Super General Advice (the thread for advice without making a thread)

This thread is for asking questions when you don't want to make your own thread to ask, or feel like it would just end up cluttering everything up.

as a general guideline, if you think something would be triggering, it would be a good idea to spoiler it.

 

Request for some alarm app suggestions? I finally got my new medication and its a twice a day, and i have major trouble getting up in the mornings. I need a good alarm app that doesnt use sound, like maybe one that has flashing lights (preferably with adjustable speeds) or something else? Alarm sounds send me straight into meltdown mode and radio or music alarms don't work reliably because my brain just adds it to whatever dream im having.

 

What kind of phone do you have? I mean, what operating system - IOS, or Android, or Windows

 

Well its a tablet, but its android if that helps. I dont actually own a phone haha

 

oooh, okay. I use the built in android alarm, connected to a bluetooth speaker in my room, which means it gets pretty loud. Also, under settings you can set it to pulse a light for notifications, it doesn't work for the built in alarm though. hm, I'm not sure about light based alarms, there are a lot of the "gentle wake up" alarm apps on the store, but i don't know how effective those are.

 

Yeah ive tried the gentle wake up before, they dont really work. The light changes very slow to simulate the rising sun and i sleep through it just like the actual sunrise.

 

follow up with some solutions ive found, for anyone curious:

• gentle wake up gave me the idea to use flash alarm as a search term, turned up some alarms targeted at deaf and hoh folks. none of the flashing alarms available were compatible but they DO exist, and looking up alarms for deaf people also revealed vibrating alarms. also doesn't work with my tablet but is a thing.
• my mom uses one of those essential oil thingies for sleep sometimes, the other night she put a shit ton of mint oil in it and it woke me up from a deep sleep in the middle of the night with no sensory side effects other than mild annoyance. if i could find a diffuser with a delay timer it would work great as an alarm! idk if those exist though.

 

!!! Yeah, an outlet timer sounds like exactly what i need, thanks!

 

you could use an outlet timer for a bright light as well if you needed.

 

I'll look into it! Do you know how they work? Im currently set up on a chaise lounge instead of a bed because matresses are expensive/too big for the area im in.

 

Okay yeah im looking at them, theyre not how i imagined. Those would work great probably

 

how the hell do i keep the tobacco in my pipe smoldering so that i dont have to re-light it every 20 seconds

question status: open, unanswered

 

I have a punctuation question that I don't know how to word, else I would google it
which of these is correct

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, 'consectetur adipiscing elit'.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, 'consectetur adipiscing elit.'

 

Have I apparently been doing it wrong? Yes.
Am I going to try and track down all those mistakes and fix them? ......Ehhhh.

thank you!

 

I have a mystic anti-answer, guaranteed to increase confusion!

In British English, either is acceptable, though I believe the first is more common. In Canadian English and American English, only the second one is correct. I believe Mongolia typically follows the American convention; Singapore, South Africa, and Nigeria the British. I do not know about Australia or anywhere else. Some literary publications, for historical reasons, follow the rule not commonly used by their country.

Summary: if you're doing a school assignment or journalism or something, follow your country's rules. If you just want people on the internet to read your writing without getting distracted by what they think is wrong punctuation, write the second way, which is acceptable everywhere, but will probably make people assume you are an American.

 

I'm british and for me it depends on a) if that's dialogue or not and if it's not b) if the thing i'm putting in the quotes has a full stop at the end of it already
If it does it goes in the quotes if it doesn't it goes outside the quotes
No idea if that's accurate to actual grammar rules or not but it satisfies my anal little brain

 

Help I don't know what to do with my life
i. was going to ask like, is it normal to feel like you can't make a big life decision right out of college without getting your parents' approval?? Like im trying to decide whether to try doing job search for Job In My Major (animation) for another month or going back to my hometown (which my parents no longer live anywhere near, they moved) asap because I can get a place with a friend for $350 plus utility monthly rent, and just get a generic Job for a little while i work on getting stuff better and/or keep working on getting an animation job after a little.
my mom wants me to keep job searching for another month and live at home but i.... don't super want to do that? I don't hate the idea either and like. i do think it would be a cool thing to get an animation job and just move somewhere and start working in my field. But I like that idea equally as much as I like the idea of going back to my home area and getting an odd job for a while. So. I just. I don't fucking know.
there's the additional petty whinge that if i keep applying for a month and nothing comes up i'm back to moving to my hometown anyways, only maybe having more trouble finding a place and missing my favorite event of the year

so like, someone tell me what to do with my life maybe? i have no fucking clue.

eta: also in the last month i accidentally didn't job search for a whole month because i didn't feel good enough to and also because a part of me didnt want to get an animation job so that i could go back to hometown. but now i'm sorta regretting that because my brain warmed back up to the idea of animation job???? fuck man idk. irhgt now i regret not being in contact w/ my college therapist anymore