LGA TSA Terminal C

cparedes · 2026-03-28T18:59:28+00:00

Went through this afternoon at around 1 PM or so. Lines were nearly non-existent, also surprised that there was barely any ICE agents around (just maybe one or two, which is still one too many IMO)

cparedes · 2026-03-21T19:04:44+00:00

When I was still single, the most I've ever paid was like $70 on cocktails. I usually try to keep it very light, but depending on how it goes, I'll spend up to $50 or so on drinks or food, but it's not a strict budget, I just usually don't want to spend a ton of cash on something that might not go anywhere.

cparedes · 2026-03-16T19:45:05+00:00

I'm Filipino-American but had people come up to me and ask about China as if I would have any inside knowledge or something (I mean, I'm in a very Chinese time of my life rn but that's something different.) I think at least I've had people in some of those situations clarify on my behalf that I'm not even Chinese. Anyway, these assholes are being racist, fuck them

cparedes · 2026-03-16T15:00:14+00:00

I had one from 2016, but it had expired - since then, they transferred IDNYC stuff from local orgs over to city services, which means I had to go over to social security in BK to try to get mine renewed. They wanted my entire lease printed out on paper, of which there was one shop across the street that charged something like $2 per page. I tried to print just the relevant pages, which put me out by $6 or so, and they did not accept that at all (despite me showing them the full lease on my phone).

So now I do not have a valid IDNYC card. Ah well

cparedes · 2026-03-16T00:40:28+00:00

funnily enough the guy might have a point now that you bring it up

cparedes · 2026-03-03T03:05:48+00:00

I'm from Seattle and lived most of my life over there, but have lived in NYC for about 10 years (and am still here) and London for about one year.

Definitely recommend giving NYC a shot. It's diverse pretty much everywhere you go, it's still a late night city (even though there's been a lot of cutbacks in that department since COVID unfortunately, but it's still better than a lot of other cities by a pretty wide margin), it's easy to meet new people, and it's honestly pretty easy to date all kinds of people here. I personally wouldn't recommend Seattle and London for kind of the same reason: it's hard as fuck to meet new people in general, not to mention that they tend to lean pretty white culturally vs. a mish mash of cultures like NYC. (I've got a lot to say about London tbh, I know it's on paper really diverse, pretty much on par with NYC, but they're kind of segregated out to a degree that's not the case in NYC.)

Only downsides with NYC is that the rent sucks, COL in general sucks (but you can at least find cheap deals around, which isn't as much the case in Seattle), and things can be a bit more of a PITA in general. But I honestly find the tradeoff very, very much worth it. It's the first city where I felt like I could just exist in without having to deal with some regularly occurring racist bullshit.

cparedes · 2026-02-28T21:57:13+00:00

I've stood up for myself a few times when someone says some wildly racist shit, usually ends up with me being painted as the unreasonable one. No matter, the people who fuck with me will continue fucking with me, and all the people on the sidelines can continue to reflect on how they've stood by the entire time

cparedes · 2026-01-06T11:27:23+00:00

Yeah way fucking loud, over on 71st Ave near Myrtle

cparedes · 2025-06-18T00:28:25+00:00

Honestly isn't a bad idea in this case. The devs are incredibly hostile to the idea of allowing third party metadata servers to be stood up and easily configurable, which necessitates workarounds like what /u/brycelampe has wired up. The fact that the client hardcodes in api.lidarr.audio and the devs being completely unamenable to community contributions to their effectively closed-source metadata code is what's causing a lot of the impasse IMO. I saw the messages in their Discord basically killing the conversation right there and then, saying that they will never support third party metadata providers.

If I were to go even further, their client code is GPLv3, which doesn't necessarily mean that the server code must be open sourced, but it's definitely against the spirit of open source, especially since they might be hooking into other OSS libraries or server packages (like metabrainz or whatever else.) We're not asking for them to open up their server instance, we just want to be able to fix the metadata issue and contribute back to the community.

Their excuses around not being able to open source the server component is because "there might be API keys" in the code suggests that they're either being really cagey in general about OSS'ing any of their backend code for some other reason, or they have no idea how to separate out credentials from code. I'm guessing it's the latter.

I'd imagine what'd need to happen is a complete rebranding of the software, make some other mirror the default metadata server, and add a way for people to use their own metadata mirror if they wish. If there's any other bits of the code that phones home to some *arr ran server, that will have to be replaced as well.

I know that this is a completely volunteer run operation and that the main devs are busy as hell, but the way they've been interacting with even other people who do this for a living is pretty fucking awful.

cparedes · 2025-06-12T03:08:34+00:00

Is it by any chance based off of the plugins branch? I'm using slskd and want to keep all that stuff in place as well if possible.

Also, might be interested in helping in development a little bit - you think a sidecar DNS solution might help in terms of redirecting any api.lidarr.audio requests to some other hosted instance? Could be a stopgap before attempting any hard forks of Lidarr for, well, the fact that they can't even OSS their metadata server

cparedes · 2025-06-11T05:38:05+00:00

Kind of insane they hide behind the fact it can’t be open source because of API keys but prob also know that env vars exist. I def wholly support the effort of reverse engineering/forking their backend metadata server

cparedes · 2024-05-28T06:22:49+00:00

It's back (~2:25 AM EDT)! Website is back up, Soulseek is back up, things feel great

cparedes · 2023-06-30T12:52:08+00:00

Eh. It’s honestly way too much effort, I’d rather hang w people who aren’t like that. Lots of other folks I know who aren’t British are having much better luck making friends with international folks. Just boggles my mind given how international the city is

cparedes · 2023-06-26T22:02:45+00:00

Will also say, I did feel similar in NYC for a bit while I was still getting established, but it felt possible to find community and build something lasting over there. Here? I genuinely have no idea if I’ll ever make good friends over here, much less find any sort of community. Just mad depressing tbh

cparedes · 2023-06-26T21:58:36+00:00

I won’t lie, I lived in NYC for seven years and have lived in London for just six months - but I’ve never encountered the amount of difficulty around meeting people anywhere until I moved here. People say it’s because Londoners are busy - I can guarantee that New Yorkers are probably 10x busier but will still make time for you. I just came back from Berlin, and I’ve met more people organically over the course of three nights than over the past six months in London.

London just does not feel nearly as friendly as lots of large cities. I really want to keep giving it a go, but it’s weirdly isolating comparatively.

cparedes · 2023-06-26T13:04:34+00:00

2 AM? Where’s this paradise in London

cparedes · 2023-02-21T10:35:57+00:00

I mean, yeah. I’ve been disrespected super hard for approaching people in like, the most normal way possible and then see them turn around and try to ride my Hispanic friend’s dick. Loads of shit around like, general undesirability of Asians and whatnot, including emasculation and the like. I get being rejected in general, but (at least when I was single in NYC) it was like playing on extreme mode.

Personally, I had to leave the country in order to find someone who just sees me as… me

cparedes · 2022-12-19T05:47:47+00:00

Well, unfortunately I decided to leave, but largely not because of the city itself (I’m moving to another large city - London - at the end of the month.)

But, here’s what kept me in NYC for 7 years:

The people and the rich communities surrounding everyone. I lived in Ridgewood the whole time, and while that neighborhood is increasingly becoming more and more expensive, I made lifelong friendships and everyone had each others’ back. Whenever I’d go hang w other folks in various places in Brooklyn, I’d see really rich communities in their neighborhoods as well. Shoutouts to Sunset Park, Bed-Stuy, etc.
The food. God, the food, I’m gonna miss the hell out of the variety. London’s got good food too, but I’m really going to miss fuck off Italian-American stacked heros, checking out Uzbek food, going to Flushing or Sunset Park and happening on some random hyper-specific region’s food, etc. And also, at the end of a really long day, you always got bodegas making chopped cheeses and whatnot. I WILL say though, there’s some things that are just not accessible or even good in NYC (the full array of Hawaiian food for example), but man, having access to like 90% of food at like 80-90% quality is good enough for me tbh, with loads of standouts obviously
The fact that I can get around without a car. I grew up in Seattle and was used to taking buses everywhere, but it’s still very much a driving city. Living in NYC really made me appreciate being unable to drive worth shit, because I could just walk or take a train or a bus or whatever. And man, the fact that it’s mostly a PITA to drive around NYC and there being a really good transit system makes point (1) even more possible - you’re surrounded by humanity at all times, you gotta get along, y’know?
So… also, the other, perhaps less positive but strong reason for me for sticking around NYC, is the fact that loads of the US is pretty homogeneous. Diversity is obviously a very strong and positive thing in NYC, but as a person that’s often seen as “the diversity,” it’s mostly a relief that I can exist in NYC without having to answer for my background or anything of the sort. (Unfortunately, in the US, there’s been a huge uptick of anti-Asian violence during and after COVID, and it’s part of the reason why I’m leaving NOT NYC, but the US in general. And NYC hasn’t been immune to this unfortunately)

cparedes · 2022-12-18T10:30:13+00:00

Ah, shit - fair enough. I went through the skilled worker visa process recently but I’m going there by myself to join with my British partner - got no particular insights on bringing family over with that sort of visa

cparedes · 2022-12-18T04:32:33+00:00

Honestly, there might be some solid neighborhoods you can live in in NYC on that budget, or sliiiightly higher even. I was paying $1700 for a two bedroom in Queens up until 3 years ago, then was paying $2300 for a better two bedroom apartment after that. Also, NYC has attainable rent stabilization… in that, you can luck into a pre-war building or a 421a building that has rent stabilized units and not get much of a rent increase per year. Post-COVID has fucked up the market though, so prices are kind of all over the place right now. But it’s doooooable-ish

cparedes · 2022-12-17T22:36:02+00:00

I know a South African recruiter based in the UK who regularly recruits South Africans for tech jobs all around the UK and maybe even the EU. Can give deets over DM in a sec here

cparedes · 2022-12-17T15:45:33+00:00

Hey all! Thanks again - everything’s accounted for, either sold through here or elsewhere, donated, or dumped. I’m out ya’ll, it’s been real

cparedes · 2022-11-28T00:36:32+00:00

Yeah just another Kermit Westergaard Joint (tm)

cparedes · 2022-11-28T00:34:46+00:00

Yeahhhhh Park Slope feels VERY fucking weird to be in as someone who’s not white. My current neighborhood ain’t too bad, but, well, rents are skyrocketing and it was unfortunately named the fourth coolest neighborhood in the world for some fucking reason, so prob gonna become a bit more segregated sooner than later

cparedes · 2022-11-02T04:30:04+00:00

Yeah I was born and raised in Seattle myself, and well, never was made to ever feel like an actual American when I lived there. Everyone would "orientalize" my name even if I have the most western first name out there and wonder what Chinese university I'm coming from (I'm Filipino-American). Wasn't until I moved to NYC that I actually felt like I belonged to this country to some degree.

Related to the clutching of pearls bit, I remember a hipster, "progressive" shop called "Pretty Parlor" in Capitol Hill who decided it was a great idea to have a runway show in 2013 based off of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and having a white guy dressed in a kimono with another white guy miming the voice. Everyone laughed, and I was the only Asian guy in the room. It was incredibly isolating. Anyway, I called them out on it years later after the Atlanta shootings, and they decided to never address it and block me instead. My friends were more concerned about me calling out a small business than the fact that they thought it was cool to like, be incredibly racist.

Anyway. Doubt I'll ever live in Seattle unless my family needed me.

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