Life updates

[ClakarEQ]

It's been about a year so . . . .
Got a new place in the country about a year ago, 10 acres north of i69 and east of Flint and absolutely love it. Both boys are in Mott college, have jobs, cars, are doing really well but not well enough to leave LOL. Being 50 now I figured the wife and I would have a bit of empty nesting going on but, no, not just yet. What's worse it I fear I may have my kids here until they're 30 something hahaha (Oh god I hope not). Very proud of them both that they've become honorable, moral, ethical young men.

I don't make much time for gaming anymore and TV watching was never really a thing for me, I've just come to terms with time vs value vs priority and just can seem to fit gaming into that equation (albeit any hobby that overlaps with gaming is really a hobby and not gaming LOL).

My Emulation Station hobby finished up with 12+ consoles, from the Vectrex to the PSP and everything in-between and roughly 1.8 TB of "stuff" (I guess that was like a 2-3 year hobby).
New hobby is growing since they made it legal here. I've always been into botany so this has been a lot of fun for me. I've been overjoyed with the results in both quality and money saved LOL.

Still loving my IT job and doing great at the company so all things are going well there.
Wife got a job to keep busy since the kids aren't kids anymore.

Other than that,I'm wishfully yearning for retirement, realizing I'm only 10-12 year away (unless my kids screw me and make me work till I'm fucking 80)

Best to the rest of you, take care.

[brinstar]

New hobby is growing since they made it legal here. I've always been into botany so this has been a lot of fun for me. I've been overjoyed with the results in both quality and money saved LOL.

fuck yeah i dream of this

[Drem]

howdy

things are pretty good. business still going pretty well. the boys are 6 and almost 3 and they're doing great

i don't game anymore at all. i keep trying and wasting money on shit but never end up enjoying anything or really playing anything for a long time. when i couldn't even finish a series i really loved (dark souls) i started to get the idea that i'm not really into gaming anymore. i guess, like clakar, it just doesn't fit in the equation at this point. if i have any free time it goes into playing music these days. been seriously into guitar and drums for a bit now. even dabbling with bass

got cancer a few weeks ago. melanoma. margins are supposedly negative after the biopsy and they did a further excision to make sure it's 100% gone but that skin is still in pathology and i won't find out for a few more days. i got flayed. sounds like we got it early enough but i guess we'll see

[Harrison]

That's awful, Drem. I'm really sorry to hear that. We're too young for that sort of shit. But, it does sound better all said and done since biopsies are negative?

I don't remember my last update. A lot has changed in my life, and almost all of it for the better. (diagnosed with CPTSD, anxiety, ADHD, but I have insurance so I can actually see doctors and have been all year)

I landed in the biomedical industry, working IT. We research neurodegenerative diseases, moving into oncology recently too.

I do everything from helpdesk bullshit, sysadmin, to security. I'm part of a small 5-man team. Infinite time off, work from home 50/50 or more by choice, and finally do work that matters. Company works towards improving quality of life and ultimately curing diseases, not making money for the sake of making money.

I have near full autonomy and respected enough to propose a project, plan it, and execute it to completion solo. I've upgraded an entire site's connection, infrastructure, and failover ISP in Pennsylvania. (including firewall upgrade, installation, and integration into the existing VPN tunnels) It's pretty much nearly my dream job, on the way to my ultimate goal of Penetration Testing. I get caught up on hackthebox.eu for days on end and forget to eat/sleep as much as I should. I'm up to 2 boxes rooted and owned. and 3 users. Still very new, but not entirely worthless.



I live in a suburb of Boston now, a very quiet snobby area. Don't care for the residents, but it's quiet and safe. Things I've never had before.

I ALSO have been struggling to game these days as much as I feel like I want to. I find most of my free time being filled up with practicing skills. I still game, but mostly singleplayer, and rarely finish anything no matter how much I love/enjoy it.

[brinstar]

drem: hang in there my dude, let us know how it goes

finawin: fuck yeah man. not that i think you will, but if you ever start feeling complacent just spend a couple minutes thinking back on where you were 5-10 years ago compared to where you are now. looks totally fuckin night and day from here, proud of you

anyway, feelin' you both w/r/t having/making time for gaming lately. i do still occasionally fuck around with The Long Dark because it's a beautiful game (see thread in other subforum), a friend talked me into downloading destiny 2, and i'm 90% of the way through a second zelda BOTW run, but not much other than that because...

still hyper-focused on getting my poop in a group after The Big Breakup 5 months ago:

• shed 35+ lbs and counting, might fuck around and try a half-marathon next spring
• started an indoor volleyball team (we are terrible) so the softball team can stick together in the offseason
• getting super into modern psych rock - check out Flaural, Triptides, Elder
• making serious financial moves towards becoming semi-retired in 2030
• going to therapy weekly and working on owning my shit
• gave up soda and switched to sparkling water
• journaling 3000+ words a day
• selling off a lot of unneeded stuff i've been carrying around for several moves now
• eating better
• working on sleeping better
• became a gin & tonic guy
• bernie fucking sanders you bastards
• trying to get back into yoga and meditation - i'm not real good at either but i can definitely see why they're extremely useful/helpful
• finally got a library card, hoovering books on the reg
• absolutely crushing it at wednesday night bar trivia (5 first place finishes + 2 second place finishes in the past 8 weeks = $130 worth of bar tab credit lol)
• staying off of FB by constantly shitposting on twitter
• chasing better jobs
• chasing cute girls

life is weird y'all

[Drem]

Pathology came back all good and I'm cancer-free. Thanks for the sentiment fellas. That was definitely pretty scary times

Congrats on the career moves Josh, sounds like you got a pretty sweet gig now. But the real question, do you still find time to troll New Bedford Facebook page anymore Kappa

And right on Alex, will check those bands out. I feel like I'm in the same vein but haven't heard of any of those bands. I been heavy on King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Wand, Oh Sees, Parquet Courts, and of course Ty Segall who I've been pretty much obsessed with for like 7 or 8 years now. I wish I had other people to play with. All I really do is practice technique stuff by myself for an hour and move on. I never even practice entire songs. Just scales and techniques or on drums i'm just doing simple patterns and paradiddles and repetition repetition repetition.... need to actually get something i can play for people under my belt. i mean fuck, i have everything i need to be my own band and record a track at this point xD

also been way into these modern neosoul guitarists like Mark Lettieri and Mateus Asato and groups/people like Thundercat, Louis Cole, Vulfpeck, etc.... there's so much good music right now

and unrelated to psych or neosoul i can't stop listening to vaporwave music? It's like the ultimate background music.

[brinstar]

dude yes my office headphones are constantly blasting youtube lists of 100% synthwave/cyberpunk/vapor - perfect background tunes because lack of vox/lyrics means language cortices aren't snagged and are thus free to focus on work (this is a real thing)

[Tossica]

Buy my record!

https://midnightmusicclub.bandcamp.com/releases

Listen to my crap!

https://soundcloud.com/midnight-music-club

[Harrison]

Hey guys, I've deleted Facebook. So if you want to reach out I'm not dead or anything lol

I keep my twitter mostly professional(huge in the infosec sphere), but you can still find me out there.

I'm interviewing with hopefully the next big move in my career, hit the third rounds which are usually on-site, but we did them over zoom. 4 hours of Zoom meetings, ouch. I should hear back today or tomorrow if I made it or not. 40-50% increase in salary minimum, so I can't understate how big this is for me not even getting into the intellectual growth of working alongside security experts rather than medical/scientific experts. While it's been amazing, I'm stagnating where I am now and need more challenging work.

I think some of you still have my number, too.

[leah]

HI HARRIWIN

i don't have your number but i am glad you're alive and well. hope you got good news!

[brinstar]

bought a house

[Durothil Skyreaver]

Duro Jr. just turned 2, and another one on the way. I am now a video game collector - I'm sitting at 400+ items. I own 103/677 NES games, most being CIB. But I'm too much of a game snob and I NEED the box the game came in.

[Durothil Skyreaver]

Got a new baby on Sept. 23rd. Also got COVID the same day at the hospital.

[leah]

fucking covid

is everyone still alive?!

[Jay]

Still alive. Hope everyone’s ok.

Day trading now and work for Nvidia. Divorced, co parenting, chillin. Healthy, stable, pretty boring lol.

[Tossica]

Doing ok. I set up a private EQ server for my nerds to play on. It's fun.

Still making records. Put out 5 in the last year so that's pretty satisfying.

[brinstar]

im poopen

[leah]

HI FRANDS

[Zanchief]

Still alive.

[Xaiveir]

Good to see some of you guys still kicking around!

[Zanchief]

I heard some news about on the regulars, and was wondering if someone closer to him could confirm.

[leah]

which regular?

[Zanchief]

Jay. I guess no one that still comes here has heard about it, but I heard from an old NT dude that he passed away.

[10sun]

No shit. No real way to confirm from me.

[10sun]

Oh. Made crotchspawn.
Working remote from the boonies while the world burns.
Thought of ya'll and swang through.