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Originally posted by Brenda:
Those shades you put in the bathroom SIX are lovely.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
Yeah, those lamp shades may have a lot of dust on them and that will take something stronger to get it off.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think they hid the passwords in someplace obscure.
On ours it's in the web browser.

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Yeah... They're in the web browser. They're in AppData in a json file along with a database key you need to copy to the new browser if you didn't make a specific .CSV password backup file. All of your bookmarks are there too.

I just didn't think to remove the hard drive and get that data off of it before I refreshed windows and all that was gone. I had backups of everything, but those were from 2023, and the passwords were not good. But I had the actual info I needed typed out in various locations. I guess I just needed 4 hours to remember what it was I needed to do.

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I love those shades too. Decorative, classy, not ornate and not stark either. I can see them going with everything from Shaker to Art Deco to modern. Honestly, if I could find something like that I'd be happy!

FWIW it's not possible to burn glass. It does melt at about 1500°F. When they "frost“ it they usually use a form of fluoric acid to dissolve a thin top layer, so it's not anything they put on top of the glass.

Anyway, I don't think there's anything permanent on the glass. Maybe KrudKutter will do the trick?

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Yeah... Those shades are thick and heavy too. I really like it.

I don't have any Krud Kutter but I'll get some if it might work. What about Easy Off? I do have some Easy Off back from when I cleaned out about 3 lbs of burnt crap in my oven.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I had an oncology follow-up today. All is good. I have one more oncology follow up at the end of the year, and that will be my 5-year anniversary since diagnosis.


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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
What did you get your friend?

My buddy liked his Kindle. One of the books I put on there was "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark". It was one of those books that people my age either had or were envious of other people who did, so I wasn't surprised to see his reaction to it being on there. He then went upstairs and found his own hard copy of it to show me.




I'm glad one of the wrappings I had just enough left of wasn't too Christmassy. It was plaid, and not overly green/red.

He said, man... you wrap a tight present. I like it.

Yeah... I learned that along with making the bows out of ribbon from my mom. And I'm a perfectionist on top of that too.

You're goddamned right I wrap a tight present.



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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
I got her a set of DVDs from an old tv show she used to like. It's called ,"The life and Times of Grizzly Adams." It's set in the old West. She loved, my family didn't watch it much. She spotted it when we were walking through my local Walmart, so I just kept it in mind.

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That's awesome.


People love when you remember something they care about or have an interest in. Let's them know that the person they're spending their time with actually pays attention to them and isn't all up in their own head (or even worse, when their head is up their own ass all the time).




Like... I can go even more into detail on this thing I put together for my friend as an example...

I didn't have any original boxes for any of this stuff. But I had just come into a pretty nice sized pile of smaller quality cardboard boxes for things like this with the last tech dehoard. I had a box that was a great size for the unit and the plug, but it had way too much depth to it and without anything else in there it would rattle all around...

So I looked around and there was a Comcast internet box I had, and inside was a cardboard insert that had a little finger hole that said "lift up, there's more inside".

It was too wide for my box, but I got out my scissors and cut it down to the right size for the new box. And I couldn't NOT put anything underneath the insert since it said to lift up to see what else was under it. That's when I remembered that I found a huge bag of "Muscle Men" figurines my brother found and gave to me years ago. We had a ton of em. So I got one of those and put it underneath the insert, boxed it all up and wrapped it up.


So when he was opening it up, he got to the flap and lifted it up and I wasn't surprised that he knew exactly what it was and he started talking about the plastic trash can containers they'd come in and then he brought up "Garbage Pail Kids", which if you didn't have them up in Canada, were trading card/stickers with some of the grossest artwork imaginable on it, and was a dark parody of Cabbage Patch Kids.

Little did he know, that 3 of the "books" I put on his device were the first three full series of Garbage Pail kids cards that I put into PDF files and turned into a book he could just scroll through and see all of them.



Then he got excited when I had that Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and went up and got his own book to show me. He didn't know there was a 2nd book and it's on there too. I told him only after I put that all together I found out there was a 3rd book that I'll have to try to find.


And like, all of this cool reminiscing about things we didn't even share together, because we didn't start hanging out until our 20's, wouldn't have ever happened if I hadn't found out what his favorite book was in some random conversation a month or two earlier and I didn't think to put that book on this thing.


I'm glad to hear your story about this. It's these little things that really mean a lot to people. And I don't think enough of us make the effort to go out of their way and do them anymore.

I'll tell you what, Brenda.

As much as your friend loves "The life and Times of Grizzly Adams", she loved that you remembered that she loved it more.

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I'm getting lazy, I don't wrap presents anymore. I just buy reusable bags. Can't remember the last time I actually wrapped a present.

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Well... they don't all get the beauty treatment...

You should see my brother's old all-in-one BEAST of a heavy computer from nearly 20 years ago that I'm giving back to him for an entirely different purpose and what the box it's going out looks like.

I actually put a TON of effort into it, even though it looks horrible. I took my old air conditoner box top because it's super durable and strong cardboard, but I had to slit it in 4 places on the inside so I could re-shape it to be much wider and narrower than it was so the thing would fit in there, and then I rebuilt the box with a ton of packing tape in the new shape. Got a box to house the cables for it and also be the extra piece needed to keep everything from moving around. There were also the two large pieces of styrofoam the A/C came in to work with, but it wasn't enough without that box in there. And I was also able to wrap the thing entirly with the nice foam bag that the A/C came in too, so the screen is nice and protected.

And I capped it off with a paper ream box top that doesn't fit and a ton of tape with a birthday card attached to the top. Oh... and I cut out handles on the sides since this thing is heavy as hell.

It ain't pretty, but it was a construction project.

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Well truth be told I was never a very good present wrapper. My mum was better at it then me, my brother or my dad.

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda:
I got her a set of DVDs from an old tv show she used to like. It's called ,"The life and Times of Grizzly Adams." It's set in the old West. She loved, my family didn't watch it much. She spotted it when we were walking through my local Walmart, so I just kept it in mind.

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That's awesome.


People love when you remember something they care about or have an interest in. Let's them know that the person they're spending their time with actually pays attention to them and isn't all up in their own head (or even worse, when their head is up their own ass all the time).




Like... I can go even more into detail on this thing I put together for my friend as an example...

I didn't have any original boxes for any of this stuff. But I had just come into a pretty nice sized pile of smaller quality cardboard boxes for things like this with the last tech dehoard. I had a box that was a great size for the unit and the plug, but it had way too much depth to it and without anything else in there it would rattle all around...

So I looked around and there was a Comcast internet box I had, and inside was a cardboard insert that had a little finger hole that said "lift up, there's more inside".

It was too wide for my box, but I got out my scissors and cut it down to the right size for the new box. And I couldn't NOT put anything underneath the insert since it said to lift up to see what else was under it. That's when I remembered that I found a huge bag of "Muscle Men" figurines my brother found and gave to me years ago. We had a ton of em. So I got one of those and put it underneath the insert, boxed it all up and wrapped it up.


So when he was opening it up, he got to the flap and lifted it up and I wasn't surprised that he knew exactly what it was and he started talking about the plastic trash can containers they'd come in and then he brought up "Garbage Pail Kids", which if you didn't have them up in Canada, were trading card/stickers with some of the grossest artwork imaginable on it, and was a dark parody of Cabbage Patch Kids.

Little did he know, that 3 of the "books" I put on his device were the first three full series of Garbage Pail kids cards that I put into PDF files and turned into a book he could just scroll through and see all of them.



Then he got excited when I had that Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and went up and got his own book to show me. He didn't know there was a 2nd book and it's on there too. I told him only after I put that all together I found out there was a 3rd book that I'll have to try to find.


And like, all of this cool reminiscing about things we didn't even share together, because we didn't start hanging out until our 20's, wouldn't have ever happened if I hadn't found out what his favorite book was in some random conversation a month or two earlier and I didn't think to put that book on this thing.


I'm glad to hear your story about this. It's these little things that really mean a lot to people. And I don't think enough of us make the effort to go out of their way and do them anymore.

I'll tell you what, Brenda.

As much as your friend loves "The life and Times of Grizzly Adams", she loved that you remembered that she loved it more.

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I'm getting lazy, I don't wrap presents anymore. I just buy reusable bags. Can't remember the last time I actually wrapped a present.

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Well... they don't all get the beauty treatment...

You should see my brother's old all-in-one BEAST of a heavy computer from nearly 20 years ago that I'm giving back to him for an entirely different purpose and what the box it's going out looks like.

I actually put a TON of effort into it, even though it looks horrible. I took my old air conditoner box top because it's super durable and strong cardboard, but I had to slit it in 4 places on the inside so I could re-shape it to be much wider and narrower than it was so the thing would fit in there, and then I rebuilt the box with a ton of packing tape in the new shape. Got a box to house the cables for it and also be the extra piece needed to keep everything from moving around. There were also the two large pieces of styrofoam the A/C came in to work with, but it wasn't enough without that box in there. And I was also able to wrap the thing entirly with the nice foam bag that the A/C came in too, so the screen is nice and protected.

And I capped it off with a paper ream box top that doesn't fit and a ton of tape with a birthday card attached to the top. Oh... and I cut out handles on the sides since this thing is heavy as hell.

It ain't pretty, but it was a construction project.

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Well truth be told I was never a very good present wrapper. My mum was better at it then me, my brother or my dad.

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I don't think I ever was until I tried it. I've been on the fence about actually having learned it from my mom or not... I still have zero memories of her ever actually teaching me or me wrapping a present with her around. I think maybe I just watched her do it. I have specific memories watching her use the end of the scissors to put the curls in the ribbons, but I was kind of surprised that 35 years later or so when I tried it for what felt like my first time, it just came completely naturally to me.

The wrapping... I'm not surprised that it's something I'm good at. It just fits my personality that I would be good at it. I'm not terribly slow, but I'm not fast at wrapping. Quite a bit of thought goes into it, and I'm very non-committal when making hard folds until I know I've got it exactly how I need it for a tight wrap.

Not joking though... my presents look like the ones you see under the trees in all the Christmas movies.

Until recently, it was usually the best part of my gifts.



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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Originally posted by Brenda:
I try. I keep a list of things that she likes and I pick something off that list.

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Yeah. That's a nice thing to do. And the lists are a good idea too. I really need to get back into making those. I already know that as I'm getting older I can't rely on my memory like I used to.

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Hey reusing old cardboard boxes and that is great. That is one less thing taking up space where it doesn't need to.

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Right? Cardboard used to be an issue for me too. But I did get rid of most of that and didn't collect more with the last dehoard. The stack in the garage with the big boxes got kind of high and is one of the things I need to pare down this year, but I was only keeping all of those to put on the floor under my old car that leaked all over the place. I'll keep some for doing oil changes, but I don't need THAT many anymore.



Yeah. These are just boxes that have recently become vacancies with the work I've been doing. Unless the box I emptied was falling apart, I've kept all of them so far, and wouldn't throw any out until I knew I had the best boxes for all the jobs.

Pretty much went through them all now, so that's less good boxes I have for packing up anything I'm keeping at the end, but if I'm doing things right on that front, it shouldn't be a problem.

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I had a number of "Garbage Pail Kids" stickers on my lunchbox when I was in elementary school. Would even put them on myself.

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Oh... so you know.

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Never heard of "Scary Stories to Tell." But those kinds of books when I was a kid.

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The stories were pretty great, but I think the reason it was memorable for so many adults today who grew up with it was the artwork inside. Even if you don't know the book, I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't seen the cover or some of these images elsewhere.

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I know she did. She looked at it and went, Oooh" which is my friend's word for her loving something.

Sometimes it's whatever works. I bought a record for my friend when we were in high school and I hunted high and low for some wrapping paper but couldn't find anything I wanted. I finally bought some of that white tissue paper and drew a picture on it and coloured it. My friend was going to trash it but her mother rescued it.

I learned to wrap presents from my mum and my friend. My friend would do what your mother would, use scissors to curl ribbons. Never got as good as they were but I tried. My brother was more of a "here" kinda of guy. Nothing wrapped. . My dad probably learned to wrap things from my mum. That is no slight to my dad but I doubt wrapping presents would have been high on his list of things to do before he got married.

I believe you and in that you are ahead of me. And that is great. Mot just me is all.

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