Early Sunsets

No, it's just another day to me. I don't really understand why birthdays are exciting to people. I'm another year older, yay. The only good part is I get Amazon gift cards from my family.

If you asked me a year ago I'd have said "true love" without a moment of hesitation, but the longer I'm single, the more I get used to being alone, and the more I realize I wouldn't be able to make someone happy in a relationship. As much as I would absolutely love to be in one, I suck at them, so I'd probably pick being rich.

I am currently a part time package handler at FedEx, part time self-employed fursuit maker (might extend that to making costumes in general, clothing, and maybe even music someday). I actually really love my job at FedEx, which is surprising. Pay is good, coworkers are all nice, management is great, benefits are cool, and every once in a while we get food, like pizza or hamburgers. Usually I get between two and three and a half hours in each day depending on volume and which particular job I'm doing (either unloading vans / trailers, scanning packages as they go down the belt, or loading packages into trailers), but with peak season coming up, we'll probably get four or more hours on the average day. I also volunteered to work Saturdays when that happens. I always appreciate more money. The only real downside is how tiring it can be, but a good way to look at it is I get paid to get in a workout every day. As for the self-employed job: my manager is a dumbass, the hours are inconsistent (and sometimes incredibly rough - we're talking occasional ten hour days or longer), pay is under the federal minimum wage, but at least now I can make costumes for myself instead of paying someone thousands of dollars to make them for me. Also those problems will somewhat solve themselves as I gain experience.

About the results I expected to get.

Somewhat worried. I won't express any specific political beliefs here so I can avoid getting dragged into the mayhem (it's only a matter of time before this thread descends into chaos and bitterness, as is custom. I'll give it another hour until someone starts a fight and gets this thread locked), but whoever wins, there's probably going to be quite a bit of change in the US over the next four years. Whether that change will be good or bad, only time will tell. If you're voting: please, don't vote for a candidate simply because you hate the other. Vote for who you think is the best choice. Look at their beliefs and what they've said from multiple news sources. News outlets are all biased, they all twist words, and they're all dishonest. Don't rely just on CNN or Fox or NPR to get your information. And for goodness' sake, don't go to social media for political advice. Things like Twitter are worse for gathering unbiased information than any news outlet.

I'm just gonna watch one of the Halloween iCarly episodes while eating Sour Patch Kids and drinking Mountain Dew. Don't have anything good to wear for Halloween, and I don't really feel like going out alone anyway.

For this year, I'm dressing up as the scariest thing I could think of; myself. That's less of a "terrifying" scary and more of an "existential dread" scary, but still scary nonetheless. My favorite candy is and will most likely always be Sour Patch Kids. Got a small box today while I was out grocery shopping seeing as it's Halloween, along with a bottle of Mountain Dew Merry Mash-Up (I saw red soda and a Mt. Dew bottle cap, which made me think it was Code Red. Oh well, it still tastes fine).

Hello, weary traveler. What's that? You're tired of your packages arriving smashed and destroyed? Yes, I do believe I can help with that. Sit down by the fire and grab a drink, and I'll tell you what I know. Tip 1 - Fragile Packages I'll be blunt; package handlers don't give a shit about fragile labels. We can't baby every adult vibrator that gets shipped across the country. It gets thrown, it gets dropped, and it will likely be hit to get it to fit snugly on the truck. I've rammed my shoulder into many a package that were sticking out from the wall too far. However, there are a few things we tend to handle more carefully, such as glass and liquids. We're not gonna toss those around, so slap a few of those stickers on your package (one on every side for best chances of survival). The more tech-savvy package handlers will also treat electronics with more care. You can bet your ass if I come across a GTX 3080 box, I'll treat it like a newborn kitten. There's also the less conventional methods. If a box says "Grandma's Ashes," most people will probably be careful with it. I once shipped a saxophone with "Urine Samples" written on every side in big red letters. Tip 2 - Large Boxes If you're shipping something large, it's imperative that you package it properly. Anything more than a couple cubic feet in volume should have double corrugated walls - anything above four should have triple walls (just my suggestion. You can certainly get away with thinner, but why risk it?). As well as this, don't leave a bunch of empty space, and don't use an abundance of soft packaging materials (i.e. packing peanuts). Use a dense foam, something like styrofoam or dedicated shipping foam, and pack that box full of the stuff. The more rigid the box, the better. If you wouldn't feel comfortable sitting on it, don't ship it. Large packages usually get put on the bottom of the truck, and heavy packages always get put on the bottom. Packages on the bottom are under a lot of stress from the other boxes on top of them. Flimsy boxes with lots of dead space on the inside, plus a lot of weight sitting on top for many hours or even days... Your package is going to arrive looking like a pancake. Hopefully you paid extra for insurance. Tip 3 - Heavy Packages Put a heavy label on every side of your package if it's over fifteen pounds. Also do this if it's a tiny box that weighs way more than you think it should just by looking at it (i.e. you're shipping a box 5 inches in each dimension and its full of nuts and bolts). This helps both you and the shipping company. If we see the heavy sticker (bonus points if the weight is written on the sticker), we can better prepare for lifting it, and in turn load the trucks quicker and not throw out our backs. That won't make it arrive sooner, but it means we get to get off from work sooner. It also means we're less likely to drop your package, so it's not entirely a waste of time for you.

My music tastes are stuck in the late 2000's / early 2010's, for the most part. The only bands / artists who have more than just a handful of songs I like are My Chemical Romance, Pierce the Veil, Sabaton, and Princewhateverer.

Oh boy, here we go again. TL;DR if it's not your body, it's not your choice. It's assault and should be outlawed (female genital mutilation is illegal in basically the entire world. Circumcision is literally same thing, but legal).

I have to ride my bike half an hour to work and half an hour home. With any luck I'll have my moped registered soon, and that commute time will get cut in half. That would also have the benefit of not being exhausting. Riding a bike up and down hills for thirty minutes is rough, and it certainly doesn't help when your job is also quite tiring.

Usually it's a sharp inhale followed by a "fuck."

Ha. No.

Yep. I'm pretty paranoid about everything, and being a perfectionist certainly doesn't help. That combined with my general anxiety and overthinking everything, and there isn't a thing on this planet I don't worry about.

I strongly prefer PC. Looking past Apple's business practices (which could be a whole other topic on its own) and putting aside their "Apple tax," I just don't like how Apple products look, and I hate the OS. PC is so much easier to customize, both on a software and hardware level. Want more performance? Upgrade the part(s) you need rather than paying thousands of dollars for an entirely new computer. Want to keep your i9 or Threadripper from thermal throttling? Upgrade the cooler instead of praying Apple's next computer actually takes cooling into account. Part of your computer dies? Order a new part and replace it yourself instead of sending it to an Apple repair store and paying an ARM and a leg (get it? Because Apple is switching to ARM processors soon? Haha I'm not funny). Also RGB.

Probably the AI in MechWarrior 5. Enemies are extremely one-dimensional, and friendly pilots are pretty useless, even just for tanking damage since they hardly ever fire their weapons to draw aggro. I ended up installing a mod that reworks the AI, and even the modder said the original AI coding is absolute garbage and incredibly simple. I guess that's to be expected from PGI, considering they've never made a good game in their lives.

I prefer modern consoles and games. It's cool to go back and play old games for nostalgia every now and then, but for the most part they're not as enjoyable. There are definitely a number of exceptions, though (basically all of the Zelda games are at least somewhat enjoyable many years after release).

I've always loved Gerudo Valley from Ocarina of Time. Sometimes as a kid I'd go to Gerudo Valley just to hear the soundtrack. Hopes and Dreams from Undertale is another of my favorites.

First game: MechWarrior 2 First game addiction: Skyrim First game system: Nintendo 64 First handheld game system: Gameboy Advance SP First game with 500 hours played: Terraria First notable achievement: Beating Halo: Reach on Legendary difficulty by myself First modded game: Super Mario 64 (if you count using a GameShark as modding) First 18+ game: Halo: Reach First racing sim game: Forza Horizon 4 First MMORPG: Fusion Fall First game that made me emotional: Undertale First game I pulled an all-nighter with: Doom 2016

Not really a monitor, but the first time I hooked my Xbox 360 up to an HD TV, I thought it looked incredible. I'd used old box TVs up until that point, and being able to actually read text was so cool. I remember quite a few names in games that I'd gotten wrong because I couldn't read them on my old TV (the RPK from Black Ops comes to mind. I'd always thought it was the RPX ).

I use it for my wireless earbuds, but that's basically it. Going wireless is great for being able to listen to music or watch movies while I work at home (I live with people, so it'd be inconsiderate to use speakers), and it's also great for listening to music while I ride my bike.

Yeah, usually multiplayer games. I get really competitive and it's hard for me to have fun if I'm not winning, so for the most part I've switched to single player or co-op games. The only real exceptions are League of Legends and World of Tanks, mostly because I've played those games long enough that I'm pretty good at them. World of Tanks does get grindy though, so that's frustrating in its own right.