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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • You’ve gotten a lot of good suggestions, and this comment might get buried but I wanted to let you know that I was there 20 years ago. The future looked bleak, I had a shitty job that was sucking my life force away… one day as I was walking into work through an alley I saw someone had left a shopping cart there. I had the thought that I could just grab that cart and keep walking… turn my back on my former life and just live my way. I passed that cart for 3 weeks… then I realized that I either need to grab the cart or find a different plan for my life. I then looked at my options, found a career path, and then started working toward that plan. It was about 3 years of very hard work, with very little social life. But I stuck with my plan, got a better job and stayed on that career path. There have been setbacks, but looking back those were just blips.






  • This sounds like me before trump, the pandemic, losing my brother, aunt and father-in-law to COVID (due to them not taking it seriously because of politics) and finally getting laid off from my job of 16 years.

    Now I eat a handful a pills every day just so I can make it through the day without losing my shit on the next person who slightly annoys me.





  • I saw a similar thread on Reddit about 12 years ago and one of the suggestions near the bottom that didn’t have any comments on it is something I’ve incorporated into my daily life and it has made a huge difference: Adjust your car mirrors so you have no blind spots.

    Most people have their side mirrors adjusted where they can see a portion of their own car in the mirror. This leaves you with large blind spots. To adjust them where you have no blind spots, sit in the driver’s seat and lean your head over to the left as far as you can (basically putting your head on the window), then adjust the driver’s side mirror to where you can just barely see your car in it. Then lean your head over to the passenger side about the same amount and adjust that mirror.

    When adjusted properly if you can see a car in your rearview mirror, you shouldn’t be able to see that car in your side mirrors, but as soon as a car is no longer visible in the rearview mirror it should be visible in one of your side mirrors. Then when it is no longer visible in your side mirror it should be in your peripheral vision.

    It takes some getting used to, but once dialed in and you’re used to it then it makes changing lanes a breeze. It also helps at night if someone behind you has bright lights because you’ll only see them in one mirror instead of all 3.



  • If you don’t want to pay for a pool then don’t move into a neighbor that has a pool. If you don’t want to have an HOA, don’t move somewhere that has one. If you don’t like how the HOA is run, volunteer to help run it.

    What you don’t do is hold up the rest of the neighborhood that actually wants to take care of things properly.

    The change to the dues required a change to the bylaws, which required 100% participation in voting, and required 60% approval. The change passed with over 85% approval. Most HOA dues in our area are $600 - $1000 per year, and many of those don’t have a pool. There are also many places around that don’t have an HOA.


  • Mostly the neighbors who don’t pay their dues or needlessly hold up needed improvements.

    Our HOA board does a great job, they are volunteers who live in the neighborhood. Our dues used to be $100 a year, plus $150 if you wanted to use the pool. Then the pool needed to be replaced (it was 45 years old) and we didn’t have the money for it, so we changed the dues to $250 and everyone gets access to the pool. That still didn’t raise enough money, so they tried to get everyone to agree to a one-time assessment of $1000 but too many people complained. So they’ve now raised the dues to $350, likely going up to $450 soon.

    The good thing about the higher dues is we will now be able to afford a lawyer to go after the 10% of the homes that aren’t paying their dues. And maybe even force the people who are hoarding cars in their yards to have to move them.