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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • My only complaint about my immersion blender is that the part at the bottom is 100% metal, which sounds good, but it makes me paranoid to use it in my enameled pots for fear of scratching up the enamel. I wish I had one with nylon or silicone overmolding.

    In terms of really simple “gadgets”, my favorites are wooden spoons that are flattened and almost sharpened like a chisel. They are great for scraping the bottom of pots/pans to get up fond.

    In terms of more complicated stuff, I really like my Anova oven. It’s basically an overbuilt convection toaster oven that has a thermometer for wet-bulb temperature and a water tank to create steam. You can control temperature to the degree, and humidity in 10% increments. It also has a built-in probe thermometer. What this basically means is that you can set the oven to a strict temperature to hold with steam and convection, and you can cook a roast to an exact temperature for an exact amount of time (which they call sous vide, even though there’s no vacuum sealing involved). You can then set it to automatically ramp to a high temperature for browning.

    It’s really nice for baking bread.

    They made a new version at double the price with even more advanced features, but they’ve given it the nebulous “AI” treatment, so it might be enshittified.


  • Until you do like step one of taking an appliance apart, and realize that the real manual is marked “for technician use only”, and it’s hidden inside of the appliance.

    My washer and dryer both have good manuals complete with circuit diagrams under the top once i take a few screws out. My chest freezer has one taped up under the hatch where the compresser sits. My refrigerator has one hidden in the door hinge.





  • Honesty is usually the right move for most interviews. People usually try to put their best foot forward, which is good, but it can end up coming across as inauthentic.

    If, for example, you are a fresh graduate, and you get an interview, they expect you to be inexperienced. If you claim to know how to use every program and do every technical process, they will know you are bluffing. It’s much better to say “I’ve taken a bunch of classes on X programming language, so I know it pretty well, but ive done some tutorials and little projects with Y and Z, and I’m eager to learn more” or “I’ve done some labs where we used A and B machines, but I had a summer internship where 90% of my days were spent working with C”.

    Also, questions like “why do you want to work here?” can be answered with “my significant other got a job in this town, so now I need to as well” (obviously not in those exact words). To you, it might seem like you aren’t acting “excited” by the company enough, but the people interviewing you likely aren’t drinkers of corporate kool-aid any more than you are, so they will appreciate the honesty. Also, the fact that you have a reason to move to that town shows that you are likely to be willing to work there for the long haul.

    Tl;dr, don’t pretend to be a unicorn cause you probably aren’t, and people don’t expect you to be. Just make sure you show that you are serious about wanting the job.


  • Yeah, this is super important. I’ve interviewed someone before who was actually pretty well qualified, but through interviewing him, it was clear that he was actually just shopping for an offer to use as leverage against his current employer, and he had no intention of working with us.

    For example, if a job would involve relocating across country, you’d better be asking questions about the area, or if you are already familiar with the area, make that obvious. At the very least, ask questions about what a normal day is like, and stuff like that.

    I think I made the mistake as a fresh grad of not asking some of those questions because I was desperate for a job, and I didn’t want to appear “picky”, but I’m sure I just gave the impression that I wasn’t serious about it. From their perspective, they probably thought “this kid doesn’t want to move across the country, they are just trying to get experience interviewing”.


  • I tend to disagree with people on the “numbers game” thing. The barriers to submitting a million resumes to a million jobs have never been lower, so people in charge of hiring are inundated with applications from people who’s skillsets and stated interests make it clear that they have not even read the job posting. It makes it so that people who are fitting for the job are like a needle in a haystack. It also doesn’t help that the people reviewing applications are not often the people who you’d be working with, and they don’t necessarily know all the right things to be looking for; they just have a list of magic words that they are filtering for. You might have a synonym of the right word on your resume, and they’d never notice it.

    These days, knowing someone is especially the key in my experience. It doesn’t even have to be someone you know well enough that they’d give you an actual “recommendation”. You are probably better off sending your resume to 10 people who already have the job you want than submitting 100 actual applications.

    It’s not the best resume in the giant stack who gets interviewed, it’s someone’s niece’s college roommate’s former coworker’s step-cousin.






  • For fitness:

    The absolute “best exercise” for someone to do is whatever they find enjoyable/fun, baring some sports, etc, that are harmful to your joints and/or brain (like American football). Fitness is about long term, sustainable effort. Some strict program that follows all the best science isn’t going to help you in the long term if you don’t stay consistent with it.

    As long as you are either creating forceful muscle exertions or getting your heart rate up (preferably both), and it’s an activity you can stick with, you are good to go.

    It’s similar with diet. Whatever you can consistently do to hit reasonable macros, with a nice bit of fiber and minimal junk, go for it. People might tell you that it’s better to get 100% of your protein from meals rather than having protein shakes, but for a lot of people, going without that protein shake will just end up with them undershooting their protein needs.