Veiva

But Ian McKellen didn't say that! Why is his picture there? Can't trust the internet for anything.

I thought it was called Elvarg? Isn't BEWD just a fandom nickname? Elvarg's nickname is Black-Eyes Green Dragon. Its eyes... so beady... so black... like the abyss. Terrible.

I finished making a password manager utility. Only made it because I wanted something very simple. It's pretty neat: The database itself is simple: In other news, does anyone have experience with Toastmasters International?

Speaking of hype, there is a show that airs around 9:00 PM EST on a certain premium channel. [spoiler=don't look if you give a crap about spoilers]I was disappointed about the ending, though completely of my own doing. I expected Drogon and instead got the show-only Fire-type/steel-beam Daenerys. I wonder how TWOW will handle her meeting with the Khal, considering Drogon is at her side... That is all.

Out of curiosity I got some questions about the people you were receiving help from. How do you think the professionals you've dealt with would react if you told them exactly what you just told us. The other question I have is about what you said about your therapist. When you say shes a pawn of greater forces that manipulate the world, what is the context behind that? I couldn't make sense of that because I couldn't figure out what its eluding to. As far as your brother, I think if he is 16 or older you should be more open about yourself with him for yours and perhaps strangely enough for his sake. Because imagine this, he is entering adulthood and starts experiencing the same symptoms as you and probably would feel like he can't express it to anyone. But for the rest of your problems I'm sorry to hear that. I wish I knew some advice that could help but I'm afraid I dont know any for your situation. I will say that I hope that you become less socially isolated and that you receive aid in managing your psychosis. The one responsible for medication management (i.e., the overly religious one) ignored my concerns and complaints. When discussing side effects, she'd appear to listen, but when I asked what could be done, she said "What exactly are the side effects?" The therapists being overworked (resulting in minimal appointment times and causing 2+ week delays if I couldn't make an appointment) isn't something they can solve, either... I don't like talking about these greater forces. It's very complicated and I'm unable to ignore the fear and anxiety from discussing them. All I can say is imagine pervasive, cosmic forces that embody "natural evil". My brother is four years younger and knows what's wrong--overall he knows only somewhat less than the professionals I've discussed it with. He gets noticeably distressed (i.e., he tells me), and at the end of the day, talking doesn't help and in certain cases is worse. edit: and to be clear I'm not thinking about ending my own life. I'm far too risk-adverse to even think about it, even at my lowest points. It's not going to happen. (@ Saq, and others)

The last few days I've been taking a hard look at myself and I'm not sure how to describe it. I wonder if there's some horrible cliff I'm moving towards, or one I've already stepped over. My greatest fear is entering a perpetual nightmare--metaphorically or literally. My social/political views are so far to the left (in the general sense) it's ... disconcerting, when compared to the social/political views of the extremists (current and historic). The media I truly value (music/literature/film) is... all around dark. My philosophy is unmistakably nihilistic. I battle with delusions, paranoid thinking, and uncertain visual phenomena, which results in conflicting thought processes co-existing: a terrifying, inward one that completely accepts the sickness and a pseudo-normal, outward one that completely rejects the sickness. I fear it's more becoming more obvious in my day-to-day life. Anger, fear, or sadness are always present and positive emotions are fleeting. I believe I've been obsessing over certain things--certain poetry and prose and their authors, privacy and security, among others. The discussions/conversations (mostly online) I involve myself feel bizarre, and pointless, if I take a step back, and my contributions are odd and out-of-place. There was a period I was receiving help, but I feel it was useless. Any positive benefits of the medication were overshadowed by the negative symptoms (sleeping issues, lethargy, and the beginning of certain involuntary muscle movements), and the professional was antagonistic to my worldview (overly religious) and also completely ignorant about me. The therapists I saw were overworked and I feel they did not have the specific experience with psychosis. Even worse, I believe my last therapist is a pawn, or even an agent, of the greater forces that manipulate this world. It's frustrating because she was the only professional who has ever actually listened. I could try a different provider, given I have Medicare and Medicaid, but there's not much choice and with the pervasive authority of medication as a panacea--regardless of its effectiveness or the side effects--and prior experience with mental health professionals, I'd rather not. But I don't even have anyone I can look towards for advice or guidance. I appear normal to those I interact with (extended family, neighbors), and it's no place for me to burden my brother. It's just a mess. I can't even trust myself.

Research Triangle of North Carolina (e.g., Raleigh and Durham), or maybe even Charlotte area, would be awesome. North Carolina has a surprisingly good tech sector... But I live in Fayetteville. There's nothing here, even with a ~200k population. Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base are the only reason the area doesn't become a singularity of nothingness. Anywhere interesting is too far away, even with a car. Moving is far too expensive to consider--it would require a full 6-months fund on top of deposits for utilities/rent/etc, and hopefully there's job opportunities or month 7 would be pretty hard... http://www.meetup.com/cyburgers/ Looks like this might be up your alley That's a new one. Last time I checked was early March, after I had some work done on my scooter. I probably should have checked again before I posted. There was another tech one, but it was before I had reliable personal transportation and it vanished some year (?) ago for some reason... @Ring_World, there's a community college but it would be a bit expensive for the purpose of meeting people. I'm looking into approaching social situations partly in order to see how plausible attending with my condition. On reflection, perhaps a class maybe a reasonable test, though it would have to wait a few months until a few hundred wouldn't be financially risky.

Research Triangle of North Carolina (e.g., Raleigh and Durham), or maybe even Charlotte area, would be awesome. North Carolina has a surprisingly good tech sector... But I live in Fayetteville. There's nothing here, even with a ~200k population. Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base are the only reason the area doesn't become a singularity of nothingness. Anywhere interesting is too far away, even with a car. Moving is far too expensive to consider--it would require a full 6-months fund on top of deposits for utilities/rent/etc, and hopefully there's job opportunities or month 7 would be pretty hard...

Is this thread only about romantic relationships? Because I seriously wonder how to meet people with similar interests in less diverse portions of the world. I don't think social isolation is doing me any good. But where do I find people who like tech, software development, or literature more than casually? Sites like Meetup are only great in this area if you're religious or a military wife...

edit: I don't care. This is dull. *shouldn't care

From my standpoint, if a work can only be properly enjoyed this first time, it's a gimmick and the work itself most probably isn't worth any time investment to begin within. Good works remain rewarding upon repeated readings or viewings or hearings or what-have-you. Bad works don't. (And I knew the general plot-line to Star Wars before I watched it in full for the first time a few years ago. It was still enjoyable. Would it have been more enjoyable for the first viewing...? Maybe, but I feel that's a pointless metric.)

The best looking drygore is like asking who is the prettiest at the Mr. & Mrs. Ugly 2016 pageant. I use maces with some in-game swords as overrides. The prayer bonus makes the main-hand mace better the few times drygores are necessary, and the off-hand is/was the cheapest.

Although I completely understand not liking spoilers, I'm not bothered by them, in honesty. Knowing points in advance lets me focus on the other portions of the media, which is nice. Especially for things that are good, but not good enough for me (totally subjective!) to revisit later. After all, a strong work (film, text, whatever) exists independently of surprise. The Force Awakens was an exception, but I saw it on the release day and was planning to rewatch it anyway.

That reminds me. I have no interest in Fallout, but when the Fallout 4 ending was leaked prior to the release, there were lots of warnings about it around various places. It was annoying. I purposely looked for the ending as a result, but I failed in this quest after a minute or two, so I just gave up. I still don't know how Fallout 4 ends, and it bothers me slightly. Not enough to spend more time searching, though. I'm sure it would be easy enough to clarify, but the initial failure was too much. It's best if I never know, I think.

Game of Thrones: very good. Been watching an episode of True Detective right before. Does anyone know if Rust has some cliche 180 from his nihilism & co to some Happily Ever After worldview? This is necessary information before I invest more time. Also McConaughey should play an evil Bill Nye, and Bill Nye should play a good Bill Nye, in some blockbuster movie thing. That would be neat.

You must be the youngest one here! I joined this forum before I was born.

Whether or not I have or will have information that must be protected as such isn't the primary point. It's the moral of the thing, in the chaotic atmosphere regarding privacy, security, and rights. I also use full-disk encryption for the disk FreeBSD is installed on and never leave my computer on if I'm not nearby. When I go to sleep, when I go somewhere, when I'm doing yardwork, etc--the computer is off. It's protected by an equally strong, but unique, passphrase as the backups, and it takes me longer to enter said passphrase than it does to boot (from POST to passphrase prompt/and then to desktop). The only feasible attack vector (well if you exclude this one) would be a personalized attempt to compromise my system while it's on or during the boot process, assuming access to my data is necessary. But I'd be more likely to win the Powerball (with the new odds) a few times! Regardless, everyone who has any irreplaceable data on their computer should have an off-site backup. The backup process should be reliable, and tests should be done to ensure the data is still valid and can be restored. An untested backup procedure or local backups are as reliable as no backups at all.

I made a reply to the discussion but decided I'd rather not continue it [the discussion]. If you read my reply earlier (Sporks, or others), please disregard it. In other news, I'm waiting on a disc recorder that can burn M-discs. Recently opened a safety deposit box to store off-site backups. The backups will outlive me, assuming storage conditions, which is nice. Going to look into Amazon Glacier for longer-term off-site backups in the event both local sites (home and bank) fail, though that's unlikely. A few days ago I verified my backup procedure works. Use r-sync to generate a backup in local storage, run a smaller script to backup some miscellaneous files/settings, archive it and compress it with LZMA, pad the file to 4 GB, encrypt it rather A Very Long Passphrase using GnuPG, and sign it with GnuPG. The signature and archive are written to disc (DVD in the test), I verify the backup is correct, and then I drop it off. Takes me a few minutes, and the bank can just be one stop so that's mostly wasteless as well. The only metadata is the filename, which is something along the line of backup_YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.xz.enc, and the data is irretrievable outside of bruteforcing a 256-bit AES key or torturing me, so I'm pretty good!

I would like to point out that: - Pre-EoC had Lv. 1000 bosses too. Level does *not* matter for bosses, it is purely for show. A Lv. 1000 boss doesn't mean it has Lv. 700 in every combat skill, that would literally be impossible to beat. - Pre-EoC, you would die *very* quickly if you had 25 maxed players on you at once in multicombat. Why in the world would you expect to survive in a 1v25? Heck they wouldn't even need to be maxed. And isn't that the point of warring, to all focus on one opponent at once so you take them down more easily? - Pre-EoC had far more power creep than EoC does. One-hit by dbowers or lucky two-specced by AGS? Not a problem, right? Just because this was pre-EoC, so that means it was fine. And it was only going to get -worse-. - Stop eating Salmon, + you seem to forget that pre-EoC had -no- food that healed above ~23 (230) while players could hit well above that. ;) Just-prior-to-EoC was the most unbalanced PvP disaster the game has ever had. You'd just need one virtually untouchable dude with Storm & Battlestaff of Armadyl + Virtus / Ganodermic + Elysian/Divine to perpetually rag everyone. Not to mention Storm of Armadyl (with the staff) could out-damage any range setup, regardless. Or melee being better against magic than range with Ganodermic armor, as well as the highest DPS (outside of Storm of Armadyl) against all styles. PvM wasn't much better around that period... The top-end gear for one style (a Nex set + spirit shield) cost over 2b, and overloads/prayer/summoning cost upwards 1b. Even seismic wand + orb weren't as expensive when factoring in inflation and moneymakers...

Using the "Tumbrlina" stereotype is just silly. They are the unfunny, non-fictional counterparts to Britta from Community (i.e., some combination of middle-class, privileged, inexperienced, attention-seeking, immature, teenager/young adult). Do you think 4chan, or YouTube, or news sites comments are useful to indicate anything important either? Hint: no, they're just people being stupid on the internet because repercussions don't exist.

I don't think trans people being unable to use the bathroom they want to use is going to be the downfall of America. Although I don't agree the US is getting worse at large (though it's not getting better), there is a hard push from the right to rollback protections for workers, minorities, voters, and citizens at large resulting in disastrous local and federal outcomes. See: Voting Rights Act of 1965 being neutered and Congress not rectifying this (2013), pro-Christian/anti-everyone-else "Religious Freedom" bills and anti-LGBT legislation in numerous states, rise of racism against Arabs (e.g., Islamophobia) and fissures between whites and blacks/hispanics (e.g., "Black Lives Matter", spotlighted hatred of illegal immigrants), invasive privacy violations and government overreach over the terrorist boogeyman, ... To be more precise, yes, you're right--neither bathroom legislation or transphobia will cause some downfall (and I think RpgGamer was referring to the larger issue of prejudism rather than the transgender subset). But the increasing fervor of right (far-right by Western standards rather than US standards, in all honesty) is indeed causing issues for everyone, and most definitely for minorities.

What's worse is the bathroom portion of the bill is a smokescreen. Again, it's a bill that rewinds worker protections and affects all citizens of North Carolina.

Bathrooms would still be segregated in North Carolina (excluding private institutions doing what they will). The "Bathroom Bill" targets a subset of existing gender-segregated bathrooms (those owned by government entities mostly), requiring one to use the bathroom corresponding to their birth certificate when it applies. A FTM using a men's bathroom is now illegal, and a MTF using a female's bathroom is now illegal. There was no issue before. Predators were not claiming to be transgender to commit sexual assault and transgendered individuals could use the bathroom corresponding to their identified gender without breaking laws. However, now using the bathroom of the identified gender is illegal, while sexual assault was illegal and still is illegal. (Again, "bathrooms" refers to the subset covered by the bill.) And I cede whatever argument I made about unisex bathrooms. I seriously don't care: if unisex bathrooms could work (remain clean, be efficient), fine. It's superficial and pointless because bathrooms as-is currently work, until aforementioned legislation is passed.

No, you're wrong. My analogy is flawed in some part, yes, but not as you appear to think (and your analogy makes zero sense). First of all, transgender females (i.e., male-to-female) are not men, so men are not using women's restrooms. Secondly, unless you can show me numbers of sexual assaults committed under the guise of being transgender, your opinion is worthless like those who pushed the "Bathroom Bill" through the NC legislature, sorry to say. A law against a non-existent threat is a pointless law. Even worse, this is a law to disenfranchise a minority further under the guise of a non-existent threat. But since MTF are no longer identify as male and no longer appear as such, and since there is no data supporting predators using a transgender guise to commit sexual assault, you can only attempt to be pedantic or arrogant (you took a discrete math course, wow, good job!) like the last time this discussion appeared. If so, I'm not furthering the discussion. Except last time I provided an example of an increase in sexual assaults in unisex bathrooms and you ignored it because it doesn't fit your narrative. Great, but unisex bathrooms aren't gender segregated and are therefore irrelevant to both my recent posts! (What was the example? I'll look for it, but to be honest, I don't remember anyone citing any data or studies.) edit: is this what you're talking about? That's not data.

No, you're wrong. My analogy is flawed in some part, yes, but not as you appear to think (and your analogy makes zero sense). First of all, transgender females (i.e., male-to-female) are not men, so men are not using women's restrooms. Secondly, unless you can show me numbers of sexual assaults committed under the guise of being transgender, your opinion is worthless like those who pushed the "Bathroom Bill" through the NC legislature, sorry to say. A law against a non-existent threat is a pointless law. Even worse, this is a law to disenfranchise a minority further under the guise of a non-existent threat. But since MTF are no longer identify as male and no longer appear as such, and since there is no data supporting predators using a transgender guise to commit sexual assault, you can only attempt to be pedantic or arrogant (you took a discrete math course, wow, good job!) like the last time this discussion appeared. If so, I'm not furthering the discussion.