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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • I never get sleep paralysis in bed at night. It only ever happens if I doze off during the day, usually somewhere unusual like at work.

    I had a boring job for many years where I just had to be in the store, and sometimes it was very slow. I would doze off in my chair, knowing it was a slow day and we had a door buzzer to alert us anyway if someone came in.

    When I would fall asleep like that, my subconscious worry of someone coming in and catching me asleep would kick in and I would dream that I heard the door buzzer. In the dream I would try to get up and be ready, but completely unable to move. Sometimes I would dream a customer coming, or hearing the phone ring. And every time I would fight to open my eyes.

    While having this struggle I would realize that not only could I not open my eyes, but I couldn’t even move my body or breathe. So then I would start trying really hard to do one of those, sometimes fighting to lift my arm, or turn my head, or just struggling to breathe.

    It always seemed like an eternity of struggling to snap out of it. And eventually I would wake up, sometimes hyperventilating because I was trying so hard to breathe but was actually doing it just fine without knowing. It also seemed as though I could see my surroundings, but I’m not sure if my eyes were open or that was part of the dream.

    But every time I woke up like that, there was no customer in the store, no missed calls on the phone or anything. I had dreamed the part that woke me up, but with no other recollection of any other dream besides being there in the store.

    Sometimes, when I heard the door buzzer, I would wake up just fine and deal with whoever came in. Eventually I realized that the actual door buzzer would wake me instantly with no problem, but the one I dreamed never did.

    I don’t really have these episodes anymore since leaving that job and no longer having the opportunity to doze off during the day. But every now and then it happens if I take a nap on the couch or someplace else during the day. I think it’s my subconscious trying to stay alert to things around me when napping at odd times with the potential to be interrupted.



  • Drinking

    Why would anyone want to drink something that tastes awful, so they can have a night of fun they probably won’t remember, and wake up feeling awful?

    If I’m gonna have a fun night, I want to remember it, not hear about it from others. And the risks are too great. Risk of doing something stupid I would never normally consider that could embarrass, injure, or kill myself or others.

    If that’s your idea of fun, more power to you, but I’ll pass.












  • I have a total of 48 TB across 4 HDD, plus the system SSD on my old desktop, now just server. It’s unfortunately running windows, because I haven’t had the time to reinstall everything from scratch yet even though I’ve intended to for years.

    Anyway, I just run Backblaze for backup on it, except one drive which is important photos/files and that gets an extra backup to a RPi using Syncthing. The other drives are all downloaded media that could be replaced given enough time, but Backblaze backs up my whole PC and hasn’t complained about the size yet. I thought for sure they’d cut me off or something, but nope still just paying $99/year for a single PC backup.


  • When me and my younger brother were little, we were outside playing and digging in the snow with an old claw hammer from the barn. It must have been shortly after watching the classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

    I got the bright idea to tell him to stick the claw of the hammer in the snow, then pull it out and lick it, just like Yukon Cornelius does, and maybe we could find gold.

    Needless to say, tongue + ice cold metal hammer were quite the match and he was stuck instantly. Being as little as we were he panicked and ripped it off, along with a large thick chunk of tongue skin. Quite a bit of red snow that day…

    I remember getting in trouble for that one. My parents definitely thought I tricked him on purpose, but I couldn’t have been more than 8 or so and definitely did not. I also remember that hammer sitting outside for the rest of the winter, with a chunk of tongue still frozen to it.


  • I think a better analogy would be paying for an all you can eat buffet, but every time you go up for a plate, Google shovels some of whatever they want onto it.

    Oh sure, they try to guess what you might like by tracking your eating habits every time you visit the restaurant, but they still keep putting crap you don’t want on your plate that gets in the way of what you do want.

    Oh, and also, some all you can eat buffets have a plate limit, after so many plates, you can only get a spoonful per trip. And Google still crams on stuff you don’t want.


  • It's great at coming up with ideas for magic items, monsters, traps, plot hooks, etc.

    I ran a Christmas session last year, it was a dream session so I handed out tons of magic items cause they wouldn't be keeping them. ChatGPT generated every single one, and I didn't tweak anything at all. Which made for a few interesting items with redundant or contradictory stats, but that was explained by it being a dream.

    I have used it many times to give ideas for new items, new monsters, etc. Recently I was creating a blood-themed dungeon and asked for monster ideas and it gave me an Animated Bloodpuddle (reflavored Gelatinous Cube with extra abilities), and a Hemogoblin (ravenous blood thirsty goblins). There were others but those ones stuck out as cool and ended up being quite fun for the party.