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I found I went through an interesting process regarding my state of mind when I got mine. I would never be able to regret getting a tattoo simply because it's the culmination of a lot of thought, decision-making, and the ultimate destination of lying on the table having something permanently added to your body. It's the outward mark of an experience and I could never regret having that experience. I think meaningful tattoos are cool and mine does have meaning to me, but I also chose it because it's aesthetically pleasing, and I think that should come first when thinking in the long-term. A well-done but meaningless tattoo is better than a poorly done tattoo with a story behind it.

$75 a day for food? I can eat for three weeks off $75. I'd be pocketing the rest.

I would like to clarify that I meant no insult saying it shouldn't cost anything; I figured the best plan would be to have a design done by the same person who did the tattoo and it would therefore be incorporated into the overall price. If you're going to wait before getting it though then yeah expect to be charged. Same goes for anyone who does you a design, tattoo artist or not. The ability to make good art is a skill that isn't given away for free. As an artist myself I have mad respect for tattoo artists (the guy who did mine went to art school and everything) and they should absolutely be compensated for their time. It's quite maddening to have people ask you to do things for free; I've experienced it myself. Nothing's free, [bleep]es. EDIT: Personally, if I were a tattoo artist I would appreciate the chance to put as much of myself into a design as possible, rather than just copying a design someone else made. So research and go to an artist.

Yeah you didn't say if you had an idea of what you want but if you do just have the tattoo artist put something together. It shouldn't cost you anything and it will be better coming from the person who's going to do the ink anyway. Since this is bumped here's a somewhat blurry pic of the enso I had done two weeks ago: I did the enso myself and had the artist recreate it. You can't see because of the image quality but he did an amazing job capturing the details. He also warned me they were addicting and he was right. Definitely planning on more in the future, and something bigger.

Looks like I still have the highest tuition. Pyrric victory. I'd never be able to afford full tuition though and a good 70% of the students here pay full or close, so, culture shock.

My bill for the fall semester came today . . . and it's $30,000 because they didn't count a single part of my financial aid package which should have brought it down to around 5k. I nearly shat myself. Time to sort this out . . .

Got two completely different results from the two non-register tests so I googled some other ones. Got INFJ like I remember. Some of those questions are pretty weird though.

Story related to Skull losing his picture: A few months before my ex and I broke up I was working on a project in a figure drawing class which had to be loosely inspired by an existing work of art. I chose this painting by Eric Fischl: Artistic nudity, NSFW I guess. It's a portrait of critic and gallery owner Simon de Pury and his then-lover, the artist Anh Duong. I think it's pretty powerful and says a lot about gender roles and relationships. So what I did was a self-portrait of myself and my then-girlfriend with the roles reversed: I was nude and she had her arm hooked through mine possessively. Eric Fischl, as it happens, is pretty big on the idea that his paintings can "read" people and capture rather insubstantial things about them. What he said about the Simon and Anh portrait was that the discomfort in the image foretold their breakup. Lo, Simon and Anh broke up, and a few months after I did a piece based on that painting, my relationship ended. I'm not claiming this is anything but an interesting story. I just find it food for thought.

Oh I know she didn't tell you right away. I'm just saying that breaking up with you and then intending to get back together was probably the worst decision possible. Telling you and not telling you are both unfair for different reasons, and the fairest thing would have been not to put you both through the emotional difficulty of a breakup in the first place. Maybe none of the drama you're experiencing would have happened if she'd told you, but you'd be going through a different but equally frustrating period right now as you would be waiting for her and wondering how much longer. And she holds all the cards, because if you actually ask how much longer you're just making it worse. (Yeah, personal experience there. Different subject, same principle.) I'm not saying you're blameless here, but it really helps to acknowledge error on both sides so you don't just take it all on yourself, because that makes everything so much worse.

Apparently there is a threshold in life at which you start seeing your job-frustrated peers fall for pyramid schemes, and I'm at it right now. They're EVERYWHERE. It's pretty sad to see people you went to high school with cheerfully walking into scams. I've had to talk one particularly stubborn close friend out of one already. Thankfully he seems to have dropped it.

Your ex is being pretty manipulative by breaking up with you and then holding getting back together up as bait. I'm going to assume she knows it's what you want. Not telling you and then getting mad when you sleep with someone else is unfair; so would have been telling you and expecting you to wait for her without a definite timeline ("the right time" is bullshit). I don't know if you posted the details of this breakup, but I don't know them. Knowing what I do, though, it seems to me you should have tried working out your differences if what you both want is to be together. Assuming she broke up with you, it might be better if you keep your distance because she sounds a bit emotionally immature and manipulative.

You'd think that, but really, most of my friends are like, "Well, that was bad. Oh well. When's the next party?" It's funny with him in particular because he goes to such extremes on both sides.

Ha I have a friend who swears off drinking every few months after he does something ridiculous while near blackout (broke someone's crucifix, punched another guy in the face, failed hookup, etc). He always starts up again within a few weeks and the cycle repeats. Not saying you'll be him. Just a funny story.

Who uses an Xbox to play Netflix? Just get him to enter his password into netflix on your computer and have the browser save it (although it's not safe to do). You then have Netflix without paying for Xbox Live. I almost never use the Xbox for Netflix, I plug the TV on my laptop and watch it that way, and even better, the image is better. I have already done that with a different person's account as I said in that very post, and I hook my laptop up to my own TV (which I don't currently have) all the time. The problem with this specific setup is that it's an older TV with only one HDMI port; it's annoying to switch cables all the time and the quality difference doesn't matter because it's like seven years old. Plus my laptop speakers are too quiet for my slight deafness and my heaphones are broken so I like having the Xbox option at this point in time. I know these are minor things, people, but I find them annoying. That's what the thread is about.

When I try to open Netflix it says you need Gold. I understand they're separate services; the point is why make the service I (theoretically, not in this specific case) already pay for only accessible through the other service for which I also pay. You'd think it would be accessible on silver but apparently it isn't.

When my housemate's Xbox Live Gold membership runs out and I can't watch Netflix or HBO Go on it anymore. Who thought paying twice for those services was okay? Then again I have access to two different accounts on both Netflix and HBO, none of which are mine to pay for, so I can't complain too much . . .

BioShock Infinite: Bored me, didn't finish. /controversial opinion Pushmo: Great game to pick up when I have a bit of time to kill. Puzzles are starting to get pretty difficult, too. Oracle of Seasons/Ages: Finished Seasons, getting pretty deep into linked Ages, which is the one I've never played before. Dead Space: Having a blast with this one. Not as scary as Slender, Zombi U, or Amnesia, but a fun game regardless.

Die Hard With a Vengeance. Never seen a Die Hard film before. It was quite enjoyable; action movie done right, I'd say.

The thing about the typical LDR situation is that it usually happens when people go apart for school, which is at an age when people change. A lot. I am not advocating for ending such relationships preemptively, but you would be foolish not to consider how much maturing you both still have to do. In some ways the relationship itself can end up pushing you to be a different, more mature person, and that person might just grow out of that relationship. These things happen. Not saying it always happens that way; you should absolutely stick with it in case it does work out. Even if it doesn't it's a valuable growing experience. Just don't be so sure this is it. That can be crippling to your personal growth if you've essentially bowed out of an entire area of life experience. And there might come a time when you do grow apart, and it will be that much harder to handle if you've invested so much based on what you thought you knew.

I think the show has way too much momentum right now to possibly be cancelled, but I think having 8 or 9 seasons would change that. The best shows are 5-7 seasons IMO. I think the longest HBO show has been The Sopranos at 6 and a half. People just won't wait nine years for ultimate resolution, plus we have child actors who would clearly no longer be children at that point.

[spoiler=more book stuff]Or it will make things all the more surprising once Stoneheart does appear. Is that sort of meta-misdirection a possibility?

Showrunners have said they're aiming for 7 seasons. Which means some condensing is going to happen considering they're taking two seasons for one of the 7 books. Works for me; GRRM needs someone to trim the fat sometimes.

Have fun with goron dancing. I am also doing this very thing. I never had Ages as a kid though so I'm eager to continue on to that, though I've heard it isn't as good as Seasons. I've got BioShock Infinite waiting for me to have time to play it . . .

I love reading non-book people's reactions.