Venting Thread Delta - Now With Easy to Follow Rules

[Dutch guy]

Yes, going to university for the first time is stressful. My experience however is that it mostly replaces stress from other things. Then you quickly learn what IS significant and what is not, meaning overall your stress levels are not likely to rise all that much.

As said, it comes and goes, you have ups and downs. Just don't let it get to you. If it does, find out where the rub is, and get help. Going to uni and standing on your own is a great experience and a great opportunity to improve yourself. Just, most importantly, don't forget to be yourself. There's a lot of different kinds of people at a university. Some very different from yourself. NEVER feel obligated to just "go along" because you feel you need to make friends. If you are not comfortable with doing something, find someone else with interests closer to your own to hang out with. (And trust me when I say they will be there)

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I don't feel like I made life-long friends. But I have made one life-long Facebook friend who I studied with for 4 years but never really spoke with. Hopefully can turn to IRl friendship as we have same interests.

Word of advice, ignore what other people on your course work ethics are. I made the fatal mistakes and saw a lot of people being lazy with attendance and it effected me. Attend every lecture/studio work period. You'll learn more and make closer bonds with people on the course.

Don't feel like you HAVE to make bestest friends. I ended up becoming very good friends with the mature students on my course because I could talk about things which I found interesting which I knew they'd be too polite to be bored by. It's strange. I've always found that I make easy friends with people older than me, or younger, but never my own age group.

--


Rant time: I can't fucking find my amp for my Electric Violin. It's in the attic but my dad has packed it away and hasn't told me where and is in Gozo atm. My dad's a fucking idiot. He has the greatest intentions and is the best dad you ever could have, but he does some fucking stupid things in the name of being dad. That's why it's so hard to criticise him. I hurt now because the attic is low and I hurt my hurt knee by having to kneel. I also damage some very nice carpet which I dragged up there tonight because my parents thought it'd be great to leave it in my room when my carpet was replaced. I had to kneel on the carpet because it was that or plywood slabs.

[Master Gunner]

My stress (and associated issues) went down significantly in university.

Get up in the morning, get breakfast, go to class, make sure to bring a lunch (while there may be cafes and the like around, you'll save a surprising amount of money by making your own lunches), and go to class some more. Take the time between classes to do homework and studying. Hang out in student lounges, you're likely to make friends (or at least people who can help with your studying) there. Eat supper, plan out your schedule for the next week so you'll be able to get all your work done. Stick to that schedule. In your free time, join clubs/societies, go to faculty/campus events, socialize a bit. Do your laundry and shower on a regular basis.

Oh, and sleep. Sleep is important.

By your second year, you may have to cut back on either the sleeping or the socializing, but don't worry about it. You'll be in the swing of things by then, and will be able to work around it. Just get your work done though, it makes life so much easier.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Sleep
Eating
Laundry

Are the three things you must remember. You may think that by delaying laundry to the extreme of like, 4 months is fine. You'll be wrong. The clothes will fester and you will have to wash the clothing twice or more to get rid of the buttery smell. And don't get too pissed off at your house-mates being lazy idiots in the kitchen. Also, stealing milk is less noticeable if you take small amounts from everyone's bottle/carton.

[JackSlack]

I'm sick of my goddamn anxiety.

I had a minor procedure; ever since I've had leg cramps. Doctors have told me it's just post-operative pain and will go away and it's not even that bad! But my brain turns it into a disaster.

I hate my brain.

[Phailhammer]

Why isn't there a separate site/section for Dymocks' stationery store? It's fucking impossible to find anything stationery-related on their home page!

[Juliamon]

Had our 4-year-old refrigerator serviced about a year ago because the freezer first stopped making ice, then it started leaking all over the floor, and finally it couldn't stay cold. Repair guys said it was the compressor, fixed it, all was fine.

A few weeks ago (conveniently one month out of warranty, of course) the same thing started happening in the same sequence. Repair guy said it would need a part he had to order and it would take a week. Fast forward a week and they sent the wrong part, so we have to wait another week. So they finally get the part, and they FINALLY get back here, and THIS guy has some sort of device (this is important, the guy last year didn't have one of these) that starts beeping like crazy when he measures something in the fridge and he says that thing indicates there's an "internal leak that can't be fixed by repairmen" so we're gonna have to buy a new fridge.

Something obviously sounds fishy about this so we're gonna ask around at other appliance repair places and see if this one company has been stringing us along for a year just to dick us over in the middle of a heat wave.

So between that fridge, the HDTV that developed huge shadowy streaks a year in, and the oven with the "convection" setting that doesn't actually do anything...
FUCK SAMSUNG.

[empath]

So the wife's lost her wedding band yesterday.

She popped it in her pants pocket before she washed the dishes, then went out for a walk and didn't notice she wasn't wearing it until after she got back and was cleaning off...and it wasn't in the pocket.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Heroes of Newerth free-to-play accounts now have access to all the heroes, no strings attached.

However some players who have paid real money for the same benefit in the past are annoyed. But there are players who are like "shut up u R so Butthurt" and then use maths of breaking down how much they actually paid of like "$30 over 2 years is nothing" and "$10 over 7 months". Well done, you can do accounting. With that philosophy you can justify spending any quantity of money on anything at all.

Isn't there a saying of "Look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves"?

A business is free to do business however they like. But it is subject to criticism of consumers. If you offer a service than you promise is exclusive for a one-off fee, but then decide to offer the same service for free 2 years later with literally no advantages for the consumers who have paid before, then you'll have annoyed loyal consumers. The initial fee feels more like a donation than a purchase, and this isn't explicitly said at the time. They need to offer something to the previous customers.

The problem is, I can understand this business move, it's the only thing they could do to stay relevant against LoL and DotA2, but, the big elephant is that the 'Legacy' players feel shafted. You have Legacy players who don't mind because they probably earn money and don't mind urinating $30 away or have some philosophy that Virtue>Own needs and are happy to give away $30.

You can't discuss this on their forums because it's full with bad examples of humanity. It's just threads of people establishing their opinions and nothing comes out of it. No one ever sees it from another person's point of view.

[Wraith]

FFS. I recently got Rocket hooked on Dragon Age: Origins. I was so excited to have someone to share my love of that game with, and I set her up with her own EA/Bioware account and her own Steam account. Unfortunately, after a few days of playing, we realized that even though I had the Ultimate Edition installed, she did not have access to Awakenings or any of the DLC because it's all keyed to my EA account (this is why I hate all this DRM crap; I paid $40.00 for that game, and my wife can't sit at the only computer it's installed in and play it). I was so excited about her playing, and I just couldn't take the idea of her not getting the full experience, so just last week, I bought her a copy of UE as well, for $30.00 on Steam.

Today it's 50% off. :::sigh:::

[JackSlack]

Wraith: Much sympathy. Fucking DRM.

[Geoff_B]

Much sympathy about games turning up in the Steam sales just after you've bought them

For what it's worth I think $30 for Dragon Age Origins UE is very much worth it

[Wraith]

It is, hands down. It's my all-time favorite game on any platform. I pre-ordered the collectors edition on XBox, started playing it a year or so later, got hooked enough to buy the UE on XBox, discovered there was an active modding community on PC and immediately bought both the Digital Deluxe and the UE. Fun fact: if you buy the UE from Steam, you can get the CD key from the Steam overlay and input it into Origin for a free copy on that service, as well.

Having Rocket play was just too damned exciting not to get her the UE as well.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

Fable 3 on sale is a huge kick in the teeth for me. The game wasn't worth the full price I paid.

Development of HoN:
Legacy HoN players get an exclusive alt skin and bonus currency earning. So, I don't mind the change now. I r content.

[Geoff_B]

Playing a course in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and getting all criticals, then dropping the ball on the very last note

Or

Playing a course in Theatrhythm Final Fantasy and thinking you've got all criticals then the score comes up with one "great" and you can're remember it at all.

Both equally hair-tearing.

[Metcarfre]

This kind of thing is driving me crazy. The same or similar companies that crack down on pirates/bootleggers (which I'm generally against, btw) and lobby governments to increase their copyright protection, have no problem stealing - stealing! - good content away from independent content creators. "Content is the easy part", give me a friggin' break. I'm so tired of corporations right now.

[Matt]

I read that too. 'content is free we have interns for that'.

ಠ_ಠ

-m

[Metcarfre]

"Content is free"

"Content is free"

CONTENT IS WHAT MATTERS, BECAUSE IT TAKES CREATIVE PEOPLE WITH PASSION TO MAKE. EVERYTHING ELSE, THE BULLSHIT, THE MARKETING, THE PRODUCERS NOTES, THE PACKAGING, DOESN'T MATTER. aaaaaaaggggghh

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

I was told a story involving the Youtube Copyright twits.

A person made a very funny video. It had many views.

An American TV show broadcasted this video without crediting the original video.

Youtube then removed the original video on grounds on 'copyright infringing' because it was the video they showed on tv which was the sameone, catch my drift?

The author couldn't prove he was the original owner because it was purged when his video was taken down.


Basically, if you're a researcher for a TV show, make sure you credit any video content you'll be showing otherwise you're a dick and cause Youtube to delete the original and cite you as the author.

Nothing you can do about it. Also my friend who used to wrote a lot of theortcraft blogs for healing in SWTOR had his articles repeatedly stolen and reposted on other blogsites.

[LogicSword]

I've just packed everything now I need to unpack it argh.

Moving house is fun.

[TheRocket]

Wtf all I want to eat is cheese. Mad greasy cravings.

[King Kool]

When I read The Host, I was so done with bad books at that point that I didn't read another book for almost a year.

I just saw a play that made me feel the same way as the Host. I sorta want to get back into theater. It's what I majored in. I love doing it. I love doing something social. This just makes me want to stay far far away from the whole cursed enterprise.

[Duckay]

Work is driving me so far up the wall that I'm currently skating across the ceiling.

Two weeks ago I showed up for one of my regular shifts (tutoring a teenage boy who is in foster care) only to find out that the family had gone on holiday without anyone telling me. I was a bit miffed, because I had spoken to the boy's case worker only the previous day and he hadn't mentioned it, but that was pretty fleeting and I got over it.

Then the following week, the day before my tutoring shift, I got a phone call from the case worker apologizing for not telling me about the holiday and asking me if I could pick the boy up from the office the following day instead of meeting him at his house. Sure, no problem. Want me to start early to do that? No? Okay.

The next morning I got a phone call asking if I could start early after all. I said sure, expecting to be asked to come in perhaps half an hour or an hour early. He asked me to come in three hours early. And then called me again 40 minutes before the stated time to ask me if I could "hurry up".


I was pretty unhappy about that but I let it go.

But yesterday was the worst. :/ I was running on minimal sleep, which isn't anyone's fault except mine, but it didn't help. I arrive at the office to pick up the keys for a company car for my other regular shift - taking a girl in foster care for a family access visit, which I do once every two weeks. I get there and the case manager (the case worker's boss) goes to get me the keys, and then suddenly freezes and looks horrified. "Oh, no," she says. "Nick was supposed to tell you."

Oh, God. What was Nick meant to tell me this time?

"The family access visits -- they're being done by the foster carer now instead of by a worker, for funding reasons. You don't need to do them anymore."

The case worker himself comes in and as soon as he sees me just goes white. He was really apologetic and all, and usually I'm really easy-going at work, but I couldn't resist pointedly pointing out to him that my phone has been on at all times for the past week (since we last spoke) and I check my email regularly. The case manager backed me up on it and reassured me that any future time I needed information out of him, to either nag him repeatedly until he told me or, if it was information they needed to give me that I wouldn't know about (like circumstances changing that I wouldn't think to ask about), that she would take care of it. But still.

I'm angry because I went into work expecting to, you know, work and it turned out that I didn't need to. Especially since I was tired as all hell and possibly coming down with a cold, and would have spent that time sleeping or at least resting if I had known. And I'm angry because it's not the first time he's dropped the ball.

But more than that, I'm angry because I've been working with this kid on a fortnightly basis for months now and she's this great kid that I didn't find out until I showed up at work yesterday that I will probably never get to see again. And that blows. I know it comes with the territory; it's not the first time I've been working regularly with a kid only to have their circumstances change, and it won't be the last. But it sucks every time it happens, and to have it combined with the rubbish communication like that just makes me more emotional about it all.

Edited to add: I'm sorry for this novella of a post.

[Drinnik]

Yesterday was my thirtieth birthday, and it sucked.

[Merrymaker_Mortalis]

My 21st sucked too Don't worry. They lie when they say significant Birthdays are special. They're not. They're the same as all the others.

At least your 18th you can legally drink alcohol, which you've been doing for years because your parents I guess would think it was fine.