Miles O'Brien

Under five minutes.

I interviewed, accepted the job offer at the end, showed up for my first scheduled shift and found out my manager wasn’t the polite manager I interviewed with.

For the record, I was supposed to start at 9am. It was 8:45 when I walked in.

Manager, literally yelling from about 300ft away: YOU’RE LATE!

Me, confused: I’m 15 minutes early?

Manager: I EXPECT YOU TO BE HERE HALF A HOUR BEFORE EVERY SHIFT, IF YOU’RE LATE AGAIN YOU’RE ON THIN FUCKING ICE

And I turned my happy ass around and walked out.

I don’t care if it was some bullshit tactic to “weed out” people, that is completely unacceptable behavior and in my younger years I have gotten into fist fights over someone speaking to another like that.

I had another job inside a week.

I don’t care if they had someone to fill my spot the next day. It wasn’t worth the time.

Ah. Well that’s a relief, I removed foxit, and never had anything Adobe.

I open the pdfs in inkscape to pull the vector files and save them as an svg. There’s probably a simpler way, but this allows me to open the vector in a lot more programs like my laser software and my CAD programs.

The only pdfs that get printed like a normal person are small rc planes and the files are from trusted sources.

It’s nice to know I can do a little extra to protect myself from pdf based attacks though, thanks for the info!

Any questionable software I have is coming up on 4 years old now, most of it is older than that. I move them to a new machine every time I upgrade, simply because I don’t trust torrents anymore.

Honestly, I don’t trust PDFs anymore unless they’re from places I know are “safe” which kind of sucks because I’ve been getting back into RC as a hobby and it’s hard to find non-pdf plans. I prefer vector files, but I’m having to try my luck with jpg and png files.

A lot of the programs I used to use have been surpassed by current FOSS projects, and I’ve been replacing them as I can. Finding an open source laser engraver program that isn’t shit is proving difficult.

I know for a fact I’m opinionated, and don’t have problems sharing them.

Please, by all means, block me if you think seeing my comments is adversely affecting you. I’d rather be ignored by someone than make their day worse (unless they’re actively trying to make others miserable, but that’s a separate discussion)

The fediverse has definitely gotten a little less hostile after blocking a few things.

And remember you can jump ship to another instance at any time! I’ve hopped a few times but for now my instance is filling my needs without much drama that I am aware of.

My favorite group I have ever DMd for was at a convention, it was 2am, and nobody had ever met before except the two couples in the mix of 9. I just ran part of a campaign I was working on for a different group.

I barely had to interact with them for RP stuff unless it was to drive the plot, or play a character they convinced to join them.

It was great seeing a large muscular guy dressed like a Dwarven blacksmith role play a halfling, and the smallest person there was playing as a half-orc barbarian from the plains of icewind dale.

And of course since it was a convention, and some of them had LARP gear with them, a friendly competitive sword fight broke out during a rest and instead of rolling, they just went ahead and used foam swords and stepped away from the tables. And borrowed dialogue from the princess bride.

Most groups definitely prefer combat, and to be honest so do I unless I’m running the game. Maybe I just haven’t played with the right group or character, or more likely I just suck at it. Either way…

I think everyone has “that one group” they wish they could play with forever and never have scheduling conflicts…

I’ve had more conversations than I can count with people I would never be able to talk to in person, all using our own native languages.

The original posts are in English, people comment in their native language, and I use a translator, then respond in my own language. Is the translator perfect? No! Neither is theirs.

With the way most translators I’ve used work, it’s easier for the non-native speaker to try translating, since the translator might try and use different words that entirely change the meaning, but likely list possible alternatives. A native e speaker will understand the alternatives while a non-native speaker probably won’t.

That’s my thought process anyway.

Never had anyone who wasn’t pearl-clutching or virtue-signaling complain about it. And I’ve had tons of conversations with people I’d never have talked to otherwise.

Nothing says “we are a free and open community that welcomes others” like moderators banning discussion of poor moderation.

Yes, I do understand what the rule is there for. No that doesn’t make it any less hilariously shitty.

Armada and Armada 2.

I really like RTS games.

Lmao how pathetic must your life be to wish such things over minor annoyances on a website.

Go touch grass

the sea calms my soul

As long as you don’t look under the surface.

Oceans be scary. (but still great, that’s why I joined the navy once)

Mountain House if solar/wind are feasible and I have sufficient clearing to grow my own food.

Otherwise, regular house.

I like mountains, hiking, biking, and I want to become self-sufficient where possible. And my wife wants cows and chickens, I don’t think they would do well on a beach, especially when sea levels start noticeably rising.

The last time I used skype, it was to monitor my 3d print because I needed to finish a project and my last attempt went all spaghetti.

So as I was at work I’d log into my computer from my phone, call myself with skype, and check to make sure everything was still okay.

Then I discovered octoprint.

At least you all can get your family to use it.

I can’t even get my spouse to use it unless she thinks what we are talking about might be illegal where we are (it usually isn’t)

I’ve tried convincing family to use it, but all that happens is I just never hear from them until I see them in person or they call me.

They don’t even feel the need to back up their Amazon Kindle collection before they get cutoff from it… Thousands of dollars wasted if they ever lose access to the account.

Weird, I just had a bunch of mls tell me just the other day that a comment I made was strawmanning a hypothetical tankie telling me I’m wrong.

And here we see yet another ml strawmanning.

Super Weird.

All I see is a bunch of people saying this is dystopia nightmare shit, and so far the only person I’ve seen do anything other than call it what it is is the ml comparing this to China.

Surveillance states are bad anywhere, you won’t get many people arguing that city wide government facial recognition is a good thing.

They stated they didn’t break piracy laws because they downloaded a shitload of books for their LLM and didn’t seed any.

Torrents are downloaded by “leeches” and put out for download by “seeders”

A proper ratio of what you downloaded to what you allow others to download should be 1:1 if you’re not a dick. (1gb downloaded means you need to upload 1gb to other users for 1:1) but if you don’t seed at ALL or if you only seed bare minimum to keep downloading things, you’re called a Leech, and derogatorily. Because you didn’t seed.

So they’re stating “we didn’t break the law, we’re just leeches!”

Shhhhhhhhhhh

If I don’t know my master plan, then THEY certainly don’t either!

Also I do intentionally leave some things a bit more vague, with ideas of what I want to do, but I’m hoping the players will start theorizing amongst themselves so I can incorporate their stuff into the game.

It gives them a nice sense of accomplishment to have “predicted” something, and I think they feel more engaged in the campaign.

Or maybe I’m just a bad DM…

rotated map of under-ice Antarctica

Okay, who’s gonna tell them…

That would be great, but unfortunately for me I have too many programs that depend on windows, don’t have Linux options, and if I’m being honest with myself I really just don’t want to learn an entirely new ecosystem. I will if forced, but the moment this laptop shits itself or they discontinue support for the OS, I’m getting a crash course.

I’d love to turn an old tablet or somethinf into a Linux device in the meantime so I can at least start something. Too bad my parent’s old kindles won’t work, there’s enough of them laying around their house…

Oh fuck yeah gimme that customization and personalization options

I used to use a program on one of my computers called rainmeter I think, and it allowed me to customize my desktop to look like the Animus menus from Assassin’s creed 2. Then decided to go with hexagons everywhere, with the replacement start menu dead center screen and other buttons areayed out from there.

Haven’t used it in many years, but I’d love that level of customization* on a pc nowadays. It seems like no matter where I go, every UI looks the same. Good for familiarity, not so much for “oh this is neat, they made it their own” factor.

*without learning entire programming languages, I hyperfixate on things but programming has never been something I’ve been able to get into

I just bought a laptop last year (portability and space constraints, I’d love to build a pc when I have the space for it) and it was supposed to come with windows 10.

I got a windows 11 model shipped to me. I didn’t ask for this. And I have to say… I fucking hate it. Why does the start menu need to change locations…

My next computer will absolutely be Linux, and it’s Microsoft’s own stupid fault. Windows 10 WAS supposed to be my last windows OS…