Posts made by Ghost

@Arkandel I think this is one interesting byproduct of living in this crazy cool era where a lot of our nerdy stuff is popular. My mom sent me a message saying she's excited for Avengers: Endgame and asked if this makes her a nerd. I told her: "Nope, just that you have good taste".

I think a lot of people didn't give this stuff the time of day because there was a stigma surrounding the concept of the nerd. Revenge of the Nerds was a thing. The image of the Louis Skolnick pocket protector nerd or the neckbeard spending all day at a comic book shop was pretty prevalent. Cut 20+ years later and people are excited about the new Dune movies, my mom knows who BANE is, and fangirls over Bucky Barnes. Right, because it was good shit if you got out of your weird self-conscious box to give it a chance.

ETA: Oh, and her Winter Soldier thirst is a thing. Jesus Christ. Thirrrrst.

My story?

My folks are Catholic and I got raised up in the Satanic Panic era, so comic books were okay but D&D wasn't. For me it was Dragonlance novels and for some reason Steven King, Clive Barker, and Dean Koontz novels were totally okay. So I mostly grew up a comic book and horror nerd, and was into Dragonlance novels before I even knew that Krynn was even some offshoot D&D setting. I think my first book was the Riverwind book. Buff native barabarian dude vs dragonman on the cover? Good shit.

By high school I was playing in bands, little metalhead goth guy, staying up late watching Hellraiser films and drawing horror comics with my buddies. We used to camp at a Village Inn in Omaha (Oakview Mall, for you Omaha people) sometimes until 1am just piling on a bunch of gothy nerds drinking coffee and rotating who's dating who. Mostly at that stage we were all punk/metal/goth show kids who went to a lot of GWAR concerts and snuck wine coolers out of our parents' fridges and smoked a lot of weed.

Around that time I got invited to a D&D game and played one session (Necromancer. HUGE SURPRISE THERE). D&D didn't exactly latch, but my first love was Vampire the Masquerade. Soon thereafter we were playing in a Little King sandwich shop after close (from around 9pm-1am) because the storyteller was the shop's manager.

When I found out there were girls, notably goth girls that were into RPing VtM? hoooooked

VtM on AOL chat rooms, VtM on the White Wolf chats, moved to where I live now and got into VtM LARPs and occasional side D&D games. VtM is really my first true RPG love. Truly.

@Arkandel said in What's your nerd origin story?:

@Testament Sturm Brightblade's end... man. That was harsh.

Man when Sturm <SPOILER> that got me good. I had to put the book down for a week. I loooooved Sturm. Hell, if Dragonlance ever got the Lord of the Rings film treatment, I'm still lobbying for Sam Elliot.

@Tinuviel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

When I was in the US I was told that it's apparently better to write a zero dollar tip receipt and just give your server, or whomever, cash. Due to taxes, or somesuch. Is there any truth to that idea?

https://musoapbox.net/topic/1943/real-world-peeves-disgruntlement-and-irks/2108?page=106

I'm in the card payments industry. Kinda went on detail previous page.

Hierarchy should be:

Cash > Credit with 20% tip or less > Credit with 20% or under tip and over 20% is cash > Credit with tip over 20%

The ones that get me are the ones who write a $0 tip receipt with a note that their tip will be donated to Jesus.

"Sucks you're minimum wage, brah, Osteen needs a speedboat."

@mietze Seen a little bit of that lately.

I work with more than a few people who have been "contract" employees, but have been in that state for years. Very few are transitioned into employees.

Now, that could be by choice; I don't know.

Well, shit.

@mietze Yeah, IMO private contractors are risky. Being one, that is.

In my experience most companies hire private contractors as quasi-employees that they don't have to payout vacation or other benefits to that are the first line of cuts when layoffs happen. That way they can keep their employees and buck off the mercenaries.

Sure, you get the freedom of negotiating for your work and don't get sucked into 100% of the company BS, but you do so at the risk of securities, benefits, time off.

@Ganymede I'd be interested to see the differences in any tax rates or benefits to state/federal for tipped vs salaried employees.

I dont have the time to research it, but I'd hypothesize it as having something to do with how tip-based businesses are able to payout less of a wage and base tip percentage allotted based on the store's overall performance.

The pessimist in me imagines that the reason why this change is coming slowly is related to the fact that someone other than the employee is getting something from it.

That New Yorker article about the elitism was interesting as Hell.

ETA: Yeah, or more nefarious or pessimistic, could it truly be that people may be unwilling to pay restaurants more because having control over the tip makes the food cheaper for the diner and gives them more control over the performance of the serving staff?

I dunno

@mietze Ugh I've heard a lot about tip stealing here in town. Remember that crazy "Amy's Baking Company" from Kitchen Nightmares? Those dicks took all tips from their servers. It's legal.

Those big fancy restaurants, like the $90 steak houses, tend to give their staff salaries and (I've heard) sometimes benefits.

@Kanye-Qwest Fair enough. Tipping has changed a lot since back in the day. I wasn't giving you advice per se. Fact is that if any one wants to support (over 20%)the tip-based service industry your best options are still to tip cash or 20%+cash extra.

The card payment industry can get pretty complex in terms of how money shuffles around.

Example: All transactions on credit cards are ultimately ranked by risk. The higher the risk, the more the credit card company charges the merchant to process the transaction. This is why merchants and card issuers push for use of in-person transactions with verified ID and chip readers. MOTO (mail order/telephone order) transactions are higher risk since the merchant can't see the person making the purchase, so those typically cost more. This is why they want to verify address, zip, cvv code, etc. Each one of those verified lowers the % of the transaction the merchant has to pay to run the card.

MOTO is the main source of fraudulent/ID theft-based transactions.

Credit card with tip is considered somewhat risky because typically the card is run and pre-authorized for a 20% tip, but then later someone has to go and enter the tips data-entry style. If it's risky enough, the server might not actually get the tip until it clears the bank. If your card issuer refuses the transaction, they might not get the tip at all.

9/10 times everything works out fine, but I wouldn't be surprised if sometimes those reddit threads where someone posts a pic of someone giving them a $1000 tip on Christmas Eve end in a bunch of bank calls, a hold on the transaction, etc.

Restaurants and servers don't mention this, but behind the scenes, caaaaaash.

@Auspice MOM'S SPAGHETTI.

@Auspice Homemade biriyani > aunt Carol's potato salad.

@Sparks @Kanye-Qwest I gather they're probably checking to see if the restaurant isn't turning 3s into 8s.

Knowing what I know about the bank industry, it probably has less to do with your money and more to do with investigating probable gratuity fraud in the same way they follow up on sudden purchases from Kazakhstan.

Average tip being 15-20%, double that in a tip might raise a flag.

ETA: Now that I think about it...

Most transactions your bank receives comes at a flat amount on your statement. There's a thing on credit card terminals called tip overage. When your card is swiped it assumes a 20% tip as acceptable but a tip higher than 20% risks flagging for fraud, YOUR bank initiating a chargeback, and the transaction rate could be downgraded. So going over 20% on a cash tip isn't so huge a deal, but on a card it's more scrutinized.

Advice? 20% on the card and if you can leave extra cash on the table.

https://www.cardfellow.com/blog/tips-credit-card-affect-restaurant/

Sidebar: I love my coworkers from India. At least about 70% of them. The greater percentage of them are pretty openly kind, low drama, love talking about movies and music, shove food down my throat, and ask me if I wanna partake in Holi and get assaulted with colored dye. They're typically great teammates without all of the ego.

There are about 30% who are pretty condescending and buy into that super judgy side of Indian culture that is if you don't dress super nice and drive an expensive car then I'm better than you, which my Indian friends at work explain is simply a thing all of them deal with; that level of pretentiousness.

A lot of them bring their kids to work. Indian kids are adorable.

My favorite cultural thing? The head-wobble. It's body language for I'm not saying yes or no, but I'm definitely not saying yes, I'm just saying that I don't necessarily agree and am doing it in a non-dickish way. The head-wobble is solid.

End sidebar.

The potlucks here are amaaaaaaaaazing

@Auspice It's a Harley...

...compatible. #mysterymen

Groan moment at work just now.

Coworker A: Hey, did you see <insert name of coworker from India> got a new Harley?

Me: No, is it in the lot? I saw the guy walking around with a new helmet but haven't seen it in the lot, yet.

Coworker B: A Harley? Surprised he didn't get an Indian

Coworker A and myself: Groan. You're an asshole, lol.

@Darinelle said in RL things I love:

fighter practice on my lunch break

That'll probably be the most badass 6 words I'll hear all day.

Like...most people I know go home on their lunch break to let out the dog or do 20 minutes of yoga.

I salute you.

@Jonah42175 Yeah, I mean I like Charlotte Flair a lot. I think she's really talented, but the constant "Charlotte gets the belt again" is getting old.

If Rousey getting the belt for being Rousey is a complaint, then Charlotte being in everything should be, too.

Ya mentioned Alexa Bliss. Think she's done? She's been absent since the Rumble.