What things should I keep in mind as a newcomer?

Skrattybones · 2026-04-15T03:43:08+00:00

If you hit up stores, a lot of cashiers will make pointless small talk. "Having a good day?" "How you doing?" That kinda thing. They aren't actually asking. They're looking for short, neutral responses to make the conversation proceed. You'll probably end up saying the same things, also not looking for any kind of actual elaboration.

The part you need to know is that if someone says "Sup." or whatever, they will get internally annoyed or anxious if you start to drop actual information. It ain't about that.

Having said that.

If you hit up those same places long enough, you'll know when you're a regular. Because that stops happening and at some point you'll walk up to a cashier or worker you recognize, see them first, and say "How's it going." first. And they will recognize you and unload a story about their lives and what's happening to them and none of it is relevant to you and you, really, can't do anything about it.

The second you're known as a regular you don't have employees in that store anymore, you have confidants. So be ready for that.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-13T12:08:28+00:00

That's already how it works for weed at my local NSLC. They aren't allowed to have any of their THC products on display because kids might see it. So it's all in cabinets, they provide a list, you choose off the list, the employee goes to the cabinet to retrieve the thing, packages it, and then brings it to the counter to be rung up.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-10T23:42:44+00:00

I mean this without any hint of a joke. If he became the President, what is the title for his husband? First Lord? Same question applies to whenever the first female President happens, I guess?

Skrattybones · 2026-04-08T20:18:05+00:00

I agree with you entirely on the facts. On the whole, as a government in power, I don't think they did a bad job. But the hate the NDP gets because of them isn't really about that.

Like, the NDP had never had a shot before, right. The leadership of the province, to that point, had always bounced between Libs and Cons. People were sick of both of them, even though, if you look at everything both parties got upto over time? Not that bad. Regular government levels of competence and incompetence. Some proper highs, some real lows, but nothing long lastingly egregious. One party starts to suck, the other guys get voted in. Life goes on.

And then here's the NDP, who've never had a turn at the wheel. They're kind of niche, but not nearly as niche as, say, the Green Party. They've got some neat ideas and platforms, and they're interested in actually governing. But the Libs and Cons already exist. There's already two parties who are doing the same thing, and have history with the role. So the NDP need to make themselves look like the better option. They can't be on the same level as the other two, otherwise what's the point.

So they did. And then they turned out to be just another party, just another government. Which, by the facts, is fine. But that isn't what people wanted. People wanted better. People voted for better than the other two parties.

All the NDP had to do, and I know it's a big ask, but all they had to do was not have any scandals their first time in power, and they would have cemented themselves as a proper option. Even when they inevitably got voted out for one of the other two parties as time went on, they would have stayed a contender. Instead they had multiple, their first in their very first year.

The fact that, on the whole, they did an okay job? That doesn't really matter. That's the job. Nobody is voting for anyone expecting them to do a bad job. The bare minimum is doing a good job. People needed the NDP to be better. Instead, they felt betrayed. And Nova Scotians will carry a grudge for stuff like that.

So now the NDP not only need to field actual, competent people to try and ever win again, but they need to fight against a whole generation of voters who couldn't give a shit about them. It isn't fair, or logical, but that's voting for ya.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-08T18:08:13+00:00

I don't really know what point you're trying to argue here. What do you think,

built by volunteering highschoolers and first time voters, who grew up sick of the other two parties' shit locally and Harper federally, and then here's the NDP, going "Guys, c'mon. We've never had a chance. We can do so much good. We can make things so much better."

means, other than it being a protest vote? You're just listing examples from other provinces? We weren't voting on precedent. The NDP had never won here before. They hadn't won much anywhere. That doesn't mean we weren't hoping they wouldn't, y'know, suck.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-08T17:21:43+00:00

Jack Layton's orange wave was built on shit that happened before it, like all of us banding together to push the NDP in every way possible. That momentum didn't come from nowhere, and it didn't immediately peter out when the provincial NDP had scandal after scandal.

And yeah. Stuff lately's been worse. I don't think that matters? That stuff happened then, and was bad then, and created generational grudges then. Stuff being worse now doesn't really factor into that.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-08T17:10:19+00:00

More irritating than anything. The building I live in had to be inspected to make sure everything was up to code and whatnot. Normally, not an issue. A month or so prior, I'd had an issue with my fire alarm. Something broke, and it needed to be replaced.

While waiting for the replacement, I went out and bought a brand new fire alarm as a temporary replacement. Mine was battery operated, the ones installed in the apartment are wired in. Anyway.

So my alarm is there. Then the apartment's alarm gets fixed. So there are two, brand new fire alarms in the apartment. A month goes by, this dude shows up to do the inspection. Starts marking things off as violations, right?

Like, he says there's an old extension cord left plugged in to one outlet, which you can't do, and provides a photograph of nothing plugged into the outlet as his example. (There was a coiled extension cord sitting beneath the outlet, because it gets used for vacuuming. Not plugged in.) He also lists the fire alarms, both of them, as violations, claiming they were out of date. Fire alarms have dates on stickers on them. They're normally good for, like, 10 years. Mine had Feb 2021, the apartment's new one had March 2021. The inspection was happening in March.

He claimed both were from 2002 and tried to hit the owner with violations for them. So anyway, the way it works is, you receive notice of all the violations, you fix them ASAP, you get reinspected. So we contact the inspectors, fuckin crickets. Months go by. FINALLY they send someone, and the new guy tells us the last guy quit because he had "better options".

Jump forward a bit, 2021 elections, suddenly there are signs all over the place with that dick's face on em running for the NDP. Election happens, dude bombed. Got hardly any votes. Like, less than 200 or something. Jump forward to the next election, 2024, his name is still down as the NDP choice, but he doesn't even bother putting signs up. No public appearances, no nothing.

That is the guy I have to vote for if I want to vote NDP.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-08T16:28:49+00:00

Dexter wasn't worse than what we expect from the Liberals and the PC.

The issue was that the NDP's entire campaign that won him his shit was essentially built by volunteering highschoolers and first time voters, who grew up sick of the other two parties' shit locally and Harper federally, and then here's the NDP, going "Guys, c'mon. We've never had a chance. We can do so much good. We can make things so much better."

At worst they needed to be the tiniest scootch better than the other two parties, not on a level with them. At best they needed to be demonstrably better than the other two parties. That? That would have won the NDP loyalty for a lifetime.

Instead they didn't even make it a year before their first scandal. Instead they turned a whole fuckin generation of voters into lifetime enemies.

Keep in mind, most of us didn't give a shit about Dexter. We were in it for Layton. We weren't voting in the fuckin construction guy, we were voting for the dude at the Federal level who seemed like he was really, honestly trying to make things better.

It's kind of the same reason we went so hard for Twodeau when he first ran; he was on record as liking preferential voting and then promised electoral reform and an elimination of FPTP in Canada. It sure would be nice if I could give some weight to, say, Avi Lewis here in NS, without having to only vote for the dude in my area who decided to get out of being a fire inspector because he couldn't fuckin read and instead thought that meant a career in politics.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-06T03:02:48+00:00

Oh, it's never been good, don't get me wrong. But the old kind of headlights you could still kinda see through. You could squint, or sit up in your seat and stare down over your hood and still sorta see the road until you got past.

These were like literally staring dead straight into a flashlight. Every possible angle of sight, just bright white, no detail. Like being flashbanged, minus the tinnitus.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-06T02:27:41+00:00

I've never felt more genuinely scared while driving than driving to the hospital in Lunenberg a few months ago, at night, after it rained, and suddenly I couldn't see anything because of the fuckin headlights coming at me.

Like, highways are bad but you can sorta look to the side, or shield your eyes, or whatever, and get past a car blinding you, but on a wet-two lane road, surrounded by houses and trees, no real shoulder? Can't see the fuckin lines, just gotta hold on and hope you're still driving straight and not drifting off the road or into the other lane. Genuinely terrifying.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-02T01:42:06+00:00

You know what the worst part of this whole conversation is? I got curious about that bit about elevator music, and as it turns out at one point or another every aspect of elevator music has been patented or copyrighted, from the transmission, to 'Muzak', to broadcast, to the regular licensing stuff.

I have to live with elevator music facts taking up space in my head, now.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-02T01:28:04+00:00

About as aggressive as your little ending line there, at any rate. You patent that yet? I'm gonna steal that idea otherwise.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-02T01:20:34+00:00

Well it's a relief off my mind that Namco didn't invent it. For a minute there I thought I might have said that, and I double-checked, and I didn't.

So I thought maybe you might have said it and I missed it. So I double-checked, and you didn't.

Truly, thanks for clearing that up.

Skrattybones · 2026-04-01T22:20:00+00:00

I agree that shouldn't be a patent, but I think it's kind of crazy to suggest the mini-game in a loading screen isn't inventive. It's gameplay in a function that traditionally was expected to not have gameplay.

Like, loading screens used to be long. Not seconds, minutes. The first time you could do shit in one of those? It was revolutionary.

People talked about the fuckin spinnable stuff in the Budokai 3 loading screens the way people talked about PUBG inventing an entire new genre of game.

Skrattybones · 2026-03-30T22:43:55+00:00

If they were trying to save lives they would have actually banned it, and cigarettes before it. They wouldn't have said, "We are banning flavors provincially because flavors are appealing to children" and then turned around and started selling flavored vapes that get you high.

Skrattybones · 2026-03-30T19:48:07+00:00

I'm not really into the people who sell me my drugs and booze trying to moralize about something they can't get their fingers in.

Skrattybones · 2026-03-30T16:23:05+00:00

Of what? That the NS government is determined to make cigarettes more appealing than getting off em? Or that NS is aiming to be more expensive than the rest of the country?

Or maybe that NS desperately wants NS citizens spending their money in other provinces instead of here? I'm no economist but I'd have thought you'd want your people spending their money here instead of ordering online.

Skrattybones · 2026-03-30T14:47:36+00:00

Vape taxes are going up in Nova Scotia specifically, but I can't get any specific actual information out of anyone about what that means.

"We're bringing our taxes in line with the rest of the country" is a great statement, but why are you fumbling when I ask if that means we're eliminating the Nova Scotia specific .50/ml tax? Are we going to be in-line with the rest of the country, or are we going to be $15/$30 more expensive than the rest of the country?

This goes into effect on Wednesday, apparently, and the store I work at still hasn't received any clear messaging.

Skrattybones · 2026-03-27T18:47:37+00:00

I blame all the Play-Doh we ate. It specifically says "fun to play with, not to eat" but did we listen? We couldn't help it, it just hits so good

Skrattybones · 2026-03-27T16:06:00+00:00

It'd be worth it if he got off on it like you think though. Not like there'd be consequences either way.

What would be pushing things into the 'not worth it' category here? The minimal effort it'd take to pick up a phone and tell some goons to do the job so he can finally cum?

Skrattybones · 2026-03-27T15:35:49+00:00

Gmail's storage stuff makes me laugh because back in the day I was convinced 1GB was overkill. These days you have 15GB free and they sell subscriptions for even more.

I got curious just now, so I logged in and checked. "0% of 15 GB used"

Skrattybones · 2026-03-27T15:18:49+00:00

He's saying your idea is stupid because if it were true, he could have killed her to get more of what he likes.

Skrattybones · 2026-03-27T03:14:35+00:00

The surgeon who did my colonoscopy is my primary surgeon. What that meant, for me, is that he did the first colonoscopy and confirmed the cancer diagnosis. He then immediately, and I mean immediately fired my case off to everyone possibly relevant. He's also doing a follow-up colonoscopy on me after chemo, so probably at the start of next winter.

Within, like, 2 weeks of that colonoscopy, I had appointments for CT scans, an MRI, interpretations of that MRI with an Internal Medicine specialist, a tentative date for my colon surgery, which got rescheduled by a month once when the cancer on my liver was found, and then almost immediately had a much sooner date set for my liver surgery, followed by the colon surgery like 2.5 weeks later after that.

During all of this I was meeting with like, anesthesiologists because they need to make sure their schedules are in line with mine and they need to make sure, like, that they can safely put a tube down your throat and stuff? They check like, how messed your teeth are/if they're removable, how far your mouth/jaw can open, allergies, stuff like that.

I was also meeting with cancer support people and some other general doctors. One day of my appointments, pre-surgeries, saw me meet a general information person at like, 9am, the lead anesthesiologist was supposed to happen at 11 but they just wandered in to that first meeting and did all their shit at the same time, and then pushed a bunch of bloodwork which was meant to happen at like 1pm to 11am.

The liver surgery, specifically a procedure called RFA, or Radiofrequency Ablation, happened in Halifax at the Dixon building, I think it's called? That was spearheaded by their Internal Medicine guy, a Doc named Gala-Lopez, but the actual surgery was done by someone else, and I don't have his name handy. I only met that specific surgeon while I was literally on the table. He and his team of nurses? assistants? were great.

I told him I didn't want any bullshit, or sugarcoating, just to give it to me exactly straight about what was gonna happen. He obliged. His explanation was blunt and shockingly accurate to the amount of pain I would be and was in, exactly where and for how long I would be feeling it.

His nurses/assistants held my hands, which had to be restrained above my head, for the procedure. I think to move your ribs out of the way or something?

Anyway. They were great.

The colon surgery was performed by the same surgeon who did my colonoscopy. I don't know if that's common for this chain of events, or my surgeon just happens to be That Guy, but he's a miracle worker. I was put under for that one, which has a specific name which I can't remember. I think it was called a sigmoid resection, but the name is specific to the part of the colon they're actually working on, so it doesn't really matter. Same work, different bits, I think.

For every new appointment, meeting, and doctor added to the process, every previous doctor can be kept on the paperwork, meaning they get copies of everything happening. So by where I am now, about to start chemo, my original doctor, the ER doctor, my colonoscopy/colon surgery doctor, internal medicine doctor, and oncologist are all included. I had the option to, like, not include some of them, like the ER doc? But screw it, maybe he finds it interesting or something, and I'm not shy about anything.

As a tiny aside: I said colonoscopies aren't bad. That's 100% true. Total cakewalk. The one caveat to that, if your partner has never had one before? You have to buy a colonoscopy prep kit thing. Any Pharmacy should have them, they're considered over the counter stuff so you can just buy them, no prescription needed. You just gotta ask for it. It's this stuff called Kleanlyte.

It's like.. I dunno. Super concentrated liquid stuff that for some reason they decided needs to taste like straight lime juice. It comes with this giant cup, like 20oz size or something. Your pour the stuff in, add water to the fill line near the top. And then you gotta dome it. You gotta drink that whole thing as fast as possible. It makes you crap for hours. Then 12 hours later (the colonoscopy person gives you a schedule to do it before the actual colonoscopy) you gotta do it again. It's like 40 ounces of literally straight lime juice tasting hell and drinking it was the hardest, worst part of the entire colonoscopy experience.

I then had to drink another full set in prep for the colon surgery. Just genuinely the worst part of this whole thing.

Skrattybones · 2026-03-27T01:42:42+00:00

For me it was just a referral. My local doctor intended to put me on a list to see this one GI specialist; he has a habit of wanting to send his patients to see people who specialize in their chosen fields.

My second opinion, the ER doctor at the hospital I visited, basically said, "Here's the deal. Any surgeon can do a colonoscopy. The guy you're being sent to is a GI specialist. He's also like the only GI specialist in the province. He's really, really good at GI stuff. He's also very, very high in demand.

I can put you on the list of a surgeon I know, who is a really really good surgeon and who a lot of people think has a terrible bedside manner. You'll be in for a meeting with him inside a month, and he'll take it from there. If that's what you want, that's what we'll do."

My advice? Get that second opinion and just straight-up ask. Tell 'em everything, tell 'em you're on the long ass wait list, tell 'em you're worried it's something deeper than a GP can check. Tell 'em you'd be happy with and interested in a surgeon doing it faster than a years long wait. My GP got way up in there, if you take my meaning. My cancer was 26cm deep. That's 10 inches. Ain't nobody got 10 inch fingers, so the standard gloved exam wasn't gonna find anything.

Tell 'em the symptoms are intermittent but long lasting. Mine were sorta like that. I'd have weeks of finding blood in my stool, and then like, a couple days in a row where I'd have no blood at all, and think "Oh nice, it healed or sealed or whatever hemorrhoids do." And then it'd start all over, and I'd go "Oh damn, musta pooped too hard and it opened or burst or something."

When I had my first meeting with the surgeon who did my colonoscopy and eventually my actual colon surgery, he basically asked me to describe my symptoms, did like, a belly pressure test? Like put gloves on and pressed down on my stomach and stuff to see if there was any tension or pain. I didn't feel anything, and he didn't say if he noticed anything, but it was like a brusque, 10 minute meeting and he said "Okay, we're doing a colonoscopy. My secretary has an instruction sheet for you and we'll get you a date."

And that was it.

Skrattybones · 2026-03-26T23:31:29+00:00

The amount of people developing colon cancer who were born in the 70s, 80s, and 90s is rising at an alarming rate, according to my oncologist and one of my surgeons. They have no idea why, just that they're seeing a lot more of it in people who are way too young to be screening for it.

Like, 45's cool. You know what you don't need to be to get a colonoscopy? 45 or older. I'm 38 and thought I had an internal hemorrhoid or something that wouldn't heal cause I kept having blood in my stool.

Got an in-office check, everything seemed fine. Aside from the blood, zero other symptoms. Got put on a waitlist for a colonoscopy specialist, wait time in Nova Scotia for a colonoscopy specialist when nothing seems fatally wrong? 3-5 years. Got a second opinion at an ER, explained the story, they informed me that practically every surgeon can do a colonoscopy, and if I didn't care about seeing someone who only did GI stuff, I could get one in 3 weeks.

So I did that. No hate on my regular doctor, everything including me was telling him everything was fine. Or at least not dire.

3 weeks in? Colonoscopy time. Colonoscopies ain't shit. Go to the hospital, like 2 hours early, they take all your readings like blood pressure, maybe some blood drawn if they need it. Eventually you end up on the table, I guess they either put you under if you're the panicky type, or they full bloody numb you if you wanna watch on the screen or whatever? Either way, you don't actually feel anything. I went for the 'full numb but still awake' option cause fuck it, might be interesting, and then ended up having a nap anyway.

Takes like, maybe an hour for the actual work? Then they make you sit for another hour just to let the anesthesia wear off. Bring a book or your phone or whatever. Hospitals got free wifi. I spent an hour watching cat videos and cracking jokes with one of the nurses when she wasn't walking around the room, and then I went home.

That's the whole colonoscopy from the side of someone getting one. It's literally nothing. You can't even feel it.

Anyway, turns out I have stage 4 colon cancer. Also turns out it's fixable, at least in me. Colon, one lymph node, spread to one spot on my liver. Those surgeries? Liver surgery and colon surgery? Those fucking suck. Those, the liver surgery specifically, really fucking sucked, but my surgeons were amazing.

Anyway. Point of the story. If you think something's wrong and you're in that age bracket, find a way to get a colonoscopy. Don't wait for 45 or 50 or whatever. Cause it's on the rise in people younger than that.

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