Posts made by Faceless

Candelabra?

@rnmissionrun said in RL Anger:

Here at the local county lockup, there's no a/c except for Main Control and Booking.

Yeah, that's a thing too. I forgot that there's such a thing as old buildings. Those places need to be phased out and replace, imo. That shit's cruel.

@derp said in RL Anger:

Also, the jail smells like pee and feet. Something is very wrong there. I feel bad, and almost feel like someone should look into why that is a thing. Gross.

Yes, it's pretty terrible. Here are some examples of why that is a thing:

• You have to work with a bunch of grody motherfuckers. (I actually encountered an offender being sent to the infirmary because he got his ass beat by his 'friends' for not showering regularly.)
• Inadequate access to cleaning supplies. (That's just unacceptable.)
• Lack of volunteers/hires for janitorial duties among offenders. If your facility has offender cleaning staff, the OIC of a unit should definitely be hiring and enforcing workers to do what they're being paid for.
• Intentional. It's a subversive act. They don't want to be there, so they're passive aggressively attempting to make the simple act of being there unpleasant for officers and staff. Weaponizing what they're able. Offenders are notorious for that as you're no doubt aware. (One year I got gunned down through an open cuffport, during morning chow distribution. On Christmas morning.)

On a mental health block I was once doing a walkthrough and discovered an offender (who looked like a cracked out Bob Ross) had basically turned his cell into the Sistine Chapel. But instead of paint, he used shit. He'd also marked himself up with dooky war paint. Then wrapped himself up in his foam mattress and proceeded to roll around his cell like a shit burrito. Talk about a 'fun' cell extraction.

@rnmissionrun said in RL Anger:

My worst experience to date involved an elderly man who rushed into the shop I work in now in desperate need of a bathroom. I let him use our employee bathroom, and had no idea that anything was wrong until I had to use the bathroom myself a few hours later. That's when I discovered the mess. It was like a crap bomb had exploded a few feet above the commode. I swear to God, it was like those pictures of the Tunguska Blast in Russia, only with crap instead of trees. I figure he cut things a bit too close and lost control before he was able to sit down. You'd think he would have had the common decency to say something to alert me to the problem on his way out but I as I recall, he left the store without even saying "thank you". To this day I have not let another customer use the employee restroom.

It could have been worse. It could have been this guy.

Jokes aside. That's a... shitty situation.

@arkandel said in Book Recommendations:

Set in the future, humanity is colonizing the solar system and in the process trying to mirror the golden days of Rome while viciously oppressing the population of entire planets to exploit them as cheap labor for their conquests. It's really engaging, the characters are great, the plot is full of twists and turns and if you're into that sort of thing I loved the strategic/tactical aspects of its warfare.

I like all of these things. I love a good plot twist and deep tactical writing I enjoy as well. I'm currently reading for the umpteenth time one of my favorite Clancy novels, but, well, I'm on my third purchase of that particular book because it's been worn out from reading it so many times over the years. So I'm sort of bored with it. A little.

Still watching the Lethal Weapon series. Still enjoying it.

I've also finally began watching Supernatural. When I say that I watch it...I mostly watch an episode or two, then go do other things. Then my spouse watches half a season and I have to play catch-up to get to where she is. I'm not as invested in it as she is.

Anyone have any opinions on The Americans? I watched the first season way-back-when and did enjoy it, but just lost track of it because I'm not huge on watching television. Are the later seasons worthwhile? Are they worth buying?

After seeing it mentioned here a few times and a couple other MUers strongly advising me to read them for about 8-10 months now, I finally ordered The First Law trilogy last night. Gotta get dat hardback on, yo. So in a couple weeks I'll start that.

Does anyone have any recommendations for non-fantasy series? I don't mind fiction at all, I just don't tend to get too deep into one genre or another. So if I'm reading a lot of fantasy(which I have been) I like to offset that with some solid futuristic sci-fi or something just not magic and swords and armor and dwarves. My hope is to buy a dozen or so books this Christmas for myself, to round out my bookshelves a little more. So I'm building a list.

@ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

TIE Fighter is one of those game game-changers, so to speak. It really was one of the first games I played which had Primary and Secondary Objectives for missions, and it was a fantastic flight-sim. It was better than X-Wing as far as playability, and it led to the very cool X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter game, which was very enjoyable.

Yes. I can remember the sense of wonder I had at that young age, watching my stepfather play TIE Fighter. He would give me an opportunity to play, coaching my super young self through things at my side? That was a fucking privilege! By that time I was already enjoying Star Wars as a new generation of fan, but it only made me all the more interested in the... everything to do with Star Wars. The Star Wars flight-sim games weren't my first dip in the proverbial PC gaming pool, that'll come in a moment. But TIE Fighter/X-Wing/X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and even the Balance of Power expansion(I mean come on, throwing yourself at a Super Star Destroyer? Sploosh) are what made me love it all the more. In the films, often the space battles and dogfights are my favorite parts! So I'll always have love for those games and may very well pick them up someday in the future, because the nostalgia engines are kicking into gear.

They weren't my first PC game ever played though. Not counting random school, classwork learning-based games like motherfuckin' Number Munchers. TIE Fighter was played around the same time, but wasn't the first that I was exposed to. My stepfather and his brother were getting really into PC gaming at the time(hell, it was with them and their friends/coworkers that I had my first overnight LAN party) so I played what they played, basically. Command & Conquer was my first. It was my first RTS and first PC game. It has a special place in my heart. Which pains me, because it's fallen so far from grace. The story of the games became fairly cheesy, very quickly. Which isn't so much a problem, I can deal with cheese mostly. I bought Command & Conquer 4 a couple years back, super excited to play it, and made it through maybe three or four missions before I just put it away from my fingers. It just didn't have the draw like the early games did(and still do) for me. It had gone too far down the science fiction path for me.

I've been playing Total War: Warhammer II since it released and have been enjoying it. I enjoy a few of the different factions but seem to focus on the Dwarves, Dark Elves(cold one knights, yo), and High Elves the most. They're the groups in those worlds that I've always had the most interest in, so naturally I tend toward them in the game!

In more modern days what I really want is Warcraft 4. I don't mean some quasi-3d Warcraft III quasi-expansion. I mean a Tides of Darkness style RTS where I can base build strategically, army amass, and slugging match with a capable AI. That's all I really want. I don't need cut scenes. I don't need too much polish. I don't need polygon characters. I don't even need a super immersive story - I loved Warcraft: Orcs and Humans(the third game I ever played!) and Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness(and there's the fourth!) because they were engaging and at times challenging! When I need to focus on a task, I even put the Tides of Darkness soundtrack on because it's background noise that I enjoy but am so familiar with that I can not be distracted by it. So that's what I want: Warcraft IV.

Today's just a good day for MU things I love!

When your character has been operating under one impression for literally IC years, then has a shift in their perceptions within the last few months(RL months, too!), and THEN in one fell swoop their whole perspective of the world is distracted by someone saying 'hey, look, over there!' and when they look someone full-on punts them in the nuts.

That's what happened to my character tonight. My initial thought was to react to it immediately, whether to write about it or bury his misery in drinks or more likely write to someone about it WHILE burying his misery in drinks. Instead I'm going to take a day or two, let it stew, and really think about how he'll react to this news. Because... god damn it all, that shit was rough. It was a damn whirlwind of emotions. Some smiles, an Easter egg or two that made me chuckle, some side eyeing, then some eye widening, then some 'oh, son of a bitch'ing, and finally 'oh, dear god, he's not been wrong in who he's blamed... but he hasn't been blaming everyone that's responsible'.

Glass case of emotion, I'm telling you.

ETA:

I had to look up wtf an "incel" is. Won't front, I laughed a little.

When you find that music that just helps you write in a scene. Or any scenes, really. At present I listen to the soundtrack for Final Fantasy Tactics. It just helps me hone in and focus. It's always nice when you hit that point where you just feel like you've hit your stride in a scene, a given week, month, or whatever.

@sunny said in RL Anger:

Fucking inability to sleep. I have been waking up 1-2 hours early every morning (or more) for weeks now, regardless of what time i go to bed. This morning it was sleeping in to wake at 5. I am so tired.

That isn't an upvote in celebration! It's an upvote in commiseration. Right there with you. On average I manage about 3-4 hours of sleep. Tonight has been 0. I feel your pain.

@wizz said in Good TV:

***MOR mor Stranger Things 2 Thoughts***

click to show

I had step-sibs at that age and there were a couple of them that I really, really did not get along with in a similar vein. They didn't like my ma, I didn't like their dad. Blame and anger and all sorts of stuff gets misdirected pretty easily when you're a teen, that part honestly made a lot of sense to me.

***Spoiler Commentary***

***Not Really A Spoiler, But Just In Case***

@auspice said in RL things I love:

Plus, I'd win Mrs. @Faceless

Naw. I liked it enough to stop being a sloot and put a ring on it. Step off, bruh. fite me

@auspice said in RL things I love:

y u so greedy?

Cookies. Preemptive cookies at that.

@aria said in RL things I love:

PSYCHIC.

Have him hmu if/when he's single. Also, only if that selective ability isn't gender dependent. Also, I get top bunk.

***=NSFS***

Got a new car. That's nice.

Old car had reached the point of being an old car. It was in great shape still, but had developed a couple leaks. Figured instead of taking the time and energy to fix it again... why don't we just get a new car? So, a new car was had.

I'm still trying to decide if we should just keep the old car and I can do the repairs as I feel the urge. Part of me says yes, because frugal. The other part of me just wants to take it out to my grandparent's and shoot it a few hundred times, because boom. (ETA: Or, you know, sell it. Because I do like money. Pretty sad that option placed third, after fixing it and blowing it up.)

Brand new car though. For my wife it's her first new-new car, which has her super excited. So we've got that going for us, which is nice.

Yes.

@Aria has told me a bit about it, since I've never played it. It has me wanting to play it.

@sg said in RL things I love:

I'd argue coworkers should know what their coworkers make, especially in fields where pay is negotiated.

I have to agree. When I was much, much younger I moved from one State to another. I transferred within the company I worked. I can't recall the exact amounts so they're just examples...

When I transferred my pay was set at $16.50 an hour. Moving from a rural area to metropolitan, the pay wasn't really enough for anyone with any sort of bills to get on solo. Rent alone to be near to work was something like 45-50% of my income. Whatever, I've been in worse positions.

After being there for about 8 months or so, the conversation of pay came up between myself and coworkers. Mostly because one person mentioned how much they made, more of a slip than anything. Then when I expressed some measure of: Excuse me, wtf?, others began volunteering how much they made. Many of them were making upward of $25-28 on the hour. Doing the exact same job, same amount of time on a weekly basis, same everything.

Well, maybe they worked their way up to that point? I can certainly understand that and I'm perfectly fine with putting in time and effort to work toward raises. That's fair. That's reasonable. That's logical.

But that wasn't the case. Many of them had started out at a couple $$ shy of where they were at that time. They had got raises to reach that point, but not by much. Every one of them to the last was astonished how much I was being paid because at that rate I was making substantially lower than any of them when they had first started out - and by that point I had been with the company for a couple years, so I wasn't some new hire or something. The general consensus was that the only difference between any of us? Was that I wasn't a local. I was from out of town.

The next day following that little conversation I went right to HR and we had it out. They tried to intimidate me by informing me that "discussing pay among coworkers is a cause for termination". Fuck you. Don't try to play me like that because I will stab your ass with a stapler, kidnap your dog, and send ransom photos from Tijuana with @Royal. In the end they bent because I think they realized that I could cause a lot more problems for them legally. They gave me a bump of a few dollars and tried to imply that it must have been a clerical error. After that everything was peachy until I transferred out again a bit later.

So yes, I absolutely do believe you should know what your coworkers make. Even if it's what @Tinuviel said and was more ballpark. "Everyone makes $23-26 on the hour" or something. Otherwise it leaves far too much space for corporate douchebags to fuck over someone trying to put in their time and make a living simply because they aren't acclimated to the local norms.