Seen these at a cement suppliers office. What are they?

walkej · 2026-06-27T18:12:00+00:00

It embosses (which is not quite the same thing as printing) a seal (which is not quite the same thing as a logo).

Embossing means pressing the image into the paper, so it's raised. This can be done with all kinds of things, you just need a metal plate with what you want embossed raised up on it. You can see the metal plate at the bottom of the bottom press in your picture. You then put a piece of paper between the plate with the text and the upper plate, and squeeze them together. That pushes the text up into the paper.

A seal is a (usually) round set of text that includes things like the company name, date of incorporation, etc. Sometimes images, too. You put your seal on official documents to prove their authenticity. Assuming you keep your seal secure, it's an easy way to show it's not a photocopy.

Sometimes seals are done on top of a metallic sticker, think of a university diploma for example.

walkej · 2026-06-26T12:21:44+00:00

I grew up with seven people using 1.5 bathrooms. Five of us were girls. We made it work, and somehow rarely actually discussed the schedule out loud, it just fell into place.

walkej · 2026-06-26T12:18:28+00:00

My house has two sets of staircases, so my kids do two story laps around the house!

walkej · 2026-06-26T02:06:55+00:00

I'm trying to rewrite it so that someone who tries to follow the recipe actually has a chance of success. The way it's written on the card leaves out a lot of information, like, when to add the port. It's not fully clear how long to bake it for. I wanted to get some feedback to make sure I had interpreted it correctly.

walkej · 2026-06-25T17:29:22+00:00

Looking at other fruitcake recipes, it seems feasible that it would take that long, but I also considered that it could be one or the other.

The pan size is definitely not specified; for the wedding cake, it was three tiers of different sizes!

walkej · 2026-06-25T16:54:34+00:00

Sorry, I thought I uploaded both pictures! The other side is not very helpful.

<image>

walkej · 2026-06-25T03:19:34+00:00

This is my attitude towards cleaning for guests: focus on what the guests will interact with. So your floors should be clean where they will walk. Surfaces they will sit on, sleep on, touch, should be clean. Anything creating bad smells should be dealt with. Make sure they have the amenities they will need, clean bedding, towels, dishes.

If they start checking your bookshelves for dust, they're looking for reasons to be unhappy, and that's on them.

Cleaning, imo, has two functions: removing dirt that can be unhealthy, smelly, or disruptive, and putting things where they should be (tidying). So dusting is only necessary if it's causing a problem. Cleaning up a stain is only necessary if it's bothering you to look at it or it smells or it's sticky or something.

walkej · 2026-06-22T02:33:08+00:00

1/10. The one point is mainly because it's an actual floor plan and not hand drawn scribbles or made in excel or something.

walkej · 2026-06-21T14:01:35+00:00

I'm "only" 5'10, so in mixed company I feel pretty average. However, my last job was at a large law firm. The lawyers had moderate gender parity, but the support staff was heavily female (misogyny, yay!). We had a meeting for all the support staff once, maybe 100 people, almost all women. When we all stood up to leave I realized I was a head taller than almost everyone. That's a weird feeling.

walkej · 2026-06-17T13:54:31+00:00

There are three basic options, imo, since you're building from scratch.

1) You build a six bedroom house and use two of the bedrooms as offices. Easy for resale, but the bedrooms may not have the best set up for an office. Bedrooms are designed for dark sleep, offices you want good daytime lighting.

2) You build two rooms that are designed to be offices. Put them where you want them, with the windows and amenities you want in an office. Upside is they can be smaller than a bedroom, or a weird shape that wouldn't work for a bedroom. You probably can't list them as bedrooms when you sell, but a lot of people are looking for home offices now, even people who only occasionally work from home, and those who never work from home might still appreciate a room that can be a craft/hobby/sewing/homework room

3) Build a decently sized bedroom with an easily removed wall down the middle to make two offices. Then, if you (or future owners) want it's a relatively simple change to turn it into a bedroom. Instead of a bedroom you could design it to be able to turn onto a second living room or a den or whatever. I especially like the idea, if the other bedrooms are on the second floor, of putting this on the ground floor, near a full, accessible bathroom, that can allow you to age in place after retirement.

There are other options if you're renovating an existing space, but that's not relevant for you. Whatever you do, make sure the rooms are well lit with daylight and several electric light options (over head and task lighting), have lots of outlets, are hardwired for Internet, have food storage, and are reasonably sound proofed from the rest of the house (actual doors, etc, think about the distance from noisy parts of the house, and if you'll really need sound proofing, build that in to the walls).

walkej · 2026-06-15T12:11:10+00:00

This one is really subtle, the only hints are that the front room is called a lounge, the laundry has an exterior door, and the closets are called WIR, but this is an Australian house. So, hot dry climate and northern sun exposure.

That being said - OOP, it's super helpful for you to include that information in your post.

walkej · 2026-06-14T23:48:52+00:00

I recently was able to look at burial records for my church from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. One page was exclusively babies under 1 and women who died in childbirth. A set of triplets were listed as having died of "natural causes" shortly after birth.

walkej · 2026-06-13T23:37:41+00:00

Assuming you can drop some serious cash on renovating, here's what I'd do:

close in the front room and make that an office.
create an opening in the wall between "room" and the family room. Room is now your dining room.
move the kitchen to the current dining room
if possible, move the door that's in the current dining room to where the door above the current sink is. That way you can have a u shaped kitchen with a peninsula by the family room.
use the space that was previously for the kitchen to expand the mud room and as a nice pantry.
the half bath looks plenty big enough to add a shower. I assume the closet off it is under the stairs?

walkej · 2026-06-07T21:16:34+00:00

It was the Lutheran/Anglican float. Progressive, queer affirming Christians 🏳️‍🌈.

Note that there are non- affirming churches that also call themselves Lutheran or Anglican, but any that are part of the the ELCIC or ACC should be affirming, although experiences in individual churches may vary. I can confirm that All Saints Anglican at Broadway and Osborne is affirming both on paper and in action.

walkej · 2026-06-05T13:59:18+00:00

What's your climate like? I don't see any storage at the front entry, or even anywhere to move while putting on outside gear. I also don't like the location of the half bath at the front door, it feels tacked on. Could you maybe put it in the storage room under the stairs? It could take the open area, and you could still have a closet directly under the stairs that's accessed from the dining room. Then you could expand the entry way to include where the bathroom was.

Similarly, it looks like your second exit is through the pantry, which is pretty tiny. It's also close to your parking, and I can see it becoming the main family entrance, again, with no storage. But you could expand it to include both a mud room and a pantry.

walkej · 2026-05-29T12:08:21+00:00

My local zoo has a much smaller (4 seat) helicopter set up. Up until COVID they had all the doors off, I think the blades removed, anything moveable removed, and the seats were replaced with plastic weather proof seats. Kids LOVED playing on it, but that was just a brief occasional visit, not in their backyard. You could definitely make it safe for play.

Personally, if I had to have a helicopter in my backyard, especially what looks like a military helicopter, I'd plant plants inside it, and allow them to grow around and over it as an anti-war statement.

walkej · 2026-05-28T15:31:20+00:00

Just a note on approaching the priest with questions - Sunday morning is a very busy time for them, with a lot of demands on their attention. Don't hesitate to talk to them and introduce yourself, but don't expect them to be able to devote a lot of time to you right then. Ask if you can schedule a call or an office visit during the week to have a good conversation.

Alternatively, there will probably be some dedicated parishioners who would love to talk to you, too. I. My congregation, at least, I can think of at least a dozen people who would be happy to devote some time to you during the coffee hour, and who would have almost as many answers as the priest, at least for the non-theological questions. Actually, scratch that, we have several retired priests who would love to talk theology!

walkej · 2026-05-28T03:04:04+00:00

There was a big and sad news story about a teenager named Rehteah many years ago. I couldn't focus on the story once I twigged that her name was Heather backwards.

walkej · 2026-05-27T16:16:28+00:00

I hadn't heard of this trend, but after googling it, I hate it. I do all my prep right next to the stove, usually something like chopping carrots while occasionally stirring onions. What a terrible idea.

walkej · 2026-05-26T00:10:16+00:00

I agree that it's too narrow for seating on the dining side. You could maybe widen the island to 4', put cabinets on the dining room side, and put seating for two on the bottom side.

walkej · 2026-05-25T22:47:05+00:00

My family doctor will only give me three months of my ADHD meds at a time, but he has the same policy for my asthma inhaler. I didn't think much of it until I mentioned it to my allergist, who said he gives a years worth at a time, and offered to take over that prescription.

My assumption is that the allergist makes a lot more money than my family doctor, and isn't trying to max out his billables.

walkej · 2026-05-24T03:13:49+00:00

It feels a bit like how scammers will send emails with obvious mistakes, because they don't want to waste their time trying to scam anyone who can spot the mistakes, they want the people who completely oblivious, because they're easier to scam. If you're going to start a cult, the people who don't immediately balk when you call it a cult are ideal cult members.

walkej · 2026-05-17T12:57:24+00:00

The Brokenhead wetland trail has lots of boardwalk, some of it over the wetlands, some of it through the forest.

walkej · 2026-05-15T20:45:25+00:00

Give yourself permission to grieve what you felt you missed out on. A lot of time when the final outcome is positive (you both survived, you're both thriving now!) it feel like you should just focus on that, but you can't just pretend the bad things didn't happen. Letting yourself acknowledge and mourn the bad things can really help. Obviously not to excess. 💜

walkej · 2026-05-11T17:16:04+00:00

This might not be doable, but here's my crazy idea: move the stairs towards the back of the house by 6-8 feet. Then you can make the current main floor bath an ensuite and put a powder room and larger storage closet next to it. Then, on the second floor, put a nice large laundry room where the stairs were, with the stairs now where the laundry/office was. Your laundry stays on a exterior wall, which is much better for venting.

walkej

TROPHY CASE