I seriously have a boiling hatred for computers now because I couldn’t even be a little bit mean. I’ve snapped a few times when people blamed me for problems years after I worked on their stuff, but mostly I just got trampled on and robbed at every turn because I didn’t want to upset anyone.

By the time I was mean enough to demand payment and things like that, I already hated it.

My daughter is passionate about computers, so nowadays if I so much as want to tweak something a little bit I let her do it unless she don’t want to. I don’t want to burn her out too.

Your dad sounds like the childhood hero of mine who got me into computers.

Severe ADHD prevented me from ever learning to code, but I became damn good at repairs and things and just general understanding of computers because he was available to ask questions at almost any time.

He went to school auctions every year and got me a pile of hardware to learn from. He never asked for anything in exchange. All around great guy.

I heard him on the phone a few times dealing with the people who he worked with though. Good god he was mean. I couldn’t imagine him being that way with me ever, but he was brutal when it came to work and money.

A dude called him one time while I was sitting there, he listened for a few minutes and he said, “I’ve got a 14 year old kid here, he’s been doing this stuff for about 2 years. I’m gonna let him walk you through this for the 10th fucking time because you’re a goddamn idiot and feeling like a fool when you hang up the phone with a grown man isn’t teaching you any lessons. Maybe get a pen for this one because if I have to remind that a child walked you through it last time, I’m not going to be so fucking friendly.” I was so nervous, apologized multiple times, when I was finished walking him through it he took the phone and said, “now don’t you feel stupid? 25 years and this kid just schooled you.”

He told me, “you gotta be real with idiots or they’ll bother you with stupid problems every single day of your life.”

I wish that lesson had stuck haha, it just wasn’t in me to be mean. As a result, a hobby that I was passionate about all of my life is something I avoid like the plague now. People ruined it for me by bothering me constantly.

Exxxxactly

Exactly.

Ah, yes. I see. My friend, when you serve the one true religion you feeeeel it deep down, as though god is talking through your feelings.

You can’t just allow people from false religions to galavant around claiming they are part of the one true religion. And, see, since we’re all immortal (at least in the true religion) this world doesn’t matter really, except where religion counts.

Gaaaaaaah. The whole world filled with people with perfectly good noses, and yet they breathe through their mouths.

Damn. I hadn’t even thought of it. Isn’t it crazy that some people among us would see things like that burn and not even wince. Hell, some would even celebrate. Our lives are so short. It blows my mind that anyone would want to destroy something like that for any reason.

All I know is that I long for it for some damn reason. As an Appalachian kid with too little to eat, that shit was heaven. I don’t know if it was just because I was hungry, but I was sad to see it go.

This made me think of something else too.

My mom used to stop at a gas station, send me in first with a food stamp dollar to buy a .05 cent piece of gum. My brother would do the same thing, then we’d drive down to the next station and do it again. Finally, at the third station we’d come to the car and give my mom the change. Once we were done, she could afford enough gas to go visit my aunt and my cousins.

Once the EBT card came out that was over for poor folks.

People would stand outside of gas stations and stop people, “hey bro, I’ll buy you two twelve packs of soda for two bucks. You can get a candy bar too.” They usually end up trespassed. The smart ones would sell the cards for half their value (smart? I know) so they didn’t get banned from stores.

Working in a gas station in Appalachia I seen a number of people open their wallets and have several EBT cards.

And also, preaching to the choir I’m sure, that’s the biggest reason I hate AI. We’re already contending with misinformation and bad information, and here comes the confused talking computer to make things worse.

I exist because my mother told my father that she was taking birth control. My father hasn’t been a part of my life except on a few occasions where he wanted to be here and there, and I don’t hold a grudge. My mom proudly told me this when I was about 9. I don’t blame her either, she raised herself from the time she was 4 years old when her mother committed suicide. She did the best she could with what she had as a person with no education and no parents to guide her.

My father came for the birth of my oldest biological child. He came for a few Christmases. He showed up when I was going through a divorce and helped me fix a car for my now ex. He didn’t have to do any of that. I barely know him at all, and even though it bums me out from time to time, it is what it is.

Life is a mess for everybody haha.

Oh it was awful, totally not worth it. He had cocaine as well, but he didn’t get charged with the acid. He was drunk, 17, on Xanax, in his mother’s car. When the police got to him he was eating the cocaine and had to be hospitalized because of his heart.

Funny thing, I was telling his story earlier.

His mom turned him into a junkie to control him. Sad thing really. She did all of her kids that way. He was the only one she turned into a junkie, she convinced the rest they were schizophrenic.

Poor guy has seen nothing but trouble his whole life.

Oh yeah, just isn’t something that regularly occurs. I had a buddy wad up a sheet of uncut blotter and swallow it when he crashed his car and the police showed up.

He spent some time in the hospital before going to jail.

Make folks hallucinate. It doesn’t do that, not really. A person who is hallucinating is unaware that they are hallucinating. They see things in their environment which aren’t there, or hear things which aren’t there.

LSD can produce stunning visuals, but there is never a moment where you are unaware that those visuals are being caused by the drug. As for the auditory side of it, it enhances music kind of like thc does, but on a much larger scale. I would say that’s the wildest part. For me, with very slow, subtle movements of my body, I could feel like I was moving into and around the music. Still though, I was fully aware that the drug was behind it.

There are no pink elephants, not really. Though, I would say that my imagination was a lot more vivid and my mind more likely to wander. Still, I knew it was my imagination.

I’ve heard some fake ass stories about people being surrounded by fuzzy bunnies and all kinds of stuff.

I will say, I haven’t taken an absurd amount of it at once. I haven’t taken it in more than a decade either.

I’m going to go with a degoogled version of the OS (LineageOS is my current plan).

The only way I’ll back out is if Apple allows an ad blocker that will cover any app I’m using. I’m currently paying for one that only works on Safari and YouTube videos take a thousand years to load up.

Now if a legit version of Firefox makes its way to iPhone in the US with ublock, I’ll be happy with that.

Ads never bothered me on YouTube.

They’re bothering me enough now that I’m going with an android phone after more than a decade on iPhones just so I can get back to YouTube the way it used to be with a decent ad blocker (better than it used to be actually).

I can’t fucking stand it, and again, it didn’t bother me before.

Want to show someone a short clip? Nah. Gotta skip two fucking ads first while you stand there looking stupid and waiting.

I’m fucking done.

That isn’t how cults work. They generally visit the leaders in jail and fight to get them freed.

Some of the sponsored shit is crazy too.

I was watching a video on a timeline of events with Puff Daddy and it hit this one part that went something like, “the young man said that Diddy wanted to play with his anus. Which reminds me of our sponsor, the law offices of so and so. Life is unpredictable and you or your loved ones could get molested too. If that happens you’ll need legal representation! Our sponsor will represent you…”.

Holy shit my brain shorted on that one.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen discord get a positive mention on this sub. I’ve never used it so I don’t really have a horse in this race.

I don’t know what people use it for, but I’ve seen all the negative memes about open source software devs using it and that causing people to skip on the software though. Never seen it get any praise around here.

That’s a damn cockatiel. I don’t care if it is a member of the parrot family. That’s. A. Damn. Cockatiel.

Have a nice day sir!

That depresses me.

I grew up in their test market. I watched every friend I had lose their parents to opioid addiction. I watched my dad go from busting his ass caring for us, camping trips, fishing trips, and hunting trips, to hanging out behind a car wash with other unemployed junkies while we cooked on a wood stove and had no electricity.

I grew up in it so it was normal. I ended up on it. You either had a social life or you didn’t. There weren’t very many sober people left by 2005.

I have seen death and chaos all of my life. My brother and I are among about 5 boys from our neighborhood left. We got sober because luckily our mother never touched the stuff and was able to be there for us. The rest in our age group are dead. Overdoses and suicides because of the addiction.

I knew nothing but violence and chaos as a kid because they lied and made junkies of entire communities.

Money is magical. As long as you pay your taxes you’ll be fine. Might have to deal with some embarrassment from time to time, you might get your name taken off of something. Other than that, luxury and protection.

The only reason Holmes is in jail is that she fucked with other people with money. She should have found a way to get rich poisoning the poors.

When they get it down to rad sunglasses I’ll wear them everywhere.

I love my Quest headset, but I haven’t turned it on in 6 months. I don’t have time to be isolated like that without asking other people to make sacrifices for me so I can have that time.

I think the tech will be important in the future. I could be wrong, but when it shrinks down and becomes easy to remove isolation, I think people will want it.