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Post by wyvernxk7 on Feb 20, 2015 6:28:25 GMT -8
Well, the reading and the loan thing are awesome! Plus, I mean, you do have a 'good' job, which is pretty cool.
Book recommendation: The Never-Open Desert Diner, by James Anderson. Just came out. I read an early draft of it and it was great back then (two years ago)... the finished copy is on its way to my house as we speak (also, it's gained sentience, apparently).
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Post by Bob on Feb 20, 2015 22:41:52 GMT -8
I just paid off my loans recently, too! Loan Free Club *high fives* Car loan, too. 100% debt free...until I go back to school for a masters or buy a house (or both), but that's the future.
Still juggling being a dad, teacher, and all that other stuff that makes me feel old. But hell, I just turned 30, so I guess I AM old. My school is continuing to be a toxic environment and teachers and staff are starting to flee (seriously). So that's fun.
Dean is totes adorable. He walks way too well and is acting a lot like a kid. He says a few words and understands more than that. "Ball" and "car" to name a couple of his words.
I'm addicted to Magic the Gathering again. Buying way too many cards. Got 2 booster boxes (36 packs for $100-ish each) for my bday last week and might get another just for kicks. I'm good with money...
I recently did some site work for future AFFR, but still no writing started or even planned.
And I'm currently sick thanks to that brat son of mine. "Hey, I just touched everything on the surface of this Earth. I'm gonna put my hands in your mouth now!"
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Post by Fleck on Feb 22, 2015 3:14:41 GMT -8
Dean is totes adorable. He walks way too well and is acting a lot like a kid. He says a few words and understands more than that. "Ball" and "car" to name a couple of his words. By "Ball" he means "Blitzball" and by "car" he means a classic 1967 Chevy Impala, right?
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Post by Bob on Feb 22, 2015 7:55:42 GMT -8
Of course!
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Post by agent0042 on Feb 27, 2015 4:38:23 GMT -8
I have a number of things going at the moment which I'm hoping work out, but regardless of whether they do or not, I'm doing fairly well. Mostly fairly well, I suppose. Starting to get a bit bored of the local weather - we've been caught in a cold snap for quite a while now in Dayton, OH; several records broken and they're saying today once again it's quite possible that the record for lowest high temperature of the day is going to be broken. Lot of snow on the ground too. I've been pretty immersed lately in Star Wars with the upcoming movie and everything. I think I mentioned before that for a while now I've been a regular editor on the Star Wars Wiki, Wookieepedia. I've been watching Star Wars Rebels. Since I don't get any cable or satellite currently, I decided to just get a season pass on iTunes and I've been watching it the past few days. Just have the second-to-last episode of the season to watch now, and the finale which isn't out yet. Back in November, I did an interview with Star Wars author Jeffrey Brown which can be found here if anyone's interested. Jeffrey Brown does some very funny comic-type books, including the Darth Vader and Son series, in which Darth Vader is a loving parent to his little kids Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, and the Jedi Academy books, in which a young boy attends the Jedi version of middle school. He also has some other books that are pretty neat, such as Cats Are Weird and Kids Are Weird, which you might enjoy, Bob, as a new parent.
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Post by Fleck on Mar 4, 2015 2:13:18 GMT -8
So the saga of my war against Google and their ridiculous web domain service has added another dark chapter. As you may remember, I had a long and passionate battle against Google because their stupid site wouldn't let me log in to adjust my credit card details. I thought that I had that all sorted out, until today. I checked my alternate email address (which I almost never check) and discovered an email from google telling me that my domain name had expired and I had lost the rights to it. Even though I had done basically everything humanly possible to protect that domain (short of driving to fucking google headquarters and throwing a brick with a 20 dollar bill taped to it through their front office window). So anyway, after a shitton more hassle and stress, I have a new domain. I'm now at www.kyle-sawyer.com (which is my pseudonym, for those of you who may be unaware). I'm pissed off because after years of keeping the Dark Sarcasm site up, I had finally started to get a fairly steady trickle of views. Now all those people are just going to find a blank page, because I don't own the domain and can't redirect them to my new site. I'll also have to redesign my site, because continuing to call it "Dark Sarcasm" is just confusing. But, looking on the bright side, this will force me to start getting my ass back in gear and writing and putting stuff out there, if only to draw attention back to my new site. Hopefully I'll have news regarding that soon. I have a lot of ideas, not just for stories, but for how I want to distribute my stories and what kind of writer I want to be. And when Google eventually turns into the evil, world-dominating corporation that it is destined to become and all the world is put in the grasp of its iron fist, I will be among the first rebels fighting the war against it. And as the conglomerate burns into ash, I will scream, "here's your fucking twenty dollars," and then grab my crotch.
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Post by Bob on Mar 4, 2015 16:41:16 GMT -8
That sucks. I went through a similar situation with my domain name back in the day. I think it was when I dropped the ".elementin" and bought my own site? Maybe before that? I can't remember, but I remember sending out e-mails to everybody that left an e-mail in my guestbook to let them know of the change. I'm sure they loved the spam mail.
Since I'm a team player though, I'll help you. You can scream at them while they burn and I will grab your crotch. It's for the team, of course.
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Post by Fleck on Mar 4, 2015 22:54:55 GMT -8
You're such a team player, Bob. I can see you're already grabbing my crotch now! This extra practice will come in handy when the real thing goes down.
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Post by Bob on Mar 5, 2015 7:14:12 GMT -8
Practice makes perfect!
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Post by Fleck on May 19, 2015 23:13:35 GMT -8
So I was wandering the produce aisle at my grocery store when I discovered that they sell whole habenero peppers. Having watched plenty of Hot Pepper Gaming (the Youtube series that nearly killed Egoraptor), I asked myself, "Well, how bad can they really be?
I bought a couple and took them home. Now, unlike Egoraptor, I thoroughly enjoy hot stuff. Sriracha is my religion and I put it on almost everything. And I don't mean that I squirt a little bit of sauce on. Usually when I put Sriracha on something, I bury it in a blanket of red. If you can still see the food at the bottom, there isn't enough hot sauce on it.
So I thought that I'd probably do better than Ego, but even still, I wasn't crazy enough (or getting paid enough) to just raw dog a whole damn habenero in one go. I tentatively cut off about a 1/8" to 1/4" slice off the bottom and took a nibble. Not so bad. I shrugged and took a larger nibble. Warmer, but still bearable. So I just took the last chunk, chewed it quickly, and swallowed.
"Hmm... not bad," I thought. "Hot, but not... wait a second. Hmmmmmmmm. Wait a second. HMMMMMMMMM. WAIT A SECOND....... HMMMMMMMMMMM."
I didn't get to the point where I was screaming or anything, but it did feel like someone was pressing a hot butterknife against the middle of my tongue. I was sweating and my nose was running and I was generally uncomfortable.
Fortunately I'd prepared a glass of milk and had it on standby. When I was convinced that the heat wasn't going to get any hotter, I drank some... but that only works for like five seconds. Then the heat immediately comes back. It took probably about ten minutes before it stopped hurting. And that's just after a little slice from the tip. I'm sure if I'd have eaten the whole thing, I'd be acting a lot like Egoraptor.
As for the taste, they aren't anything special. They taste like regular bell peppers, but have an ugly, smoky, chemical-like underflavor. Even now, my mouth tastes like I've been drinking burned dishsoap. It's just... ugh.
Habeneros are evil. Don't try this at home, kids.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on May 20, 2015 21:22:37 GMT -8
It's funny, Habaneros don't burn me in a way that's nearly as unpleasant as jalapenos for some reason, even though they are certainly much much hotter... on the way in at least. The sequel is always much worse.
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Post by Fleck on May 21, 2015 2:43:52 GMT -8
Jalapenos are weird, because you really never know what you're getting when you buy them. I've had jalapenos that were so mild you could have put them on a salad and thought they were green bell peppers. And some I've had burned my eyes just cutting them. Also, in my experience at least, jalapenos are the worst offenders when it comes to having uneven distribution of piquancy through the pepper. Some bites... nothing. Other bits, flaming death, all in the same pepper.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on May 21, 2015 16:48:09 GMT -8
Fair enough.
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Post by Bob on May 22, 2015 6:24:19 GMT -8
I've heard it's all about the seeds for jalapenos. Seeds hot, rest not (not really at least). Sounds mostly right, but I feel like I've had bites in both cases that beg to differ.
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Post by Bob on Jun 13, 2015 18:04:36 GMT -8
I'm on summer break! Woohoo!
Sorry for being MIA for about, what, year and a half? Haven't posted anything to the site since January and I realized recently that it's doing that dumb thing again where it is downloading files instead of opening them. I'll have to fix that yet again... *sigh*
So here's my life (last year and change) in review. You totally care. If you totally don't care, then instead of reading this, go check out the STEAM SUMMER SALE GOING ON NOW OMG!!!
The third and fourth years of teaching are supposed to be the golden years of teaching because you finally have it down. That's kind of true, except that I have a baby and a corrupt school that make things very difficult.
Starting with the baby, Dean is, of course, awesome. Best kid in the universe, obviously. He's a year and a half now and already knows all of his letters (though he can't say "J" or "W" yet and he just got "G") and is good with his numbers, too. Very smart kid, which makes me happy. And he loves books (which is why he loves said letters and numbers). Big struggles are that he doesn't listen and hates his crib. He knows when he's being bad and even repeats "no no no" when he's being bad, but continues to do it anyway. One thing I never knew is how frustrating this can be. I have confidence that I'll be able to discipline him better in the future, but right now he doesn't understand cause and effect, so I don't know what to do (except train him to understand cause and effect, which we're doing). I never really thought about the phase of discipline where you can't be rational and have a conversation about it. As a high school teacher, all I need to do is have a rational conversation with a student to fix most things, but man, I'm lost at this stage in life. So things have been very frustrating in that regard. He's a lot of fun, he just pushes buttons a lot.
Then there's my school. Things have gotten so bad there that I have seriously considered quitting on about a biweekly basis. I mean, still teaching, just not at this school. The kids are great, which makes it a difficult choice, but the way our school is run is pathetic and sad. There is one man running the show at this point. He has a salary of $204,000 (and he gets a 3% raise every year) AND he's hiring a principal to do his job now, so now we're paying $100,000+ for a principal AND $200,000+ for this guy to do...umm...err...newsletters I guess? Meanwhile, we got a 5% raise, but now need to work 3 more days each year (which means instead of a raise, I am getting extreme overtime that I didn't want). The only people that can fire this guy are all his biggest fans, so it won't happen unless something extreme happens, but since we're paying a lawyer to defend this guy and our school something like $300,000 per year, he does a good job of towing the lines of "sure it's unethical, but it's not illegal, technically." It's great. So far, something like 20 teachers have quit this school year and I expect a few more to quit this summer when they find new jobs (a large number of teachers are interviewing for new jobs). A group of veteran teachers took our school away from the district because they thought they could run a school better than it was being run, but then they hired a guy who managed to steal the whole thing away from them. Now, a huge portion of the teachers that started this charter have left (like, almost all of them). So sad to see education become a business and see people who feel the need to essentially take away money from kids. This is why so many people hate charters--they have so much potential, but are largely unregulated and turn into quite the profit for a few individuals.
What I'm getting at is that this was the best worst year of my life ever. Or maybe worst best? It's been great because I love my family, love my son, and all that good stuff, but it has been the most stressful year of my life by a long shot. Work has been so stressful that I just wanted to come home and chill with some TV or video games or something, but going from a stressful job and going home to a stressful home is tough. It's been hardest over the past couple months because my wife hasn't been feeling very great, so it's almost like working two jobs. Take off the teacher hat, put on the daddy hat, and essentially work from when I wake up at 6 a.m. to when I go to bed at midnight (because Dean feels that is a good bedtime). Maybe sleep deprivation plays into all this, too?
OKAY OKAY! Enough dwelling on the negatives. The positive is that it's SUMMER TIIIIIIME! I'm hoping to get a LOT of R&R. I am not working this summer (aside from a week-long AP conference toward the middle-end of the break), so I'm hoping to get a lot of work done. I'm not sure where my priorities are just yet, so I'll let you know about the website soon enough. I'd like to say "UPDATES EVERY FIVE SECONDS!" but I'm trying to manage my time and I'm really, really eager to start on some of my original works soon. So not sure yet if I'll be working on AFFR finales (Fallen/All Stars seasons) or something brand spanking new (as in not fan fiction). I'll let you know as things go. Should I do any original works, I'll be sure to drop a few previews and use you guys to test the water and see if you think I'm onto something good or not.
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