MU Soapbox

Derp

@silverfox said in RL Anger:

You've already set up an account but 110% I suggest a credit union.

I did, in fact, go with a credit union. Great minds!

Derp

@aria

Oh god, now i'm remembering it and tearing up too. It's a good day to cry, sure, why not.

Derp

@aria said in RL Anger:

(But also legit fuck your bank still.)

The first thing I did this morning was go set up an account with another bank.

I'm 100% on board with 'fuck those guys' at this point.

Derp

@kestrel

It's so weird, too, because that's how we would talk if we hadn't been groomed to do it in this weird paragraph style meant to avoid the dreaded short poses.

I can't help but think this is the same as people using passive voice to try to sound smarter, even though it just makes things harder to understand.

We did this to ourselves. Now we have to work to heal the damage.

Derp

@meg

I appreciate the hell out of all of you. Like -- I really, really do. I'm kind of floored by how this thing has taken off so far. It's -- just incredibly humbling.

Thank you so much. Each and every one of you. If you guys ever need anything at all, and I can provide it, please let me know. I'll do whatever I can.

Derp

Alright. I did the thing.

After doing the math and figuring out how much this is actually setting me back and how incredibly painful this can be for the next few weeks -- I took the plunge and made a GoFundMe, with a realistic amount based on the new fees and expenses that will come from this one.

https://gofund.me/d4b1da0f

Apparently I wrote a novel in the blurb part just -- explaining how this has been a shit year and how much it has sucked trying to get caught up. GFM requires you to click 'Read More' like eight times. So if you want the whole thing all at once, here goes:

***=Long and Stuff***

click to show

Hi! I'm Daz. Most of the people reading this probably know me a little better as Derp, or Ryker, from various online communities.

And it's been a rough year.

Normally I try to avoid asking for help. I'm pretty good at finding clever ways to re-arrange things, make sure that things smooth themselves out over time. But at the beginning of the year, I was face with an unexpected, very necessary long-distance move. It wasn't really optional. It was a matter of personal safety, both physically and psychologically. But it completely wiped out what savings I had managed to build up to that point.

The next few months were spent managing the realities of trying to build a life in a far more expensive city while living paycheck to paycheck. I managed to stay ahead of most of the expenses, or at least very carefully juggled which ones I could afford to let get behind a bit. The Calculus of Being a Single Human Adult Renter.

And for the most part, I was starting to get caught back up a bit. I was less than $200 behind, after being almost $1500 in debt after the move. After this check, everything was starting to look up! I even had enough to take the dog to the vet for a sudden eye infection without taking the bank account into the negative! (It might have had less than ten dollars, but still not in the negative!)

And I deferred payment on a few bills for about a week and a half, just waiting on my next paycheck to hit, because I figured that the $25 or so it would cost me in late fees was a cost that I could safely absorb.

Imagine my surprise when I wake up to find out that the bank paid all of those bills on the day I got paid -- except that they paid them before they processed my paycheck, and charged an overdraft fee on each and every one of them. Five transactions in all. Five overdraft fees. Almost two hundred dollars in unexpected charges that my bank, being the mega-corporation that they are, refuses to reimburse. Because they know they're basically ubiquitous, so it doesn't matter if they lose one customer. They have millions of others, and tons of small banks are basically owned by them anyway.

So now I'm back to the part where I have rent coming up, and not enough money to cover it due to these unexpected extra expenses, plus the extra $75 that it's going to tack onto the rent (because it'll be late) and the additional extra overdraft fee that the bank will surely charge for not having enough to cover the expenses.

And that's before gas, or food, or laundry, or any other adult expenditure.

I, like many of you, hate asking for help. But the logical part of me knows that, at this point, we're getting into territory where getting caught up is going to take a lot of effort, and a lot of sacrifices, and a lot of tempting fate that could end up making things even worse. Especially as I've largely been tempting fate for the better part of a year to just get caught up to where I am.

So. I'm asking for help. Because I've been doing this awhile now, and I've made sacrifices, and honestly -- I'm tired. And feeling a little defeated, at this point. Unexpected things are going to keep happening, and there's no way to tell ahead of time if they're going to be the kind of things that I can bounce back from easily, or if they're going to knock me further down the slope I just climbed, ever so slowly.

I don't expect anyone to contribute anything they don't have, or don't feel comfortable sacrificing. PLEASE take care of your own needs first, and only contribute if you really, truly are in a place that you can do so. But if you have anything that you could spare, the fundraiser amount puts me exactly even after rent is paid, groceries are purchased (budgeted for about $50), I get enough gas in the truck to get to work for the next two weeks, and the last few of the remaining bills are caught up, which puts me in a position to actually be able to start saving money again. And that would be a huge stress burden off of me.

Thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide. I really believe that we choose our own families, and the people reading this are almost assuredly part of the family I've chosen for myself. One of these days, I'll be in a position to help one of you, too. And you bet that I'll have your back when you need it, like you always have mine, no matter how rough life gets.

For those skipping that part -- the TL;DR is that not only do I have to account for the 200, I have to account for the 75 that will get added onto the rent for it, as well as all the other basic adulting charges, and realistically -- I could use some help. Even if I hate that I need help, and hate asking for it more. There's just too much that can go wrong to keep gambling on me being able to catch up before the next majorly expensive thing.

Any help you can offer is appreciated.

Derp

@il-volpe said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

ETA that it was @Derp who added Darren,

How could I have missed my chance to add Darius to the list of names, instead of Darren!!! Ugh, I will never forgive myself!

Derp

@reimesu said in RL Anger:

Pomplamoose

Look, introducing people to the glory of Pomplamoose is just basic human decency, and don't you let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

Derp

@aria

Lol, I appreciate it! I dunno. Maybe I'll take a full inventory of how much this is gonna set me back and start a gofundme or something. It just hurts me in the pride, because I feel like there are people that need it worse than me, and all of this is because of stupid first world problem bullshit.

Derp

@ganymede

I'll be alright. I won't starve. I have been poor most of my life, I can make food do amazing things on a very small budget. I can go staple shopping, and get brake pads, and probably have enough left in the bank that they'll cover a rent check.

I'm mostly just mad. Mad that we pretty much have to use banks, and they have this ridiculous amount of power. Mad that i work in a job that people used to fight for, that now doesn't even pay competitively for beginners, and I have plenty of experience and academic cred. Mad that, because of that job, I can't even get a second job because of the moonlighting rules at the first job -- and they know because everyone reports income to them, so unless I find something super-duper under the table, I am stuck at a single income, or take risks out in the private sector legal economy which is -- kinda iffy right now, and largely full of areas I have zero experience in, like real estate.

I'm just mad that all of this institutional nonsense is so hard to work around. And I needed to vent about it.

PSA, kids: It doesn't get better if you go get an education. It just gets more expensive and complicated, with more paperwork.

Derp

@ganymede

Well, if I can ever figure out Ares under the hood enough to make it work, you can come play at my little side project.

I mean, it'll have werewolf, most likely. And Mage. Probably not vampire because you'd be the only person I trusted to run vampire in a way that wouldn't make me grind my teeth.

Derp

@ganymede

It's very much on my agenda, yes. There are some benefits to this particular bank. Namely that they have ATM's like -- everywhere. Everywhere. Which is occasionally useful. The other banks I have as current options require a bit more forethought and planning to avoid other fees.

But when I talked to the banker lady, she said that I wasn't eligible to have any of the fees covered because I did have to legitimately overdraft at the beginning of the year when I had to move out of my old place in a hurry, which ate all the savings I had and then some, because I didn't feel comfortable in a house with a dude that pulled a gun on me, quelle surprise.

So she's all 'because we only charged you fifty dollars instead of a hundred and fifty dollars back in April you are not eligible to have us fix our own fuckup until the end of November, sorry'.

Finding another bank is definitely on the agenda.

Derp

@ganymede said in FFG L5R:

@derp said in FFG L5R:

Needed: Iron Master Irraka with contacts in local government and organized crime. Required: Fame (Undefeated Karaoke Champion)

So ... you need me.

Uh, I clearly said Irraka, not Bastet.

Derp

I was gonna put this in peeves, but -- I'm angry. Like, really super angry, the more I think about it.

My bank kind of fucked me. Most banks, if you have overnight transactions, will process deposits before debits. Because that tends to be the natural thing to do.

Apparently, not my bank. I scheduled some bills to get paid today. And they did. Four of them. But the bank processed these before they processed my paycheck.

And now, due to the order in which they processed this shit, I have almost two hundred dollars in overdraft fees. Which the bank refuses to cover, even though they are due in their entirety to the order of processing. That the bank decided on.

I can normally eat an overdraft fee. It'll hurt. But I usually have some flexibility there.

But I work for the government in a 'fiscally conservative' red state. Which means that I get paid significantly less than my private-sector counterparts. To the tune of five figures. I can't just absorb $200 in fucking fees like it's nothing, especially after putting stuff off for almost two weeks in an effort to avoid overdraft fees in the first place.

So now, I get to play the fun adult game of 'do I have enough food to last for two weeks if I skip groceries, and can I absorb yet another overdraft fee for the fucking rent that this bank has eaten into the funds for, and can the brake pads I was planning on changing this week make it another two weeks? Do I ask my friends for help when my life is completely unpredictable and I cannot promise I can repay it on a set schedule? Do I reach out to family and hope against all hope that they don't try the same manipulative psychological bullshit that caused me to shut them out in the first place?'

I hate this feeling.

Derp

@pyrephox

Needed: Iron Master Irraka with contacts in local government and organized crime. Required: Fame (Undefeated Karaoke Champion)

Derp

@carma said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

@il-volpe said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

@derp Yeah. So is roll-over XP so Abelard grows powerful, dies, and gets a new PC who's halfway to monsterhood to start with while Millicent, who joined the game when Abelard, Brigid and Camille were all two and three characters in, will never catch up and get to play with the big doggies except as incompetent sidekick.

This is a complete tangent, but where did these names come from? I've started to use them just out of repetition.

I don't know but I just now noticed it too, and I vote we use it as MU-standard. Abelard, Brigid, Camille at least.

Derp

@wretched said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

@jennkryst I still, after like, so many damn years, loved the haunted Memories version of 'Once you raise this stat, it is x amount of time until you can raise that stat again.' At least for atribs and skills. But I like the slow long game and the insta bulk up because you had xp sitting around just hits my personal suspension of disbelief buttons.

Saaaaaaaaame.

Also, having everyone start with a massive amount of xp just because some other people have been playing there longer is stupid and broken.

Derp

@carma said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

Brigid: "I think that's everyone safe and accounted for. Thank heavens nobody was killed in that meteor storm."
Abelard: "I haven't seen your husband. Is he alright?"
Brigid: "Oh, I completely forgot about him. I'm sure he's fine."

We haven't seen your wife in four months, sir, and you've yet to file a missing person's report.

She's not missing. She's in like -- France. or something. Maybe.

So you have no idea?

How is this my problem?

Sir, we're gonna need to continue this conversation down at the station...

Derp

Apparently, editing a post will still show stuff in the history. Anyway! The picture apparently has raised some concern, and since I can't edit it, I just deleted the post, so that's why there's a deleted post! Nothing bad, just can't perma-change it.

Derp

@lotherio said in What's So Hard About Ruby?:

So, I guess thanks for the snobbery about what's so hard and making me feel dumb today.

I can appreciate that you're affected by the topic, here, and I'm sorry that you felt it was belittling to you. But what you're describing (coding in general) is absolutely not what I'm referencing.

At least three people in the past -- two, maybe three weeks, have made it a point to talk about how Ruby specifically is hard to code in (versus something like python or Mux code).

And I'm asking why Ruby in particular is harder to code in than other languages as part of a follow-up to those comments.

There's no snobbery going on here, and nobody is looking down on you based on any level of coding you do or don't have. It was a genuine question asked in good faith about a topic that has come up multiple times in a (relatively) short span of time.

So I apologize if you felt attacked. That wasn't the intention, and what you're referencing isn't even what I was talking about or asking. I think we're mostly on the same page.

Edited because I was feeling a might defensive and that was unconstructive.

For reference, here are a couple of examples of what I'm referring to:

@23quarius said in Project Gridlock (Temp Name) Matrix style mush:

Mister ~~Johnson~~ Anderson, Ruby is horrible, don't torture yourself with Ruby

@mr-johnson said in Project Gridlock (Temp Name) Matrix style mush:

Going to go with ares in spite of how hard it is to code with Ruby. Just because it's the system I've used for my last 4 games that actually saw a release.

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