Random Thoughts Thread

[Forlorn Drifter]

It's a church based organization that helps people get out of the sex industry. The large majority of it is focused on fundraising money and keeping up temporary housing, but the position I was offered was working with people being trafficked, which I don't think I could have stomached, especially after reading some details.

[strangenova]

Yeah that sounds intense, no wonder you turned it down. I'm guessing you have some kind of degree in social work or psychology?

[Forlorn Drifter]

Nope, completely different field for my degree. I just know a couple of people in the group, and I was suggested when the position opened up. They have a really hard time getting anybody, especially for Japan, due to the language barrier. I was open to going, and they have an 8 month training program and test before they even allow you to do grunt work at their locations. Most of the work is in South America, but Japan is the newest one they work in.

[marurun]

Japan has massive issues with human trafficking.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Japan has massive issues with human trafficking.

Yep. You dodged a bullet there, forlorn.

[Forlorn Drifter]

Japan has massive issues with human trafficking.

Yep. You dodged a bullet there, forlorn.

Yeah. I appreciate what those folks do, but I'd lose it around something like that. Really can't control my anger in those situations.

Though I now am really curious on how all the stats come together. High rates of people visiting prostitutes, but also high rates of people having low numbers of sexual partners or never having sex. Mix that with what my Japanese friends say about dating culture, and I'm thinking there's just a lid of dirty old men in Japan and a bunch of younger generations more in line with the rest of the world.

[SamuraiMegas]

Didn't know where to post this but I downloaded FL Studio and made my first beat.

This is the basically complete version, I'm having a friend show me how to use the program a bit better so I can tweak some things. I need to up the volume on most things so I would use headphones if you got em.

[Arenegeth]

Why every one of my random gaming thoughts is about PS1 Disc problems...

Anyway, last year, I finally completed my perfect playthrough of Final Fantasy VIII, a project that started all the way back in 2016, and lasted for more than 400 hours.

As I usually do when I complete games like these, for the crescendo, I go and beat the final boss, for what will most likely be the final time (since I rarely replay games I 100%).

Well everything fine and dandy, Ultimecia falls like a wet paper tissue to my overpowered, fully maxed out characters, and the long CGI ending rolls.

The ending plays out perfectly, and then we move on to the credits, you know the part where you see the camcorder footage on the left side of the screen while the credits roll? Well as soon as the scene switches to Quistis beautiful face, the game crashes!

I thought it was a random crash, so I reload, beat Ultimecia again, and it crashes at the exact same spot. I switch to a different Playstation unit, and it crashes again, exact same spot.

I thought the disc was immaculate, so I pull it out and take a very good look. It wasn't as immaculate as I thought, but nothing one would call a deep scratch, minor surface marks, probably from back in the days when I used to have my PS1 Discs in a CD folder.

The thing is, the were 0 problems for the duration of all 4 Discs, I should know, I did everything there is to do in that game and played for many, many hours, not even a single case of the sound skipping, or a CGI-skip nothing. But an instant crash right before the game ends, that always happens on that exact same spot, every single time?

I thought I'd get one of them fancy Disc buffers, I was meaning to get for years anyway, and that would fix it, so I had put it out of my mind.

But my random gaming thought today was, what if it is Disc rot? What if the data is just gone, on one small little part of the Disc and that's why it just crashes every time instead of skipping, what if it is not just a scratch? But worse yet, what if I got other games like that?!

I went through this game almost literally (metaphorically) with a fine toothed comb in the process of completing it, and a problem didn't happen until the very last part of the game, the credits roll. Do I now have to replay every single one of my PS1 games to confirm that they all work perfectly all the way through!? Would ripping the ROM on PC prove their data integrity?

I don't know, but it was random, and it was a thought, so...

EDIT: Eh, just realized this is the plain random thought topic, not the gaming random thought topic. Meh, random is still random, it applies, but if a Mod wants to move it, go ahead.

[strangenova]

Been absent for a couple months. Shit in my life has changed for the worse. Looks like I'm gonna be selling my collection soon to help.

[Ack]

Sorry to hear that, strange. I hope things get better soon.