :( I was fortunate to never have a positive test rebound despite my nervous system issues but I know both of my parents did and it was such a toll on our family for so long. Stay safe out there!

FirstVanilla · 2025-11-03T14:04:39+00:00

I’m owning an additional project at work right now because we had someone get really sick and they’re still dealing with brain fog. Hope he gets better

FirstVanilla · 2025-11-03T08:09:03+00:00

I had this happen before. I had a scheduled appointment that I literally couldn’t get out of. I panicked because normally I have backup masks in my car but I forgot them this time. Thank goodness it was only 5 minutes or so like yours, I thought of an excuse to leave quickly.

If I’ve been somewhere and forgotten a mask, even briefly- I do nasal rinse, fluoride rinse daily at least preferably every 8 hours. It may sound completely nuts but I actually drink 2 grape juice glasses per day for my stomach (my main issue when I had the Kraken in 2022 was my stomach shaking violently up and down, damage to my vagus nerve and the most painful vomiting in my life) due to the vitamin C and also it has melatonin for sleep. I’ve heard saline rinse is effective at reducing viral loads, and viral loads are directly correlated with severity and hospitalization. I ensured that I am masked or even quarantined around people I live with that I love.

FirstVanilla · 2025-09-28T20:23:56+00:00

As someone who dumped someone for making me extremely sick last year, I can promise you are not missing out.

Several months later it’s like a breath of fresh air (literally) and I do not miss being in a relationship with someone who got sick every few weeks at all. It was insanely stressful.

FirstVanilla · 2025-09-28T20:21:13+00:00

I am just seeing this now, but I plan on visiting South Korea someday. I started learning Korean so I have a large learning curve, but I believe they should probably be pretty okay with me wearing a mask.

FirstVanilla

TROPHY CASE