The whole “small town on the edge of dying” bit. Holy shit have I experienced that firsthand.

See, what happened with a lot of these towns is that their industry became a part of their pride and culture. Where I’m from it’s coal. Trucks everywhere have a decal of a coal miner with one of two phrases. “Coal keeps the lights on.” and “6 inches from hell.”

My grandfather was a coal miner, so was his father, and his father, on both sides of my family. My father realized that the industry was dying so he left (and left us here haha). My brother did it for awhile but left it behind because of the drug problems in the mines. There was a whole underground urine market that kept things moving.

Even the poor fools who never worked in the mines go on and on about coal like it’s some kind of idol.

I would imagine the same thing happens in other places. The people fear big changes until their fear backs them into irrelevance. I’m getting older, so I can relate to that, only I vote for my kids, not to make me feel less afraid. Whatever world they grow up in won’t be one that I’d be perfectly comfortable in. It has always been that way as far back as we have been recording history. No sense in fighting where the world is going just because I don’t understand it or relate to it.

One we can make it work either way. :p

I personally wear a ninja turtle mask everywhere I go, but I’m down to share it.

We share our diseases in this community. Only the strong survive!

At my store (which I worked at for 23 years and miss dearly), I would always let my regulars come in after closing if I could still serve them. If they had cash, I’d ring it up the next day.

That was one of 7 stores I worked in over the years (same company).

The other 6, hell no. Once they realized that I’d open the door after closing those bastards were coming up to an hour after I locked the doors. Same jerks every time yelling and cussing at me, “Well yer still here yuh faygit I don’t see why you won’t let me git a beer!”. Sometimes I’d stay late and hide in the office to watch a little tv before going home. It was always the same jackasses beating on the door at 1 AM putting their hands and faces up to the glass with stupid looks on their faces. I stopped letting them in after it became a problem for me and no matter how many times I said no, they’d walk their drunk asses to that store to try me.

It is amazing how much culture can change over 40 miles of road. I mean it, it’s crazy. Even the meth heads were polite and reasonable when they were in the middle of a 3 week, no sleep, hallucination fueled nightmare. “Ah, man. I’m so sorry that I bothered you. There’s people following me across the road so I’m just gonna borrow a little of your light here until someone I know comes to get me. I hope you have a good night.”

In that one store every local was always polite. I had two memorable assholes there over 23 years. At the others I had so many I couldn’t tell you.

A very good friend of mine had one of these when I was a kid. We called it laserdisc. I couldn’t tell you how that started.

So, when I got to high school and they were using actual laserdiscs I said, “Where’s the cool outer shell? Is this just like, a school laserdisc setup?” Some kids argued with me that I didn’t know what I was talking about.

I clearly remembered watching Star Wars on them and being mesmerized by that case.

Years later I got to thinking about it and googled “laserdisc with hard casing, mechanism removes disc when played”. Nothing. I chalked it up to it being some kind of false memory. Maybe I was just remembering the sleeve and my buddy was putting the movies in the player in a way that made me think it worked like that.

It wasn’t until years later that I seen a techmoan video in my feed and I was like, “THAT!! That’s what I’ve been talking about all these years!! It’s fucking vinyl! NO WAY!”

I was always tech obsessed so it nearly drove me crazy anytime I thought about it. He’d been dead for years so I couldn’t ask him. His dad and sister had no idea what I was talking about. “He traded a lot stuff around so there’s no telling what he had. There was mismatched technology all over this place.”

I second this question.

I’ve been called Seal Since the 90s, it seems natural to me.

The odd thing was back when my brother used my computer to play and everyone was calling him Seal. I’d hear that and it felt so strange. If the two of us were in a lobby right now and someone were to say, “yo seal!” we’d probably both reply.

I’d often hear, “who playin? Is it big Seal or little Seal?” “Umm, big Seal I guess.”

And I had a dude down the road always ready with a card to slap in my box so I could watch every channel for free.

I watched Bigger, Longer, and Uncut first, then Cruel Intentions. I don’t remember the movie, but I was way into the actresses. Good god Sarah Michelle Gellar and Reese Witherspoon really made my 14 year old brain short out bad. I can’t remember a single thing, seriously, but I watched it like 30 times.

Mine was a cam recording of Scary Movie 2. Horrible, horrible, horrible. Not the fault of the codec. I avoided cams after that and waited for the screeners.

But oh boy did I love my divx South Park episodes.

I probably haven’t watched a movie in 5 years.

I rock my old Apple color monitor for my old consoles. The same one I’ve been rocking since I was a kid. Gotta smack it from time to time. I’ll change the capacitors one day.

Well, I guess I won’t need one then. Hardware is a bit older but if I can get the same performance I’ll avoid the windows partition.

Oh yeah, people who need more power definitely want something else. It’s all I need really. I’m about to inherit my daughter’s old gaming laptop though so I’m not sure what I’ll do then. Definitely Linux with a small partition for windows to play some VR games. I’d say I’ll still use the Steam deck for most things though because it’s so portable.

I’ve been docking mine and using it as my primary pc. The only issue I’ve had is that I was able to play CSGO perfectly, and CS2 don’t do so good.

I was docking the Steam Deck and playing GO, but 2 doesn’t really run that well on there.

I still play the hell out of Source though. My brother and I did nothing else one summer growing up. I spent all of my 20s playing CS:Source and WoW.

I wish I had time for either these days.

Yeah it definitely is. I’m older than her though and we discussed it. I could end up kicking the bucket or our relationship might fail and she wants to plan ahead for the unknown.

We’ve got a few more weeks to talk about it, but ultimately I might end up getting a vasectomy too just to have it over with. I have plenty of kids.

I have two adopted and 5 biological, so I’m good at this point.

Hell, I was good 3 kids ago really. Haha

I wouldn’t trade any of them for anything in this world though.

My wife’s gynecologist has asked her if she wanted to get her tubes tied during all three of our pregnancies. It didn’t offend us, we have the kids we want now and she said yes this last time.

I appreciated him asking. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’s on that list.

Not my idiot dog haha. It’s the, “let’s see if I can yank his arm off” string.

He’s just so hyper. Even though he’s trained now it’s run, look back, stop, run, look back, stop, forget, yank arm off.

You make me feel uneasy…

:p

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.