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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • Lots of little things, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the constant pop-ups asking me to try out Copilot in Win10, harassing me daily on both on my personal PC and my work laptop.

    Windows has been on thin ice since the trash fire that was Win8, and I’d only stuck with it for Nvidia driver support for gaming. I’ve been watching Proton development for years now, and putting it through its paces on my older PCs every few months, so I knew I was ready to make the switch for about a year before I finally pulled the trigger. I justified putting it off with the thought that “I can build my next PC around an AMD graphics card amd make the switch then.”

    Then Win11 and all its garbage was announced, AI took off, and Microsoft started pushing their slop on my machine harder than ever. It was too much. I switched to Mint DE on my current machine and haven’t looked back.





  • How much time have you spent being single?

    Most of my life. I’ve had two serious relationships and one complicated one, none lasting more than six months. My last relationship ended in late 2019, so it’s been 4.5 years. I’m 33 this year, and have been single for about 31 years total.

    If you’re currently single: is it by choice or circumstance?

    Bit of both. I choose not to invest my time, money, and energy into pursuing a relationship, but sometimes that choice feels forced because I don’t have enough time, money, or energy to spare for pursuing a relationship. If it happens, it happens, but I’m not proactive about it because I’m focusing on work and my hobbies. If I ever find myself financially stable without working full time I might have time to actively pursue a relationship, but that’s not in the cards right now for my autistic ass. I spend almost all my free time recovering so I can go back to work.

    I joined a LARP community and I go to board game and DnD meetups specifically to meet people and keep my social muscles healthy. Hopefully I’ll find a partner in those circles someday, but no luck so far. The unfortunate reality is that every girl I meet is already in a relationship. I have made a lot of friends, so mission accomplished as far as that goes, but the folks who say that joining hobby groups and hanging out with people who share your interests is the best way to find a partner are full of shit.

    Finally, both of my serious relationships ended on good terms because my partner felt I did not communicate enough with them, while I felt the amount of communication they were expecting was too much for me to maintain, which made the relationship a source of stress and anxiety for me. We broke it off, and I’m still good friends with one of them. This is a problem with me that I’m not sure how to fix, and it’s very much not conducive to a healthy relationship. I hope I can find a partner who’s comfortable with that some day, but it’s made me leery of jumping into new relationships.

    Do you / did you enjoy single life?

    No, but I don’t enjoy dating life, either. Life in general is an unending stream of demands, and I never get enough time to stop, breath, and reset. That’s true while I’m single, and it was true while I was dating.

    What are / were the pros and cons?

    Pros:

    • My living space is my own. Everything stays exactly where I left it, and I can decorate as I please.
    • I eat when and what I want. I can cook or eat out as I choose. Meals don’t need to be a production, and if I want to stock up and eat the same thing for weeks on end there’s no one to complain about it.
    • My time is my own. I can schedule things whenever and I don’t need to coordinate calendars. If I need to travel for work I can drop everything and just go.
    • No fucking kids. My niece, nephew, and soon to be 2nd nephew are plenty.

    Cons:

    • I’m so lonely. So very lonely.
    • Porn addiction. I have a high sex drive, no healthy outlet for it, and it’s an easy dopamine hit for stress and anxiety relief.
    • Financial stress. I’m barely getting by on a single income.
    • Constantly questioning my identity. I think I’m some flavor of aromantic sex-positive asexual, and I suspect I’m bi and/or trans, but I’ve got no partner to explore my own gender and sexuality with. It’s hard to tell how much is real and how much is my mind spinning off the rails with nothing to latch on to.

    Is / was partnership a goal of yours?

    Yes. I’d like to settle down with a fellow introvert so we can be alone together.



  • The price.

    Bought a used '96 Mazda Protégé off a coworker for $700. Ran it into the ground. Scrapped it for $300 when I could finally afford a better car. Definitely got my money’s worth.

    I got to learn what driving without power steering felt like after the compressor locked up and the drive belt shredded. Ended up replacing it with a smaller belt just for the power steering since I couldn’t afford to replace the A/C. Drove with the windows down for a few months. Good times.




  • I just started and I’m having fun with it so far! Playing a mage and just unlocked my first specialization. Went with the one that gives meteor.

    I think I soft-locked my save while I was having disconnect issues. I can’t leave the area anymore at all. Contemplating starting over. I’m not too far in yet. GW2 and PoE are running fine now, but LE is crashing every time I try to exit the end of time zone without fail.




  • Firewatch has been on the periphery of my attention for a while. I’ve heard generally good things about it, but it didn’t actually pique my interest until Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe

    spoiler

    swapped it in to replace Minecraft in the alternate games ending.

    I figured if it was good enough for the Stanley Parable devs to feel it was worth referencing, it must have been an indie gem that I was sleeping on. I was wrong.


  • Firewatch was a recent purchase for me which I mildly regret.

    As a walking simulator it’s wholly dependent on the quality of its story, and the quality just isn’t there. It starts strong but the ending is rushed and without a coherent resolution. It does so much work to set up multiple dramatic mysteries and then haphazardly solves half of them out of nowhere and forgets the rest in the final scramble to finish.

    Nice graphics. Great voice acting. Neat concept. Needed more time to cook and left me feeling like I wasted my time getting invested in the story.

    A recent release? Diablo 4 I guess. I don’t really regret it since I knew what I was in for. I bought it to play with my best friend, and we had fun together until he got bored and frustrated. My hopes were high but my expectations were minimal and it still barely managed to meet them.