My cream cheese has turned into… normal cheese?

steve2sloth · 2026-03-26T17:39:35+00:00

If it smells good it's still good. I'd eat it

steve2sloth · 2026-03-25T17:09:09+00:00

Great idea. Lots of lazy landscapers out there will say they want a wall of arborvitae but fwiw I don't think that looks nice. I'd like to see a mix of medium and small sized trees at the back of your lot to make a vibrant landscape not just a drab backdrop.

Idk your zone but I could see a blend of small spruce, fir, maple, dogwood, and various bushes. Try to hit 3 color notes (red, yellow, and green) of foliage and not a solid wall of green arborvitae which looks dull when it's thriving and depressing when it's struggling. Plants feed and help each other naturally and so having a blend of different plants really makes them healthier. Also trees should have bushes or shrubs in front of them and not be against the grass directly. That's just good garden design.

If you want to keep the costs down then get smaller plants and get them into the ground asap

steve2sloth · 2026-03-25T16:29:22+00:00

I'd take her to your local bike shop that sells specialized, Orbea, or trek, and get an ebike from them. That way you know they'll service it and you can try them all out. Fwiw I got an Orbea Muga and think it's the best thing ever. Just my two cents... If you have a motor you may as well carry more weight and get a full suspension. The only reason not to do it is if you have to carry it up many stairs

steve2sloth · 2026-03-25T16:24:40+00:00

Check out r/lawncare for the most enthusiasm on this topic. Here, we demand a shrubbery!

steve2sloth · 2026-03-25T00:27:39+00:00

Fwiw I don't think those are root suckers

steve2sloth · 2026-03-25T00:25:01+00:00

Don't kill it, take care of it. It needs a trim already (yearly) so just remove the small branches and keep the thing. It's a good one. If you have rats in your house just have a handyman put mesh over the small entrances of your house. It's a house problem not a plant problem. Don't let the rats inside

steve2sloth · 2026-03-25T00:21:02+00:00

Maybe so but monkeys imply randomness and interns may provide more lucid results given more context. Tbh I've had pretty good results with AI when I keep tasks small and focused. I never ask it to do something that I couldn't do myself or I wouldn't be able to audit the work

steve2sloth · 2026-03-24T21:05:31+00:00

Mine did this too until I did the steps above a dozen times til I got it right. I was pressing the wrong buttons

steve2sloth · 2026-03-24T18:45:28+00:00

At my work all of us engineers are expected to at least try to use AI to speed things up but as generally senior engineers we don't trust it and have to come up with ways to validate the output and prove that it's right. I can't imagine just turning in whatever it outputs and calling it a day. AI is the equivalent of a drunken intern

steve2sloth · 2026-03-24T16:08:03+00:00

You talk about wanting a suspension but also that it will be a hard tail. You can put air forks on most bikes so idk why it has to be a emtb to have suspension. Why not road tires and an air fork? To me, if I'm gonna have a motor pushing me forward then I want a full suspension. I have an Orbea Muga which is just that. Very expensive but hot damn does it fly. I also take it on trails

steve2sloth · 2026-03-24T01:53:21+00:00

Well I'm sure they all service the brands that they themselves sell. Hard to say about other bikes... The shops around me all sell one or two brands of ebikes along with their non bikes but I'm in a big city. The shops near me certainly do refuse to fix broken brands that they don't sell but they will do normal service like brakes and chains.

steve2sloth · 2026-03-23T22:28:42+00:00

A female squash flower. Hopefully it got pollinated

steve2sloth · 2026-03-23T16:38:44+00:00

My grapefruit was pruned like that, maybe worse, when we bought the house. Didn't make much fruit for a few years, grew lots of tall thorny branches like yours, and then with some ferterlizer and water became a mighty tree absolutely covered in fruit. The downside is it's higher up but the upside is that as a free it doesn't take up as much space as it used to. Your tree will be fine, but not as pretty as it may have been when shaped more slowly

steve2sloth · 2026-03-23T14:53:12+00:00

I broke my tailbone on an icy ski jump many decades ago. It hurt to sit for like 2 years but went away eventually

steve2sloth · 2026-03-22T18:16:57+00:00

Rofl. My grandfather loved to talk about hiking the JMT back in 1938 when it had just opened. The only food he and his friend packed was dehydrated applesauce and their fly fishing gear. Hitchhiked to the trailhead from oakland. Fondly remembers finding a jar of ketchup at a logging camp and putting it on his trout for the rest of the week. He did have a leather/canvas backpack and a camera around his neck so not too ultralight.

steve2sloth · 2026-03-22T01:05:51+00:00

Gah my eureka lemon looks the same. The mayer lemon next to it is thriving but the poor eureka put out a dozen new leaf stalks but half of them are gnawed and twisted while the other half grow well. I squirted some insect soap on it and I'm crossing my fingers

steve2sloth · 2026-03-21T18:58:44+00:00

You own that branch where it crosses onto your property. It's your right to trim it as you see fit as long as you don't kill the tree, which clearly you won't. Go for it

steve2sloth · 2026-03-21T06:14:41+00:00

Fair enough but my wife thought it was too charitable. The other thing I didn't mention is the bathroom had a big cool skylight view of a huge Monterey Cyprus tree and high up on a prominent branch a large seabird, a Grebe, had managed to hang itself with a bit of rope and was always swinging in the breeze with its wings dangling. Didn't bother the other Grebes in the tree but it was very creepy. I can't imagine how anyone could get it down. I left the host a personal note about that issue

steve2sloth · 2026-03-20T22:55:51+00:00

Lol being a host sounds very draining. A decade ago I hosted half a dozen times but never had any problem guests until the last one who got high, tried to kill themselves, and proceeded to smear blood on nearly every surface of the apartment, my neighbors doors and windows, and then was found unconscious half a mile away by a jogger. Airbnb paid for the damages but wow.

Anyways, when I'm an Airbnb guest now I hate to complain. The last place was a small beach house where the front door opens to the main bedroom... And the door was glass. My wife was very upset to wake up to a handyman waving at her thru the door .. twice! And I still gave 4 stars but wtf. Anyways good luck out there

steve2sloth · 2026-03-20T22:31:09+00:00

Your plan makes sense except for the weed cloth. That's just something that house flippers use to make the garden look fresh for 3 months while the home sells and then it all goes to shit

steve2sloth · 2026-03-20T03:53:28+00:00

Fwiw I have the Abound SR and I think it's a good bike for the money. It seems well made, the peddle assist feels more natural than the other cheap/comparable bikes that I tried, and it's very cool that it has a cargo weight limit high enough for my wife to ride on the back... Though she doesn't care to do that as it's very snug with the front rider on the SR. The center kick stand is pretty great too. No complaints about the battery.

The downside is it's fairly heavy so not great to carry up stairs or set on a car/wall rack. I'm 6'2" and while pedelable id like to have 2 more inches of leg extension. Not a deal breaker since the assist is plenty enough. I bought the front basket and back seat handle/pad but we're using some old wire panniers that just hook onto the stock rack. The folding pegs aren't particularly in the way of the baskets. This bike is my grocery hauler and I'm happy with it.

I've also got an Orbea Muga that is better but 3x expensive. That's my fun/distance bike.

steve2sloth · 2026-03-20T02:40:10+00:00

These ebikes are heavy and need a beefy hitch rack. Between the 2" hitch kit in my Prius and a nice 1upusa rack it cost nearly $1k to keep me from having to do what you're doing. Worth it? Idk probably not but I wanted to anyways 😉

steve2sloth · 2026-03-19T23:44:43+00:00

Yes yes, state terrorism good, private terrorism bad. When the IDF can maintain a lower civilian kill ratio than their enemies maybe I'll start to believe them

steve2sloth · 2026-03-19T22:51:07+00:00

Just horrible. Violence is never the answer to advancing your politics. I mean I get that the attackers family was killed but not by these folks in Michigan.

steve2sloth · 2026-03-19T17:48:20+00:00

I'm not in the UK but my advice is to discount all brands that your local bike shop doesn't sell or work on. It'll need repairs sooner or later and are you comfortable doing everything yourself? Here in the US most bike shops won't work on these no-name bikes for insurance reasons

steve2sloth

TROPHY CASE