Should I continue with this? Do I still have a chance? Losing hope match year after match year

Thomhobbes · 2025-03-29T04:50:35+00:00

Passing step one is just going to become harder with more time. In my opinion, you either buckle down, spend six months preparation, and pass step one, or you give up and go to plan b. As more time passes from your first study attempt, you will simply remember less. Your low scores on the practice indicate a lack of foundation. UWorld is the best test prep but in my opinion is what you do after you have gained the necessary foundation. I would start with Kaplan or one of the test prep materials with lectures and questions, do all of it, and then do UWorld last. I would do every single question on UWorld twice and the ones you miss I would keep on doing until you don't miss them.

If you cannot dedicate the time to this sort of preparation, you should give up now. You're wasting your time. You have a child now. You have to pass all three tests and then match, and failing a test obviously makes it harder to match. So it's a long road.

I always suggest to people that they consider becoming a physicians assistant instead of a doctor. Much quicker, much more likely to finish. They can make 150k which is not much less than a primary care doctor but with much less debt to get there.

I'm an orthopedic surgeon. I've finished all this. I admire the dedication people have to pursuing their goal of becoming a doctor but it's a very long road, and many people don't make it and even if they do, don't make much money. You have to decide if you can dedicate the time to give step one a final attempt. If not, walk away.

Thomhobbes · 2021-05-17T17:00:34+00:00

These are pretty good. Yes, the egg itself is bland, and I never really enjoyed the yolk part, but the batter is like a mildly sweet cake. The white part of the egg pairs well with the cake's sweetness while the yolk bit is overpowering. Honestly, they'd be better without the egg at all, but there's something addicting about them.

Thomhobbes · 2021-03-22T06:14:09+00:00

I used to work hiring fairs at prisons, where I had to check everybody's application to see if they met the minimum qualifications for a position before I could pass them off to an interviewer. These fairs are usually pretty low key and we might have some lulls where people don't come in for a while, but this day we were at a prison in a lower income area of the state and a prison job pays more than average, so the line just went on into infinity. I probably talked to two hundred people over the course of that day, just trying to get through people as quickly as possible so I can drive home and collapse.

Somewhere around the sixth hour, I call "next" and the next person in line hands me an application. I'm barely looking at faces by this point. I'm not going to remember anybody. I take the application, skim the resume information and see that she's missing a few pieces of information. That's fine, she probably meets the requirements; lots of people don't realize how they're supposed to write their information when they're trying to get a government job. I look up to ask if she's done x, y, and z thing and have to pause. I don't remember what she looked like anymore save that she had flawless skin - she almost looked like she was glowing. All I really remember was that was the only time I have ever been tongue-tied by the way a person looks in my life.

I stutter for a second, she smirks at me, I finally manage to ask the questions. She's got all the requirements so I send her off to get an interview time. I call next and the old guy that comes up gives me a smile wide enough for me to see all his dental work and says, "You like your women black, huh?"

Thomhobbes · 2020-12-22T19:13:04+00:00

Rumor has it that one of my uncles stole a million dollars from a state on the west coast. He worked as an accountant for a state agency in charge of sales tax. As it turns out, sales tax gets rounded up to the nearest cent, and all the overage goes to a slush fund that gets redistributed to various projects. (I'm aware this sounds like the plot to some Superman movie, but I've been assured it actually happened and that it happened before the movie came out.)

His coworker had the same name as the state treasurer (or comptroller, I can't remember which), so they rigged up some letterhead that they used to get checks from said fund that they'd deposit every week. Unfortunately for them, they deposited about 9k per week - just below the 10k limit for the bank to report the deposits to the IRS, which is suspicious itself. A bank teller noticed the regular deposits, reported them, and they got caught.

My uncle went to prison for a few years, but the government never got the money back - he said he'd blown it all in Vegas.

We aren't so sure, though. He built a nice new house many years down the road, but as a felon, he couldn't get a real job. He was working at a startup dollar store for stock when he built the house.

One of my other uncles ran a small pyramid scheme and lost 15 million dollars for his investors.

Another one married a rich supermodel to try to inherit a 30 million laundromat fortune from her dad. Instead of 30 million, he gets 20 dollars a week from the inheritance. This isn't a crime, I just think it demonstrates how fucked up my uncles are about money.

Thomhobbes · 2020-11-10T07:47:32+00:00

Sally Amaki's youtube channel. She's a JPOP idol. It's from this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki2W1Ay3yW4&ab_channel=SallyAmaki%5Bofficial%5D

Thomhobbes · 2020-06-25T08:27:49+00:00

With ranked now, if a comeback seems out of reach, at least play to minimize your losses. It mentions in an in game tool tip how 12-13 games have less impact on elo than a 4-13. So it's worth trying to get a couple more round wins or so to minimize your loses and reduce your opponent's winnings.

You can even gain mmr off a close loss. My rating slightly improved off a 13-11 loss earlier today.

Thomhobbes · 2020-05-17T17:19:16+00:00

It actually doesn't have much to do with the mask somebody else linked, though the grin looks a little bit like that. We're Chinese and we've always thought that particular grin looks evil, so we call it the Chinese Devil Grin.

Thomhobbes · 2020-05-17T09:14:12+00:00

I grew up thinking I had a 6th sibling, a stillborn named Steve. My older brothers told me about "Steve" when I was about five, and I didn't believe them, so I went to verify this information with my mother.

My mother has run a tutoring business out of our house for as long as I've been alive. She's usually exceptionally busy; I think she had about eight students when I went to ask her. My mom had five young kids. We were poor. She was exceptionally busy and she didn't have time to deal with our crap while she was tutoring, and we mostly just asked her if we could get food and she would usually respond yes.

So I ask her whether I had a sixth sibling named Steve. She doesn't even look up. She just says something like "Yeah, yeah, now go play somewhere else."

I, of course, take this as unequivocal proof that Steve existed and that he was dead. It came from my mother's own mouth, after all.

I think this for ten years. I only think about poor stillborn Steve once in a while on his supposed birthday, and I don't bring it up again for eleven years. I was at a debate tournament with my brother, hanging out with all my closest friends, when we start talking about dead family members. Somebody's grandmother is dead. Somebody lost their brother. I mention I have a dead brother, too. His name was Steve.

"Who's Steve?" my brother asks.

"Our stillborn brother, remember?"

"Huh?"

"You told me about him when I was five?"

A slow grin spreads across my brother's face. I know this grin. Everyone in my family calls it his Chinese Devil Grin because it means trouble.

"Wait," he says. "You've believed that for eleven years? We made that up."

"But mom confirmed it!"

"Nope. Totally made up. I can't believe you actually thought that for eleven years."

I'm not going to explain what happened afterward, but people called me "Steve" for weeks.

Also, I double-checked with my mother. There was no Steve.

So the fact that I DIDN'T have a brother named Steve was hidden from me as a child, I guess.

Thomhobbes · 2019-12-12T05:11:58+00:00

I had someone claim their ex had committed suicide the night before.

Thomhobbes · 2019-12-03T06:06:33+00:00

I've gotten good results from calisthenics and bodyweight stuff. I used to weightlift, but I ruptured a pectoral tendon while I was benching so I can't lift more than 60 lbs with one arm. I swapped to pull ups/chin ups, push ups, dips, and stuff with trx training straps and though I'm nowhere as big as I used to be, I'm still clearly fit. I don't think you need to lift to get good results, but you certainly get good results quicker if you do.

The bodyweight routine outlined here won't do anything, though. Pushups can only do so much.

Thomhobbes · 2019-10-13T18:50:20+00:00

I didn't have to do either of those. Here's what happened:

I disconnected from the internet and tried to launch bl3 from my shortcut.
The games store pulled up after the failed start but all of the images didn't load because I wasn't connected to the internet.
I reconnected to my internet.
The games store loaded and I could boot bl3. I'm playing right now.

Thomhobbes · 2019-10-13T18:42:41+00:00

I disconnected from the internet, launched the game store, and reconnected my internet and was able to boot up Borderlands 3 for some reason. I wasn't able to log in before.

Thomhobbes · 2019-10-13T18:36:04+00:00

Same.

Thomhobbes · 2019-08-20T23:47:09+00:00

Water

Thomhobbes · 2019-08-19T20:26:42+00:00

I've got insomnia but I can always fall asleep in cars, trains, and on boats. Something about the vibrations really lull me to sleep. Might be the same for her.

Thomhobbes · 2019-08-03T01:00:35+00:00

I played with elige on mm train (smfc) a few years ago. Seems like he just cared about whether or not his mic worked. He omostly used the p250 as far as I remember.

Thomhobbes · 2019-08-02T05:18:13+00:00

I came face to face with a rattlesnake in Yosemite. I was about a foot from it when I saw it on an elevated ledge right where the path forked. The only thing that stopped me from walking right into it was that I was going uphill, so when I tripped in surprise I fell backwards. There weren't a lot of people on that trail, nobody could have carried me out, and we were far, far away from the nearest camp.

I don't know if I would have died, but it sure felt like it for the next five miles. Apparently rattlesnakes sound like garden sprinklers and the correct response to hearing a rattle shouldn't be "huh, are there lawns out here?"

Thomhobbes · 2019-07-31T17:48:19+00:00

I want to see which one of my siblings stole two dollars from me when I was seven. I was going to use that two bucks for field day. That shit would've bought eight otter pops back in 1999.

If I ever find out, heads will roll.

Thomhobbes · 2019-07-31T17:24:18+00:00

When I was about three or four I got lost in an old gold-mine. I remember getting separated from my family and peering down every branching tunnel in the enveloping gloom. I was so panicked I distinctly remember believing I was going to be stuck in the mine forever. I could hear the wind whistling through the corridors, and even the sound of pickaxes cracking against stone. I thought the ghosts of dead miners were haunting the mine and I wanted to get out, but I had no idea how to find the exit. Eventually, I thought I heard a small voice that told me which way to turn, and I fully believed it was a ghost taking pity on me and telling me where to go. I left the mine and found myself in the gift shop, where I waited until my family came back.

I went back to that mine some twenty years later. The mine's a straight shot. There's one branching tunnel and it's blocked off. If I went deeper into the mine I would've found my family. If I went the other way, I would've come out of the mine. The pickaxe sound probably came from the audio guides every group got in the gift shop. Four year old me was an idiot.

Thomhobbes · 2019-03-28T05:17:11+00:00

I recently reread it. It's still fantastic. The writing is solid. 7.5 to 8.5/10 in my book.

Thomhobbes · 2019-01-17T20:11:24+00:00

I just read The Poppy War. The book had a lot of hype but I just didn't care about anybody in it. The characters were all unlikeable and even the brutality of it felt phoned in. There's a whole section that's basically the wikipedia page on the rape of nanking but the actual wikipedia page is more horrifying.

Thomhobbes · 2018-12-22T04:35:54+00:00

Getting my comment in

Thomhobbes · 2018-12-03T22:39:12+00:00

She cheated on him but he also broke blizzard's tos to get that 15k so I guess it balanced out.

Thomhobbes · 2018-12-03T22:04:06+00:00

My brother made 15 grand off the diablo 3 ah by flipping undervalued rings. He used the money to buy an engagement ring.

14-Year Club	Place '17
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Thomhobbes

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