cobysev

Back when I was a teenager (~25 years ago), I had the worst time waking up every morning for school. My dad would have to come drag me out of bed, then I would be sitting in the shower dozing for a while before I actually started cleaning myself. Like, literally sitting - I would sit on the edge of the tub while in the shower and just slip in and out of consciousness for a little bit until I was awake enough to shower.

Of course, this made me run late every morning. My dad always poked his head into the bathroom to yell at me that I’m going to miss my school bus if I don’t hurry up. I rarely ever missed the bus, but I also barely caught it most days, which always made my dad anxious about my morning routine.

As a healthy young teenager, I always had morning wood that wouldn’t quit. I had gotten used to it, so getting ready in the mornings with a raging boner wasn’t unusual. But I was generally pretty good at keeping it hidden from others until it went away.

One particular morning, I had gone through my shower-sleep routine and finally got around to cleaning myself. I had lathered up my entire body with soap and was scrubbing all the cracks and crevices thoroughly (I was a bit OCD when it came to cleanliness).

This day, my dad had finally had enough and decided to see what took me so long in the shower every day. Out of nowhere, he whipped open the shower curtain and opened his mouth to yell at me.

I was standing there, frozen in shock, both hands gripping my soapy raging boner. My dad glanced down, then back up at my face, then gave me the goofiest smile I’d ever seen him make. Then he wordlessly shut the shower curtain and walked away.

It took me a minute to realize why he changed his mind about yelling at me; it didn’t process at first what the situation he walked into looked like. I was just washing my body, after all.

My dad never again yelled at me to hurry up in the shower.

There’s audio to go along with it.

Zimbabwean one hundred trillion dollar note

Hey! I bought one of these for like $2 USD online nearly a decade ago. That was still almost 1000x its face value at the time.

Imagine there’s a new issue of a famous comic book being printed (the series doesn’t matter; take your pick). But the caveat is that there’s only going to be ONE copy printed. Only one in existence. That single issue could potentially be worth millions, because it’s so desirable for comic book nerds and they all want to get their hands on it. Only the wealthiest of collectors will be able to throw enough money at it to win an auction, which raises its value significantly.

Now imagine the publisher decides to make 100 copies instead. The value of that issue is now much cheaper; maybe worth several thousand dollars per comic, because there are a handful of them floating around now. Still, only wealthy collectors will be able to afford bidding on a copy, but at least the top 100 bids will win a copy. Raising the value, but not as much as if they are all bidding on a single product.

Now imagine 100,000 copies are made. Now it’s mostly a standard printing, and it’s only worth the cover price for a comic nowadays (what, like $3.99 or so?)

The more copies that are out there, the easier it is to find and acquire, and thus the cheaper its value is. Same goes for money; the more printed bills that are out there, the less value each bill has, and you’ll need more of them to afford basic products. Which is why inflation is a thing, because we’re constantly printing more money each year.

In reference to my point about comic book values, there are only about 100 copies left in existence of the first Superman comic (Action Comic #1). A single copy sold last year for $6 million, and its condition was only rated 8.5/10, which means it’s a little rough around the edges from wear and tear. Not even a pristine comic book, and it still cost millions to buy!

That same issue sold for 10 cents when it was first made in 1938, but the fact that comics were made to be read and then discarded back then means most people never held on to their comic books and their numbers have dwindled over the years. Now Superman is a huge deal - one of the best-selling comics of all time - and his first appearance in a comic book is so rare, people will spend millions just to have an original copy.

Well, I did serve throughout the Iraq War. I got some PTSD from my time in war zones that is a 70% disability rating alone. Plus several minor and major physical injuries over the years that I never fully recovered from.

The VA doesn’t do a direct addition when it comes to disability, so a 10% rating and a 10% rating doesn’t equal a 20% rating overall. They have some weird equation to calculate disability, which would probably bring it out to 12-15% disability total. But I had so many claims to submit, I made it all the way to 100%.

I thought I had maybe 2-3 medical claims to make when I retired. But I spoke with a VA counselor who spent 3 hours pouring over my 20 years of medical records in the military, then went over every single body part and asked detailed questions about my functionality and how it’s potentially degraded over the years since I joined the military. By the end, I had 33 claims to submit, and the VA accepted 30 of them. Enough small ratings (plus a few large ones) got me all the way to 100%.

I may not look disabled if you met me in person, but I am struggling, both mentally and physically. The VA actually fixed my knees; I was walking with a cane for the last 4 years I was in the military. But it’s not a perfect fix, so I still struggle to get around and I can’t run anymore without pain. But I don’t need a cane anymore, so there’s that.

YOU ARE ONLY 38?!

I was 38 when I retired three years ago, actually. I’m about to turn 41 in a few months. Sorry if I didn’t write that clearly in my comment.

The first few years going home feels like nothing ever changes but I recently went to my home town for a wedding and saw some friends for the first time in 15 years. Wow did the passage of time hit me like a truck.

I feel this. In my early years of the military, I used to take a month off every year and go home to chill with family and friends. The first few years of that, it was like nothing changed. But then I started dating my future wife and spending my time off traveling and honeymooning with her. When I did finally go home again, I almost didn’t recognize it. My friends and family had moved further away, my hometown had changed, everything was suddenly different.

True, 38 isn’t that old. But keep in mind, I’m 100% disabled according to the VA. Two decades of military service has wrecked my body, so I’m unable to work any physically demanding job. Heck, I struggle just to go up and down stairs in my own house without pain in my knees and back.

Which is a shame, because I was an extremely fit and active person in my youth. That’s part of the reason I joined the military - I was in the best shape of my life and could keep active all day without breaking a sweat. I’m actually frustrated now that just walking from my house to my mailbox takes me out of action for an hour or two.

I keep telling myself I’m young, but my body’s acting like it’s 80 years old. That’s the one downside to military service; it can easily overstress your joints and physically age you much faster than normal.

This is a compartmentalization technique seen in a lot in people with ADHD. Not saying OP has ADHD, but it’s something to look into if they have other signs.

I did this for literal decades. I was excited to start my adult life after high school, but an opportunity I couldn’t pass up dropped into my lap, so I chose that route instead.

Joining the US military was that opportunity. My uncle explained how the Air Force had taken care of him for 30 years, giving him free food, free lodging, free education, free travel around the globe, free medical and dental, and a steady, decent paycheck on top of it all. It sounded too good to be true, so I signed up as well. I figured I could get back to my plans for adult life later, after I’d taken advantage of all the benefits the military could offer me.

20 years later (3 years ago), I retired from the Air Force. It was a pretty stressful career, in a positive way, so I was glad to get home, relax a bit, then finally pick up my life where I left off.

The things is, a lot happens in 2 decades. All my friends had left town and moved on to new lives, new careers, created new families, etc. my own family had mostly moved away, except for my dad who was still living in my childhood home. He offered to let my wife and I stay with him rent free as long as we wanted. He passed away last year and I inherited the house from him.

So now I’m back in my childhood home, just starting to really get settled back in and trying to figure out what to do with myself. I feel like my life has been on hold for so long, I don’t even know where to start in picking things back up again. I’m not young anymore, so a lot of the physically active jobs and hobbies I was previously interested in are either difficult or impossible for me now. I also changed a lot mentally with 20 years of military service. I’m not the same person I was at 18, so I have to readjust my interests and hobbies.

Fortunately, I have a lifelong pension from the military. I was grandfathered into the old pension program before they switched to a 401K-type plan, so I get paid half my final paycheck every month for the rest of my life. I also got the coveted “100% Permanent & Total” disability rating from the VA, so that is an additional monthly payment for life that’s about double the size of my pension. Plus free medical and dental for life. My wife didn’t retire from the military, but she also got the 100% P&T disability rating, so she gets the same medical pay and benefits as me.

So with all this passive income, we can actually be retired, as of 38 years old, and have the free time every day to focus on rediscovering our lives. I don’t feel like I need to put my life on pause while I work a job I don’t necessarily care for, or save up enough money for something I really want to do. I can live my life fully now, unpaused, for the first time in my life. It’s been very liberating, both mentally and physically.

I want categories like this, but I already have categories for each franchise. Anything that’s related to a franchise goes into a category named for that franchise. Even if it’s just a game and its soundtrack. That way, everything for a particular game is kept contained and I know what’s related to what. If I have a random “dev tools” installer in my library, I figure out what game it’s for (thanks to SteamDB.info and it goes into a category along with that game.

I do have a separate category for simulation games, but only because I love simulators and have tons of them. Outside of that, any attempt to make genre categories has just further confused my library. So for not, I just have hundreds of categories for specific games and their included content and/or sequels.

Got me. 🤗 Poor spelling/grammar is a pet peeve of mine, but it’s so hard to point out online without getting a lot of hate. I only responded here because it was topical and, I assumed, intentional.

I dare you to proof that its dead.

I don’t know if this comment was intentionally improper, but…

• prove
• it’s

Why are there so many articles that drop the second Y from his name? It’s Zelenskyy. I haven’t seen an article on Lemmy in the past couple weeks that spelled his name right.

Nope, this is loss.

Is this commentary on the game’s anti-corporation story, or about Microsoft shutting down this game’s studio after this highly successful release? Or both?

Here’s the comic on the left (titled “Loss”) and its shorthand on the right that people sneak into everything to reference it.

The webcomic (called “CTRL-ALT-DEL”) was mostly comedy, but then pivoted out of the blue with this dark, dramatic, wordless strip. The whiplash in tone led to a lot of jokes and people trying to meme it and slip references to it into everything.

The father used knives to create the Loss shorthand on the countertop. He called it “Rick-rolling” because he knows that word is associated with online trolling. He’s never seen the original Loss comic, so the arrangement of knives on the counter is more akin to hieroglyphics than anything; an arrangement of symbols to convey an idea.

My mother used to work a state govt job. I don’t think she ever had a “take your kid to work” day, but there were a few times when she brought me into the office for the day. She was the manager of an entire wing of her building, so she could just bring me in anytime and no one said anything about it.

Her coworkers were always so nice and had apparently heard all about me because they all seemed to know me intimately. I sometimes wondered if her coworkers were only nice to me because I was the boss’s kid. But my mom was a genuinely nice person who was always looking out for others, so I wouldn’t be surprised if her coworkers actually liked her.

Sometimes I’d get tours of various offices, sometimes my mom would just set me up with something to do to entertain myself. I drew a lot in my childhood, and my mother would always put up my artwork in her office to show off to her coworkers.

My dad ran his own business and as long as I could remember, it was just him and his secretary renting out a large office space in the cities. He had a partner originally, but his partner died really young, so my dad was left with the whole company to run himself. Fortunately, my mom’s govt job paid the bills, so my dad didn’t need to make a ton of money with his small business.

Every time I went to my dad’s office, he would set me up at a computer near his secretary and I would spend the day either playing Wolfenstein 3D or Pac-Man. This was back in the early '90s, so you had to boot these games from a command line. The computers themselves were Windows 3.11 or so.

EDIT: I never had kids of my own, and I retired young, so I won’t ever get to experience taking my kids to work.

I’m atheist (and used to be extremely Christian once upon a time) and I’ve always celebrated Christmas. I’ve never seen it as a religious holiday, even though Christians try to claim it as their own. It was originally Saturnalia, and has more lore behind it that doesn’t line up with Christian beliefs. Like, who is Santa Claus in Christianity? They literally just took an already established holiday and claimed it for their religion to pull in more followers to their faith. Nah, I’m gonna keep celebrating Christmas without the Christ part. It’s a fun holiday that doesn’t need religion poisoning it.

Is anybody else just Not planning on gift-giving this year?

I’ve always been awkward about mandatory gift-giving situations, like birthdays and Christmas. I prefer to give gifts in the moment, from the heart, that people really need. Not gifts because the situation demands it from me.

As such, I tend to avoid gift-giving for specific holidays and events and tell everyone to avoid giving me gifts in return. I usually buy everything I want for myself anyway, and I hate receiving gifts I never asked for. What am I going to do with a trinket, or daily calendar, or a light-up desk toy? Maybe it’s the ADHD in me, but I like to plan and organize my home and other spaces, and receiving gifts I didn’t ask for messes up my structure. I don’t want to be a jerk, but if you give me a non-functional gift, it’s likely going in the trash the first opportunity I get.

My wife and I are already talking about getting a divorce (due to other long-standing issues) and things have been tense in the household for some time now.

Sounds like you have more on your plate than worrying about gift-giving this year. My recommendation is to give your kids and niblings (nieces and nephews) some simple gifts at a minimum. Don’t ruin their Christmas because the rest of your family are treating you like crap. They aren’t to blame, and they shouldn’t be roped into the drama. If anything, avoiding giving them gifts is just more ammo your family can use to turn them against you.

Keep the peace with the innocent bystanders, but I would totally forego gifts for the rest of your family. Save that money and buy yourself something nice instead. (Or save for a divorce lawyer if you need one)

?:)

• Epic wants to be Steam’s direct rival, so their storefront has many of the same features, but it’s not as popular within the community. I honestly have no opinion about them.

I have an opinion on them. They’re a terrible company with anti-gamer friendly policies.

I have no problem with competition. It keeps businesses legit and cheap/reasonable for consumers. Heck, GOG does a great job as a companion storefront with Steam.

Epic Games could have tried to be competitive too and provide a similar or better platform for games. But instead, they wanted to corner the market and steal gamers from Steam, so they started pushing exclusivity contracts with publishers. New games would come to only their storefront for the first year, then release to other PC storefronts after that.

Then they started publishing games themselves, which kept them isolated to their storefront indefinitely. Even game series that were released to other consoles and PC platforms suddenly had a sequel that was stuck on Epic Games. I’m looking at you, Alan Wake II.

Or worse, buying up IPs and removing them from other storefronts, like Fall Guys and Rocket League.

They also tried to pull people in by releasing a new game for free every week (even AAA titles!), which was actually the coolest thing they ever did. But it doesn’t excuse all their other anti-gaming practices. If anything, it made me feel dirty using their platform.

I have never given Epic Games a penny of my money and until they decide to be competitive with Steam instead of just stealing the market from them, I will continue to boycott them.

I’m not alone in this mindset. Ubisoft was releasing games exclusively on Epic Games for a while and they’ve just decided that their newest Assassin’s Creed game will release on Steam, due to poor sales on Epic. Also, Alan Wake II had dismal sales because it’s locked behind Epic’s storefront. So a lot of other gamers aren’t willing to put up with Epic Games’ BS and their model is crumbling.

Epic is what happens when a corporation pops up expecting to make money off gamers. Steam is what happens when someone who is a gamer themselves and appreciates the gaming experience creates a store for gamers. I have given thousands of dollars to Steam over the years and have a massive library of their games. I only have a few free games on Epic and I won’t even install their launcher anymore. As a consumer, I vote with my wallet, and Epic needs to get with the program or go away.