Maria WAAAH

That is so much bullshit and I am sorry. I have also had my full of just absolute garbage. Sometimes because I didn’t have the means for something better. Sometimes because a high quality item doesn’t exist. (Because why sell quality when you can sell cheap and make them rebuy?) But all around… Bullshit.

Brand new chairs that are cheap are almost always garbage. Are you able to source something second hand, like from Facebook Marketplace or estate sales? In the US, there are places that sell used desk chairs from offices, as well as government surplus (hit or miss whether you can get just ONE chair, but I’ve known a few people that have gotten small amounts of furniture from surplus). Is there a Canadian equivalent? Auctions are another good place too.

I hope you will be able to get something that works for you soon.

Feelin like a freak on a leash…

I find it’s difficult to be around people I treat like shit, too.

You will probably overbuy baby stuff. Just make sure you can return it or pass it on.

You will probably need something you don’t have for the baby. Yes, babies have the same base needs, but individual babies may have different needs. For instance, they may not tolerate the bibs you have for them. You didn’t mess up if you missed something, that’s just life.

Get ready to do lots of laundry. Babies produce so, so much laundry. Spitting up on things. Blowout diapers. Other mystery substances. Get all of your fussy, non machine washable clothes and set them aside for a few months.

Make sure you can feed yourselves with little friction for the first few months. Your exhausted, sleep deprived self will thank you. Freeze some meals. Make meal plans ahead of time. Convenience food.

If you are having a biological child, and you are not the carrying parent, this next part is important. Have you ever had surgery, especially major surgery? Remember how much rest and sleep you needed to recover? Giving birth is pretty much exactly like that. (Yes, both C-section and vaginal birth.) But, after the procedure, you don’t get to sleep or rest. You have a small creature that depends on you for ALL of its needs, and it will communicate in such a way that it may not be apparent what the problem is. Breastfeeding too? Then you must either feed the child yourself or pump ahead of time so someone else can. There may be a 10 pound weight limit on how much you can carry. Guess what weighs about 10 pounds and keeps getting bigger? And did you know if you carry it with its car seat, it likely weighs MORE than 10 pounds?

If you’re not the carrying parent, make sure they can rest as much as you possibly can make it. Recruit help from trusted friends and family. It could even be for the dishes, laundry, cleaning, or cooking. It doesn’t even have to be baby care if they aren’t comfortable with babies but still want help.

If you are, don’t be afraid to assert yourself with your partner if they are slacking with the division of labor.

I always endeavor to get things that have multiple uses. At first, I pooh-poohed (heh) the idea of a diaper genie. A regular trash can should be sufficient, right?

No. If you’re doing disposable diapers, get the diaper genie.

Easy mistake. This is a reign deer. You can tell because of the rein of terror.

B-but Metallica fans bad!

Until a traumatic injury. Then that fucker, along with angry soft tissues, will remind you how much you really don’t have control.

Yep. For instance, making a vegan version of a non vegan food can turn out disappointing. But a food that is just vegan to start with? Delicious.

I was told about a bug in a specific tool. It was being used in production. Apparently we’ve gotten a lot of complaints about it over the years, and they would complain if the site was actively used it always failed.

I couldn’t find it in the development branch in source control.

I asked if this tool was purchased from a third party. My boss, who was not a developer, said no. And he was very sure of that. But he didn’t know where the code was.

I was the developer with the most seniority, and I was there for less than a year at this point.

I looked again. I finally found it… In an unapproved pull request from a few years prior.

The meat of this tool basically took information to make an order and create an order in the system.

Any time we needed to insert a record, it would find the highest Id in the table, increment 1, and insert the new record, id and all. It did this for every entity that needed to be inserted. Address, customer… Everything.

Worse, very little validation was done. Want to order something but it’s out of stock? No problem, this tool just pushed it right through.

Want to ship something using a shipping method that doesn’t exist? You got it.

Want to ship something to an address that doesn’t exist? Sounds like the warehouse’s problem.

Knowing about the level of knowledge here, you know that there were no transactions. All sorts of unused records were left in the database when there was an error. The users would get a generic error and try again several times, too.

The worst part was, we have an already existing function that would take order information and try to make an order. And it would give you actionable errors!

We’re cooked

I’m so hungry, I could eat a whole octorock.

Love my Costco membership. Family of three. Get a few seasonal items, allergy meds, soap, trash bags, toilet paper, laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent…

For food, I really do like to buy ingredients here, too. I will buy the big thing of ground beef and meal prep and freeze. I’ll get the bell peppers and cut and freeze them. I used to do the onions when they had huge 10 pound bags. I also get my chicken, butter, and certain cheeses. I like to get shelf stable condiments here, since they aren’t in the huge tubs. I used to get canned goods here, but nowadays I pretty much just stick to the chicken.

For food that is ready to eat, I like to get them as occasional treats. My local store has a two pack of quiche that is so good. I used to get their lasagna, but those were so thin that it doesn’t feed all three of us.

Kirkland Signature brand stuff is almost always amazing. They have a really good return policy that I have only used twice. Once was for a jar of olives none of us liked. The other was for a container of Kirkland Signature laundry soap. There was no way to smell it before I bought it, and omg it smelled SO BAD.

I like it for the gas, but I work remote so this isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be.

If you’re the type of person that would be tempted by the delicious treats at Costco and would eat all the savings, pass. But otherwise, I would consider.

Unless the school that has the software dev program forces all their teachers to use this stuff…

Mike Tyson visits Pennsylvania.

I had mine in my early 20s. Sucked. Laying the groundwork for my own stability was a lot harder than it should have been, but I got it done anyway with a combination of a mountain of determination, an incredible amount of work, natural talent and smarts, and so much luck.

But the child will be an adult by the time I am 40, so I got that going for me.

It’s based on the snack, Chex Mix. Chex Mix is made of pieces with several different consistencies, like salty Chex, mini pretzels, mini breadsticks (small oblong cracker things), and rye chips (the round things).

The rye chip part of Chex Mix is really popular.

Yeah, fuck you, Olympics.

Slopmaxxing