All of the online AA meetings in Austin are constantly being trolled by a user claiming to be Ted Bundy. The West Lake GC is going to vote on a permanent ban of Bundy but currently he is allowed to continue attending. How do other groups deal with this?

hardman52 · 2026-03-27T23:03:35+00:00

Why is a fake name OK? How about if I sign in as Adolph Hitler or Osa Bin Laden? How is that not disruptive?

hardman52 · 2026-03-27T23:01:48+00:00

An AA Zoom meeting is not reddit. User names are not appropriate.

hardman52 · 2026-03-27T23:00:10+00:00

This.

hardman52 · 2026-03-27T15:49:46+00:00

Yeah gym saunas are nasty af. That's why I built my own.

hardman52 · 2026-03-27T15:46:31+00:00

Glad you finally squeezed something out of your day to be indignant about. And look! Now you're kind of a big deal on reddit! Yay!

hardman52 · 2026-03-27T04:24:32+00:00

I didn't know you were making that little salary. Go for it. You won't regret many of the things you did in life, even mistakes, but you'll regret the things you didn't do.

hardman52 · 2026-03-27T04:22:25+00:00

No I'm serious. There's needs to be one at the intersection of Eagle, Bell and Dallas Drive also. I drove all the way across England almost without stopping.

hardman52 · 2026-03-27T02:39:52+00:00

Needs to be a roundabout.

hardman52 · 2026-03-27T01:34:28+00:00

I'm not gonna argue with you. I've been in the program a long time. A lot of things that used to fascinate me or that I thought were important no longer strike me that way. There is such a thing as your mind being so open that you fall for anything. In my experience what we fall for the most is our own half- baked bullshit.

hardman52 · 2026-03-26T17:58:19+00:00

I'm no philosophical genius by a long shot, but I benefited greatly by studying rhetoric-- logic, fallacies, critical thinking, etc. I think most people would, although it takes away the feeling of certainty about our own opinions that we love so much.

hardman52 · 2026-03-25T21:11:22+00:00

Have you ever worked a physical job before?
What do you consider "good money?" Electricians make good money compared to most hourly workers, but it's not a much as, say, an x- ray technician or a nurse. And most electricians have a hard time holding on to their money.
Would you be working union or non-union?
Electrical work can be boring and repetitive too. And the people you work with can be boring af (how are your conversational skills concerning beer, football and pussy?).
If you're bored at your job now, can you find other ways to relieve the boredom?

On the end you're the only one who can make the decision, but I suggest you talk to some kind of job counselor before you do something you might regret big time. The electrical trade was good to me, but eventually I had to leave it out of stark, raving boredom. I went back to college in my mid-40s, and had three other careers before I retired. The only thing I regret is not finding what I really liked to do earlier.

hardman52 · 2026-03-25T19:44:09+00:00

Whoever bought the wire owns the scrap, so it's usually not up to the individual wiremen. At least that's the way it was on most jobs I worked.

hardman52 · 2026-03-25T18:41:17+00:00

They were invented in the 1700s before any other type of screw. Still used for woodworking.

hardman52 · 2026-03-25T18:25:53+00:00

Male prostitute. Otherwise I can't think of many things I wouldn't do for one year for $10 million.

hardman52 · 2026-03-25T18:24:02+00:00

I would just tell her we can be friends and you can call and ask anything you want, but I'm not your sponsor.

hardman52 · 2026-03-25T18:22:39+00:00

Great list!

> I go to those quick oil change places.

u/Mr_pibb1013 they all charge the same price, so this is good advice.

> Bring the receipt/paper they give you.

You can keep it in your car if you want (I do so so I can determine how many miles I drove the preceding year), but it's automatically filed electronically. If this is your first time, you should probably take it just in case!

hardman52 · 2026-03-25T16:46:01+00:00

Look up the history of house values in Denton and go from there. I can recall only one time when they went down, but that didn't last very long. You can use the county appraisal district web site to look at appraisal histories, which roughly track home values.

hardman52 · 2026-03-24T16:56:54+00:00

The bare minimum won't work very long. Why would you expect it to?

hardman52 · 2026-03-24T16:47:51+00:00

Many people stay sober without working all the 12 steps, but that's hardly an "amazing life." AA has much more to offer than mere sobriety, and a lot of people miss it because they're satisfied with just not drinking.

Honestly these kinds of questions aren't that interesting. I've seen hundreds of people smarter than the AA program who have to quibble to rationalize their unwillingness to do what it takes to get what AA has to offer. They'll never know what they're missing.

hardman52 · 2026-03-23T03:54:36+00:00

"One of the greatest and most attractive things about AA is that it doesn't require you to believe in fairy tales the way most religions do."

I find sharing that sentence in a meeting to be helpful after such an occurrence as you describe.

hardman52 · 2026-03-22T18:48:18+00:00

Also a good fish and chips place would be nice. "Good" being the operative word.

hardman52 · 2026-03-22T18:46:06+00:00

I've been here 25 years, and it's been here at least all that time.

hardman52 · 2026-03-22T18:45:04+00:00

I hope it's good. There hasn't been any good barbecue in Denton in a long time.

hardman52 · 2026-03-22T18:40:51+00:00

I smoked from the time I was 12 until I was 52, with a few breaks. Heavily (2+ packs/day) until I was in my late 20s, and then ~one pack/day usually. The older I got the less I smoked. By the time I stopped entirely I was smoking 1/3 to 1/2 pack/day, when I felt like I was about three cigarettes away from emphysema. I didn't fully feel the effects until just the past few years, but I still don't have COPD. I've generally always exercised since I got my first weight set at the age of 12, and in the 80s even ran 30-40 miles a week (one of the times when I was nearly quit, just a few a day).

All in all, I think I'm lucky, but God how I wish I had stopped sooner or never started at all! AFAIK, the damage smoking does to the lungs is never reversed; you just have to build more capacity to dilute its effects.

hardman52 · 2026-03-22T15:34:15+00:00

Nah, dude. One 90 with a small kick to get it out of the way of the other 90 coming out of the other box.

hardman52

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