APS members without lives?

[Monkeyleg]

Back when Oleg created this forum, I'd cruise through, read some posts, and then do something else. Usually something productive.

Sometime several months ago, I found myself addicted to the site. I just had to know what job foibles Mike Irwin was going through, or who finally had found a girlfriend for life.

I even found myself reading posts asking for advice about broken lawnmowers or cordless drills. I'd hoped to give advice, but had none.

Believe it or not, I actually talk to people every day. Sometimes all day.

But, for whatever reason, I find it more interesting to talk to the folks here on APS.

And that has me worried. Granted, I had no life before THR, TFL or APS.

But, does this mean that I have even less of a life now?

That's pretty scary stuff to consider.

[Felonious Monk/Fignozzle]

It comes & goes.

Currently, I'm home full time, working on an MCSE certification via an online course.

During that time, I'm logged into APS pretty much all the time, and take a few minutes frequently to peruse what's being discussed.

I've had moments (and will again, I'm sure) when it will be days between my visits.
It's nice when it happens, but a relatively benign addiction, IMO.  To each his own.

[MicroBalrog]

What is this L-I-F-E thing you are talking about?

[BakerMikeRomeo]

MicroBalrog: +1

Li... liieeeph.. l-.. I don't believe in it.

Yeah, I don't do much. Read THR, read APS, browse the SigForum and HKPro galleries, read my webcomics, read my blogs. Rinse, repeat.

I don't get out much. Well, that's a lie. I don't get out ever, except to run errands or to fulfill obligations.

~GnSx

[Nightfall]

I spend lots of time on a computer, writing code anyway. APS is just a mouse click away, so I stop in regularly. If wanting to interact with the better grade of human that I often find here makes me lack a "life", so be it.

But, for whatever reason, I find it more interesting to talk to the folks here on APS.

Talking to folks in "real life" regularly makes me want to put my head thru some dry wall, repeatedly. Here, people tend to be a bit better behaved, a bit smarter. I can actually stand most of the discussions here. I guess I'm just anti-social.

[Ex-MA Hole]

I find that it's (usually) intelligent, non-threatening conversation.

Hope I didn't offend anyone!!!  ; )

[garrettwc]

If wanting to interact with the better grade of human that I often find here makes me lack a "life", so be it.

+1. A lot of times the conversation is more pleasant and interesting here than what's going on elsewhere. Sometimes it's the other way around. It comes and goes.

[AJ Dual]

Four kids in diapers at home, and a dead-end IT cube-farm job at work.

Yeah,

No life here either.

[Art Eatman]

My old worn-out bod needs an hour or two to get going in the morning.  So, coffee, Aleve, and APS/THR/TFL.

When it's 100F outside, I'm inside.  The last few days, I was mostly outside.  Today, it's raining.  (In the desert?  Huh?)  I go to the boobtube for car racing and feetsball.

The Internet's fun, and I'm no longer building hot rods and houses and hauling gravel and all that physical stuff.  

Art

[cosine]

APS members without lives?

Guilty as charged. No girlfriend, not many friends at all, my day mainly consists of work, study, and the Internet. Oh, I get out and play golf about once a week with a really close friend, but that's about the extent of my life. (Not that I really mind.)

[Gewehr98]

Guilty as charged, at least for another week or so.  The sheriff's department is taking their sweet time running my background check, and the home interview isn't scheduled until next week.  They figure I'll get picked up on the force next month.  County government works slowly in their human resources department, evidently.  They'll eventually get around to having me start work, then maybe I'll have some LawDog moments to post.

So I unpack household goods, clean them, watch the three dogs, and browse.  THR, TFL, TRP, and APS have a strong gravitational pull, what can I say?

[Monkeyleg]

Fistful, if you don't mind my asking, how did you find this forum if you weren't already a THR member?

As for the other replies, I'm surprised at how similar some of our situations are.

I just got off the phone with my closest friend after over an hour of conversation. It's the first time we've talked in months. I haven't seen him face-to-face since sometime last year.

Maybe I should step away from this keyboard more often and actually talk to live people, and in person.












Nah.

[Moondoggie]

My wife and I moved to this podunk town (her hometown) after retirement from the service to look after her 83 yr old Mom who lives next door.

This is the most ridiculously backward, insular, inbred community that I've ever imagined.  I'm never going to regress to being redneck/ignorant enough to fit in here.  I've only found one person in town that I marginally connect with...my local friendly FFL.  I've dropped over $3K in his store in the past 2 yrs.  I've invited him to go to IPSC matches many times, and he's repeatedly said he'd like to go, but when the time comes he's never available.  I got the hint, I guess, and gave up.

I've met some folks that I shoot (KC) with that I think I click with, but I live over 100 miles away, so it's kinda hard to spend a lot of time with any of them.  My best friend from the Marine Corps lives 1,300 miles away, but we talk frequently using free cell-to-cell minutes.  He's pretty much my only outside serious contact.

So, THR, APS, Frugal Squirrels are my principal pastimes when I'm in semi-retired leisure mode.

Life?  What life?  What IS life?

[Waitone]

Where does one go to get one of 'em there "lives"?  Sounds interesting.

[Antibubba]

If you're going to pick on me for spending all my time here, then YOU'RE OUT OF THE WILL!!!!!



...


Anyone else?

[BakerMikeRomeo]

Moondoggie, if you wanna talk to your friend in the corps, and want something cheaper (and you and he have broadband) and more comfortable, you might consider picking up a reasonably cheap computer headset at Wal*Mart, and downloading Skype from www.skype.com

As of right now, I've been on Skype with some friends for slightly longer than five hours (we've been playing Guild Wars), with a mic set up on my desk and my big ol' headphones on my head, for a cost of zero dollars.

~GnSx

[Perd Hapley]

As of right now, I've been on Skype with some friends for slightly longer than five hours (we've been playing Guild Wars), ~GnSx

Speaking of having no life.  How old are you boys?  

[Perd Hapley]

Fistful, if you don't mind my asking, how did you find this forum if you weren't already a THR member?

I was.

[BakerMikeRomeo]

Speaking of having no life.  How old are you boys?

Am I gonna have to drop this here elbow on you, old man? 'Cause I will come down on you like a lead-lined sack of asswhoop!



Just kidding. I'm 19. I think both of my friends are, too, but I dan't know when their birthdays are.

In other nolife news, I just tried out the Company of Heroes (things I'm getting sick of: "X of Y", "Brothers in...", World War II ("It's official. Utah Beach is the new Hoth." ~Penny Arcade)), and it is pretty cool. Lots of neat stuff. Artillery is an absolute bastard (as it ought to be), and taking machineguns is a total bear.

I'm getting sick of there being no half-way mark between the squad-based shooter and the real time strategy game. Can't someone bring back the Real Time Tactical style of Ground Control (the first one, not the ass-awful sequel that did away with everything that made GC worth playing) on, like, an infantry platoon scale?

Take Rainbow Six and zoom out. Take Company of Heroes and zoom in. Take out resource management and base building (except for planning defenses), and for the love of GOD, let ME decide how far the damn camera zooms out! I can't tell you how many RTSes I've passed on because of awful cameras (e.g., Dawn of War, which SHOULD be a totally sweet RTS, but whose camera hovers about six inches off the ground at maximum zoom-out, leaving you with many a weapon that has a range measured in SCREENS). Cameras should rotate around their own axes, not around a point in the ground. Camera controls should be located entirely on the mouse, and duplicated on the keyboard.

*grumble*

I oughta write a book. If everyone would follow my various "all games of genre X should have features A through W, plus whatever makes your game different", I would be significantly less hacked off when playing most games made.

~GnSx

[MicroBalrog]

Speaking of having no life.  How old are you boys?

22 in 9 days.

(e.g., Dawn of War, which SHOULD be a totally sweet RTS, but whose camera hovers about six inches off the ground at maximum zoom-out, leaving you with many a weapon that has a range measured in SCREENS).

I don't think there's anything in DoW with range quite that long. Not even the Whirlwinds.

But then I only played the demo.

[BakerMikeRomeo]

Lobbas, Whirlwinds, and basically any of the artillery units have ranges long enough that if you're looking at the unit/building being shelled, you'll have to go find the blasted thing before you can thump it.

Stuff like that just drives me UP THE FREAKIN' WALL, though. Some little camera quibble, some little stupidity in the controls will just hack me off something ferocious.

~GnSx

[BakerMikeRomeo]

NoLife update no.2:

If anyone knows anybody what works for THQ or Relic, give them a kick in the pants. #123 on Gunnyskox's Things Every Game Should Have is THE ABILITY TO SKIP CUTSCENES, okay? If I want to hear bad acting, stupid lines, and experience a premise strained to its breaking point, I will watch any Star Wars movie made in the past 10 years. When I mash SPACE, you shut your dirty Full Motion hole and let me play the bloody game. Do this, or you will never receive an ugly scrap of my money.

I've had it up to here with game developers delivering terrible story, subpar acting, and lines so bad only a CS Major could've written them and trying to play it off like they're delivering some brilliant cinematic masterpiece (hint: CS Majors write code, not screenplays). Either do it right, or don't do it at all. You either include a GOOD story, with GOOD writing, and GOOD acting, or give me my objectives and shut up. Not every world war 2 game needs some grunty sergeant and some squeaky-voiced lieutenant and this that and the other asinine one liner. Make a good game, or make a good movie. Clearly, game developers aren't capable of doing both at the same time.

Infantry should be able to jump over low walls. Particularly low sandbag walls of their own construction, instead of getting stuck behind them when they're building them across bridges.


Positive things about Company of Mind-Bogglingly Overused Nouns:

Capturing special weapons is among the coolest ideas ever. If the crew of a field gun dies, but the gun isn't blowed up, I can totally just roll an infantry squad over there and pick up where the dead fellas left off. If I tear up an MG42 team, I can similarly hork their machinegunnery.

Doing... things.. is moderately intuitive. I still need to memorize the hotkeys.


Grrr... A gaming magazine needs to hire me to write a weekly "total bitch" column.
~GnSx
P.S. There were only three things that were good about F.E.A.R.; they weren't story, voice acting, animations, "scary" stuff, or AI.

P.P.S. They were Graphics, Environment, and Gunfights.

[American By Blood]

Not every world war 2 game needs some grunty sergeant and some squeaky-voiced lieutenant and this that and the other asinine one liner.

What about the most important WWII video game/movie stock character?  The vaguely ethnic guy with a Noo Yawk accent and a nickname related to his city of origin.  Can't forget him.

WWII was fought exclusively by Nazis and Dodgers fans, dontchaknow.

[MicroBalrog]

Lobbas, Whirlwinds, and basically any of the artillery units have ranges long enough that if you're looking at the unit/building being shelled, you'll have to go findthe blasted thing before you can thump it.

Minimap is friend.

[Brad Johnson]

Talking to folks in "real life" regularly makes me want to put my head thru some dry wall, repeatedly.

No kiddin'!

In my line of work I see people (who should know better) making the same stupid decisions day, after day, after day...

You guys and gals are my sanity check. After a rough outing, skimming through a couple of threads here - along with my often long-winded replies - lets me know that there really are intelligent people in this world.

Brad