The Gaming Den

Shrapnel,

I'm sorry if you're feeling a little piled on. Losing your job sucks, and I'm sorry to hear that you're in a bad situation. I hope you find a new position that you like better and you're happier.

While it can feel like people are trying to be mean to you, I don't think that's the case at all. Keep in mind that we're only responding based on what you tell us and sometimes the context isnt' clear. Take, for example the following two quotes:

Shrapnel wrote: So, would going in, saying sorry, offering to pay to replace the broken machine and beggin for my job back work? I'm totally willing to sacrifice silly things like "dignity" and "pride", becuase you can't lose what you don't have.

Shrapnel wrote:I was joking about begging for my job back. I'm not that pathetic.

There was nothing in the first statement to indicate that you wouldn't ask for your job back if people thought you had a chance to succeed. I'd guess you wanted to hear that it would be worth doing - that it could be successful. Everyone who has responded has made their response only on the things you've self-reported. We'd expect that you're biased to present the facts in the way that makes you look good - few people deliberately try to make themselves look worse in stories about the things they did. If the consensus is that you're creating (or at least contributing) to your own problems, you should be willing to do some serious self-reflection.

Especially if you're serious about having Asperger's, you might consider that you're not particularly sensitive to the social needs of your fellow citizens. If you lack the empathy to avoid social awkwardness naturally, you're going to have to apply your brain to learning a bunch of rules that won't necessarily make sense to you. So while it may feel like we're putting you down, that's really not the case. We're trying to offer constructive criticism to help you in your future endeavors, whatever they might be.

If you get nothing else from this conversation I hope you'll come away with this: There are no good excuses. Most people don't actually care why something happened, but if it inconveniences them, they would like a sincere apology. Rather than explaining why it couldn't be helped you should acknowledge their situation. The explanation should not be offered as a defense if it is included.

Bad Example
I'm sorry I'm late. My car wouldn't start so I called my friend and he gave me a ride, but he came twenty minutes after he said he would.

Better Example
I'm sorry I'm late. I had car trouble and I'm really sorry that I let you down. Is there anything I can do to make up for this? I can stay late or cover your next shift.

Shrapnel wrote:(I wrongly thought like two or three people, most of whom would've been Darth, would say, "oh, that's too bad" and leave it at that.)

I don't read this forum too often. Mostly I check In The Trenches and I haven't even been doing that too much lately. I honestly didn't even know you had been fired when I last saw you on Saturday. I didn't ask because I figured things were going well. I'm genuinely sorry to hear that, and hope that you find a better job, but as another person who has Asperger's and is currently unemployed (but volunteering at a wildlife hospital, where I take wildlife rehab classes) I don't have too much to say in the way of advice that hasn't already been said. Wildlife hospitals aren't exactly hotbeds of social interaction.

To change the subject (that being dogpiling on Shrapnel for being a shitty employee and not grasping that it's 100% his fault), I've started reversing the effects of when my health quit a few years back. I've started swimming and now am strong enough to mix in some weight training.

Shrap- just move on, and learn from this. It can take some time to really get tumbled into employable drone, and deviation from social norms only makes that process longer and harder. You'll find something, just try to learn from everything.

Count- Congrats!

I'm looking at getting a new(to me) car. This is not "Yay! New car!" this is "aww fuck, I have to replace this fucking thing." About a year ago, my car's driver-sider front wheel joint snapped, leaving the left-front corner resting on the wheel. It was $1000 to fix, and I had to have my dad pay and then pay him back. Last night, coming back from a delivery, pulling into a parking spot, the right front wheel joint snapped. Three and a half hours later, it was sitting at a shop waiting for people to come in this morning, and I was figuring out whether I should put another $1000 into my $2.5K car, or just replace the thing. It's a nice car, it really is. It's a red crown vic, that for all it's dents and scratches, is pretty dependable. But it's just accumulated more and more serious problems. On top of the wheel joint, the engine is now completely seized, and I'm looking down the barrel of a car loan when I was hoping to be finding an apartment in a month.

So my wife now owns the PokeNexus servers for Minecraft. She spent most of yesterday on the phone gathering staff and organizing stuff to get achievable timelines set up.

explain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D_vQTqtmHI

PokeNexus is a public Minecraft server, which uses the Pixelmon modpack, providing regions to explore, Pokemon to capture, etc. The prior owner got tired of being expected to do stuff like maintenance (and wasn't that good at it to start), and let it shut down about a week or two ago due to lack of fvcks to give. They got enough e-mails asking about stuff to be fixed, they threw their hands up in the air and gave everything to my wife - passcodes, file packs, authentication junk, the donation account, etc.

interesting O.o

So, anyways I'm just over 2 weeks out from doing a 4 day, 300 mile bikepacking trip.

I have most of the essentials planned and (hopefully) adequately trained. But I could use some suggestions for riding music to expand my playlist.

Preference for uptempo stuff to move to and bonus points if lyrics somewhat motivational, but I'll give anything a listen.

Sabaton maybe?
Alestorm?
Queen of course, always good . .

Well, I have a specific song recommendation: "Stand my ground" by Tom Petty is a good one to keep yourself from giving up

Maxus wrote:Well, I have a specific song recommendation: "Stand my ground" by Tom Petty is a good one to keep yourself from giving up

That is in fact song #2 on the most recent playlist I made for training.

Josh_Kablack wrote:

Maxus wrote:Well, I have a specific song recommendation: "Stand my ground" by Tom Petty is a good one to keep yourself from giving up

That is in fact song #2 on the most recent playlist I made for training.

Good man.

On a completely different subject, I recently had occasion to review "lateral thinking puzzles".

The correct response to anyone seriously asking you the one about the guy who takes the elevator down but not up is to lash him about with your buggy whip. The solution assumes something that has been only rarely true for my entire lifetime. You see, most elevator buttons have been laid out like this:

or like this

since before I was born. Current Elevator systems are installing touchscreen panels like this

The "Solution" to the puzzle assumes this sort of antique control layout:

Which is honestly kind of hard to even find on a Google Search anymore.

Could you perhaps repeat the question?

Q: "What kind of person takes an elevator down, but not up?"
A: "One too short to reach the higher buttons."

I've managed to end up with saved up money, and I'm wanting short-term investments. I've only got two real sources of debt - car and student loans. The student loans are never going away unless I get a better job or the Income-Based Repayment Plan I'm on forgives the whole thing in about 15-20 years from now. My saved money is enough pay off nearly the entire car loan, which will currently not be paid off until 11/2019. The thing is, I doubt any investment option I can choose will do better than the car loan's APR (4.2%). But, it's also important to have emergency funds, which short-term investment options let me have.

If you can afford the rates right now, ask to pay off half of the car loan and either let it run for the same ammount of time with lowered rates or have it stop sooner at the rates you are used to and keep the rest of the money for emergencies or something small and nice?

If I were you I'd pay off the whole car loan, because debt is something you should do your best to get rid of... but I don't live in the US where you can get fucked by medical costs etc. at any time, so it's probably better to take Stahlseele's advice: pay down half of it and save the rest.

Banging out the car loan or a chunk of it seems solid advice. Hard to beat a guaranteed 4.2%.

Paying down the loan is likely your best bet. As a maybe second choice, you should probably also look into what an IRA / Roth IRA / myRA could do for your taxes. But how good that is depends on your overall income and tax picture - and in most cases you lose the sweet tax bonuses if you need to withdraw the funds.

Oh and I forgot but josh reminded me. If your work had contribution matching in a 401k or something I'd say that could be good for the amount of whatever is matched (my work matches a scaling portion of the first 8% of my paycheck so I make sure to fully utilize the matching). But it wasn't offered as an option.

I guess another option is if you can use funds to help you or your partner to get a better job. Via education upgrades or what have you. We paid a pretty chunk of change to get mrs erik qualified to take the CPA tests but she hasn't taken em yet despite finishing her courses, so that path isn't without uncertainty and risk. But I'm still holding out hope that she does em in the next year and massively improves her income to let us sock away serious cash to invest and have a hope of retirement.

If you are the type of person who could take the monthly car payment and put it into savings every month once the car is paid off, you should do that. The fact that you were able to save is a good sign.

You should have cash savings that'll earn virtually nothing, but will keep you from needing to take on debt or alter your investments if you need extra room in your budget.

While I personally expect a market correction, a diversified 401k is a good investment at any time. If you take a loan from your 401k, you're essentially paying yourself interest. It would be better to let compound interest grow your investment, but it's nice to have options.

erik wrote:Oh and I forgot but josh reminded me. If your work had contribution matching in a 401k or something I'd say that could be good for the amount of whatever is matched (my work matches a scaling portion of the first 8% of my paycheck so I make sure to fully utilize the matching). But it wasn't offered as an option.

Yeah, my work does 1-for-1 matching to a 401k for the first 7% of my paycheck. I took that full option at the beginning of my employment.

Warning. Whiny rant incoming...

I have considered options to education to get a better job, but motivation on that front is difficult. I have a Master's in Mechanical & Energy Engineering. In the last 6 years, I haven't gotten an interview for any job I've applied for. I have gotten about four interviews in that time span, but only through head-hunters who saw my resume floating about - and of the two that actually gave feedback, their only stated reason for turning me down is that I was too educated/qualified. Heck, my current job essentially retroactively demoted me from Engineer to Engineering Assistant when I asked for a raise...

My great accomplishment so far this year: The Robert E. Howard Bar Guide.