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

I am informed by phone guy that I am not entitled to a refund, as per the subscription terms that I agreed to despite never actually agreeing to it. He also asked me twice why I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal, to which I answered both times that I didn’t subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, after which he reiterated several times that per the user agreement I was not entitled to a refund but he could cancel the subscription for me.

I looked this up. Apparently a number of people have been having problems canceling their subscriptions, and WSJ is quite emphatic about not allowing refunds.

Basically fuck those guys.

 

Fucking rich people.

 

Very late after the fact I think but oh my god, really? Chicago is 4 hours east of me and Minneapolis is 11 hours west and I've been trying to get there. That's such a short amount of time! I'm excited.

 

Yeah! If I remember right he megabus only costs about $30, if you want to get up to Minneapolis and have a way to get to Chicago that's a good option far as I've heard. As I said I haven't traveled it myself tho so I'm not an expert

Looking at the site it says the actual transit time is about 8 1/2 hours; not sure why I always heard it was 6 cx

 

Also, I highly reccommend opening the site you used to look up the plane ticket prices in incognito mode or private browsing or something else that doesn't save cookies.

Just to make sure they haven't adjusted the prices on you, because they do that.

 

Now soliciting opinions on minimally inhumane rodent control.

No good place to release any mice I catch in a live trap. Will be trying deterring them first.

I'm okay with killing them myself if it's the best way to prevent suffering. I would just snip their spinal cords after catching them if I knew how to hold a wild mouse while doing that.

 

Femmes of kintsugi I come begging for your aid.
I don’t wear makeup very often but occasionally my inner compass swings towards lady and I want some rockin winged eyeliner.
The problem is my glasses, specifically that my eyesight is completely shit. I don’t keep contacts around because they’re a pain to get in and out and glasses are such a part of my mental picture of myself I feel weird without them. But! To do eyeliner I need to lean in reeeeeeally close to the mirror, such that there’s no room to put the brush/pencil/what have you between my lid and the mirror. Are there any tricks to doing eyeliner without being able to see what you’re drawing?
Would it be weird to go into a store like Sephora or something and ask for help? Or to ask to try out a magnifying mirror before shelling out the cash for one?
Also! How in the heck do right handed people draw on the left eyelid? I’m turning my wrist almost all the way inwards to get the angle right and I’m sure this isn’t how it’s meant to be done.

 

I have a magnifying makeup mirror that I got off Amazon for like fifteen bucks and I highly recommend it, it's made my life much easier. I've seen magnifying mirrors out to try in places like Bed Bath and Beyond or Target - as long as they're labeled what magnification they are, they're useful for you to see if the online ones would work for you. (I just recommend buying one online because the ones I've seen in stores are ridiculous prices.)

As for eyeliner tips, I find it easiest to work left to right no matter which eye you're working on - angle your brush or pencil downwards if you're starting at the outer corner and upwards if you're starting at the inner. For a very soft and forgiving of mistakes eyeliner, I like to take an angle brush, get the bristles damp, and use a dark eyeshadow to line my eyes. If you can see where you're starting out, you can then use your lashes as a guide for the brush as you draw a line. The eyeshadow method gives you a softer line so mistakes are less obvious, too.

Edit: also I used this trick when I used to do my makeup in the car a lot: if you're using a pencil and you choke up on it real hard, you can feel your lashes as you line your eyes and that keeps you straighter if you can't see exactly what you're doing - just be sure to pull your lid off to the side so there is a straight line and you don't get the line interrupted by the fine creases your lid likes to throw at you.

 

ok so. 2-3 weeks ago my phone broke. i took it to the phone doctor and it's been there since, but today they called me saying that they don't have the thing needed to fix it (the... entire display) in my phone's color and it would take about another week to see if their parts guy has it in gold because of the holidays, and i cant do that because i am travelling to my mom's this weekend. so my options are:
buying a new phone, same model, for about R$900;
buying the new model of my phone - pro is that it's better than my current phone (J7 Prime vs J7 Metal), cons is that it slightly doesn't fit the phone cases I have and I love the cases I have - the camera sits a bit higher in the prime - and it's also $200 more expensive.
shelling the r$500 they want to fix it, but get the display in another color (black or white)

what should I do? Boyfriend thinks I should get a cheapo phone, but I like the J7 mid-rangedness. Mom is ok either way. I am inclined to get another phone like my own but it doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a new last-year phone and uuuuugh
i hate spending money

 

personally I would just get the display fixed in another color, since that’s cheapest and I like to keep things I have rather than buy new ones, and aesthetics aren’t important to me

that’s me though

 

I kinda want to do that because of those reasons, but i had an argument with husband, who thinks its still not worth it either way, and now im nervous because he Does Not Aaprove Anything At All Ever. Its completely perfectly functionable except that the entire screen has gone pitch black with the occasional neon glitches, and its only six months old, and it was a gift. I hate breaking gifts. Thats why i wanted it fixed so bad. I only asked for this one because my previous was an iphone 4s bought around launch, and it had become.... a slightly glowy brick. Im not one who likes to waste tech.

If i can get it fixed on another color it would be done by the next morning, and now that ive wasted almost 3 weeks its just... whatever. I could have gotten a new one even cheaper if i had bought it online when it broke, as the husband so kindly reminds me, but now i dont have time for this, and it's more expensive than fixing.

All that matters to me is that i have a phone by Sunday, because i have a four hour flight with a three hour wait time between changing planes, the week before christmas, on an airport that is famous for being shit; the last time i was there i missed my connection because the airport staff was that shit. Its what making me go into panic mode - the pissibilty of being stranded halfway with no easy communication methods in an emergency, its one of my super anxiety triggers.

 

@witchknights I think you should have the ultimate final choice over what you want with this purchase, even if other people don't agree with your reasoning. It's your phone, and you'll be the one using it. As long as you're not going to starve or be homeless, get the option you're most comfortable with.

 

Yeah but mild disagreements mean people Hate Me Forever And Think Im Stupid And Not Worthy Being Around, havent you heard?

 

Fortunately I missed that flyer, and if I'd received it I would have casually torn it in half and dumped it in the recycling with the other junk mail.

That feeling is known. It really sucks. It turns small decisions into trips through the minefield with no map, and bigger decisions into hell vacations.

It's all lies. You can pick whatever phone you like and you'll still be a worthwhile person.

 

I'm with Verily on this one, but I understand the concern about other people not approving of your opinions/decisions.

 

Late reply, but as I've done that exact ride a thousand fucking times, not true. The most uncomfortable I've ever been on a megabus was when I ate a crapton of gas station candy and then tried to research a paper on a moving bus and ended up with a dire migraine. I curled up in a ball and convulsed a bit for about two hours as my neighbors made sympathy noises and shuffled away a little to give me room. This barely tops the time the driver stopped his bus in the dead of night in the middle of Wisconsin because he felt something weird and wanted to make sure there was nothing wrong with the bus. Nothing was but it was about 0 degrees out and he left the front door open for ten minutes as I was slowly awoken from my slumber with fury.

It's never been unsafe though. A few years ago I had home base in MN but school in Chicago so I took that ride maybe eight or ten times one way or another and never even had to defend myself from a theft. Though there's no reason to not be careful about that.

That would probably be because you can cut it down to 6 hours if you're in your own car and are clever about avoiding traffic; the bus has a few stops in cities in Wisconsin so the route is a bit meandering and the stops take time time. There's a lunch stop halfway through even.

Price varied greatly but I never paid more that $50. Usually it was way cheaper than that. They're priced by availability, so if you know you're taking a trip, try to get tickets as early as possible; weekdays, overnights/off-hours, and any day that isn't a holiday are cheaper.

I've also taken a long trip on the Greyhound busses a few times and I prefer megabus, they have more room and are generally more comfortable (and wifi. It's bad but it's wifi) but again I certainly never died on a Greyhound either.

 

Hey so I got a new phone recently which as cool. Until it ate ten euros in one day, and fifteen in two days of data. The culprit has been found, google play store, but it was for example already set to only update over wifi. Help?