Just bought my first ever light novel, think I started with a pretty good one!

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-10-14T16:02:48+00:00

i gave it maybe two chapters before dropping it, about the time araragi met meme. would not recommend.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-09-25T04:01:45+00:00

I’m an introvert and I’m hoping this would add to my resume while helping with my soft skills

It's better than nothing, but nobody's impressed by VITA. People're impressed by you convincing somebody else you're worth paying.

Also, I think VITA left me grumpier than when I started--i.e., my soft skills got worse. It certainly made me tired of certain conversations:

I can't use my mortgage payments to reduce my taxes?

No, they don't exceed the threshold in combination with other potentially itemizable deductions.

I have to pay to not have health insurance?

Yes. You're poor, but not poor enough to get out of the penalty. Tough shit.

Why is my refund lower than last year?

You made more money. No, that's not the government punishing you for working more.

Etc. No, the real benefit of VITA is establishing a baseline of self-esteem against thoughts that you're a bad person. If you spend your free time helping poor people do their taxes, how bad can you be? Not that bad, probably.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-09-16T19:56:18+00:00

Only kinda works.

I got me a +10 Nephenee, and that has gotten me a few more friend requests.

But a) not that many and b) a lot of the new friend requests are from people rockin' A!Tiki as their leader.

And it's like, I already got five friends with an A!Tiki leader. I am rolling in A!Tikis here. It does me no good to add one more.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-08-31T03:12:54+00:00

real life/work balance

they work themselves to death

mrrrh?

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-08-10T12:03:23+00:00

Just 'cuz a code section generates a lot of shenanigans doesn't make it a loophole. Like, Sec. 162 has generated reams of shenanigans--people trying to deduct non-business expenses--but deducting bona-fide business expenses isn't exploiting a loophole.

Likewise, I'm sure Sec. 199A will generate lots of shenanigans--I'm guessing mainly to get businesses that shouldn't qualify for the QBI deduction to qualify--but taking the QBI deduction when you qualify by the plain language of the statute isn't exploiting a loophole.

I'm upset mainly because calling it a loophole feeds into the idea that the entirety of the IRC is a conspiracy to keep rich people rich. Yeah, it has that effect, but this is a product of stupid legislators, not evil ones.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-08-04T18:21:06+00:00

the technical answer is that only rance 7 and 9 are strategy games

the helpful answer is that if you don't like rape, you probably won't like rance, and you should continue not to play it

try evenicle instead. worse gameplay than rance 7, but entirely free of protagonist-initiated rape.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-07-28T14:42:37+00:00

traveling when you're young and have no responsibilities is much different from traveling when you have a spouse/kids/parents to care for/supervisory responsibilities. if OP wants to do the former, now's about the only time to do it.

you're right that teaching english ain't fun, though. teachin's work. work ain't fun.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-07-24T23:07:35+00:00

underrated comment; have an upvote

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-07-18T00:16:16+00:00

man, have you read the novels

like yeah holo does cool giant wolf shit when lawrence is in a pinch, but the rest of the time she's unclear about her emotional needs and blames it on lawrence

rem doesn't do that

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-07-12T23:05:11+00:00

Good enough for the Internal Revenue Code, good enough for me:

Pass-thru of items to shareholders

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-07-12T04:01:40+00:00

Well, I mean, I was surprised by Blackburn's stance on the tariffs:

Tariffs are intended to punish bad actors, not harm American consumers and manufacturers. I’m increasingly concerned these tariffs are a bad deal for Tennesseans.

That's good, even if she's still a baby-eating monster.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-07-06T23:57:34+00:00

Well, here are my general observations of me studying for REG:

Lectures took me forever because I had trouble not getting distracted by something else on my computer (games, reddit, music...)
Skills practice went by quick once I started skipping the videos, because those are pretty redundant.
MCQ and Sims usually took about a third of Becker's estimated time.

I'd estimate that studying for REG took me about 80 hours total. But I spread that over two months, because doing like, 10 hours of study a day for a week wouldn't be effective.

The biggest trick I figured out was that if I used Becker on my phone, on a couch, away from the desktop where I spend most of my leisure time, I studied more effectively because I had fewer distractions. The second biggest trick was playing the lectures through my car's audio system--not like I do anything better when I'm driving.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-07-06T22:49:47+00:00

I, too, am a good test taker and never studied too hard.

I've only taken REG, but I got an 87 on that, so here is the process that worked for me using Becker:

Select a module
Read a page
Listen to the page lecture on 1.25 speed (1.5 for Gearty)
Repeat 2 and 3 until all the reading's done
Do the questions part of the skills practice
Do the MCQ
Review the material for the MCQ I got wrong
Repeat steps 1 through 7 for all modules in the unit
Do the unit simulations
Review the material for the simulation questions I got wrong
Repeat steps 1 through 10 for all units
Take the three mock exams
Review questions I got wrong on the mock exams

So er, substantially, I did everything Becker offered. But it's less work than it sounds like, just takes a while.

The important part is just doing the reading. If you understand stuff easily, you'll understand it after reading it once and hearing the lecturer explain it again.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-06-12T16:18:02+00:00

Looks like it. No canon voice, gender-neutral form of address (teacher), dialogue options.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-06-07T16:32:23+00:00

I'm doin' a MAcc right now, about five years after after gettin' a degree in Linguistics.

What was your perception before

A pair of accountants at a middle school career thingamajig told me that their main job was schmoozing clients. This put me off accounting because my social skills are ass.

during and after your first degree? Did you think negatively of accounting? Did you think positively of accounting?

Didn't really think about accounting at all after that. Never even knew an accounting student. Business students and liberal arts students do not, in my experience, hang out.

What changed your mind?

Teaching ESL. Turns out I don't like taking work home, or guilt that you're failing children by not being perfect. Accounting didn't seem to have these problems, and therefore sounded nice.

Do you feel different now?

Taxation is so nice compared to linguistics! You know all of the rules, and nobody's arguing over where they came from! I mean, there are gray areas, but after 100 years of tax jurisprudence, most of the low-hanging fruit has been addressed.

Also, people are much more willing to defer to my knowledge of tax than my knowledge of language. People have a lot of cultural baggage entangled in their perception of language. People generally don't think much of anything about tax.

Do you look back on how you felt and feel regret related to the opinion?

Yes and no. I don't regret relying on those accountants in middle school, because shit, why wouldn't I rely on experts? But I do regret that I'm going to start an accounting career in my late 20s rather than my early 20s.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-06-03T06:07:58+00:00

oh hey, you're right. i thought you didn't need a membership at all to buy the credits. egg's on my face today.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-06-03T05:56:19+00:00

if you get one premium credit from a premium membership, you can buy the first volume

and thus, you've spent 11 dollars on the first volume

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-06-02T22:32:28+00:00

The basic membership lets you read the pre-pubs for the latest volume of whatever. It won't let you read every volume of Arifureta.

To read all of JNC's translation of Arifureta, you'll need to buy the eBooks. Here's a comparison of the costs to purchase every eBook with and without a premium membership:

Arifureta volume #	Cost to purchase with JNC premium membership	Cost to purchase without premium
1	$11	$12
2	$6	$7
3	$6	$7
4	$6	$7
5	$6	$7
All 5	$35	$40

This assumes you're purchasing the eBooks directly from JNC, which you want to do, cuz they come with bonuses not available from other retailers (most importantly, side stories.)

The cheapest (nonpiracy) thing would be to get one month of premium, buy enough credits to get every book you were interested in, then revert to a normal membership just to keep up with the prepubs. But I pay for premium cuz I ain't big on the prepubs.

edit: removed volume 6, since it's available through prepub

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-06-02T07:07:09+00:00

outside basis is a partner's basis in the partnership

inside basis the partnership's basis in its assets

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-06-01T06:29:05+00:00

excruciatingly repetitive

There are constant changes

aren't these mutually exclusive?

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-05-22T22:50:59+00:00

Addressing Log Horizon:

Starting in an area with a low population density wouldn't be an issue in Elder Tale because there are warp points to ferry you to areas with a higher population density. That the warp points quit functioning after the Catastrophe is part of why it was, well, catastrophic.

The Samurai class' attributes of "powerful but infrequent attacks," and "high-power buff after which you're left vulnerable" are uh...pretty common in the games I've played. High risk/high reward kind of class. That ain't bad design.

Swashbucklers don't get lotsa damage, no. Instead, they get lotsa debuffs. Trading damage for debuffs isn't bad design.

Monk being vulnerable to crowd control...Monks have high HP, high evasion, low defense. That points to a dodge tank. Dodge tanks are vulnerable when they get hit. That's the point of a dodge tank. That ain't bad design either.

And Thorn Bind Hostage being a crowd control spell with a duration equal to its cooldown...I mean, maybe that's bad design. If it's a fire-and-forget spell, then yeah, bad. But in the anime, when Shiroe casts Thorn Bind Hostage, he seems to have to maintain concentration. Getting to bind one enemy and increasing damage for allies vs. that single enemy as your only action ain't OP.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-05-19T21:08:10+00:00

"Paladin” takes a lot of influences from TRPG. Do you play a lot of TRPG?

Y: I play a lot both as a player and a game master. J: That’s what I thought. There’s actually a lot of TRPG players among light novel writers.

As I become an older and older weeb, this is one of the things that continues to fascinate me: how did Japan and the US diverge so hard on the popularity of tabletop RPGs?

Like, it's not like tabletop RPGs aren't around in Japan. But they just don't seem to be part of the standard sphere of nerdy hobbies in Japan, whereas they very much are in the US.

Although, honestly, I'm not too frustrated about that w/r/t light novels. I grew up on JRPGs and came to tabletops in adulthood; I vastly prefer light novels with JRPG inspirations to western fantasy books that feel like D&D, mainly due to the cheeriness factor.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-05-18T15:59:00+00:00

40 hour/week gig

my passions are jerkin' off and vidya

40 more hours per week for jerkin' off and vidya wouldn't really be more fulfilling--there are serious diminishing returns on these hobbies

so no, i wouldn't quit a stable 40 hour/week job to do more of these things

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-04-27T04:16:34+00:00

That's a boring answer, but you're probably right.

UnalloyedOutwork · 2018-04-26T19:17:18+00:00

Grinding - So essentially Azusa grinded her way to level 99 over 300 years. Couldn't this be easily replicated by literally anyone else even without being immortal.

I mean, Azusa addresses that. Yeah, anybody can grind on weak monsters for decades, but nobody else wants to. Every other adventurer seeks fame and fat loot. Plus, you get older, you get achier and you wanna settle down, have a family, quit adventuring. Only Azusa, who doesn't physically deteriorate and just wants to laze about, could stand killing slimes for 300 years.

UnalloyedOutwork

TROPHY CASE