To preface, I know I just need to fix this issue when I come in for my next shift. I'm just annoyed.
They changed my password on a day I wasn't there and I was planning on offering my Monday shift over the weekend, but the app doesn't work because they changed my password while I was away. I've never used an attendance or employee app that is as buggy and glitchy as this one is. I used my old password but when it logs in it tells me that there's an authorization error. I log in with my new password and it tells me it doesn't recognize me before it finally logs in and there's nothing but an empty screen even after uninstalling and reinstalling the app twenty times. It's so ridiculous.
I've worked the worst of worst retail jobs and yet somehow FedEx is still the most inaccessible when it comes to a "self-ran" scheduling system and app.

I have played off and on for quite a while. Hard casual gamer in general, I did have a good swath for several seasons where I deleted the game, mostly because my internet wasn't great, and a buggy controller made it near impossible to properly play anything. But have been back for about 4-5 seasons now, and with the return of solos mode, I question if the game even has proper balancing at all, or if the game is straight up just rigged against certain groups of the player base. I have always been the definition of a casual, console player, never amassing a large amount of wins, absolutely detesting teammates whose only ever plan was to drop in the hottest area of the map to fight it out because I can always count on rng to put nothing but maybe attachments and a grenade where I try to land in the hot zone, and said teammate to instantly d/c when they get downed there. But a long running thought I have had, is does literally nobody else seem to have the problems I seem to have as a console player using the standard controller for my ps4. I always seem to have more recoil that make hitting more than 3 shots at range unlikely whereas enemies shred my shields long before I can even get to a more effective range, always have issues trying to track seemingly spastic moving enemies in closer range, compared to them constantly hitting shots while moving like a frog of meth. Feels like my gun magazines always run out fast, and just shy of doing enough damage to kill, whereas theirs seems to fire at a leisurely pace, but also somehow firing enough shots fast enough to kill me before I can kill them. Rarely getting more than 1 shot in nearly any of the burst fire guns to hit at closer ranges per burst, and in general a sense of over correcting when trying to aim at enemies in close range fights. Now, I will admit, I am nowhere near a great player, but I tried to think of myself as an average, slightly below average player. I understand my skills when it comes to positioning, quick lootings, and recoil control are fairly poor, that the controller makes it a little less convenient for mobile moving and aiming compared to keyboard and mouse( don't say jack about aim assist, have only had even the slightest bit of noticeable affect a whopping 1 time in a lockdown match), that there are setting changes that pc users can take advantage of compared to a 5 year old ps4. I just lately have been getting what feels like constant B.S. in solos/trios and the mixtape playlist. I chose a gun I am decent with, enemy kills me with firerate, I find a freaking gold spitfire in solos, only to somehow be beaten with firerate at close midrange by a flatline of not known tier. Enemies constantly seeming to have positions on the fly where only their head and or upper torso are visible, and the constant of the enemies on a roof lip, getting many, many shots on me if I get literally anywhere near them, or try to using semiauto weapons from a decent distance away. I constantly try using different characters I like, usually try using a weapon I am good with(generally, flatline, spitfire, rampage, alternator, g7, RE45, peacekeeper, havoc; mildly, sentinal/longbow, tripletake, moz). But lately all my efforts just seem to play well in my style just seem to end up dead to the first enemy I encounter. I learned quickly that I just could not keep up with the manic building energy in fortnite, now it seems like I just have no chance in the last multiplayer shooter game I try to enjoy, and it just feels crushing.

Hi,
We’re visiting Disney Paris this week with our 2 little kids (1.5 & 4). My partner is Parisian and spent a lot of time at Disney as a kid in the 90s.
1)We want to bring some snacks in our backpack for the kids - is this allowed? Apparently it was previously forbidden.
2) How much is it to hire a pram or a buggy? We may not have space for 2 in our car (and we will definitely need 2 - our 4 year old has Cerebral Palsy and fatigues easily).
I also read on the Disney website that because our 4 year old is on NDIS (Australian national disability scheme), we may be eligible for a disability/ accessibility pass for him. Does anyone have any experience with what documents you may need to bring as an NDIS recipient? You are not given a NDIS card or anything, it’s just a government scheme. I could print his plan that outlines his funding, I could print his letters of diagnosis from the hospital, but I know how the French are about official documents (very pedantic).

Title basically,
Pulled a bunch of good stuff at anni and now it's farming time, I don't plan on pulling till the next anni basically, so I won't get buggy that way, and since the special lvl islands are the main source of manuals buggy basically speeds the process up by a lot.
I got Marco for XP and chopper for cc so buggy is the only one for farming im missing, should I buy him? Have 500 medals after anni pulls.

As the title says I've been getting unsolicited advice, comments, and tips from folks who don't even have cats.

• TLDR; folks keep telling me how low maintenance cats are and I'm doing "too much". Any advice on telling them to back off or a better way to make them understand? Kindly if possible.

A little history; I've had my cat (4yF) for about 1.5yrs and she's indoor only in my apartment. She is microchipped, wears a color with my info and a small tag that says microchipped and indoor cat (one on each side). I don't let her go outside. I plan to get a cat buggy but that's well in the future. She eats mainly wet food bc we're trying to lose a little weight (15lbs right now), and I have her on a feeding schedule.
Now I've had to do some traveling this past two weeks and my sister and I have been coordinating to make sure one of us is always with the cat and she gets her food, playtime, and pets. Family and friends asked my why can't you stay longer? Why do you have to go home to your cat? I explained the above to them. In return, I get the below advice/tips/comments:
• "Just put out a bunch of dry food. I know someone that does that and they travel a lot. Their cat is fine."
• "She never goes outside? She's in a cage. You need to let her go outside."
• "That's a fat cat."
• "Cats are low maintenance. You're doing too much."
• "She can be alone for some time. She'll be fine."
• "Dogs are way harder to manage. I can get going home to a dog, but a cat? It can't be that much."
• "You're spoiling her. She can be alone."
• "I never got a sitter for my cat when I left her alone for a week."
Do y'all get these types of comments/advice? How do you respond and discourage folks from giving them unprovoked? I'd love to hear any stories or comments or advice y'all have gotten from folks, too. Thanks!

I wonder if anybody has a rational explanation alfor all the complaints about KLM on this subreddit. About half the posts are a variant of “KLM is a shit airline,” “KLM scammed me” or “service agents suck.”
Some of these posts are clearly by people who misunderstood something, planned poorly or otherwise messed up. Are they just here to vent?
Although a frequent flyer with KLM myself (typically FB gold, platinum in a good year) I am not a KLM fanboy. I fly other airlines at least as often as KLM - my preferences differ by route. But through the years, I still think KLM’s product has remained solid. That is: KLM is following industry trends in terms of cutting costs, no better or worse than comparable airlines.
Things that I have (usually quietly) complained about over the years:

• buggy app and website
• flaky IFE and bad seats on the old 747s in the final years of service
• occasional issues with meal availability etc
• ocassional issues with ground staff at certain airports (poorly trained, bag drop opening late, etc).

Things that need improvement currently, in my opinion: - service in the economy cabin on long haul flights. During Covid crews stopped walking through the cabin in between meal services, and they’ve never come back. - those Beemster cheese sandwiches on EVERY single short haul flight. I happen not to like them, but they never offer anything else anymore, ever. - AMS lounges are overcrowded and understaffed, food is mediocre at best
One consistently positive point (unchanged over the years) is that I find KLM cabin crews always among the most friendly and helpful.
Obviously people who post their problems here have had a bad experience. These do of course happen (lost luggage, missed connections, etc), and have happened to me - but more often with other airlines than KLM. Have I just been lucky?

So, after years of not playing FO4, I wanted to do a WH 40k run, since I saw some interesting 40k mods, like the ones that replace BOS with space marines, Minuteman with Death korps, synths with Necrons, mutants with Orks, adds adeptus mechanicus and sororitas armors, etc. I actually think I mentioned almost all the mods I want to use but I think this big update surprise just ruined my plans, my questions are;
Would these mods have conflict with NG patch?, I read only SE dependant mods are having issues, can anyone confirm this?
By any chance, and I say this with low expectations, NG patch fixed stability/bug issues?, I would like to know considering the best mods for stabillity were SE dependant if I remember correctly and I won't enjoy a crashy buggy experience, I rather pass and wait for fixes, thanks!

The Penguins of Madagascar

"Just smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave."

The Penguins of Madagascar are four ordinary penguins turned secret commando team. Born in the frozen wasteland that is Antarctica, Skipper, Kowalski, and Rico spent their childhood in boredom, waddling along the ice with seemingly no destination in mind. They were constantly told by the rest of their colony that it was a dangerous world for a penguin, and something so "cute and cuddly" shouldn't take any risks. One day, the group witnessed a lone egg rolling down the snow towards an icy cliff. When they realized no one was going to help it, the three baby penguins leapt into action. They rescued the egg from certain doom, but in the process were separated from the rest of their group, stuck on a lone iceberg and floating towards an unknown future. It was that moment that Skipper, Kowalski, Rico, and the new hatching Private, became not only a team, but a family.
Fast forward a few years, and the Penguins of Madagascar have grown into a skilled group of elite commandos, partaking in various missions that have taken them all over the world, from New York to Madagascar to Africa to Europe. Over the course of their dangerous careers they have accumulated a wide variety of friends and allies. These range from the residents of the Central Park Zoo to the members of the spy agency North Wind. However they have also made no shortage of enemies, including Hans the Danish puffin, the Red Squirrel and the maniacal Dr. Blowhole.

Respect Threads

• Skipper
• Kowalski
• Rico
• Private
• Group Thread

Skipper

"Cute and cuddly, boys. Cute and cuddly."

Skipper is the leader of the group, devising tactics and gives orders. He is calculating, strict, paranoid, short-tempered, stubborn, and has a great disdain for hippies. Skipper's raving paranoia and tendency to view even the most ordinary activities as a military operation, combined with his experience in covert ops, has driven him to prepare for nearly any situation, no matter how bizarre or unlikely. While his antics do tend to alienate other animals outside of his commando team, more often than not his paranoia is proven justified, as he and his team have saved the world on multiple occasions.
Strength

• Slides into a metal door with enough force to dent it
• His punches shake a tree
• Forces open a giant alligator's jaws
• Crushes a golf ball with his flipper
• Throws a plastic unicorn toy with enough force for it to get stuck in a brick wall
• Repeatedly breaks himself out of a block of ice that was "Antarctic cold"

Speed/Agility

• Dodges a multitude of darts from a booby trap
• Dodges a large missile multiple times
• Dodges multiple lasers while charging towards an experimental laser turret
• Slides fast enough to stay ahead of Officer X's combat van
• Jumps over 1 1/2 stories onto a rising platform
• Bounces and flips around several lamp posts, rocks, and trees, eventually knocking out some pins with an explosive dive kick

Durability

• Gets kicked into a brick wall by Joey the kangaroo, cracking it
• Gets kicked high into the air by his evil android doppelganger, who was strong enough to crack concrete
• Kowalski's Nexto Skeleton knocks him through a bench with a rocket kick
• Gets pounded into the concrete by Bada
• Gets slammed into a concrete wall by Roger, creating a penguin shaped indention
• Falls through the roof of a plane mid flight
• Gets blasted into a stone wall by an explosion
• Gets shocked by the Zoo's new electric field
• For a short while, he walks across pavement that was hot enough to turn an egg to ash in 3 seconds
• After being buried alive, gets blasted through the dirt with a piece of dynamite and is perfectly fine

Skill

• Even while unconscious, his reflexes always keep him ready to fight
• Fends off the other penguins with relative ease
• Throws a playing card with enough accuracy to cut a four ropes keeping the penguins suspended in the air as well as a rope holding up a chandelier
• Throws a coin, which cuts two ropes and frees Maurice, bounces off a wall, cuts another rope and frees Mort, and finally bounces off another wall and turns off a light switch

Kowalski

"Okay Kowalski, wow me."
"Behold, a portal to times past. The Chronotron!"
"So, its a time machine?"
"Well, yes."
"So why not call it a time machine?"
"Sure, yeah. And while we're at it, let's call the Great Wall a fence, the Mona Lisa a doodle, and Albert Einstein Mr. Smarty Pants!"

Kowalski is the brains of the operation. He is a brilliant inventor, creating a multitude of different inventions and gadgets to help the penguins on their missions. If given enough time, there are few things that he couldn't invent. Unfortunately, most of the time his inventions cause serious trouble for the team, either falling into the wrong hands, turning against Kowalski, or just exploding. Not to mention, despite his intelligence, he cannot read (although he still carries around a clipboard to record drawings of their plans). He tends to over-analyze situations, trying to perfect every minute detail of a plan before he acts. This often causes the team more harm than if he would just act. That being said, he is still an invaluable member of the Penguins. Without him, they would simply be a couple of ordinary penguins that can do flips and karate chop people.
Strength

• Slides into a metal door with enough force to dent it
• Kicks a bowling ball with impressive velocity into Private's face
• Pulls down a bill board
• Digs through solid concrete with nothing but a plastic spoon

Speed/Agility

• Jumps over 1 1/2 stories onto a rising platform
• Dodges a multitude of darts from a booby trap
• Dodges several laser beams from the Penguins' lair security protocol
• Slides fast enough to stay ahead of Officer X's combat van
• Wall jumps several times to climb out of King Julian's fake volcano
• Dodges and weaves around several spotlights

Durability

• Gets pulled by Rico with enough force to dent a steel door
• His Nexto Skeleton knocks him through a bench with a rocket kick
• Gets crushed by a swinging wrecking ball and is fine moments later
• Gets crushed under a large boulder
• Gets blasted into the air by Rico's rocket launcher
• Gets shocked by 5000 volt electrical cables twice
• Gets his face torched by the Penguins' flamethrower
• After being buried alive, gets blasted through the dirt with a piece of dynamite and is perfectly fine

Skill

• Flips and dodges around several attacks from chameleon tongues while being blindfolded
• Throws his abacus, which bounces off of both Badda and Bing and then returns to him (similar to Captain America's shield)

Intelligence/Gadgets

• Invents a machine that can remove someone's intelligence and store it in a cardboard box
• Invents a fully functioning time machine, which he uses twice to travel back in time. When three Kowalskis exist in the same space it rips a hole in the fabric of the universe
• Built a thermo fusion reactor within the penguin's base
• Invents the Helmet, which allows the user to move object with their mind, as well as summon any object they think of to them at a moment's notice
• Builds an invisibility ray
• Makes a laser gun that can revert things to their younger, fresher state, which turns Skipper into a baby and eventually back into an adult
• Creates a device that can stop time, (anyone that is touching the device at the time he activates it will experience the stopped time)
• Builds a mech suit, which he dubs the nexto skeleton, that can fly, shoot missiles, is strong enough to life a large boulder over his head, and can even rebuild lost limbs out of seemingly nothing
• Builds a machine that can clone an exact replica of any living organism, as long as it has their DNA (which he uses to bring a dodo bird back to life)
• Built an anti gravity gun
• Hacks into a traffic light with relative ease

Rico

"B-but that shouldn't have worked! It breaks all known rules of science!"
"And that's why we call Rico a maverick. He makes his own rules."
[BLEH BL-BLAH BL-BLUH BLAH BLEH]

Rico is the group's weapons and explosives specialist who mainly communicates through grunts and squeals. With a stomach that defies reality, Rico swallows a plethora of useful tools and weapons and regurgitates them when needed, including ones that appear to be too large to have been swallowed in the first place. Rico has a few screws loose, so the other Penguins need to keep him on a tight leash lest he lose his mind in a dynamite filled frenzy. That said, Rico's love for explosions and destruction is an asset that Skipper has no problem letting lose on their enemies or any problem that the team may be facing.
Strength

• Breaks a fairly large hole through a brick wall
• Pulls Kowalski with enough force to dent a steel door
• Lifts an anvil over his head
• Bites through a lock
• Digs through concrete at an incredibly fast with two plastic spoons

Speed/Agility

• Jumps over 1 1/2 stories onto a rising platform
• Dodges several laser beams
• Dodges one of the Red Squirrel's missiles
• Kicks Kowalski into the air, and by the time he falls back down, Rico had already got into, started, and drove the penguins Buggy next to their base to catch him
• Cuts up a fish into perfectly sized bites of sushi in just over a second
• Climbs over the zoo's main gate in seconds

Durability

• Slams into a brick wall, cracking it
• Falls directly onto a rhino's horn
• Gets crushed by a falling elephant
• Falls through the roof of a plane mid flight and is completely unharmed
• A bomb explodes inside of his stomach and he barely reacts
• Is right next to where Kowalski shot his newly acquired plasma blaster on turbo setting, which caused an explosion powerful enough to blow a hole in their concrete ceiling (that same plasma blaster on medium setting was able to disintegrate a lamp post in a single shot
• Gets hit by a static shock that is strong enough to knock out the power in the Penguin lair
• For a short while, he walks across pavement that was hot enough to turn an egg to ash in 3 seconds
• After being buried alive, gets blasted through the dirt with a piece of dynamite and is perfectly fine

Skill

• Fends off both Skipper and Kowalski with nothing but a doll as a weapon
• Throws Marlene like a boomerang, bouncing her off of both Bada and Bing's heads and then catching her
• Shoots 3 fish out of the air with a crossbow

Swallowing/Regurgitation
Rico is able to regurgitate whatever Skipper needs as long as he has it locked away in his intestines. As soon as an object, weapon, or tool is needed he can produce it almost instantly.

• Spits up a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse and immediately regurgitates a flash light
• Spits out a grenade filled with knock out gas
• Regurgitates a massive missile which is far larger than he is
• Continuously regurgitates hook shots so he can swing from buildings like Spider-Man
• Spits a small anchor into the air with enough velocity to strike him in the head a couple seconds after it leaves his mouth
• Regurgitates a chainsaw with enough velocity to fly into the air and cut through a sewer pipe
• Fires screws fast enough for them to secure a metal door in place and keep Jiggles the slime contained
• Throws up a cinder block with enough force to send a leopard seal flying backwards

Private

"Private, options."
"Hello? I'm the options guy!"
"But not when it comes to matters of the heart. That's where young Private here shines."

Private is the emotionally sensitive, British-accented rookie of the Penguins of Madagascar. Though younger and less experienced than the other penguins, he is the most down to earth and compassionate. Private tends to offer simpler, more commonsense solutions in response to Skipper and Kowalski's complex strategies, often in an understated tone while those strategies are falling apart. He also has an affinity for unicorns.
Strength

• Slides into a metal door with enough force to dent it
• While underwater, he kicks a baby leopard seal which flies into an adult leopard seal, reversing its momentum
• Stops a massive leopard seal from falling off an icy cliff
• Hangs onto his golf club as he uses it to swing their golf cart around a tree

Speed/Agility

• Jumps over 1 1/2 stories onto a rising platform
• Dodges several darts shot out from one of Kowalski's booby traps
• Dodges several lasers from the Penguins' security system
• In the flash that Dave's monster ray is fired, he frees himself from his bindings and hides beneath a piece of machinery without anyone noticing
• Out swims a leopard seal for a short while
• Deflects a golf ball with his club
• Wall jumps multiple times to get to the top of the zoo's gates

Durability

• Gets karate chopped by Skipper to the ground
• After covering one of Rico's bombs with a bucket, he gets blasted through the roof of the zoo's security building
• Gets crushed between Skipper and a concrete wall after an explosion blasts Skipper into him, leaving a Private shaped indention in the wall
• Falls from the outskirts of the Earth's atmosphere and crashes to the ground below
• Gets dropped onto an electric fence by Savio
• For a short while, he runs across pavement that was hot enough to turn an egg to ash in 3 seconds
• After being buried alive, he gets blasted out of the ground by a piece of dynamite and is fine
• Falls into a pit of rusty bear traps, which mildly injures him

Skill

• Defends himself from Skipper's strikes and disarms him while blindfolded
• Defeats over a dozen of Dr. Blowhole's minions with ease
• Fires a dart gun, which bounces off of several objects and walls before eventually hitting the light switch and turning off the lights

Cuteness

• Unlocks what Kowalski calls "quantum hyper cute", which causes anyone who sees him to faint because their brains are overloading from the cuteness
• By using himself as a power source, his cuteness is able to reverse the affects of Dave's monster ray

Teamwork

• Push an elephant into a cage
• Using Rico as a battering ram, they destroy a brick wall
• Forming a penguin chain, Kowalski, Rico, and Private support the weight of an elephant
• Kowalski, Rico, and Private manage to hold Officer X's van in place while it tries to drive away
• Incapacitate Capitaine DuBois and her men, tying them up and launching them out of a canon
• Take on a small army of Dr. Blowhole's lobster minions

Gear

• Grenades
• Rocket launcher
• Flamethrower that is hot enough to melt a lamp post
• Laser pen which can cleanly cut through stone
• Grappling hooks
• Jetpacks gifted to them by the North Wind spy agency

Using the Penguins on WWW

While it may vary from episode to episode, the penguins are all around the same ballpark in stats and skill. They're pretty well rounded, being able to withstand blows that damage stone and metal walls and can dish out those same kinds of hits. On top of that, most have dealt with minor esoteric damage types like heat, electricity, and cold. While they're not too crazy speed wise, they're all capable of aim dodging lasers and can avoid slower projectiles like darts. Combine that with their absurd agility and small size and these four will be extremely difficult to hit for opponents that are on their physical level.
However, it's the areas outside of physical stats that let the penguins fight above their weight class. They're all capable in close quarters combat, with Skipper being the clear standout (though Rico and Private have both shown to be able to hold their own against him under the right conditions). Rico is a walking armory that will give them access to any weapon in their arsenal at any time, Kowalski has plenty of inventions that most opponents won't have resistances too, and Private's hyper cuteness could certainly catch their opponents off guard.
The best way to beat these four is to split them up and fight them individually. They've shown many times that they are far greater than the sum of their parts, engaging in hit and run tactics or using one of their various haxes to battle opponents above their weight class. Kowalski and Private in particular are vulnerable to losing their composures if things aren't going their way in a fight (though I wouldn't exactly call that a strength for Skipper and Rico either).

My mum is staying with me and my youngest for a couple of weeks while my husband and eldest are abroad for a wedding. Her siblings have booked a cottage a couple of hours drive away from us and we had planned to have a day trip there (we have a dog so meeting at the cottage is not an option as it's not pet-friendly).
I have a rocky relationship with her siblings due to things that have been happening since I was a child. I decided to go NC after my wedding 11 years ago.
I've rarely seen them since then but have been civil when I have done. I've had a bit more contact with my mum's youngest sibling in the last few months and it hasn't been too bad. I still keep it at arm's length though in order to protect myself.
In the last couple of weeks I've noticed that my car boot/trunk isn't opening properly and the car dealership can't fit my car in until the end of the month to get it looked at so until then I'm making do without the boot.
I told my mum it's going to be difficult to manage a daytrip with the baby, buggy and dog and asked if they could come over to ours instead as they would have to pass this way on their way too and from the cottage. At first they seemed ok with it but now my mum's youngest sibling is sending her multiple texts asking if I can put the car seats down or asking if it's really necessary for me to bring a buggy (for a 9 month old baby on a day trip!!) as we won't be walking that much. They actually suggested that I bring the car seat instead. I can barely walk from the front door to the car on the driveway with the car seat let alone carry it along with me on a trip out!
They are all in their 50s and 60s and don't have children so they don't understand all the practicalities surrounding a trip out and I can't help but take their "suggestions" as disrespect. If I have said it will be difficult to come up then why not take my word for it? If alternative ways were possible I'd have thought of them. We're already on thin ice as it is and this kind of behaviour just makes me not want to see them. Am I overreacting here?

living in EU region, 300/150 plan, average ping of 130ms.
yesterday, dungeons were playable, now they are buggy as hell. i lost some of potential S+ runs due to the following things:

• Watcher getting bricked
• mobs not dropping keys for unlocking doors
• some secrets not loading

there are also more interesting bugs:

• trap arrows not flying from dispensers at all or they immediately stop flying after shooting

generally, these things were happening maybe 1 out of hundered runs, now they appear sometimes one after one.
anyone also having issues recently?

Completed the SS2 story last month and I wanted to express my thoughts on what made this mod great!
Of course, SS2 is well-known for its automatic settlement-building features with plots and city plans. HQ with the 3.0 automation update is also great, and there is a sense of satisfaction as you watch your people clean up the HQ and really turn it into a grand building. The war mechanics Chapter 3 introduces is abit buggy and finnicky especially when it comes to quest markers, but the story does a really good job teaching you the outpost, army-building, and conquest mechanics that may otherwise seem intimidating at first.
But here is the other thing that I think makes SS2 really great: the story and characters. The characters you meet all hype you up, acknowledge the great things you are doing rebuilding the commonwealth, and devote themselves to your cause. You get a sense that you truly are making an impact on people's lives, even if that's not really a thing reflected in-game. This especially aligns well if you are on a Minutemen playthrough as it makes you feel like the General you were supposed to be rather than being a glorified errand boy.
We should not be sleeping on the power of narrative experience and the impact it leaves on gameplay, and I think SS2's campaign shows us why. In a world where we increasingly feel like disposable cogs of the machine, it truly feels great and uplifting to hear characters call you 'Chief' and give you credit where credit is due.

Planning a successful event in London requires attention to many details, one of the most crucial being the quality of your audio setup. Whether you're organizing a corporate event, a music concert, or a private party, ensuring crystal-clear sound is paramount. This is where Chaps PA, a professional Surrey-based PA and audio hire company, excels. With expertise in providing live sound equipment and professional audio engineering services, Chaps PA guarantees that your event sounds spectacular.
Sound system hire London
When it comes to sound system hire in London, Chaps PA stands out due to its commitment to excellence and a broad range of services tailored to meet the unique needs of any event. Here’s why you should consider them for your next event:
​

1. Comprehensive Audio Solutions: Chaps PA offers a wide selection of high-quality sound equipment suitable for events of all sizes, from intimate gatherings to large-scale concerts. Their inventory includes state-of-the-art speakers, microphones, mixers, and amplifiers, ensuring that every note and word is heard clearly.
2. Expertise and Experience: With years of experience in the industry, Chaps PA’s team of professional audio engineers are adept at setting up and managing sound systems for various events. Their expertise ensures that the audio is perfectly balanced and tailored to the acoustics of the venue.
3. Customized Services: Understanding that every event is unique, Chaps PA provides customized solutions to match your specific needs. Whether you need a simple PA system for a corporate meeting or a full-fledged sound setup for a music festival, they have you covered.

Speaker Rental London – Quality and Reliability
The cornerstone of any good sound system is its speakers. Chaps PA offers top-notch speaker rental in London, ensuring that your event benefits from powerful and clear audio. Here’s what sets their speaker hire services apart:
​

1. Variety of Options: From compact speakers ideal for small indoor events to powerful outdoor systems, Chaps PA offers a range of speakers to suit any venue and event type. They stock brands known for their superior sound quality and reliability.
2. Professional Setup and Support: Renting speakers from Chaps PA means you also get the benefit of their professional setup services. Their technicians ensure that the speakers are optimally placed and configured, providing consistent and high-quality sound throughout the event.
3. Flexible Rental Plans: Whether you need speakers for a few hours, a full day, or an extended period, Chaps PA offers flexible rental plans to accommodate your schedule and budget.

Speaker Hire London – The Chaps PA Advantage
Hiring speakers from Chaps PA means more than just getting high-quality equipment; it means partnering with a team dedicated to making your event sound amazing. Here’s how they make a difference:
​

1. On-Site Technical Support: Chaps PA provides on-site technical support during your event. This ensures that any audio issues are promptly addressed, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your event.
2. Competitive Pricing: Despite offering premium services and equipment, Chaps PA maintains competitive pricing. This makes them an excellent choice for events with varying budgets without compromising on quality.
3. Customer Satisfaction: Chaps PA has built a reputation for reliability and customer satisfaction. Their commitment to delivering outstanding audio experiences has made them a preferred choice for many event organizers in London and Surrey.
   London speaker hire
   

For anyone looking to elevate their event with superior sound, Chaps PA offers the best solutions for sound system hire, speaker rental, and speaker hire in London. Their extensive range of high-quality equipment, combined with professional audio engineering services, ensures that your event sounds as good as it looks. With Chaps PA, you can be confident that your guests will have an unforgettable auditory experience.
To learn more about their services or to get a quote for your event, visit their website or contact their friendly team today. Let Chaps PA take your event to the next level with impeccable sound quality.

I reach into my inventory and pull out the tablet I received from the gacha mechanism I am the "Owner" of. I watch as the thing turns on and I begin to fiddle with it, going through a brief registration as I walk over to the part of my apartment that serves as a kitchen and I open my refrigerator door. I take a step back and decide to get creative and practice using my powers.
I close my eyes and use magic, casting spells to telekinetically reach into the fridge and pull out ingredients. This is messy and difficult but it results in me gaining experience and a new skill "Spatial Magic". I feel the keen impact of "Experience Booster" as even simple motions, and failures, grant me valuable experience. I keep my eyes on the tablet and I deftly manipulate it while I maneuver the food I plan to cook over to the appropriate parts of the kitchen. I deal with bouts of "Buggy" all the while but nothing actually disruptive. The drawback is annoying but so far it's been a nuisance more than anything else.
The tablet is easy to use and I feel my appreciation for the technology growing as I sync it up to the local wifi and I notice that the thing has an unlimited battery. The device promises to be useful with its unlimited battery...
I switch my class over to chef as I begin to cook. At the same time I skillfully use the tablet to listen to the news and I finally begin to have a reliable mechanism through which I can learn about the world I'm in. My cooking grants me experience, which "Master of All" makes universal, while I actively advance my "Passive Listening" skill and I grow in my overall awareness of the world around me. I fastidiously store every morsel of knowledge I acquire as I cook, and in minutes I have more food than I made yesterday. I again taste some of it and smile, satisfied by the skill I'm showing. The food tastes noticeably better today than it did last night. This is a trend that will absolutely continue in the days to come thanks to MoA and my dedication to honing my skills.
I take a beat to photograph the food, carefully and diligently using the multitude of experience I've earned since I gained that skill last night to snap some good pictures before posting them on social media and quickly writing a caption about "Meal-Prepping" which this kind of is. I'm better at it than any normal person could ever hope to be, since my food is fresh and will stay fresh in my inventory. After I do that I store the food, placing it safely in containers I own and then storing said containers in my inventory.
For the rest of the night I use my tablet to learn about the world while carefully practicing the magic I can use on myself and other objects. I gain a skill named "Enhancement Magic" which is certainly handy, and I also gain a "Meditation" skill after looking online for what "Real Gamers" would do and finding that this concept seems to exist in this world as well. While I am meditating I do indeed recover my arcane energy faster, and I even improve my intelligence attribute! As of this point in time I have not improved charisma, but this is the only attribute of mine that hasn't risen by at least one point thanks to the incredible synergy between "Master of All" and "Experience Booster".
Before I know it it's Thursday and I am on my way to work. I have another uneventful day of simply working to fix the backlog my company is in and thus grinding experience for skills. At lunch I again surprise my friends, but I share more of my food with them and get more experience with my chef class, It is enough to level up, and I select a skill that allows me to prepare a touch more food with my ingredients than is physically possible, which I know will come in handy down the line.
At the end of the day I go to the gym again and this time I explore the place fully. I find that it has several amenities, such as a decently large pool, numerous studios and even a few rings for sparring and martial arts-based physical conditioning. I keep my workout today simpler than it was two days ago, and as a result of this I only gain two skills: jogging and sprinting. I test my endurance and jog for close to an hour as a sort of light workout. For the last five minutes of the hour I go as "Full tilt" as I can on a mundane treadmill and effortlessly endure the experience, thanks to the tenacious "Tough As Nails" perk. While I'm working out I activate my gacha machine and get a ring that I cannot use as it boosts my charisma and I am prohibited from using stat enhancers like this by one of my drawbacks. I tuck it away in my inventory and mentally sigh. I'll undoubtedly need to get used to this kind of thing, since my "Starting Equipment" drawback is actually pretty significant even if it's only a temporary inconvenience.
I work out for a decent bit before heading home. At home I initiate work on longer-term projects. I don't bother making food today, though I continue to hone magic while utilizing my "Mage" class, and I also use my tablet to begin to do creative things like create graphics, write, and even try my hand at making websites from scratch. One minor seed I plant while attempting to get new skills is that I email a few charitable groups, particularly soup kitchens, hoping to get the chance to more easily grind "Chef" since it seems I get the biggest amounts of experience whenever food I cook gets eaten by others. I do this all for the sake of gaining new skills, ones which I prove able to gain very easily and I will be able to grind even more easily. My ability to just... not sleep proves it's worth its weight in gold, or choice points, as I use another night to grind valuable experience.
Throughout the night I keep hoping to get assigned a quest for a class like "Psionic" or "Psychic" and so far I've had no luck. A part of me wonders if I should be tricky and try to use my pseudo-psychic powers in front of someone but I quickly realize that such an action would be just as likely to get me a deception-based class as it would be to get me what I seek...
Friday rolls around and I complete my work week with ease. Work really is just a chance for me to grind my skills, and each day my speed, accuracy, and overall badassery in the context of my boring job increase. In days I've managed to sort through a healthy portion of the backlog we've been stuck in thanks to the fact that my speed and accuracy with stuff like typing. "Buggy" becomes less and less meaningful, thanks my slowly improving luck, as well as my ever increasing speed.
I don't level up as a chef today, but it doesn't matter since towards the end of my shift I get an email from a coordinator of a soup kitchen that is based out of a church near my apartment that asks me to stop by tomorrow for a chance to discuss what volunteering would look like and potentially help out for part of a shift. This news delights me and for my first non-picture post on social media I share how excited I am to have the chance to learn about volunteering. This post immediately begins to get likes on websites like the local equivalent of Twitter, a website and app named Chitchat. Some of the likes come from my coworkers, a handful of whom have found me and followed me.
At home I finally take the time to thoroughly and properly clean spaces such as my bathroom and to effectively organize the tiny living space I have. The activities are enough for me to earn new skills, with one particularly handy new skill being the "Cleaning" skill. I don't gain a new class, but for the most part this is to be expected. I suspect if I level up a class enough I'll automatically get access to new, "Prestige" classes seeing as that's one of the features I paid for with regards to my skills, but aside from that it seems that to gain new classes I need to effect others with my skills. Gaining some type of cleaner class will probably take me cleaning a public space, which is a fascinating thought to entertain as I can do such a thing under the cover of acting "Charitably".
As I sit in the cramped space I'm currently calling a home I wonder how altruistic I would be in a fully mundane, completely organic situation...
Right now I am achieving selfless ends but for entirely self-serving reasons. I want to work at a soup kitchen, to volunteer my time and energy not to help someone but to empower myself as this provides me with the easiest means to cook food for other people in ways that will award me a significant amount of experience. It's true that I am achieving positive, beneficial ends, not only for myself but for others as well, but given the simple reality that my motives are so impure it's a bit difficult to sit here and pretend that I'm a righteous sort. Though I doubt the people I'm helping will actually mind that my motives don't stem from a heart of gold...
I am steadily continuing my journey towards getting stronger as I swiftly type away using my tablet's digital keypad. A video is playing via picture-in-picture and I'm listening to a chef talk about making delicious soup on a budget, mostly to get myself in the right state of mind. Eventually that video ends and I quickly listen to I'm writing out a short fantasy story, as an exercise in creative writing. The words are flowing and I'm easily getting into the grove.
The secondary train of thought I possess is keeping track of the bars associated with my attributes and is noticing that this odd exercise is directly increasing my intelligence and charisma attributes, as it seems that some activities are nice tests of more than one attribute.
I devote myself to this particular sort of training all while I use simple casts of my telekinetic magic to hone my growing familiarity with an incredibly vital field of magic. By the time Saturday morning rolls around I've gained a point in charisma and increased my writing level several times, which has the effect of granting me levels in other skills such as singing and speed typing. At this point I can write nearly 300 words a minute, a hilarious number for me to be able to type and by the time I'm done with this jump that number will surely be much, much higher thanks to the nature of my job as well as my favorite perk Master of All.
When it's late enough on Saturday that the sun is out I find myself on the sidewalk, slowly walking towards a cafe. I have a short bit of time before I need to go to the soup kitchen so I decide to grab some breakfast someone else cooked, as a bit of a treat. The cafe is a quaint little thing located not terribly far from my apartment and pretty close to the church the soup kitchen is operating out of.
Soup kitchens operating out of churches was something I heard of back on the "Earth" I hail from, but it's not something I ever actually saw... This version of Earth really seems to have taken after various stereotypes and assumptions about Earth that didn't always reflect reality.
I enter the cafe and walk towards the back of the line of people waiting for a chance to order their food. The line ahead of me isn't huge, but it's bigger than I would have thought if someone asked me to picture a line at a cafe. The cashiers diligently do their jobs and in a matter of minutes I'm walking towards a cashier. I feel the subtle effects of TDOL as I approach a strikingly pretty cashier.
The woman is a surprisingly tan, probably Hispanic, redhead whose hair smells of somewhat newly applied hair dye. She smiles brightly at me as I approach her. She is... quite pretty, and as I approach her I dare to wonder if there's a sort of persuasive route I can take to getting her number. Internally I smile as I sense the back of my mind, the unconscious part of my mind, sort through potential conversational strategies that might allow me to successfully flirt in the short time frame I have to interact with her. I pause time with one of my perks, and allow my rapid mind the time it needs.
I feel various perks working together as I use "Observe" on the cashier. A small load of information appears in my head allowing me to learn her name, as the cafe doesn't require nametags, and various minor facts about her. This is due to the fact that "Observe" has slowly and steadily increased in level over the last few days, and each time it increases in level it's cooldown decreases and how much I learn when I use it increases as well.
What I have just learned is factoring into the strategies and instincts I feel considering my desire. My perks powerfully hone my charisma, turning it into a valuable weapon and tool in my toolkit when it comes to interpersonal stuff. I allow my mind a second, as I decide on my strategy and then with a thought I unpause reality itself. I walk over to the redheaded Hispanic woman with a smile.
"Hey there, how's it going?" I ask with a happy grin and she smiles back at me. She asks what I'd like and I reply with whatever she thinks tastes the best. This surprises her, and my smile relaxes a touch.
"I'm about to go into an interview for a volunteering opportunity and I wanted to grab something light for breakfast. I'll be honest I'm not normally one for breakfast foods but I'm trying to broaden my horizons." I reply, relaxedly. She sizes me up and then taps some of the keys on her cash register. A number appears on the thing and she asks me for my name. I give it to her and she types it into the machine as well, before holding her hand out for my payment.
"You're not gonna tell me what it is?" I ask and she smiles in a curiously catlike fashion before replying.
"Only if you ask." She says, and for a moment I look at her and decide, instinctually, not to do so. She nods when I hand her my card, and she quietly calls me funny. She hands me my card and a receipt, and I fill out the paperwork with a confident grin on my face. I walk over to where other customers are waiting for their food, and I wonder if I made the right moves. I don't have to wait long, as when I get my order I am pleasantly surprised that the top napkin of the handful placed on the tray my food was given to me on has a number scrawled onto it, and the girl's name written in what I assume must be her handwriting.
The order I receive, Hannah's suggestion, is a light turkey croissant, and a delicious, fruity drink. I enter the number into my phone and text the cashier immediately, though I don't anticipate getting a response until a bit later. My message is simple, it's a short introduction and a thank you for the dish.
I do the stereotypically millennial act of photographing the food, posting it online, and then actually eating it, taking only a short few minutes to do so, and when I'm done I clean up after myself before I quietly leave the cafe. I smile as I feel the early morning sunshine beam down on me. This is the first chance I've really had to appreciate the sunlight during the day, as it's decently in the middle of Autumn and so most of my day is spent at work.
The church I'm heading to is visible from where I'm standing, so I appreciate its beautiful architecture, which reminds me of a Protestant church back in my version of the United States, for a second before making my way there. Reaching it only takes me the duration of a short walk and I arrive there early enough that I am about ten minutes early. This is within the window of polite earliness that I am used to back in my homeworld. I switch my class over to chef again as I wait to be seen. In minutes I am speaking to a kind-eyed older Black man who is the church's pastor.
Thanks to perks and my very specifically busted, for this kind of thing, build, I am able to make a hilariously good first impression on the kind pastor who runs the soup kitchen. I spend much of the rest of the day here, doing m. In minutes I'm assisting several more experienced cooks with doing minor preparatory work for tomorrow's meal hour. The soup kitchen is open every weekend, and I make a very good impression on my fellow chefs thanks to my class, skills, and knowledge I gained when it comes to soup making last night, though the food we make is varied.
I diligently follow instructions, having wisely told my fellow chefs that I'm new to cooking, and as I cook with the chefs, I level up my cooking class again. This time the upgrade I select is a boost to the speed at which I can produce food, cutting down how long it takes me to cook something by 2%, a rate which will increase as I level up more. This is not a big improvement, but in time... In time this'll become something astounding.
During this time I've also been getting occasional text messages from Hannah. We've been chatting and I've taken pictures with some of my new friends during brief lulls between intensive moments of culinary action. This habit of mine has gotten weird looks from my new friends, all of whom are older than me, but given my enthusiasm and "natural" skill, no one has actually tried to criticize me or get me to stop. It seems that everyone considers me a bit of a lucky charm, and to be fair... I am.
I cook with the chefs for well over five hours, and they are surprised to feel the effects of perks in my possession. This is a rare opportunity for me to be a leader and team player so I happily contribute my perks to the success of the kitchen. I am a dynamic, impossibly fast learner, and so by the time two hours have passed I'm cooking and engaging with my new friends with a stunningly natural rapport and flow, but beyond that I'm able to use "Teamworker" and "Motivator" two of my "Generic Cubicle" perks for the first time. This gets coupled with the power of "Support", which makes my allies far more effective at everything. By the tme the first hour passes and I get into my grove we're cooking faster, and we're making fewer mistakes, as well as finding it easier to manage the necessary chaos that comes with working in a decently large kitchen. Even my luck is contagious!
By the time the pastor, who has been cooking alongside us, says that we've done enough for today and can do the rest tomorrow it's partway through the afternoon. In a moment of inspiration, after a long day working in the kitchen, I ask the pastor to pray over the food and for us, which he smiles at me for and motions for everyone to bow their head in prayer. I do as everyone else does, and am thankfully when people do not grab hands around me. I have an idea I want to test out and to do it I need everyone to either leave or have their eyes shut for a moment.
I use my enhanced senses to easily track when everyone's eyes are shut and when they are I open mine and quickly cast a spell aimed at the food. The spell I cast is a simple healing spell and I am doing this to see if I can enchant and enhance food with magic. The big pot, filled with a healthy soup meant to supplement a smaller dish like some bread, begins to glow and I smile as I shut my eyes. The glow is subtle and only lasts a brief second so when it ends no one seems to notice it. This brings a smile to my face, as does the acquisition of a pair of new skills I get which freezes time for a split second but is worth it: one is named "Stealth-Casting" and even before I read the description I know what it does: it makes it harder to detect my magic, especially when I don't use it on living creatures. This skill is worth its weight in gold and when everyone looks at me I am cheesing pretty hard. The other skill is named "Enhancement" and it allows me to funnel supernatural energy into objects to subtly enhance them. This skill... this is one of the foundational attributes of some versions of alchemy, and the knowledge that I have acquired such a beauty of a skill is incredibly exciting. I tell everyone I'm excited for tomorrow, and no one has any difficulty believing me, definitely only thanks to my perks bolstering my charisma.
We all quickly get ready to go home, and I am sad to say farewell to my new friends but I am quick to assure everyone I'll be here bright and early on Sunday. On Sundays, the team, whoever can make it at leasr, is here from 9:30 until 2:30, primarily serving food and doing kitchen maintenance. I plan to join them. As I walk home I use my gacha mechanic and I get a water bottle that serves as an arcane energy potion I can use once a day to completely refill my arcane energy pool!
I arrive home uneventfully, and I make use of my new toy immediately, the instant that my arcane pool runs out of energy after I run out of energy the first time, as I train my magic and my other skills for the rest of the day. At the same time I text Hannah and a handful of my coworkers who message me on Flickpic, this world's version of Instagram, while I grind through the night. Sunday rolls around, and not super long after the sun peeks out over the horizon I make my way to the church, ready to serve the community and potentially level up some more. One minor thing I get, after using my gacha mechanic today, that I don't think I'll, personally, ever need is a pillow which protects against bad dreams. It's a neat curiosity, and I plan to keep it, but seeing as I don't sleep I think it'll be more for my friends, romantic interests, and anyone else who I might give it to for a short while.

I recently left my employer about 3 weeks ago, it has almost been 1 month. To be honest with you, it has been severely mentally exhausting determining if I made the right decision. It is way less stressful being unemployed with no plans for a new one than the opportunity to return to working for them. The actual thought of having the engage with my coworkers and supervisors genuinely causes me anxiety. I genuinely felt like my decision was warranted at the time, but since then I have been wondering if the narcissist is actually me? Or is feeling this a result of what I have endured for the last two years?
Here is the full story, from the start of when I was hired, because I need some third party insight into what happened here, and if maybe I'm in the wrong? To keep in mind, I'm a software engineer, or well I was once considered a software engineer...they seemed to strip that title away from me over the course of my time employed.
To start, I was working at a company who I had been with since college, they treated me well, the company was well organized but I was falling behind on bills and could barely pay rent. I was seeking other opportunities in fields such as the gaming industry but I lost my confidence when I was ghosted by my dream job. I had asked my supervisor for a pay increase, but they couldn't afford or justify it at the time.
I must have put my resume or my information in some recruiting or hiring system, because randomly one day at work I began being bombarded with emails, which eventually turned to a phone call. The recruiter mentioned an Application Support Engineer role that I would be a good candidate for, making double what I was making. The experience level seemed very light, and it appeared to be more of a support role for more pay. Thus, I felt this to be an easy way to make more money so it piqued my interest. I interviewed, and noticed several red flags from the supervisor immediately. He seemed very busy, and he couldn't answer specific questions on what the role would entail. I mentioned I had developer experience, and was largely a software dev which he replied that he was looking for more people on his team with that sort of background. He mentioned creating and writing custom tools to help streamline their testing processes.
The recruiters were very pushy, gauging my interest in the position almost immediately after I had spoken to the hiring manager who said that he really liked me and my experience and wanted to hiring me ASAP. So, feeling like I had to make a quick decision I promptly replied yes and notified my old job with a two weeks notice. Before I left, my program supervisor set up a one on one with me, in which he tried to retain me. He prompted the question of where I was going to so I told him. He hesitated and expressed caution, saying that there would always be a place with me at my old job if it didn't work out. He said he had previously worked for the company years ago and it was riddled by financial issues and company layoffs. However, I really needed the money and when mentioning retainment, my old job couldn't pay me enough to get by. So unfortunately I did have to go. But, boy was he so right.
Before I started I felt uneasy about a legal document I had to sign prior to starting, a Non-Compete agreement that specified a 3 year time frame where I could not work for competitors. The verbiage was confusing as the timelines outlined in the agreement specified 1 year in all the terms, but then there was another mention of the agreement extended 3 years. Nonetheless, I signed it because I was desperate for cash. The consequences of this hurt me later. When i was hired, I was hired with a title of Systems Engineer that did not match the original job posting the recruiter had referred me for. Keep in mind, on my resume it clearly outlined my developer experience, as this will add context later.
When I first started, I wasn't sure if i had been spoiled at my last job and perhaps ungrateful. They gave me a laptop that hadn't been cleaned off, and was old and slow. I still had this laptop for the entire 2 years I worked for them, even though they mentioned they would get me a new one the following week. The first week, I was given ridiculously easy tasks, and could tell it was busy work. There was ample work to do, given the company's entire wiki space was disorganized, but yet I was expected to 'read up on the documentation' that was hard to find and I could barely understand anything of what the company's actual product was, or how it was intended to behave. There was another girl who started with me on the same day, who had also been a developer, one of which being the company that was my dream job. However based on our conversations, she didn't seem to understand or know the same things as a developer so It was unclear what she had worked on. She had more strengths with databases, while I had not had much exposure so we formed a friendship and comraderie. This girl however was a little pushy, always giving me food when I'm kind of a picky eater and didn't 100% feel comfortable with a lot of the offerings but still nonetheless ate them to make her feel appreciated! We spent a week or more of doing pretty much nothing, on the company's dime. I expressed to my boss that I wanted work, because I was severely bored and used to working remotely. Instead I was forced to be in the office with absolutely no real work to do.
Given i was a front-end engineer prior, I took it upon myself to use dev tools to inspect the web application's source. It was an absolute mess. The web application was buggy, not all the buttons worked, and it was quite baffling. 'This is what we are releasing to our customers? They deal with this?" For someone coming from a robust company with clear process and a tough senior mentor who was an absolute expert at web development, I was really confused on why my time wasn't allocated to help assisting with some of the clear bugs in the software. So i posed this to my Manager, he seemed on board. However, when i didn't hear back I decided to ask the scrum master when I could move to the development team, given I wasn't being given any work and I felt that I could contribute some value with my skills. To which she replied, 'You don't have enough experience' and laughed. I was completely baffled, and angered. Enough experience? I thought in my head, as I looked at the woman eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich, who I had observed pretty much did nothing the entire day other than creating tickets and getting the other boss's attention to also mention had no knowledge of software or technology. I was visibly angry and she laughed more. My coworker witnessed me talking to her, and told me 'Be patient, our time will come." So i tried to forget about it.
Then enter in the golden systems engineer. This dude never ever came to meetings, I didn't even know he was on the team. He was actually one of the guys who was supposed to participate in an initial interview with me but couldn't be bothered to show because he was so 'busy.' And well he would make sure he was for sure, based on what I observed from him. He decided his own work, he didn't hardly communicate with the boss, and he spoke negatively in any area he could. He described the software as complex, and I firmly disagreed. I outlined to him what I knew about the concept and he told me I was wrong, when I certainly wasn't given I had already had a firm grasp on what the actual behavior of the system was. I again got frustrated as I was being told information that did not match reality. My coworker comrade also had problems with him, and she told me that it wasn't just me. Eventually, we had to shadow this guy to do some tasks that really had me contemplating quitting already, in less than a month. I had no experience physically assembling hardware but yet, me and this other female coworker were asked to do so. We were intended to lift heavy machinery to assemble these servers. While golden engineer led the effort, telling us he could do it all if he wanted to and didn't really need us. So i mumbled under my breath as I built them, but started looking on the bright side. Hey, at least I don't have to think about anything right now, not like I'm using my actual skills and or my brain. This would later come back to hurt me. Part of their plan i guess.
My boss started noticing I was working faster than others and completing things quickly, and eager for new work. So he put my on my first software project, with a new software project manager. I was expected to be following the guidance of golden engineer and some other guy who was apparently a part of the team but couldn't be bothered to ever show either. More about him later. Scrum master lady started asking me to teach her my knowledge of software. Maliciously, I found it ironic given this was the same woman who told me I didn't have enough experience to be a developer, given I was literally a developer not even a few weeks prior working at my old job. Oh how the tables turned, but I still gave her what she needed. So on this project, I had no idea what was going on, and I would ask for help, but people just expected me to 'learn it' like i 'learned everything else.' I felt like they were trying to challenge me expecting me to fail so I would dial my enthusiasm back. But it didn't deter me, I was working well on my own and didn't need much help.
Enter in the problem that randomly came up when I would report smooth sailing. Suddenly, one day the product broke and I couldn't resolve it myself. Golden engineer comes running in to save the day. I told him what I thought it was, and he said 'no no' and we dug into the issue for 3 hours. At those 3 hours, what I thought the problem was, was indeed the problem but worded in a different way for the golden engineer could understand. Extremely infuriating, as he still said 'well i fixed it!' Could he had not say 'we fixed it?' no of course not.
So of course this showed that I still needed help, which my boss told me well you're still learning! And this severely bothered me.
They sent me out to the project on my own, with the promise that someone would be going with me, but ghost man and golden engineer couldn't be bothered. I went and did the best I could on my own, and overall was successful. However, there was some strange behavior I noticed on the last day, as if someone had gotten into the system without my knowledge. Later this would be revealed as ghost man, but at the time I didn't know. The same issue I had previously, cropped up again. This time, instead of golden engineer I reached out to a developer as I felt she could maybe help me understand the nuances of the product and why it was so buggy. She seemed nice, but when I gave her the lines of code i thought were causing a problem she became volatile and said to 'work as support!' So this threw off my perception of her, and gave me a bad taste in my mouth since she seemed to similarly act like scrum master without acknowledging my skills. So i stayed quiet and did just that, because I figured 'i'm not an developer here.'
On top of all of this, i was doing well so I was given another project on top of this one. Same golden engineer above me leading the project. I was doing more development oriented tasks, but the problem was that the ecma script versions were not supporting the latest versions that I had used, so i couldn't use my arrow functions, const etc. And ultimately the golden engineer would put in shite solutions in simple js to accomodate a terrible data model. I can't elaborate more than that, but mapping the messages to do magic in the software was sort of his forte. He was definitely a hacker. Eventually, i found a lot of comfort working with golden engineer because he was given the best projects and the best tasks, so i felt somewhat honored to be working with him. But every now and then he would discourage me telling me 'i didn't know enough' or 'you messed that up!' etc. However, there were also really good pieces I did in which he would take that credit on his own as his own work. One being an idea i came up with for a new message in the API. But no, that was his idea in the end.
Then things hit the fan. I had too much work, and i realized it finally. I looked back and I was exhausted, working 60 hours a week. Where did the days of busy work go, where i suddenly find myself tasked with way too much? I was left out of critical meetings, and golden engineer took off one day when I had an important meeting with the client, knowing that he was the only one who knew the core detail about the project. I failed miserably in front of the client and was yelled at by the director. The product owner and golden engineer had had a meeting about a bug they were looking to cover up for the client and I was intentionally not included. After the fact, golden engineer even said 'Ahh yeah should have had you in that." But i was the one who cracked. I quit! It had been almost a year at this point and I was driving myself insane, looking around realizing I had been scrambling so hard trying to prove myself to people who seemed to be sabotaging me and watching me run around and waiting for their help. The main thing was that the director was an extreme ahole and had made me feel so inferior and lost.
But, I couldn't just get out so they tried to retain me. Director scary man was ironically one of the people who wanted me on his team?? Which seemed honestly strange considering he just told me I was not intelligent 3 days prior to quitting. He couldn't give me any valid reasons why I should join his team. The other option in QA seemed a lot nicer, the guy had clear reasons why I could provide value and i felt seen. So i joined that team. Unfortunately, the team didn't know what had happened and thought I had been promoted and were a little jealous i suppose. They all seemed to engage in the same tactics, undermining their boss, not listening to him or appreciating his kindness and ultimately my boss and the entire time was laid off. I was the only engineer who remained. It was baffling. My safe space was gone completely. I felt like I may be next.
And guess what happened? I was initially on the software engineering team at this point, because I didn't have a place. Two directors had seen me in action and were vying for me to be on their teams. However, at this point I felt a little strange working with the other developers, and with the Product Owner given he was known for sabotage so i felt like it was too good to be true, even though I really did admire the Software Engineering VP because he replaced scary director man who had that role prior. I was also scared and wanted to navigate to the role with the most job security. Given that developers had come and gone, and had been laid off and quit themselves. I was a little scared to be a developer at that point, thinking I may be embarassed publicly again as it had happened 2 times one including some barraging from the Software Engineering VP who i so much admired!
Scary director man was now in a different capacity with product management. I couldn't get a clear read on software VP, and i didn't feel like i was a good fit for devops who also wanted me so I expressed that I was a little bit more creative and felt like I could help with more of the design aspect, since I did want to strengthen some of my design skills given I had been out of the front end game for some time and had worked closely with product management at the time.
So big scary man calls me and asks if i want to join his team. Big mistake, and i knew i messed up but I guess i was optimistic in thinking that big scary man was one of the people who had advocated to keep me given the last layoffs. He gave me absolutely no work, and was always busy. It was like a repeat of year one. I started to see the reason why my first boss didn't give me tasks. He was reporting to big scary director man. I went in to the office to try to work with big scary director man and Product Owner. Product Owner and I were always meekly nice to each other, even after him sabotaging me but to me it all felt fake. I witnessed big scary director man yell at product owner, and we were then all forced to get lunch. 'Ahh what a wonderful time.' Then big scary man questions later why i don't want to do lunch outings with him. Also, weirdly at the annual conference, not sure if it was to save face or what but big scary man kept trying to engage with me and play games. I offered to play pool with him, but felt that he was critiquing even the way i held the pool stick. It was literally just meant to be a game, i thought we were having fun this wasn't necessarily a teaching moment.
One day, the company got into a bind. They had became delinquent on one of their contractual obligations and had angry customers. Ghost man who had been laid off in the second layoff round had an under the table solution that was giving customers information that the rest of the company had no idea about or how it worked. So when he was laid off, the product stopped working and the company was trying to scramble to reinstate the functionality of what it was doing. I took it upon myself to reverse engineer the product into something a little bit more LTS and controlled. This is where things heated up even more. I told big scary man about what i had done and he was pleased, but it was a big secret. I was told to not focus on the look and feel and the accuracy was what mattered. Eventually, this turned into a larger effort where I became a product owner of this tool and then another, and another that I invented and I felt like I was really making an impact.
However, there was so much sabotage going on unbeknownst to me. They told me to stop developing and to lead the developers to do it. Keep in mind the developers weren't necessarily fans of mine so they didn't really seem to like me or like this new power position. I found it a little funny considering I had just wanted to be a developer to work in peace without harassment and not necessarily be their boss. But big scary man wanted me to be the leader and not the developer. I found this confusing, but obliged. Big scary man never gave me any direction and he had a flying monkey cohort who would treat me like garbage, expecting immediate replies and even going as far (flying monkey) to say he was the project manager knowing that he had not created a single deliverable for the project. This man also knows nothing about software. They didn't appreciate my insights, when i told them something wasn't feasible they would ignore me and ask someone else.
Eventually, we cranked out a killed product but there were still some improvements that needed to be mad given the back and forth on requirements due to project manager flying monkey sticking his nose in places where he had no bearing. I tried to consistently explain to big scary man how I was feeling, but he didn't seem to care. He was actually the one who after I delivered a clear presentation on our status, demanded we release the following week. So i worked all weekend, just to come in delusional on Monday not able to work. It felt like an absolute shit show. The main developer who had been helping me work on the backend. (We would have daily sessions to go over the requirements, he felt like he couldn't contribute to the code due to the same experiences he had with developers and the PO not giving him tasks.) So i gladly locked arms with him and we brought in another girl given I couldn't work on the front end as per big scary man but i couldn't tell either of them 'Hey i'm not working on this because big scary man said so' Instead i had to tell them i was busy. But big scary man would never assign me work, so i actually wasnt. When i wasn't I'd find other things to stay busy so that it was true. But I promise i wanted so badly to work on it, I was genuinely told not to contribute to my initial prototype and work.
Several projects were like this, and everyone knew at this point that I had knowledge of development. But noone recognized me as a developer in any capacity. It was infuriating again. Not being able to do what you love, not being able to work on the things I wanted to and being told to write my own tasks was genuinely maddening. Then the comments started and the gossip. I only had a few close friends at work, one being the girl i started with the guy i locked arms with and the release manager who i trained when he started. I told all of them a few stories from my childhood and I noticed them starting to make little tiny subtle comments that only I would know were referring to my past. I couldn't justify or explain any of it. So again, I quit!
This time, the CTO called trying to retain me. He didn't believe my claims of harassment, even though he literally told me he felt the same - like an outsider when he joined the company. He literally justified my claims but also denied them at the same time. He said he didn't know i was a developer or had development experience. No one had told him. No one wanted to tell him. Everyone wanted someone else to be given credit. It was insane. I felt i was being set up, and again I was being exluded from meetings and I even started using the same tactics to save me and locked arms product. But locked arms couldn't be trusted, because he showed that he would be willing to throw u under the bus to save himself. He ended up blaming me in the last conversation we had. I was so disheartened, as I felt he was the only friend i had given the coworker i started with had written a nasty email criticizing my work, after telling me I was doing great. I don't know why she decided to forward it to me to make it look like she wasn't talking bad about me. CTO offered to retain me with a developer position, but I had to decline. I was so fed up and i was pissed that I finally got what I had wanted but couldn't take it because of all the toxicity floating around, and honestly hating myself for having to engage in these work politics. What got me the most was that the CTO mentioned i need to have 'thicker skin.'
So i left, and its been 3 weeks. But all the little flying monkey coworkers who gossiped about me have since reached out, one even going as far to ask me how I'm doing on bills. It's my mistake, as distraughtly when i left coworker who i started with called me while SHE was at work. Very strange, prompting me to hang up on her, but I had disclosed that I felt so alone and that I couldn't prove to everyone what had been happening and that in the past I had been diagnosed with different mental disorders such as OCD but it felt really real to me! And she said, no theres nothing wrong with you but would you be willing to come back to our team? And i just felt like no matter where i turned i was being sabotaged.
Every individual at the company with the exception of maybe a handful felt manipulative, deceiving and heartless. I wish i could elaborate even more but here is the real kicker.
The UI designs that were so 'terrible' that I did, were just published as their software product. That's not what their product looks like, its instead what the product i worked on looks like but they are advertising and marketing it as such. I broke down when i saw that, since its been so hard to get a job. I felt like I worked my butt off, and I miss the pay but I couldn't find any reason to continue to endure that. Was I wrong??
I know that this maybe hasn't been 100% clear, and i'm missing details because this is already so long. But ultimately, what happened?? Am i just crazy? Why would locked arms guy blame me, and then reach out 3 weeks later trying to insist me to call him to chat? Also, big scary guy hasn't reached out, nor my first boss. But first boss had made comments and ignored my messages prior to me quitting. They all seemed so fake. But maybe i'm the problem? I think i have to be at this point because none of this seems real to anyone I talk to. Well, at least it did when i was experiencing it but given i grew up with n parents - they have went back and said 'why do you think people don't like you?' It has genuinely been driving me insane. Please offer any help or feedback D:

Hi all.
This is probably fairly niche, even amongst this community, but I thought I'd put it out there as alongside aiming to retire at 55 (currently 38), it is the closest thing I have to a long-term life goal.
Realistically (and I imagine this might lead to a few downvotes, but we all get dealt different hands!) I won't be able to do this without my inheritance, which is something I dread, and feel guilty about even thinking of. Mum died last Summer (they had me late, at 42, she was 80 when she died), and Dad is thankfully in very good health. I'm an only child and their house is in Surrey, valued at around £850-900k, so if I've done my calculations correctly (again, I know it's practical to do so, but I hate myself a little for the thought) I'll be due a pretty sizeable windfall. Hopefully not very soon. But I appreciate that makes me insanely fortunate, even amongst the HENRY community.
All that said, I'm wondering if this is something anyone else has either done already (if so, share your story!), is in the process of planning, or even has a vague passing interest in?
I live in South Bucks currently, which we love, but, where land prices (with planning) are exorbitant - approx £250-300k per 0.1 acres 😖, so I already have a number of thoughts for how to approach that. As with anything, these range from low risk and high cost, to high risk and low cost.
I've pretty much been researching build systems, costs, design, the various routes (from self-PM all the way to turnkey, and the associated companies) for maybe 3 years already, and its become a bit of an obsession. Still, nice to have a new interest and appreciation for home design and architecture.
My loose goal is a total project cost of £1.5-1.8m, all in, likely on a 0.2-0.4 acre plot, and looking at a floor space between 3500 and 4500ft². Contemporary, plenty of glazing, double height atrium, complementary materials (sucker for slatted wood), and built on Passivhaus principles.
Who else shares my dream?

I started noticing a couple of years ago that I may not be getting notified about all the upcoming Etsy site-wide sales events (not the ones that they do that are specific to categories, but the big ones like Black Friday, Labor Day, etc.) that they're planning to hold. The most recent one this happened with is the Father's Day coupon code sale event that's going on right now. I know a lot of sellers are having trouble with this one being buggy or getting opted in when they didn't opt in, but I wasn't even given the option to opt in and this isn't the first time this has happened.
Etsy never sent me an email (I don't have anything in my spam folders) inviting me to run the sale, I had no message to run the sale in my Dashboard in any of the shops that I operate and I check the dashboard for each shop dozens of times per day or more. I check the Sale and Discounts page at least once a day for each of my shops, and I've never seen any mention of opting in to hold a Father's Day coupon code sale. The only way I found out there was even a sale event going on was because other sellers were reporting having issues with it.
This has happened to me with other sales in the past too. Last year, I wasn't notified about the Mother's Day or Father's Day sales, and didn't get notified anywhere about the Labor Day sale either. I counted my lucky stars that they bothered to show me a Dashboard notification for the Black Friday sale. The year prior, I wasn't notified about Father's Day or the Labor Day sales events.
I saw someone in another thread report that they have a section in their Sales and Discounts page that told them about upcoming sales events that they could opt in to. I don't have that section on any of my shops.
Anyone else experience this?

I started noticing a couple of years ago that I may not be getting notified about all the upcoming Etsy site-wide sales events (not the ones that they do that are specific to categories, but the big ones like Black Friday, Labor Day, etc.) that they're planning to hold. The most recent one this happened with is the Father's Day coupon code sale event that's going on right now. I know a lot of sellers are having trouble with this one being buggy or getting opted in when they didn't opt in, but I wasn't even given the option to opt in and this isn't the first time this has happened.
Etsy never sent me an email (I don't have anything in my spam folders) inviting me to run the sale, I had no message to run the sale in my Dashboard in any of the shops that I operate and I check the dashboard for each shop dozens of times per day or more. I check the Sale and Discounts page at least once a day for each of my shops, and I've never seen any mention of opting in to hold a Father's Day coupon code sale. The only way I found out there was even a sale event going on was because other sellers were reporting having issues with it.
This has happened to me with other sales in the past too. Last year, I wasn't notified about the Mother's Day or Father's Day sales, and didn't get notified anywhere about the Labor Day sale either. I counted my lucky stars that they bothered to show me a Dashboard notification for the Black Friday sale. The year prior, I wasn't notified about Father's Day or the Labor Day sales events.
I saw someone in another thread report that they have a section in their Sales and Discounts page that told them about upcoming sales events that they could opt in to. I don't have that section on any of my shops.
Anyone else experience this?

So I just finished my latest run and the results where not at all what I expected. Basically in this run I tried to achieve Yugoslavia ,and Rumburg reconciliation. The game is either really buggy or i just found some incredible stuff. In summary this was my playtrough:
Background:

• Middle income
• Studied history
• Human rights
• Former Red Youth

Choices:

• Built H3 (wanted to see if it made Agnland green without Agnolia deal - it did not) with SSC (found out you get consistent planned economy with 2 projects built with SSC and no health and edu privatization, without nationalization)
• Workers rights
• Tourism Act
• Reinforce Central bank
• Research crops
• banned Young Sords (you get Communist points for Yugoslavia run, and later when you unban them you can get green Human rights modifier)
• Stimulus checks
• Language Act (for Kesaro)
• built Morna port with SSC (cost 1 extra budget for some reason)
• Centralized Bergia
• Invested in Gasom with Rizia, set EPA to 49%
• Increased taxes on Large corporations, Smoke, Alcohol and Luxury

Increased funding in Health, Education and Law (ACP on OG, later on Oligarchs), Army maintained
Dictator constitution:

• Historic win (4 wealth lobby)
• 7 votes on Supreme court
• Strong decrees (Central bank, Trade commisnion, Death sentence)
• Impeach justices (later sentenced Soll to death)
• 2/3 veto (so assembly can pass Smoke, Alcohol and Luxury tax for me)
• Removed MoH
• 15% threshold

No Agnolia deal (fun fact: with History+Human rights+H3+relaxed immigration I could insult Hoorten all I wanted and he still offered good deal)
Wehlen full OBT (because Bluds right)
Valgsland alliance (didnt recognize Island for RP purposes)
Accepted Arcasia aid, eventually got both Contana and Arcasia investment
Now the strange part. Even tough i was generally anti Blud, and didnt attend Aschraf i still got Minority act and reconciliation (didnt even participate on Victory day)
Acted like the biggest Rumburg sucker:

• Didnt close embassy in Dome
• Sent whistleblower back
• Paid reparations

At the AN meeting, Queen condemned me for OBT and helping Valgish invasion, but my only respone was "Thank you for your kind words" (?? possible bug)
Later she called and demanded cities, i refused and even maneged to win war:

• Maintained military
• Didnt modernize
• Didnt remove consription
• Military Industry
• Transferred Gendarmerie to Lileas
• Rumburg wasnt even expeled from AN or OMEC

Strategy:

• Defensive, Wehlen covered flanks, Valgsland help on front
• Take Dome, Wehlen cover, Valgsland take Dome

At the end it even says only million civilians died (instead of 2 million)
So what do you guys think was I lucky or not? Does my war prove Valken is tactical genius?
For those who managed Rumburg reconciliation, how do I do that? And i read somewhere you can get her to stop funding BFF or something is that true?

I develop, manage, and scale online businesses.
I offer remote services (as lead front-end and back-end developer) for the following tasks/projects

• WordPress, and WooCommerce. I write lean and bespoke themes or utilize existing themes depending on your requirements and budget.
• Shopify
• Code your existing shop design to a fully working website that actually reach customers, and sell products/services
• Redesign, update existing websites, full auditing
• PHP shopping carts (Opencart, Prestashop etc)
• Multi vendor, SaaS and development of custom platforms
• Physical products/shipping/tracking or Digital products
• Booking/Membership/Subscription
• Custom Analytics/Reports
• Custom payment method and checkout
• Custom features for front-end (customers) or back-end (less management, more productivity) experience
• APIs/Payment gateway integration (ex. Stripe, Paypal, BTC/Crypto Wallets)
• Chat/Bot/AI integration
• Automation/Data Scraping requirements for your online shop
• Data conversion/Product entry (automated)
• Social media/Community management
• Small, mid-scale hosting included (you just need to provide a domain address)
• can work with Google cloud, AWS and other cloud services
• can work with any market or industry

I provide assistance throughout the entire lifecycle of your website, from planning, building, running, and maintaining. I specialize in managing the technical aspects of your shop and remain dedicated and reachable until your business achieves its first sale.
starts at $15/hr. accepted payments in Paypal/Wise/Crypto/Stablecoin
available for 20-40 hours/week
portfolio, email contact basmatix .netlify .app
email contact is hello_thomasino(@tuta .io) (better notification in email) the reddit chat/message can be buggy at times. please send your information direct to my email instead. it is a more reassuring method to be connected. You can also reach me via chat applications afterwards.
dm me for more in-depth details and discussion. please include a brief description of your job offer. If you are looking for a easy to work with guy and can carry all technical tasks for web then you’ve found the right place.

I develop, manage, and scale online businesses.
I offer remote services (as lead front-end and back-end developer) for the following tasks/projects

• WordPress, and WooCommerce. I write lean and bespoke themes or utilize existing themes depending on your requirements and budget.
• Shopify
• Code your existing shop design to a fully working website that actually reach customers, and sell products/services
• Redesign, update existing websites, full auditing
• PHP shopping carts (Opencart, Prestashop etc)
• Multi vendor, SaaS and development of custom platforms
• Physical products/shipping/tracking or Digital products
• Booking/Membership/Subscription
• Custom Analytics/Reports
• Custom payment method and checkout
• Custom features for front-end (customers) or back-end (less management, more productivity) experience
• APIs/Payment gateway integration (ex. Stripe, Paypal, BTC/Crypto Wallets)
• Chat/Bot/AI integration
• Automation/Data Scraping requirements for your online shop
• Data conversion/Product entry (automated)
• Social media/Community management
• Small, mid-scale hosting included (you just need to provide a domain address)
• can work with Google cloud, AWS and other cloud services
• can work with any market or industry

I provide assistance throughout the entire lifecycle of your website, from planning, building, running, and maintaining. I specialize in managing the technical aspects of your shop and remain dedicated and reachable until your business achieves its first sale.
starts at $15/hr. accepted payments in Paypal/Wise/Crypto/Stablecoin
available for 20-40 hours/week
portfolio, email contact basmatix .netlify .app
email contact is hello_thomasino(@tuta .io) (better notification in email) the reddit chat/message can be buggy at times. please send your information direct to my email instead. it is a more reassuring method to be connected. You can also reach me via chat applications afterwards.
dm me for more in-depth details and discussion. please include a brief description of your job offer. If you are looking for a easy to work with guy and can carry all technical tasks for web then you’ve found the right place.