As a person who sleeps through alarms and is approaching middle age…

It is a problem.

I wish I had some advice, but I am accepting advice lol.

My first thought was Grand Prismatic, just after dawn.

Cool enough that the thermal features create a fog over the water, and more importantly, all the tourists (I was a hotel employee in the park) were still in bed. Had the boardwalk area all to myself.

I think I just sat in contemplation for half an hour, which if you knew me would say is impossible. Very peaceful.

I went from hourly call center to on call 24/7 and being the only point of contact.

When my phone notifies me, just any notification, I panic. The phone rings, I panic. Its been over a year since I left.

Yes, its part and parcel to other issues of mental health, but… Man, do you know how often you get notifications? I’ve turned most off and still some days I’m ready to smash my phone so it will shut up and I can breathe normally.

Thank you for differentiating.

The original “skin head” movement was mostly factory workers in Britain who cut their hair short (not necessarily shaved bald) for safety around equipment, and some of the most popular music among the group was stuff by “rude boys” Jamaican primarily I believe.

It was working class solidarity with no intentions of racism.

The neo Nazi groups coopted the term, and delved into punk music to find disenfranchised people who would buy into their rhetoric.

There are also other skin head groups that exist today - SHARP for example, standing for SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice.

Espouse hateful rhetoric around these guys and you’re liable to wind up on the wrong side of a brick to the head.

Why do I know all this? I have a penchant for research, and in the past few years I’ve been shaving my head because I decided to own my thinning hairline instead of have some ridiculous comb over type shit and hide it.

I have had an encounter with a racist white dude at a 711, and he’s ranting at the cashier and looks to me and said “Right brother?!”. No, it was absurdly horrible (misguided) and I threatened to call the cops if he didn’t leave the store and hopefully the neighborhood. He left when he realized he didn’t have any support.

I was witness to what burnt piss does on a hot muffler.

It stinks, for miles. And months.

Also worth mentioning is the Cleric Quintet, same author.

I can’t recall if its a FR books (I believe it is, but been a long time) but I remember it being a satisfying read on a rainy day.

I read it in a week at work, no business because it was a walk in only location for fast food, it was raining to the point that it was overflowing the glass caulking for exterior floor to ceiling windows. So mop up once in a while, and read.

Call it whatever you want man, whats important is that it helps you.

Could you go into detail, even just privately, that seems like a solid use for some otherwise idle storage space.

Then again, the only part of being a scout (boy) that stuck with me involved fire or survival methods, and to always be prepared is a good maxim.

I respecced Shadowheart to have more strength initially, and a reroll later after finding certain gloves, and made her a tank with spirit guardian. Stays in range of other characters for more potent touch heals, can take a blow, and Spirit Guardians in the middle of a pack of a restraining CC spell, and it builds up the damage. Freedom of movement, or equipment that grants the same/similar are super useful for this strategy. That said, I have only played on the Balanced setting, so take it with a grain of salt.

Edited to add, Life domain provides juicier heals and access to heavy armor.

Kali was built out as a penetration testing distro, though it does contain some diagnostic tools.

Not a bad place to start if you’re used to Debian, but it is a rolling release so it may break unexpectedly, or have new bugs introduced with each update.

A persistent USB with just Debian could have all the same tools installed but have a longer support scope on releases so you don’t have to update daily (bleeding edge) which is nice to reduce read/writes to the flash drive it’s on.

That being said, I keep a Kali live image (persistent) but thats becauae its home - my first introduction to Linux was 5 minutes with Red Hat, but aside from a brief intro in highschool, I really started with Linux in Backtrack, offensive security’s predecessor to Kali.

Yes, I have to learn things the hard way lol.

I’ve been on a decade long hiatus from multiplayer aspect of games - aside from games I was with people I knew in RL.

I only occasionally get a twinge for the comraderie of some epic raid in an MMO, or tight unspoken squad tactics where everyone just does their job as expected (not necessarily well lol) and came out on top.

But really, I don’t have the time to commit to either of those.

Then I hear about my friend in GW2 (RL friend) who is going through some toxic guild BS and I don’t miss it.

Everquest did this to me.

I mained a bard, and back then you had to stop a song and start a new one every so often…

Mathematically it translates to a button press ever 1.5 seconds, ignoring movement, other combat abilities, etc.

I also refused to compromise on spelling and grammar at the time.

I got real good at typing accurately and quickly.

I have lost a lot of that speed, but at comfortable pace I’m probably 80-90 words a minute, and the last time it was measured was a keyboarding class requisite. 121 GWAM for an eighth grader isn’t too shabby. As long as I fixed the printer I got to play games in that class.

I’d be happy to take one, should you still have any to give out.

In Planescape: Torment Dak’kon was absolutely my favorite character. I really wish WotC would explore the other half of the Gith people.

Reading the unbroken circle of Zerthimon lined up philosophically for me, and seemed to (at the time, like 1999) line up with Bhuddist philosophy which I was reading then too. Typical teenager in the Christian south looking for alternatives.

I have the rune of torment as my only tattoo (just the basic symbol, not TNO’s personal additions) for a few reasons, but to this day I can look at it and be inspired by Dak’kon’s words.

Endure. In enduring, grow strong.

Sylvester? Is that an auto correct issue, or is this a public holiday that I might want to move to lol.

Please forgive my ignorance, the schools really failed in the US.

I loved to do that in Everquest.

Started on my mage who could summon a ring that instantly cast levitate on you.

So we had games getting up to, and jumping off of, really tall structures and playing chicken with the ground lol.

On my bard, the combination of raw movement speed and a Lev meant getting into places not designed for players, though I will say they did a good job of making sure you didn’t die out of bounds, back when you had to recover your gear from your corpse.

I only had to petition a GM once to get me unstuck, lol.

They just teleported me to the current expansion at the time “hub city.”

Never got into speed running though, and I don’t think my attention span would allow for it. Respect and all, its impressive what some people can do, just not my thing.

I’ve done the graveyard shift for a couple jobs now.

Usually for medical IT.

Its usually quiet, I don’t see my boss very often, and for the most part just run the entirety of IT stuff by myself.

I know how much I value my sleep, so I try not to escalate issues in the middle of the night.

In a lot of ways its made me a more creative problem solver and just a better more rounded tech.

Some things I just don’t have permissions for, and have to escalate. Sucks, but I get it.

It helps that my wife works similar hours to me.

We can both go to bed in the afternoon, though I’m jealous of her getting to sleep later than me in the moments I’m first awake, but I leave work first so its a fair trade I guess.

I can’t speak to the neurological state of my last group, but we had a lot of people new to TTRPGs, so we had similar issues.

We house ruled that making a gesture over your head meant it was OOC.

This was to help separate thinking outloud as a player, from something involving the character. It had become an issue for one of our players with a low int score, lol.

I would just add not to be worried about dumb choices only earning ire.

Some, most, of my memories from past campaigns are borne from ideas all the players know were dumb as hell, but the gnome fighter with 3 int (2e) decided to just leroy jenkins a horde of goblins. We were captured which lead to other mishaps.

If the group doesn’t have at least one break so everyone can get the laughs out and settle so they speak without giggling, I consider it a bit of a failure, personally. Even in a “serious” session.

I keep tons of meat and cheese in the fridge, and the only time it smelled was when the MIL spilled milk in it and neither cleaned it up nor told someone about it so the more able bodied could take care of it.