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[Eric Blank]

Got 8-10 inches of snow last night. Mom needs to go see the doctor; dad thinks he hears fluid in her lungs, shes only being treated for flu so far. Now im nervous. My coworkers mother died last week of pneumonia, and i dont like that she could have two infections simultaneously.

[Kagus]

The world is pain and I haven't learned to love it.

[TD1]

It's Valentine's day, I'm 22 (23 in early March), and I've never been on a date.
I am going to blqme early high standards and lack of going out (to meet people)

[Reelya]

Well Activision Blizzard is firing a bunch of people, like 8% or something.

I don't like this sort of thing in general.
I wish they'd fix maphack in SC2 rather than this.
Who cares if your shares earned 0.84 per share instead of $1.24 per share predicted. You are still making 2.4 Billion.

It's not just that. If you don't control costs then the next guy will, and then you start losing contracts, or aren't as competitive on pricing, which puts the company in a death spiral. It's hard to win contracts if you don't control for costs, meaning hanging onto a lot of un-needed extra workers to be nice ends up meaning you have less work, not more.

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/atvi/financials

See above, there was a huge drop in net income in the last year, almost a 75% drop in net income in one year. If profits fall by 1/3rd the amount of the previous year, that would push the company into running debts. Funnily enough, when your profits decline 75% in one year, that's a bad sign.

Games are not a commodity like Coca Cola or shoes or something, where you sell a predictable amount every year: it's entirely project-driven and reliant on getting "hits" in a fickle market. Big companies can die quickly. Give that some consideration.

[Yoink]

It's Valentine's day, I'm 22 (23 in early March), and I've never been on a date.
I am going to blqme early high standards and lack of going out (to meet people)

I'mma come over there, drag you out on the town, and we shall pub-crawl our way across the region meeting as many potentially-attractive persons as possible whilst drinking as many beers as possible.
It'll be just swell.

[TD1]

I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't drink 

That's the main problem. Not my lack of drinking, but that I have a lot of hobbies which I like to do in quiet by myself. I simply don't meet people, sigh.

It is Belfast, though, so if you want to come over for a boozin' I'm sure you'll get it XD

[Yoink]

Well, you don't have to drink along the way. Up to you.
What, did you think I was going to be shouting all those beers?? Not bloody likely! Not even with those amazingly cheap drink prices over there.

Drunk-me has more than enough charisma to gain sufficient friends for two people.

[TD1]

Did drunk-you tell you that?

[itisnotlogical]

I'm exhausted, I'm sick, and it's time for another exciting day of just scraping by instead of doing anything even remotely fulfilling. I'm being paid to waste my life in a building full of people I hate.

[Frumple]

Seems like they've finally called it for Opportunity. Godspeed, little robot.

[Eric Blank]

Goddamnit now im sick and i still havent gotten confirmation one way or the other on my health insurance

[JoshuaFH]

My mom is making it more clear by the day that she can't support herself in her crippled old age, and if she's to have any quality of life period in the future she'll need my direct monetary support. I have part time job just above minimum wage, which while very stable, is just barely enough to support myself with a little money for saving and small luxuries. Supporting my Mom (and possibly my sister? She's still young at 17, but doesn't exactly have a can-do attitude) is literally impossible.

I don't know if there's any government assistance that can be pursued that hasn't already been exhausted, but I'm thinking my Mom has dried up those options. I'm thinking it falls squarely on my shoulders to make sure she doesn't die poor and miserable.

To secure a better paying job, I have two ideas: College and Military.

My idea of college is it is both an enormous gamble, and very scam-like in nature. My scholastic credentials are very weak, so I'm thinking the only way to really succeed in this path would be to chase it with reckless abandon, to focus on it with all my energy; for an outcome that might not pay off. I'm reluctant to pursue this option.

My military-loving friend suggests that I join the Air Force. Honestly it's not a bad idea, it would provide pretty much everything I've ever wanted in life: a standard of discipline and fitness, a real mental and physical challenge to apply myself to, the potential for prestige and honor, the necessary beating and hazing into manhood I was denied as a child, the possibility of male friendship and camaraderie that I've always dreamed of, and finally a non-deadend future with the education and job opportunities I'd undoubtedly receive along the way. If I succeeded there, I'd get pretty much everything I've ever wanted, in addition to being able to support my Mom.

One thing holding me back, is simply that I hate the idea of becoming a killer of men. Even if I enter a totally non-combat role, I feel I'd be complicit with the people that are basically paid murderers. Now, that wouldn't be such an enormous hurdle, as I agree with the necessity of a military, and that necessity just means people are going to die at the hands of other people, but it's totally sickening that the role's commander and chief is an orange idiot asshole, and any position in the military means I'm ultimately just a peon to somebody who frankly doesn't deserve that kind of loyalty. Pursuing the idea basically means, to me, that I've been bribed to be a pissant. It's a very degrading thought, to say the least.

I perhaps have the wrong idea, I don't want to come off as condescending to hard working people who definitely deserve respect, but that's how it seems to me. Though if I'm being stupid, and I sure feel I am, feel free to point out my stupidity.

[Kagus]

So, here's the thing... Military work is really not that prestigious. Now, the U.S. does seem to have a lot of goodies as far as economic support goes, specifically in order to attract more low-income or disadvantaged families and pad out the ranks.

Chair Force is indeed probably one of the best slices to get into, but you need to realize that regardless of where you end up in the military, you will still be in the military... And some things really just do not change across the different areas.

The "peon to someone undeserving of loyalty" thing? That's one or two levels of separation, not a dozen. And that's completely irrespective of whoever happens to be president at the time.

The upper leadership and higher officers will always be a bunch of namby numbskulls who are entirely removed from reality. The middle leadership will occasionally have one or two individuals of passing competence who managed to slip through the cracks, but mostly it's a horde of unwitting and insecure war college degrees. Lower leadership is the soup of quintessential dumbfucks you rely upon to survive, and you will grow to understand that their mating calls mean that someone is definitely going to get fucked.

And don't get me started on your fellow lump-nutted grunts at the bottom rung. Holy fuck, such stupidity was a not meant to be grasped by man.


So, basically... Yes, it's possible for the military to help provide for your family. It's specifically engineered to be one of the best options for people with few options. You're probably still going to have to fight them on a few things in order to get all the fringe benefits, and military bureaucracy is a thing of goddamned awe. Butts entirely made of experimental ultra-dense heavy metals, all the way up and down and to the sides. So, yeah, you can get some really good programs, but you will definitely have to put a lot of time and energy into getting them.

Secondly, it will not be prestigious. It will not be glorious. It will not make sense. You can rest easy about being able to get into a role where your job is not even tangentially related to someone somewhere getting killed, but this is mostly because it's entirely possible and even likely that you can end up in a job that isn't related to anything at all and serves no purpose other than to exist as an effort in futility (but God save your puny soul if you don't put all of your energy into the thing). You will be surrounded by a rigorous and expansive system of mutual support and experienced hierarchy that is wholly populated by a species not entirely dissimilar to humans, were it not for the fact that the entirety of their nervous system is preoccupied with the difficult task of vacuuming the air for trace minerals, in a fashion imitating (but entirely less sophisticated than) the act of breathing through one's mouth.


The thing is, you're a thinking person. As a thinking person, a great deal of the military will make no sense to you. It's definitely still a career opportunity, but you need to be aware that it won't really agree with you on a personal level, and that you therefore should not take things personally. This is quite difficult. It can take years to fully develop the apathy required to excel.

There are plenty of resources available to someone working in the military, but it is a really dirty job to extract those resources, and as such it's important to dispel the notion that it's a functional or respectable system. It makes life so much easier once you stop expecting the military to actually work.

[thompson]

There isn't a public pension in the US?

[Kagus]

There isn't a public pension in the US?

Technically, it exists. However, Social Security is laughably inadequate and in most cases cannot cover even basic food and shelter expenses for one person. Individuals are instead expected to arrange private retirement plans through their employers, and to invest savings in personal accounts.

Naturally, those with the lowest incomes who are most in need of outside assistance will generally find it either difficult or simply unfeasible to spare the extra expenses of saving up for such an account.


Better dead than red.