cobysev

I’m getting a new OLED Steam Deck in the mail within the next hour or so, so I’m glad to hear its battery is handing well.

I have an original LCD Steam Deck from their initial announcement of the device, which is still showing 100% battery health. The battery doesn’t last very long unplugged, though. I’ve had to make sure I have a charging cable everywhere I go. So I’m looking forward to the longer lifespan of the new Steam Deck.

That’s a shame. “Narrative-driven, story-rich games” are mostly all I play. Just because people spend more time in strategy or MOBA games doesn’t mean they’re more popular, just that they take more time and don’t have a designated end point, so people come back to play more often. But we still enjoy story-rich games and they’ll still sell.

This is why Call of Duty has turned to garbage. Because they realized they could get more gameplay out of the multiplayer mode, so they stopped making good campaign modes and focused all their energy on multiplayer and pushing microtransactions. It’s literally prioritizing money over quality gaming.

And I know, they’re a business and the goal is to make money, but who can remember a fun multiplayer level? What even is the point in getting invested long-term in multiplayer when they’re releasing a new game every 1-2 years? Counter-Strike has been mostly the same for decades and was extremely popular because it was so well-known and hardly changed. It only recently released a sequel, which was basically just a huge patch to the original game. Meanwhile, my memory of Call of Duty multiplayer games is fuzzy because I’ve played so many over the years and none really stand out to me.

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.

?:)

This doesn’t seem like it would work. Debris falling off the trains, dusty buildup, vibrations, rocks bouncing around the tracks; heck, even just wildlife crossing the tracks. So many things are gonna damage those panels if they’re just lying on the ground between tracks, and solar panels are extremely fragile.

I hope they have some sort of bullet proof glass or something over those panels. Probably going to need a special train to spray water over them to clean regularly, too.

I dunno about Swiss trains, but the tracks behind my house in America leave a thick black film on everything, and it’s very hard to clean by hand. I think they transport coal.

I’ve spent the last year or so playing Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint with a couple friends.

It has an interesting sci-fi/military story, tons of side missions if you’re tired of following the main campaign, and a wide open map to explore if you’re just bored of everything. Plus, there are random missions every day, so if you’re done with the main campaign, you can continue to do missions and enjoy exploring the world even more.

Also, your party doesn’t have to stick together. You can play on the same map, but go off and do your own thing. I have a buddy who can’t follow instructions to save his life. He’s always running around, causing chaos everywhere he goes. We’re trying to stealthily infiltrate a base and he just crash-lands a helicopter into it and runs in guns blazing.

So… we let him run off and grief other bases or enemies while the rest of our party focuses on the mission. Everybody wins, and we all get to play together and have a good time.

EDIT: Same goes for Tom Clancy’s The Division and The Division 2. Unlike Breakpoint, which takes place on an island nation, fighting against a wannabe dictator, The Division takes place in America after a virus plague has wiped out most of civilization, and you’re playing as an elite team that’s trying to restore order to the population.

I’ve been playing The Division with my friends for a few years now. It’s a very fun game series.

My grandfather had a massive heart attack in his 70s. He only stayed alive because my mother was a Red Cross certified CPR instructor and kept him going for over an hour until an ambulance got there. Doctors said his body was pretty messed up and they gave him maybe a month to live at best.

My grandfather said, “To hell with that, I wanna keep living!” He lasted another 10 years until he finally passed away.

Similarly, my dad was on hospice care earlier this year. He had a strong body, but his Parkinson’s was affecting his functions and they gave him less than 6 months to live. Not even a month later, he told my sister that he’s tired of fighting and just wants to die. Within a day, he had passed away.

I definitely believe that the conscious mind plays a role in keeping the body going. If you can convince yourself to keep going, your body will fight the good fight, but if you give up, your body stops trying so hard and gives in.

I thought it was referring to “standup meetings,” which is what we called weekly meetings with the commander in the military.

Everyone stands for the commander when he enters a room, then each person presenting needs to be standing while briefing the commander.

It’s military protocol for a high-ranking officer, although the cool officers would tell everyone to buck protocol, remain seated, and just give them the bullet points so we can get back to work.

We are. I just read an article yesterday about how Microsoft paid research publishers so they could use the papers to train AI, with or without the consent of the papers’ authors. The publishers also reduced the peer review window so they could publish papers faster and get more money from Microsoft. So… expect AI to be trained on a lot of sloppy, poorly-reviewed research papers because of corporate greed.

If I’m on the go, I’ll hook up my laptop to the TV with an HDMI cable, set the TV as a duplicate screen so I can close the lid on my laptop (make sure closing the lid doesn’t lock your computer or put it to sleep), then use my wireless mouse and keyboard so I can sit on the couch/bed/whatever and control it from afar.

At home, I bought a micro PC that I keep connected to the TV via HDMI. Then I use a wireless mouse/keyboard to control it from the couch.

The micro PC has WiFi so I can connect it to the Internet, and all devices on my home network can see each other, so I can quickly copy something from my regular PC or laptop to the micro PC if I want to view it on the TV.

I mostly use the micro PC for my streaming services. I don’t trust my Smart TV to be connected to the Internet, so I don’t use any of its apps. But I’m old; I’m used to TVs being dumb devices. I don’t like handing over control of my apps to companies; I’d rather access them directly from a computer.

I did this with my Steam Link in the past. Interestingly enough, my new Smart TV has Steam Link as a downloadable app for it, so I don’t need my physical box anymore.

hunter2

Reverse this for me. I shower first thing in the morning every day and my bath towels are just drying clean skin. They only touch me for maybe a minute or two before being hung to dry.

However, I go to sleep at night, after a full day of developing natural body oils on my skin. And I lie in bed for 8+ hours at a time.

My bed sheets are far more gross after a week of use than my towel will get in a month, more or less a couple weeks.

It’s more about framing the conversation in a way that helps OP’s supervisor realize they’re at odds with each other, socially, and that the supervisor needs to make changes, not OP. I know it’s a bit blunt and direct and may not exactly describe their relationship, but I’ve found that being direct and binary with extroverted people generally gets them to the point faster, rather than beating around the bush with complex descriptions of their dynamic.

And the supervisor being an extrovert is definitely a part of the problem in this case. They’re ignoring signals from OP that they don’t want to be social, shaming them for it, and forcing public interactions in order to change them. This is classic extrovert behavior which is making OP uncomfortable.

The topic of discussion is definitely off-limits and deserves a conversation with HR, but the supervisor still needs to understand that OP’s antisocial behavior isn’t a problem. Otherwise, the discussion will change to be more work-appropriate, but the behavior will remain.

As a fellow introvert, I’ve found that being meek and timid about uncomfortable situations just invites more trouble from extroverts. The best way to handle it is to be direct and firm. If she wants to be nosy, then drop all the gory details:

"I’m an introvert and I don’t feel comfortable sharing my personal life with coworkers. I know you, as an extrovert, want to be involved in everyone’s personal lives and there’s nothing wrong with that, but as a leader and a manager, you need to understand how to change tracks and adapt to your subordinates’ needs.

“I need time to myself to recharge; being around people is mentally and emotionally draining for me. It’s not something I can “fix,” it’s just the way I am, and no amount of exposure to people or social events will ever change that. I need you to understand that and adapt to my needs, in order for you to effectively manage me.”

I worked my way up the ranks in the US military and eventually found myself managing people. As an introvert, I found it extremely difficult to get out and talk to my subordinates. But I soon realized that the mission wouldn’t get done unless I did my job, so I quickly learned how to fake an extroverted personality while at work so I could talk to people and ensure mission success. Then I’d go home and crash. I’d spend my evenings either sleeping or bundled up, watching TV or playing video games, just to recharge so I could do it all again the next day.

But one of the things I learned was how to adapt to the needs of my subordinates. I had one guy who was a complete fuck-up. Couldn’t do anything right without someone holding his hand. So I either had to be very hands-on with him, or delegate that responsibility to one of my subordinate leaders.

But then I had another guy who grew up in a ghetto being plagued by corrupt cops, and he hated anyone in an authority position over him. Why he joined the military, I dunno. We were all about authority and respecting rank and file. But if I even spoke to him, he would shut down and then be unproductive all day. As long as I left him alone, he was my hardest and most productive worker. So I learned to leave him alone and he practically did my job for me. Maybe your supervisor needs to learn that lesson with you.

Yes, this is what I meant. The Red Cross said my blood type is rarely needed in my area so they don’t care about me donating blood. But they’re always needing plasma donations, and you can donate them more frequently than blood, so they recommend I do that instead.

People are getting paid to donate plasma?! The only scam here is that I’ve been giving it away for free!

I donate to the Red Cross here in America. Honestly, I’m happy to donate. I get to sit and relax for a couple hours, the Red Cross I go to has TVs attached to the chairs so I can watch a movie while I donate, and I get free drinks and snacks afterward.

They’re always hurting for plasma donations and you can donate every 28 days, so I visit frequently. I don’t really see how it could be a scam. They always tell me plasma is more important than blood donations. Blood goes bad quickly, but they can keep plasma for a long time. And pretty much everyone can use it. Unlike blood, which you need a compatible type to use.

I donate because I enjoy helping others. I’m not looking for a way to personally benefit from it, so I don’t really care if they offer to pay or not. I feel like that should be the default mindset going in. But I understand there are people who are hurting financially, and donating blood or plasma is an easy way to make a buck. So I’m fine with them offering to pay for donations.

I think it’s great for a ground-floor investment in a YouTube competitor. It draws more people to the platform, gets a chunk of money flowing up front to help boost the service, and they can always sunset the lifetime option if the site gets popular and revenue starts to get tight. As long as they continue to honor it for everyone who paid initially.

Like I said in my original comment, a Nebula subscription is only $6/mo. A lifetime access payment is over 4 years of subscriptions up front. That’s a nice chunk of change to help get them established.

I saw someone’s video about how Nebula works (I think Legal Eagle? He was advertising it hardcore on YouTube for a while) and the subscription service is how they pay content creators. He said it’s a more stable income than YouTube, where your videos earn advertising money based on trends and visibility. If you’re not YouTube famous (and the algorithm doesn’t make you visible), you’re not going to make any money on the platform. But Nebula gives you a more solid income, plus the freedom to make the content you want. No AI moderators flagging videos because it thought it detected the word “suicide” or something. No forcing you to include key words or pushing regular videos on a tight schedule to ensure the algorithm keeps recommending your channel.

Yeah, like I said, it needs more content creators to dump their libraries there. It could be a fantastic competitor to YouTube if only more people knew about it and used it.

Find me a self publishing video platform with the reach of YouTube that doesn’t require self hosting and I’ll happily move my content there.

Nebula is the next best thing to YouTube, but not enough content creators have moved their stuff there, so it’s easy to run out of interesting videos to watch after a while. Some of the bigger folks I follow share their content on both platforms, and the incentive to watch on Nebula instead of YouTube is that content creators have more freedom with their videos on Nebula. They can post bonus/extra footage that would be automatically flagged and blocked by YouTube normally. Don’t need to dance around the censors on Nebula.

Nebula is subscription-based, so they don’t show ads anywhere on their site. But if you don’t want to pay for another subscription service, you can also do a one-time payment to have lifetime access to their site. It’s $300, which is the cost of just over 4 years of their subscription service ($6/mo). Considering I’ve had an account for over 3 years now, it’s almost paid for itself.