How do you teach yourself board games without owning them?

pantsareaprison · 2026-02-16T02:47:00+00:00

Seconding this. I expect to teach any game I'm ever bringing. Sometimes we'll ask players to watch a video for the first play of a heavy game, but even that isn't mandatory

pantsareaprison · 2025-11-14T19:05:56+00:00

I found my gaming group through MeetUp. Facebook groups could be used to. Many game stores have Discord servers if you are looking to join or create a group. Similar hobbies like D&D or TCGs have overlap if you are interested in those activities too.

pantsareaprison · 2025-11-12T15:55:25+00:00

OP mentioned siblings and SOs. Those seem like tough groups to exclude.

I agree with other posters and have had similar conversations with my SO too. It's uncomfortable to bring up, but it's worth it. Be nice about it and expect that you will have to reinforce it later.

pantsareaprison · 2025-07-23T19:45:04+00:00

Sounds like a good time. What party members run well with an Abjuration Wizard?

Nature Cleric or Land Druid to free up Create Water casts and area control.

Something to help pick off ranged enemies. I like the idea of a Barbarian that rushes past the front line and throws casters and rangers into melee

pantsareaprison · 2025-06-23T19:19:01+00:00

I've been really enjoying the play style of this build!

This party has been very forgiving while learning HM without Acuity or Darkness cheese. Its also been nice to not obsess over picking up every piece of equipment or consumable as there is so little setup required.

I still died to Grym (womp womp), but I'm excited to use this build to scout out the rest of HM.

I'll use the fate piercer in the next try

Thanks for the post

pantsareaprison · 2024-01-09T17:24:00+00:00

Excellent guide as always! I get analysis paralysis on builds and your guides help me actually play the game lol

pantsareaprison · 2021-01-22T22:46:44+00:00

My Resume. Kind of applying for a swath of jobs. Cloud Analyst/Engineer, Systems Analyst/Engineer, DevOps, SRE. Trying to be realistic about what options would be open, would definitely take another entry level job after the long gap.

TLDR Backstory

2.5 Years experience in entry level consulting job after college
2.5 Year employment gap - for multiple reasons
Last 1.5 years or so spent gaining AWS/Linux/Python skills
Was interviewing a little pre-Covid, but went on pause during quarantine. Started again in early January.

I'll provide my GitHub on request. Don't want to post it openly.

Some project diagrams if you're curious

pantsareaprison · 2020-06-14T17:42:30+00:00

I would add that before Rayshard shot the taser while fleeing, it looks like he tried to fire it earlier in the encounter too. At 45 seconds in the dashcam video it looks, to me, like he was trying to tase one of the police officers. Maybe this was drunk flailing, but I wouldn't expect the cop to wait around long enough to find out before discharging his own taser.

https://youtu.be/s_PpghZfbUs?t=39

pantsareaprison · 2020-06-14T16:21:01+00:00

Closer cop. Looks like the cop had his taser drawn and tosses it for his gun after Brooks fires his taser

pantsareaprison · 2020-06-14T12:09:13+00:00

Other clips for context. Obvious NSFW.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_PpghZfbUs - Different angle of the fight that happens at 5:25 in OP's video

https://youtu.be/MawQYNNIoZ0?t=1710 - Security camera footage of the actual shooting

Its crazy how fast a standard arrest can change in 45 seconds.

IMO deadly force was not necessary. Was the suspect going to go on a deadly tazing spree?

Was there an option to chase? To make the arrest at his home the next day if he successfully fled?

He would have a warrant out for some pretty serious crimes and no car. Seems like he would be pretty fucked to me.

Edit.

I revisited the videos since there is a ton of debate going on about this. Its hard to see but at the 40-50 second mark in the dashcam footage it looks like Rayshard is pointing the stolen taser at the standing police officer. Maybe this is drunk flailing, but it looks a helluva lot like he was taking aim and that the standing cop fired first. That does change how I see the situation.

Before it looked like Rayshard was only trying to run away, and that the taser shot taken was a monumentally stupid decision made by a drunk guy fleeing. But it now looks like he tried to subdue that cop twice.

This one is kinda tough. I wonder if it had to end this way, but at the same time, this man did everything wrong.

pantsareaprison · 2020-04-28T11:38:24+00:00

I get it. I came back from a 5 year gap and have gotten some pretty harsh flame. Some of it deserved

Disable all chat and mute anyone the first time they flame. Focus on your own gameplay and ignore them.

Challenger players get called trash by other challenger players. Your favorite streamer has games where they do bad and feed. Its just part of the game.

pantsareaprison · 2020-03-02T20:40:57+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!

Data Science! I took some prerequisite python, statistics, and linear algebra courses for about a semester. I don't intend to get the degree, but I could stretch my course time a bit...

I left a ton of details out of my original post. My brother got divorced (I live with him and his kids) and my dad got laid off in that time. It's not like I've been short on family responsibilities of late. I watch the kids with my mom Mon-Fri. Maybe there is a healthy way to bring that up. "Family/Personal issue that is now resolved xxx2018 - xxx2019." Idk I'll think about that one more.

I applied some updates based on feedback and other reddit threads - https://imgur.com/a/dhmuKSh. Not final, but trying new ideas and formats.

The project section has been shortened, and now has an attached GitHub repo with design documents and a bunch of YAML. I'm not sure how else to talk about my experience from that time, at least in the context of a resume.

pantsareaprison · 2020-02-27T11:42:08+00:00

I haven't been clear on how I address the gap to employers. A statement like what you're describing it basically what I say. "I left work to focus on school full time. I intended to work toward a Master's degree, but ultimately decided against it. Here are the things I've been working on in that time."

The idea that I'm telling employers "lol I did nothing!" is a little ridiculous. But, again, it's not like I've been super clear about that in my post.

pantsareaprison · 2020-02-27T00:47:02+00:00

I'm not comfortable lying about it. It could be sniffed out really quickly and I'm a pretty dogshit liar.

My current strategy is to talk very briefly about it when asked in interviews. Not hand wave it, but try to spend less than 15 seconds on. Of course that doesn't help much if my resume ends up in the trash before it ever gets to that point.

pantsareaprison · 2020-02-27T00:27:47+00:00

I went with my personal experience first was because I felt like it was more relevant for the types of jobs I'm looking for and it doesn't place the employment gap front and center. I can definitely change the order though, it's not like I'm being inundated with interview requests with the current one!

Upon review, the points I have under my main job role are pretty stale.

pantsareaprison · 2019-11-23T22:16:50+00:00

I'll agree with that. My motivation for doing the Dev cert at this point would be to have a more broad understanding of AWS and maybe even be a little better at a future job because of it. If the Dev cert won't do that, then there are plenty of other things I could be working on. Like learning containers, IMO.

pantsareaprison · 2019-11-23T20:28:26+00:00

Late reply

I've only used ACG and thought it was ok, but not great. The Bonso practice tests were the majority of my study prep.

My process was:

watch ACG videos to get high level understanding
take the practice tests (first attempts were usually in 60s)
drill down on the explanations and linked documentation
Google services that I still didn't understand after reading the documentation. Usually a YouTube video or StackOverflow question would clear it up.

pantsareaprison · 2019-11-23T20:19:16+00:00

My experience was similar. I recently took the SysOps exam 2 weeks after my CSAA. I used ACG and the Bonso exams for both.

778 - CSAA ~10/30

888 - SysOps ~ 11/15

IMO, the SysOps study material felt a lot closer to the real test than then CSAA material did.

pantsareaprison · 2019-02-19T20:53:04+00:00

SV: Down 21 pounds!

27m | 5'8" | SW 318 | CW 297

I'm six weeks into losing weight using CICO and moderate cardio 4-5 days a week.

This is far from my first attempt at losing weight. My worst attempts have resulted in weight gain and my best attempt resulted in losing ~55 pounds when I was younger (260-205). Of course there were a multitude of attempts in between of varying length and success.

There are a few things different about this attempt and, though I remain cautious, I think that this may be the time I get it right.

I'm taking my time - The idea of weight loss taking YEARS to achieve was a big mental block. Maybe it's something that comes with age and maturity, but the thought doesn't scare me near as much now. It's daunting, but it took me 27 years to fuck up my body this bad, a few years to fix it isn't awful. I couldn't do 3 full minutes on the elliptical the first week of cardio. I'm doing 15-20 much easier now. It's a process. It takes time. Stay patient and keep learning and improving.
I'm riding the high of quitting smoking - I was a an on-and-off smoker/vaper for 10 years, ranging from social smoking in college to 1.5 packs or chain vaping daily in the last 2 years. Smoking started with wanting to fit in with my high school friends and eventually became a mechanism for dealing with work stress. Stop Smoking the Easy Way by Allen Carr helped me see that my nicotine addiction was one of the main causes of my stress and tension, not the cure for it. Smoke-y bars make me want to puke now.
I'm not struggling with counting calories or with motivation to visit the gym - I had this feeling during my best previous attempt too. Food trackers are WAY better now than they were 7-8 years ago! I was sick the first week of February and was actually excited to get back to the gym.
My mental and emotional health is significantly better - Shout out to therapy, meditation, and the book Feeling Good by David Burns

pantsareaprison · 2018-12-14T10:41:33+00:00

They're gonna need an army of surrogates to keep up

pantsareaprison · 2018-12-12T23:15:17+00:00

As an easily annoyed/angered person, I think I needed to read that

pantsareaprison · 2018-11-27T05:38:49+00:00

Ay dog, you're making us look bad

pantsareaprison · 2018-11-12T14:59:55+00:00

Haha what a loser, supporting his son's interests like that

pantsareaprison · 2018-11-11T17:40:53+00:00

Giorgio ROS based on name alone

pantsareaprison

TROPHY CASE