Yeah, I’m liking it so far, but I’m still very much in the testing phase, I don’t have any “real” data in it yet.

“find your dream job”

Which is what I did: working in tech. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to build things, but I also wanted to support a family. At first I wanted to be a carpenter, but the likelihood of making good money with that was small, so I learned to build websites and decided to make a career out of it (I actually thought about patent law, but realized SW patents don’t build, but prevent things from being built).

So yeah, I’m basically doing exactly what I want, and I’ve avoided working for companies I hate.

That said, I’ve been doing the same thing for many years now, so a change of pace would be welcome, but I still want to build things. Unfortunately, LLMs are trying to take the part of like (actually building things) and is trying to replace it with designing things. I guess I could pivot to that, but seeing something built doesn’t have the same satisfaction for me.

If I had enough to retire, I’d probably start an indie game studio, and I’d hire a lead designer and work on the fun algorithms myself. So my main complaint is what I work on, so I could probably be happier with a different company, but there’s no perfect company and I like my current team, so I’m not particularly interested in leaving.

And for Microsoft, to get a back catalogue to ensure your subscription service remains attractive.

All of my good long term relationships came from times when I encountered someone adjacent to my other interests.

Well yeah, “putting yourself out there” doesn’t mean doing things you hate, it means doing things you like that involve other people, but forcing yourself to try doing them with unfamiliar people. If you like board games or whatever, look for a local group at the library or something. But you’re not going to meet new people to play with if you just sit at home.

Don’t go to a dance club if you hate dancing, but that doesn’t mean you should just stay home.

I actually need someone that I can talk to openly and constructively across all of my interests

I don’t think you’ll ever find someone who matches you on all your interests, but hopefully you find someone who is willing to listen to you ramble on about them, and support you pursuing them. They’ll have their own interests as well and expect the same from you.

My wife and I are both fairly introverted, and we met at a school dance that neither of us really wanted to attend. We awkwardly exchanged numbers, then texted for a bit before our first date, which was playing video games at my place. She beat me at a fighting game, and that’s how I knew it’d have a chance at working out. Nothing is perfect, but we have enough overlap to have something to talk about, along with separate interests. We both like video games, but she prefers team games (MMOs, games like REPO, etc), while I like SP games. She likes to paint and read romantic manga, I’m more into sci fi and fantasy novels. We both like movies and road trips, and we have a similar sense of humor.

I sincerely believe you need just a bit of overlap to share common ground, with enough differences to keep things interesting.

I’m now content with being alone.

I hope you can find more than contentment. If not romance, at least a trusting friendship. Maybe you have that, idk, or maybe you’re happier than you’re letting on, my point is that I believe everyone deserves to be happy, but that often requires a bit of discomfort to “put yourself out there” and make it possible to find fulfilling companionship.

Everyone is different of course, I just feel bad when I see someone blaming everyone else for their loneliness. That doesn’t seem to be the case for you, I’m more referring to the OP here (and honestly, most of my comment here is in that context).

Anyway, finding a good fit is really hard, especially as you get older, since there are naturally fewer people available and everyone seems to be busy. Anyway, good luck with whatever fulfills you, and I hope something you or I wrote here helps someone.

Really? I haven’t tried that since they revamped the sharing thing. I have three accounts, one for me, my wife, and one my kids share, and they’re all linked. Most of the time my kids use my account, but I can easily change that if it’ll allow simultaneous play (on different games).

Thanks for the tip, I’ll try it out!

Right, and it depends on what “quite off target” means. Are we talking about greens becoming purples? Or dark greens becoming bright greens? If the image is still mostly recognizable, just with poor saturation or contrast or whatever, I think it’s acceptable for older software.

Oh sure, I just read it as validating self-destructive habits of “incels,” where they look for reasons to “justify” their victimhood. They jump to insane extremes, like saying, “I have to completely change everything about myself to get a GF/BF,” but honestly all it really takes is a little bit of confidence (going to meetups you’re interested in helps), practicing reasonable hygiene, and making yourself available.

No one deserves to partner with someone that later never showers and never leaves the house after they remove the mask of their true self.

Sure, but on the flip-side, finding someone you really care about does a lot to motivate you to change your habits to make sure they are comfortable being around you. The first step is finding someone you’re compatible with, and that is unlikely to happen without making an effort.

Don’t tell people to conform to combat loneliness

Right, and that’s not what I’m saying. Instead, I’m saying if you want a thing, there are certain expectations to get it. If you don’t want companionship, that’s totally fine. But if you do and you’re not getting it, there are certain things you need to do to improve your chances, and whining about it online while locking yourself up in your home isn’t it.

it would work

And that’s probably enough. I don’t know enough about HDR to know if it would look anything like the artist imagined, but as long as it’s close enough, it’s fine if it’s not optimal. Having things completely break is far less than ideal.

The US and Ukraine are in very different positions…

Yup, it’s probably in reverse order.

It’s still okay in certain cess pools on the internet.

That sounds awesome!

I chose a bit of a different life path with different rewards and caveats. I’m glad you found something that brings you joy. :)

Exactly. I have something like 10-20 “complete” games because they either give 100% completion for rolling credits or I really enjoyed the game and ended up completing the achievements anyway. Of the rest, I’ve probably rolled credits on 80% of my “played” games, because sometimes I just lose interest before I reach the end, while still enjoying my time w/ it.

Games should be fun, and if they stop being fun, move on.

No, the Steam life is not to play games, but to buy them.

A lot of Steam games don’t have any DRM, and most of the rest are pretty easy to strip.

Give it a shot sometime. Completely quit out of Steam, turn off your internet, and try running some of your older Steam games directly from the Steam folder.

I do this somewhat often when my kids are on my other computer playing games on my account and I still want to play something. It’s a little trickier on Linux since you need something to run the Proton/WINE layer, so I mostly stick to Linux-native games in that pretty rare case.

Yeah, I have far fewer games and have played a lower percent of the ones I have. There are just so many bundles that have one or two games I do want and I just add the rest to my library.

Exactly!

And it’s highly unlikely that OP is playing 100% new-releases, especially w/ that 200+ installed games, so they’re probably getting a bunch of those well below store price (i.e. through bundles and whatnot). I have several hundred games, many of which I haven’t played, and most of those came in a bundle that included a couple games I did play (and the total price was significantly less than the retail price of the games I did play).

I’m guessing that’s OP’s case, and given how many they claim to have played, I’m guessing they have a lot of time to play games.

not finishing so many of your games shows some kind of problem

If they’ve played 23%, that’s a lot of games, as in, well over 1k. Thy said nothing about how many they’ve finished, but I don’t think “finishing” is all that important.

What I’m more interested in is how much time they have for playing games. What’s they’re lifestyle like that they can play nearly 2k games while also accomplishing other life goals? It’s not an unreasonable amount, just sufficiently high that it raises some eyebrows.

I feel like it’s an obligation for me to finish a game unless I don’t like it.

If OP isn’t finishing any games, yeah, I agree. But there are a ton of games that I don’t find worth finishing, in any sense you define that, but that I still find worth playing.

For example, I didn’t finish Brutal Legend because I really didn’t like the RTS bits at the end. I still love that game and recommend it, but I only recommend it w/ the caveat that the ending is quite different from the rest of the game and it’s okay to bail. That type of game isn’t going to have an amazing ending, so the risk of not seeing the ending is pretty small (and I can always look that up on YT or elsewhere if I want). I did the same for Clustertruck because the ending had an insane difficulty spike on the last level and I just didn’t care enough to finish it.

However, other times I have pushed through, such as Ys 1 Chronicles, which has an insane difficulty spike on the final boss. I am happy I pushed through, because I really liked the world and the ending, which feeds into the next game (in fact, on Steam, it automatically started Ys II after finishing Ys 1). I ended up not liking Ys II as much (still finished), but I really liked the tie-over from the first to the second.

So yeah, I don’t fault someone for not finishing games, but I do think they’re missing out if they never finish games.

Isn’t that what 802.1x is for? If you really want to lock down your network, there are options.

Awesome. :)

I love ceviche and my SO makes pickled salmon salads that are amazing, so I’d probably love it.