Also me: QualifiedKitten@kbin.social

  • 6 Posts
  • 330 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • Oh yeah, I’m very much aware of where I asked. Haha. I see an opportunity where I can at least advocate for the FOSS options, so I’m trying to learn what those are and how they compare to other solutions before I make any suggestions to the decision makers.

    I was recently laid off, and have been wanting to explore some personal self hosting projects, plus I’m hoping to make a bit of a career pivot, so my interest is coming from a variety of motivations.


  • I only just discovered this problem a few days ago, so I don’t really know yet. We definitely need to be able to track a number of details about the animals including source, outcome, medical records, etc. I think having a way to keep track of “employees” (we’re 100% volunteer run), “customers” (finders and adopters), and finances is also pretty important, and hopefully in a way that doesn’t require a lot of duplicate entries due to multiple fragmented systems.

    There’s quite a few (mostly proprietary) systems out there specifically designed for shelters, so I suspect something like that might be the best option for the current issue, but looking at Odoo might be relevant to my professional development in general, as I was recently laid off, and hoping to pivot a bit from the general administrative work I had previously been doing.






  • It’s happening. Slowly.

    I first dabbled with Linux around 2015 by dual booting. Ran into too many issues, then I royally fucked shit up by accidentally deleting the bootloader or something, so I was pretty hesitant to try again. I finally got a hold of a surplus laptop from work so I could install Mint on it without any worry that I’d lose important data.

    I’ve been using that as my primary PC for a few months now. I’ve run into some minor challenges, but nothing critical that I couldn’t figure out with a search engine.

    I had another old laptop still running Windows 7 that has been having weird issues, but I’d been too lazy to backup the files so I could wipe it. I finally pulled the trigger today, fully wiped it, and installed Mint on it.

    I’m not ready to preach Linux to my “normie” friends yet, but do mention it to them here and there in hopes I’ll be able to bring them over in the future.


  • One of the things I do often is to go to the manufacturer’s website and look for information about “Distributors” or a “Store locator”. Sometimes the system lets you search by specific product, but it looks like Purina’s only lets you search by animal. If there’s a local alternative that just doesn’t carry your brand, it wouldn’t hurt to ask if they can order it for you.

    My personal approach to longer term boycotting is to reduce my spending with these companies as much as possible, rather than looking at it as all or nothing. If you were to adjust your purchasing habits to make something like Chewy your first choice, and only buy from TSC when Chewy is out of stock/delayed, that’s still going to impact TSC’s profits and is better than making no changes.

    I don’t know where you’re located, but Wilco seems to carry the Purina duck food, available for shipping, and looks like they might be less bad morally, although I have no idea how expensive shipping is or how reliable they are.

    P.S. Purina is owned by Nestle, so that’s a whole other layer to consider. No judgement though, my cats love their Friskies and Fancy Feast, and it’s not like I can explain to them why they should accept a different food, especially when I’m unemployed and it’s significantly cheaper than anything else.





  • I randomly tried using Jellyfin today instead of Plex, but Jellyfin kept crashing my browser and logging me out, so I wasn’t in the mood to troubleshoot, so I just gave up and went back to Plex.

    In the past, I’ve been annoyed that Jellyfin didn’t seem to have an option to sort media by “Last Episode Date Added”, nor did it seem to have a way to build a queue of episodes from multiple different shows. I think I was also having trouble figuring out how to add multiple sources… I have my “long term” library on a local hard drive, plus anything “new” on a seedbox.

    I theoretically want to fully switch over eventually, but so far, Plex is still good enough for my use case.








  • A few years ago, I found myself wondering if my cat wanted a buddy, so I signed up with the local shelter to foster, figuring if it didn’t work out, I’d have an easy “out” to find the new cat another home. I actually wound up fostering a few litters of kittens before adopting a second cat, and have also continued fostering.

    If you decide to adopt or foster, be prepared for the first few weeks to be challenging. Read up on Jackson Galaxy’s guide to cat introductions, and move slowly from step to step. The guide is in 5 parts, here’s part 1: https://www.jacksongalaxy.com/blogs/news/cat-introductions-part-1-before-the-introduction

    Some cats accept new cats within days, others may take weeks or longer. My oldest is always super pissed off for the first few days, but we usually reach “Eat, Play, Love” around 2 weeks.