What you did Today: The Story of you

[ShadySands]

I ended up turning the offer down. The extra money wasn't enough even after negotiating and the only thing I was really liking was the extra benefits and some new challenges but in the end I liked my schedule flexibility and more teleworking more.

[Gorgon]

Dreams.  I can never remember mine unless I'm dreaming and then suddenly wake up.

So... for some reason I'm Hitler's personal secretary ( I know, right ?)

 The fürher is in the doorway to my office with an entourage of assistants and what looks like gray uniform death star generals and he goes 'The odds for tomorrow are 2/1'.

I'm trying to explain that I don't understand as a ringtone goes off. The office is messy with papers strewn everywhere and I dig through them looking for the source, I can tell that the gathering is having fun as at my expense as Hitler goes 'Das is sehr beständig'. I find 4-5 identical flip phones with confusing menus and I can't figure out how to turn them off. They open easily in the back and run on AA batteries, I  pop the batteries out.. but they keep ringing. 

Which transitions to the alarm on my phone and I realise that I'm going to be an hour late for work.  

 

 

[LadyCrimson]

Cooked bratwursts in the oven for dinner. Nicely browned and perfect. Ate with sauerkraut and mustard. I could feel my arteries clogging but they were tasty. Comfort food always seems to taste better in winter.

Having one of those months where I'm always sleepy/want to be bundled up and fall asleep w/the TV on half the time. Exercise falling off which I'm sure makes it worse. Need to get back on that.

[melkathi]

Today I searched for video game news in an attempt to take over the Computer and Console section of the forum.

[Hurlshort]

Yesterday I needed to go pick up my RV about 30 miles away. I had dropped it off to a renter on Friday and biked home, and it was a very nice ride filled with fall colors and a good breeze. But Sunday was supposed to be rainy and I kept hemming and hawing about taking the easy way and just having my wife drive me. But the sun came out around lunch time, so I decided to jump on my bike and go for it. The first 10 miles went great, with just a light shower of rain. Then I hit the mountain. Did I mention there is a mountain to climb on this ride? It's about 2500 feet over a 4 mile stretch. The first two miles are paved, so that was fine, but the last two miles are just packed base rock. The tricky part is to keep your momentum going and stay in the saddle, because once you lose traction, you are going to end up walking. It got even trickier on the last half mile where they had put down a new layer of gravel. It felt like I was riding on two flat tires.

So I made it to the top with some effort, and I'm now 15 miles and an hour into the ride. The next part is a steep downhill, which I knew would be tricky in the conditions. So far it had been fairly dry, but as soon as I set off on the downhill, the heavens opened up. I got drenched. I was riding my brakes, shivering, barely able to see, all the way down the mountain. I pulled over at a small market at the bottom and tried to compose myself under an awning. I couldn't stop shaking. I had to actually take off gloves and wring out the water. I called my wife and briefly contemplated giving up. I was now only 10 miles from my destination, but the rain did not seem to be letting up. Finally the shivering subsided, and I decided to try and get through it. I put away my cycling glasses, put back on my wet gloves, and started pedaling. 

Eventually the rain let up a bit. I was still cold and uncomfortable, but the wind was helping me along a bit, and the last 10 miles went by fairly quick. I made it to the RV, dried myself off, and made it home safely.   

Edited December 9, 2019 by Hurlshot

[Blarghagh]

On 12/6/2019 at 6:48 PM, Gfted1 said:

Well wishes to you all! Do you know the sex yet?

Thank you! Yes, it's a boy. Which is fantastic, because I don't recall having any positive male role models and I have no idea how to be one. 

Of course, it's a moot point for now because he's imitating the dutch train service - he's late, I don't know why he's late and I have no idea when he will get here...

[Guard Dog]

34 minutes ago, TrueNeutral said:

Thank you! Yes, it's a boy. Which is fantastic, because I don't recall having any positive male role models and I have no idea how to be one. 

Of course, it's a moot point for now because he's imitating the dutch train service - he's late, I don't know why he's late and I have no idea when he will get here...

You know how to be a positive male role model. It's easy. 

1. Work hard and take care of your family
2. Love your wife/spouse unconditionally
3. Love your son unconditionally
4. Treat everyone with respect and insist on the same in return and show him how to do that.

See? Not hard. Just  be yourself.

[melkathi]

3 hours ago, TrueNeutral said:

 I don't recall having any positive male role models and I have no idea how to be one.

You'll do great.

[Gromnir]

3 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

You know how to be a positive male role model. It's easy. 

1. Work hard and take care of your family
2. Love your wife/spouse unconditionally
3. Love your son unconditionally
4. Treat everyone with respect and insist on the same in return and show him how to do that.

See? Not hard. Just  be yourself.

have met enough married couples to know that the #2 on your list is tougher to pull off than you suggest, particular given potential decades o' inevitable conflicts both large and small. 

is a big celebration on day o' marriage, but from a marriage outsider, day 1 looks to be relative easy. am thinking culturally we do in reverse. marriage should be a minor affair with little fanfare. any pair o' stoopid kids can get married. a couple o' drunks in vegas can get married. takes far more effort to make a marriage last. is 21st century and we don't so much care 'bout dowry's and joining family fortunes, so we suggest forget marriage celebration and instead make each subsequent anniversary more extravagant than the last. if such celebration feels like a lie, then is likely a sign you is doing something wrong, eh?

regardless, from pov o' a never-married person, #2 looks more than a little difficult.

HA! Good Fun!

[Guard Dog]

It is. I've failed at marriage twice and have no appetite for a third bite. But neither was for a lack of love. I still love them both. But I wasn't compatible with #1 and can't trust #2. Thank God no kids to complicate things. 

[Gfted1]

Ive been married for 1000 years, and imo, the secret to longevity is the ability to accept what each other evolves into. Youre not the same person you were 5, 10, 20 years ago and neither is your partner. "Love" is always there, acceptance and growth takes occasional effort.

[Hurlshort]

My key to success is to just let her have her way whenever possible. 

As to raising the boy, so far it's a lot less complicated than the girl. We just grunt at each other and go out for burgers every once in awhile. 

[majestic]

I spent a good while of the day reminiscing. Which is something that I do somewhat frequently but it seldomly affects my mood this negatively. Usually it's just a bit of nostalgia mixed in with an increasingly intense notion that maybe the old farts actually had it right and things really were better in the past.

So I'm going to tell you guys a story. You can stop reading here if you don't like stories about, well, "the one that got away" but if you stick around you'll get to call me a stupid moron at the end. Well, possibly. And no, it's not going to be a friend zone story. At least... not a traditional one. I'm also not looking for any validation or a pat on the back or anything, I'm trying forum posting as a sort of coping mechanism (now that I type that out this sounds ridiculous). Since that got a lot longer in writing than I thought it would I'll just put it in spoiler tags.

A couple of political threads back we were talking about education and I mentioned that I signed up for a 5 year course at one of our schools - a course on software development, business administration and related skills (including system and network planning). Usually one signs up at the age of 14 and finishes at 19. When I signed up we also had to take an entry examination that's pretty similar to a SAT. Well, it IS a type of SAT. Or was, because entry examinations were dropped some time after I signed up. Even then, out of everyone that passed the test, the course has a 85+% drop out rate.

Most of these drop outs happen in year one and three, year one dropping those that simply can't hack it and year three dropping those that can't keep up with the level of commitment, skill and intelligence necessary to finish the course. The rules are simple, if you fail one or two classes you're allowed another examination after the summer holidays to check if you caught up with what you were supposed to have learned, and if you do you get bumped to a passing grade and move on. If after these examinations you've still two failed classes you have to repeat the year or drop out, with one it's up to the teachers to decide whether or not they still allow you to pass (i.e. if you grades are otherwise excellent they'll assume you can catch up during the next course year). If you fail three or more subjects during the year you also have to repeat or drop out.

You're allowed to repeat years two times, after that you're done.

This excourse is just there to drive home the point that when you're sitting in year 4 you're essentially surrounded by young, exceedingly bright people. So this is the background against which the beginnings of this tale are set.

As year 4 began we - once again -  underwent reorganization to cope with the drop outs. Instead of being four groups of 20 (down from six groups of 36 in our first year) we were down to 3 with roughly 18 students in them. Actually having over 50 students left at that point is actually considered a pretty large number so our teachers took some extra care to weed out even more, but that's not the point here.

First day and we're assigned some "repeaters", people who failed fourth year. Among them the other party of the story, a drop dead gorgeous girl. 6'1", pretty pale blue eyes, long, dark hair. You can imagine her looking a bit like Gillian Anderson would if she were what the executives at FOX wanted from Mulder's X-File partner: A woman like her but, well, taller, leggier, breastier. Fitting, given that she was - is - a huge X-Files buff. She's not only pretty but also quite smart - even if she had to repeat year 4, she finished the course with us, anyway.

To make her even more perfect the rest of her personality and life played extremely well into my saviour complex. Often times melancholy, family problems, usually ends up in abusive relationships, full of strange dichotomies - smart but with an astounding capacity for naiveté for instance. As I can't help myself at this point I do the usual - move myself into the friend zone and try to help out. Okay, I'm kidding. Not about the friendship part. Over the course of the next two years we actually became good friends and I already had a commited, loving reletionship at this point anyway.

Sometime after we had finished school she moved to my area with her boyfriend who at the time just had started being a commercial airline pilot after finishing his fighter pilot training and term in our air force (also someone from our school). By this time my relationship had fallen apart during my military service and I had not seen her for a while. Anyway so she calls and we're off to a street party with copious amounts of drink. Guard Dog probably knows what I'm talking about, what with engineers and hard drinking.

At this point we're four people - her, myself and two friends of her boyfriend. She tells us that while she's enjoying the advantages of dating a pilot she doesn't like the fact that he's barely home, being in New York at the time, and that there are some issues, well, you know how it goes. The longer the evening gets the bigger the issues appear to be and while my own problems make me fall in love with her (possibly all over again) she at one point looks at me, kisses me on the forehead and says: "You know, we'd be pretty great together! You could be my Mulder!" (I swear I'm not making this up, she LOVES the X-Files)

The other two guys and me agree that it's probably better to go home before things escalate, so we convince her to leave. At this point she's drunk enough to be barely able to walk, eventually sits herself down on the sidewalk and says she's going to sleep, and that it's too hot to sleep in full clothes. So now she's wrangling herself out of her blouse with US trying to make sure she doesn't, we're still on the road a couple hundred meters away from her place.

She gets back up, yells that us that we don't care for her and starts running away. Not really knowing what ELSE we should do we're chasing after her. Funny that. Ran like a fricking Olympic sprinter while being too drunk to walk straight. To this day I'm rather thankful that nobody else saw that scene. What would you expect is happening when a pretty woman is running from three men chased down a small, somewhat dark side road with an open blouse that she's barely wearing any more?

We eventually catch up, get her insider her apartment and tuck her into bed. At this point the other two guys are hanging out while I'm making sure that she's actually going to sleep, it had happened before that she managed to climb out of a window in that state, no kidding. In any other situation she's a riot while drunk. This one was somewhat uncomfortable, not to mention really conflicting. She looking at me and asks me to stay and I'm like "Yeah, sure, sleep this one off and we'll talk tomorrow" knowing full well that she's not really going to remember anything by tomorrow and her boyfriend's going to be back too, so it's either now or bust.

With her fast asleep we leave, say our good byes as I'm starting to... walk home. Deliberately moved myself back into the friend zone at this point.

Their relationship falls apart too. The reason? Oh boy. Stupid retarded asshat actually cheated on her while in NY, she immediately moves out, disappears for a while, doesn't pick up her phone and well... we're both happily married by now and she's recently had her first child but at times like today I kind of wonder what could have been.

Fun fact at the end, if I could do this all over again and even if I knew he was unfaithful at that point I'd just walk away. We can't truly stop being who we are, can we? And I never have and never will take advantage of someone drunk to the point of being (almost) unable to consent no matter how much I would love to.

And everything worked out for us anyway. It's not bad, just... ah, hell. I'm of half a mind to delete everything but I've wasted an hour typing by now.

[Azdeus]

Woke up about an hour before work, went outside to plug in the heater in the car, discovered I can't open any doors because there is half an inch of ice on the car. ****.

 

[ShadySands]

Got a concussion, good times.

[Azdeus]

What happened?

 

So I got my HTC Vive, set it up, and played some, I manged some 6 hours before the batteries went out for the controllers. I definetly don't have a problem with motionsickness, but I did notice a tendency to sway alot when I'm running around in Skyrim VR, and my vertigo kicks in something awful when I have to look down any kind of height. Slapped some mods on and it's quite alot of fun.

While playing and seeing "my" body move about, I got some Déjà vu feelings from way back when I first played the old Tresspasser game. The thought occured to me that that game would be perfect to make a VR update on.

Also realized that I'm going to have to redecorate alot, I definetly need some more room to swing about my arms, I get way too much into the games xD

Edited December 10, 2019 by Azdeus

[ShadySands]

8 hours ago, Azdeus said:

What happened?

Nothing major, just fell and hit my head while doing stuff around the house. Luckily for me you can't hurt steel but the brain still wobbles.

[Gfted1]

Glad youre ok.

[ShadySands]

Thanks! I've been telling everyone I got it playing chess and it was a very tricky move

[majestic]

21 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Thanks! I've been telling everyone I got it playing chess and it was a very tricky move

Double post if your wife is abusing you.

[Gromnir]

1 hour ago, ShadySands said:

Thanks! I've been telling everyone I got it playing chess and it was a very tricky move

HA! Good Fun!

[ShadySands]

I was thinking Revenge of the Nerds 2 but I could go for that too

[Malcador]

Back from Houston, survived United Airlines and at least that part of Texas.  Was not bad trip even though only a couple of days. Got to see the Saturn V on display at JSC so that was fun, that campus sure is run down, even the lawns looked poorly maintained.   Also got to visit some really nice bakeries, was a Salvadorian and Mexican one.  Coming back to Toronto is sort of striking how poorly people drive here by comparison

[Guard Dog]

I finished Skyrim today. It only took eight years but I finally finished it! Now I can try Fallout 4

[ComradeYellow]

Got my new motherboard (Intel obv) and 2tb SSD drive.  Debating on whether I wanna hook it up now or this weekend.  At any rate I gonna get those clock speeds past 5ghz soon.