Wow. My furnace just kicked on. Isn’t that the digital inverse of Stockholm Syndrome?

As a professional 35 year draftsman, I would recommend you buy an 11x17 gridded notepad, a pencil, an eraser, and then make numerous sketches. Do an plan view of each floor to create the general arrangement and the room-to-room relationships. Sections will be required at each elevation to show heights. Then sketch each room on its own sheet. Here you can supply more detail, using matchlines, etc. In this manner, you don’t have to bear the burden of drafting and accuracy until you are behind the screen. You can just sketch the idea, and provide the numerics. Sketches need not be pretty or to scale or made by someone with any drafting talent at all. Use placeholders. A square with ‘TLT’ in it is just fine for a toilet. Later, the sketches can be redrawn in cad via a scaled floorplan and your placeholders detailed as required. This is generally how I would proceed when I had to draw up large steel furnaces in which the OEM drawings were lost.

With that in mind, Id suggest paying cash to someone else that has cad software and knows it. This is not a large or even complex project. They can take your sketches and recreate them into a 2d drawing set assuming you did your sketches right. While it will be a great accuracy check, I recommend this just so you don’t have to run CAD on Linux, an endeavor that is sure to cost you that cash in time and frustration alone. It’s just not suited for the heavy throughputs of CAD.

Consider this. If your choice of tools does not matter, you could replace your screwdriver with a butter knife for this renovation. As well you could use a rock in place of a hammer or some eco-friendly hemp string in lieu of your tape measure. If the choice of operating system, the base for all software to run on, is a negligible detail you may as well remove your foundation while you are at it. It’s just going to crack and leak in 200 years or so.

If you don’t know any starving draftsman or doing it yourself is an additional goal, then at least go buy a cheapie beater windows laptop and get a mainstream cad software, even if it’s free. You’ll be needing something mainstream to get good search results as you learn to run it.

And please, if this comes off as rude, I assure you that it’s borne from my first hand experience. CAD drafting is not difficult, but it is tricky. There will be many moments where things can get off the tracks without you realizing it. It’s disheartening to say the least when you realize that many minutes, hours or days ago you punched a bad number, misread something, phone rang and you got distracted, etc. And then when that happens, you have to know how to fix it since some of the drawing is right and some is now wrong, and a wrong drawing isn’t necessarily worth the paper it’s printed on. A good cad guy will avoid most of these traps for you entirely.

I happen to be working in a major grocery store right now that draws from UNFI for 75% of our product. Our shelves are far from bare, but our deliveries have been affected. Certainly, stock quantities are only going down. I did not receive any stock Monday. I was told they took our order from a prior Wednesday and resubmitted it for delivery this Wednesday, but it did not arrive. An order is in place for tomorrow, but again, we didn’t shoot it so they must be using sales estimates or another prior order. I hope it shows up, but its not likely I’ll be getting it (a truck is scheduled but with no eta).

We have other suppliers and are drawing additional items from them where we can, but they cannot quell the full demand in either quantity or diversity.

I’m surprised they had no backup system in place. That was incredibly unwise and irresponsible considering it is food chain related. Funny how banks are too big to fail, but not food suppliers.

A few that come to mind

2022 - Lovecraftian Horror/Dark Comedy/Fantasy - Glorious

2019 - Mystery/Horror/Thriller/- The Colour Out Of Space (or Color Out Of Space)

2015 - Action/Violence/Scifi - Hardcore Henry

2010 - Action/Violence - Machete

2010 - Action/Comedy/Romance - Scott Pilgrim Vs The World

2009 - Zombie Horror/Dark Comedy - George: A Zombie Intervention (or George’s Intervention)

2009 - Adventure/Fantasy/Scifi - Ink

1999 - Adventure/Comedy/Fantasy - Dogma

1997 - Action/Adventure/Scifi - The Game

All were really good movies that I myself initially passed over (numerous times even) before coming back a while later to be blown away on the first watch. Most of these I ordered on dvd as the credits were still rolling. I can list some more if you like any of these.

Update: I have made the selections and planted the garden on May 11. I am seed sowing Muncher variety cucumbers in a large container with a trellis and a couple of side pots of marigold.

The container is a 36x17x15 rectangular plastic storage tub. I placed it on a 36x22x3 pallet, and dropped a tarp in it to cover the sides (both inside and outside tub walls). I filled it with 100 pounds of topsoil prepped with some miracle grow liquid. The trellis is nothing too pretty. Old pallets broken down for a 60x36 wood frame leaning against the house on a 60 degree angle. I have some poly rope to use as lattice and can adjust on the fly.

I selected the Muncher variety for it being good on a trellis, its burpless and resistant to a lot of disease. A local to my area grows these every year in a raised bed with trellis. I planted (3) groupings of (2) seeds for (6) seeds total. I will trim to 3 at some point. I plan on adding some mulch when the plants take hold of the vines. I’m capable of pollinating them manually if I have to.

I should get 2 hours with the sun obscured by trees followed by 6 hours of unimpeded sun before it disappears behind the house. It will not get direct sun for the last 3-4 hours.

The marigolds are to attract insects and for their odorous protection. Dunno. He works at a place that sells marigold seeds. I wonder if he jive talked me. Sounds sus, but I had soil left over and thought what the hell.

Wish Dales cucumbers luck and thanks for the replies. I’ll post a final update in a few months (because I hate leaving things unfinished).

Just west of Pittsburgh, PA - Region 6. I was pretty young but my grandfather’s garden and orchard were legendary.

The garden bore nothing too exotic. Tomato, cucumber, zucchini, beans, cabbage, potato, lettuce, carrot, onion, radish. The usual suspects.

His apple trees (maybe 12) did fantastic. Unsure of type but it was a baking apple. There was always a glut of apples in the fall. They had a grainy flesh as compared to a non-baking apple. They were still quite delicious to eat right off the tree.

He also had a plum and a pear tree that both did well for many years. Again, I am unsure on the breed. The pear I remember in my head looked a lot like a bosc. It bore pears that were smaller than a grocery stores. They were brownish not the standard yellow or green. Very sweet though.

Not trees, but Pennsylvania grapes, rhubarb, black raspberries, red raspberries, blackberries and strawberries were also quite productive for many years. Particularly the red raspberries of which he had like 30 bushes, so you could eat your fill and take a to-go bag. Mind the Japanese beetles. So good and such a good memory.

Peaches though wrecked my grandfather. If it wasn’t blight, it was disease, birds, bugs, bores or drought. All he wanted was an unmottled peach. Never did ever happen despite his best efforts.

Cherries did a number on him too. The birds were just too hard to beat. Chaotic little shits would eat the unripened fruit.

Oh, and I wanted to ask you a specific (or anyone else for that matter). Feel free to tell me to pound it sideways if you don’t know.

When I was looking up the Port Albert, I also discovered a sort-of kin to it called a ‘Lemon Cucumber’. Are they any good?

This is the other variety that keeps coming up. Straight 8 is also on the list. I’m working in a grocery store right now and have access to people who SHOULD be in the know. I’ve been told that the ones readily available to my Pittsburgh region are the seedless hybrids trucked in and 30 days between picking and slicing.

Sadly, the guy I spoke with knew a fair amount about the differences in cucumber varieties. He advised I seek elsewhere as to how best grow them. I truly don’t need another chore to do after work and don’t want to prune either.

Yes, this is one I hear a lot. It’s likely going to be a finalist.

I was able to find the Port Albert seeds for sale to my region. I’m unsure if it’s lineage is purer than yours, but it had the right name. The crystal apple was another one that made the initial list of breeds to pick from. I can’t say if I’ve ever had a sour cucumber or not. It’s one of those fruits that always kind of tastes the same to me, watery and earthy with a pinch of salt. If its a drastic difference, then I maybe haven’t had that honor.

I’ve never eaten one but have seen them at the grocery store before. I had no idea it was a cucumber variety. I thought it to be along the lines of a sweet fruit (like starfruit or dragon fruit).

As for Dale, I’d have to be over cautious. I’m unfamiliar with it and it has a known hazards entry regarding the seeds. I’d have to defer to Dr. Mike (his vet) to be sure it’s not the last thing he eats. I give him other fruits that have toxic parts, and I remove those parts, but it’s a fruit I’m familiar with and am comfortable doing it. as an example, cherries are one of his favorite fruits, but the pits are deadly if he eats one. Grapes on the other hand, I’m not sure. I won’t give him one. Not worth the risk in my opinion. Leeching can occur from the seeds and even seedless grapes can have small underdeveloped seeds.

On that note, chocolate, caffeine, avocados, tobacco and any fruit pits are all deadly. Alcohol, salt, oil, honey and fake sugars should be avoided. As part of his daily diet, he eats a serving of fresh fruit/melon for breakfast and steamed veggies at night. He eats most of whatever I eat for dinner as well. Especially chicken. He LOVES chicken. We tell him it’s his cousin Arnold or aunt Ruth. It seems to make him happier.

Hollywood is NOT cranking out original movies. They follow formulas and reuse them at nausea. It’s kinda annoying actually. Everything about it has become lazy and unimaginative

So before I listen toi him whine anymore, did Christopher Landon even make a free Beehaw account and, like, make a post about it? He could have teased it a bit, did an ‘ask me anything’ or some shit. I actually enjoy a good thriller. I hadn’t heard there was a new one out.

You should cease eating them over their inclusion of GMO ingredients alone, but that is just my opinion.

That condition is a despotic red-flag deal-breaker that should be countered with epic abandonment. Let them know this is not OK. If I hadn’t uninstalled it years ago, I would have already. Lots of better browsers out there.

HP was great in the 90’s. They made quality stuff back then. My HP4MV’s were like a tank. They built a great name for themselves legitimately. That all changed in 2000 when that dingbat took over as CEO. Everything they made became ultra cheap. When I’m out shopping, I’ve been known to approach random strangers that I observe looking to buy a printer just to tell them how bad HP is.

I personally stopped using them in 2002 after a brand new HP-5610 multifunction doc center cockblocked itself from windows 98 because I plugged in the usb data cable that connects the computer and printer without installing their bloaty software FIRST. It was a long night reinstalling the OS I had just reinstalled the week prior. Their helpdesk was so infuriatingly dumb and unhelpful I made it a goal to steer anyone away from them that I can.

The Brother laserjet I purchased as a replacement in 2007-ish is still going strong as well. I’ve never even serviced it (other than replacing toner and paper). Admittedly, it’s getting tired after 18 years.

You do not need to support a company that treats its customers as badly as HP does, and never support anyone or anything that thinks you deserve to stand there like an idiot for 15 minutes before they can do their job for you. That, kids, is called neglectful and disrespectful.