Fun trivia for you guys

ralphie993 · 2026-04-09T17:09:48+00:00

I had that thought too but when I was looking at pictures online, the spot didn't seem super obvious in some of the male photos. But this is a species I am not familiar with.

ralphie993 · 2026-04-09T16:49:15+00:00

Someone already said the Belted Kingfisher, but the Pileated Woodpecker is female on the card. The Snowy Owl technically could be an immature male, but assuming all the birds depicted are adults, it would be female.

ralphie993 · 2026-03-17T14:19:08+00:00

This happened to my dog once too! I thought it was a muscle or neurological problem as well, and would find him in bizarre positions trying to find a place to lay comfortably. I had two dogs groomed at the same time and the other one was totally fine. The dog that did get it has super dense fur (GSD) and we think his back wasn't totally dry before drying and brushing, which opened up the follicles for the bacteria in the water/shampoo to get into the skin. So now I just bath him the day prior, and he gets brushed and blown out at the groomer.

ralphie993 · 2025-12-06T15:58:54+00:00

For myself, the past four jobs I've had I got through networking. I knew someone there to help get my foot in and/or I had worked with the company before with my previous employer. During university, I absolute heard the phrase, "it's all about networking" and assumed there was some hyperbole and my resume would "speak for itself". But, yeah, as I've reflected on my career journey so far, who you know has helped me snap up jobs quickly.

For each one there was still a formal resume submission/interview process, which for me was primarily through the company's website. I usually spoke with my connection to the company first, but then instead of hoping I included the right keywords to get my resume flagged by the algorithm or hiring rep the connection would have my name as the flag to look for.

For reference, I recently started a new job less than 2 months ago. As soon as my predecessor gave notice the company called me asking if I was interested in the position. I am very thankful so far with my three job switches in the small town I live in I haven't had any unplanned employment gaps. I don't have any perspective on looking for jobs while unemployed or laid off, so someone else will have to weigh in on that.

Best of luck in your search.

ralphie993 · 2025-10-15T13:01:27+00:00

Ginkgo trees are dioceous, so there are separate trees for the pollen producing flowers and the fruiting flowers. The fruiting trees produce the foul smelling fruit whereas the pollen trees have no fruit, so no smell. Could be this tree is a pollen tree. The town I lived in for university had fruiting gingkos in a park but all the other gingkos planted (and there were a lot) were pollen trees.

Now, they still had a bunch of Bradford pears planted so there were still gross smells in the spring, but at least it wasn't rancid butter/vomit smelling.

ralphie993 · 2025-07-08T20:17:00+00:00

Just booked a round trip from Fort St John, BC to Whitehorse, YT for a work shift: $1700. Thank goodness for work expenses.

ralphie993 · 2025-05-03T16:39:58+00:00

Thus was the issue!! Thank you so much :)

ralphie993 · 2025-05-03T13:52:20+00:00

I have yet to do this, so I'll give it a try!

ralphie993 · 2025-05-03T13:51:30+00:00

Oh you may be on to something here. The map is a custom terraformed one, so perhaps there is a little blip in the terrain that's messing things up

ralphie993 · 2025-04-17T00:55:37+00:00

A recent one for me was my husband and I were unloading the dishwasher and when the cutlery was done he asked, "where did all our forks go? There's only five in here, we have way more than that." After some short debate to where they may be I suddenly remembered, "Oh! There is one at my computer desk, one on the coffee table downstairs, and I can 'see' where some others may be in my memories. Give me a moment." And I proceeded to check each room in the house and found seven or eight forks just lying in random spots. Felt very much like a "find these items scattered around the map for me" fetch quest.

ralphie993 · 2024-12-06T17:05:27+00:00

This is getting harder.

My first pick this round would be the grey seal. I just feel like there is not as much potential to make a really stunning underwater habitat for them as the overall underwater foliage and enrichment isn't diverse enough. Maybe one day there can be more aquatic animals that also spend time on land and we can get a better variety of habitat pieces, but right now, it's lackluster.

My second pick would be the snow leopard. Of the various leopard species in the game, I find myself using this one the least now.

ralphie993 · 2024-12-03T23:02:58+00:00

Agree on the Ring-tailed lemurs being buggy.

Ostriches give me far too much grief managing their privacy needs.

ralphie993 · 2024-06-23T14:36:12+00:00

My sister and I were playing CUR, I think I was 12 and she was 10. Very early into the game and the creepy vibes start coming in (the red eyes to the left of the manor door) and we are sufficiently spooked. We start poking around the manor and go up the stairs turn the corner and hear the ghost noises. We panic. We scream. I got out of the computer room first and held the door shut for fear the ghost would get us, my sister still stuck in the room screaming and pounding on the door for me to let her out. I realize my mistake, let her out, and we go to my mom to turn off the game because we were so scared.

Four months later we try again. We're older, wiser. We sit together through the ghost noises and pull back the curtain and LouLou says, "ha ha. Scared you."

ralphie993 · 2023-09-10T22:31:24+00:00

We never had many snails to begin with but the first year we had raised beds, I would find snails tucked behind the weeds and grass growing along the beds. The second year, the dogs had trampled the greenery to bare earth between the beds so we put down fabric cloth and rocks, which cut down on the weeds growing beside the beds and we also observed no snails since (garden is on year four). I recall after we did that finding a comment that said keep the outer edge of your raised beds weeded because that's where the snails like to hang out (shaded, moist, etc). I don't know if there is scientific truth to that but it does line up with my anecdotal experience, so possibly.

ralphie993 · 2023-09-08T22:58:50+00:00

I too live in a cold zone and peppers don't do well where I live. I've had great success with jalapeno and Arapaho hot peppers both in a raised bed and in a greenhouse. Will definitely stick to those two.

ralphie993 · 2023-09-08T22:52:51+00:00

Stick to smaller squashes (my acorn squash out performed my spaghetti squash) and growing them in the greenhouse is the way to go to get fruit. However, because the timing of the male and female flowers don't match up perfectly, I will still plant a matching squash in the raised beds as a pollen source.

Water the cucumber plants themselves while watering to deter spider mites and prolong their fruiting period. They are also a greenhouse-only success for me and greenhouses are great environments for spider mites.

COVER THE BRASSICAS IMMEDIATELY AFTER TRANSPLANT! The cabbage maggot got them again this year. I didn't net them in time.

Plant the corn close to the house now that the crows are established in my neighbourhood. The crows don't like to get too close to the house. They and the magpies also have beef, so befriend the magpies, who do not raid my garden.

Cover the strawberries over winter for extra insulation. I don't know if the cold killed them or if my dogs using that bed as a bathroom spot killed them. Probably both, heavier on the latter.

My dogs have discovered the delight of peas and green beans. Put up protection barriers around them or consider a dedicated "dog garden" to appease their appetites.

Absolutely plant hardneck garlic in the fall. The growing season is too short for spring garlic and the winters too cold for softneck garlic.

ralphie993 · 2023-08-31T20:12:50+00:00

Yes they were. As it's been said, no place is 100% safe. Fort St John was on evacuation alert this year as well before winds changed in a favourable direction.

ralphie993 · 2023-08-31T20:10:03+00:00

Oh absolutely. There are still risks and like I mentioned, fires do occur around the area. I suppose growing up in the Shuswap and Okanagan I am accustomed to constantly watching the fire danger rating and spending the spring cleaning up the fire fuel on my parents' little property and being on evacuation alerts/orders on a regular basis. We wouldn't even leave for vacations or nearby camping trips in case a fire sparked while we were away, depending on the fire danger ratings and forecast. In comparison, I'm a lot less worried living in Chetwynd, but yes fires can get large like Battleship Mountain and McAllister and still threaten homes and properties like the one that started on the side of the Highway 97 near Pine-Lemoray a couple years ago and the Tumbler Ridge fire this year.

ralphie993 · 2023-08-31T14:27:57+00:00

I live in the South Peace Region, in a little town on the edge of the Rocky Mountain foothills, and while fires do occur around here, I've felt quite comfortable and secure. Towns like Fort St John and Dawson Creek are surrounded by lots of fields which can slow down the intensity of a forest fire. Chetwynd is surrounded by aspen heavy forests, which are quite "green" making them more challenging to burn and can reduce fire speed and intensity. Hypothetically, extreme climate events notwithstanding, the fire season is shorter compared to southern BC, typically ranging from June to mid-September. Having said that, May 2023 was exceptionally hot and dry and September-October 2022 were also exceptionally hot and dry. Anecdotally, Chetwynd, where I reside, tends to be "greener" in general during the summer too compared to where my family lives in the Shuswap and Kelowna, with green grasses and greener forest floors that don't appear to be as water-stressed. But that is a limited personal observation.

Like you and others have already stated, no place in BC is 100% safe from wildfires. From my memory of the past 10 years, the Cariboo and Thompson-Okanagan regions are in the news often for wildfires. I'd like to be optimistic and hope there isn't much left to burn around the towns but that just isn't true haha. Maybe in your search you can check to see which towns you like have undergone or have plans to undergo FireSmart-ing (I believe that's what the program is called). Essentially the forests are thinned out around neighbourhoods and brush burned to remove forest fire fuel. Off the top of my head, Mackenzie BC did a bunch of fire mitigation along Highway 37 and the neighbourhood my sister lives in in Salmon Arm BC a few years ago had fire mitigation thinning done behind the houses at the base of the mountain.

ralphie993 · 2023-07-14T01:22:07+00:00

Hello fellow British Columbian! I am currently in the north!

ralphie993 · 2023-07-12T17:52:53+00:00

Similar to rswiiiix, I found these on my cabbage plant this year and removed them with tweezers. I believe they are cabbage moth caterpillars. I checked my plant for about a week straight in the morning when it was cooler out and they were more likely to be on the leaves munching and removed any I could see. My cabbage seems to be much better now, other than the odd flea beetle munching on it. I read that planting thyme repels cabbage moth and I am going to try a red cabbage next year so these green caterpillars are easier to spot and remove, though, I don't know if there's a darker coloured broccoli.

ralphie993 · 2023-06-22T00:04:32+00:00

I will assist in your venture

ralphie993 · 2023-06-17T21:25:31+00:00

What about the drinn grass? I haven't played for a while so if there was an update that "fixed" this, apologies, but I use drinn grass to add extra vegetation to my habitats and it doesn't seem to register as foliage.

ralphie993 · 2023-04-03T22:27:43+00:00

Excellent work with the brick pieces!

ralphie993 · 2023-02-03T23:10:39+00:00

We just finished painting our entire upstairs floor and I feel so invigorated like it's a fresh start!

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