Best posts made by WTFE

@Pandora said in RL Anger:

Pro-life.

They sure got the better end of the deal when it came to naming those two stances, didn't they? If you're not pro-life, what are you? Pro-death, apparently. I'm pro-people having the right to do what is best for themselves and their health; mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially. Those are choices, so I'm pro-choice. If you're not pro-choice, you're pro-people having their personal options ripped out of their hands. Let's call 'pro-life' that instead.

I personally prefer the terms "anti-life" and "anti-choice" because I think both sides are being disingenuous.

Not less forgiving.

Less forgetful.

As in fuck "forgive and forget". Forgive and remember.

You think it's bad for you, how 'bout we poor fuckers who have to either watch your insane electoral gibbering pass by our social media feeds or install specific software just to filter it out!?

And even THEN fuckers like Google and Wikipedia and Yahoo and too many other miscreants to count send emails or put huge blaring pop-up signs in their pages that remind you to go and vote and offer to tell you where your voting station is. (Apparently my voting station is the USPS...)

Yes. FUCKING GOOGLE. The people who steal collect all the information they can about you down to your sock size. Those people can't seem to fucking figure out that a Canadian citizen living in China can't vote in an American election and offer to help.

So you think you're tired of your circus freak show masquerading as democracy? WALK A MILE IN A NON-AMERICAN'S SHOES!

@tek said in Dead Celebrity Thread:

@Thenomain said in Dead Celebrity Thread:

Leonard Cohen.

):<

Was just coming here to post this. Fuck everything forever.

Ditto.

I can think of a million people I'd rather see go before Cohen. One of them might even be president of something or other.

2016, if you go after Tom Waits, I'm goin' after you!

'Some kind of' video.

@Insomnia said in RL Anger:

Doing new training, I'm the only Canadian. Trainer is telling me I'm wrong and there is no timezone past Eastern.

The world stops at America's borders, amirite?

@Insomnia I love fucking with people like that. My current favourite is to tell people who say their time zone is "EST" (as if this is something universally understood) that my time zone is "CST".

This causes endlessly entertaining "misunderstandings" because it is, just not the CST they're thinking of. Some of them figure out after all the hijinks that perhaps it's best to talk about UTC±<n> (or GMT±<n> if you must) rather than thinking that "EST" and "CST" and "MST" and such are actually globally standard names.

@Sunny said in RL Anger:

Motherfucking people bitching about their bloody Freedom of Speech when private companies censor speech in private areas.

This is punctuated incorrectly.

Motherfucking people bitching about their bloody Freedom of Speech.

Better…

Motherfucking people bitching.

Oh, this is much closer!

Motherfucking people.

And here we have the bingo point.

@Sunny said in RL Anger:

@WTFE

Nope. My anger is pretty specific. Thanks for playing, though.

My pet peeve: humourless cunts.

@Kestrel said in Dead Celebrity Thread:

@WTFE said in Dead Celebrity Thread:

The 2016 Song.

The comments tho.

Youtube has a comments section? I don't see it.

(Seriously, I don't. Because I adblocked the motherfucking section. Like I adblock almost every comments section anywhere.)

@Auspice said in RL things I love:

2016 may have been an incredibly rough year (personally, as well as everything else), but it's definitely ending on a high note.

That's because Buzz Aldrin hasn't died yet.

@Misadventure said in RL things I love:

I have little sympathy for the "let it all burn" vote.

And in a single sentence we have a good summary of why there's a "let it all burn" vote. Bravo.

Personally, as a non-American, I have little sympathy for the USA and am chowing down on popcorn as I watch the nation burn.

@Catsmeow said in RL Anger:

To be fair, you can't blame your family for screaming at you that they know what's best for you medically. Especially if it has no bearing on them or they have never gone through it.

They learned this from watching politics.

(Obviously I'm making a joke here)

In the proud "ha ha only serious" tradition, no less.

@surreality said in RL Anger:

I will say, it's becoming more and more recognized that people change careers and such many times over the course of their lives these days than it once was…

Free anecdotal data point: I started my "adult" life thinking I was going to be in the military. This didn't pan out; I'm not the kind of mentality that does well in the military. (Turns out "why?" is not a question people want to hear when you're told what to do.) I had a fallback of sorts in software, so I fell back to software and had a very lucrative career in that. As that progressed, however, the ever-mounting soul-sucking nature of the job brought me to burnout and beyond (to the brink of suicidal ideation).

My getting fired was a blessing.

My inability to get any other job in the field (largely because of self-destructive job interviewing) was a blessing as well.

I had the luxury of a year's worth of high living courtesy of the monetary benefits of my former career, so that gave me time to think of a "Plan C", which turned into living in China teaching English for 15 years.

A paperwork fuck-up on the part of my last employer killed that possibility (the rules for getting work visas for education tightened and I no longer practically qualified, so when my employer screwed up my visa extension I was doomed). I had, however, not kept my fingers out of software, so I was easily able to snag a software-related job in a local hardware engineering firm. So I'm back writing software (although I'm not in a software shop, thankfully). Which is good, because I actually love writing software. It's the software industry I despise.

That's four "career" prospects and several dozen job changes over my lifetime.

This is the new normal.

I lived with migraines for almost a decade. Then, thankfully, it turned out that in my specific case the fix was really simple: a minor dietary change.

I feel for those who have migraines that aren't so easily fixed.

@TwoGunBob said in RL Anger:

@WTFE Yeah, no definable triggers for mine.

That really bites for sure. I know how crippling mine were when they fired up. Not having any way to control them would be really terrible in the long run.

My trigger turned out to be trivial: I'm a "reactive hypoglycemic". My migraines were caused by a roller-coaster ride of waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much blood sugar alternating with my body over-producing insulin and bringing me suddenly to waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too little blood sugar. It took me two weeks of dietary adjustment effort to knock what used to be horrible things I got multiple times a week to something that happened in far milder form maybe once a month. And then that frequency dropped to the point that right now the last time I had a(n incredibly mild) migraine was about three months ago. I haven't had a serious one in so long I'm not sure I could even identify the year in which it last occurred.

Keep looking for triggers; don't give up. It's life-changing when you get rid of these fuckers.

Medication for them made me feel worse.

Ditto here. I was given meds for mine. I preferred the headaches. And the flashing lights. And the nausea. The meds were AWFUL.

So, I'm now a music producer.

Well…

OK, then, you got it out of me. I'm contributing to a crowdfunded musical project.

Musically this is very much on the dividing line between "too saccharine" and "potentially interesting". I'm banking with this that they put their most commercial sound forward for the project advertising. If I'm right, I have some interesting music that two women produced without a label and without the near-slavery that is typical of music industry contracts. If I'm wrong, I spent about $25 (I paid for the highest level) to help two women produce the music they wanted rather than what some soulless shit record exec thinks that the public wants. It's a win from my standpoint either way.

This is my third crowd-funded project from that site; the first two were far less risky in that they were wargames published by people whose work I already knew. I know next to nothing about these two except that at least one of them is involved in some way with television.

@TwoGunBob said in RL Anger:

@WTFE Tell me more of this diet or a possible link?

I have "reactive hypoglycemia". (It was once sometimes erroneously referred to as "carbohydrate addiction" a couple of decades ago.) What happened with me that triggered migraines (among some other problems like a strong tendency to sudden rage) was that my body, in over-producing insulin, would give me blood sugar levels that tended to go up and down more often and faster than a Vegas streetwalker in an alleyway.

The process works like this:

1. I eat something that spikes my blood sugar.
2. My body, upon seeing the blood sugar spike would counter by dumping insulin. Too much insulin.
3. My blood sugar plummets like a concussed bee.
4. My adrenalin dumps and I enter fight-or-flight mode (and with my personality this was "fight" ninety-nine times out of a hundred) leading to either rage (usually) or panic (occasionally).
5. I would counter the sudden feeling of intense hunger by eating, which would lead back to 1.

This had a massive influence on my weight, my personality, and also triggered migraines quite frequently. Combatting that latter one required me to:

1. Cut down on sugars and refined starches. (Note: not eliminate. Cut down.) Make up for them with foods high in fibres, fats, and proteins.
2. When I do imbibe sugars and/or refined starches, do so only in small amounts and/or pair it with fibre, and if sugars, fats. This had the effect of "smearing" the blood sugar spike over time thus making the impact of a spike far smaller.
3. Snack more. Instead of eating three big meals a day I eat three medium-sized ones and snack frequently between them. SMALL snacks. Just enough to prop up my blood sugar and prevent it from dropping. Ideally these snacks were full of fats, proteins, and/or fibre. Complex carbs as a part of them is OK as well. (My "killer snacks" were either nuts or apples. Apples are fucking wonder foods for my condition apparently.)

When I started this and made the (relatively minor) lifestyle adjustments needed my migraines almost instantly stopped. A few times I screwed up the diet and they'd leap back in ready to remind me why I was doing this. Within a year migraines were a small problem that would crop up at an ever-decreasing rate instead of one of the dominating factors of my life.

As a side effect my weight dropped from four pounds shy of 400 pounds. (180kg) to far more manageable levels. I mean I'm still obese. I'm at about 115kg right now. But think of it: I lost, in effect, a whole person of weight. (My wife weighs about 60kg…) Most of that weight loss happened in about the first three years. After that … well, I like food.

I'm open to trying a life changer and I need to for a million reasons beyond headache relief. I did my meticulous insane diet and lost around 35 pounds for a good 18 months and it crept back on as the diet was not really about eating different and healthier so much as tightly reigned portion control.

I did portion-control dieting (Weight Watchers) for a while and had the same problem you had. I was perpetually hungry (because of the blood sugar roller coaster) and perpetually pissed-off (ditto). With the minor tweaks I mentioned, however, I don't bother checking portions. I don't feel hungry and while my weight LOSS may have stalled somewhat, it's not going back on to 180kg levels.

Now…

I AM NOT A DOCTOR! I am not a dietician either. I can and will not diagnose your state. Consult professional assistance if you think you've got what I have. There is, however, a nice test you can use to find out. It's the test the hospital used on me to ascertain if I was reactively hypoglycemic or not. It's dirt-simple, but it's unpleasant. Make sure you have a friend nearby to help out. Procedure is easy:

1. Don't eat. I had to not eat for 12 hours before the test.
2. When you're at the end of that period of fasting, take a glucose packet (like the kind used by diabetics to counter insulin shock).
3. In the hospital they monitored my heart rate and blood pressure to watch for the adrenalin rush of hypoglycemic shock, but they didn't need to bother. I turned pale, sweaty, and was trembling and nearly fainting within ten minutes. The blood pressure cuff was redundant. So for a home sanity test, just sit there and hold your hand out in front of you, horizontally.

If you find it suddenly shaking uncontrollably, and/or if you find yourself faint, pallid, and sweaty, then get some fucking food into you (no sugars: starchy and with protein: toast and an egg, say) and talk to doctors until you find one that understands that yes, in fact, reactive hypoglycemia is a thing. (Lots of doctors 20 years ago didn't believe in it. This appears to have changed, thankfully.) Then follow that doctor's advice.

My wife got me my birthday present a week early and gave it to me for the office. I can now finally drink acceptable coffee at the office.

(The mug and the weird double-walled glass aren't the present. The grinder and the french press are.)

@Auspice
That hand-held one I've got is perfect for my usual use case (making one mug of coffee for me in the morning; I usually drink tea the rest of the day, hence the double-walled glass cup to the left). It's a burr grinder with ceramic burrs, so no rusting problem. It's eminently washable and it takes me about 30 seconds to grind enough beans for a single-serving French press like the one I've got.