Jackie's Fridge

I use a Kaweco Sport as my daily driver.

Bonus: Nobody ever “borrows” it at work because it confuses and terrifies them.

Treez nuts

Love it! Minimal but effective.

Can dimly remember what he looks like. Apparently he looks like someone’s creepy uncle who was always doing sleight of hand tricks to wow the little kids

This is why I joined a track-a-week music challenge this year! I’ve been dabbling for 5 years and still have no idea what I’m doing musically (no theory or anything) but I figured cranking out a finished song every week throughout 2024 would force me to get better and it’s really working!

I mean, I’m still cranking out garbage, but now it’s higher quality garbage and I can make decisions faster, let go of ideas that aren’t working without a second thought, and learn from other people taking the challenge.

As far as art goes, I’ve been drawing live caricatures for 15 years and I’m WAY better than even a few years ago. Definitely stick with it. Be too stubborn to give up. Keep doing the thing. Skill will develop the more you persevere.

Yuuuup. We had to babysit literally the Bestest Boi. Seriously the coolest and most well-behaved, well-trained, low maintenance dog who ever dogged. And I loved him. But I was SO GLAD when he went home.

I can’t do the clinginess. I’m just getting up to grab a pen, please don’t wake up, follow me across the house, and then follow me back. Don’t stare at me when I eat. What are you loudly licking over there? How come you smell, you JUST had a bath. You KNOW you’re not supposed to climb on the couch, and climbing on top of me doesn’t negate that. Why are you so clumsy?? All of it.

I would pet him and then count the seconds until I could get up and wash my hands. And this was a dog I genuinely loved and would have adopted in a heartbeat if he was a cat.

I like dogs. I am 100% not a dog person.

The Birthday Massacre are so gooood

She vaguely thinks there may be something out there but it has zero bearing on her life. I think that makes her functionally an agnostic atheist.

Another vote for the T480. I have a T480s running Mint and it’s been lovely. No driver issues and for office/light media creation/consumption it seems to work without a hitch.

A Mary Sue can fail, but those failures don’t usually have a massive impact and are easily reversed without the feeling that the MS had to struggle to earn the reversal.

The more flaws a character has, the more they have to work to balance them out. Readers are more likely on the side of a character that has to work and make sacrifices to make it through the difficulties the plot throws at them.

Random Example: Diana Rowland’s “My Life as a White Trash Zombie”. Protagonist Angel has a criminal record, drug addiction, abusive home life, and generally makes very bad decisions. Because of her life course, she has very few resources (she can’t go to the cops, nobody she knows has money or connections, etc) but she can think quickly and has a sort of desperate resourcefulness. Because everything is working against her, she has to fight for any positive forward movement, and one misstep can be a serious threat - and those happen frequently, undoing any success and forcing her to burn her resources to try a new path. IIRC in one of the books the B-story is her trying just to earn her GED as the main plot around her is utter pandemonium. Just that struggle to graduate high school is a herculean task given the deck stacked against her. Readers aren’t thinking “how will she win”, they’re thinking “well what’s going to go wrong this time?”

TL;DR: If every time your protagonist has a setback the readers shout “can’t she ever catch a break?” instead of “ah she’ll just breeze through this” you should be doing okay.

YOU WOULDN’T DOWNLOAD A MOUSE

I have random stupid hangups and for who knows why profanity is one of them. I’m fine with it. I barely notice when others use it. But I just can’t. It doesn’t sound right in my context or in my voice.

Of course I hate my own voice with a fiery passion, but that’s another hangup.

Same, but I always read it in Nandor’s voice from What We Do in the Shadows

It’s a short series (six episodes so far) but with two more in production: The Devil’s Hour.

Go in blind, don’t spoil it for yourself.

If you like a series that gives you all the clues but none of them fall together until the last episode, this one is dark, brain-bendy supernatural mystery with an excellent cast.

Yeah he tried getting into business but when that didn’t work out he started yelling at clouds.

The Former Guy. He was in Home Alone, starred in some reality show and sold steaks for a while.

Listening to other people, especially to women, is a skill. Don’t spend silent time in a conversation waiting for your chance to speak or be smart or witty, stay quiet and really process what you’re hearing. Imagine yourself in their situation. Accept that what they say is exactly how they feel.

The less time you spend talking, the more your conversational partner will tell you, and the more you will start to understand them, their lives, their goals, and their anxieties.

Knowing and understanding other peoples’ experiences will help you not only make better decisions in your own life, but understand why other people act and think the way they do. You’ll be less likely to snap-judge or make assumptions about others. And knowing more about your loved ones, co-workers, and neighbours will allow you to help them effectively if they need it.

And travel abroad as much as possible - listen to people from other countries and cultures. The human experience is wildly varied and endlessly fascinating.

It’s great being the one nobody suspects! A few people thought I might have done the baby thing but I was also “finding” babies in my work area and was decent enough faking confusion and offering up more plausible co-workers as suspects. I like your idea of getting creative with the hours sign!

I forgot - I also did a squished spider prank. I drew a “crushed” spider in a random spot on a sheet of copy paper - two sloppy body segments and broken stick legs in the general squished spider arrangement. I used just a black felt-tipped pen and even added a tiny drop of water to the body to bleed the ink and make it look juicy. Once it dried, I slipped the paper face-down in the paper feed tray (so the print would be on the spider side) under two clean sheets of paper.

When my supervisor printed a spreadsheet, there it was on page 3. Sadly, she didn’t have a huge reaction to that one, but I was still proud of myself.

You can get a bag of hundreds of tiny plastic babies on Amazon. I got a couple hundred of them and hid them everywhere in our office over the weekend when nobody was there (including in my own office).

It’s been a couple years, people are still finding them, and nobody knows where they came from. A few people blamed one of the HR ladies and a co-worker who’s addicted to buying tchotchkes on Temu. Hopefully none of my co-workers are on Lemmy, because I hope to refresh the baby population soon.

At my previous job I tied strings to a couple packages’ worth of Dove individual chocolates and hung them from the ceiling of a co-worker’s office when she was on holiday. She is short and loves chocolate, so they were tantalisingly out of reach. She liked how they looked and kept them there for a while, but eventually started pulling them down as she had chocolate cravings.

If you like twitchy reflex killers, two oldies-but-goodies from Terry Cavanaugh: Super Hexagon and VVVVVV.

Fun chiptune soundtracks, minimal graphics, and so much “I died already? Okay just ONE MORE try and then I really need to get some work done. ARGH - okay maybe ONE MORE try…” And when you finally succeed the dopamine is second to none.