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On the subject of pot usage... I've noticed that I smell it a lot more around here (small desert town, full of Mormons) that I live in. Out walking at night, it's pretty much a sure thing I'll catch at least a few wiffs of pot smoke. Sure thing in grocery store parking lots and drive-thru food lanes.
But, we drove down to Los Angeles a couple weeks ago... and while tooling around downtown it was damn near constant. We were laughing about it because it was just sooooo dense.
 
Lads the Earth was flat until the Sumerians and Roswell aliens lifted Aman from it and made it round in the Second Age. Don't think it was Illuvatar just because it says so in the Silmarillion :alien:

Huh. I could say the same about a couple Princeton graduates that I game with online.
It doesn't surprise me. I've seen similar stuff in the Sorbonne and Cambridge. There's plenty of smart people there, but the general abstract/detached atmosphere is a breeding ground for nutty ideas. I remember a fella who had made a formula to "compute" how much of a pussy/beta a given man was. He only went to lunch with me because I came out as borderline alpha. Good times.
 
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Roswell aliens

They prefer to be called Greys. That kind of talk is what I expect from one of the Nordics who came to Earth frequently in the 60s to take out reproductive fluids.

Why, yes, I did have a family member obsessed with UFOs when I was growing up, how can you tell?
 
Was lurking another RPG forum. OP posts, "I'm looking for a game that has qualities x, y, and z. I've tried GURPS and it doesn't meat my criteria because of reasons a, b, and c."

Third response: "Have you tried GURPS?"

I'm glad people here usually have better reading comprehension than that.

(I don't remember if GURPS was actually the specific system mentioned. I'm just using it as an example).
 
Was lurking another RPG forum. OP posts, "I'm looking for a game that has qualities x, y, and z. I've tried GURPS and it doesn't meat my criteria because of reasons a, b, and c."

Third response: "Have you tried GURPS?"

I'm glad people here usually have better reading comprehension than that.

(I don't remember if GURPS was actually the specific system mentioned. I'm just using it as an example).

I can remember a time when just about every question would get a reply along the lines of 'If you want a rules-lite system I'd just use FATE Core with ...'
 
So what you're saying is that some significant percentage of the American populace doesn't sail? That's fair.
Oh yeah lots of people don't sail but people have been sailing for ages so I'm pretty sure if you walked up to a port in 1500BC and said (on any continent minus Antarctica) that the world was flat they'd smack you upside the head and walk on.
 
Oh yeah lots of people don't sail but people have been sailing for ages so I'm pretty sure if you walked up to a port in 1500BC and said (on any continent minus Antarctica) that the world was flat they'd smack you upside the head and walk on.
So where we're at is that neither of us is making excuses for rank ignorance? Swell. :thumbsup:
 
Splitter! FATE not good enough for you, is it?
I’m pretty sure if we go chronologically in the “People online telling you what game is good for everything” the order is:

1. Savage Worlds
2. Exalted
3. Savage Worlds
4. Fate
5. Idiot, why are you still asking when I already said Savage Worlds?
6. Cortex Prime
7. I was trolling old forum posts from years ago and saw someone say you should pick up Savage Worlds. They were the idiot, as they should have told you to get a time machine and come to the present to buy the latest edition of Savage Worlds, which is the One True Game for everything.
 
Wasn't there an era where folks were recommending All Flesh Must Be Eaten for everything?
I think Cinematic Unisystem did have a brief spurt of “It can do anything!” as did Burning Wheel. I’m not sure where they fit on my timeline.

I still can’t believe I had someone suggest Exalted was better for Ghostbusters than the first edition of the WEG game.
 
Been on holidays for the last fortnight, took my wife and kids up to my parent's place at Hervey Bay QLD for Christmas/Boxing Day, then back here for our annual BBQ/pool party on NYD with friends. After that we returned back up to Hervey Bay for a week, it was really nice and relaxing. Great calm beaches, and not as busy as the more prominent beaches here in South East Queensland, such as the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.

We had a great time, although the nearby rural region of Mary Valley experienced a significant flood event, quite devastating, which cut the highway for a few days. The nearby town of Maryborough (my child hood home town) also flooded, but they managed to save the old town centre, and the majority of folks were not too affected there (unlike in the farm lands of the Mary Valley).

Still it was great to be away. I'm back home in Brissy with my family for the next two weeks of the summer holidays, so I've got some rpg sessions lined up as well as hanging with the kids and numerous chores etc.

The only issue is that the current pandemic wave is starting to hit here in QLD, and my work has me on a recall list if their staff numbers thin too much. Given the daily cases creeping up at present, not to mention some of the break in general supply chains etc, I can see myself recalled back at work next week unfortunately.

Fingers crossed I keep the remainder of my holidays, but it is what it is :thumbsup:
 
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I have vacation time scheduled next week. I wasn't really thinking of it as a "vacation," though, since I'm taking the time off in order to recover from the surgery I'll be having on Tuesday morning.

But working a public-facing job in a high-traffic building during yet another pandemic wave is getting old. I'll be glad to be away from work for a bit, regardless of the reason.
 
Heh, I think Edward Snowden isn't the example I would have used, but I understand as well

Short of it, get around people who do the work. Do puzzles like Wordle, Crytoquote or whatever it is in the paper. Get a raspberry pi and install a server on it. set a goal of something you want to do (for me it was encode mp3s) and then do it on the system.

there are many classes. they are mostly alright, at least at the start.

have him apply for internships https://www.pnnl.gov/internships we pay them.

hit me up with more specific stuff via DM if you like.

Thank you I will pass it along. We will just keep prodding him, eventually he will sort things out. It was comforting to visit my wife's family, she has two brothers just a couple years older than my son, who have both had to move back in with her parents because of the Covid job market. My son graduated HS in 2019 so had a year to start to "adulting" and then Covid shut everything down. On the plus side our youngest is 8 so nice to still have a live in babysitter.

My first reaction would be to say turn tail and run. Video game developers are like idols. Everybody wants to be one so the companies treat them like shit and if they complain they get replaced. Long hours, constant death march projects, crap pay and shitty management leading to burnout. The chances of getting to work on an AAA title are infinitesimally low; the majority of prospective employers are peddling shitty mobile games designed to hook whales on pay-to-win or gacha and your job satisfaction will be close to zero. Most potential employers in the industry are crooks.

If he really still wants to do it, take a look at one of the engines and figure out how to build some games on it. Then do a comp sci course or degree and make sure he does a linear algebra paper, maybe discrete mathematics and stats as well so he understands the maths. Graphics is one of the closest fields in programming to actual applied mathematics and you will need to have a strong grasp of linear algebra at least. He'll be ready when he can explain the mathematical properties of quarternions (essentially 4 dimensional complex numbers) and why they're efficient for doing 3D transformations. He should also get a handle on GPU programming if he wants any chance of getting out of the entry level of mobile games.

If he has any real mathematical aptitude he should then consider doing a 90 degree left turn and go into analytics or data science as he will earn 2-3x the salary for a vastly less stressful job - 10x if his maths is up to working as a quantitative analyst. If he still wants to do game programming then he really has to find a way to demonstrate talent and get the attention of a games company somewhere above the bottom-feeder level.

Yeah, he knows video games is a difficult job market. One thing that is nice is when he talks about it he is pretty realistic about it, so it is clear he knows it isn't just playing video games all day. He has some friends who are also interested and they supposedly have been learning to make mods to some of the games they like. His uncle is about 3 years older and they also tinker with ideas for games. He is competent in math, I don't know how solid, but my wife is very good at math so he may have gotten that from her. I'm solid on the basics, but the theoretical math I'm screwed, like Sudoku puzzles forget it, my wife they aren't even challenging.

The difficulty for me is he seems pretty confident that he is going about things the right way, but I know so little about it that I can't help or really even be sure he has a clue. He might be buying my wife an I a vacation home in Jamaica before he is 30, or still be living with us and planning his future when he is 50 hard to tell at this stage. :crossed: I think he will be fine, but kids are so different these days from when I was 20, makes it really hard to know what is going on in those little skulls.

Other than the math and analytics which he has not talked about your comments are helpful in supporting the side that he may actually have a clue, as it is inline with some of the things he has talked about. He has taken some graphics classes as that is an area of particular interest to him.

Huh. Mine is Asian with the same body type. Perhaps there is a relationship between having a shapely rear end and a disinterest in housework.

If only it were that easy. :hehe:

Mines white with the same body but an intense cleaning streak.

Well there goes that theory.

I was being silly about the shapely bottom thing but being serious for a moment, I don't think a cleaning streak is weird or undesirable. I have known many people who gain some fulfillment and purpose in maintaining a clean and orderly home. For people like my mother, brother, and a couple girlfriends is it also part of their love language.

The last long term GF I had before getting married was a pretty serious neat freak. We made it work for 5 or 6 years but ultimately I think that played a part in our demise, she used to joke about us getting houses next door to each other if we ever got married because she couldn't live with me. I'm really not that bad, I mean I'm no Oscar Madison. I just have a lot of crap, so tend to live in a constant state of disarray and clutter, but it is mostly clean clutter, not dirty dishes, and food laying around. Eventually it gets bad enough to set me off on a cleaning flurry which then slowly turns back into a state of clutter.

I also ended up with one of the ample bottom, bad housekeeping models (I mean, I'm also bad at it, so we struggle together).

But hey, she is an awesome cook! (I'm not half bad myself, but she is definitely better than me).

We largely split the cooking, she specializes in baking, I do more of the general cooking. She is a very capable cook, but tend to resort to Mac and cheese or tuna casserole because she likes it and it is easy.

Sorrowful day, gamer I knew online through a discord channel is gone. (Took his own life.) Just so you people know--I'm not the most stable, but I've fought my depression for years. I can't change the past, but I can say if you feel like that's ever an option reach out. Me, hotlines, whatever. Love you miscreants.

Sorry to hear that.
 
Twelve years before I started my current job I applied for a position with my employer. After I came home from first day of work I found I finally received an e-mail informing me I was rejected for the role I applied for 12 years earlier.



Today I got an e-mail rejecting me for a position with one of our competitors. I’ve no memory of applying, and judging by the e-mail I received it at, the latest I applied was 2008, as that’s when I stopped using it on my resumes.



I’m not sure what’s more amusing:



  1. The fact that the rejection repeatedly states they have many open positions, to the point that it feels like they’re desperate to hire and they’re sending out e-mails to anyone who ever applied in hopes of getting new hires.
  2. That I can believe #1 because I once got hired for a job through similar methods.
 
Twelve years before I started my current job I applied for a position with my employer. After I came home from first day of work I found I finally received an e-mail informing me I was rejected for the role I applied for 12 years earlier.



Today I got an e-mail rejecting me for a position with one of our competitors. I’ve no memory of applying, and judging by the e-mail I received it at, the latest I applied was 2008, as that’s when I stopped using it on my resumes.



I’m not sure what’s more amusing:



  1. The fact that the rejection repeatedly states they have many open positions, to the point that it feels like they’re desperate to hire and they’re sending out e-mails to anyone who ever applied in hopes of getting new hires.
  2. That I can believe #1 because I once got hired for a job through similar methods.
Last year I applied for a cook job for a convalescence home as well as several other similar facilities in the area. The convalescence home replied the same day and basically wanted to hire me as soon as my application hit their desk. I eventually decided against working for them because the whole facility was rundown, and seemed shady. So I called them back to let them know I wasn't interested, only to find out that the person who had been running the kitchen/interviewed and hired me no longer worked there.
A week later I got hired at a different facility and to my surprise found that my boss used to work at the convalescence home. He left because they were on the verge of bankruptcy and would miss paychecks.
Months later I get an email effectively begging me to come work for some company I've never heard of. Scrolling down to the bottom of the email I find some small print stating that it's the new name for the failing convalescence home.
I still get an email once every 3-4 months with a job offer from them, but I ain't touching it with a 10 foot pole.
 
I'm not going back to the gym, but I did order a rowing machine to go in the storage room that I've cleaned up a bit of to have room for some workout stuff.

As far as a 1 exercise thing it is about as good as you can probably do for full body so we'll see how that goes.
 
I have to dig some footings for a wall today. Pickaxe and shovel work. After months + months of being sedentary I'm thinking of those guys who run out to shovel the first snow of winter and drop dead of heart attacks...
 
Preparing for my Apprenticeship End Point Assessment, which is at the end of January. I have an interview, presentation, and discussion, followed by an exam, all on the same day, so that will be fun. If I pass, I will have a Level 5 qualification in Operational Departmental Manager, which will be good.
 
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