cobysev

I learned about trunk-or-treat while living in South Carolina. I didn’t live in the highest quality town at the time. Apparently, one Halloween over a decade ago, a small boy and his dad went up to a house in our town while trick-or-treating. The guy inside was strung out on meth, though, and thought he was being raided by the cops when the child rang his doorbell. So he responded by emptying a full clip of an AR-15 through the door, killing the little boy and his dad.

Ever since then, local families always did a trunk-or-treat instead. The local school would open up their parking lot for trick-or-treaters. Adults would line up their cars in the lot, with their trunks open and, typically, the inside of their trunks were covered in Halloween decorations. And they would just hand out candy from a stash in their trunks. Kept everyone safe, made traveling on Halloween secure in a well-lit environment, and you could collect tons of candy with just a quick circle around the parking lot.

It wasn’t the traditional way to go trick-or-treating, but it was better than cancelling Halloween altogether because of a few crazies in the town.

When I lived in Japan, there was a pachinko arcade in my town that had nothing but pachinko machines lined up in rows like slot machines in a casino. They were skinnier than this, but a couple feet taller than me, and I’m 6" even.

It’s illegal to gamble with money in Japan, but not to gamble with little metal balls, so you buy the balls, play with the machines, and sell back the balls you have left at the end. If you win more balls, then you get more money when you sell them back. A nice little legal loophole for gambling.

I’ve spent the last year or so playing Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint with a couple friends.

It has an interesting sci-fi/military story, tons of side missions if you’re tired of following the main campaign, and a wide open map to explore if you’re just bored of everything. Plus, there are random missions every day, so if you’re done with the main campaign, you can continue to do missions and enjoy exploring the world even more.

Also, your party doesn’t have to stick together. You can play on the same map, but go off and do your own thing. I have a buddy who can’t follow instructions to save his life. He’s always running around, causing chaos everywhere he goes. We’re trying to stealthily infiltrate a base and he just crash-lands a helicopter into it and runs in guns blazing.

So… we let him run off and grief other bases or enemies while the rest of our party focuses on the mission. Everybody wins, and we all get to play together and have a good time.

EDIT: Same goes for Tom Clancy’s The Division and The Division 2. Unlike Breakpoint, which takes place on an island nation, fighting against a wannabe dictator, The Division takes place in America after a virus plague has wiped out most of civilization, and you’re playing as an elite team that’s trying to restore order to the population.

I’ve been playing The Division with my friends for a few years now. It’s a very fun game series.

My grandfather had a massive heart attack in his 70s. He only stayed alive because my mother was a Red Cross certified CPR instructor and kept him going for over an hour until an ambulance got there. Doctors said his body was pretty messed up and they gave him maybe a month to live at best.

My grandfather said, “To hell with that, I wanna keep living!” He lasted another 10 years until he finally passed away.

Similarly, my dad was on hospice care earlier this year. He had a strong body, but his Parkinson’s was affecting his functions and they gave him less than 6 months to live. Not even a month later, he told my sister that he’s tired of fighting and just wants to die. Within a day, he had passed away.

I definitely believe that the conscious mind plays a role in keeping the body going. If you can convince yourself to keep going, your body will fight the good fight, but if you give up, your body stops trying so hard and gives in.

We are. I just read an article yesterday about how Microsoft paid research publishers so they could use the papers to train AI, with or without the consent of the papers’ authors. The publishers also reduced the peer review window so they could publish papers faster and get more money from Microsoft. So… expect AI to be trained on a lot of sloppy, poorly-reviewed research papers because of corporate greed.

If I’m on the go, I’ll hook up my laptop to the TV with an HDMI cable, set the TV as a duplicate screen so I can close the lid on my laptop (make sure closing the lid doesn’t lock your computer or put it to sleep), then use my wireless mouse and keyboard so I can sit on the couch/bed/whatever and control it from afar.

At home, I bought a micro PC that I keep connected to the TV via HDMI. Then I use a wireless mouse/keyboard to control it from the couch.

The micro PC has WiFi so I can connect it to the Internet, and all devices on my home network can see each other, so I can quickly copy something from my regular PC or laptop to the micro PC if I want to view it on the TV.

I mostly use the micro PC for my streaming services. I don’t trust my Smart TV to be connected to the Internet, so I don’t use any of its apps. But I’m old; I’m used to TVs being dumb devices. I don’t like handing over control of my apps to companies; I’d rather access them directly from a computer.

I did this with my Steam Link in the past. Interestingly enough, my new Smart TV has Steam Link as a downloadable app for it, so I don’t need my physical box anymore.

hunter2

Reverse this for me. I shower first thing in the morning every day and my bath towels are just drying clean skin. They only touch me for maybe a minute or two before being hung to dry.

However, I go to sleep at night, after a full day of developing natural body oils on my skin. And I lie in bed for 8+ hours at a time.

My bed sheets are far more gross after a week of use than my towel will get in a month, more or less a couple weeks.

It’s more about framing the conversation in a way that helps OP’s supervisor realize they’re at odds with each other, socially, and that the supervisor needs to make changes, not OP. I know it’s a bit blunt and direct and may not exactly describe their relationship, but I’ve found that being direct and binary with extroverted people generally gets them to the point faster, rather than beating around the bush with complex descriptions of their dynamic.

And the supervisor being an extrovert is definitely a part of the problem in this case. They’re ignoring signals from OP that they don’t want to be social, shaming them for it, and forcing public interactions in order to change them. This is classic extrovert behavior which is making OP uncomfortable.

The topic of discussion is definitely off-limits and deserves a conversation with HR, but the supervisor still needs to understand that OP’s antisocial behavior isn’t a problem. Otherwise, the discussion will change to be more work-appropriate, but the behavior will remain.

As a fellow introvert, I’ve found that being meek and timid about uncomfortable situations just invites more trouble from extroverts. The best way to handle it is to be direct and firm. If she wants to be nosy, then drop all the gory details:

"I’m an introvert and I don’t feel comfortable sharing my personal life with coworkers. I know you, as an extrovert, want to be involved in everyone’s personal lives and there’s nothing wrong with that, but as a leader and a manager, you need to understand how to change tracks and adapt to your subordinates’ needs.

“I need time to myself to recharge; being around people is mentally and emotionally draining for me. It’s not something I can “fix,” it’s just the way I am, and no amount of exposure to people or social events will ever change that. I need you to understand that and adapt to my needs, in order for you to effectively manage me.”

I worked my way up the ranks in the US military and eventually found myself managing people. As an introvert, I found it extremely difficult to get out and talk to my subordinates. But I soon realized that the mission wouldn’t get done unless I did my job, so I quickly learned how to fake an extroverted personality while at work so I could talk to people and ensure mission success. Then I’d go home and crash. I’d spend my evenings either sleeping or bundled up, watching TV or playing video games, just to recharge so I could do it all again the next day.

But one of the things I learned was how to adapt to the needs of my subordinates. I had one guy who was a complete fuck-up. Couldn’t do anything right without someone holding his hand. So I either had to be very hands-on with him, or delegate that responsibility to one of my subordinate leaders.

But then I had another guy who grew up in a ghetto being plagued by corrupt cops, and he hated anyone in an authority position over him. Why he joined the military, I dunno. We were all about authority and respecting rank and file. But if I even spoke to him, he would shut down and then be unproductive all day. As long as I left him alone, he was my hardest and most productive worker. So I learned to leave him alone and he practically did my job for me. Maybe your supervisor needs to learn that lesson with you.

Yes, this is what I meant. The Red Cross said my blood type is rarely needed in my area so they don’t care about me donating blood. But they’re always needing plasma donations, and you can donate them more frequently than blood, so they recommend I do that instead.

People are getting paid to donate plasma?! The only scam here is that I’ve been giving it away for free!

I donate to the Red Cross here in America. Honestly, I’m happy to donate. I get to sit and relax for a couple hours, the Red Cross I go to has TVs attached to the chairs so I can watch a movie while I donate, and I get free drinks and snacks afterward.

They’re always hurting for plasma donations and you can donate every 28 days, so I visit frequently. I don’t really see how it could be a scam. They always tell me plasma is more important than blood donations. Blood goes bad quickly, but they can keep plasma for a long time. And pretty much everyone can use it. Unlike blood, which you need a compatible type to use.

I donate because I enjoy helping others. I’m not looking for a way to personally benefit from it, so I don’t really care if they offer to pay or not. I feel like that should be the default mindset going in. But I understand there are people who are hurting financially, and donating blood or plasma is an easy way to make a buck. So I’m fine with them offering to pay for donations.

Nope, he did this one himself. The reason? His employees spent so much time at the factory, they didn’t have time to actually buy his cars.

Yes, he improved working conditions to make a profit on his cars. A selfish reason, but it inadvertently helped us all.

Mine is video games.

I’m 40 and I’m gaming now more than I ever have before!

Granted, part of that is because I’m retired young and have all the time in the world. But another part of that is because I made a small Discord server with a few close friends from my high school days. It’s how we stay in touch, since we’ve all moved away since childhood.

We game online every Monday and/or Tuesday evening. It gives us time to talk and catch up through Discord while also playing some fun online multiplayer games together. The rest of the week, we share news, memes, videos, and other text discussion through various channels I’ve set up in Discord.

I’ve never heard of anyone losing their love for video games as they get older. If anything, continuing to play games later in life will help keep your cognitive functions strong. Remember the Skyrim grandma? She’s still going strong in her late 80s. It’s never too late to get into gaming again.

I’ve spent nearly 2 decades connecting with friends, family, coworkers, and associates through Facebook. I hate Facebook, and actually use F.B. Purity to remove 90% of the content, ads, promotional junk, games, marketplace, etc. from it. But as the main way I’ve stayed in touch with people I’ve known over the course of my life, I just can’t dump it.

Besides that, I have Lemmy (of course); LinkedIn, which I’m not really using anymore since I retired young; Imgur, which I mostly just use for browsing memes; and Discord, which I only use to communicate with a few close friends whom I game with weekly.

I created accounts for Instagram and Whatsapp, but I’ve never used them. They were too self-promoting for my taste. When they first became a thing, they were all about taking selfies and sharing your face with your friends. I wanted discussion and interesting content, not to see selfies. They created the generation of “social media influencers” who think they’re entitled to things in life because X number of people follow them on social media.

I also avoid TikTok like the plague. I was in the US military (working as an IT guy) when TikTok became popular, and we discovered it embedded itself in your phone so deeply, you couldn’t fully remove it even when uninstalling. Plus, it gave itself full admin rights to your phone, then started trickling your data to Chinese servers. Which is why the president made such a big deal about TikTok being a national security threat. It’s not because we didn’t get along with a Chinese company; it’s because a foreign government was collecting personal data and building profiles on American citizens. I will never touch that program as long as I live.

I’m 40 years old, by the way. A lot of people say Facebook is only used by old people, and yes, I just turned 40 and am finally becoming an “old person.” But I’m still relatively young compared to people’s expectations of Facebook users. And I have a lot of Facebook friends who are much younger than I am.

Fluently? Only English. But I spent 20 years in the US military, nearly 8 of them living full-time in foreign countries. So I did my best to learn at least a little of the languages I was exposed to in my travels.

I was stationed in Japan for 3 years. I learned how to get around and order food in Japanese, plus some limited conversation. I’m actually studying to read the language now. I could read Hirigana and Katakana (the Japanese alphabets) when I lived there. But it takes their students their entire school lives to learn how to read Kanji (the complex Chinese-borrowed symbols that represent entire words), so that one will keep me busy for a while.

When I was stationed in Germany, I learned some basic German, thanks to having friendly neighbors who spoke nearly fluent English. They helped me correct and improve my German language skills. But I was only in the country for a couple years, so I didn’t get very advanced with it.

I took 4 years of French in high school. I thought I was pretty decent at it, but every time I attempted to speak the language in France, the locals immediately switched over to English to converse with me.

Random related tangent: my wife and I took a vacation to Berlin once, and my wife, like me, spent several years studying French in high school. She decided to test her German language skills with the locals, and when she spoke, they immediately switched to French for her. Turns out, she speaks German with a heavy French accent. She was able to finish her conversation in French.

I’m currently studying Norwegian. My 3x great grandfather immigrated to America from Norway, and I still have living descendants of my ancestors over there. My dad and I went to visit them once, and I would like to be able to speak their native language the next time I go back. It used to be a rule that everyone in my family line learned English and Norwegian, but my grandfather died when my dad was only 2, so my dad never learned Norwegian, and thus neither did I.

I learned some extremely limited Korean. I was assigned to South Korea twice, for a year each time, and the military wouldn’t let me live off-base amongst the locals, so I didn’t get much free time to explore the country and learn the language. But I made an effort to learn some phrases so I could be polite in public, order food, and find my way back to the military base if I got lost.

Other languages that I’ve been exposed to and picked up a handful of words/phrases, but never seriously attempted to study: Italian, Arabic, Spanish, and Hawaiian.

As a former IT guy, I got used to just saying “secure shell” every time I saw SSH, to help teach my younger IT folks the lingo. I don’t even say the acronym anymore. When I did, I just spoke the letters (es-es-aich).

Same for ZSH; I just call it Z-Shell (zee-shell).

Sudo has always been “soo-doh” (or “sue-dough” as OP spelled it; same pronunciation). I’ve never met anyone who pronounced it differently in my 20 years of IT work.

I love Xena! It’s technically a '90s show, but it fits with the '80s Sword & Sorcery theme pretty well.

I’ve always been fascinated with the '80s Sword & Sorcery genre; e.g. Willow, Conan the Barbarian (the Schwarzenegger versions), Deathstalker 1-4, Labyrinth, The Beastmaster, Red Sonja, The Neverending Story trilogy, Dragonslayer, Masters of the Universe, Ladyhawke, etc. Just to name a few.

I dunno why they fascinate me so much. I’m a very outdoorsy kind of person and I guess I like the simplicity of the medieval settings and lifestyle. Living freely off the land, going on grand adventures in undiscovered realms, fighting against evil forces who want to rule the world, and a hint of magic to make it that much more interesting.

Plus, the sets and costume design were pretty simple back then. I feel like I could probably make my own Sword & Sorcery films in my forested backyard and they’d turn out just about the same quality. I actually enjoy going to Renaissance fairs every summer, just because it feels like I stepped into one of those old classic films.

When I was living in Europe for a few years, I joined the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), which is a global organization that reenacts pre-17th century lifestyles. Since I was in Europe at the time, we would actually rent out castles and would spend weekends living like medieval peasants and/or nobles, and learning all sorts of primitive trades like blacksmithing and tailoring. It was a ton of fun! Sword & Sorcery films just take that a step further, with action/adventure and fantasy elements mixed in.