An attempt to change ones language and image

[Tasty]

[Great Rumbler]

So is Oscar gonna quit The Bore now like he quit NeoGAF over the Donkey Kong Country smackdown?

[Joe Molotov]

Not like this. Not like this.

[Yeti]

What is the Donkey Kong Country Smackdown? 

[Verdigris Murder]

Basically every motherfucker is his/her own Sonderweg theory on the Internet. Every motherfucker be needin' to keep their pimphand strong and righteous, to slap down any motherfucker that be a'raining on any gay parade, figurative or literal.

The Sonderweg theory does apply to an awful lot of stuff online though, Facebook and forums and forum personas are spring to kind things, thought all casual like.

On Stringers Bells theory. I guess?

[Verdigris Murder]

Also when your're getting regular sex, you tend to give less of a fuck. I think that's because everyone needs companionship, and when there are many folks out there without that, and if you factor in the anonymity of the Internet, you actually have a fairly unhealthy combo.
Some dudes in the orient did a test on Internet and they decided that anger on the Internet spreads faster than feelings of joy, and that it also is rewiring one of the lobes in the brain, the one which deals with knowledge retention.
Anyway.

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

look at all these wankers taking shit way the fuck too seriously in here

The fuck are you on about?  Most of the canceled stuff is public knowledge via people's resumes and LinkedIn.  Go google a little bit.

And don't you fucking EVER dare to put the "anti-Japan" shtick in my mouth.  I never said it, and I never would.  You little piece of shit.

 

Total annihilation.  It's been a while.

[Rufus]

Poe's law, mold creature.

[Rufus]

[Shadow Mod]

also my donkey kong scapegoat threw a Nintard into such a depressive spiral that he threatened to kill himself repeatedly and eventually got himself banned from the GAFs, so all I can say is that plan went better than expected

If that was the plan all along why not return?

[Tasty]

[Tasty]

also my donkey kong scapegoat threw a Nintard into such a depressive spiral that he threatened to kill himself repeatedly and eventually got himself banned from the GAFs, so all I can say is that plan went better than expected

If that was the plan all along why not return?

no, that wasn't the plan, just an unexpected bonus.  you guys know why I left.  I think even if king tyler were dethroned, I wouldn't go back.  kind of would feel like being the weird old guy at the nightclub.  average age there is easily more than ten years younger than me.

Are you saying that isn't the case here?

[Human Snorenado]

GET OFF MY LAWN

[Human Snorenado]

GET OFF MY LAWN

finding out i was older than you was one of the most disappointing days of my life, triumph  :'(

It's ok, you're only as old as you feel, and I guarantee that you feel younger than me, since I've pretty much felt dead for the past 10 years.

[Himu]

What? I thought Oscar was younger.

[DCharlieJP]

I'm still here every now and again - pulling that average age up for the "olds"

[Human Snorenado]

What? I thought Oscar was younger.

I think he's a year or two older than me.  I look probably 5-10 years older, though, as I've done a lot of what could be called "rough living"

[Great Rumbler]

Fun fact: COG's avatar is a picture of himself at the tender age of 23.

[Human Snorenado]

I wish I had as much hair as Samuel Beckett...

[Human Snorenado]

Sheeeeit.  I am older than you, young'n.  36 here.  You can go back to being happy.

And while you're at it, GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN.

[Himu]

OLD PEOPLE

[Van Cruncheon]

i turn 40 at the end of the year. suiciding

[DCharlieJP]

39 in Feb too !

</cue Pink Floyd's "Time">

Bring it on ! I'm emotionally still 14 anyways!

[Human Snorenado]

And just like that, I'm way less decrepit

[Tasty]

I just turned 22. I'm getting too fricking old.

[benjipwns]

I'm really a five thousand year old demon, so that makes it okay to look up my skirt. 

[DCharlieJP]

what was i doing at 22? that seems a lifetime ago.... 16 years back makes it 1997

hmm - 1997...

Nearly destroyed my finals prep by buying an N64 and Mario 64, secured a job - moved to London, graduated, was with a different lady friend to the one i'm with now, moved into a house in Streatham with 3 young women, played FF7 and enjoyed it without shame, had no internet connection, went to Hong Kong, played Futsal at a decent level, incorrectly diagnosed with a heart murmur um.... pretty dull all round really. Oh Princess Diana died and i was in the minority of not particularly caring at all, this apparently made me some sort of heartless monster :/

[Human Snorenado]

22- I almost died in a car accident that summer, head bashed into my windshield and I bled a lot.  Six months later, I picked a sliver of glass out of my forehead. 

I also moved into an apartment with a bunch of my friends, and some strippers moved in next door.  WE ATE ALL THE DRUGS AND LISTENED TO ALL THE DRUM AND BASS.  So, it's not surprising that I don't really remember much else that happened that year.

[Raban]

ha, i wasted 22.  i think i was doing stupid games journo shit and planned on making it a career.  spent entire weekends drinking at the bar.  finished out the year starting work on a gba game that ended up never being finished.  the good news is the month after i turned 23 i got my head back into the game.

god I hope this happens for me

[Tasty]

what was i doing at 22? that seems a lifetime ago.... 16 years back makes it 1997

hmm - 1997...

Nearly destroyed my finals prep by buying an N64 and Mario 64, secured a job - moved to London, graduated, was with a different lady friend to the one i'm with now, moved into a house in Streatham with 3 young women, played FF7 and enjoyed it without shame, had no internet connection, went to Hong Kong, played Futsal at a decent level, incorrectly diagnosed with a heart murmur um.... pretty dull all round really. Oh Princess Diana died and i was in the minority of not particularly caring at all, this apparently made me some sort of heartless monster :/

Where were you before London? US? Other-UK?

[Tasty]

ha, i wasted 22.  i think i was doing stupid games journo shit and planned on making it a career.  spent entire weekends drinking at the bar.  finished out the year starting work on a gba game that ended up never being finished.  the good news is the month after i turned 23 i got my head back into the game.

Oh? What happened?

[Himu]

Turn 28 next month. Surprisingly okay with that.

[Tasty]

ha, i wasted 22.  i think i was doing stupid games journo shit and planned on making it a career.  spent entire weekends drinking at the bar.  finished out the year starting work on a gba game that ended up never being finished.  the good news is the month after i turned 23 i got my head back into the game.

Oh? What happened?

that's when i realized i didn't see a future in the games industry and finally went to university.

What for? Writing?

[Himu]

ha, i wasted 22.  i think i was doing stupid games journo shit and planned on making it a career.  spent entire weekends drinking at the bar.  finished out the year starting work on a gba game that ended up never being finished.  the good news is the month after i turned 23 i got my head back into the game.

Oh? What happened?

that's when i realized i didn't see a future in the games industry and finally went to university.

What for? Writing?

Psychology. Surprised you don't know this, we talk about stuff like this in the gaf thread. Oscar's fascination with psychology and trying to help people who need it is well documented.

[Tasty]

I can't tell if you're yanking my chain.

[Himu]

Anyways, related to this thread. This week I've been telling myself when I wake up that life is great, and I'm glad to be here. Just telling myself that I'm worth in my head makes a world of difference. I'm definitely smiling more often -  a lot more, for no reason other than to be here. Hopefully I can keep at it, it's definitely been a great week, with some lows, and some highs, but that's life and it's what you make of it. Didn't pay the mortgage in time, and that's bad news. But I've managed to get it paid this week with hard work and pinching pennies. I got a second job, and that's great news.

At the very least, the Himu Pinko is turning on the philosophies section again. It's been about...four to five years so that seems about right. Humanism by itself, while liberating, has no backbone and feels limiting.

[Himu]

I can't tell if you're yanking my chain.

I'm very disappointed at your ability to read people and their passions. You should correct this.

[DCharlieJP]

Where were you before London? US? Other-UK?

Hometown --> Liverpool --> London --> Tokyo

All UK except for the last one

ha, i wasted 22.  i think i was doing stupid games journo shit and planned on making it a career.  spent entire weekends drinking at the bar.  finished out the year starting work on a gba game that ended up never being finished.  the good news is the month after i turned 23 i got my head back into the game.

my plan at 22 was : make my fortune until i was 35 then switch over into gaming. The truth is the closest i came to this was a) a first round informal chat with Psygnosis and, lol, recent first cut interviews with Cave and Konami. The Cave one was fun simply because i mentioned i liked their shmups and they shut down the chat -right there- and for Konami the opening line was "lol - why?!" followed by "you are too senior" which was the only thing they said to me in English... i thought that was to do with my experience, i was later informed by my wife that this is the coded way of saying "go home, grandad" lol.

[Tasty]

My current plan is to work at a tech startup until it's acquired before the bubble bursts, and then reinvest that money smartly in stocks/bonds/etc. Then maybe work on my own little tech projects and see if I can grow them into a business. I really lucked out having the skillset I did when I got hired, if the bubble wasn't being inflated right now it would probably be impossible for me to find work without a college degree, and I would not have been able to get one with my family's finances. Now, since I have experience, I'm probably secure for life unless the tech industry/US economy tanks completely. (Which is a possibility, of course. We got too close for comfort in 2008... I should learn Chinese just in case, I guess, lol.)

Plans have a funny way of changing though!

I know that a long way down the line (mid-30's) I want to do pure content creation and live off that instead of programming. My own short animations, my own short movies (full indie movies?), my own short novels (and later full novels.) Gotta practice until then though, which I'm trying to do on the side right now.

yeah i was sure we'd been over this, but i have a master's degree in psych.  basically came to japan to take a one year sabbatical before going in for the phd, ended up staying here because fuck clinical psychology is a dirty business if you don't want to be penniless.

I'm really surprised I missed it if that's the case. Hmm. I usually remember details like this.

What did you do in between your Master's and current job?

[chronovore]

GET OFF MY LAWN

finding out i was older than you was one of the most disappointing days of my life, triumph  :'(

It's ok, you're only as old as you feel, and I guarantee that you feel younger than me, since I've pretty much felt dead for the past 10 years.

You kids are cute.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I turned 46 a week ago.

[close]

22- I almost died in a car accident that summer, head bashed into my windshield and I bled a lot.  Six months later, I picked a sliver of glass out of my forehead.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[Cerveza mas fina]

30 suckers, im legit old now.

[DCharlieJP]

My current plan is to work at a tech startup until it's acquired before the bubble bursts, and then reinvest that money smartly in stocks/bonds/etc. Then maybe work on my own little tech projects and see if I can grow them into a business. I really lucked out having the skillset I did when I got hired, if the bubble wasn't being inflated right now it would probably be impossible for me to find work without a college degree, and I would not have been able to get one with my family's finances. Now, since I have experience, I'm probably secure for life unless the tech industry/US economy tanks completely. (Which is a possibility, of course. We got too close for comfort in 2008... I should learn Chinese just in case, I guess, lol.)

from my recent job hunting perspective - here's what i came out with :

any coding skill was a bonus - and if i wanted to work using anything like Java, C, C# etc then unless it was cutting edge stuff (algo trading - with ooddles of experience) then i was going to be taking a bath on salary (50%+ cut)

what got me to not have to take the bath were the business side stuff, project/product experience, management, language (stop laughing at the back!)

I had some spare time - i was going to pick up some coding qualifications .... instead i just got ITIL :/

[Olivia Wilde Homo]

I'm 28 and still don't know what I want to do yet.  So I'm doing as much certifications and education as I can until I can figure out an answer as a way of doing something productive while I figure things out.  Next year I should be done with my MBA and I'm going to get my PMP.  Then in 2015, I'll get (or try to get ) my PE.  Hopefully I'll have some questions answered by then.

[Rufus]

Seems to me you're succeeding.

I need to get some sort of career going before I hit 30 or I'm always going to be a bum.

[Himu]

I'm starting to work on my grad school portfolio requirements. I have about half a years time, maybe more, to master what I want to master. I need to have the utmost professionalism in my art abilities if I want to pursue this. I am going to pursue a Master Degree in Animation. I do not want to go to Grad School and learn without them; I want to make feature film quality before I graduate, such is the goal.  I can no longer live like this, I have to pursue my childhood dream before it is too late. Which, ironically, is never too late. If I fail, which is a possibility, I can still take solace in the fact that I put confidence into myself.

Good luck on everyone's journeys.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Seems to me you're succeeding.

I need to get some sort of career going before I hit 30 or I'm always going to be a bum.

Im waiting for you in bum hell

[Himu]

"I need to do this, I need to do that before I reach 30" is such a construct of the mind. Life is not a race. Accept that many successful people don't get their lives on the move well into their 30's and they're still happy. I felt really sad I was applying for grad school when I was 27, the realization, I'd be 30 when I finally graduated. But time marches on. Accept this.

[Rufus]

I know. But time marching on is exactly why I need to haul ass already. The longer I wait the harder it's going to be. Drifting around isn't cutting it and it's going to bite me in the ass (again).

There's a definite chance that I'll just end up disappointing myself which is going to erode what little motivation I have, but I do need to set some sort of goal. In the absence of any particular career goals an age cut-off will have to do. I'm not aiming high, although "job security" (so I can safely settle into my 'special fellow routine) seems more and more unattainable in today's environment.

[bork]

32 here.  Old n' creaky. 

[Cerveza mas fina]

Job security is pretty much dead, its all about finding a field where there is plenty of jobs.

In other words find a pond where you are the big fish.

I'm not talking about career people, just your normal average joe shit.

[Rufus]

Yeah, I'm thinking of learning a trade that's in demand (one where you're not treated like shit and paid a pittance despite the fact that you're in demand). Which I should have done before I went to university, but hindsight is 20/20.

[Cerveza mas fina]

In hindsight I would have never gone to university but move to ireland during the big boom in 2002 after high school.

I would have been making double or triple of what I do now at least and no one would have been asking about a degree or shit.

Also I might have been stuck with a house thats in negative equity.

[DCharlieJP]

to add : there are senior people i know - who have 20-30 years senior investment bank knowledge who are getting "a trade" - one is currently doing a plumbing qualification because
"people always need a plumber"

[Tasty]

I'm really surprised I missed it if that's the case. Hmm. I usually remember details like this.

What did you do in between your Master's and current job?

nothing really between so much, but during, i was a mental health worker for the province of manitoba.  unless you mean the english teaching job that i came out here on before i started my own school.

So you do TouchArcade on the side...?

My current plan is to work at a tech startup until it's acquired before the bubble bursts, and then reinvest that money smartly in stocks/bonds/etc. Then maybe work on my own little tech projects and see if I can grow them into a business. I really lucked out having the skillset I did when I got hired, if the bubble wasn't being inflated right now it would probably be impossible for me to find work without a college degree, and I would not have been able to get one with my family's finances. Now, since I have experience, I'm probably secure for life unless the tech industry/US economy tanks completely. (Which is a possibility, of course. We got too close for comfort in 2008... I should learn Chinese just in case, I guess, lol.)

from my recent job hunting perspective - here's what i came out with :

any coding skill was a bonus - and if i wanted to work using anything like Java, C, C# etc then unless it was cutting edge stuff (algo trading - with ooddles of experience) then i was going to be taking a bath on salary (50%+ cut)

what got me to not have to take the bath were the business side stuff, project/product experience, management, language (stop laughing at the back!)

I had some spare time - i was going to pick up some coding qualifications .... instead i just got ITIL :/

Management/business is kinda the last thing I want to do, lol. So I know I have a ceiling when it comes to programming. It's not my end goal because of that.

I'm having trouble understanding your sentence though. Doing coding was a "bonus," but you were also taking a 50% cut by doing it?

[bork]

Job security is pretty much dead, its all about finding a field where there is plenty of jobs.

In other words find a pond where you are the big fish.

I'm not talking about career people, just your normal average joe shit.

That's pretty much why I ended up where I am now.  Was in Japan doing the English teaching thing on JET.  It was fun but ultimately not for me.  I finished out my three years and started job hunting, but realized I had no idea what the hell I wanted to do.  Shockingly, not much was available with a degree in East Asian Studies.  A job recruiter expressed interest in me becoming a recruiter, so I went off that and applied to some other recruiters, but nothing came of it.  Some of those places were actually kind of shady, too. 

The last straw from that came when I went out to a recruiter in Tokyo (paid 3-4 man for the trip/hotel) who asked what I was even doing there, since they only hired people with 5-10 years experience.  It was the VP of the company I spoke to in a phone interview -he knew I was seeking an entry-level position- and the president who "interviewed" me and basically made me feel like shit.   I also did try one English school and that interview was a complete joke. 

The funny thing about this is that both of the people at these two companies were former JETs themselves.  I actually got into an argument with the latter when he didn't believe how much JET was paying me.      That was hilarious, looking back, since the guy came in late, dressed like a slob, and then proceeded to be completely hypocritical about everything I discussed with him before the interview.

One thing I noticed when job searching was the large amount of IT jobs available.  So I decided to go back home and go back to school.  Been working at a Help Desk since the end of 2010.  It's the lowest end of the totem pole, but has been a great start and I've learned a lot.  I work with some good people and have fun here.  Recently got promoted; feels good man, etc. etc. 

I wouldn't mind going back to Japan and miss being over there every now and then, but I also feel pretty content being here too.  If the right job opportunity came along, I'd be all for it, but I'm not interested in the English teaching thing and my Japanese is so-so, so I don't think much would be available.

[Tasty]

"I need to do this, I need to do that before I reach 30" is such a construct of the mind. Life is not a race. Accept that many successful people don't get their lives on the move well into their 30's and they're still happy. I felt really sad I was applying for grad school when I was 27, the realization, I'd be 30 when I finally graduated. But time marches on. Accept this.

Honestly I was freaking out hardcore about not doing some stuff before 20. I felt like such a bum, I had basically dropped out of college due to money issues, didn't have a job, lived at home... I wasn't in the best state of mind, lol.

Things can turn around pretty damn fast though...

[Tasty]

oh boy, now that Himu has put on her philosopher chapeau again we can look forward to plenty of Wear Sunscreen posts like that one, hunh?

I have no idea what any of this means.

[Phoenix Dark]

26 now, looking at going back for an MBA as well.

Gotta say I'm a bit surprised at the lack of profession I've seen among some of my peers, most of whom did quite well in school but seem like social fuck ups. I remember turning my phone off during my first big internship day, but these fuckers are literally texting at their desks and then saying "oh, it's a family emergency..." Yea ok. I browse the internets at work am smart enough to only due it when I can get away with it.

One day after a meeting my boss said to me "good work, you'll be in management soon" in front of everyone, thus putting me on multiple people's shit lists.

[bork]

One day after a meeting my boss said to me "good work, you'll be in management soon" in front of everyone, thus putting me on multiple people's shit lists.

  That's awesome!

I had a former supervisor tell me "you do much better than everyone else here and you'll go far" but that was via Email.  I already see some jealousy from the promotion I got (which can best be described as a "semi-management role") and people giving me shit when I tell them to do stuff or question why they did something the way it was done.  But that was to be expected.

What kills me is how easy it is to get this promotion...yet nobody wants it.  Why would you NOT want to A) get certifications for FREE and B) a pay raise?   

[Himu]

Yeah, I'm thinking of learning a trade that's in demand (one where you're not treated like shit and paid a pittance despite the fact that you're in demand). Which I should have done before I went to university, but hindsight is 20/20.

If you go for an in demand trade, go with something that actually interests you. It may sound cliche to say, but don't become a plumber just because it brings in the dough. Then again, being a plumber may make you happy, I don't know.