Yep. And my best friend. I was in the class after everyone was filing down their teeth over the Vampire the Masquerade larp they were all into. My buddy was in one of the first few full classes in Goose Creek rather than down in Florida.
That ain't no fucking joke. I think I know maybe 3 couples that made it through Power School and only one that are still together. One guy is married to his ex-wife's sister though, so maybe that counts.
I had a lot of insecurity (that led to some much needed humility) there that would have tanked any relationship I had. I was used to being the smartest guy in the room. I got there and I was painfully average with very little idea of how to work hard mentally. It was a rude but necessary awakening that made me an insufferable dick privately but helped me a lot in the long run.
Also got the best advice of my life from one of the instructors in A school. Most of the administration told us not to break the rules. This guy, every time we left for the weekend, told us "be discreet".
I did not realize who I was replying to hahaha. So hi there, friend!
I don't believe in an afterlife but if I'm wrong I hope wherever your grandmother is she met up with my buddy's grandpa and they're terrorizing ghosts with porn and toys together.
I don't know if that last part is a joke, but my buddy and his brothers slipped the porn VHS that was still in the VCR when his grandfather died in his casket along with a bottle of Crown Royal.
I'm a dudely guy. I love my smoker (where do you live that they're doing it that often? Even here in Texas it's a niche hobby 99% of the time). I work on and ride motorcycles. Woodworking. Hog hunting, but that's mostly to keep wild hogs from tearing up land of people I know. I love camping. Music production. So I'd be considered pretty normal, minus the sports, if someone were to know my hobbies.
But also I've got some plushies in my home studio. I like them, they make me smile. I've got a bunch of retro games on modern equipment. I read a lot of fantasy and that includes a healthy dose YA fantasy. In addition to tabletop games that a lot of folks play I have an entire shelf dedicated to kids board games that I play.
I don't have kids. Never will. I'm the crazy uncle to everyone else's kids and we have a great time when they're over. And if anyone doesn't like my childish hobbies they can go fuck themselves.
Liking kids stuff isn't sad at all. Ever. If you aren't harming others and you're having a good time then anyone who gives a shit has stepped way the fuck out of their lane. If you met the most amazing person tomorrow and wanted them to be your partner and they found out about your hobbies and made fun of them, even if they were perfect in every other way, that's not the right person for you.
Now I'm not personally a Lego person. I don't have the concentration for it. But if I found out you were my neighbor I'd 100% offer to smoke a brisket or whatever you eat and supply some beer if you'd bring over the Atari for some Combat or have an extra RC car that we can race. That sounds like an incredible way to spend a Saturday if I'm not headed out of town.
About 15 years ago there was a company I did some work for (I was at an MSP at the time) who wanted to virtualize certain systems. Great. No problem. Except those systems needed to read floppies. Ok, I can pass it through. Except they wanted to get away from floppies. Great, let's get you a newer system from a different vendor because this one went out of business when NT4 was still the big dog. Nope, too much money and the process would change.
So I had to reregister every DLL by hand because the installation didn't work on Server 2008 r2. And every few months it would have to be done again because one of the guys thought himself a genius and kept messing up the janky ass workflow we put together to download info from thumb drives to a virtual floppy.
So plug in the drive, janky ass script creates a virtual floppy in drive A of the server, and manually (eventually I just wrote a script because I didn't want to get that call on a Saturday) register each DLL every so often. And they'd rather pay the company I worked for several hundred dollars a month than pay a couple of grand one time that would have paid for itself in less than a year.
That hurts me in my fucking heart. But ol' Cancun knows the political winds are shifting and wants to line up for another shot. I feel like a bunch of them are about to be "reasonable" over the next 2 years.
First, thank you for pointing this out. I had to go and fill my brain hole with a bunch of information about this absolutely fascinating discovery. I really thought you were discussing some science fiction concept initially.
Second, what in the actual fuck did I just read?!?
I'm so out of touch that I'm not sure if that's a Zangief costume or if a guy that calls himself a Tantric Warrior just dresses that way.