I grew up in the evangelical movement. I heard over and over and over again (some variation of this) when I was a kid, “The nation that refuses to aid Israel will fall! All of those who turn their backs on the Jews will burn when god returns.”

Those people are deadly serious too. It wouldn’t matter what Israel does.

That is religion. It is crazy to me that we live in this age with endless knowledge at our fingertips and people still believe all of this nonsense.

We can look into the belief systems and religions of people from all over the world, and somehow the majority of us can’t look at our own systems and realize that it’s all bullshit.

You can hear the teachers in rural India say, “The caste system is the will of God! How can you question the will of god?” A couple clicks later and you can hear a child Imam saying, “How can there be any god besides Allah?!” A few more clicks, you can hear a rabbi say, “We are the people chosen by god!” A couple more clicks and you hear the preacher say, “All other gods are false gods. Only our son of god is the one true god!” Hell, you can go down a rabbit hole of all the “gods” currently living with lucky followers of the one true living god right here, right now. Vissarion in Siberia gave those lucky bastards the Last Testament they’ll ever need to read. Imagine being lucky enough to shake your god’s hand and watch him prance around in white and burgundy robes and grow old before your eyes.

There are so many one true gods out there. You’d think that alone would make people think and question their own one true god. Nope. Not only do the majority of us keep putting our hands together and saying amen, we got folks out here making brand new gods today for future people to fight and die for.

It’s amazing.

At my store (which I worked at for 23 years and miss dearly), I would always let my regulars come in after closing if I could still serve them. If they had cash, I’d ring it up the next day.

That was one of 7 stores I worked in over the years (same company).

The other 6, hell no. Once they realized that I’d open the door after closing those bastards were coming up to an hour after I locked the doors. Same jerks every time yelling and cussing at me, “Well yer still here yuh faygit I don’t see why you won’t let me git a beer!”. Sometimes I’d stay late and hide in the office to watch a little tv before going home. It was always the same jackasses beating on the door at 1 AM putting their hands and faces up to the glass with stupid looks on their faces. I stopped letting them in after it became a problem for me and no matter how many times I said no, they’d walk their drunk asses to that store to try me.

It is amazing how much culture can change over 40 miles of road. I mean it, it’s crazy. Even the meth heads were polite and reasonable when they were in the middle of a 3 week, no sleep, hallucination fueled nightmare. “Ah, man. I’m so sorry that I bothered you. There’s people following me across the road so I’m just gonna borrow a little of your light here until someone I know comes to get me. I hope you have a good night.”

In that one store every local was always polite. I had two memorable assholes there over 23 years. At the others I had so many I couldn’t tell you.

I seriously have a boiling hatred for computers now because I couldn’t even be a little bit mean. I’ve snapped a few times when people blamed me for problems years after I worked on their stuff, but mostly I just got trampled on and robbed at every turn because I didn’t want to upset anyone.

By the time I was mean enough to demand payment and things like that, I already hated it.

My daughter is passionate about computers, so nowadays if I so much as want to tweak something a little bit I let her do it unless she don’t want to. I don’t want to burn her out too.

Your dad sounds like the childhood hero of mine who got me into computers.

Severe ADHD prevented me from ever learning to code, but I became damn good at repairs and things and just general understanding of computers because he was available to ask questions at almost any time.

He went to school auctions every year and got me a pile of hardware to learn from. He never asked for anything in exchange. All around great guy.

I heard him on the phone a few times dealing with the people who he worked with though. Good god he was mean. I couldn’t imagine him being that way with me ever, but he was brutal when it came to work and money.

A dude called him one time while I was sitting there, he listened for a few minutes and he said, “I’ve got a 14 year old kid here, he’s been doing this stuff for about 2 years. I’m gonna let him walk you through this for the 10th fucking time because you’re a goddamn idiot and feeling like a fool when you hang up the phone with a grown man isn’t teaching you any lessons. Maybe get a pen for this one because if I have to remind that a child walked you through it last time, I’m not going to be so fucking friendly.” I was so nervous, apologized multiple times, when I was finished walking him through it he took the phone and said, “now don’t you feel stupid? 25 years and this kid just schooled you.”

He told me, “you gotta be real with idiots or they’ll bother you with stupid problems every single day of your life.”

I wish that lesson had stuck haha, it just wasn’t in me to be mean. As a result, a hobby that I was passionate about all of my life is something I avoid like the plague now. People ruined it for me by bothering me constantly.

Exxxxactly

Exactly.

Ah, yes. I see. My friend, when you serve the one true religion you feeeeel it deep down, as though god is talking through your feelings.

You can’t just allow people from false religions to galavant around claiming they are part of the one true religion. And, see, since we’re all immortal (at least in the true religion) this world doesn’t matter really, except where religion counts.

Gaaaaaaah. The whole world filled with people with perfectly good noses, and yet they breathe through their mouths.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen discord get a positive mention on this sub. I’ve never used it so I don’t really have a horse in this race.

I don’t know what people use it for, but I’ve seen all the negative memes about open source software devs using it and that causing people to skip on the software though. Never seen it get any praise around here.

It is so depressing how much I lost as a kid.

My backup method was almost entirely optical. Oh well. I’ve kept myself from feeling too bad by keeping in mind that I am waaaaay too lazy to ever go digging through it anyway.

2020 was hell for me. 6AM-9:30PM 3 or four days a week. 10 hours the other 4-5 days. It was the best year I’ve ever had financially though.

I finally found someone and she just sits and watches tv all day. I couldn’t be happier. She’s always on time, only calls out for real shit, considers work a break from farming.

It’s been wonderful.

I wasn’t gonna hack my switch, buuuuut.

Trump told republicans to vote against a bipartisan border bill so democrats wouldn’t get a victory.

He’s poking the dude.

I could be wrong all the way around. That’s what I’d do though. I’d poke the bastard.

Ultimately, it sucks that it seems like we have to hold democracy together long enough to find someone who has the balls to make serious changes. One of these guys sent his people to the capitol to raise hell in an attempt to keep power and potentially eliminate any chance for positive change in the future. The other did not. They are not the same.

He’s clearly just jerking the guy’s chain after he told his fellow magats to block the last border bill.

Xitter! It’s poppin!

It’s all I have these days.

Well, and my switch.

I don’t have that one. I remember my cousin using it to animate dolls she drew on paint shop pro though. I don’t specifically remember it being animation shop, but I remember the name Jasc when she was showing me her work.

Stop yellliiiinggguuuh!

I’ve never had one. I’ve never bought anything from Amazon.

I’m fine.

God, I feel that so much. Even with my Steam deck, if it requires too much tweaking I’ll ask my kid. If she’ll do it, great. If not, I’ll find something else to do.

People burned me out so bad. Everything they did was somehow my fault. Every relative I had called me constantly about silly problems. “My whole quickbooks is deleted. I had it on my desktop and now it’s gone!” “Ok, so I copied excel from my desktop onto usb drive and it won’t open on my other computer. The icon is there but it just won’t work. Oh, well I don’t see why not! It works fine when I click it on the other one!”

One time a guy brought me his laptop to repair. I repaired it and got the $75 bucks I charged. More than a year later I got a call, “Lithen, I don’t know what you did to my laptop, but it hathen’t worked, like, for crap, thinthe you worked on it.” I said, “ok bud, I’ve worked on hundreds. Which one was yours?” I asked him to download TeamViewer, went to his control panel, seen a pile of bullshit crapware he had recently installed, told him to kiss my ass and take it to “thomeone elthe”. I shouldn’t have made fun of his lisp, but I was ready to implode from the crap at that point.

People call me now and I play dumb and act like I just haven’t kept up with the changes. I. Hate. Computers.

And I fucking hate that, because I loved them so much when I was younger. It was like exploring a whole new universe.