Theophany posted:

Food is always an easy derail. Mainly because American food is loving trash designed for the broken palates of their landwhale population who are conditioned to feed on a steady diet of high fructose corn syrup and diabetus medication.

Solice Kirsk posted:

Sour beers are a scourge that must be stamped out.

Theophany posted:

Food is always an easy derail. Mainly because American food is loving trash designed for the broken palates of their landwhale population who are conditioned to feed on a steady diet of high fructose corn syrup and diabetus medication.

Splicer posted:

Why would an obvious truth cause a derail?

Nerobro posted:

And it doesn't even take 10,000 hours. I was trying to figure out how to suggest that it's about intentional practice... which is a skill many people haven't learned.

Maybe, the anonymous posters answer, is to work with the girlfriend on learning how to do intentional practice. Giving her tools to be better, maybe she'll play less. Or at least, play better.

Theophany posted:

Food is always an easy derail. Mainly because American food is loving trash designed for the broken palates of their landwhale population who are conditioned to feed on a steady diet of high fructose corn syrup and diabetus medication.

Osama Dozen-Dongs posted:

in the spirit of post hoc ergo propter hoc there's now a folk belief that anyone can become a master if they spend enough time, a position not in the slightest supported by the original results.

loquacius posted:

The Fahrenheit/Celsius thing only took off because I actively encouraged it.

ALFbrot posted:

drat dude, that's pretty cool

quote:

I am addicted to buying Lego and it just ruined my life.

I have been buying since I was a kid and, until now, its always been something I could keep under control. A few sets a year, splurging for loose pieces at conventions, stuff like that. But in the last 5 years or so it’s gotten worse. Unfortunately that also coincided with meeting the love of my life and getting engaged.

My fiancé (ex now I guess) realized I had a problem and made me keep a tally of how much I spent on Lego a month. At my worst I was dropping 4-500 a week on Lego. I had a massive backlog of sets to build, filling up my parent’s entire spare bedroom since my one room apartment was already filled with completed sets.

We cut it down to 100 a month, at least that’s what I told her. In reality I purchased a storage locker for cheap and kept buying Lego. I’d either go build them and store the finished pieces in the locker, or just leave the unopened boxes in there. We hadn’t combined finances yet so she had no idea.

I proposed to her after 4 years of dating, and her one rule was I keep my Lego addiction under control. I lied through my teeth and said I would. I also got her a cheaper ring (about 300 dollars) and instead spent double that on Lego in the same trip. She wasn’t my priority, sadly.

We started wedding planning and this is where things fell apart. I was in charge of certain things, and one item was building the centerpieces. My fiancé designed a pretty cool thing - some fake water lillies in a bowl of colored water with an LED light in it. We needed to make 17 of them, she had the exact pieces picked from the craft store along with the total cost - 126 dollars to make every single one. She gave me that money to pick up the raw materials.

I never did it, I just went to Toys R Us and threw that money towards Lego Star Wars sets that were new. I kept lying and putting it off, then she got pissed at me because the store discontinued the LED lights, so we had to buy a different type.

I finally got off my rear end and bought the stuff, but couldn’t justify making them until I finished some of my Lego backlog. Our wedding date was supposed to be this June. and I hadn’t even bought the materials until February.

My fiancé was justifiably mad and told me I needed to help out more, specifically by booking the hotel block, meeting the DJ and giving him his down payment, and printing up our table placecards.

I didn’t do any of this because Lego released set 75192 - the 800 dollar Millenium falcon. I bought it with the DJ money and spent 3 days building it.

My fiancé found out and threatened to cancel the wedding unless I “came clean” about everything. So I did.

I showed her the storage locker (full) and my bank account (empty). I figured I spent around 35,000 on Lego in the 2 years we were supposed to be saving for the wedding, honeymoon, and house.

She gave me back my ring that night and said she couldn’t trust me enough to marry me. I don’t blame her, not really. Her family hates me and now so does mine. A lot of people already have emailed me saying I wasted her life and their time. My parents threw all my Lego out of the house into the yard, so I spent a night having to drive over there and save them. Right now I’m still in my apartment, I just set up some Lego stacks to work through.

My ex has blocked me and hasn’t reached out to me. Her family refuses to get me in contact with her. I barely feel motivated to build my Lego backlog now.

Please don’t end up like me. I read the Lego thread in DIY a lot now and see so much of myself in those people.

I will not sell the Lego though, so please do not ask. They still mean a lot to me.

quote:

To preface this, I have a history of being treated for mental illness. I have come to realize though that they were treating symptoms of mental illness in humans, but for me they were just side effects of what God has done to me. All my life I knew something about me was different and that I had memories I couldn't access. As I got older, I tried harder and harder to access these despite the "professionals" telling me it's unhealthy or they aren't real. After years of meditations and piecing together various flashes that came to me, I now know what I really am: a former angel that God threw out of Heaven because I questioned Him. They mistook my real memories for delusion or hallucinations.

And here is what I remembered. Most people think the God they read about in the Old Testament stopped being like that and became more subdued and loving after sending Jesus to die for your sins, but it was only temporary. He has already started His biggest punishment for humanity ever, and this time there is not going to be an Ark, there will just be no humanity after. He gave you a chance, but those who call themselves Christians are liars and hypocrites, and the ever-increasing number of non-believers are doing everything they can to turn the world in to one that mocks and hates God.

I tried to point out to Him that there are still good Christians down here, and for that he stripped me of my status and hurled me down to Earth to die with you all as a human. I don't know when it's going to happen or how, but it's coming very soon and there's nothing you can do about it except start begging for His mercy...but don't get your hopes up.

loquacius posted:

I don't think you can even get much money for open, completed Lego sets, right?

loquacius posted:

Splicer posted:

The love of your life is Lego. Stop pretending and accept it. Then build a new wife, better and pointier than the last one. Also, stop paying for Lego storage. Build a Lego house and store your Lego in that.

yeah I eat rear end posted:

Yeah I think they at least need the original box for people to even want to buy them. My parents tried to sell our 5 giant tubs of legos (like those big plastic rectangle containers like Jesse was looking at for dissolving the bodies in in the first season of breaking bad) and nobody wanted to pay a non-joke amount of money for them. They all just ended up getting donated.

loquacius posted:

I don't think you can even get much money for open, completed Lego sets, right?

Sagebrush posted:

As long as you've got the whole set intact and it's not mixed up with other pieces, and you have the instruction manual, you can put it in a ziploc bag and still get a decent price on the lego trader websites. Not like full price, obviously, but maybe a third or so? Depends on how rare the set is. If the bricks are all mixed together in a bucket then yeah it's usually just sold by weight for pennies on the dollar.

Incoherence posted:

He should have signed a Lego-tract with his fiancee.

quote:

This is an oldie but I think it's still funny. Anyway, this was right when Skyrim was all the internet was talking about, and my co-manager and I happened to have an employee named Lydia (For those of you who don't know, Lydia is a memorable NPC who is sarcastically vocal about how much she really hates carrying stuff for you). So naturally we decided that any time stuff needed to be carried around we would tell the real life Lydia to do it, because we were both playing Skyrim, were stupidly obsessed with memes and were horrible people. Lydia had absolutely no idea why we were picking on her like this.
Lydia complained to our director and the four of us had a meeting. Our director tried to be serious about this but she was clearly fighting not to just crack up about the whole thing. We promised to try and be more fair in the future. The second after Lydia left the room the director just completely lost it and told us that if the whole thing hadn't been so funny she would have fired the both of us.

Incoherence posted:

He should have signed a Lego-tract with his fiancee.

Incoherence posted:

He should have signed a Lego-tract with his fiancee.

loquacius posted:

Goddamn dude

If you're loving with someone because of a nerd reference you have to tell them the reference, you're just lucky the director is a nerd too

Anyway the funniest thing about Lydia was always the boatload of "POLITE LYDIA" mods that started cropping up because nerds have incredibly thin skin