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The Old Hack

Things that make you MAD

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Yeah, an introvert support group does sound rather self-contradictory.

But maybe they could meet jointly with my procrastination support group... nobody has gotten around to attending yet.

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2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Yeah, an introvert support group does sound rather self-contradictory.

that's putting it lightly. i mean how the hell would you set up the damn thing in the first place when everyone it's meant to appeal to would avoid it for the very reason it's a thing?!

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My father's pissed off that i'm dead-set on leaving the province, because i guess somehow in his mind continuing to search for jobs that may or may not happen here is smarter than leaving for a job that's guaranteed.

Okay, yes, it's a job that someone else got for me, not one i got myself, and that goes against what i believe in in some ways (there's no value in something you didn't earn yourself.) and that bugs the crap out of me, and likely will for the duration of my stay there. but considering his suggested alternative was a job placement agency, and this is a family business, (which i suspect he only dislikes because it's Mom's, IE; his Ex wife's, side of the family.) both are still relying on someone else to fix my unemployment issue for me, only difference is my way is a guaranteed thing with someone i trust, vs random temp agencies who care more about their placement ratio than whether their staff will last at their placement more than 2-3 months. there's a REASON people refer to those places as 'Temp' Agencies; as in TEMPORARY JOB!

And after a year of this crap, i'm through avoiding "you fix this, i cant" kind of options.

GET OFF YOUR DAMN HORSE JACKASS! I need to be able to afford food and that's significantly more likely to happen if I LEAVE.

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Nearly everyone at some time has gotten a job, or some other good deal, because a friend or relative put in a good word for them.

If it makes you feel better, keep these things in mind.

1.  If there was a candidate for the position who was significantly better qualified than you, then no reasonable employer would have bypassed them in your favor.  If the boss does pass over the best candidates for ones he thinks will be more loyal, then you may want to take a closer look at the business and the way the boss runs it.

2.  There may have been other candidates with similar qualifications as yours.  What tips the scales slightly for or against a candidate can be almost anything.  One of my old bosses told me I was hired because I was the only man to show up to the job interview wearing a tie that day.  "My sister knows this guy" seems no worse than "I like what he wore".

3.  Opening the door for you may have been a gift.  But what happens once you are inside is up to you.  If you honestly believe that you were held to a lower standard to get the job, then you must hold yourself to a higher standard to keep the job.  Don't give the critics (or yourself) an opportunity to say "I Told You So!" 

Nepotism can be a bad business practice.  But giving a relative a chance is usually no more risky for the business than giving a random applicant a similar chance.  The real test is down the road.  If you are retained after failure or if you are promoted while only showing mediocre results, that is Nepotism of the worst kind.  But if you are successful, thank the people who gave you a chance, then go on and earn everything you get all the way to the top.

Finally, someday you may have the opportunity to give someone else a similar chance.  Go ahead, as long as you hold them to the same standards you expect of everyone else and are prepared to let them go if they don't work out.

Edited by Pharaoh RutinTutin
spelling

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Ken "Pathological Liar" Whitman and/or "d20 entertainments, LLC".  I had gotten over my anger at this dufus, but today, I got an email, via Kickstarter, from him that the "TV Pilot" based on the table top RPG "Traveller" - "Spinward Traveller" wasn't dead, but would be released in August, 2017.  Original release date was Dec 2014.  Ken is, or was, a serial Kickstarter fraudster.

The part that got me freaking mad was this:

Quote

"Sorry it has taken so long, there have been many sit backs in my life, and there are a few backers that actually follow and harass me online, effecting my ability to make a living and produce this product."

What he means is that in early 2nd quarter 2015 people started asking about the Traveller project and the Knights of the Dinner Table project (I backed only the Traveller project, but the KoDT project got close to half a million via Kickstarter).

Then he pulls these, as part of the Q&A he included in the email

Quote

Q. Have you been involved an any other Fundraiser sense your trouble her on Kickstarter.

A. No, I decided to work on these projects and will never create another fundraise for any project until my current ones are completed.

That's because you have a lifetime ban on starting new Kickstarter project due to failing to deliver on six in a row.

Quote

Q. Have you contemplated suicide because of your finacial situation and personal problems.
 

A. Yes. If you have ever been cyberstalked, or have dozens of web sites dedicated to your failure, it does get a bit depressing and over whelming. If it we not for the support of a few friends, and the fact I have two wonderful children, I probably would have taken the cowards way out. But they believe in me, so I guess i have no choice but to get this project finished and done with.

You can just image how I, being bipolar, reacted to that. He may have personal problems, but he has a long history in the RPG business of being late or delivering poor products. The problem is that in person he's a real likable guy and manages to explain away his past failures. At least until his multi Kickstarter failures and the wide spread use of the internet.

Quote

Q. How is your relationship with Marc Miller.

A. Strained but okay. He believes in this project and gives me word of encouragement to finish it up.

Strained? Marc is such a nice guy that even after I wrote a scathing review of his latest version of Traveller, which I know he read, due to comments, when I said I lost my Traveller dice (which were just normal dice that were black with red spots, the color of the classic Traveller books) he sent me a free set of his company's Traveller dice. Marc is high class and one of the good guys in the business, even if he needs a better editor. If you have a strained relationship with him, it's you, not Marc.

(These were cut and paste, don't bother with correcting the spelling.  I see the red lines, I don't care)

For those that need a Ken to English translator:

Cyber stalked = people sending emails to his public email address asking about the project(s) they backed

Dozens of web pages = blogs set up by people that backed one or more of his projects and got squat in return.  To be honest, I really only know of two, (Not Another Dime and Don't Fund Ken Whitman or d20 Entertainment 1 ) but there have been mentions of his apparent fraud on several of the industry blogs/web pages. 

If you are active in the business end of TTRPG you have at least heard something about Ken, if nothing else the fact that he blocked Jolly Blackburn from a Facebook group about his Knights of the Dinner Table2 "live action series".  For those who don't know who Jolly is, he's the artist and primary writer for KoDT.  To put in "our" terms, it would be like blocking Dan from an EGS film forum on Facebook.

Sorry about the length of this, but I needed to rant, and Ken has a habit of searching Facebook for mentions of his name and being an ass (see banning his at that time theoretical business partner from the group about their project) and with Project X starting to build up steam, at least on my end, I don't want to possibly deal with him on Facebook.  I did post short notes about the email on the Traveller groups, but more or less just "hey, I got this." sort of messages.

It's also possible I'm having a hypomanic episode, which would explain why I got a lot of work done on Project X, and why my right leg is bouncing up and down.

1Neither of these have been real active for roughly a year.  I suspect there is going to be some activity based on Ken's emails in the next few days.

2A popular small press print comic/magazine for, by and about table top gamers. 

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On 26 July 2016 at 11:43 AM, mlooney said:
I'm starting to rant about internet protocols and political people having no clues about them. This is dangerously close to XKCD 386 and I should go to bed.
 
duty_calls.png

I have trouble going to bed when I just have no work the next day. 

But yes, I try to avoid heated arguments on the internet because your reason is one of two reasons I avoid them, that occasionally, I get too emotionally attached to the argument and the position I'm arguing from, irrespective of how toxic the argument becomes. The other reason is that where I don't get too emotionally attached, it is very easy to see when the argument becomes increasingly toxic and the sooner you're out, the better.

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tl;dr
Mlooney has an old computer and some modern software acts weird on it.

If you try to add a new piece of software via `brew` and it tells you that it doesn't support your version of OS X any more, what it really is telling you is "go ahead and  rm -rfv /usr/local then down load MacPorts for your version of OS X and rebuild your tool chain, because buddy, you are hosed now if you try to do any thing with me...."

So, downloaded gimp.app, MacTex-2016 and the 10.7.5 version of MacPorts and am rebuilding my tools. This is way more irritating than it should be. This time around, instead of doing my normal kitchen sink version of install, I'm going to install as needed. Both options have their own problems, but I don't have to mirror a production server any more, so there is that.  I know MacTex is loading like 6 gigs of very small files, but damn, a two to three hour install?  And the fun and games you get into the first time you launch Gimp and it goes nuts trying to find every single font on your machine.  Plus the joy of watching the first thing that installs that needs gettext.  That's good for a 30 minute nap right there. 

Good times.

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TL;DR - I had an encounter with a militant feminist - it got ugly

 

Ever had one of those moments where you just approach someone with an innocent question and then they just blow up in your face? Yeah, I had one of those before I got back here, it's been a while now and honestly at first I wasn't really mad at it I was just really confused, but now that I've had some time to think over it, I'm leaning towards angry and sad - though mostly angry.

Context: I'm writing a story with a female lead, I wrote a draft and sent it to some of my closest friends and colleagues; most of them said that my female lead was "not female enough", and then gave me their notes as to how to better write a female lead, and recommended that I go around and speak with as many female friends as possible and get a better sketch for how to characterize my female lead better.

So I approach one of my more, shall we say, hard-line feminist leaning friends (and this can only end so well), and I ask them about my notes, things like "Do you think that in context A, my character would act like X?", and "If my female lead was A, should their emotions dictate their actions towards Z?", and so forth; my line of questions were primarily directed towards my lead's mannerisms, character tics, and emotions (the top three things I needed the most work on).

Her response was one of... a condescending persuasion. Initially stating that being who I am (an Asian straight CIS dude), I could NEVER be able to write a female protagonist with any degree of accuracy, then stating that every question that I presented to her was based around stereotypes and that the female protagonist archetype I had in the works was basically an outdated, flawed, inaccurate, and frankly reprehensible representation of women everywhere. I asked her to provide me with some examples of a female lead that would fit her criteria of a good female lead, and she answered that I would copy the likes of Furiosa from Fury Road, I tried to press her further by asking what specifically about this character made her a better female lead than mine (although subjectively speaking, mine is a Magical Princess acting as a Colonel in her country's regular army and is caught between conservatives and progressives of her country, while Furiosa is an orphaned lady who rose through the ranks of a male-dominated society and became a high-ranking general, and later changed her ways to redeem herself) which she failed to provide besides saying "she's awesome and her character was developed with the help of Eve Ensler". With my limited knowledge of the film at the time I referred to her as "Cool action lady" from the movie, which really riled her up, she then went on a tirade basically saying "You see? All you can call her is her status, and her gender! That's how you objectify all of us women! You should stop, and the next time you open your mouth, check your *bleep*ing privilege!" at which point she abruptly ended the conversation, and basically never spoke to me again on the media platform we used and in real life.

At first I was like "Really? Did that just happen?" and "Well, that just happened." And mind you, all I was asking for was her help in writing a better female lead, and she turned it into... whatever I just described to you. I didn't take it to heart, though obviously it's ingrained into my memory like a branding scar or something, but just thinking about it in passing really gets on my nerves.

If anything however I do find it somewhat consoling that afterward my less militant colleagues gave me much better feedback, and while I've suspended writing until the end of the current semester (because seriously, I have trouble with some of the subjects I'm taking up right now), at least I'll have plenty of ammunition to continue with later on.

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13 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

My question would be, do you still consider this rude, insulting, belittling, sexual-stereotyping person a "friend"?

She was one of my classmates and friends during our college years. In fact, I think it's partly because of her thesis work that she ended up with the militant feminist perspective she has now.

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Literature would be boring if no one ever tried to write from a perspective they themselves have never had.  Sure, you've never been a woman. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had never been a consulting detective.  Shakespeare had never been a king, prince or Fae.  Presumably Jeff Lindsay has never been a sociopathic serial killer and Steven King was never haunted from childhood by an evil clown.  If this ever comes up again, ask her if she believes the only stories that should ever be told are first-person factual biographies, because that is the only way to avoid anyone trying to write from the perspective of someone they aren't.

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

Shakespeare had never been a king, prince or Fae.

He hadn't ever been a Dane, either! Him and his rot about something rotten in Denmark.

Sure, our current government is rotten as all out, but what did HE know about it? :icon_evil:

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The University Administration has gone from "Reasonable, but inefficient" to "impossibly impractical, and inefficient".

 

So there's an event in about 5 hours time I have to go to. The call time is 6 AM local time. They announced this 12 AM LOCAL TIME. They want all performers and staff members to be on the spot bright and early the next day and somehow expect us to be in tip-top shape.and presumably having slept at least 6 hours previously. This happens sometiems I know but here's the really infuriating part. THE PROGRAM ISN'T EVEN SUPPOSED TO START UNTIL 10 AM LOCAL TIME. So  ihave to be there bright and early tomorrow or later today (and thank the eyes of the minors I can't swear here), but it's not even for a good reason. They said it's for "general run-throughs" BUT I DEMAND TO KNOW why does it have to be 6 AM. That DOES NOT take long (you can be done in 1 hour tops, even for a long event). BUT NOPE, 6 AM.

 

I've seen homicidal Commissars from Warhammer 40l more reasonable than the current Uni Admin.

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2 hours ago, Red Regent said:

I've seen homicidal Commissars from Warhammer 40l more reasonable than the current Uni Admin.

I could make do with Ciaphas Caine. In fact, I'd rather have him in charge of our government than the current Parliamentary majority.

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1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

I could make do with Ciaphas Caine. In fact, I'd rather have him in charge of our government than the current Parliamentary majority.

I would go with him over either of my two options.  Hell Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie would be better.

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31 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

I am NOT living in a world where Bella Swan gets elected president.

I'm fairly certain they're talking about the MLP Twilight. Which I'm actually OK with since for a sentient race of equines, they're pretty reasonable.

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42 minutes ago, Red Regent said:

I'm fairly certain they're talking about the MLP Twilight. Which I'm actually OK with since for a sentient race of equines, they're pretty reasonable.

They are. I was just being an old anal-retentive stick in the mud and deliberately misunderstanding. It says in my contract I have to do it at least twice a week.

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19 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Big talk from the Pharaoh who was perfectly fine with basing his rule on a pyramid scheme.

Dane to notice that while he was one of the earliest adapters, he wasn't the only one who practiced it. See: Imperial China, the Aztecs, and the Incas for proof-positive of this.

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4 minutes ago, Red Regent said:

Dane to notice that while he was one of the earliest adapters, he wasn't the only one who practiced it. See: Imperial China, the Aztecs, and the Incas for proof-positive of this.

Nowhere did I claim he was the only one. Merely that he did not have much room to complain about horsing around when his own moral ground was hip deep in crocodiles and hippos.

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