Hey that’s super helpful, I really appreciate it! Thank you! I haven’t checked in on the project(s) in quite a while. :)

Do not compare evils, lest you be tempted to cleave with the least of them!

–Victor Saltzpyre

(A raw line probably inspired by somebody else lol)

My highschool was a smaller charter school that was essentially a bunch of connected / encircled modular buildings.

I actually kinda miss it because it had different vocational paths and I ended up in a student-run computer shop. We actually fixed things around the campus and other people’s machines and stuff. Shame that sort of thing kinda fell out of relevance, job-wise!

We also had a large computer lab where we played things like CounterStrike Source, Battlefield Desert Combat or 2142, and sometimes Unreal Tournament maybe?

Lol anyway, to your question: I think I might have been popular-ish. In the sense that I think I was a sort of “ambassador” between groups.

I made friends with the drama kids, the nerds, had some goth friends, stoner / skater friends, and I’d often introduce them to each other. I had my “circle” but I was that guy who sorta knew almost everybody.

I think the thing I miss most is that everyone saw each other as individuals back then. Surface level you might fit with a “group” sure, but we tended to see each other as people and for the most part they got along.

But sadly when I moved away after graduation, only like one friend really made the effort to keep up with me over the years. :( Quality best friend though!

But I still think of them often and hope they’re doing okay in this crazy world…

My “trick” with this is to mv files I’m very sure I want to be “deleting” into /tmp . If it instantly turns out to be a mistake, I can pull it back. Else, it gets purged on reboot.

This is usually A-okay for my home server since it reboots so rarely! A desktop machine might give you a little less time to reconsider. But it at least solved the “trash is using 45% of my hard disk now” issue haha.

In the very worst case scenario there’s the “Drop everything and run photorec / testdisk” as a last resort!

Minecraft is still the hardest thing to host lol

I’m actually considering hosting a Luanti / “MineTest” server for this experience, since my wife lost her Minecraft account / key thingy since the time we played in beta ages ago haha.

I wonder if it’s any easier to host or not. 🤔

Mint was my first serious move to Linux too! It’s so user friendly and clean.

I’ve been running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with an Nvidia GPU for quite a few years now on my gaming / 3D art rig though, and I’ve really enjoyed it. My Win10 partition has been dormant and shrunk for a very long time. :D

Just make sure you stick with the default of using BTRFS at least on root, to get that snapshot rollback support!

For being such an up to date distro, it’s ridiculously stable. Usually issues I’ve had have been Nvidia problems, but I’ve been able to roll back until they resolved. Things have definitely gotten much better over time.

Wayland has also matured wonderfully and things like multi monitor setups with different refresh rates work just fine these days.

Totally get what you mean about KDE too, I really enjoy how much easy customization it has!

Hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

Some takeaways here:

1. Don’t give up on yourself or your dreams.

2. Keep a steady income going while you work on those things, because then your work can be your art for yourself instead of desperately trying to make something sellable before you run out of cash, and treating yourself to a latté feels like you just blew money on a steak dinner using funds that aren’t coming back. That stuff is scary.

3. Game Dev / Gamer reddit has some gem, but on the whole it is full of very, very bitter people. They got that “everything you do is gonna suck and I’m totally saying this because I care” treatment, and they pass it right along. You’re better off finding /starting a local club.

• Of course, ignore #2 maybe if you’re one of those self-help book authors who is “so tired of their megacorporate 6-figure income after 10 years” and they have zero debt and saved most of that as a runway and can live on 45k a year. Sure, take the plunge and find your soul or whatever lol.

I want to see open source printer devices doing this.

I couldn’t care less about Bambu Lab, if anything they irk me because they’re driving 3D printing towards a “the magic black box just works until it doesn’t and then we throw it in a landfill and buy a brand new one.” model.

Debian? :p

I’m mostly just annoyed that none of my side quests seem to be unlocking more main story quests and I can’t even tell if I’m getting XP or not. :(

“I heard them say we’ve reached Morrowind. I’m sure they’ll let us go.”

Morrowind will always be wonderful to return to. I miss all the imaginative player house mods. OpenMW has been so AWESOME.

Also:

YoU wOuLdN’t StEaL a LiMeWaRe pLatTeR

Ya-ha-ha! It’s lovely! Yep-yep! :D

…which means MS is still steering the ship.

And boy, have they been drinking all the rum. :(

I remember Star Siege and MechWarrior 3 coming with a big novella book of some sort, accompanying the manual, and Sim City 3000 came with a wire bound TOME of a book lol. RTS games would often come with big foldout tech trees and stuff too.

The original manual for The Sims was really fun to read too because it was full of humorous witticisms at every turn.

And just like that, Microsoft goes straight to jail LMAO.

But oh yeah, I’ve seen those. Those would also be included under this law! We can have both! Lol

Seriously though, I’m talking specifically when any little thing that stops someone from doing what they’re doing and it’ll usually say “Hey, this is why it’s not working. Please tell someone this message.”

“…it just says error?”

Hurt my soul. I’m so done with that nonsense lol.

Telling any support staff individual

“It just says error.”

Punishment compounded based upon the degree of detailed information you simply decided to not bother reading before seeking assistance.

Lol

Every time this franchise comes up I just find myself remembering all the fun I had with BF2 and 2142. I wanna play those again…

BF4 was actually pretty great fun too.

Now I’m just so over it.

Secure boot is a good feature to protect against certain kinds of threats, but “you can’t run this entertainment software because you aren’t running a completely Microsoft-prescribed system” is a super lame use of it.

Oh I thought “hnnnnnng” was still a heart attack / death by cringe meme. Did that change? Lol

I got one I’m betting we won’t find on here yet…

Alone in the Dark 5, an incredibly ambitious game that fell short, but had some great ideas.

One of which was how that incredible soundtrack by Oliver Deriviere drove this particular playable sequence, 59th Street .

The whole soundtrack done in conjunction with “The Mystery of Bulgarian Voices” is absolutely stunning for an action-horror title.

It was the best part of the game and an incredible example of meshing soundtrack with cinematic gameplay.

. . . actually? All the stuff he does is freaking awesome, so see/listen to his other titles like:

• Remember Me (Awesomely underrated!)
• Obscure

Other (lesser known / thought of?) good soundtracks off the top of my head:

• There Came an Echo (by Big Giant Circles. So good they used the theme in Stranger Things! Season…2?)
• Anything by Supergiant lol.
• Oni (bungie / rockstar)
• FTL
• Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, Metro: Exodus
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• X-COM: Enemy Unknown and X-COM 2.
• King’s Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity

I’ll probably add to this if I think of any more. :)