cobysev

[…] we have so many things wrong PlanetSide that it makes the stars almost irrelevant.

Yeah, this has been my fear lately. As a kid in the '80s/'90s, I had high hopes for humanity. I loved space travel stories; read so many science fiction books, watched Star Trek/Star Wars, loved space films of all genres…

But lately, I’ll be happy if we ever make it to Mars. The one person who had a dedicated mission to get a man on Mars turned out to be a self-destructing billionaire sociopath who seems to have abandoned that dream for political meddling aspirations instead.

If we can get capitalism out of the way, humanity might have a chance at bouncing back. But as long as a few powerful elites maintain control over society, our hopes and dreams will forever be redirected toward financial gains until the collapse of society.

On the plus side, even Rome, the most stable and advanced civilization outside of our own, eventually collapsed. Humanity survived and eventually went on to thrive once again, doing even better this time. By the historical timeline of the birth and death of civilizations, America is long overdue for a collapse. Maybe we’re about to see a global change that will reset our predicament and give us another chance to succeed. If we can learn from our past.

I just wish I could see how life goes on without me. How our world changes in the future beyond my limited time on this planet.

I think about people who lived hundreds of years ago. How they couldn’t even imagine the scientific and technological advancements that we have. And then I think about hundreds of years into the future. What changes will be so extreme and advanced that I can’t even imagine it today?

I wish there was some way for me to glimpse into that future and see where society is heading. Will we expand out to the stars? Will we be extinct long before we leave this planet? What’s the ultimate future for humanity? These are questions I want to know, but will never get a chance to find out, unless everyone but me dies out in the next 30-40 years. And I highly doubt that’s gonna happen.

Being in the Air Force, the job was mostly like any civilian IT job. We worked off a ticket system to resolve computer issues, dealt with “customers” (other military members), managed servers, satellites, networks, etc. The specifics depended on the exact job; it seemed like every base I was assigned to had different equipment or mission requirements, so I was always learning some new system to manage.

Probably the biggest difference from the civilian sector was that military networks were severely locked down. There were approved software lists that were managed from much higher levels in the Air Force and only that software was allowed to be installed on computers. Half the time, even us administrators at the base level couldn’t mess with installed software.

There were software scans that would detect unauthorized software and boot computers off the network until it was resolved. Most places I worked, you couldn’t bring CDs or flash drives with your own programs on them. USB devices would be flagged instantly and get your account kicked off the network until you completed remedial training through your local IT office.

Our web browsing was severely limited too. Some bases only allowed official military website access; others would allow access to the web but only from an approved white list of sites. It depended on the job and the classification of the network.

Also, they believed that the best security was older systems that had been thoroughly tested for vulnerabilities, so we were usually a step or two behind the civilian sector in terms of operating systems and software/hardware. They preferred that new systems were thoroughly tested in the civilian sector first, most vulnerabilities identified and remedied, and then we would trust it. So I rarely got to learn about modern IT technologies unless I researched it myself in my own free time.

EDIT: In terms of harassment, there was sometimes a lack of respect for the IT guys. Lots of higher-ranking officers made unreasonable demands, expecting us to make some impossible network requirement magically work because “that’s your job.” Or just getting mad when things were broken, because “Why do we have IT guys if things are always broken?” Or the same if things work: “Why do we have so many IT guys when nothing ever breaks?” We had our own leadership in the IT field whose job was to explain to other leaders exactly what we did and how it benefits them, so the rest of us could focus on the job.

The branch you join does make a difference in experience. I was in the Air Force, which is one of the most chill branches to serve in.

Despite the name, most Air Force members are not pilots. In fact, only about 5% are pilots, while the rest work in careers that either directly or indirectly support those pilots. We have doctors, lawyers, accountants, police, cooks, engineers, teachers, etc. I was an IT professional in my service, so my job was basically to sit at a desk and fix computers.

The Army and Marines tend to abuse their members, both mentally and physically, so I wouldn’t be surprised if those guys don’t recommend military service to others. I’ve heard horror stories from my Marine buddies, and I’ve personally witnessed some of the harassment/hazing rituals Army members go through.

They have a lot of toxic behaviors that keep getting passed down to the next generation. Surviving it and promoting above it is more a badge of honor than anything, so they subject the new guys to the same abuses to “toughen them up” or something.

The Department of Defense also uses it as an excuse to give them the worst equipment and hand-me-downs in the military, so they tend to operate with old and barely serviceable gear, while the Navy and Air Force tend to get the newest equipment.

But the Air Force was pretty fun. The Navy is pretty good too. They have some of the best technical schools in the armed forces, so they set you up with plenty of opportunities when you leave the service.

The Space Force is basically Air Force 2.0. All our space programs were under the Air Force until the Space Force was officially created, so they just transitioned those members into the new branch and copied Air Force regulations over until they could define their own unique requirements.

As a teenager, my friends and family always told me I was the nicest guy they knew… and they were genuinely shocked when I joined the US military.

I came home after Basic Training for a couple weeks before moving to my first assignment and everyone was surprised I came back successful. They expected I would’ve been kicked out for being too nice. In fact, I earned Honor Graduate.

I didn’t know much about the military when I joined, except for what I’d seen in old war movies. But they had some amazing benefits that I couldn’t pass up, and my uncle, a retired service member himself, highly encouraged it. I got free medical and dental, free college education, my initial career field training qualified me for most of an associate’s degree in my field, free travel around the globe, free food/housing… and they paid me to do it all. It was the best deal I could get right out of high school.

My whole military experience was a lot different than I expected; I spent a lot of time correcting stereotypes about military service with my friends and family. I actually had a pretty good career and retired after 20 years of service.

I mentioned in another comment that I’m using Gboard, which is Google’s POS keyboard. It’s not great (and I’m looking for better replacements currently), but it does learn words if you swipe them 3 or more times in a short time.

I have a unique first and last name that never pop up in dictionary words or common name lists, and Gboard swipes them for me now, because I’ve used them enough times in typing and fixed their attempt at autocorrecting it. Or if it mis-reads my swiped name, it’s usually one of the suggested corrections across the top of the keyboard.

I really don’t like Gboard, but it’s been the best I’ve found lately, so I always install it on new phones and tablets as soon as I get them. I’m getting suggestions in another comment thread here for viable FOSS replacements, so I’ll need to test those out.

I’ve been using Gboard, Google’s keyboard. I don’t like it and am currently trying to de-Google my life, but I haven’t found a better swipe-to-text keyboard yet.

You’d think it would be easy to replace Gboard. Ever since Google started inserting AI into everything, half my words don’t swipe correctly, or they’ll give corrective suggestions on the top bar that are way off the mark. It was way better about 5 years ago. But it seems most keyboards are also using AI to predict swiping, so I can’t find any that work better at the moment.

I used to hate touchscreen keyboards, but then I learned about swipe-to-text. Now I can swipe words on a digital keyboard faster than I can type them on a physical keyboard. I can’t go back to pressing individual keys now unless it’s on a desktop computer keyboard.

Are you sure it wasn’t “queuing?” As in, “I’m queuing up some food to be cooked for our queue of orders.”

Thank you. As a former IT guy, I’ve been trying to keep my family away from Apple products. They’re way overpriced for their limited and locked down functionality compared to everything else out there.

My dad had Parkinson’s late in his life and my sister replaced his Android with an iPhone, specifically so she could give him this fitness tracker. He spent the last few years of his life struggling to figure out a new phone, and we could never get the damn app to work anyway. He fell all the time and it never once reported it.

I spent 20 years in the IT field and getting my computer-illiterate family to consult me before buying computer tech is like pulling teeth. I offer them free consultation and support all the time and they just go out and buy spyware-riddled junk on their own. They only come to me when their stuff is no longer useable.

My sister finally stopped buying iPads… only for her to go and buy Amazon Fire tablets for her kids. I had to go in and lock them down because they were constantly shoving ads into every function of the tablet. Her kids kept trying to buy games because they were constantly being advertised to them. And guess who left their credit card credentials on the tablet?

My apologies, /rant.

I’m just about to turn 41 and I had several experiences with long-distance relationships before I got married. Heck, I got hitched before online dating became a common thing; I totally missed the boat on that. I feel like online dating would’ve made my life much easier because I’m an introvert who sucked at talking face-to-face with anyone I had a crush on. But I could chat online all night and seduce practically anyone with my charm and wits. I had serious game as long as I was behind a computer screen, haha! And I was pretty handsome in my youth, so I never disappointed when people met me in person.

In 2001, I was 17 and long-distance dating my best friend’s 3rd-cousin. She lived about 3 states away. We got to know each other through AOL Instant Messenger after my friend asked me to chat with her one night. We’d be chatting all night, keeping each other company with only typed words. I only met her twice in person. The second time, she decided that the long distance relationship was too hard to maintain. She was about to graduate and go off to college anyway. I still had another year of high school before I was free.

A few years later, when I was 20, I had joined the US Air Force and was stationed in Japan for my first assignment. I found myself dating a local Filipino girl. She was 27, and the most advanced tech she owned was a flip phone. Planning dates was awful because I didn’t even own a mobile phone, so I had to hang out near my landline phone at home and wait for her to call when she was ready for me to pick her up. She would soak in the tub for 3+ hours each night before our dates, so I spent most of my evenings just sitting at home, waiting for her call. She didn’t own a car, so I had to go pick her up.

In 2005, I got deployed to Africa for 4 months. I basically told my girlfriend that I would be unreachable while I was there, but if the opportunity arose, I’d try to contact her. I wrote her a few letters while I was gone, and even sent a few brief emails to her phone. She had some email service that would forward messages to her flip phone, but only if it was less than 20 characters. She didn’t own a computer. I got to call her only once, but we were limited to a 5-minute call, and someone was always listening to the conversation, to make sure I didn’t discuss classified information.

I came home from Africa and my girlfriend was so excited to see me again, she planned to spend the night at my place. But after a very passionate “reunion” that night, she suddenly got very quiet. She wouldn’t look at me and refused to talk. After coaxing her for a bit, she finally opened up and accused me of cheating on her while I was gone! When I asked where she got that idea, she said the sex was so good, I must have been practicing with other girls! I tried to explain that it was just the pent up emotions from being abstinent for so long, but she wouldn’t hear it. She had thoroughly convinced herself and she dumped me that night.

I went home on vacation to visit family shortly after that and wound up meeting the girl who would eventually become my wife. She was the college roommate of an ex-girlfriend of mine whom I was still close friends with. My soon-to-be wife and I spent a few days of my vacation hanging out, then I went back to Japan and we stayed in touch over AOL Instant Messenger. We chatted almost every day and got to know each other really well.

When I got sent to Oklahoma for my next assignment, less than a year later, I was only a few states away from my eventual wife, and she asked if I would be willing to try a long-distance relationship with her. I had finally received my first-ever mobile phone (a flip-phone) and I made an effort to call her at least once a week. Outside of that, we stayed in touch via email or through AOL Instant Messenger. About once a year, when I had saved up some vacation days, I would drive the 7+ hours out to her home and I would spend a week or two staying with her before returning to my military base.

A year later, she graduated college and wanted to move in with me, but I got deployed to Iraq a week before she was supposed to move in. So I mailed her a house key and told her to make herself comfortable and I would be back in 4 months. While I was deployed, we chatted almost daily through Gchat, Google’s attempt at an instant messenger program embedded in Gmail.

I eventually came home and we lived together for about 9 months before I got a new assignment to South Korea. I was going to be stationed there for 1 year before being reassigned to Germany. I couldn’t bring my girlfriend along, so she went back to her home state for the year. I promised we’d meet up in Germany a year later.

A half year later, I went home on vacation and proposed to my then-girlfriend. She said yes, but also dropped a bombshell: she didn’t know how to keep a steady job if she was just going to be following me around the world, moving every few years at the whim of the military. So she asked if I was okay with her joining the military as well. She had learned a lot about military life and how excellent the benefits and pay were, and she wanted to try it for herself.

So I took her to a military recruiter, got her signed up, then I went back to South Korea for the second half of my year-long assignment.

But I told her, if she joined as a single woman, she would get a random assignment somewhere in the world and I might never see her again. So I suggested that we just get the legal paperwork for marriage out of the way so she’s legally tied to me, then we can plan a big wedding some other time when we’re living closer to home. If we’re legally married, then the military would keep us assigned together.

So we looked into the legal process for her home state and found out I didn’t have to be physically present to get married, and we were allowed to sign the marriage license in advance of the ceremony. So she mailed a marriage license to me, I signed it with a legal notary as witness, then I mailed it back to her and she signed it as well.

Then she asked a friend of hers who was an ordained minister to perform a brief ceremony to legally wed us. My wife invited her military recruiter as a witness and they performed the wedding ceremony from her bedroom. I joined the ceremony over Skype, from my dormitory room in South Korea.

During that time, I only lost connection once. Webcams were not very reliable in those days (around 2009), so it was a miracle I only dropped the call once during the ceremony.

After the ceremony, her recruiter borrowed the wedding license to update her status as married before she officially joined the US military. 5 days later, my wife left for military basic training and it was almost a half a year later that I got to see her again. I couldn’t reach her while she was in training. I got assigned to Germany and my wife followed me there about 3 months later.

And that was pretty much the end of my struggles with old-fashioned long-distance dating. In 2009, I got my first-ever smartphone while in Germany (an iPhone 3S) and staying in touch with people became a lot easier from that point on.

Oh yeah, and I had the worst time staying in touch with my family while I was in the military. My mother would always mail me calling cards (back when long-distance phone calls were expensive as hell). She expected ME to reach out to HER, though. I gave her my email address, but she almost never emailed me. She thought it was MY responsibility as her son to call her.

Suffice to say, I didn’t have much contact with my family in the 20 years I spent in the military. Long-distance phone calls were expensive and difficult to figure out when I was stationed outside the US, and I was always a bad conversationalist on the phone. If I couldn’t see who I was talking to, my brain would wander and I’d lose track of the conversation. I learned at 37 years old that I have a bad case of ADHD, which explained my struggles with staying in touch with people who weren’t physically nearby.

My wife and I moved in with my dad when I retired from the military a few years ago, but my mother had divorced him and moved across the country by then, so I still struggle to stay in touch with her. I’m trying to text her more often, but she’s extremely old-fashioned and expects me to call her instead of messaging. She’s 100% a boomer (born in the '40s) and is completely tech-illiterate. It’s very frustrating. She doesn’t really believe in ADHD and thinks it’s just an excuse to be lazy, so she regularly plays the victim when I don’t contact her enough. Which just makes me dread calling her.

So I guess I’m still struggling to communicate in an old-fashioned way with my mother, even to this day. But I’m pretty good at staying in touch with other friends and family via more modern communications.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR CURRENT PLEX PASS HOLDERS:
For users who have an active Plex Pass subscription, remote playback will continue to be available to you without interruption from any Plex Media Server, after these changes go into effect. When running your own Plex Media Server as a subscriber, other users to whom you have granted access can also stream from the server (whether local or remote), without ANY additional charge—not even a mobile activation fee. More on that later in this update.

I was worrying about this change because my Plex server provides free streaming for several of my friends and family and I didn’t want them to have to start paying for it. The whole point was to get them away from Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, etc.

But this sounds like, since I’m already a Plex Pass subscriber, my remote viewers will still be able to access my stuff for free. Do I have that right? Because if so, this change is just business as usual for me.

I saw the “Women in Metal” title and thought this would be a thread about women in trade jobs (i.e. metalworking).

I’ve been paying for Proton VPN for a couple years now and I’ve never been blocked by YouTube.

I’m also using uBlock Origin and Firefox as a browser. YouTube takes like 5-10 seconds to load videos, thanks to their built-in delay timer when ads can’t play, but otherwise it works fine.

Honestly, I’d gladly wait 30 seconds staring at a black screen than watch a 10-second ad. So their delay timer is pointless.

Back when I was a teenager (~25 years ago), I had the worst time waking up every morning for school. My dad would have to come drag me out of bed, then I would be sitting in the shower dozing for a while before I actually started cleaning myself. Like, literally sitting - I would sit on the edge of the tub while in the shower and just slip in and out of consciousness for a little bit until I was awake enough to shower.

Of course, this made me run late every morning. My dad always poked his head into the bathroom to yell at me that I’m going to miss my school bus if I don’t hurry up. I rarely ever missed the bus, but I also barely caught it most days, which always made my dad anxious about my morning routine.

As a healthy young teenager, I always had morning wood that wouldn’t quit. I had gotten used to it, so getting ready in the mornings with a raging boner wasn’t unusual. But I was generally pretty good at keeping it hidden from others until it went away.

One particular morning, I had gone through my shower-sleep routine and finally got around to cleaning myself. I had lathered up my entire body with soap and was scrubbing all the cracks and crevices thoroughly (I was a bit OCD when it came to cleanliness).

This day, my dad had finally had enough and decided to see what took me so long in the shower every day. Out of nowhere, he whipped open the shower curtain and opened his mouth to yell at me.

I was standing there, frozen in shock, both hands gripping my soapy raging boner. My dad glanced down, then back up at my face, then gave me the goofiest smile I’d ever seen him make. Then he wordlessly shut the shower curtain and walked away.

It took me a minute to realize why he changed his mind about yelling at me; it didn’t process at first what the situation he walked into looked like. I was just washing my body, after all.

My dad never again yelled at me to hurry up in the shower.

Well, I did serve throughout the Iraq War. I got some PTSD from my time in war zones that is a 70% disability rating alone. Plus several minor and major physical injuries over the years that I never fully recovered from.

The VA doesn’t do a direct addition when it comes to disability, so a 10% rating and a 10% rating doesn’t equal a 20% rating overall. They have some weird equation to calculate disability, which would probably bring it out to 12-15% disability total. But I had so many claims to submit, I made it all the way to 100%.

I thought I had maybe 2-3 medical claims to make when I retired. But I spoke with a VA counselor who spent 3 hours pouring over my 20 years of medical records in the military, then went over every single body part and asked detailed questions about my functionality and how it’s potentially degraded over the years since I joined the military. By the end, I had 33 claims to submit, and the VA accepted 30 of them. Enough small ratings (plus a few large ones) got me all the way to 100%.

I may not look disabled if you met me in person, but I am struggling, both mentally and physically. The VA actually fixed my knees; I was walking with a cane for the last 4 years I was in the military. But it’s not a perfect fix, so I still struggle to get around and I can’t run anymore without pain. But I don’t need a cane anymore, so there’s that.

YOU ARE ONLY 38?!

I was 38 when I retired three years ago, actually. I’m about to turn 41 in a few months. Sorry if I didn’t write that clearly in my comment.

The first few years going home feels like nothing ever changes but I recently went to my home town for a wedding and saw some friends for the first time in 15 years. Wow did the passage of time hit me like a truck.

I feel this. In my early years of the military, I used to take a month off every year and go home to chill with family and friends. The first few years of that, it was like nothing changed. But then I started dating my future wife and spending my time off traveling and honeymooning with her. When I did finally go home again, I almost didn’t recognize it. My friends and family had moved further away, my hometown had changed, everything was suddenly different.

True, 38 isn’t that old. But keep in mind, I’m 100% disabled according to the VA. Two decades of military service has wrecked my body, so I’m unable to work any physically demanding job. Heck, I struggle just to go up and down stairs in my own house without pain in my knees and back.

Which is a shame, because I was an extremely fit and active person in my youth. That’s part of the reason I joined the military - I was in the best shape of my life and could keep active all day without breaking a sweat. I’m actually frustrated now that just walking from my house to my mailbox takes me out of action for an hour or two.

I keep telling myself I’m young, but my body’s acting like it’s 80 years old. That’s the one downside to military service; it can easily overstress your joints and physically age you much faster than normal.

This is a compartmentalization technique seen in a lot in people with ADHD. Not saying OP has ADHD, but it’s something to look into if they have other signs.

I did this for literal decades. I was excited to start my adult life after high school, but an opportunity I couldn’t pass up dropped into my lap, so I chose that route instead.

Joining the US military was that opportunity. My uncle explained how the Air Force had taken care of him for 30 years, giving him free food, free lodging, free education, free travel around the globe, free medical and dental, and a steady, decent paycheck on top of it all. It sounded too good to be true, so I signed up as well. I figured I could get back to my plans for adult life later, after I’d taken advantage of all the benefits the military could offer me.

20 years later (3 years ago), I retired from the Air Force. It was a pretty stressful career, in a positive way, so I was glad to get home, relax a bit, then finally pick up my life where I left off.

The things is, a lot happens in 2 decades. All my friends had left town and moved on to new lives, new careers, created new families, etc. my own family had mostly moved away, except for my dad who was still living in my childhood home. He offered to let my wife and I stay with him rent free as long as we wanted. He passed away last year and I inherited the house from him.

So now I’m back in my childhood home, just starting to really get settled back in and trying to figure out what to do with myself. I feel like my life has been on hold for so long, I don’t even know where to start in picking things back up again. I’m not young anymore, so a lot of the physically active jobs and hobbies I was previously interested in are either difficult or impossible for me now. I also changed a lot mentally with 20 years of military service. I’m not the same person I was at 18, so I have to readjust my interests and hobbies.

Fortunately, I have a lifelong pension from the military. I was grandfathered into the old pension program before they switched to a 401K-type plan, so I get paid half my final paycheck every month for the rest of my life. I also got the coveted “100% Permanent & Total” disability rating from the VA, so that is an additional monthly payment for life that’s about double the size of my pension. Plus free medical and dental for life. My wife didn’t retire from the military, but she also got the 100% P&T disability rating, so she gets the same medical pay and benefits as me.

So with all this passive income, we can actually be retired, as of 38 years old, and have the free time every day to focus on rediscovering our lives. I don’t feel like I need to put my life on pause while I work a job I don’t necessarily care for, or save up enough money for something I really want to do. I can live my life fully now, unpaused, for the first time in my life. It’s been very liberating, both mentally and physically.

I think it was paid… But it’s been years so I couldn’t tell you.

It’s currently $3.99 in the Play Store for me, with a crossed-out list price of $6.49. Not a bad deal.