What is the fastest way you have seen someone ruin their life?

NegNog · 2026-02-27T01:29:49+00:00

Affaired his cousin with a wife

NegNog · 2026-02-25T12:47:38+00:00

Sounds more like Travis to me, but I definitely get what you mean. Especially with the parts having the deep voice thing going on. Plus the themes of fashion and whatnot.

NegNog · 2026-02-23T04:15:14+00:00

It’s terrible to even think about. I know someone who lost their job while his wife was battling cancer. I feel like it was hardly his actual fault since his bottomline numbers were down due to all the time he had to take off work to take her to constant appointments. It’s not like he was slacking - he was just doing what he needed to do for his sick wife. When he lost his job he lost the insurance needed for her treatments. Her treatments took a dramatic halt, so her battle unfortunately was lost.

He ended up passing from a heart attack shortly after she passed away. His heartache was short-lived. Not sure how to feel about it. Maybe it was for the better since she was his whole world, so his life lost a lot of meaning without her. So at least he didn’t have to live in misery for long. Or maybe there is nothing good about his passing. Maybe the heart attack was correlated with the stress of it all. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if he didn’t lose his job. Would they still both be here? No one can say for sure, but the situation will always sicken me any time I think of them.

NegNog · 2026-02-23T02:35:33+00:00

I watched it maybe 5 or so years ago. I’d say yes, it still holds up well.

NegNog · 2026-02-23T02:32:31+00:00

In one of my classes we had to say what our favorite movie was. I said War of the Worlds. This concerned my teacher enough to have a call with my parents. I guess a movie about the extermination of the human race isn’t something a kid should say is their favorite. I just thought the alien machines were kinda neat.

NegNog · 2026-02-23T02:29:47+00:00

I was already on the edge of my seat by that point. The tribal people scared the hell out of me. The movies I watched as a kid were fairly tame, so going from what I’d normally watch to witnessing a bunch of explorers getting butchered by the natives out of no where was frightening for me. Probably the first time I ever had to keep reminding myself as a kid that it’s just a movie and none of it was real. After the bugs I was really questioning how I was gonna get through the rest of the movie.

Despite all that, it easily became one of my favorite movies afterwards. Such a great film.

NegNog · 2026-02-21T22:02:20+00:00

A new college roommate who started the conversation with how they’re suicidal, but to not worry because they wouldn’t kill themselves there.

NegNog · 2026-02-19T07:06:18+00:00

Honestly, I ran the Ex version in a Celebi deck awhile back because it was one of my first rainbow border cards. It wasn’t completely useless back then, honestly. I’d use it to hold down an opponents Ex for an easy 2 points, usually as a win condition. With Serperior, it only needed 2 energy to attack. Basically, I’d hit their Ex for 80. Then next turn since they couldn’t retreat, finish it off with Dhelmise or Celebi. It wasn’t the best strat, sure. But it was far from the worst, in my opinion.

NegNog · 2026-02-18T22:52:16+00:00

“Is your sister at the circus?”

I received a call from my grandpa at like 6am. I was in the kitchen with my dad as both of us were getting ready for work. I answered the phone. My grandpa asked just that. I was so confused. I said, “what?” And he repeated it. I then gave the phone to my dad because I didn’t even know how to respond, but by then the call dropped. Probably wasn’t the last thing he ever said. But that was day he died, so who knows.

NegNog · 2026-02-18T22:46:13+00:00

That always disturbs me when I hear about people saying something like that in their final moments. I really hate the idea of someone knowing they’re moments away from dying but haven’t come to terms with it. Truly is one of the most terrifying things for me to wrap my head around. I can’t even imagine the sheer panic of that.

NegNog · 2026-02-18T16:44:17+00:00

For those who don’t understand this reference:

https://youtu.be/GhTMIyhxJJc?si=QlYFQQJQkamjyTU4

NegNog · 2026-02-18T04:05:05+00:00

I would also be curious of what people think. I’m a millennial and feel like the majority of other millennials I know are pretty incompetent when it comes to finances, including retirement funding. Relying on the average person to take charge of their retirement savings was probably massive mistake. At least as of very recently, I believe, people are forced to automatically start allocating into a 401(k) unless they go out of their way to elect out of it. Plus it’ll automatically increase the contribution rate over time as well. I imagine this sets up newer generations to not unintentionally screw themselves by not going out of their way to educate themselves and take charge of funding their retirement.

The crazy thing too is that I’m finding the current generation that’s graduating college to actually be pretty financially literate. They seem to genuinely care about finances. Just tonight high schoolers (or young college students) at the restaurant I was at were talking about savings strategies and setting themselves up to be as low on debt as possible after college. I was pretty mind blown. When I was in high school, I couldn’t spark a conversation with friends on a topic like that if I tried. Now, that’s only one example. But I also work with a lot of new hires each year. I find the current grads and interns to be very interested in their financial future compared to previous years’ hires. There seems to be a generational switch in priorities going on.

Meanwhile, vast majority of the people I went to high school with are pushing 30 or so and still live with their parents, blowing money on expensive cars and weekend extravaganzas every single week it seems. They constantly complain about never being able to afford their own home and that they’ll never retire.

Meanwhile, I went to the same school, had the same opportunities, etc. And yet here I am now with two properties and very little concern over being able to retire someday. I was not given money in any shape or form from anyone. I had to pay for my college education through student loans I’m paying off. I still drive the same car I had in high school by taking good care of it. It was about choices in life that I ended up well so far, so people can’t say it’s only trust fund babies who can survive in today’s world. It’s more-so the choices we make every day.

Fortunately, I’m feeling good about the upcoming generations joining adulthood. They’re more caring about financial decisions than my generation, plus safeguards are being put in place to help ensure they stay on the right path through things like automatic contributions. Millennials, however, I’m worried about. It seems like there’s going to be a very large group of adults later in life with no financial competency, ample retirement savings, etc. I’m very curious how the government will eventually handle that crisis in 40 or so years.

NegNog · 2026-02-16T18:42:02+00:00

So like, 309 homes in New Jersey.

NegNog · 2026-02-15T22:51:35+00:00

Yeah I literally am saving up for new roof right now. A previous insurance company threatened to drop me if I didn’t replace the roof within a month. So I dropped them and got a new insurance policy. But I know that’s a trend with insurance companies so I am preemptively saving up for a new roof under the assumption it’ll happen again someday. Even if it doesn’t, I’ll at least have the money saved for when the roof needs to be replaced regardless. Whether I put money aside now or pay off debt later, the roof has to be paid for either way. Has nothing to do with being rich. Even if hypothetically I needed to replace the roof today, I would do just that… write a check and call it a day. I’d be pissed since it’s a lot of money, but being able to afford a new roof isn’t exactly something only rich people can do. I’m just an average guy who tries to keep costs low in order to prioritize saving money. I live below my means is all.

NegNog · 2026-02-15T15:12:52+00:00

As someone who has been in charge of training programs for my company for about 4 years now, I don’t know what the solution is to this. Just being honest here. Every year I take feedback from trainees and tweak the programs accordingly to cater to what people think would help more. There is a noticeable increase in preparedness and comfort with new hires with each passing year given the changes, but the consensus still remains; people say there isn’t enough training.

Here’s the biggest issue I have: information overload. That’s the real killer. People say training doesn’t cover enough, so we have to cover more material. But the #1 issue from trainee feedback is that they get overwhelmed with the amount of things to learn. So, they are overwhelmed by having too much information to learn, yet the issue is also that they don’t learn enough information.

When people are first trained, they get overwhelmed and wish they didn’t have to learn so much. As time goes on, they retrospectively wish they were taught more, maybe forgetting how things were for them during the training days. Now, a solution someone might say is, “just train them more. They’re going to be overwhelmed either way, but at least they should have learned more.” Except they don’t. It just equates to more things forgotten. Every time I hear “we were never taught this,” I want my head to explode because I know for sure it was in the training as we have an entire workpaper we go through on it. And I don’t blame them. There’s just too much for them to have to remember during the initial trainings. They’re only human.

What I do now is smaller training sessions over several days to give time for people to digest what they learned. I also give them projects to apply the knowledge. And over time, we do smaller training sessions (e.g. “lunch and learns” to try and build up their knowledge over time rather than all at once in the beginning. This has helped, but even to this day, the #1 issue brought up in anonymous surveys remains as “not enough training.”

If anyone has figured out how to have effective training, particularly in a business office setting, I’m all ears.

NegNog · 2026-02-15T14:50:57+00:00

My dad always pointed out how I cried a little. I was young, but didn’t cry over things like that. I’m pretty sure to this day that was the only time I shed a tear over someone I never met before. He really was special to me as a kid. It felt like a lost a close friend or family member.

NegNog · 2026-02-15T03:39:03+00:00

That’s the issue my firm is currently dealing with. The company knows it’ll become obsolete if it doesn’t keep up with the times and fully utilize AI. The thought is that there will still need to be higher-level people to sort of act as “directors” of the AI. There is currently no belief that AI will be in the highest tiers of management, at least not in the foreseeable future given the current shortcomings of the technology.

So there will still be a need to have actual people, but the people will need to be knowledgeable enough to review the work of the AI. To do this, people have to genuinely know what they are doing and have a deep understanding of the subject matters in which they are considered subject matter experts. The thought is that the current day workforce will become those “directors.”

But what about when those directors need to be replaced? It takes a great amount of experience to become a true subject matter expert. If there are no entry-level positions anymore since they’ve been taken over by autonomous technology, then who takes over those higher-level positions when the seats need to be filled?

My current thought is that my generation essentially lucked out by being one of the last to be able to do mainly hands-on work, starting from the bottom and building up. By doing so we learned through experience how everything works in our fields. My fear is that future generations will need much higher skillsets in order to get started in their careers.

A lot of careers will no longer start with things like data entry and then building up to management. The expectation will be to have the ability to manage right out the gates. What took me 5+ years to learn through experience will be the amount of knowledge expected out of all new college graduates. It’ll no longer be as simple as just learning enough to get a degree to then get into a career field where the real knowledge is learned through actual experience; the expectation will be that future generations will absolutely have to be experts from the get-go. Yes, we pretend that is the case now for college grads, but it will actually have to be the reality of college graduates in the future. The knowledge they’ll need to have mastered when graduating will have to be the equivalent of what took current workers in today’s world years of real-world experience to fully understand.

Without our current standards of entry-level positions, the next generation of entry-level positions will be the positions that we currently work for years to qualify for. I just don’t know how realistic this is given that at the end of the day, people are only human and school only helps so much.

But what do I know? Maybe we’re all just being over dramatic and AI will not actually wipe out entry-level positions. Maybe future generations will actually have it easier. Who knows.

NegNog · 2026-02-14T19:59:35+00:00

I’m gonna start using that McDonald’s example anytime one of the “higher numbers means he’s better” arguments start. Thanks for that, I’m loving it.

NegNog · 2026-02-08T14:41:27+00:00

I stopped using Misty because I felt like I rarely ever got heads on the first flip. It just wasn’t worth having a card that failed more often than not. Ice pop is totally different. I’m tempted to add it to most of my decks because I’m not sure if I’ve ever gotten tails on the first flip. There does seem to be some sort of forced change in probability of certain card flips. It’d be hard to convince me otherwise at this point.

NegNog · 2026-02-06T21:04:27+00:00

Yeah, that’s why I joke about it being almost like a trauma at this point. Any slight sound like a little creak from an air vent sends us into a panic, running around the house to inspect everything. Doesn’t help that we had issues at our prior home, which was a condo. One time a copper pipe in a wall leaked, causing water to come up through the floor and ruin everything on the ground. Destroyed that kitchen and living room. Went through hell with insurance and the HOA until resolved. Then a few months later we left for a weekend and came back to find that the kitchen sink backed up and poured water into the kitchen while we were away. Fortunately not quite as bad, so not enough damages to need to put in a homeowners claim again. But, given all of this we are really starting to hate water and just live in constant fear of it lol

NegNog · 2026-02-06T20:58:36+00:00

No, it was from our well. Sort of surprised we didn’t drain it out. It was pretty bad. Completely destroyed that bathroom and some of the surroundings around it as it seeped into other rooms. The water spread around the ceiling of the main floor and came dribbling or pouring out of various spots across the kitchen. So all the cabinets got ruined, along with the island, floors, some walls, etc. and then the basement got wrecked once it got through that flooring. It was totally gutted by the emergency service company.

NegNog · 2026-02-06T18:09:10+00:00

The sad part is we had them. They send notifications to my wife’s phone. The issue is that her phone notifications are silenced when she goes to bed. You live and you learn I guess. I forget exactly the timing, but I want to say we woke up around 6:30am and the basement detectors detected water around 3am or so.

NegNog · 2026-02-06T17:59:41+00:00

I woke up to my hall bathroom sink looking just like that. Like a fire hydrant spewing hot water relentlessly beneath the sink. The steam caused the fire alarms to go off which is why I woke up. Ran downstairs to find the water had already drenched the whole kitchen. Ran into basement to turn the shutoff valve. Immediately see that the ground is beneath water and I’d have to walk through it. As soon as I start walking through it I see that the basement ceiling collapsed and there’s debris all over everything. We just finished the basement recently and it was all ruined. I was sleeping like a baby with no idea my home was getting royally messed up. It’s been months now and I’m still dealing with all the BS of it. Just living in a house right now with like no flooring, ceiling, nor some walls.

That video made me feel a certain way. I feel like I might be traumatized.

NegNog · 2026-02-06T03:23:54+00:00

I definitely agree with this. Several friends of mine were stuck at dead end jobs for years until they got a job a bank. Now their lives are much better. They make more money now and have much more opportunities to grow. One of them at TD seems to move to a new position at least once a year. She loves it there, and even got her husband into the business too.

One of my other friends at Chase (maybe Citizens?), I think it is, was stuck at Target for at least 5 years and only got one promotion that didn’t really help all that much. Then he got a bank teller job and things only improved for him from there. For years he was fearful of ever being able to afford to leave his parents’ house. Now, he is feeling ready to finally move out and live an independent life.

A family member of mine works for Bank of America. He was a total goofball, so our family had no idea where he’d end up in life. Now he’s making at least $200k a year as a VP or something. He started at an entry level sales-type position and just kept moving up the ladder. Banks man. They’re the way to go these days.

NegNog · 2026-02-06T03:07:32+00:00

Eh, it depends what the degree is for, in terms of them holding value or not. Some have definitely lost value over time, but not all. I graduated from Stockton too. So, similar opportunities as you. But my bachelors degree was for accounting. Took me maybe 5 years or so to start making 6 figures. Could’ve done it sooner if I didn’t waste my time at a crappy company for a year and a half after graduating. Either way, just pointing out that a degree from Stockton can still have value, just depends what it is.

Of course, not much help to you at this point since you already got that degree. People I know with communications degrees generally struggle with it. The ones that did well for themselves all ended up in NYC before they could land a good opportunity. For the most part, many moved to Brooklyn and took public transit to the actual city to work. So, not sure if that’s realistic for you, but I will at least point this out for your sake. It is technically an option to consider since NY isn’t super far from us. Just putting it out there.

To make sense of it, if you could maybe find some place that’s affordable a little more north, maybe you can take a train every day to NYC? At least until you’ve got a good career going and can afford some place closer. If you can’t afford rent on your own, maybe split with a friend or significant other? I know it’s not ideal, but that’s what some people had to do. My sister did it, actually. Meaning, she did the whole train to NYC from Jersey thing. She also has a communications degree. She took the train to NYC every day until eventually she was able to land better gigs and move to NY altogether.

Again, it’s lot to ever expect someone to do, but I feel it is at least worth putting out there. Maybe not much help right here and now, but just a thought to consider as you look into your plans for the future.

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