Like the title states, I have been a nanny for 5 years with 5 years previous childcare experience and education. As a nanny I don’t work for less than 95k a year now, I also work on contracts that I make and have the family agree to. This started about 2 years ago when I was making 105k a year with my latest family. That family recently lost their company and couldn’t afford to keep me, this directly violated our agreed upon contact (me being let go) so I fined them the previously mentioned amount for premature firing/let go. (If I were to violate the contract or neglect the kids or my job the fine would no longer apply via the contract.) so now, I am looking for a new job which brings me to this situation. I met with this family, the mother who I spoke to on the phone about my contracts and payment for the job I would be doing and everything was fine, until I sat down and met the husband the following day. I was going over my rates and contracts and quoted them 100k a year for my services based on what they wanted, which I already estimated for the wife on the phone and she showed no signs of disagreement. When the husband heard this he began laughing. Telling me that I was absurd to think they pay a glorified babysitter that much. He continued on to say the family should be giving the contracts not me and that me nor my services were worth that much. Now, like I stated I do have my degree and am able to teach the age group I work with. So my services included private homeschooling, house cleaning, private chef, family management and a few others. So I suppose my question is, is he right? Am I way out of bounds here? In my mind, I could charge a lot more. Keep in mind I only work for high profile clients who should be able to pay the rates I am asking. Please be blunt with me, as a nanny I would like to make changes if need be to my career.

Trying my best at being punny.
Sadly, with most puns, when they are told (usually by dads) they are often dismissed in ways that seems cold and mean. Before you judge my punderful abilities and read any burrrther, you have to understand pundamentals of pun... itself.
Oh this is going to be so pun, isn't?!
By the way, did you know the actor who plays Legolas tried to meet some fans privately but couldnt because everyone kept screaming its-elf!!
Fun fact! I wanted to share with you something that I thoroughly enjoy. I love a very deep, almost circular hole that stores fresh water. If you dont like that... oh well.
At my old job, I was a bodyguard to a well-known electrician. You wouldn't think an electrician would need a body guard but the power dynamics at his job were shocking, to say the least. Ive heard stories that'll make your hair stand up. To be honest I wasnt very bright, kind of a dull on the job, and because of that, my boss would always blow a fuse. Watt could I do? Watt you dont do is try to run power lines through the wirehouse and bolt out of there. They'll close the circuit on you. That wasn't a very positive experience and I was charged up with negative energy so I took my lunch breaker.
On my lunch break I saw a worker bee contemplating his life choices on a beautiful plant with flowers. Beeing that and beeing his sadness, I muttered to myself 'Oh honey, youre bumbling through life the same way I am. My advice is dont go wasping your life away. I know life stings sometimes and its always pollen you down. You have my sympabees. Please moving forward little friend, bee-have!' Beefore I buzzed the door to let me back inside to work, I looked over to the beeautiful bee on the flower and waspered... dont stop bee leafing my friend!
Feeling stressed at work, I prayed.
Dear Lord, I ask you to please crest me with strength to deal with this singing pig that is my boss, for it is sow-fully terrible to listen to. I beg you to let me rise up and not lose prominence. If I dont receive your cressing, I know Alp fall from this elevation and land boar-down on my face. Can you blame me? This singing pig is trying to swine-dle me! For peaks sake, Im stuck listening to his hymns-illayus! Alas! My lord, being the bigger man is hard, hard ad a rock. This elevation I now sit upon is breathtakingly high up, not for the weak and pun-y!
Haha as you can see, my puns are great! Spanning a vastly huge mountain range of topics and being very (Cl)everest..you could say I'm not only very punny, but absolutely peaking hill areas !!!

New story time baby. This one would be about god of stories salor and if you know anything about gos salor's backstory then throw that out because I'm retconning it. Plus this is not part of the main salor but a different one. Also I'm don't going to fully work on it yet because I wanna take a break do this type of lore because I just finished SCP salor like 3 days ago lol and just need a break in total. So enjoy the beginning of this tale
The house of ideas. The house of ideas is where most stories are held. Stories about people, there, stories that are lost to time by people, there, if you even made a story it is there. Any story you could think of is stored there safely. Today was a important day for the one known as Salor has been accused of the act of going against the house of ideas.
Salor would be handcuffed with material that couldn't be broken by the most powerful of weapons. Two tall guards with golden armor that had black outlines and markings on them. They had strange looking helmets that even Salor never seen before with purple eyes showing out of them. They wield axes in their hands that in one slash could cut a planet in half. They would arrive at a giant door that went into what Salor could describe as a mansion that was from the 1900th century.
The two guards would put their hands on the door and push it open. The mansion would be far bigger inside than it was outside. It looked like it went on for an endless amount of time with bookshelves of stories. The bookshelves would be made out of the finest wood you could see in several lifetimes as they would hold several types of books about different people, different stories, different legends and far far more. The two guards would continue to bring Salor to where they are going. Salor would try to strike up a conversation.
“So where are we going?”
“I suggest you shut up defendant because your questions won’t help you.” the guard on the left of Salor would say.
“Whatever the boss decides.” Salor would say back.
Before Salor could look to his right, the right guard would grab his ax and would sweep his legs. Salor would be in the air for a bit as he would go back a bit. The guard would lift his ax over him and bring it down with the handle of it hitting Salor in the stomach. Salor would quickly be on the floor and coughing trying to recover from the heavy blow.
“SHIT, what was that for!” Salor would say looking at the right guard.
“Those who defined orders will be put back in line” The right guard would reply.
“Tch”
The two guards would grab Salor by the arms and lift him up where his feet couldn’t reach the floor and only dangle in the air. Salor would try to move his arms but it didn’t work a bit. The two guards would continue to bring Salor to where they were going. They would pass many bookshelves that contained many stories. When he took a closer look he could see they were ordered by series and what genres they were. After some time the three of them would arrive in what seems to be the middle of the grand mansion or library. There was also a book reception desk that was high up like it was a judge’s bench. The guards would drop Salor and kick him down onto the ground. His head would hit down ground as he would give a grunt. The two guards would bring down their axes and they would land right by his head, seeming like they were ready to kill him right there with no hesitation. Saloe was stuck there. His hands were handcuffed behind his back, he was laying on the ground not being able to get up, and finally two axes by his neck that could slice his head off like it was paper. Man, such place to be, his day isn’t going well.
Then up above in the air, two beings would appear.They would both be pitch black and had blue outlines on their clothing and even blue eyes.They would look far different from each other too with the taller one would have a appearance of a grown up woman that would be wearing a overcoat on and wearing a black and blue wedding hat. The other one would have the appearance of a small boy that is wearing a black and blue suit with dapper black shoes on. They would look at each other then look down to the guards and Salor.
“Is he the one who did it?” the boy would say.
“It seems like he is the one.” The woman would reply with.
“Who the hell are you-” salor would try to say but one of the guards would move his ax to have it touch his skin but not hurt it. Salor then went quiet not because of fear but because he was smart.
The two mysterious beings would look at each other and would descend down and where the library-like desks were they would sit down on their respective seats. The woman would pull out a file on the desk and would open it. The file was on Salor and the “crime” he did.
“Today is trial of the house on the character known as Salor who had committed the crime known as rujukanria or the act of disturbing the house of ideas in an act 2 type manner.” The woman would say.
“Woah woah woah there slow down, can anyone tell me what is happening here”. Salor would say in response.
Both of the guards would move their axes closer to his neck, but the boy would raise his hand making the guards move their axes back but still by his neck.
“The one known as Salor, you have been accused for rujukanria act 2. This means that you have knocked over a bookcase that damaged some books apart from the house of ideas.” the boy would say. He would nod to the lady and she would get out a picture. Could you even call it that or something for it looked like a picture but worked like a video. It would show a video of Salor purposely knocking over a giant bookshelf that contained lots of books and tales. It would soon stop as Salor would now have a shocked face.
“That can’t be me, I never even knew about this place until I actually came here.” salor would respond with.
“It sure does look like you and besides it even says in your story it shows you were going to do this and you were there to steal a very variable book” the woman would say with a serious yet disappointed voice.
“It couldn’t be me, it couldn't be…” Salor would look down a bit and realize something. He realized that the “Salor” on the video thing didn’t have a part of his ear was gone where he took a gunshot to the ear. “I was framed…” Salor would whisper to himself.
“What was that defendant?” the Left guard would ask him.
“I was f-”
Before he could finish his sentence he would be cut off by the boy with him raising his hand.
“I think we are done here, there is fine and clean evidence that supports your guilty Salor.”
Now both the boy and the woman would start to speak together
“We, the guardians of the house of ideas have decided to give Salor who has committed rujukanria act 2, shall receive-”
Suddenly a massive explosion would come from the north-westish of where they were. The guards would quickly get ready in a battle stance as they rushed over to the explosion. The two beings would look at each other and decide that the explosion was more important than the Salor trial. The both of them would teleport away leaving Salor alone.
“Should I go see what that was…maybe not”
Salor would get up and start to walk in a random direction that was south-west. He would walk until he saw a section of the library that had the stories of people he knew like old friends and comrades from war. He would continue to walk down the bookshelves and would soon arrive at a specific spot. He would notice that his story was also here too but also by three other versions of him? He didn’t know why there were 3 other books of his but he wasn’t too interested in those but his. He would grab his book and it had a green cover which made him confused. It also had some gold on it for effect which made Salor feel cool. He would flip through the book and he would be shocked that it told every detail throughout his long life even when he went into that long sleep. He would flip until the pages went blank. As he did he could see that his book would have purple markings on one of the pages. He would read it and it was just the exact detail that was on the picture thing. He knew it, he was framed. He didn’t know how but he wanted to know who and how they did it. He would close the book and start to carry it around with him.
He would leave where that around was after a bit of walking he would be lost. Then another explosion could be heard and he saw a yellow, black, and purple cloaked figure dash in front of him and start to race out of the place. Salor would run away and hide and as he predicted, some guards would rush over to where the mysterious figure would dash off too. Luckily they didn’t notice him. What was strange is that those two other people from before weren’t with them.
Yet soon, Salor could feel something. It felt like an unknown force was pulling him to something or somewhere. After the guards went away, chasing the mysterious figure, Salor would sneak away. He would walk for a bit until he would reach a more, far bigger bookshelf. It would have stories of many villains, heroes, and even gods. Salor would keep on walking until he found a green glowing book. This was the thing that was calling him. He would grab the book from the shelf and on the cover it would have the words “The story of the god of stories loki”. It would have green and gold colors on the cover and back. He would look at his book and he realized, they would look the exact same but with different words. He would open the book and would start to read the story about the god of stories loki.
He would sit there reading the story for what felt like hours even though only 30 minutes had passed. He would be done with the book after sometime and a look of excitement. He also felt that his body was a little strange. He would spot a mirror and would walk to it. As soon he looked in the mirror he could tell he was far different. He would have gold horns that tore through two spots on his hat that came from a gold thing that lined up against his hairline. His clothes would completely change with them now being a green overcoat with gold on them and white fluff on top of the coller. His pants would change to gray-blueish pants with brown boots on. Finally, he would notice that he would grow a foot taller now being 5’5.
“Holy shit…I look cool.” Salor would say to himself as he did a little spin.
He would soon walk away with him holding both of the books in his hands. He would walk out of the area of bookshelves. He would continue to walk around a bit until he arrived back into the center of the place and he would see the same exact two beings from before floating in the air talking to each other.
“You think that the mysterious figure would come back again?” The boy would say to the girl.
“I don’t think so. Just by his smirk I could tell that he was satisfie”d with stealing his book.” She would reply with.
“That would be troublesome just by itself. We also have to deal with that salor-” The boy would reply with but stop his sentence when he looked over to Salor and notice his new appearance
“It seemed like he changed.”
“His tale did go into action.”
“What the hell are the both of you talking about?”
The two beings would look at each other, seeming like they were talking to each other through their minds. After a bit they would be done and look down at Salor as he looked on, crossing his arms.
“We have decided on something, Salor.” The woman would say.
“Yea what is it?”
The boy would speak up “prove yourself to us. You have a brand new life thanks to that book. Prove to us you can be the next god of stories and prove your innocence.”
“Next god of stories?” Salor would say to himself and look down. He didn’t know what he meant to be the next god of stories but he needs to prove his innocence to survive.
“What do I get if I do prove myself?”
“The act of rujukanria act 2 shall be dropped, you will have free access to the library, and the respect from the two of us.” The woman would say.
Salor would think to himself again. Getting free from his charges was good and he was interested in the library. He would also get their respect but he conflicted on that part.
“I accept” Salor would say looking up at the two beings.
“Good.” The boy would say.
Now both of the beings would be talking together “as the guardians of the house of ideas mojiama, the woman of peace of the house, and trejiama, the boy of order of the house. Shall see if you are worthy of innocence or you are guilty, now- “
They would bring their right and left arms respectively up, pointing to the sky and then back down to Salor. Some blood would come out of his mouth and as he looked down, he could see 4 bar-like things would be stabbed into Salor. One in his right knee, one in his left shoulder, one in the abdomen area, and finally one in the heart.
“Survive” The both of them would finish their sentence.
Salor would start falling backwards and as he did, a hole would appear on the ground. He would fall into it and would start to fall father and father away from the house of ideas. Blood would quickly leave his body but couldn’t cover them. He would continue to fall though all of space seeing many universes, planets and many many more. What felt like an eternity, he would land on something. It was the ground of the void. A splash of blood could be heard as even more blood would come out. He would soon start to lose consciousness but before he did, he could see a tall man that was black as night would approach him. He couldn’t tell what he was or what he was wearing for his vision would be blurry. Soon he would pass out with the mysterious man standing over him.
To be continued

A friend of mine that owns a brokerage needs help learning how Drayage works. I’m out of the logistics world but would love to make some extra money.
I wanted to see what the hourly/monthly rates you would charge.
Few more details:
Team of 6-9 brokers I’d be training. Not sure how many days I’d be in the office. 3-5. Their knowledge of Drayage is 1/10.
How much should I charge? How much would you charge?

I was diagnosed with Graves last November. At that point, my TSH was 0.008, T3 was 7.4 and T4 was 2.9. The doctor put me on 10 mg Methlmazole. Fast forward to May 1, 2023, a month-ish ago. TSH was 3.070, T3 3.5 and T4 1.2. Everything in normal range. Doc lowered the Methlmazole to 5 mg. I have gained 5 pounds in the last month. I lost 20 pounds while I was hyper. I’m wondering if this is normal, to gain back some of the weight, or could I possibly have gone hypo within the last month? I had an appointment with my PCP today, and he asked me what was going on that I gained 5 pounds since I saw him last month.( I have been seeing him for blood pressure monitoring.) I don’t see my Endocrinologist again until October. I can send her a message asking this same question, however, insurance has decided to charge for these messages. I thought I would ask here first if anyone has had the same experience before I contact her. I’m not sure how this disease “ works”, for lack of a better word. Any advice would be appreciated.

Hello everyone. Today I have here what remains of my airsoft collection. I'm going to be fully honest here, I'm not expecting to get very much for this, I just need it gone. These guns are somewhat damaged as well and could serve as parts, or even fixer-uppers. I would prefer the magazines go with their respective guns, but they can be purchased separately. Prices unfortunately do not include shipping. That will be calculated once we figure out where I'm sending the thing. Here is what I have available, I will be updating this list as things are sold:
Link for pics: https://imgur.com/a/1j2xIYe
Golden Eagle Scattergun M870 Gas-Powered Shotgun - $55 with magazines, $50 without
- Missing green gas tank
- Rear O-sight is squished
- Black finish is heavily damaged
- Rear butt stock pad clip is broken
- Handgrip wobbles
Comes with 7 30-round shotgun shell magazines, or these can be bought separately for $5
CYMA Thompson M1A1 Full Metal Electric Submachine Gun - $65 with mags, $60 without
- Multiple screws missing on stock & butt plate
- Charging handle broken off (cosmetic issue only)
- Very bad scratches on top of receiver
Comes with 2 110-round midcap magazines, or these can be bought separately for $10
Tokyo Marui Desert Eagle Gas Blowback Pistol - $105 with mags, $80 without
- Missing front sight post
- Slide catch is heavily worn
- Recoil spring is weak
Comes with 2 28-round gas magazines, or these can be bought separately for $35
Umarex/IWI Licensed TAVOR TAR-21 AEG Rifle - $120 with mags, $100 without
- Charging handle broken off (makes access to hopup a little difficult but not impossible)
- Safety switch sometimes sticks
Comes with 3 midcap M4-style magazines (unsure of capacity but I think 120) and 1 KWA K120 magazine, or these can be bought separately for $30
No-name dual stick syle adjustable stock for M4 style rifles - $10
If you would like to purchase this all at once, I will give it to you for $200 plus shipping. Thank you for your time and have a wonderful day.

There's a lot of conversations about which classes are powerful, tiers, etc. This isn't about that. These are a few personal observations about where the design of the class seems to contradict itself, or provides few/no options to players. These could probably be improved.
7 reasons weapon swapping is in a bad place

1. In its basic form, it provides no inherent value. There is no incentive to swap weapons.
2. Ideally, each attack uses the player's most powerful weapon. Some skills have weapon type restrictions (bludgeoning/slashing).
3. There are no aspects interacting with this system directly (e.g. "1h slashing also counts as bludgeoning").
4. Building around weapon swapping (Walking Arsenal) requires very stable gear (high level), you can't really rely on multiple weapons being similar in power when you frequently change them.
5. This system works against weapon expertise since we can only have one weapon expertise enabled, which can only apply to one weapon.
6. Further, almost all builds can only fit 2 direct damage skills into their build, as barb relies heavily on self-buffs to survive and deal damage. Swapping requires at least 3, with one of the 3 allowing the opposite type of the other two (slashing vs. bludgeoning).
7. Finally, the only basic skill which is in a good place is Lunging Strike, since barbs have such a high demand for mobility (melee), and low availability of mobility (long cooldowns without large investment).

Some problems with basic skills

1. Everyone uses lunging strike because the class does not function without its mobility
2. Frenzy's attack speed buff is so short it can't actually be used as an off-skill for the buff. Since lucky hit is normalized to the increased speed, it actually doesn't even really benefit much from its own attack speed mechanic, instead making it a basic skill which requires time to ramp, which is very strange.
3. Bash is designed around stuns, which has extremely low/no impact on gameplay. Stun is a defensive mechanic, and it generally only affects a small number of enemies at once, for a very short time (or merely increases the boss's stagger). Investing is a waste outside of (maybe) equal level PvP, or some kind of exotic stun-support build for extremely specialized groups of players.

A small proposal from me, would be to consider making all basic skills 'lunge' like lunging strike, and rework lunging strike somehow.
Some problems with core skills

1. The class seems designed so that it should only use one core skill. That's fine, but some of the core skills don't stand up to different types of content well.
2. Rend has a very small and difficult to target AoE; when surrounded by enemies, it's often the case that name locking (skills centering their targeting not where you click on PC, but on the nearest enemy to your cursor) cause the skill to miss or be inaccurate. If skills centered their targeting on your cursor instead of an enemy near your cursor, it would probably be a lot better for players on PC.
3. Upheaval seems like it's mostly useful in the overworld or for some large groups of small enemies. Maybe it needs to be improved for when you use it to hit just one enemy.
4. Double swing is surprisingly small range, and requires dual wield (two weapons). Finding two good weapons is a lot harder than finding one good two-hander. The benefits it provides are all either relatively insignificant, or easier to achieve elsewhere due to the conditions placed on them.

Some problems with other utility skills in defensive, brawling, and weapon mastery categories

1. We get ~3 slots for utility skills. This is because lunging strike, a core skill, and an ultimate skill are more or less required. Shouts and defensives dominate this part of the bar, because we must generate resources, and survive, and mostly, shouts provide those things.
2. Too much of iron skin's power is provided by aspects, making it a worse choice than e.g. challenging shout. Also, Temerity is such a strong unique that iron skin is an unjustifiable investment.
3. Ground stomp is an aoe stun. Stuns generally aren't very useful outside of equal-level PvP. The aspects related to ground stomp provide additional damage for it, but unfortunately they're the variety of aspect which changes based on the item power of the item it was taken from. This makes it more difficult to rely on as a primary source of power. The walking arsenal aspect for it is interesting, but a very hard sell with a 30 second timer. Even rank ~13 ground stomp is relatively unimpressive, and again mostly useless against bosses.
4. Kick is almost good with power kick, except it still doesn't count as a core skill, so it doesn't synergize with any of your keystones, and it locks out your fury for spending on cores. Also, even with those downsides, it still has two charges and a big cooldown. Even without going power kick, the button isn't worth pressing - generally knockbacks are counterproductive to Barb (and other class's) damage. We prefer vacuum. Knockdown is effectively stun, so it's not worth much in PvE. Maybe this skill is okay in equal-level PvP.
5. I think many people want Leap to be good. With lunging strike, the mobility is mostly redundant/unnecessary. If we didn't have lunging strike, the cooldown would be too long on Leap to make it work, really, without a ton of investment. It seems weird to need to invest a lot just to be able to engage your enemies. Some of the aspects read okay for it, but ultimately the dps and utility on this skill are not useful. With the right investment, it's good for resource generation. That seems like the best reason to run it today, which has nothing to do with what makes leap, well, leap.
6. Charge is problematic for all the reasons leap and ground stomp are problematic. Honestly, if all three of these skills vacuumed at the end (end of charge, end of leap, before or after ground stomp), they would be wildly more usable. Similarly, if the earthquake aspects related to them could be applied to items without worrying about what item power the aspect came from, it would be a lot more usable. Maybe at level 100 fully investing in these mechanics could work, but it seems unlikely given how they behave today.
7. Steel grasp, even with the unique, doesn't really fulfill the expectations set by its description. I don't see much of a reason to use it outside of pvp.

Rupture, and weapon mastery tier in general
Rupture is ineffective because there is no way to scale bleed duration; any moment that could be used to apply rupture could be used to stack more bleeds, and the maximum bleed duration is 5 seconds; all of them tick at the same time. There's no reason to use it unless you're invested in either the explosion or a 4 second attack speed buff. If the buff were longer based on number of bleeds, it might be worth it. If we could scale bleed duration, it would definitely be worth it. It's also weird that the class has an extra skill for removing bleeds. It seems very odd. It's also a bit weird to not see a bludgeoning weapon based skill in the weapon mastery tier which applies daze and vulnerable or something. Like some kind of armor crush.
Keystone passives

1. The walking arsenal keystone..I really don't know what's going on with that design direction but it needs a rework, badly.
2. Unconstrained...again, this one feels a bit uncreative. Why do we care if berserking is longer? Our build will either apply it consistently, so duration doesn't matter, or it won't. It's trivial to get nearly 100% uptime on berserking if you want it, and it's honestly not even that great to begin with.
3. Gushing Wounds bleed keystone requires crit and crit damage investment, which seems fine, but is only achievable in later tiers of gear; would be nice if this was more effective earlier on
4. Unbridled Rage is the bread and butter for most players. It works because of how generic it is - you always have to have a core skill, and it turns up the damage and resource costs. It's boring, but effective. One major problem is that because this keystone exists and is strong, any build which doesn't rely on a core skill for damage is immediately a bit of a joke. E.g. even if you wanted to use all brawling skills, you'd have a hard time getting much value out of any of the existing keystone passives.

I keep reading anecdotes around the internet (Credit Karma, etc) about how people immediately pay off the charges on their credit card after using them. I heard actor Ben Stein say as much on NPR years ago. I got a good laugh hearing him talk about being disliked by credit card companies for paying down his balances right away, denying them any income from interest.
Going by context, I assume they are talking about the same day. It sounds like a great idea, except is it actually a real thing?
I am probably mistaken, but I could swear that my bank issued credit card (not debit card) used to clear pending transactions within 24 hours. I'd pay the balance down as quickly as possible. At some point in the past few months, credit card transactions started taking anywhere from 3-5 days before clearing. That doesn't work in my favor if I'm trying to build up my credit by using my card, even sparingly, and paying down the balance ASAP.
I'm just curious if the whole paying off the credit card balance immediately is a thing of the past? Or was it always an urban myth? And if not, is it normal for different credit cards to take differing periods of time to clear pending transactions?

Source
I'm Iskarel. I maintain the PvE Thief builds and guides on Snow Crows
With a PvE perspective, I'm going to run through the changes, discuss their impact, and talk about current meta builds and how they're impacted.
Want the build-by-build cliff notes? Skip to the bottom, search for "tl;dr"
I know this is a lot. Think of it as a reference document.
A LOT has changed. The builds aren't unrecognizable but the texture has changed almost across the board.

Flanking is Dead (for most endgame bosse)

To make them more reliable in endgame PvE content, all effects that benefit when the player strikes from the flank or from behind now always apply their benefits when striking defiant foes.

Not all players know that "flanking" or "from behind or the sides" just means—don't be in front of the target.
Ever used a build with Thief runes? Just don't stand directly in front of the target.
What fewer players will know is that there's a small set of skills that actually need you to be ~180-degrees behind your target.

• Thief Backstab (deals double damage from behind)
• Thief Sword Stealth Attack (only dazes from behind)
• Ranger Greatsword Hilt (dazes from the front, stuns from behind. This basically doesn't matter in PvE)
• Mesmer Downstate phantasm (deals more damage if the phantasm hits from behind. Hey it's like a Thief!)

Which way does Keep Construct face when it descends back to the arena after the orb-rift-push phase?
Which way does Sabetha face during her Flame Wall?
I'm not going to answer these questions because the answers don't matter anymore! This skill expression is now gone.
Just backstab from any angle.
Ah but "defiant foes"? What isn't included there?
Can you backstab Primordus in the Harvest Temple strike if your group stays on the left vs right side, when looking from the center towards the dragon?

You would have to be on the right side. The left is the dragon's face.

Which way does Conjured Amalgamate face?

When approaching CA's platform, it is facing to your right. This also applies to the hands. Stand on the left side of the platform, and "above" the hands (closer to the portal leading away from this encounter).

Which way do the hands on Adina face?

2 o'clock (north), 5 o'clock (northwest), 7 o'clock (south), 10 o'clock (southeast)
No, I don't know why.
Just use your rifle and pierce two hands with Spotter's Shot + Death's Judgment! That's better than remembering these facing positions.

These are non-defiant "prop" type enemies. Also included here is Drakkar, the Octovine, and Tequatl. IIRC.
BTW Drakkar is made up 17 prop pieces, and you can only cast Deadeye's Mark on one of them. Don't play Deadeye here, you're trolling yourself. :D

Acrobatics Mental Gymnastics

Yeah this ain't it, chief. This is still a defensive and mobility-oriented traitline.
The damage modifier in Endless Stamina can't compete with Deadly Arts or Critical Strikes, even when combined with the Power in Swinder's Equilibrium.
The other stuff is maybe interesting for solo open world champions but Shadow Arts is already quite capable at that, and Condition Thief has a lot more toys to work with when solo compared to Power.
It's something but this traitline still feels ironically directionless.

Improvisational Theater of War

Interesting! We can now use this traitline predictably, resetting the cooldown of all or utility skills. On the surface that's good because it means we'll always get value out of the reset...unless our skill uses are staggered. More on that later.

Mag Bomb Delenda Est.

Currently this skill's damage-per-cast-time is roughly double that of Daredevil Staff 2, Weakening Charge. Notably, the cast time is short because it pulses damage.
The coefficient we have on the wiki, drawn from the Game's API, is 4.10. ANet lists a 1.50 (per hit, so 4.50 total) nerfed to 0.70. So... Uh...
Let's say Throw Magnetic Bomb's damage is nerfed to 50% of its current damage. Or there about.
So next patch, one Throw Magnetic Bomb is close to the damage of one Staff 2, but the damage comes out over time (during our Assassin Signet burst) and the cast animation is faster than Staff 2.

But is it worth losing Executioner?
Probably not. Executioner is approximately 9.52% damage on a fight that spends 50% of its time above 50% target HP and 50% of time below (due to Ferocious Strikes).
That's a lot of damage to be made up by another use of a stolen skill!

Daredevil's Bound to be Good

Bound: Increased power coefficient from 1.75 to 3.5

This ratchets up the damage of our dodge so that it beats the damage-per-cast-time of Punishing Strikes (skill 1 part C) and Staff 5, while still losing to Staff Strike and Staff Bash (skill 1 parts A/B), Staff 2, and Fist Flurry/Palm Strike.
This damage increase is valuable because

• (A) it makes dodging better for damage, on top of the damage modifiers provided by Havoc Specialist and Bounding Dodger
• (B) if we get excess endurance from our helpful allies, burning it off to maintain our modifiers hurts our DPS less on the future patch.

Auto chain go brrrr

Staff Strike, Staff Bash: Increased power coefficient.

... Uh oh.
This increase the DPS of the first and second part of the chain well beyond the last hit.
The optimal DPS rotation now involves interrupting the chain after the 2nd hit.
That's not easy to do on most professions, which have a limited number of viable interrupts, but we're Thief, baby!
Staff Strike, Staff Bash, Weakening Charge. Repeat. Throw in a Fist Flurry. Save your Palm Strike. Yeah. This sort of thing.
Calculations done by REMagic42 ( training-accident-36 ) show the following

• new auto chain interrupt rotation: 40,252
• old benchmark rotation: 38,593

A not insignificant DPS increase provided by this (unintended?) balance predicament.
You could just not do this. That's up to you. The build is getting buffed by ~4,000 DPS next patch but it still has all the old problems. Don't know those? Read here

Let's Get Physical (Lights out, follow the noise)

Various Physical Skill cooldown reductions

These are neat and strictly a positive.
Left, a great player who provides benchmarks for Power and Condition Daredevil, already tested Condition Daredevil with cooldown-traited Impairing Daggers and found them simply worse in group content vs Devourer Venom. You can read more on his benchmark.
So the Impairing Daggers cooldown reduction (CDR) doesn't matter to us.
A cooldown reduction for Channeled Vigor would've been cool!

This skill basically gives you a get-out-of-jail-free dodge if you're ever scared that burning all your dodges for Havoc Specialist will leave you vulnerable. You can get a dodge with Withdraw on a shorter cooldown but that travels backwards from your facing direction which can be scary.
This skill is also very useful for maintaining Lotus Training uptime when playing Condition Daredevil. If you can't keep hitting the boss with your auto-attack chain and F1 Steal, you will run out of endurance and lose your condition damage buff. Use Channeled Vigor to maintain buff uptime when you can't hit the boss. (This tip comes from Left!)

Impact Strike is still worse defiance-bar to cooldown ratio vs Basilisk Venom, but any improvement is nice. This skill is good when you can't guarantee all hits of Basilisk Venom will hit your target, or when you need to CC more frequently than Basilisk's cooldown allows.

Death-onate Plasma and "Boon Thief"

Farewell, Boon Thief. Without Quickness, we can no longer role-compress all those shiny boons in Plasma into a Quickness Build.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the damage of Detonate Plasma will not be worth its cast time purely from a DPS perspective, especially on a Condition Build, but you might still get some boon uptime from Daredevils on fights like Matthias and Twin Largos' Kenut.
You can now permanently sunset your Celestial/Ritualist gear for Boon Thief. Will you use it for Alacrity Specter later? I don't now, I don't know how much Alacrity is given by that trait. We'll talk more later. :)

Also Icebrood Saga exists

These really don't matter. Unstable Reagent is maybe a DPS increase, I don't have a log with it for cast time.
This is NOT Unstable Artifact BTW. That skill is still worth using for both Power and Condition DPS.
Cursed Artifact is like throw-Plaguelands, and an Ethereal field at that. It's free real estate on the Condition Build.
Time in a Bottle is squad-wide alacrity AND quickness. Take that, Chronomancer! It's only found in Cold War and randomly in EoD strikes. :)

Dumbed-down-eye

Deadeye Stolen Skill splash support

Stolen Skills now grant their beneficial effects around the caster.

These are mostly "splash" uptimes of boons, but you can also get superspeed and a modest heal. Neat! Deadeye providing a token amount of squad value beyond its DPS and CC output.

Deadeye Malicious Intent buff

Malicious Intent: Increased Malice gain from 1 to 2 in PvE only

This is actually big!
Firstly, this increases the damage dealt by the lower difficulty Be Quick or Be Killed Dagger Deadeye rotation (if you've ever heard someone described Dagger Deadeye as 5111151115111, that's this).

1 more Malice pip after each Mark and Stealth attack boost the damage modifier of Malicious Backstab. I don't have a quick estimate for this increase yet.

Secondly, this is wonderful for the Dagger-Dagger Maleficent Seven rotation.

All Power Dagger skills (Heartseeker, Dancing Dagger, Cloak & Dagger) are single-damage packet skills (with the exception of Dancing Dagger when bounced from your main target, to another enemy, and back to your main target). This means they have only one chance to score a crit, and thus only one chance to earn 2 Malice instead of 1.
Power Thief derives 15% critical chance from Critical Strikes' Keen Observer trait, which demands the player stay above 75% HP. You won't have 100% uptime of this trait in many raid fights, especially if your healer is slacking. If the current Dagger Deadeye benchmark was performed at 75% player HP, without drastically altering gear to accommodate for the missing critical chance, the benchmark could lose up to 12,000 DPS!, dropping it nearly into support territory.
This Malicious Intent buff gives you a safety cushion for one of those Initiative skills to score a non-crit, making the rotation more robust in endgame encounters. It does NOT reduce the minimum number of Initiative skills needed to reach maximum Malice: that is still 3 with Malicious Intent and 4 without. It does reduce the maximum needed by 1 skill, which is also great!

Quickly Fire For Effect

This trait no longer requires a target to grant boons to allies.

Er, it doesn't require one right now. Specifically, if you Mark a target, you can use your F2 and gain boons even if your stolen skill is obstructed by terrain. If you have your enemy targeted while outside 1,500 range you will get an out of range error that stops you from casting F2, but simply untargeting the enemy will let you use the skill to get boons. If you are obstructed or out of range, you don't hit the target.
I assume what this means is that if you do NOT have a marked target, you can cast a cantrip to get a new F2. That's cool and rather handy for the new Quickness build.

Shadow Flare isn't real, it can't hurt you

Shadow Flare: Reduced cooldown from 30 to 20 seconds. This skill only damages once instead of pulsing. Activate the flip-over Shadow Swap to trigger another damage instance from your original location.

Deadeye dumbed down. Navigating self-reveal with pulsing damage skills on DPS Deadeye has been a hallmark of modern builds for several years—Shadow Flare for Power, Thousand Needles for Condition.
That problem is now eliminated for Power. You don't need to know the timing, you don't need to know where to throw Shadow Flare. Just Do your backstab, cast Shadow Flare for one damage packet, cast it again, go for another Backstab. No fuss, no skill expression, no frustration, no learning curve.
I don't like this change, I understand why other people like this change. I think it's dumb to change this. If you don't like self-reveal, consider not playing the class that uses Stealth and Revealed for its DPS output.

Fun in the Chamber

One in the Chamber: This trait now also increase the damage of F2 Stolen Skills in addition to its previous effects

In case anyone is unfamiliar with Deadeye—it doesn't have access to any core Stolen Skills. No Mag Bombs here!
This is a nice perk. The important thing is that this trait gives us an extra F2 charge every time we use a Stolen Skill...That's for Quickness.
This trait is also valuable to Condition Deadeye builds (particularly since there's a 4/9 chance they get a stolen skill that applies damaging conditions!) and to Power Pistol-Pistol Deadeye. See more of that here.

Binding Shadow, my beloved

Binding Shadow - Reduced cooldown from 30 to20 seconds in PvE.

Cool! I love—

This skill now immobilizes marked targets instead of knocking them down

Oh. Uhhh it already immobilized them. I assume it immobilizes them more? That sucks, this was an amazing breakbar skill, particular on Condition Deadeye where it applied several poison stacks (natively, and via Panic Strike with Immobilize) and gave an extra F2 charge from One in the Chamber.
It's lower cooldown on boonstrip which is neat? Matches No Pain No Gain time in Fractals, I suppose.
Just use a Power Mesmer, they passively breathe boonstrip.

Quickness Deadeye builds

Three options!
Oops! All cantrips

This option will spam out cantrip like nobody's business to meet the voracious demand of Might uptime.
Fire For Effect grants 8 stacks of Might for 12 seconds. The with-Alacrity cooldown of Cantrips are: 16 (Binding Shadow, Shadow Flare), 20 seconds (Malicious Restoration heal), 25 seconds (Mercy, Shadow Gust). When using Mercy, the cooldown of F1 is effectively the cooldown of Mercy, plus minimally the cast time of the F2, plus the cast time of F1 again.
So some of our Might is locked behind 25+ seconds. Building for 100% Might Duration would be devastating for our DPS output. We could cover 100% Might uptime with a single trio of F2 casts anyway—Binding Shadow, Malicious Restoration, Shadow Flare—but that would not take tactical advantage of the natural Deadeye's Mark cooldown.
Instead, we'll cover Quickness with two sets of F2 casts, staggered across the duration of our Might stacks. Left has an old benchmark demonstrating this technique.

So that's our 24-might upkeep option. It's not pretty, and it's Cantrip spam. ANet said we wouldn't have this in the game anymore.
Well, what if we don't have to generate Might?
Then we have two options:
3 cantrips with no Improvisation

This option will maintain a burst of 24 might as we apply quickness, or we can space out the stolen skills to maintain at least 8 stacks indefinitely. Sounds pretty good!

Improvisation

We'll probably still be using Shadow Flare because it's just good damage, and Improvisation selects for builds that use active utility skills, not passive signets. We might even be able to use Malicious Intent instead of One in the Chamber for this build, earning us more damage on Malicious Backstab.

So we have options.

Quickness Deadeye weapon options (We don't have those! )

Maleficent Seven is the only equalizer at work that allows bad weapons to do somewhat okay, and without that, we're back to shopping with the to the usual harsh restriction of "the best single skill out of all these weapons crushes the validity of all other options".
Stealth attacks? Naw, just spam F2s without Malice.
"Filler" initiative skills used to build up to an Initiative reset at max Malice? Nope, don't care, whatever has the best initiative-to-damage ratio is what we're running.
Thief Dagger is about matched with Thief sword for auto attack damage but Dagger is home to the centralizing Cloak & Dagger → Backstab combo. This does huge damage from any direction—flanking is gone!
Sword, by contrast, suffers a DPS loss when using any dual wield skill, Headshot, or Black Powder. The only DPS gain skills are Cloak & Dagger (but the stealth attack for sword is BARELY worth using, you could actually just cast Cloak & Dagger twice in a row and do just as well), and Sword 2...without using the return-to shadowstep. Meaning Sword 2 has a 15-second cooldown. Just to do slightly more than the auto-attack.
Need CC? Pack an off-hand pistol and fill time with auto-attacks, they're very good.
What about Pistol?

It's just weaker.

Shortbow?

It sucks really bad against single targets.

Rifle? This is the sniper spec!

It sucks if you don't have Maleficent Seven for infinite Initiative and either stealth utility skills or Silent Scope to unlock Death's Judgment.

Specter, rant about single-target/ally-target support

Ally-targeted scepter skills now also grant a lesser effect to additional allies in a radius around the target.

I don't know why ANet is so obsessed with single target support for PvE Specter, but they'll learn its untenable eventually. They've been gradually walking back the single target focus ever since release, and we are now about 15 months past Specter's official release and coming up on 2 years since it's beta.
Ally-targeting is clunky.
Single-target support is nonviable. We have encounters that apply arena damage to all players, and each player in the squad can take damage from the same AoE and it's the healer's job to keep the whole team up.
A "lesser effect". Reduced duration? Great, what's the point of that? You might as well just make it all the reduced duration.
Does "splashed" Shadow Sap not even grant protection to the other allies? Great, we won't use it.
Hopefully this will just be something like reduced Barrier or Healing, and the Boons are intact, but it's already been confirmed by the new member of the design team, Trig, on a Twitch Stream (Mighty Teapot's?) that Endless Night will not give Quickness to "splashed" allies.
Maybe this skill shouldn't give quickness at all. Why is the design team not skill splitting? What are they afraid of?

The Dark Side of Scepter Splash

If you paid attention to Specter during its beta testing, you might be aware of a very weird build that used Endless Night (Scepter Pistol dual wield beam skill that granted quickness and 7-packets of Barrier to 3 allies, if you could pierce through the allies).
This rotation was initially theorycrafted by Left when Specter was first showed off. I did some early proof-of-concept on the build, then Left took it over and improved it to around 51,000 DPS.
That's a lot of damage!
Watch that video briefly, and notice how I swap between the enemy and my allies, applying one skill to the target then the Endless Night beam to my allies.
When Specter applies barrier to an ally, they receive a stack of Rotwallow Venom, which applies a short-duration stack of torment to a single enemy just like normal venoms.
Each cast of Endless Night back then was 21 applications of Rotwallow Venom, with more Torment duration than we have now.
ANet killed that build back during beta by making the beam target a single enemy, nerfing the quickness application, nerfing Rotwallow Venom duration, nerfing Specter's Torment damage modifier, nerfing Consume Shadows to require charging up.... The list goes on.
Why do I bring this up?

Scepter Autos on Allies

Currently the scepter auto chain applies 54 seconds of Torment (in the form of multiple stacks). If the scepter auto chain can instead apply barrier to 3 allies, then this balloons to 72 seconds without Strength of Shadows, or 108 seconds with Strength of Shadows.
Yes.
The auto-attack chain will be twice as strong when targeting allies, vs targeting the enemy.
Endless Night is not worth using against an enemy target, but it might be worth using on allies. This rotation won't have room for auto attacks, so I'm not pinning any hopes to this.
No, the optimal damage rotation will probably be Twilight combo, Siphon, and Shroud skills on the enemy, then filling time with Scepter skills on allies. We will probably spend less time in Shroud because those autos are just so cracked...

Second Opinion, moving away from Consume Shadows

Ever since beta all forms of Specter have run Consume Shadows—Alacrity, DPS, Heal. This is because Consume Shadows can apply barrier to allies, giving them Rotwallow venom. The other adept traits are purely defensive, so they're not used by the DPS and Alacrity builds...and Consume Shadows is an extremely potent healing tool. So potent, it's been nerfed repeatedly!

Charged time reduced from instant to 4 seconds, maximum shroud cut by more than 50%, conversion ratio reduced from 100 to 50%

Second Opinion will grant bonus Condition Damage, more with a Scepter. This should be, at minimum, +80/+80, which will beat the ~800 DPS provided by perfect Rotwallow Venom application from Consume Shadows.
Perfect?

If your allies are too injured and Consume Shadows only heals them overflowing into Barrier, you won't give them Rotwallow.

Traversing Dusk no longer gives Alacrity

This is just a heal trait now. That's just what it does.

Shadestep is the new Alacrity trait

Oh. Uh. I'll keep it quick.

1. This reduces our gameplay from 2 separate rotations with their own quirks and different Shroud lengths, to 1—the DPS rotation.

How do you give alacrity? Just go into shroud and push buttons.
How do you do DPS? Just go into shroud and push buttons.
Alacrity Specter's Well cooldowns were inaccessible inside Shadow Shroud because we inherited a shroud, not just a kit like Druid's Celestial Avatar or Holosmith's Photon Forge.
Druid Spirits off cooldown while in CA? Don't care, you can push em.
Specter wells off cooldown while in Shadow Shroud? You might be gaining DPS from shroud skills, or healing from Consume Shadows, but you're losing Alacrity uptime. Is that tradeoff worth it?
Doesn't matter anymore. Just do the benchmark DPS rotation.
You're too slow? Then your alacrity uptime will suffer. You need to be on pace with going in and out of shroud, just like the DPS rotation. Difference is, if you're bad at this, it's going to frustrate other people.
This is not the hardest rotation in game to optimize and you of course have the option to make it easier with Ritualist gear (which you should do anyway if you plan to still run Consume Shadows, will be a two-fold personal DPS loss).

\2. Ever been kicked out of Shroud by incoming damage in a raid/strike/open world meta? No more Alacrity uptime for you. Better refill your Shadow Force quickly—and Larcenous Torment generates Shadow Force FAR more slowly than Traversing Dusk

Fun fact: Traversing Dusk's 1% Shadow Force per ally in your shadowstep scales indefinitely, not just up to 5 players. That gives you colossal Shadow Force generation in crowded metas and even raids.

Want to use your Siphon on ally? No you don't, that's valuable Shadow Force generation you need to maintain tempo for Alacrity.
Again, you can wear Ritualist gear to soften this loss.
Want to have the utility of Well of Bounty? Well, previously that utility was tied to your Alacrity uptime, your DPS uptime (lingering outside shroud for Well of Bounty was a loss), and your healing output (Traversing Dusk, and maintaining tempo in/out of Shadow Shroud for Consume Shadows).
Now you can take Well of Bounty and have it on demand, at a DPS loss.
Previously you could have just take advantage of the long Stability duration to cast this well early, or delay it slightly to cover the mechanic.

How much DPS will ANet allow this build to have?
We don't know. And now it's DPS is very closely tied to the DPS build because they're doing nearly the exact same thing.
This has never happened to Firebrand, trust me.

tl;dr It's dangerous to read all that up there! Skip to here!

Condition Daredevil

Unchanged by Impairing Daggers cooldown reduction

Power Daredevil

Buffed to ~38.6 if you do the old rotation.
Buffed to 40.2 if you do the new degenerate 1a 1b 2 1a 1b 2 rotation that interrupts our auto chain.
Still screwed by all the usual stuff.
Mag Bomb damage normalized. Cool. Still amazing utility on that skill.

Boon Thief

Dead. Deadeye killed it.

Power Dagger Deadeye

Much easier to play. Splashes some cute boons onto its subgroup, at random. Have to see if Shadow Flare is still worth using. Hopefully, right?

Power Rifle Deadeye

Silent Scope uses Shadow Flare, I hope that's still worth using.
No need to flank with Premeditation Rifle is nice. Swapping Impact to an Accuracy sigil (or not doing that, and losing crit chance) was ~1,200 DPS loss, so that's avoided. I don't mind losing flanking here that much because Flanking wasn't make-or-break adrenaline pumping like dagger. It was just a boring loss.

Quickness Deadeye

I hope you like pushing 5 and 1 a whole lot because that's almost all this is. Also pushing cantrips for F2 charges to provide quickness.
It will play okay, but pretttttttttty similar to utility-spam builds that people hate, with the added bonus of casting TWO skills for every application of quickness.
You can tune this to your liking BUT

IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MANY WAYS THIS GAME'S ENEMIES CAN APPLY REVEALED TO YOU THEN YOU'RE IN FOR A TREAT WHEN YOU PICK UP QUICKNESS DEADEYE NEXT PATCH :D

It won't really prevent you from applying quickness but it will tank your DPS and fracture your soul.
One of us. One of us!
This is getting no changes, by the way. It'd be a huge amount of effort from the studio's programmers for one elite spec, for one profession, largely in one game mode (instanced PvE), with a small player base.
Probably just not happening. Not a question of "want to", it's a question of resource management AND doing this right.
Remember stealth-tanking Old Lion's Court? Because they didn't apply Revealed, then they only applied Revealed once and Deadeye just Shadow Melded out of it?

DPS Specter

Buffed by Second Opinion, dubiously buffed by targeting allies with the auto chain.
You can still run Consume Shadows for team healing/barrier.

Alacrity Specter

I don't know. Presumably the shroud skills will allow us to provide at least 50% uptime with a non-degenerate rotation (one that doesn't have us spending all our time in shroud). Said degenerate rotation is naturally policed by the fact our shroud absorbs incoming damage.
Will it run Consume Shadows? Not for optimal damage anymore.

Alac Share Specter

Just change your grandmaster from Strength of Shadows to Shadestep and do the normal rotation. Should do at least 50% uptime, unless Alac specter is just nonviable and can't maintain Alacrity.

now with so many modules available on good lock which allow us to further customized our phone and provides better user experience, i hope that samsung could soon introduce another module to let us customize:

1. phone lock/unlock sound
2. charging/dock sound
3. low battery notification sound
4. allow us to change the low battery % notification instead of 15% as some would prefer to start charging at higher % like 20% or 30%
5. send notification when battery is fully charge

​
https://preview.redd.it/tn8fb4dky35b1.png?width=1671&format=png&auto=webp&s=ed12e24edb6af51b9917acf3aea498e737e849a2
This isn't meant to be "definitive", it's simply based on my own experience within the event so far.
I'm aware that some producers shown may produce higher-level items (the L5 picnic basket sometimes throwing L2 cutlery, for example) but the point for myself when making this was to find out which producers make which item chains in general.
If you spot something I got wrong, please feel free to point it out. No hard feelings :)
Some producers create lower-level items within their own chain (the Slice of Watermelon in the Ingredients chain, and Pocket Cutlery set in the Cutlery chain) and in THESE instances I showed that those producers may create any of the L1-L3 items.
Some items are used to "feed" other items, similar to other items in past events. These are shown by red arrows which "feed" into the top of the producer listed (picnic table or unlit campfire)
It's been said before but I want to say again in case anyone has missed it: THE CAMPFIRE HAS A FIVE (5) MINUTE TIMER ONCE YOU ADD THE SECOND INGREDIENT. Make sure you do not add the second item if you are low on energy, and definitely do NOT use a time skip booster after activating your campfire. The fire has infinite charges and will keep giving you marshmallows (or occasionally rattan) for as many times as you can tap it... if you have any "infinite energy" balls, get them ready!
Some producers downgrade themselves (Burger & Fries, and Honey Jar) and these are shown as well as how many taps it takes before they downgrade. I realized that watermelon also downgrades but I didn't show that in this image... oops?
Hopefully this helps other people. Cheers!

( IDK how to reddit good, lots of good comments on my first post in /HomeImprovement this is really a safety psa Post link https://www.reddit.com/HomeImprovement/comments/145k3b7/how_we_almost_died_and_or_lost_our_house_aka_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button )
Hi all, just a quick preface, I'm only posting this incase someone else tries to search for this because I was at it for hours and it might save someone's life. I'm so glad we were home and it didn't happen in the middle of the night. I feel like writing it like a story so I'm gonna. Tldr at bottom.
This morning I was up early as I've been for the last few days, my cat just got spayed so I've been sleeping in little spurts with her as much as possible.
It was around 8am or so at this point after sitting with her in the living room just zoning out on my phone killing time with my cat and wife napping beside me when out of nowhere I get hit with a smell, hard.
Kinda hammy. Kinda like a ham that's just about to go bad or just turned bad. It filled the entire house. It was serious. Filled the house in a matter of minutes. I jokingly said to my cat "Are you smelly? Do your farts smell like old ham or something?" She replied "meow" as she usually does as she's quite vocal. This discussion woke my wife who I asked, "Do you smell some old ham or something?"
Before she can even open her eyes the smell intensifies. It's now so strong it's making me feel a bit nauseous."Yeah what is that" she says popping up pretty quickly looking puzzled or disgusted. "It literally just came out of nowhere and it's getting waaay worse by, like, the minute." I responded.
So we open the door and screen door window quickly, place a fan in front of it. By this point it's making me feel worse, my mouths watering a slight amount like I'm going to vomit if it gets much worse.
We are both running around the house trying to figure out where the hell this smell is coming from. She mentions it has a slight paint thinner-esque smell to it but I didn't really smell anything but overwhelming old ham.
We had our HVAC system checked out a few weeks ago and found out it was leaking coolant and after googling weird smells in the house with no results about ham she found the coolant can smell like paint thinner among other things however ham was not on the list so I call the guy who did the HVAC work anyway just to see what he thought.
He basically said it should be odorless and would stop by anyway Monday as he was visiting family and took the day and weekend to do so. So we start googling like crazy. Not finding anything but click bait articles about the usual bad house smells, you know dead animals in the vents, gas leaks, sewage fumes, fishy-smelling electrical fires and the usual stuff. I tried every key word I could think of to get different results.
Dead animals don't bother me, my stomachs pretty strong when it comes to that, didn't smell fishy, if it was sewage I figured I'd be blowing chunks as I'm pretty sensitive to the smell because of something gross that happened to me when I was young and it just didn't smell like sewage. We don't have gas so it wasn't that.
At this point I have no idea and I feel pretty awful so I decide to step out back and me and the wife basically both had the same idea at the same time to call the non-emergency fire department to as she's feeling weird too. They come out and have a gas and co2 meter thing that I'm sure checks for other stuff too with nothing showing up. They smell it too and I ask since they just got here if they smell it from the vent when I turn the AC on. Figured maybe a fresh nose in the place would be able to point it out if it did.
Nope the place smells less hammy to me almost as soon as the vents start to push air. They look around a bit more and have no idea what it could be or where it's coming from. At this point I'm stumped, they leave and it's back to Google. Finding almost nothing even close to what I have going on I decide to go underneath the house ( it's a trailer or mobile home ) and make sure nothing died under there or if I can even smell anything under there at all.
There was a couple cat poops from before we sealed up the side right I assume but no smell, nothing. At this point I'm clueless and not sure what to do or who to call but the smell is coming and going in waves now. Super strong to almost gone every 20 minutes or so except for one little spot in the kitchen it seemed to persist a bit. I'm checking everything I can at this point and it's just about 4pm.
I call the sewage company, maintenence comes to check the line and whatever. He comes in to see if he smells it and thinks it's sewage and after a bit he's not too sure. He recommends getting someone to check my air vents for something dead or left behind like a rodent or his meal and also to pour some water down the drains we haven't been using to make sure the traps are full and keeping sewage smell and fumes out just to be safe. I gladly take any advice I hear and have read so far and he leaves.
I start calling HVAC companies who are telling me they don't do dead animal removal in vents, and to call a pest removal company. What? Okay. So I call a pest company who tells me to call an HVAC company... who tells me to call pest control... who tells me to call animal control.. who tells me to call an HVAC company. I am still not sure who to call if you can't get into the vents easily and need them checked but it seems to be a different branch or kind of animal control but they're not answering.
I basically rip apart the kitchen, moving furniture, checking all the cupboards, the fridge, the dry food and anything I see. What about the water i left in the instant pot? No. Nothing. Anywhere. Just hammyness. The vents? Sure smells like fresh air.
I'm getting no where. It's almost 5:30 at this point, everything is closing or closed besides 24 hour places who are going to charge me an arm or two tonight and I have no clue about the weekend. I sadly sit down on the couch after I mess with the thermostat just trying to see if I can make it any better.
My wife steps outside because this wave is smacking her hard. At this point I had smelled a slightly chemical smell mixed in with the harsh hammyness a couple times but I don't recognize it at all. I'm thinking of dropping out the air duct myself, moving the fridge to check behind it. Everything. I get up to join her outside and that's when it happens.
ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzZzzZZZAP POP. It comes from the kitchen and instantly I know what it is. I look at my wife and say "of course, ham!" She's confused and asks "Ham? What was that noise" as I'm running toward the kitchen.
It was the vent light on the oven hood. You know the thing with a vent that probably has bacon grease and other food oils up in there. There's smoke and it smells HAMMY. I run to the breaker box and kill the power and we grab fire extinguishers. Luckily no fire. But we almost left the house to go to my mom's or a hotel until we could get it looked at several times but something kept telling me not to leave. And I'm really glad we didn't.
TL;DR house started to smell like almost bad ham and paint thinner or some kind of chemicals possibly sewage in a matter of minutes, turns out range hood was trying to start an electrical fire.
Moral of the story is if you smell slightly bad food and chemicals, flip the breaker and see if it goes away. Might just be about to have a serious problem.

Current cards: Discover It $7,000, December 2022 (For restaurants currently, soon to be for gas next month) Citi Double Cashback, $6,000, February 2023 (catch all card) Citi Custom Cash, $6,500, May 2023 (used for merchants category) Amazon Chase, $3,200, May 2022 (used only on Amazon) Curve, $500, August 2022 (redirects charges to proper cards for rewards)
FICO Score: 748 Experian Score: 720
Oldest account age: 9 years 5 Months
Income: $78000
Average monthly spend and categories: dining $500 groceries: $1,100 gas: $200 Shopping: $700 Bills: $500 Other: $600
Open to Business Cards: Possibly
What's the purpose of your next card? Cashback
Are you OK with category spending or do you want a general spending card? Yes

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Timestamp: https://imgur.com/a/50LAioV
Up for sale is my 16” AR upper receiver. Catch and release from here with less than 150 flawless rounds through it. Nice and lightweight, weighing just under 53 ounces.
Components are as follows: -Aero Precision M4E1 threaded upper receiver -Ballistic Advantage 16” mid-length gas 5.56/.223 Hanson profile barrel -Aero Precision Atlas R-One 12.7” handguard -A2 flash hider -Ballistic Advantage gas block and mid length gas tube
No bolt carrier group/charging handle included.
Yours for $250.69 shipped via Paypal friends & family or Venmo.
No parting out and no trades, please. First “dibs” takes the item. Please PM me with any other offers/inquiries. Thanks!