Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@Tyranexx I had issues in elementary school too. But it just wasn't as bad as jr. high. I remember coming home from jr. high thinking that most people wouldn't even notice if I died, and most of the few that did would be better off with, or at least entertained by, my death. It wasn't that I was suicidal, it's just that I, for a time, felt like no one would care or miss me.

Thanks! It's not so much that I thought I wouldn't be cut out to be a soldier - though they'd likely have had to beat me into shape as I've never been athletic - but that I feared being an officer. I've read a lot of war stories and even the unrealistic ones talk about leaders sending people to their deaths and I don't think I could deal with that. And with the benefit of hindsight now, I don't support the actions of the US government and thus would have been unable to fight in some of the battles they might have ordered me to - I would not have been able to live with that. - Though to be clear, my problem is not with the military, it's with the the political leadership and not related to any one party and that's all I want to say about it here.

Yeah the copyright flags get DCAU taken down pretty quickly, even if they aren't monetized. I don't understand why they aren't on Netflix or some other streaming site. Seems like it would be an easy sell to me. I know JLU was on Netflix, years ago. Netflix drops or loses the rights to things all the time for reasons I don't understand. It's what prompted me to buy Battlestar Galactica on Blue Ray. My favorite work of fiction, I just had to have it.

@bimmy-lee Mine was a super-senior fifth year too. Because I studied abroad for a semester, I missed some fall-only classes that I needed and thus had to wait. That's one thing I would never change though, study abroad was the absolute best educational experience I ever had! I tell everyone, if they can, to take the opportunity to study abroad. Living in a foreign country, even just as a guest student for a semester, opens your eyes in ways you can never get in a classroom, no matter how good of a school you attend or how talented a teacher you have.

@bimmy-lee I've had such bad luck troubleshooting plants that I might ask someone at a nursery next time I have an issue.

@Tyranexx yep and just after I was getting used to seeing grass again.

@Tyranexx - That makes sense to me. If life is like an RPG, the day/work time is like a highly structured part of the story where we’re allowed very little variance from the path from point A to point B. Night time though, that’s the time our Brains are no longer bound by schedule and routine, and it’s just a free roam. Maybe a Zelda game is a better comparison. Daytime is like working through a dungeon and a boss battle, while night time is just Hyrule field for our minds.

@Heavyarms55 - I’m not sure I knew you studied abroad. Very cool. Was that in Japan, or somewhere else?

@Woomy_NNYes - Try to find a nice, dedicated plant store, and talk to the people in there. I’ve found that first hand information seems to be better than the general stuff you might find on the internet. Many times, they’ll know characteristics of the individual plants, and they can really help you give the plant what it needs to thrive. If you need to build a little confidence in your green thumb, get a low maintenance succulent, bamboo, or a money tree. You can earn your green thumb with those types of plants without worrying about killing them. They’re all very forgiving.

@bimmy-lee @Heavyarms55 I've had the "I forgot about that class" dream too. It lasts decades apparently. That's weird. There's something in human psychology that maintaining classes and school schedules permanently seriously effs up our brains. If it's one person it's a freak. If it's two people it's coincidence. 3 people is a trend. If classes mess up our brains that we permanently forever are messed up in our sleep by it...something's wrong with the way life is done! It was the same for me, a dream where you remembered you completely forgot about a class that was on your schedule and never actually went!

@Heavyarms55 Isn't "study abroad" basically a different way of saying "choose to be born to rich parents?"

@Heavyarms55 I actively dreaded going to school at that point in my life. All I wanted to do was stay home and read, play games, or spoil the animals (pets and livestock). I often had similar feelings; I never attempted suicide or anything like that, but there was an incident that led my parents to send me to counseling. In hindsight a few of my reactions to some horseplay that was perceived as teasing were overblown, but when you're so used to the real deal it's hard to distinguish between the two. I still have a hard time reading people and their intentions at times, but I'm a lot better at it now than I was then.

I've never been athletic either; I played volleyball in Jr. High (I was decent, but never a star), but I didn't really do anything sports related in HS besides Scholar Bowl. Your reasoning of not wanting to be an officer is why I decided not to have anything to do with the medical profession; I don't wish to be responsible for the lives of others and am unsure how I'd live with myself if I'd either knowingly or accidentally ended a life due to a mistake or a decision that needed to be made. I'm generally with you on respecting many who have served in the military, but not to many of the uses it has been put to; I also won't expand further on that here. Besides hindsight, you can thank a cousin of mine for that. He served as a Ranger in the US Army, and he suffers from PTSD and is a recovering alcoholic thanks to his experiences in the Middle East. He's actually written a book to help him heal from his experiences that I hope to read soon.

So I was correct in thinking that at least some of the DCAU used to be on Netflix. I understand that licenses need to be renewed every so often, but it's still irritating that many full series still require you to buy them if you want them all in one place since the alternative is losing access with little notice. Things like that are why I'm cautious about an all-digital future with most media until some processes are changed. With the popularity of many series, you'd think companies would be vying to try to cut through all the legal and corporate tape to try and get some monetary returns out of something that's popular. :shrug:

@NintendoByNature It'll be hiding again by this time tomorrow. Hopefully some of it gets killed off. While I like spring for the most part, I don't love tending to my lawn.

@bimmy-lee Life for me, depending on the day, is typically a RPG with visual novel, puzzle, and endless runner elements all thrown in. Weeknights are typically filled with pretty much every other genre that you can imagine.

Going off the Zelda comparison: daytime is like accidentally hitting No whenever Kaepora Gaebora says "Did you get all that?" in OoT.

@Tyranexx Good description. My life is generally an endless runner that keeps crashing. Somehow there is a grinding mechanic involved as well. I keep losing progress every time it crashes....I never seem to get to the next save point so I just replay the same part over and over and over, but usually the experience is worse each time.

Comparing to Kaepora isn't quite right though. I can eventually throw heavy objects at the screen and end the insanity. Can't do that in life without having to switch to playing NFS: Hot Pursuit followed by A Way Out.

@Tyranexx lol I have to travel for work tomorrow, so hopefully i won't be stuck in some ditch!

@NEStalgia - I’ve known several other people who have the dream, and I do think it’s a real trend as you say. One of my friends has it, except it’s about the bartending job he took after HS instead of going to college. Not sure if that qualifies as this dream, but it hits all the same beats. I’ve always kind of assumed it’s from the anxiety that comes with being out and on my own for the first time without the parental safety net, trying not to screw things up, but I was young and living the kind of lifestyle where I was pretty much always messing up something.

@Tyranexx - A lot of the time, my day time life feels like one of those Reins games where you just make a bunch of decisions quickly with only a vague understanding of the outcomes, while trying to keep an impossible amount of people content. It’s either that or Streets of Rage 2. I have to fight a lot of future punks. The neighborhood has really gone downhill.

@Tyranexx
Speaking about sports in scholl, i felt there are some sports has never introduced in the school despite the actual sports are exist. I never saw a school consider Boxing / Kickboxing as School Extra curricular. I think there was some negative stigma about boxing / kickboxing at some country due to the violence perception from Boxing / Kickboxing. A lot peoples still worried to let their kids join in Boxing as they concern their kids became more aggresive and like to hit their friends. But, i still saw some kids in other places or country have opportunity to be taught about Boxing lesson. What makes Boxing / Kickboxing are so underrated sport ?
I'm sick with soccer as too popular sport.

@bimmy-lee Low maintenance, huh? ha. I got a 3 foot tall Snake plant (sansevieria) a few years ago. 2 things happened. The plant was at a northwest window & I put solar heat reduction film on the windows. oof bad move. I may have actually underwatered too? But, the window film was probably the biggest problem. The film rejects 60% of sunlight, on a northern window, it just wasn't enough light. The plant kept dying slowly, leave by leaf. Had to get rid of the heat control film. (swapped those windows with other ones that didn't have film). But, it's funny that I screwed up so epic-ly with the low maintenance snake plant. So, I bought a new snake plant.

@Tyranexx I can very much relate to having trouble reading people. I've honestly largely given up on that. If people get mad at me for something and they didn't directly say what the issue was, I don't want to say I don't care at all, but it's not far off. Thankfully as an adult it's usually enough to just say "you didn't say X was a problem or make it clear in any obvious way." And I'm blessed with pretty good coworkers right now.

As a kid I was much the same way, I always wanted to bury myself in fiction because of the bullying. Now I still do, but to ignore different things. If I don't focus on work or fiction, I read the news, all the things that I can't do anything about, but make me very angry.

I feel for your cousin. It must have been a real world nightmare of an experience. His dedication and loyalty is very admirable. Which is a big part of why I hate the ruling elite, who send good people like your cousin to fight unneeded battles on the other side of the planet. I blame those in power for the horrible experiences the good people in the military have to experience. It's true evil what the politicians do.

The thing I don't get about the Netflix issue is, why take the show down from Netflix if those with the rights don't then intend to at least offer it somewhere else? Even if Netflix offers less money for it potentially, that's still money you're not making by leaving that material rotting on a hard drive somewhere... And frankly I am sure either Netflix or Hulu would be more than happy to have it. If not them even Crunchyroll might be interested. I could easily see them expanding into western animation if they had the opportunity.

@bimmy-lee Yup, Japan. Same city even, more or less. I'm technically in a small town outside the city but it's generally considered to be one big area. I could walk to the city line in only an hour or so. That's actually why when I signed up for this job, this was my second of 3 preferred locations. (though the odds of getting a placement in Okinawa or Tokyo are slim to none because everyone wants those jobs) But this one was easy since almost no one outside Japan knows about Shiga. lol

@NEStalgia It's really not. The only real extra expense was the plane ticket. You just need to choose a program that your university has a partnership with a university in the other nation. Eastern Michigan had a partnership with a university in Shiga, Japan because of a sister-state relationship so that was that. There are even special scholarships intended to encourage study abroad that often go unused for the simple fact that people aren't properly aware of them.

@Heavyarms55
Just curious on your current place Japan.
Is Kickboxing (Especially K-1 World Grand Prix) still popular in Japan ?

Because most of K-1 fighters are from Europe.

@Anti-Matter I have at least one coworker and a handful of students that I have heard talking about various martial arts. Usually MMA. I don't remember if any of them have mentioned kick boxing specifically. But since I'm not interested in it, I usually ignore it unless they directly ask me something about it.

I grabbed a copy of New Leaf for next to nothing. Now I can’t find my charger. At least I’ve got half a charge.

@Woomy_NNYes - Ha, Yeah, I bet it didn’t like having the sunlight reduced. One thing I almost mentioned in my last post was to maybe avoid flowering plants or succulents. They’re a tad bit more tricky and finicky. I’ve found the watering is based on the amount of light they’re getting. I have my succulent garden in a well lit spot and have a led grow light on them for 10 hours a day. Some of them could normally go weeks without water, but under that amount of light; I water them every five days or so because they’re constantly stretching and drinking. Snake plants are pretty easy though. I’m sure you’ll have better luck with this one. Just keep as much light on it as possible, and water when the top would gets dry.

@Heavyarms55 - That’s a nice little deal you worked out for yourself then. It pays to be adventurous. You never know what kind of future opportunities you might set up for yourself.

@Anti-Matter - Does your school teach kickboxing or have a kickboxing club? I’ve never met anyone in the US who had a school sanctioned combat sport. There are boxing clubs, and martial arts schools around here though, but they’re independent of the school system. I begged my parents to allow me to box when I was young, but they wouldn’t let me do it. I did take karate classes for many years as a consolation, and I played sports year round in high school including wrestling.

@bimmy-lee so did you end up finishing golf story yet? Make any more progress in unravel 2?

My coworkers definitely contributed to Fat Tuesday today; we had a food day on short notice. Someone brought in a load of Pączkis from a local grocery store (a special doughnut of Polish origin that they offer the week leading up to the start of Lent). Others brought in cheese dip and nachos, biscuits & gravy, a pepperoni pizza, oiled oyster crackers (I'm told these are great with beer), Panera bagels, no-bake cookies/cow pies (made by yours truly), pepperoni and taco pinwheels, and even a store-bought cookie dough cream pie....I behaved somewhat, but I still went kind of overboard lol.

@NEStalgia Life is an endless runner of constant activity AND crashing. XD Losing progress after each crash is sometimes a life truth as well. It really depends on the situation. At least I've been hitting a save point or two lately. But man would I love more pause and rewind buttons. Oh, and to replay levels....

@NintendoByNature Drive safe! Hopefully it doesn't get too nasty. I'm not even sure we'll get the amounts they're forecasting. The snow won't be hanging around long in any case. It's already a wet mess here from the rain today and yesterday.

@bimmy-lee I can't say I can relate on the Streets of Rage 2 front, but I definitely click with the former comparison. The former sounds like a fast-paced job or a timed answer sim with customer service thrown in. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with most end-users anymore....Most people are fine, but you get the difficult ones, people that accuse you of doing something that didn't happen and using you as their vent pillow, or the very nice ones who, unfortunately, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near technology....

@Anti-Matter Boxing, at least in the area I'm in, is a pretty niche interest; not a lot of people talk about it. The closest thing I can think of is wrestling (so it's a stretch), and that's not very common either. Different sports are popular in different countries, and the popularity can even be different by region. In the US, at least where I am, the most popular sports by far are baseball, basketball, American football, hockey, golf, and soccer. I attended a small school where some of these sports weren't even offered; you had to go to a larger school half an hour away if you wanted to participate in some of them.

@NintendoByNature The final course in Golf Story is so hard for me. Thanks for reminding me of my continuing failure.

@HobbitGamer i can't remember honestly since it's been so long. I should probably replay it. But yea, you were never destined for Greatness on the green, I knew it from the get-go

@Tyranexx thanks. Shouldn't been too bad. We've already got some accumulation now. So I'll just have to leave a little earlier tomorrow morning.