One of my students gave me a birthday present on Sunday. It included these:
Some mandarin oranges. The ruler was absolutely necessary for scale, yes.
Some honey from her grandfather's apiary.
Some rambutans (a.k.a. "the product of mating a lychee with one of the nastier breeds of spider").
Sometimes it's nice being a teacher here, even if it is only part-time in a rented classroom.
My (paid) job history starting at about age 12 in rough chronological order to the best of my recall:
I'm probably missing one or two in there somewhere.
@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.
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.)
@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:
This had a massive influence on my weight, my personality, and also triggered migraines quite frequently. Combatting that latter one required me to:
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:
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.
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 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.
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. 
@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.
You're now facing the tripled-edged sword of Star Wars games. On the one hand if you let everybody who wants to make a Force-based character, everybody will make a Force-based character to the point that your single planet will have more Jedi on it than canonically exist post-prequels. If, however, you don't permit Force-based characters at all, your setting won't be of much interest to the player base because at this point it's not really Star Wars, just sub-standard space opera. This leaves the third option (the one you chose) which will lead to endless shitfits over favouritism.
Why did I read that as "a cancer in his head"? Oh, right. Because I'm a terrible person.
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. 
Wow. The Arx crazy is just spreading out through the forums here like kudzu.
Meet the unofficial official song of the year here. I'll leave the reason why as an exercise for the student.
I finally broke down and smashed the shit out of one of my bamboo liquor bottles.
Can't say I've ever heard it, although I did skip every movie past 'Jedi. When did it first get used?
@ixokai said in Star Wars: Insurgency:
… why its valuable to have someone with some slicing know-how in a ship.
In theory if a slicer uses relay to send out some jamming signals, a slicer on the other side can use sensors to repair the sensors and counteract it.
I'm going to use advantages for various add-hoc effects but I want something a bit more meaningful to engage potential slicers.
You keep using this word "slice" in its various forms.
WTF does it mean?
S'all good, man. Shit happens. On both sides of the comprehension divide.
@Sunny said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
@Meg is not staff on the game, FYI. Maybe find another premise.
Ah, my bad. She'd been talking like she was.
Redirect, then: s/Meg/<whatever staff member is letting KrazyKwest tarnish the game image>/
@Meg said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:
I slept on this and thought about it so I could make sure that I wasn't wading back in in a reactionary way. But I have to disagree; I'm sorry. I don't think you're being fair to Kanye Qwest.
This is your privilege. Just be aware that KwazyKwest's antics are off-putting to more than just an arrogant ass here who feels the need to speak up. If you feel that on the whole KwazyKwest does more good than harm to your game, then by all means speak up in defense of her. Just be aware this comes with a cost. In this case the cost is that people reading her ravings are going to assume that this is representative of the game runners' approach to things.
Kanye Qwest has some consistent, repeatable, pretty obvious buttons.
IRL I have a motherfucking HUGE^WYUGE button: aboriginal affairs in Canada. I took a lot of shit in my youth from aboriginal gangs. I cannot possibly deal with aboriginal matters without that colouring my position.
So I don't.
I step away from arguments involving aboriginal peoples. In the one case where I was (circuitously) involved with disciplinary proceedings involving an aboriginal coworker, I asked to kindly be removed from the decision-making process because my intensely negative experiences with Canada's native population in the past would strongly colour my stance to the point of unfairness.
This is what mature people do when they recognize a hot button and a tendency to overreact on a given topic. They recuse themselves. Absent that maturity (which KwazyKwest obviously lacks!), other people remove them from the position when it's recognized.
You obviously recognize KwazyKwest's irrational hot button. You choose to leave her exposed anyway. This now reflects poorly on you (for the first time in this thread, incidentally).
(He's admitted he was being dickish, we all can agree, whatever.)
Yes. Thenomain has a strong tradition of being a mealy-mouthed dick. And he has similarly pleasant things to say about me. And yet … here I am defending him. When two people who do not like each other are in support of one another against one of yours, it may be time to rein in that one, no?
And it didn't really have to be Thenomain. I know it seems like it's Thenomain a lot, but she has been consistent, on game and on this thread, in wanting to make sure that people aren't doing things that will stomp on other people's fun.
It has been so disproportionately Thenomain that I honestly can't name another person she's gone off on like a MOAB. More than once. She does not come across as being defensive. She comes across as being ... well, KwazyKwest.
You can't call a doorbell crazy and overreactive if you go to press it 20 times.
You can call, however, a person crazy and overreactive if they present their button and say "here it is, press it!" and if they consider every off-hand comment a button press.
Again, all of this is fine. I'm not telling you how to run your game or manage your community. I'm telling you that there is a cost associated with the way you're choosing to run it. Right now, KwazyKwest's batshit insanity reflects on your game. Enjoy the shitshow. Especially now that you've practically come out and encouraged the behaviour.