What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[BogusMeatFactory]

Went to scoop out some leftover chili when I heard a metallic clang hit my spoon. I went to investigate and found a very large bolt in my chili. I made it myself and don't remember putting any metal bolts in it. I think my refrigerator is trying to kill me.

[Opa Opa]

Wow, Ack. I had a similar experience. But things went downhill the first day of my new job as a farm equipment custodial technician. I rode my bike, it's a Huffy. Not the cheap ones from today, but a 1992 model. I ride a girls model. I care more about performance than apperance and they are just easier to get on. When I got there after a 3-hour uphill ride I was told they didn't have enough work for me so I headed home. There's a great 99-cent store where everything is $7 between here and my uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's house where I stay. It's on a different road though which is also uphill.

When I got there they were having a b5b2g1TO (that's a buy 5, then buy 2, get 1 10% Off) sale, so obviously I was stoked. I know i'll be getting a ton of hours next week (my boss said that would probably be a possibility of maybe happening) so I loaded up on some classic horror films (Nightmare on The EL at the 21 Hop Street Massacre and others). I spent $87.44, but it would have been $87.91 without the promotion, so I feel good about it. I bought a bunch of baking goods too from there.

When I got home (I forgot I had rode my bike, so I walked home) I was tired. I decided to make some Zuchini, liver, clam and cocoa brownies. They weren't very good - not that I would know. My uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's neighbor's kid was over (You remember him) and he ate them all before I could even try it. Then my uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's cousin's masseuse (who stays in the cellar) asked me to do the dishes from the brownies I made. I said no way. I didn't even get to try one. Am I the only normal person around here?

10/10

[Ack]

Wow, Ack. I had a similar experience. But things went downhill the first day of my new job as a farm equipment custodial technician. I rode my bike, it's a Huffy. Not the cheap ones from today, but a 1992 model. I ride a girls model. I care more about performance than apperance and they are just easier to get on. When I got there after a 3-hour uphill ride I was told they didn't have enough work for me so I headed home. There's a great 99-cent store where everything is $7 between here and my uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's house where I stay. It's on a different road though which is also uphill.

When I got there they were having a b5b2g1TO (that's a buy 5, then buy 2, get 1 10% Off) sale, so obviously I was stoked. I know i'll be getting a ton of hours next week (my boss said that would probably be a possibility of maybe happening) so I loaded up on some classic horror films (Nightmare on The EL at the 21 Hop Street Massacre and others). I spent $87.44, but it would have been $87.91 without the promotion, so I feel good about it. I bought a bunch of baking goods too from there.

When I got home (I forgot I had rode my bike, so I walked home) I was tired. I decided to make some Zuchini, liver, clam and cocoa brownies. They weren't very good - not that I would know. My uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's neighbor's kid was over (You remember him) and he ate them all before I could even try it. Then my uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's cousin's masseuse (who stays in the cellar) asked me to do the dishes from the brownies I made. I said no way. I didn't even get to try one. Am I the only normal person around here?

See, here's the problem, Mike. You're too good at washing dishes. I would recommend you do more lawn mowing or chop wood, but any skills you happen to pick up in a small town aren't going to work well in a big city, so you probably shouldn't bother with it at all. I know you're awesome at computers, kick ass at laundry, you know your way around a kitchen (and then some) and thanks to previous employment experiences you're awesome at dishwashing and the custodial arts. Your skill set is definitely more geared towards doing the laundry, washing the dishes, sweeping the floors, vacuuming the carpets, scrubbing toilets, cleaning the sink and tub, cooking meals, fixing computer hiccups, optimizing home theater setups, and so on. And you have got to go for those QUALITY end results.

Tell me, when you did all this, did you still have energy, or were you steadily losing it from not getting any sleep the night before and crashing at around 11am or 2pm? That's rough. And I know your uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's cousin's masseuse sometimes likes to make fun of you whenever you do anything. I remember that time you did yardwork and got that nasty-ass rash all over your torso and thighs that you didn't even notice until after you had spent God knows how long digging and scratching at it and your lips swelled up a few times, and your uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's cousin's masseuse just mocked you along with your uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's cousin's masseuse's ex-girlfriend Charlene. But you gotta do things like this. And you have to be willing to share. Otherwise your uncle's grand-daughter's adopted stepsister's cousin will think you're a selfish asshole. You know the concept of your brownies being owned by you is a concept that is only arbitrarily enforced. But family HAS TO share.

Tell you what, take some dramamine. It will help you feel better. Same active ingredient as benadryl.

[Luke]

Tell you what, take some dramamine.

It also can be addictive, so maybe not. A friend of mine takes it on short road trips for "motion sickness" and he basically falls into coma as soon as he takes it.


Smile: Wearing comfy casual clothes today, and sporting the new Chuck All Stars. I got a nice compliment on my new Chucks this morning at my local Coffee Shack from a sneaker head who also listens to NPR. Nice guy, but also really funny.

"Yo man, those them new Chucks? Heard about them on NPR last week. Man, they look good. Where'd you get 'em?".

Running into to smiling people always makes me happy, and a compliment is the cherry.

Compliments...pass them on as often as you can.

[MrPopo]

Tell you what, take some dramamine.

It also can be addictive, so maybe not. A friend of mine takes it on short road trips for "motion sickness" and he basically falls into coma as soon as he takes it.

That whoosh bowled me over.

[Erik_Twice]

I've been trapped in my room for the last few days, with only a few trips to the library here and there. The whole city looks like a ghost town and only two of my friends are still here which makes every day incredibly boring. I simply don't go out or do anything but stay on my room studying or playing with my computer and I really, really need to get out and socialize because it's starting to impact my mood.

And my weight. Just by being somewhat active while I was on my trip I lost several kilograms and felt much better. Now I fear I'm going to pick up weight again not because I don't eat, but because my life is absurdly sedentary. Yesterday my legs hurt from not moving enough, it's beyond awful.

[Ack]

I've been trapped in my room for the last few days, with only a few trips to the library here and there. The whole city looks like a ghost town and only two of my friends are still here which makes every day incredibly boring. I simply don't go out or do anything but stay on my room studying or playing with my computer and I really, really need to get out and socialize because it's starting to impact my mood.

And my weight. Just by being somewhat active while I was on my trip I lost several kilograms and felt much better. Now I fear I'm going to pick up weight again not because I don't eat, but because my life is absurdly sedentary. Yesterday my legs hurt from not moving enough, it's beyond awful.

Might I suggest looking around for classes on some kind of hobby. Scuba diving, acting, baking, painting, anything that will get you out of the apartment and interacting with folks. It almost doesn't matter what it is, so long as you do it.

[Luke]

I simply don't go out or do anything but stay on my room studying or playing with my computer and I really, really need to get out and socialize because it's starting to impact my mood.

Make friends, don't try to find them.

Friends are easier to make than they are to get rid of.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Friends are easier to make than they are to get rid of.

Since I am an absolute expert at alienating people, I am glad that you hold my abilities in such high esteem.

[MrPopo]

Frown: Got screwed over by muscle memory and blew away my Starflight save.

So Starflight is from an era of very limited computing, so rather than use save files it actually modifies the program as it goes. However, since it comes on floppy disks (old, 360 kb) most of the writing was deferred until you invoke the save and quit command. It writes a little bit when the game first loads and puts the game files in a dirty state. Then when you hit escape it loads up a menu that gives you the options to save and quit, return to the game (i.e. exit the menu), or quit without saving. The latter will then hork your save and you have to restore the game files from a backup master disk (or a backup save, if you did such a thing). The reason they have such an option is if you want to quit out because you want to restart it saves you from waiting for the write cycle (again, '86, 5.25" floppies).

Well, the muscle memory comes in because I keep wanting to hit escape to cancel out of stuff. Most of the time in Starflight when you want to cancel something you just hit the right or left arrow key (as usually you select things with up and down). In the case of text entry mode, though, you have no way of cancelling out. If you are selling items or saying how many times you want to train someone the cancel is to say "I want to sell 0" or "I want to train 0 times".

The other issue is the game apparently buffers key presses after you hit escape. It takes a while to load up the escape screen after you hit it; I'm assuming it's running some cleanup code on its end to take what's in RAM and get it into a format suitable for writing to disk. And it turns out that 0 will invoke the "exit without save" option. I was in the training screen and picked the wrong person and it was asking how many times I wanted to train them. First I hit escape to cancel out, then I remember "oh yeah, I need to enter 0", so I press 0 and enter. Then the escape screen loads, reads 0 from the key buffer followed by an enter, and exits out, horking my save.

Fortunately, I was only a little bit into the game, so I don't mind losing the progress. I also shouldn't have allowed my save backup script that runs after I finish the game execute (it starts with a "do you want to backup" prompt) but I wasn't sure what the state of things was. I decided to gamble, since the existing backup would have only saved me 10 minutes. Gambled and lost.