Posts by Descender

69

Any videogamers here?

by R.F. in

this is my #1 hobby.

i have a ps2, psp, and xbox.

i was mainly an xbox kind of guy until they completely abandoned it soon after the 360 was released.

In general, console games aren't near as addictive as an mmporg. The Wii is a really great game console to play games on with your spouse or your kids. And I don't ever feel like I have to spend massive amounts of time on it. I very rarely spend more than 30 to 45 minutes at most on the Wii in one sitting. And it's fun for multiple people. I had several people over to my house a couple of weekends ago and we all had fun on the Wii. Now massive multi player online computer games are different. Sure you can try to get your spouse hooked on it, and although it's fun and it keeps him or her off your back. There are certain pitfalls.

I got my ex-spouse addicted to EQ awhile after I started to play. We were living in a small one bedroom low income apartment, but somehow we found the money to afford a new computer and then set up a new phone line so we'd have two internet connections. This was 2000 so cable modems weren't main stream yet. Suddenly I had more reason to stay online playing EQ because she was playing too. We became addicted together and it was fun. Eventually our play times increased as our character's levels increased and we had to spend more and more time questing and raiding and trade-skilling. We both got into one of the biggest guilds on the server and suddenly it was a job. To be in the guild we had to be on at certain times. The guild had mandatory raiding times. In this guild raiding times were set for Monday through Friday 6pm central to 1am central. Saturday at 10am central until whenever and Sunday was optional. In order to stay in the guild you had to attend 70% of the mandatory raids.

You had to have a high level of skill in playing and follow a button sequence to the second, especially if you were a healer. If you messed up and that caused a raid whipe you were generally berated in all CAPS in front of the rest of the guild, cussed at and given no option for loot that evening. It was actually very stressfull. I had horrible stomach pains during the time that I was raiding the most and went to the doctor and ended up taking ulcer medication.

After years of playing with my wife I decided to cut back on my gaming, whereas she decided to keep playing. I had cut my playing down to almost nothing and had no idea that my wife had started talking to several of the guys from the guild through an IM and then she started talking to them on the phone. Then she started taking videos of herself, usually stripping and all the things that go along with that and sending those videos out to these guys. The guys would take videos of themselves and send them to her. I found all this out a few months later while looking something up on her computer and ran accross all this stuff. At the time, it was all very heart-braking.

She eventually left me and told me, amongst other things, that playing the game had contributed so much to us becoming different people that she just wasn't attracted to me anymore. We went to marriage counseling where the counselors told us that getting so involved in a game together had actually estranged us instead of drawing us together. She later used our joint credit card to fly a guy from the guild half way accross the country to meet her in the apartment that she moved into. That didn't work out and we got divorced. The last time I ever spoke to her on the phone a couple of years ago, she was dating a guy and said she was so happy that he wasn't a gamer like me.

I ended up wishing that I'd never picked up that Everquest box. And then I turned right around and installed WoW after it came out. So, really I'm kind of hypocrite. But alas, learn from my mistakes.

69

Any videogamers here?

by R.F. in

this is my #1 hobby.

i have a ps2, psp, and xbox.

i was mainly an xbox kind of guy until they completely abandoned it soon after the 360 was released.

Descender

I've always been a big gamer. I've had almost all the console systems from the Atari 2600 onward. Currently I only lack a PS3. I've played a lot of the massive multi player online games on the computer and I was addicted, actually addicted to a few of them.

You know you're addicted to a game when it's all you can think of. You're going to work and the only thing on your mind is the new armor you got last night and how you just can't wait to get home to go raiding in that new dungeon. You know you're addicted when all you dream of is the game you're playing. You know you're addicted when you happily forgo almost all real life activities so you can play one single game 60 to 80 hours a week, every week for months or years.

Just like all addictions you'll try to rationalize you're game playing when someone confronts you about it. You're saving money, you don't like going outside, other people watch TV and you play the game instead, you're an introvert, this is the way you relieve stress, you'll quit when you get to level 60, no wait, it's level 70 now. Maybe you'll just play a little while longer until you've gotten into a big guild, explored all the dungeons, and gotten a whole set of epics then you'll quit. Oh no, they just came out with another expansion and all your gear is crap, you don't want to quit when just anyone can easily go and get better gear than you have, of yeah they raised the level cap again and when you quit you need to retire at the top.

Then one day several years down the road when the game is winding down and everyone is migrating to the new game on the horizon you look back over your gaming career and see all those missed days of work, those missed relationships, those missed days out in the sun. You realize that you're different than you were before you started playing this game. You're out of shape, you've gained a lot of weight, you're skin is pasty, your mind is in a fog and look at those dark circles under your eyes from all those nights you stayed up until 5am raiding. And what do you have to show for it? a few high level pixels that aren't worth anything. But you saved so much money from not going out to the movies, or out to eat, or the bar, or on vacation, right? Probably not, as you played the game you probably stopped progressing at work, if you could, you probably cut your hours back to the base minimum you could still work and survive so you had more time to play your game. No money made here.

At least that was my experience. I played 4 1/2 years of EQ and retired from that game in 2004 with several high level characters with somewhere around 320 days played. That's 320x24 hours = 7,200 hours played on EQ. I retired from WoW a couple of months ago with a lvl 70 priest with all epics, a lvl 63 shaman, and several twink characters ranging from 19, 29, and 49. I had played 2 years of WoW and had around 120 days played between all those characters. When I look back on it now, I'm afraid it looks like a lot of wasted time.

137

I hate Walmart!

by Elsewhere in

jw
friends

i rarely ever set foot in the place and will go out of my way to avoid shopping there.

tonight i made the mistake of giving walmart the benefit of the doubt and walked in the door.. they didn't have the main item i was looking for, but they did have one other small item.

i headed to the front to check out only to find they had only a few check-outs open and all of the lines were far too long.

Descender

I actually live within 30 miles of the Wal Mart home office, which means around this area Wal Mart is pretty much the only option. I'm actually surrounded by Wal Mart Super Centers, there is one less than two miles to the south of me, and there is one less than two miles to the north of me. There is a Sam's club right beside one of those Wal Marts and just down the road about a mile is a Wal Mart neighborhood market. They're building another Sam's club about 3 miles away and just a couple miles past that new Sam's club is another Super Center. If I wanted to make a drive-by I could visit a total of 12 Wal Mart Super Centers, Sams, and Wal Mart Neighborhood Markets in a span of about 35 minutes. Give me couple more minutes and I could visit the Wal Mart home offices and drive by the original Walton's 5 and dime where it all started.

So, although I'll agree that the customer service at Wal Mart is non-existant, that they don't pay their employees enough, that they sometimes don't care for their stores the way they should, and the fact that they employ overseas slave labor, people around this area don't have a lot of other choices as far as grocery items are concerned. Now for home improvement items, I'll always frequent Lowe's or Home Depot over Wal Mart even if they are a little more expensive.

12

Harry Potter and the Superstitious Dubbies(not Dobbie)

by undercover in

jw
friends

(this thread is inspired in part by fifi40's thread about battling her ex-husband in letting their son go see the new hp movie.).

still having contact with jw family and some jw friends that i grew up with, it's interesting to see their reaction when conversations come up about the hp books and movies.. my jw mother-in-law snorted and grunted her disapproval and locked herself in her bedroom while visiting while i was watching one of the movies.

i was watching it when she came in from shopping with other family members and i wasn't about to turn it just because she was in the room.. my brother, dfd but not free of the control of the wts, expressed shock that i had read all the books and commented on them being "demonic".

Descender

I guess the Harry Potter ban is still going strong with the JW's. My brother, who hasn't been going to a lot of meetings as of late came over to my house last Saturday with two Harry Potter movies and asked if he could watch them with me. I didn't have anything better to do, so we sat down and watched two Harry Potter movies in a row.

My brother's wife called during the movies to see what he was doing and he told me that if she asked, to tell her that he was watching Lord of the Rings with me. I made fun of him and said, how exactly is Harry Potter any worse than Lord of the Rings. He said, I don't know, but if she knows I watched Harry Potter with you she'll make sure my life is a living hell for awhile.

117

Do you have to pay federal income tax? Is there a law requirering you to?

by frankiespeakin in

jw
friends

i haven't payed mine for almost 3 years because i don't like what the government is doing with its war machine and taking away our civil liberties with the patriot act:.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5981720328972328609&q=irs+tax+is+illegal+-+no+tax+law+exists%21%21&total=1&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1623838328974046647&q=law+federal+income+tax&total=77&start=30&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=6.

Descender

To say that the rich pay the majority of the taxes is true. But the percentage of their income that they pay towards taxes, as long as they take advantage of all the legal tax loopholes, will almost always be much smaller than the percentages of lower incomes.

My ex in-laws owned an accounting firm. It wasn't just your run of the mill rinky dink cpa office, it was an international accounting firm that could deal in taxes in all states and other countries. They were what most people would call rich and they legally paid in an average of about 15% every year, that's all. I make a lot less than they did and I pay in around 30% because I can't take advantage of all the loopholes.

So saying that the rich pay the majority of all the taxes is true, because even if they only pay out at 15%, that 15% of 5 million dollars is going to be a whole lot more than my 30% of 60 thousand dollars. It's just that the percentages and loopholes aren't exactly fair for those that aren't rich.

15

"It will change your life"

by lost_light06 in

jw
friends

i have to share this.

last night i had an appointment with a lady.

i was under the impression that it was regarding life insurance, something i will need to get soon, however there were hints that there was some sort of "business opportunity".

Descender

Yeah, looking back on the time I was recruited into a MLM company called Equinox, I can see what you're talking about. I was 19 years old and very niave about most everything as most 19 year old witnesses are. My girlfriend at the time, another witness, recruited me into the company.

It had all the aspects that you speak of, the recruitment meetings where the Equinox higher ups would say what a life changing opportunity this was and how fast you'd get a return on your investment. The lady that supervised these meetings was supposedly an ex-Fortune 500 company exec that had seen more opportunity in this MLM business and had jumped in and quit her high paying executive job. We would get to see the checks that people were supposedly receiving in amounts of like $25000 per month and such. Someone would get up in front of the crowd and tell how this business had saved his life and his families lives because now he could afford all those things that his family needed.

So, being the nieve young witness that I was, and wanting to be with my girlfriend, I signed up. I took out a $4500 loan from the bank with my car as collateral, bought product to re-sell from the company and became an Equinox associate. I didn't understand what the company was really about. I sold a few things but didn't understand the upsale requirements on the things I was selling so failed to make a profit on most of the things I did sale because they were already too high priced before any additional charges you'd tack on to make a profit. I brought in a few associates myself, but as soon as they realized what it was about, I never heard from them again.

That was my first experience with a get-rich-quick MLM company and at first I really thought all I had to do was sign up and the money would just start flowing in. But the only way that you could have actually made money in that company was if you recruited more people that were willing to take out loans themselves to buy product and then if they would do the same and recruit others, and on down the line. I, just like 99% of the other supposedly happy rich associates could not make any money with this venture to save our lives. We would have to get up in front of the new recruits and lie about how good we were doing and how great of an opportunity this was so that we'd have a chance to make some money off these new recruits through our downlines. It wasn't actually about selling the product at all, it was all about selling a fake company to get new recruits (ala JW's).

Every Monday morning the associates were supposed to come in to have a group speakerphone meeting with the president of the company. He was a jerk. He'd get on the phone and tell everyone how they needed to do better and bring more recruits into the company, how he and his family were going to take a trip to the Swiss Alps the next week to stay at his personal villa and they were going to fly in his own personal jet. And how, if we'd just try harder to recruit then we could have a piece of all his riches too. I remember an instance where I lady in another office, maybe somewhere in Chicago got on phone and everyone could hear her question him and she said she just didn't feel like this was a legitimate business because it seemed the only way to make money was to recruit more people and not sell the product. Mr. President guy flew off the hook and called her a bitch and told her to get the f**k out and that she was no part of his business anymore. Then he said, "that's how you all can handle a whiney bitch." Everyone laughed and clapped and agreed. I felt really bad about the whole situation, but I laughed as well.

After we got out of that particular meeting, I guess I was in need of a talking to because I wasn't bringing in enough recruits. So I was told to sit down in a chair in the middle of the office where everyone could see. Then the supervisor (Fortune 500 lady) nodded and gave the go-ahead to the girl that had been my girlfriend and she yelled and berrated me in front of everyone and told me that I wasn't a worthwhile enough associate for her to waste her time on and that I either needed to shape up and work harder to bring in more recruits or I needed to get the hell out. So I got up and got the hell out, never to return.

It was basically a $4500 lesson for a 19 year old on why I should never get involved in something like that again, although at that particular time I couldn't see the similarities to the JW's. A couple years after that there was a 20/20 episode on Equinox and a bunch of previous associates were on there talking about how they were going to bring a class action lawsuit against Equinox for being a pyramid scheme. The business filed bankruptsy shorty afterwards.

105

DO YOU THINK THERE'S A CURE FOR CANCER?

by Mary in

do you think the scientists, doctors and pharmeceutical companies know of a cure for cancer that they're not telling us?

when you consider the leaps and bounds in medical discoveries that we've made in the last 50 years, it seems incredible that they're still using chemotherapy and radiation as the treatment for cancer.. while i was one of the lucky one who has survived cancer (so far), it's always in the back of my mind that it could return.

we all have friends who died before their time because of this rotten disease, yet the only progress that seems to have been made is that they can now 'detect' it earlier, which of course gives you a much greater chance of survival.. there have been stories of people who have been cured through alternative medicine, yet no one in the medical field seems to be interested in anything other than chemo or radiation.

Descender

My mother died of cancer at the beginning of last year at the age of fifty-four. No one in my family had ever had cancer and we were all totally oblivious to what to do about it, except what her doctors told her. It was malignant melanoma that had effected her liver. We found out a few things as her health declined. The misconseption is that the United States is the end all be all as far as medical care goes. That's as far from the truth as you can get. There are so many restrictions on health care procedures here in the United States that even if other options are definitively known to help more than the standard Chemo-Radiation procedures would, you can't get them here because they haven't been approved for use, even on people that will die without and would be willing to sign waivers just to have another option available.

Also, for people that haven't ever had cancer, there are stages from 1 through 4. If you are diagnosed with liver cancer of any kind, you automatically have stage 4. With stages 1 through 3 of cancer you have a chance of remission with treatment, but stage 4, that's the stage that the doctors give up on you. Stage 4 is where the doctor gives you a sad look and skirts the subject and says on average you have this many months to live. My mother's doctors told her she had a few options. She could take chemotherapy, which the doctors could almost gaurantee would not help at all with liver cancer. She could go to a hospice and live out her last days being taken care of there, or she could go home and take care of her affairs and die there.

My mom was a JW and she had a friend in the congregation that had had cancer 5 years before. This woman's cancer had effected her ovaries and had spread to several of her organs including her stomach and liver. She told my mom that when she had been diagnosed, the doctors here in the US told her that she was stage 4 and could go the chemo route, but that she would die and on average she had less than six months to live. This lady told my mom that when the doctors here had told her she was going to die, she went to the hospital Santa Monica in Mexico. It's considered an alternative hospital, mostly dealing in treatment of cancer. There were certain treatments that were customized to the type of cancer that the person had and the successfull remission rate is much higher than the remission rate in the US with conventional treatments.

This lady that told my mom about this hospital in Mexico went into remission while being treated there and when she came back to the US, her cancer was all but gone. Today, five years later, she has no signs of cancer in her body at all. My mom decided to take her chances and go there, she was very weak at the time because she had opted for one treatment of chemo here before she knew about this other option. For two weeks she progressively got better as evidenced by her blood work that they would check every day. But unbeknownst to her, the chemo and the pain pills that she had been perscribed by her doctors here in the US for her cancer had caused ulcers in her stomach and two weeks after she'd been at this hospital in Mexico her ulcers ruptured in her stomach and she started to bleed internally. It was found out too late what had happened and the doctors wanted to give her blood, but she said, "no blood" as she passed in and out of conciousness. It was too late anyway and she died.

But I sometimes wonder, if she'd known about the option of the hospital in Mexico when she was first diagnosed with cancer, before the chemo, and before the pain meds, would she have stood a much better chance. I personally think, yes.

22

iRIVER versus iPOD a Discussion

by Terry in

jw
friends

i've owned two different ipods including the video ipod.. i own two different iriver products including the new iriver clix2 (mp3 player, video player, digital recorder and fm radio.).

to me the iriver is the clear winner on all fronts.

(cheaper, too).. briefly: iriver allows multiple file formats and drag and drop file use.

Descender

I'd like to have the ability to check out all of the portable media and music players, but I don't have the extra funds. But I do know that for my own personal preference I will usually only use one when I'm walking or riding the trails, mowing the lawn, or working out, so the video option isn't needed. Also, I want the smallest player available.

Luckily, my wife and my dogs got me an ipod shuffle for doggy father's day. It's barely bigger than the end of my thumb and it clips on to my shirt or shorts. And my wife has an ipod and several thousand songs that she's downloaded to itunes over the years that I can choose from. So I used my shuffle for the first time last night while working out and it was great. At my gym, they keep XM radio tuned to 80's hairbands all the time. It gets old really quick. I don't like the earplugs though, they fell out twice last night and felt like they were going to fall out the rest of the time.

34

Did you ever 'Turn Someone In' to the elders? Do you regret it now?

by AK - Jeff in

jw
friends

i am not proud of that, for i know the pain i caused someone as i look back.. i turned in 4 people for 'gross sins' over my tenure as a jw.

i wish i could take it back now.

were these people guilty of 'sin' as defined by the wts?

Descender

I didn't ever tell on anyone myself. But my good ex-JW friend, Robert, that I grew up with was telling me a story the other day that I thought was kind of funny though.

He and a crew helped remodel the inside of a local strip club a few months back and he'd gone back in to meet with the owner to drop off his invoice around lunch time and noticed a ministerial servant that he used to know from a local congregation sitting by himself at a table in the back. Anyway, Rob went over to his table and said, you're so and so. He said the guy got a little bit red and said that he'd heard that he looks like this other person, but it wasn't him. So Rob sat down and engaged him in conversation, and caught him saying something only a JW would say. And Robert said, "hahah, I caught you, you are that guy." I guess when Rob said that, the JW got really nervous, said he had to go and basically ran for the door. Always fun catching someone self righteous doing something hypocritical.

Of course, Rob won't say anything about it. He's been out for 11 years.

41

Small dog Owners, best breed?

by restrangled in

jw
friends

my mom is slowly losing her old cat and her heart is breaking.

she would like to adopt a small dog.

(no puppies).

Descender

My dad has a Bichon Frise and if you like fairly boring dogs that don't require a lot of attention then that might be for you. My dad's Bichon sleeps, goes to the bathroom, and eats and that's about it. She doesn't shed though and that's good.

I have 2 pug dogs and I love the attention that they give me. They constantly play like puppies even though they are 4 and 5 years old. They will follow you around with their toys, lay on you, lick you, and in general, they really like to be around you. They do shed a lot and need a lot of attention, kind of like a small child. But they are by far the most fun dogs I've ever had. And I've had many kinds over the years. So my vote is for pugs.