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I'd always thought that making friends and talking to strangers was super hard. My whole life, I've struggled along with just a couple friends...

Recently I've been reshaping my life and have been trying to make new friends... I'm still working on the execution, but just talking to people and finding common ground and being social has become SO much easier than I always thought it was. I think the trick was to just stop caring what people thought about me and being proud to be my genuine self.

There's a group I've been meeting up with regularly and we're going to the zoo this Sunday, and bowling next Sunday, on top of our usually scheduled Thursday afternoon general social meetups :)

I'm not in IT, but I was trying to get a coworker to send me a file they were supposed to have generated. I sent them a PDF and I wanted them to update it with current procedures (they were the area supervisor) and type it out in a word doc so it could be edited and rev controlled.

They never got back to me, 2 weeks passed. It was a 2 page document, so I emailed them to ask if they had finished. They responded that oh yeah they had finished a while ago, and I could find the completed document attached.

They sent me back the original PDF I sent them. After a confused follow up email, they again sent me back the original PDF.

I went over to their desk, which I had never been to before, usually I interface with them out on the assembly line. I was like "Hey what's up, could you send me the .Doc file you created?"

Their response? "I forget what I named it so I can't find it."

I am even more confused. After some general troubleshooting I ask them to open their documents folder, which they did not know how to do. It didn't matter because it was empty. They then close out of Outlook, which had been fullscreened the whole interaction.

Their desktop was the most densely packed jumble of hundreds of files I have ever seen. Not snapped to grid.

Turns out every document they ever interact with gets saved to their desktop permanently, and to find things they use Windows search. This explains why I kept getting back the original PDF, they searched for the name of what the file was supposed to be, and they just grabbed the first result without looking and slapped it in the email.

I ended up finding the document by showing them how to open a finder window, navigate to their desktop, and sorting by "last modified", then asking them what day they remember finishing the document. It was named New Document.doc.

It ended up being so bad I had to completely re-do it myself anyway.

Aww, I was hoping the branding was based around the Quartz crystal subtype of the same name... My parents are big into Herkimer diamonds, I was about to go order them some bags lol. (They are currently on a ~2 week road-trip around central NY to go digging.)

I will be interested to see how visible they are from afar. The space is down between a big pile of scrap metal, and a giant pile of salt. It SHOULD be fairly visible from the highway, where people are stuck in parking-lot-esque traffic every morning and evening.

The space is actually fairly interesting. It's been years in the making, but the aptly named Public St. is now legally recognized as a public right-of-way to the bay, much to the chagrin of the abutting heavy industry, who would rather keep public out of their space to avoid scrutiny. I don't know about other states in the USA, or other countries, but in the tiny state of Rhode Island where I live, the area between the low-tide and high-tide line are public property. Everywhere. Without exception. This is written into the state's constitution and tries to make it "impossible" to own the coastline. All over the state, there are right-of-way lines which consist of small strips of public land between private land to allow the public to access their lawful public property. The incorporation and inclusion of such right-of-ways can get somewhat contentious, and powerful interests who wish to privatize and exclude the public from access to the coastline always have something to say about it.

This particular new right-of-way doesn't really lead to anywhere you'd want to perform any kind of fun water-related activities. It's horrifically polluted, smelly, and directly adjacent to loud, messy industry. It does, though, cram a wedge in the space to make room for environmental justice causes like the aforementioned project regarding publicly displaying the current air quality right in the heart of the industry responsible for said poor quality, and can now be used to bring awareness to the pollution generated by the industrial waterfront. It also just feels powerful to be there. It's a place that really feels like you shouldn't be allowed to go there. On Sunday afternoon I sat there and watched a cargo ship be loaded up with scrap metal by 2 giant cranes only a couple hundred feet away. The ship was still there yesterday.

Yesterday I attended the "activation" of a new project in my city, where an artist/activist will be hoisting some large (10+ feet long!) wind-socks with a color matching the day's air quality warning level (yellow --> orange --> red --> pink) at the end of a public right-of-way to the ocean on the industrial waterfront (which is a large source of the particulate matter making the air quality poor in the first place). I got to the spot early, planning on sitting and reading and just chilling before the event, but when I got there, the artist and their 2 friends were struggling to get things set up, so I joined in and helped. Had a lot of fun getting my hands dirty and getting it all set up!

and then stayed the whole event and helped pack everything up.

I ended up talking with a couple people there about the project, environmental justice, etc., took a lot of neat pictures, just had a nice evening.

There was also a small amount of anguish interleaved, as well lol. One of the artists friends' started talking to me after we finished setting up, and I just did such a poor job of conversing, I wasn't really prepared or in the right mindset for deep conversation. They were asking so many questions about me, and I just... didn't return that energy. I feel like maybe they were flirting with me? Even if they weren't, It was one of those things where only after they got bored of talking to me they went to go talk to their other friend and like 20 minutes later I had that "OHHHHHHH... Damn." realization, like I should have asked them more about themselves, they were clearly interested in learning about me. Well, I wanted to at least apologize for being a bad conversationalist, but in the middle of packing up, they just left, and I never got the chance lol. So now I have that internal cringe embarrassment going on today, like I want to just curl up into a little ball and expire, even though I will probably never see this person again.

Thank you!

Yep! I started out with a Windows 98 Vaio laptop and a PCMCIA SCSI card, but now I also have a Windows 2000 desktop with a PCI SCSI card. I've uploaded the software to the internet archive

If you find a camera without the cable, take note that it is a proprietary SCSI interface on the camera, so you NEED the Polaroid cable. Said Polaroid cable also has a very uncommon DB25 connector on the PC end, which pretty much no SCSI interface uses natively, requiring an adapter to whatever flavor of connector your interface has, but those are easier to find and not specific to the camera.'

If you can find a PDC-3000, it takes the same photos, but uses Compact Flash memory cards, which is infinitely easier to use. You still need the Polaroid software (which is different for the 3000, someone else uploaded that one ) to convert the camera files, but just plugging the CF card into a card reader is so much easier than dealing with SCSI, turning the camera on, plugging it in, turning the PC on, making sure the camera doesn't go into low-power mode before the PC finishes booting, etc...

Make no sudden movements! In 12 years it will backhand you into the bye-bye realm!

My parents were super anti-video game, and also thought Pokemon were some satanic cult thing... My brother and I used to absolutely LOVE when my mom would leave us home alone on school vacations or weekends to go shopping or something or run errands while dad was at work, we would pop right on over to Kids' WB! and cross our fingers that Pokemon was on.

Our dad took my brother and I to some computer fair/carnival thing one time in 2000, I don't remember exactly where it was, but it was in a parking lot in front of some boring commercial building. There were computer themed carnival games, booths with information, displays of the newest tech, etc. We played lots of games and had a fun time.

Well, turns out, I was REALLY good at throwing floppy disks, because I got the 3rd highest score in the floppy disk throwing game (you had to hit targets of varying size to score points). My prize? A purple Gameboy color and Pokemon Yellow. (First prize was a high-end Windows 98 computer. I remember being bummed I didn't win a computer, but I still have that purple Gameboy Color... Probably wouldn't be able to say the same for the PC)

Of course since I won this thing, my parents couldn't take it away from me (well OK, I mean they COULD have, but besides being anti-video game and anti-pokemon, my parents were really great). This was the crowning achievement of my childhood. Of course, pokemon only has one save file, and so naturally, my brother "couldn't play my game". It took a while for my parents to understand this, but they eventually caved and got my brother his own neon green gameboy color and Pokemon Silver. Seeing the superior graphics of Silver, I saved ALL my pennies to eventually buy myself Pokemon Crystal. My brother, seeing the enemy Pokemon animations in Crystal not present in his Silver, saved all HIS pennies to eventually buy a Gameboy advance and Pokemon Saphhire... and the arms race continued. I got a GBA SP. My brother got a DS, I got a DS Lite, etc. etc., a constant stream of one-upmanship...

I still have the Purple Gameboy, Yellow, Crystal, Ruby, and the GBA SP, some of my most prized possessions. Almost every other physical thing from my childhood has been lost or sold. I had one of every single Pokemon game up until X/Y... A couple years back before the cartridge prices really exploded, I sold all the DS/3DS ones, which was kind of a bummer in retrospect, but whatever. I have much less interest in re-playing the DS era games. Maybe Black/White someday, I have good memories of that release. Last year I casually played through Pokemon Yellow again, and this year I've been playing Crystal.

I just started the Zones of Thought series by Vernor Vinge last Friday. I've been binging another author's work (Greg Egan) for the last several months, but finally finished his last novel, so reading something by a new author has been refreshing and exciting! The story immediately fell into a trope that I haven't been a fan of in the past (High-tech race meets low-tech feudal race), but it is already way way more interesting and deep than the last novel like that which left a sour taste in my mouth (Fire Time by Poul Anderson) and I'm enjoying it a lot!

I have a really hard time setting boundaries, and will quietly sacrifice my own happiness and sanity to make others happy. I also have a long history of fearing being alone...

From Freshman year of highschool to 2 months ago (2006-2025, wow almost 20 years, time flies), I think I have been single for a combined total of maybe a year, year and a half? I dated 3 women in a row for a little over 5 years each, exiting one long term relationship and immediately starting another one. Each time I just quietly sacrificed and changed myself for years until I could go no further, and crashed out, super unhealthy. The last long-term relationship, we moved in together after 3 months, and lived together for 5 years through 5 moves and COVID, it was crazy.

After that last long-term, I tried dating more casually, but quickly ended up in another relationship that lasted almost 2 years, but she really hurt me quite a lot, and I was so unable to leave until I was literally hanging onto sanity by a thread, because I was so afraid of being alone.

I told myself after that, I was done with dating... but I quickly fell back into it, and actually succeeded in dating casually for a bit. I ended up with a really pleasant friends-with-benefits situation with someone who had their shit together and was really good at setting boundaries, which helped me immensely, and I started working on myself in my own space outside that. Of course, though, I met some other woman who I fell for, and started dating her exclusively. She did not have her shit together, and I found myself right back in my old habits of sacrificing myself to help her. This lasted another year and a half, until 2 (maybe 3?) months ago, I finally just dumped her because I was so so bored and so tired of sacrificing my own happiness. I even got to the point where I was able to articulate and communicate my needs and wishes that weren't being met (which was a first), but after multiple talks, and almost breaking up once, she just never changed. This time I am REALLY done with dating.

I'm only just now starting to miss the physical side of dating, and would like to someday maybe find a similar FWB thing, but for now, I haven't even thought about setting up a dating profile or trying to meet anyone with the intent of dating. These past months have been the longest stretch in 20 years that I haven't thought about dating, tried to date, set up a dating profile, etc... It's kinda sad when I think about it. I've made a lot of progress on the fear of being alone, and even though I have no pets and live alone in a tiny apartment, I am finding my own happiness and keeping the loneliness at bay with the most active social life I have ever fostered, so for now it is going really well.

I am still working on all the fine details, and I have been on the journey for a while now, but ditching my smartphone has been one of the best things I have done in a very long time. My fancy new "dumb phone" came in a couple weeks ago and I have been loving it (Lightohone 3)

I have always been good at "doing nothing", but not even having the option for the dopamine drop of scrolling whatever has been such a positive experience.

I actually haven't thought about it THAT much lately because it's just become my new normal, but yesterday at work I went to the bathroom and there was someone standing at the urinal peeing, and scrolling on their phone... Like you can't even have that short singular human experience of ripping a hearty piss without distraction??? It made me think a bit deeper about how happy I am that I've "fought my way out of the machine" and never let myself get too far gone.