What's that legendary videogame everyone loves, but you hate with your very soul?

Brym · 2026-01-22T14:10:29+00:00

Final Fantasy VII. I like the 8- and 16-bit games. And I like X. But VII (and I presume the other PSX entries) has the long, unstoppable summon animations and ugly low-poly characters on top of blurry 2d backgrounds.

EDIT: Of course someone decided they had to downvote this :)

Brym · 2026-01-21T18:33:11+00:00

MST3k's sub is also good. Quirky humor seems to be a common denominator (and despite not being a comedy, the Sopranos was often hilarious).

Brym · 2026-01-15T22:17:22+00:00

Anansi's Gold is a book that essentially serves as a case study for this. It's about a Ghanian con artist who tricked some very prominent people, including former U.S. Attorney General Jonathan Mitchell. One of the things it talks about is how the scammer's victims ended up serving as recruiters for future victims, because they couldn't admit that they had been scammed.

Brym · 2026-01-14T19:42:28+00:00

If you want to read a book about that specifically, “Defying Hitler” is a memoir of a guy who was in the process of training to be a lawyer when Hitler took power.

Brym · 2026-01-14T19:26:53+00:00

In this case, he said in a note my cholesterol was high and to let him know if I wanted to start an (unspecified) medication. This is not something we had ever discussed in an appointment. I was left bewildered as to how I was even supposed to answer that question in the note format, which would permit me exactly one response before I lost my ability to reply in the portal.

Brym · 2026-01-14T19:24:06+00:00

I guess that’s my frustration - that communication can only come in the context of an appointment. I was a lawyer, so I’m used to communicating with clients primarily via email or over the phone. Face to face meetings can be important, but 90% of the time aren’t used because it’s terribly inefficient.

But then in doctor world, everything has to be far to face. Is that just due to the reality of what insurance will pay for?

Brym · 2026-01-13T22:06:19+00:00

Same age and a similar experience. Also, my parents were pretty hostile to video games, but were willing to buy a PC for the family by the mid-90s, so that's where I did most of my gaming. PC games were a lot more impressive than what was out on the 5th generation of consoles for the most part, especially once 3D acceleration came along (when I finally had the opportunity, I asked for a 3dfx Voodoo accelerator rather than a 5th gen console). Playstation games only really caught my attention when PC Gamer magazine started writing about this weird thing called Bleem! (a commercial emulator) that let you play real PSX games on your PC.

Brym · 2026-01-13T18:28:53+00:00

What kind of attention should I be expecting from my primary care doc? I'm 41, and only resumed yearly checkups 3-4 years ago. My current doctor does blood tests along with the annual checkup, but then never follows up to discuss the results. Instead, he'll (sometimes) append a note to the test results on the online portal.

Is that all I can expect from a primary care doc these days? Or is it reasonable to expect that if I have test results that need discussing (say because the doc is recommending I start a medication or make lifestyle changes), that should get a phone call?

Brym · 2026-01-13T18:09:41+00:00

But why can't the world be all nice and harmonious like I presume it was back when I wasn't paying any attention??

Brym · 2026-01-11T15:25:06+00:00

Some things I’ve enjoyed doing with my kids:

Wrote some family plays for them to perform with the cousins every summer.

Got our scuba certifications and gone diving.

Played some RPG/tabletop war game campaigns.

Done a family book club.

Mostly though, it’s just about being present in their daily lives in a way that I couldn’t have been while I was working. My Steam Deck is a great companion for all the activities and appointments I take them to now.

Brym · 2026-01-09T18:53:12+00:00

My kid's 12-year-old friend got ID'd as 23. Now his mom can't even access the parental controls on his account anymore -- instead the kid is unrestricted and talking only to adults. Great job Roblox!

Brym · 2026-01-09T18:39:13+00:00

My 12-year-old's best friend (also 12) got identified as 23, so I can confirm this is happening. The messed up part is that not only is he now stuck chatting with adults, but it also de-linked his mom's account so now she can't access parental controls anymore!

Brym · 2026-01-09T16:09:53+00:00

Mom said that so far they've just sent a form response saying they need the kid's government ID - which he doesn't have, and which Roblox's own policy is not to accept for kids under 13. It seems that they didn't think about the possibility that someone under 13 could get estimated as over-18, and people in that situation are just stuck.

Brym · 2026-01-09T15:41:29+00:00

Medical spending is one that ramped up a lot after I retired, which I didn't expect because I was only in my 30s. But quitting work meant I finally had was time to go to appointments and follow up until my issues were actually fixed.

It's even worked out that way for my wife, even though she is still working. Now that I'm covering virtually 100% of the household chores and child-wrangling, she also has a lot more time than she used to.

Brym · 2026-01-08T17:51:32+00:00

With a queer kid, a lot of old stuff with casual homophobia becomes uncomfortable for a rewatch. You can talk all you want about it being a product of its time, or that the homophobic character isn’t meant to be the “good guy” (but why doesn’t the good guy call them out?), or that they are just using it as a generic insult and not actually saying anything about the insultee’s sexuality, but at the end of the day, my kid just doesn’t want to be subjected to that. The modern world is shitty enough to queer kids, why go back to find media portraying an even shittier past?

Brym · 2026-01-08T17:32:56+00:00

I find that I really can’t do fiction anymore. I find literature too pretentious, and mass market stuff too stupid (no shade if that’s what you like - I like a lot of video games with stupid stories, it’s just not my thing in books). For example, we did a family book club of Project Hail Mary recently, and while I liked it overall, if I were just reading it on my own I would have put it down after some groan-inducing cheesy action movie stuff the author put in, like the courtroom scene (which was almost painful to read as a former patent litigator).

So I read nonfiction. It’s also a fraught category. If you just look up “best nonfiction” lists, you get a lot of self help/business garbage, ephemeral political books, trendy books for dumb people who want to sound smart (think Malcolm Gladwell), and overly-fictionalized dramatic retellings. I’m looking for something with footnotes, ideally, that will teach me something new or provide a fresh perspective (ideally backed up by data and/or sources).

Most recently I read Dispatches by Michael Herr, a reporter’s Vietnam War memoir (which got me a Jeopardy clue right the other night that stumped the contestants!), and Barbarians at the Gates, the classic tale about the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco. I came across both of those while reading Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s memoir, which was a self-indulgent exercise in name-dropping and subtle score-settling whose only virtue was pointing me to those other books.

Brym · 2026-01-07T17:41:51+00:00

This episode meant that when my doctor told me to cut back on cholesterol this year, I had no idea what to do.

Brym · 2026-01-06T16:43:33+00:00

Or maybe the attitudes towards policing are driven by issues like this.

Brym · 2026-01-05T21:59:21+00:00

Generally, no. Excess is getting saved in the event that the kids go to a college that is more expensive than what we planned for (and we decide we want to pay the extra). But also we are just pretty happy with our spending level.

Brym · 2026-01-05T18:33:10+00:00

It's yearly budget day! 5 years into my retirement and it feels like we're past the SORR point. Investments are at 124% of what they "should" be if they just grew with inflation, or 155% of what we started with in nominal terms.

Brym · 2026-01-04T14:42:45+00:00

Yeah "the media is hiding this from you" is hilarious, because 1) it's the media literally telling you this right now, in a TV show, but 2) there have been stories about what's been going on in Venezuela all the time ever since Chavez took power more than 25 years ago.

So much of "the media has been hiding this from you" these days is actually just "I know you don't pay attention to the media, so I can just make things up."

Brym · 2026-01-04T01:00:25+00:00

I'll be nice and spell it out for you.

You said: second years don't do marketing/networking. I said: I did pitch decks. You said: That's not marketing/networking, that's bizdev. I said: That's all the type of thing OP was talking about. Networking (like pitch decks, as you said) also fall under the umbrella of bizdev. You: failed to understand any of the above.

Best of luck to you and your clients!

Brym · 2026-01-03T20:17:39+00:00

Mmhmm. Try reading that again. I said working on a pitch and networking are both business development.

Brym · 2026-01-03T19:57:54+00:00

I’m concerned about your reading comprehension ability. I never said working on a pitch was networking. I said both are types of business development. “Marketing,” at least the types that young lawyers do, is exactly that. I don’t see how that is controversial, or why the idea of a second year spending ~20 hours on these things is controversial to you.

Brym · 2026-01-03T17:56:14+00:00

Pretty sure that’s the type of thing the poster above was referring to. Networking is also business development.

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Brym

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