How are you?

Life sets em up, I knock em down...or they knock me down...or it's a tie and we just pummel each other for days on end lol

It's just like Chumbawumba foretold....

Not great. Sad and bored and feeling kinda hopeless. Need something to work towards. Thankfully school is starting up in September.

If you want you can mine crypto for me ☺️👉👈 could give you something to do
- Haha I don't have the GPU for that. Also it's called "mining" crypto, not "youring" crypto.

Doing ok I guess, main issue is being alone constantly, but since I have had almost a decade of living alone since I moved out from my parents and was quite lonely before that as well (my parents are lovely and caring, I have just never found anyone special, and have drifted apart from most of my friends).

Planning on getting into VR in september after the PS2VR PC adapter has been out for a month, and I have reviews to look at

My car needs it's bumper replaced after a badger ran into me while I was driving. I can still drive it, no warning lights nor leaks what I can see...

This spring I had a holiday in Spain, got to walk El Caminito Del Rey and it was gorgeous, I will get back to Spain soon with work this time.

I need to replace my computer desk and remodel my living room, but first I need to move my computer, record player and more from the computer desk.

Need new monitors for my computer, my current monitor has terrible image retention issues.

How was your experience with El Caminito? I've always wanted to go but I feel quite overwhelmed with all the planning.
- It was fantastic and a bit terrifying.
  I am soo happy I went, but unless there is a lovely woman asking me to accompany her, I won't do it again.
  95% of the path is amazing, with some thrilling but not scary views, the last 5% was terrifying, however I never felt unsafe.
  Ok, lets start from the beginning.
  As you probably know, El Caminito Del Rey is a stunningly beautiful path in a crevase of a mountain side, it leads between two hydro electric powerplants, and was originally built as a maintenance path.
  It got famous on the internet as the worlds most dangerous path, when I first saw videos of it, the path was crumbling concrete hanging on the mountain side.
  This is no longer the case, since adventurers kept bypassing anything the local government did to prevetn access, they decided on another way forward, rebuilding the path.
  The new path is built just above the old one, preventing access to the old path, while granting safe and easy access for unfit tourists (like me) to see the amazing landscape.
  The path is modern, made out of tick peices of wood, securely anchored to the mountain side, there is a secure railing with netting along the entiire path.
  There is minimal need for planning on walking the path, you need to get a ticket, and I do recommend getting a ticket for the return bus as well, you will be tired after walking the path.
  You only really need four things to walk the path.
  A ticket
  A bottle of water
  Decent shoes, I walked in my Brooks Ghost 23, you don't need hiking boots, but avoid sandals or flipflops.
  A good camera with a solid strap, if you drop your phone or camera over the edge of the railing, it is gone/destroyed.
  Do not bring a big backpack, this is noted on the rules you get when buying a ticket, this is due to the path being very narrow.
  You buy tickets for the walk online: https://www.caminitodelrey.info/en/tickets/buy
  We got a guided tour, we had an english guide, but the guy we had was not really worth it.
  So you go to the restaurant marked on the map you get when buying the tickets, that is not the entrence to the path, it is the entrence to the entrence to the path, unless your instructions say otherwise, do not wait there, there are big signs, you need to walk about 2km to get to the entrence of El Caminito Del Rey.
  So you get to the entrence, this was a bit chaotic when I was there, depspite being there in low season. Speak with the staff, they will help you, scan your ticket and get into your group.
  If you have picked a guided tour, you will be issued a small radio reciever and and headphones, the headphones are terrible, if you can, get some better 3.5mm earbuds that fit better.
  Regarless of what ticket you have bought, you will be issued a helmet and a disposable hairnet.
  Finally, you are entering El Caminito Del Rey!
  The path is for the most part located inside the cleft, this is very nice as if you start feeling dizzy of vertigo, you can just not look down, and the feeling goes away.
  This is untill the end...
  I must again stress, that while it was terrifying, I never felt unsafe.
  You will have to walk across a metal grid catwalk suspention bridge, it is supported by thick metal cables, but it does wobble and sway a bit, then you get to a an anchored path hainging on the open side of the mountain, there is nothing to help your vertigo there as the path hangs over a sheer drop of 100+ meters.
  I don't like hights, I get some vertigo, I was clearly uncomfortable and scared, but at that point you can't really go back, so I just focused on continuing on.
  The path is completely safe, highly thrilling and even terrifying, and so so worth it.
  I had my Lumix S5 camera with my 24-105mm lens, a great combo, and I just 1150+ photots from my walk, some of the most beutiful nature photos I have taken.

I'm okay, kind of a boring day overall but I got some cleaning done, and later spent the evening playing board games with some friends, so that was fun.

And to your second question, small, shriveled, and always to the left.

No better way to spend a Saturday as far as I'm concerned. What board game? Betrayal at House on the Hill was the last board game I really remember playing and it was a blast. Hope you had fum
- Betrayal is super fun, we didn't play that one tonight though. Started with Concept, then played a game called Hues and Cues. It was a good time, definitely the best part of the day!
What board games? A few friends and I spent nine hours (we agree, it was ridiculously long, we were expecting 4-5 hours) playing Clash of Clans Last night. We started actually playing around 8:30 PM and finished at 5 AM.

Not the best...

I haven't been able to find a job in my field (IT) for about a year, any opportunities which I think I have secured are ripped out from under me at the last moment. Two weeks ago I was waiting on hearing back about a 4th and final interview with CrowdStrike...then they screwed up 8 million Windows PCs and cost businesses about 5.5 billion dollars.
My brother has come to terms with his alcoholism and it's been a rough few months for my parents. He's 42 and has a 4 year old daughter, and her mother is an absolute nightmare to deal with (they aren't together). My brother lives nextdoor to my parents ...but I live 1300 miles away. We thought he was doing pretty well for the past month...but it turns out he was eating like the equivalent of one piece of beef jerky a day (in total) and not drinking any liquids other than (a reduced amount of) alcohol. He has been on blood pressure medication and apparently mistakenly doubled up on that, passed out at the top of his outside steps one night last week, fell down the steps and broke two of his front teeth badly. He's been in the hospital for the past few days so they can get him stable. My parents are going to recommend in-patient recovery to him, because he wants to get sober, but can't really manage to do it himself. My parents are 67 and 74, so it's a ton of stress on them as well.
And the least of my problems: my short term memory is terrible (I'm 38 with ADHD). I've been attempting to learn how to dance Casino (Cuban Salsa), but I can't remember a damn thing, I have practically zero rhythm, and my body is fucked up from minor scoliosis in two places which throws off my weight/center of balance and makes me shoulders tight (I'm "round shouldered"). I've gone to about 30 classes, but I'm still stuck on the very basics 😑
Also just feeling like shit today, physically, but that's because I was up until 5 AM playing a board game with a few friends and took too much Ambien (I've been taking it on and off for about 20 years and steadily for the past 9 months or so while talking to a psychiatrist about my insomnia) because even though I had been awake for about 20 hours I was still pretty alert.

I just keep telling myself it could be a hell of a lot worse though.

I'd say lay off the gaba dealies withdrawals for em can be insomnia, otherwise you know what you're doing it seems.
I feel you on the job thing, when I was 23 it took me many months to find a job in IT, it was awful, I remember the stress of it, I needed it desperately to stay in the country, otherwise I'd be deported to hell.
- I’d say lay off the gaba dealies withdrawals for em can be insomnia
  I'm an insomniac anyway, Id' rather knock myself out than stay awake for like a day or two straight and be miserable due to lack of sleep. I actually take Gabapentin as well, which helped me not feel like ass in the morning (the usual outcome of taking like 15 mg of Ambien, previous to about 2-3 years ago)
  I feel you on the job thing, when I was 23 it took me many months to find a job in IT, it was awful, I remember the stress of it, I needed it desperately to stay in the country, otherwise I’d be deported to hell.
  Luckily I'm a citizen so I don't have to worry about that, but yeah, it's absolutely miserable and demeaning. Half of the time is spent creating an account for something that you'll never use again, verifying that your resume was parsed correctly, and then answering the same bullshit discrimination questions. 30% of it is spent wading through all the job postings from recruiters with horrible/useless job descriptions, and if you find one you like, talking to them for 20 minutes about the exact same stuff that's on your resume and you go into detail about it and they stop you because they have no clue what you're talking about. My mom keeps telling me "you may have to go for something that you don't want" because she doesn't understand that getting a helpdesk job takes just as much effort as getting a Linux System Engineer job.

I've had some bad luck recently, but things seem to be looking up now. I try to look on the bright side - this has been a timely reminder of how great my life usually is.

Bit overwhelmed. So much to do!

Feel free to join !casualconversation@lemm.ee for this kind of threads

I have today off, and no obligations to anyone or anything. The world is my oyster, friend. So y'know, pretty good. It's still early morning my time zone (stupid internal clock set for AM shifts) so I'm just snuggling with the cat and putzing around on my phone before I get up.

My only complaint today is that my coffee grinder finally died last week so I'll have to resort to the pre-ground for my coffee when I do get up in a bit. I'm not a coffee snob by any means but you can totally taste the difference, so I might get a little crazy today and add some oat milk or perhaps even sugar. I know, I'm a wild man.