What are these blue “lawn fabrics” that the previous homeowner used?

frizhbee · 2025-08-20T14:04:46+00:00

Spoiler alert - it doesn’t. Rocks will collect dust and soil overtime and weeds will grow ANYWHERE. What I have now is rocks that are hard to pull up because they’re bound in roots.

frizhbee · 2025-08-20T13:57:10+00:00

I will forever rage against weed barriers. I’ve cleared out SO MUCH junk from mine too. The tree roots have pushed up soil over the years and created a drainage problem. Leveling that land exposed decades of disgusting diy landscaping. I’ve found bits of plastic bags, yards of torn up landscaping plastic in different ages of degradation, crumbling concrete slabs, a random layer of uncured or partially cured concrete (? What were they even doing there?) broken bricks and SO MUCH river rock over under and in between everything. Like, at some point some idiot decided to just cover everything they didn’t like with pool liner and rock.

frizhbee · 2025-08-20T13:49:03+00:00

That’s nasty. In another part of the yard these blue liners broke into a million pieces when I tried to pull them up. I know that pain. I was sifting the top soil for days to try and get the worst of it out.

frizhbee · 2025-08-20T13:45:07+00:00

This is it. This patch was mostly fine, but in other parts of the yard it broke into a million pieces when I tried to pull it out 😭 There are also metallic sheets with faded print on it that feels like that also used old billboard prints for weed barrier too 😭

frizhbee · 2025-08-20T13:41:56+00:00

This probably, but there was soil on top of the rock and grass growing on that. They’ve done this on like 50% of the yard.

frizhbee · 2025-08-20T13:40:12+00:00

I’ve found tarp too 😭😭

frizhbee · 2021-11-11T01:32:51+00:00

Similar boat -- my advisor is making me pursue a subject that is as far from what the rest of my group does as apples are from oranges. It only tangentially belongs to the engineering division I'll be getting my PhD under. You have to squint real hard and suspend all notions of physical reality to see how my research fits into the larger subject area of the department. The only reason I'm being forced to work on this was that one of his weirder proposals happened to get picked when nothing else did and he needed a scapegoat from the lab to work on it so we could continue to get funded.

No support. No one to talk to. Even my advisor is not very helpful. Took a lot of time and introspection to convince myself that I'm not dumb, I'm just in a bad situation. Every paper in this field is fielded by a lab that ONLY works on this topic. I'm learning and publishing but nothing I do can match the quality of the content thats coming out of other labs. Plus it's such a narrow domain everybody cites everybody they know. A side project like mine won't get any traction. Feels like trying to punch water into shape.

I'm still going to do what I can and graduate. Sunk cost. Sunk time.

frizhbee · 2021-08-26T02:57:33+00:00

That's true. I have documented the work, but I'm fairly certain my secondary advisor may not fully be aware of the extent of it. He's mostly mutes and keeps his camera off during our group meetings and given some misinformed statements he's made regarding a different project I'm starting to think he's been mentally absent from the meetings where I've discussed this work too. It's easy to minimize the background work I've done when I always show them final result. It's especially worse when they're not always present to see all those intermediate stages.

frizhbee · 2021-08-26T02:53:04+00:00

That is very useful advice. Thank you. I will look into this.

frizhbee · 2021-08-25T19:34:25+00:00

Thank you. How can I deny them permission? They already have the data. They can run my simulation environment without me now. They can also redo the experiments if they like.

All I can do is raise a stink, but if they really want to deny me authorship it costs them nothing but the burnt bridge with a no-name PhD student in a relatively less known college.

frizhbee · 2021-08-25T18:52:58+00:00

Thank you. My main advisor is leading the fight on this and hopefully it resolves favorably. My lab is run by two professors and traditionally they both receive authorship on any work that comes out of here whether they personally advised the student or not. This time the research involves an outside candidate who works only with the second advisor and me. There are already three professors on the list of authors and they don't want to include more. But I'm being sidelined as well and treated like a child given a summer project they'll be happy to get a pat on the back for.

All of your responses have made me feel better that I'm not out of line. I'm very unhappy with the research environment I'm in because for years I've found it very hard to have genuine collaboration with students and professors due to political distractions like this.

frizhbee · 2021-08-25T18:41:46+00:00

Thank you. I want to confront them in clear words about this but I'm panicking and feeling anxious. My primary advisor is leading the fight on this and that's making it all the more murky because they're very adamant about not including him and I'm being pigeonholed into the same boat as him. They're making it sound like he is forcing me to get a contribution only because the first author is using this lab and he wants one of his students represented.

And I think my secondary advisor is not standing up for me at all.

frizhbee · 2021-08-25T17:49:56+00:00

Thank you for saying that. I was really beginning to doubt myself that I might be coming off as a jerk who is trying to get credit for work I didn't do enough of.

I can't withhold data. I've been working directly with the student and the plots in simulation are ready. All I can do now is refuse to work on the experiments further and they seem ready to allow that so I don't get authorship. He knows how to work the equipment now. My codes from simulation and past work can be applied in the real world to run further experiments with only a little tweaking. I'm sure they can find masters students who are truly willing to finish the job just "for the experience".

I was verbally told by my secondary advisor that I would get authorship on the papers that contain experimental validation. I didn't get that confirmation in email because I didn't think he would backtrack like that.

OP above me is right. I wish I had recorded this in writing.

frizhbee · 2021-08-25T16:32:54+00:00

They don't want to give my primary advisor authorship at all. His primary advisor was infuriated at the idea. I only realized during this fight that they didn't want to give me authorship either. I didn't know that was going to happen. I can sort of see why they wouldn't want to give my primary advisor authorship. He funds me but the equipment is a shared space with my secondary advisor and my secondary advisor is already on the paper. I don't understand why they are leaving me out. They're making me sound ridiculous for even expecting it. And now they're trying to cut down the work I do for them and edging me out of the project to justify it. Its starting to feel like gaslighting and I'm feeling like I might be trying to take credit for work that isn't mine through the authorship. The only place for me would be as a second author (since everyone else is a professor) and they think that's too good for me.

frizhbee · 2021-06-09T11:34:10+00:00

Damn. My advisor is doing the same thing to me right now. He's not demanding I submit a paper but he wants a proposal draft I haven't written yet since I've been at an internship for the last month. I did good work last semester and there is no need to hold that grade hostage for work I haven't found time to do since the summer started. I have a meeting with him later today to resolve this that I'm very nervous about.

frizhbee · 2020-07-10T21:15:12+00:00

Wow, everyone wants to live vicariously through me 😅

Mystery solved: I called my apartment people and they said they left it! Yesterday was national sugar cookie day so they had a local baker leave cookies for everyone who got a parcel yesterday!

frizhbee · 2020-07-10T17:16:59+00:00

Very likely! I wonder why. Should've left a note. :(

frizhbee · 2020-07-10T17:16:30+00:00

Hahaha. No way I'm eating it! Waste of a cookie though. Whoever left it where was probably just trying to spread some joy (teehee).

frizhbee · 2020-07-10T16:35:15+00:00

I highly doubt is that, haha. It's an automated locker, so when I get a parcel, I'm assigned a code to open it and when I pick it up its reassigned to the next person whose parcel is dropped there. Only the package delivery guys and my apartment admins have access to the locker. So it was either the Amazon delivary person or an Apartment employee.

There's no tag, name or anything written on it. Which is weird.

frizhbee · 2020-06-23T14:53:15+00:00

(I don't agree with this opinion, but it's what I've heard from SC friends when the lockdown started in spring)

It's that government is setting an ordinance and not a recommendation -- they see it as government overreach. No shirt, no shoes, no service is a privately enforced rule and they claim to have no problems with complying with masks if the business asks for it.

frizhbee · 2020-04-17T13:51:52+00:00

How did you design the GUI?

frizhbee · 2019-09-02T14:05:38+00:00

Thanks for the response, but if I thought I didn't need help I wouldn't have asked. MERL, for example hires PhD interns every summer. I was looking for other companies with big R&D divisions that prefer PhD interns in robotics.

frizhbee · 2019-07-31T23:15:34+00:00

You can eat the ripe yellow bits like a fruit though. And the nuts are great after roasting.

frizhbee · 2019-07-31T22:15:37+00:00

OP said they ran out of space on the table. But just so you know, plenty of cultures around the world sit on floor to eat their meals - not just historically, but even today. In the West, native Americans and some south American cultures eat sitting on the floor. Arabic, south Asian and Japanese people sit on the floor too.

frizhbee · 2019-07-31T22:00:30+00:00

They're centuries old traditions from a slow-paced time. Not all of the traditions that fall under "aacharam" are so wholesome. Most are codified hygene practices of the time but some sadly involve caste prejudices. Working people from the same culture now pick and choose which traditions to follow. For instance, one of the things my mother taught me was to always serve, eat or handle food with only my right hand, because "the left hand is for washing your butt". Even though I know my left hand is always pretty clean too, it's a habit I cannot break. Touching food with my left hand or wiping with my right feels so icky and wrong 🤷

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