My friend, talking about hirelings: “They’re just soulless followers! They don’t have any sort of personality!”

Me: “I know.”

I got on ICQ in 97 or 98 to keep up with friends from a MUD and mine was 7 digits. I haven’t logged into it in over a decade because when I went back to see if anyone from the old game was around none ever showed up online.

Came here to say this. I’ve worked on systems for a restaurant on the beach and it was corroded as hell. We had the wireless access points in cheap “weatherproof” boxes and they got corroded. We replaced them once a year or so because it was so bad.

I take B vitamins because I don’t feel like a dirt grub after a bender. I’m not worried about living longer or I wouldn’t go on benders. I just want to feel good while I’m here.

I’d bet good money against a bent paperclip that they had childhood trauma already. That doesn’t excuse what they’ve done, in fact that makes it worse. It’s likely the thought was “this is what happened to me to make me the person I am today” or similar.

That being said, once you do this to a child you’re no longer a person in my eyes either. They aren’t human. They aren’t animals. They are nothing. The whole reason I’m not in charge of anything is because I think we should throw them in an oubliette and let them survive by drinking from puddles and eating rats. That’s not justice, that’s revenge. I just don’t have anything else in my heart for these people.

It’s unique in it’s looks.

That’s what they said about me.

I did contract IT work for one where one of the staff got in very serious trouble for having CSAM on their work computer. Like a lot of it.

No worries! It’s less than half an hour to downtown Houston from here at this time of night and probably right at half an hour from Katy proper.

I grew up in a true rural community of less than 1000. It was half an hour to the outskirts of the nearest city, and that place had 75,000 people. It was hours away from the outskirts of the closest REAL city, Dallas, with 1.3 million people. In contrast, Katy has 25,000 people and sits half an hour from the center of a city with 2.3 million people, nevermind the size of the metro area.

So if she lived on the west side of Katy, she was describing the place as she saw it and that’s not on you. A small place as compared to Houston, and more on the rural side of the suburbs. I take my motorcycle out that way because if you leave headed west it’s pretty empty for a while.

I’m glad that my nephew’s teacher last year sent out a message to allow family to donate to those parties. I’ve paid for a few.

I’m also sad that it has come to that.

Katy ain’t tiny. Well, in and of itself it is but it’s part of the Houston metro. I live off the Energy Corridor. I can be in Katy in a few minutes. I can also be at a dozen grocery stores, an insane number of taco trucks, any type of bar you’d care to visit, escape rooms, several gyms (I’ve recently started rock climbing in one again!), and shit loads of white collar industry for a good paying job within a few minutes. My first IT job making more than $125k was 10 minutes out of Katy. It’s suburban, not rural.

I see you’ve been to my hometown.

The other person that replied did mention a lot of cool things you can do in a rural community. But being half an hour from a grocery store that has something I actually want at a price that’s reasonable (as reasonable as groceries get, I guess) sucks.

I picked Elden Ring back up today (why no, it has nothing to do with the DLC). I’m still garbage.

Considering some of the sellers, they deserve each other. I have cash, don’t want to haggle, and can pick it up whenever it’s convenient. Three weeks later I’m either told it’s gone or asked what time I can be there.

I could have been there weeks ago. I already purchased one elsewhere. No need to get pissy when it’s been so long.

Hey, leave Drunk Steve out of this. He did nothing wrong.

I had to reread after reading your comment because I was sure the guy was talking about Trump.

Edit: Turns out that person was talking about Trump! Just an innocent mistake on their part.

If there’s no heaven, why should we be good?

Edit: I was paraphrasing Trump’s most recent word salad, showing that he views literally everything as transactional. Not my views. I could have been more clear.

I feel ya. I played one of the CoD games online once back in the mid 00s and stopped gaming entirely for more than a decade. It seriously made me just lose all the love I had for games. I came back for Cyberpunk and it turns out that was a good time to get back into gaming.

Or, in the case of one of my former classmates, her 26 year old.

Just wait until 2038. More overtime!

Just tell him the only way to mine it is with windmill power. He’ll change his tune.