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reddit-tales · 4 years

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How do you tell a depressed friend or partner that you don’t have the mental resources to listen to them be depressed anymore, without coming across as a massive asshole?

My wife has major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety, and PTSD. She goes to therapy regularly and is medicated so most of the time she manages it well. But when other things in our life are difficult her mental health can take some serious downturns. Due to our relationship being more than just friends I’m obviously more invested in helping her than I would be with other people, but here are some things I have learned over the years. Things which have made our relationship very successful and mutually beneficial.

Ask the person what they need. Oftentimes when a person we care about is struggling we want to jump in and fix everything. That’s not always what the person needs. Maybe they just need to vent to someone without judgement. They might not want advice, because they know what they should be doing, but their condition is making that hard. Maybe they don’t want to talk at all and just need a hug or a shoulder rub (if you both are comfortable with physical contact). Or maybe they just want to sit with you and watch a movie, or go for a walk, and take their mind off of it. Giving advice that is never taken is draining and frustrating - but you can help them without doing that.

Tell them what you need. Just because you don’t have the same mental struggles doesn’t mean you can’t also have needs. Let’s say they came to you asking to vent, but you had a long day and are tired physically and emotionally. Tell them “I am not in a place to be able to carry that right now.” This is when you could offer to do something else for them, or tell them when you feel you’ll be better able to help. You could also tell them a time limit if you have some energy to give. Like “I would love to let you vent, but I need to set a limit of 15 minutes today. After that let’s agree to change the subject, or do another activity that we can both use to unwind.” This gives your person a clear view of your boundary and lets them still get support from you.

It’s okay to have lines that can’t be crossed. Adding to the boundaries I brought up in point 2, it’s perfectly okay to have limits on where your support ends. There may be topics that are triggering or uncomfortable for you and you are allowed to say talking about those is off-limits. You can also change those limits depending on what’s happening in your own life. Maybe they have a bad relationship with a parent, while your beloved parent is unwell. It’s not going to feel good for you to hear them talk about how horrible their mother is when you want nothing more than for your mom to get better. That would be an appropriate time to tell them this is a boundary and if they need support in this then they need to seek it elsewhere. You can still be there for them, but find a way around this particular issue. Your limits can also be time-based rather than topic-based. You can tell them they can’t contact you while you are at work, or before/after x time. Or that you can only hang out on x days.

Communication. This is the most important. Just be honest with them. They don’t want you to burn out. They don’t want to drag you down with them. But one of the symptoms of these problems can be pushing people away and isolating yourself. That means that they only have a limited number of supports in their life and it can put a lot of pressure on the supports they do have. It’s up to you to be very clear about how you’re feeling and what you need so they don’t push you away too. If you do all of the above from a loving place they will be happy to know they aren’t putting too much on you. Being clear about this will ultimately be helpful to you both.

They need to respect you. If they don’t listen to your boundaries it’s okay to cut them off. If you have to go that route, it would be kind to let them know why. But you always need to put your own health first. You deserve to have friends that you enjoy being around. You deserve to be happy. You don’t need to be anyone’s emotional doormat.

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reddit-tales · 4 years

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Change my view: “Gender Dysphoria is a cureable mental illness, we've stopped looking for the cure because society is now forced into accepting transgenders.”

There is something known as the social model of disability that applies here. Being deaf for instance is generally considered a disability, but if society were set up such that we didn’t use sound as our primary means of communication than being deaf would not have any negative impacts on a person’s life and it would no longer be classified as a disability. This applies with mental illness as well, something is only a mental illness if it causes significant distress in a person’s life by definition. What is and isn’t a mental illness is a rather arbitrary line to draw and some of it is dependent on what society is willing to accept and accommodate. This means that one could eradicate a mental illness by changing society, that is entirely possible.

Mental illness treatment is a rather tricky thing in general. It usually involves a lifetime of medication and a various forms of therapy that can only ever lessen the problems while only occasionally producing anything resembling a cure in a minority of people. That is the current level that mental illness treatment is at. If you consider gender dysphoria a mental illness though, compare that to what happens when people transition. It cuts suicide attempts by an order of magnitude. Post-op trans people still have a higher suicide rate than the general population by a couple percent, but that’s still an order of magnitude better than the nearly 50% pre-op suicide rate. As mental illness treatments go, transitioning has insanely good almost perfect results. People would kill to have something even half that effective for anxiety and depression. The higher post-op suicide rate than the general population is fully explainable as a result of people not accepting them including often their own family.

Transitioning saves lives, that’s just an objective fact. Trans acceptance is suicide prevention. The only reason to not do it would be if it also has consequences that are somehow worse than the thing it prevents. I can’t even think of a single negative consequence though, let alone one worse than avoiding a proven suicide prevention measure. Calling sex reassignment surgery “mutilation” is misleading at best. It’s a cosmetic operation done in a starile hospital room under anesthetic by a trained surgeon, not a schizophrenic castrating himself with a rusty knife. If that’s the standard for calling something “mutilation” than a hip replacement is “bone mutilation” and open heart surgery is “chest mutilation”. If you are worried about children transitioning, people have thought of that. Although transphobes will often call it “chemical castration” in their usual fear mongering way, puberty blockers only postpone puberty for as long as a person is on them and the moment they stop taking them things resume as normal. Nobody is seriously suggesting doing anything irreversible to anyone under 18.

Homosexuality was once considered a mental illness too. However, people realized that they were freaking out about nothing and that everyone is better off when nobody goes out of their way to cause active harm in order to prevent a harmless action. That is happening again with trans people, though that movement has been consistently a few years behind gay and lesbian acceptance.

I should probably clarify where I’m coming from here. I’m the son of a trans women, and I dated a trans man once who I’m still close friends with to this day. My trans-parent was sent to conversion therapy, in a move that lead to multiple suicide attempts she blamed herself for it not working and that sort of thing can put people in a really dark place. She has since decided to embrace who she is and transition. My trans-man friend and I have shared things with each other that nobody else on Earth knows about us. I have known him for every step of the transition process, and I have seen his mental health improve quite a lot as a result. He was in a really bad place when I first met him, and now he’s doing much better.

I would also like to add that I am diagnosed with mild autism myself, and I have problems with the way you seem to think of that sort of thing. I don’t know if this is intentional or if you’ve just spent too long around transphobic rhetoric (I’m going to assume the latter), but the tactic of comparing gender dysphoria to mental illness only serves to pin the existing stigma associated with mental illness to being transgender. It’s an appeal to ableism, basically. Calling it a mental illness changes nothing though. Mentally ill people still deserve a basic level of decency, the right to express themselves, and freedom from bullying. The word “delusional” is often carelessly thrown around in relation to transgender people, but that is factually inaccurate based on what is known about gender dysphoria and it only serves to bring to mind stereotypes of mental illness. I have to deal with enough ableism shit on my own, and I hate seeing it used against people I care about too. They don’t deserve that.

#change my view #transphobia tw

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reddit-tales · 4 years

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How do you control yourself when you are full of rage and want to keep calm?

I'm a very calm person, but teach calming techniques to emotionally disturbed kids.

The biggest help I've found is finding a technique which grounds you and reminds you where you are in the present. I teach lots of different ones, including:

clench and unclench your toes, focus on the feeling of your feet on the floor while you do it.

breath in and out so deeply you feel like your ribs are being pulled apart and knitted back together.

Grab something near you, could be a pole, table whatever, and clench and unclench around it.

Walk, while counting your steps.

Do something rhythmic, I like bouncing a ball personally but can be anything, from using a stamp to skipping.

All research shows when you reach "red mist" your rationality is gone and you just have to last it out. Your best bet is to recognise when you're losing control and utilise grounding techniques before you're past the point of no return.

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reddit-tales · 4 years

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What was the sexual education disaster from your school?

In 10th grade our health teacher asked for volunteers to demonstrate putting a condom onto a banana. Weirdly, she asked one student to put the condom onto the banana and another kid to awkwardly stand there holding the banana "erect." The two guys who volunteered were best friends. One of them was very popular and the other one was a bit of hanger-on. People used to speculate that he had a thing for his popular best friend, although that was probably just teenagers being gossips. When the two of them stood up to do the demo, people whispered to each other and laughed a little bit, probably because of this rumor.

The popular kid was the one holding the banana erection and the hanger-on was the one demoing the condom. When the chuckles started, the popular kid began to blush, which of course made the whole experience feel more intimate. Suddenly it's a classroom of 10th graders watching a maybe-besotted hanger-on intimately handle his best friend's banana. As the hanger-on began rolling the condom down the tip of the banana, the popular kid, grimacing with embarrassment, squeezed the base of the banana a little too hard, and the banana burst. The peel split on the sides of the banana. The mushy fruit spurted out. The banana had prematurely ejaculated.

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reddit-tales · 4 years

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People that have had a threesome and regretted it, what happened?

I don’t know if I regretted it per se, but I was the third wheel. After the sexcapade we passed out and later on that night her boyfriend went to the bathroom. She then cuddled up to me and said ‘that was really fun and all but if we do this again can we get somebody I am attracted too’. Then her boyfriend walked back in and she realized that I wasn’t him, I could literally feel the room fill up with awkwardness.

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reddit-tales · 4 years

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What’s the most amazing coincidence that has ever happened to you?

When I was in college my girlfriend and I were doing the hostel thing in Europe one summer. We were broke but her mom worked for a big airline, so the airfare was super cheap. After London we went to Paris, and her mother suggested that we look up her old work colleague Kurt, and see if we could stay with him. Free board? Sounds great.

So we called, and his wife answered - Kurt was out of town, but call back tomorrow once they'd had a chance to talk. We did, and Kurt said it would be fine. gave us directions and we were set. When we got off at the Metro we were immediately lost, but we called Kurt back and he said just wait, he'd come get us, which he did. Everything was immediately super awkward, but what are you gonna do?

The small talk was even more strained - "So...you still work for Delta?" "No....I'm in technical writing" Weird, basic details just were not lining up. We got back to their house, I took a shower, his daughter come home from school, and it has probably been ninety minutes since we'd met face to face and Kurt decides to drop this bomb on us -

"Hey listen, you seem real nice, but I don't think that I know who you are. I talked to my wife though, and if you want you can stay here for the night."

"But you're Kurt."

"I am, but I never worked for Delta and I don't think we've ever met."

"True"

We called back her Mom. Turns out we had Kurt's phone number ONE DIGIT OFF. We'd swapped a five for a two, called the wrong number, and got a DIFFERENT AMERICAN NAMED KURT. living IN PARIS. and then we'd GONE TO HIS HOUSE, PRETENDED TO KNOW EACH OTHER, I TOOK A DAMN SHOWER, and then we all agreed we were total strangers.

We called the /right/ number, got the "Real Kurt" who lived like two miles away, and whose daughter was in the SAME CLASS at school. Both Kurt's were lovely, but we opted to stay with the one we knew.

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reddit-tales · 4 years

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Have you ever felt a deep personal connection to a person you met in a dream only to wake up feeling terrible because you realize they never existed?

My last semester at a certain college I was assulted by a football player for walking where he was trying to drive (note he was 325lbs I was 120lbs), while unconscious on the ground I lived a different life.

I met a wonderful young lady, she made my heart skip and my face red, I pursued her for months and dispatched a few jerk boyfriends before I finally won her over, after two years we got married and almost immediately she bore me a daughter.

I had a great job and my wife didn't have to work outside of the house, when my daughter was two she [my wife] bore me a son. My son was the joy of my life, I would walk into his room every morning before I left for work and doted on him and my daughter.

One day while sitting on the couch I noticed that the perspective of the lamp was odd, like inverted. It was still in 3D but... just.. wrong. (It was a square lamp base, red with gold trim on 4 legs and a white square shade). I was transfixed, I couldn't look away from it. I stayed up all night staring at it, the next morning I didn't go to work, something was just not right about that lamp.

I stopped eating, I left the couch only to use the bathroom at first, soon I stopped that too as I wasn't eating or drinking. I stared at the fucking lamp for 3 days before my wife got really worried, she had someone come and try to talk to me, by this time my cognizance was breaking up and my wife was freaking out. She took the kids to her mother's house just before I had my epiphany.... the lamp is not real.... the house is not real, my wife, my kids... none of that is real... the last 10 years of my life are not fucking real!

The lamp started to grow wider and deeper, it was still inverted dimensions, it took up my entire perspective and all I could see was red, I heard voices, screams, all kinds of weird noises and I became aware of pain.... a fucking shit ton of pain... the first words I said were "I'm missing teeth" and opened my eyes. I was laying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by people that I didn't know, lots were freaking out, I was completely confused.

at some point a cop scooped me up, dragged/walked me across the sidewalk and grass and threw me face down in the back of a cop car, I was still confused.

I was taken to the hospital by the cop (seems he didn't want to wait for the ambulance to arrive) and give CT scans and shit..

I went through about 3 years of horrid depression, I was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed, I was scared that I was going insane as I would cry myself to sleep hoping I would see her in my dreams. I never have, but sometimes I see my son, usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision, he is perpetually 5 years old and I can never hear what he says.

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reddit-tales · 4 years

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Some tips for buying a used car for people that know nothing about cars

I’m a mechanic/auto shop owner. I figured I’d put some stuff together for anyone interested in buying a used car but doesn’t know anything about cars. Obviously the best option is to take it to an auto shop to have it thoroughly inspected by a professional before you buy it. The key word here is BEFORE you buy it. I don’t know how many people I’ve had come to my shop for an inspection after they bought it….ugghh. The $150 or so you spend is worth not buying something that may have thousands of dollars of problems. But if that’s not an option, here are some tips to help keep you from buying a lemon:

1-Buy a cheap OBD scanner/reader. You don’t need to spend a lot, as they’ll all do what you need here. A bluetooth OBD reader and the TORQ app for you phone seems to be pretty popular/good choice. Practice using it on some cars. Some of the stuff I'm going over may seem daunting, but if you practice it on a car a few times, you'll get the hang of it, and this will all make sense. You could be saving yourself thousands in repair here, so take a few hours to practice it. It's not hard once you do. You should be able to do all of the stuff I'm going to talk about with your scanner in under 5 mins total. You don’t have to worry about reading and interpreting data. The main thing you want to do is check for codes in the engine and transmission ECUs. ECU stands for Electronic Contrul Unit. Basically, it's the computer that controls the engine or transmission. They are sometimes referred to as ECM, or Engine Control Module, and TCM, or Transmission Control Module. Sometimes they'll be referred to as PCM, or Powertrain Control Module. This is what it's called when only one computer controls both the engine and automatic transmission. The PCM may be one physical computer, but logically, it's 2 computers. So if you connect your scanner to a PCM, you'll still see two separate options, one for engine, and one for transmission. Do note that if you have a manual transmission, there won't be a transmission computer.

So when you connect to each one, there should be no codes in either. If there are codes, there’s an issue. It may be minor, it may be major. Google it if you want, but not knowing what the codes mean, your best bet is to walk away. If your scanner is a better one, you can also check other modules (computers) for codes. However, it’s pretty common on newer cars, especially European, to find obscure codes in obscure modules. Normally they’re not an issue. Focus on the Engine and Transmission. ABS (antilock brakes) and SRS (safety restrain system...airbags, seat belts, etc) modules normally shouldn’t have codes lingering either. Make sure to also check after test driving. The codes may have been reset by the seller to hide a problem (more on that in the next paragraph). They may have returned during your test drive, so check again!

Use the scanner to check the monitors on the engine ECU/Computer. Monitors are a series of self checks that the ECU does on the engine. All applicable monitors should be set (passed/complete). They get reset when you clear the check engine light, or when you disconnect the battery (usually). If all of the monitors haven’t passed, then it’s quite likely the person selling it has reset the check engine light recently (may be trying to hide a problem), or there’s a problem that isn’t allowing the monitor to complete. Not a good sign. Walk away. To complete all of the monitors can take quite a few miles and sometimes several days. So there's a good window there for you to catch someone doing some hanky panky.

2. Crank the engine without starting it. What you want to do is listen to the engine during a continuous crank. On American cars and on Mazdas, this is easy, as they have what’s known as a Clear Flood Mode. You turn the key to the on position, wait a few seconds, depress the gas pedal all the way, then try to start it. The engine will crank away without starting for as long as you hold the key (or in the case of a push button start, until you hit the button again). If the engine starts, quickly let off the gas so you don’t revv up the engine too high and try it again. You’ll want to listen to it for a good 10 seconds or so. This is a very easy way to check compression on an engine. The main thing you hear when cranking an engine is the electric starter working to try and spin the engine. As a piston comes up and compresses the air, the starter has to work harder to spin the engine, and the speed/pitch of the starter changes. Once the piston comes back down, it’s easier to spin the engine, so the speed/pitch changes back, and then repeats as each consecutive piston moves up in the compression stroke. Every engine sounds different, but they all should have a very steady rhythmic starting noise. Kind of a WAAA WAAA WAAA WAAA WAAA. If one or more of the cylinders has low compression, you will hear the starter have an off-rhythmic sound that repeats. So for instance, if you have a 4 cylinder engine with one low compression cylinder, it would sound like WAAA WAAA WA WAAA WAAA WAAA WA WAAA WAAA WAAA WA WAAA etc. Every 4th pitch change will sound different than the other 3.

For reference, here’s what a normal cranking sound should be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v0h_Ygqox0

Here’s what a low compression cylinder cranking sounds like. It’s at about :55 secs :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOghpmVhVng

If you listen closely, you’ll hear the unsteady rhythm. Loss of compression is usually piston rings, valves, or head gasket. All costly. If the engine sounds funny when cranking, walk away.

If the car you’re looking at doesn’t have a clear flood mode, you can remove the fuel pump relay in the engine compartment fuse box, which turns off the fuel pump. Most cars have one, but some don’t. Some cars can be a real PITA to disable it from starting. Google the car you’re looking at with something like “YYYY Make Model clear flood” or “YYYY Make Model disable fuel pump” and see if there’s an easy way to achieve this. I'm sure there will be a Youtube video showing you exactly how to do this.

Practice this beforehand on cars you have access to if possible to tune your ear to the sound. You can also do this periodically on your own car to see if any problems are arising.

3. Check the fluids. All of the fluids will have minimum/maximum marks. If fluids are low, someone has not been maintaining the car well, or it has developed a leak. Not a good sign. When checking the engine oil, it should range from clear to black. If it looks like chocolate milkshake, there is a major problem. RUN AWAY. You can also smell the oil on the dipstick to see if it smells like gasoline. If it smells like raw gasoline, the engine is either injecting way too much fuel or you have bad piston rings. Either way they're bad. If the oil level is WAY above the full mark, like an inch or more, then either some other fluid is making it's way into the engine (very bad) or someone sucks at doing an oil change. Remember to check the oil with the engine off and on level ground. Some new cars don’t have dipsticks (mainly European). If so, you’re SOL. Check the coolant in the reservoir. It should be green, pink, red, yellow, orange, blue, or purple, depending on manufacturer. If it’s rusty, walk away. Remove the radiator cap (only if the engine is cold) and look at the cap and in the radiator. If you see any rust or chunky/gritty brown stuff, walk away. If it’s just water, walk away (be careful here, Ford’s yellow coolant almost looks clear). Check the automatic transmission fluid. For the most part, it should be red, but sometimes amber or green. It may be black. That’s dirty. Not a deal breaker, but they haven’t been keeping up on maintenance. It should not smell burnt, though. That’s bad. If it looks like strawberry milkshake, that’s really bad. Also, remember that you should check the level on automatic transmissions while the engine is running in Park and after driving it and getting the transmission good and hot. The only exception is most Hondas. That’s checked after driving but with the engine off. Google it for the car you plan on looking at to make sure. Many new cars don’t have a transmission dipsticks, so again, you’re SOL there.

4. Start the engine and listen for any noises. The engine should be cold. If it’s at operating temperature, the seller may have warmed it up to hide some cold start engine noises. Be wary. If it makes any noises, walk away.

5. Look for maintenance records. If it has consistent oil change records at an oil change place, at least they’ve been changing the oil. Unfortunately, oil change places only check easy profitable stuff. It’s better than nothing, though. If the records are all at an independent shop, that’s better. Indy’s will usually do a pretty thorough check up on the car when servicing it. If it has all dealer records, that’s the holy grail. Dealers will find any nick nack that’s wrong and upsell it. They also commonly don’t do thorough diagnostics (this is an unfortunate effect of the way dealer shops operate). So if it needed repairs, on top of having new parts that needed replacing, it may have other new parts that it didn’t even need. Plus those new parts will be good quality OEM parts, not chines junk of questionable quality.

6. Check that everything works on the car. Check the A/C, the heater, the windows, the locks, the mirrors, the head/parking/brake lights, etc. If the owner neglected to fix obvious problems, what else did they decide not to fix?

7. Look under the hood and look for any hokey work. Random zip ties holding things on, tape, broken plastic pieces, a battery that can move around if you push on it, wires hanging, etc. If it looks like unprofessional work has been done on what you can see, how bad is what you can’t see?

8. How does the car look? Is it dirty, full of scratches, stained? If the owner cares so little about the interior/exterior, they probably have the same attitude towards the mechanical part of it.

9. Check the tires. Aside from general condition, do they all match? If all the tires are different, they’re cheap/broke, and have probably cheaped out on a lot more than just tires. Lay your hand flat on the tire tread and light feel around the tires. If you feel a repeating pattern of flat spots/dips, you have suspension problems.

10. Try and stay away from used car dealers. Used car dealers get the majority of their cars from auctions. A lot of cars that go to auction are sent there by someone that doesn’t want it, usually because there are problems. Not all, but many. New car dealers send trade-ins that are too old or the wrong make to put on their lot, and some of those are decent. However, the small used car dealers usually buy the bottom of the barrel cars at auction. They’ll fix the minimum needed with the cheapest parts possible to maximize profit. They’ll make it look pretty, though. Good chance you’re buying a polished turd. Not all used car dealers are bad, though. Check reviews. Look at what they have on the lot. If they have a lot of high resale value cars on the lot, they're buying the good stuff at acution. If all of their cars are under $10k, with a lot under $5k, move on.

11. Obviously, test drive the car. Drive it at different speeds up to highway speeds. Brake easy, brake hard. Find a crappy road or railroad tracks to drive over. Make sure there are no noises or vibrations. Get it good and warm. When you’re done, open the hood and take a good whiff. Make sure there are no strong smells (like burning fluids or other things). Look under the car and see if anything is dripping or the bottom of the engine is covered in fluids (bring a flashlight, it can get dark under there). Don’t be alarmed if you see water dripping under the car at about the same area as the base of the windshield/firewall. If the A/C or defroster was on, that is just condensate from the A/C system. Touch it. If it’s not oily and looks/feels like water, it should be OK. If you’re test driving a manual car, the clutch engagement point should be somewhere in the middle of the clutch pedal travel. If it’s right at the top or right at the bottom, clutch repairs are in the near future.

12. This one is a little more advanced, but not too difficult. It’s also pretty important. You’ll need your OBD scanner. What you want to do is look at the engine data and search for the fuel trims. An engine computer injects fuel based on a bunch of sensor inputs. It has a base fuel map programmed into it that it references, based on those sensor inputs, and injects XXX amount of fuel. There is an oxygen sensor in the exhaust system that analyzes the exhaust gas and acts like a quality control inspector. It tells the computer whether it injected too much or too little fuel. The computer then makes adjustments to that base fuel map to make sure it’s injecting the proper amount of fuel. Those adjustments are called fuel trims. A 5% fuel trim would mean the computer had to add 5% more fuel than the base map. A -5% fuel trim would mean that the computer had to reduce fuel by 5% from the base fuel map. In a perfect world, fuel trims would be zero. However, that’s rarely the case. Fuel quality, different atmospheric conditions, engine wear, engine or sensor problems, etc, make it so that the base fuel map is never perfect, so the computer is always adding or subtracting fuel (usually it’s adding, but sometimes it’s subtracting). I don’t like to see a computer adding or subtracting more than 10% fuel. Any more than that and there may be a problem. Any more than 15-20% and there is definitely a problem.

So what you’re going to want to do is look at the data on the engine computer. You want to make sure you connect to the computer using the GENERIC OBD2 option on your scanner. Different car manufacturers will call these fuel trims by different names, and display the percentage in different ways. If you connect to the engine computer the standard way, you may be confused trying to find and read the fuel trims. But if you connect using the generic obd option, it’s always going to use a standardized display format across all vehicles. Some really cheap OBD scanners only connect using the generic OBD protocol. You’re going to see a long list of a bunch of different data. Scroll through until you find “short term fuel trim” and “long term fuel trim”. I'm not going to explain what the difference between those two data parameters are, as that doesn't matter here, and may end up being confusing. I'm just going to tell you what to do with the values you see.

Short term fuel trim, depending on your scanner, may be displayed as: Short term fuel trim, STFT, ST, or ST%

Long term fuel trim may be displayed as: Long Term Fuel Trim, LTFT, LT, or LT%

Let’s assume your scanner uses the more common STFT and LTFT designation. You’re going to see a number after the letters, so STFT1 and LTFT1. The number means the “bank” or side of the engine. A 4 cylinder engine only has one “side” so you’ll only see STFT1 and LTFT1. However, a V6 or V8 engine has two sides of the engine (3 or 4 cylinders on one side, and 3 or 4 cylinder on the other side, hence the V6 or V8). The computer controls fuel independently for each side of the engine, so you’ll see a STFT1 and LTFT1 for one side of the engine, and STFT2 and LTFT2 for the other side. Don’t be alarmed if you’re looking at a V6 or V8 engine and you only see STFT1 and LTFT1. Many late 90s cars and some early 2000s cars didn’t control fuel separately for each side of the engine, and lumped both sides into one bank.

When looking at the short term and long term fuel trims, you’ll notice the long term fuel trim number stays pretty steady, but the short term fuel trim number may change a lot. This is normal. What is important to note is that they are cumulative. So if STFT=4 and LTFT=3, then your total fuel trim is 7%. Let’s take a look at some examples on a V8:

STFT1 : 3 ... STFT2 : 6

LTFT1 : 2 ... LTFT2 : 1

So the total fuel trim on bank 1 is 5% (3+2) and the total fuel trim on bank 2 is 7% (6+1). Each bank is below +/- 10%. That’s pretty good.

STFT1 : -5 ... STFT2 : 3

LTFT1 : 3 ... LTFT2 : 1

Bank 1 fuel trim is -2% (-5 +3) and bank 2 is 4% (3+1). Again, that’s good.

STFT1 : 6 ... STFT2 : 7

LTFT1 : 10 ... LTFT2 :15

Bank 1 fuel trim is 16% (6+10) and bank 2 is 22% (7+15). That’s not good. Walk away from this one.

Here's one more that's a littlte different:

STFT1 : -20 ... STFT2 : -20

LTFT1 : 22 ... LTFT2 : 20

Hey, 2% and 0% total fuel trim on each bank. SWEET! this car is running almost perfect! Well not really. Why is the LTFT adding 22% but then the STFT is taking a bunch of it back? There may be an intermittent issue going on here. So add the absolute values together as well (treat -20 as 20) and see what that total is. Here we have 42 and 40. There's some interpretation required here that you'd need some experience to do, but I'd say anything over 25 when adding absolutes is cause for concern.

Check these numbers with the engine running at idle, and rev up the engine and hold it at about 2500rpms and check it there. Like I said, you may see the STFT number change pretty quickly, so just use the average of the numbers you see for that one. If you have someone with you, you can have them check the numbers while you drive as well.

Practice this on a car you have access to beforehand.

13. Last and not least, don’t trust the person selling the car. Trust your eyes, your ears, and your instinct. You don’t know this person, they may be lying about the car, or try and tell you that the thing you’re worried about is no big deal, it’s just this or that. Or they had a guy check it out and it’s a really easy/quick fix. Be patient and find the right car. If something is fishy or doesn’t seem right, move on to the next car. A car is a pretty big expense. Most people budget for the purchase price of a car and don’t consider there may be considerable extra expense in fixing major problems. Minimize the possibility of those extra expenses by inspecting the car the best you can.

I would recommend running through these things, and any others you want to add, on your current car, your parents’ cars, friends’ cars, etc. Do it several times. Get comfortable in making these checks so that when you’re doing them in front of some stranger on their car, you won’t forget anything.

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reddit-tales · 4 years

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What was the most porno situation you ever had?

one that i still kick myself for.

i work as a gardener so i'm half way there already but at one if my former sites there was an older woman who lived there. she was late 40s-early 50s but had aged like a fine wine, great body, lovely face and an attractive personality that made you feel easy around her. she'd jokingly flirt all of the time too which to then 21 year old me had me real hot under the collars.

one day i was using some rope for a job when she asked if i could help her move something heavy in her apartment, me being the guy i am agreed so i went into her apartment with the rope still in hand. moved the stuff for her and she took notice of my rope, crossed her wrists over and said "oh is that for me sir?" or something like that whilst giving me now what i know as 'the look'.

i chuckled but left the apartment where i immediatly realised that i had an opportunity to playfully ramp up the flirting and see where it went.

i was young and inexperienced but in hindsight she all but handed me a condom and i used it as a balloon to float away instead

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reddit-tales · 5 years

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What one experience made you completely rethink how you viewed a certain individual or group of people, either in a positive or negative light?

I used to be absolutely terrified of homeless people. When I was little, a homeless man set up camp behind the office of our Church. The parents saw him just lying there in his blankets, and decided they wanted to help him (not call the cops). However, a few kids and I decided to be little jackasses, and dared eachother to touch the only part of him sticking out of the blanket; his bare feet.

Now the thing is, it's not necessarily *bad advice* to tell a kid not to poke the bare feet of a homeless guy. But it was certainly bad advice to take it to a much greater level, and say homeless people were dangerous, disease-ridden, and wanted to hurt us. Because for years afterwards, I couldn't go close to a homeless person, not even in my teens. I'd see them just sitting nonchalantly in front of a convenience store, and I wouldn't make eye contact.

In my senior year of high school, I decided to do a human interest piece for the school paper. It was a common addition, usually documenting the history and lifestyle of well-known local restaurants, former star athletes retiring in our quiet slice of suburbia, or up and coming entrepreneurs.

But there was one guy everybody knew, a man we called "Santa Bum." He was a homeless man who would share the waves with the school's surf team, and he existed mostly down at the beach. He was easy to spot with his very long pearly-white beard, which was his pride and joy.

I decided to do a piece on him. The journalism teacher thought I was joking, but I polled the class. Show of hands. How many of you guys know who Santa Bum is? Boom, all hands. Of course everyone knows this guy. You can't spend a week in that community without seeing him patrolling the beach or traversing the main boulevard in his bright red trunks.

He's Santa Bum. Of course he has bright red trunks.

I found him with the surf team, introduced myself, and he was immediately receptive to my questions. I was expecting maybe a 10 minute interview or an awkward end to it, maybe being asked for food or money or booze. Thing is, I was before one of the most well-known local celebrities in our community, but I also knew he was homeless. And man, I was a little scared too. The only thing that helped was knowing he's been a part of the community for a long time, the trusting assurance of "if he's actually dangerous, he probably would've been put away a long time ago."

The interview was amazing.

His name is Ryan. He graduated the same high school I did. He attended two years of college, but had to drop out when he lost his job at a closed pet store and couldn't pay tuition. One of his good friends started a business using a lot of his own money, and he jumped on board with him, working for free and burning through his last savings to stay afloat in the hopes of developing computer components for audio equipment and making millions. That never happened, and he ran out of money completely. He used his experience to try and find a job as an audio engineer, but ended up at a record store. He had a mental break in the 80's, decided he didn't want to work anymore, felt he gave the world enough of a chance to say he tried, and made the deliberate choice to live the rest of his life out of his van.

Ryan knows a *ton* about 70's era computer technology, audio mixing, and always has an infinite list of unknown garage bands confined to memory that he could always recommend with the fervor of a lifelong fan. I described his expansive knowledge of obscure and small local acts, writing "He knew more about opening acts than headliners."

And he just hit a wall. He proposed to his girlfriend, but she declined and left him shortly afterward. His deadend job, his inability to utilize his limited college education, and a rapid pace of computer evolution left him feeling unwanted, unmotivated, and on the brink of a nasty drinking addiction. One morning, he realized the destructive path his life was taking, decided to quit his job, and just take a meditative afternoon to recollect his thoughts at the beach.

And the beach never let him go.

He made his money collecting cans from garbage bins and turning them in to the grocery store. Most of his food came from what the local shops threw out; the greatest year of his new life was when Noah's Bagels opened a shop down there, because they would throw out several weeks worth of delicious high carb food items every evening. He was fortunate to kick his drinking habit before it got too out of control, and expressed how blessed he was that he could simply overcome the urge with a nice afternoon nap on the sand.

He wasn't just aware of the "Santa Bum" moniker. He invented it. When he realized his facial hair was turning white early in his homeless life, he grew out the beard, thinking it would make him more approachable. He believed people would be less likely to hassle him if he looked like Santa Claus, because who would call the cops on Ol' Saint Nick? With his distinct red trunks and beard, he didn't look like some homeless guy sleeping on the beach. He looked like a friggin' postcard. Kids would be delighted seeing him surf, making him a valued member of the community.

By far, this was the most enjoyable interview I ever did for that newspaper. And the article got a tremendous response from the students as well, a lot of the school surf team started greeting him by name every morning. The surf team's coach personally complimented me for the article, saying I did a great job capturing his story and assuaging the apprehensions some parents might express seeing him there. The coach used to surf with Ryan and got to know him years previous, so his approval meant a lot to me.

Since then, I'm still a little wary around the homeless. I've walked through skid row and the fashion district enough times to know there are some legitimately unstable and off-kilter individuals who aren't all there. But the thing is...I've *walked through skid row.* I wouldn't have gone anywhere close to that place before.

But Ryan undid a lot of the mental damage that one mother did in my formative years. He reminded me that there's still a human behind every one of those downtrodden faces, and they all have a story to tell. A story of dreams, attempts, successes, and failures. They all have reasons for being there. And if you lend them an ear, they can take you on a wild ride of a story that makes you appreciate who they really are, and not just the circumstance they've ended up in.

Ryan passed away from skin cancer in the mid 2000's. The local paper had a quarter-page feature for him in the front bottom fold. It described his history in working a tech start-up back when they were super rare, his aspirations to be an audio engineer for local bands, and one particular line stood out. "He knew more about opening acts than headliners."

Logically, it's most likely coincidence. But a part of me thinks my own story influenced Ryan's remembrance in a more prominent publication, giving them more to work with. It might've just been another blip in the obituaries section, but by taking a morning to just sit down and hear him out, his memory is carrying on to present day.

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