Shipwright welder. I crawl all throughout the bowels of Navy and civilian ships with my gear in tow. I build new areas, cut out old areas, and perform repairs on hulls and pipes.

If it’s local city elections, it’s difficult as the line between parties gets fuzzy. Some candidates have little to no info on their policies and such.

If I can’t find anything about them at all, I won’t vote for them. If they’re hyper religious or make it their main focus of their campaign, I won’t vote for them. Other than that, it’s just a coin toss.

Larger elections like stare and national are a bit easier. If they have the letter R next to their name, it’s safe to assume they’re insane, evil, or both. It’s become the norm these days. That makes it a choice between independants and democrats. I guess it comes down to which has better policies on issues I care about.

This, 100%.

I’m not about to tarnish my professional reputation just to spite a clueless customer.

Freelance welding on my days off. A customer wanted to hire me to make a fence gate, but he didn’t have solid blueprints. He had a crude sketch drawn on a scrap of paper, but no specific measurements. I offered to come by and take measurements, but he didn’t even have a fence base to take measurements off of.

Essentially, he wanted me to construct a property fence gate of unspecified size and install it to a nonexistent perimeter fence. I told him these issues, but he didn’t care. He wanted me to build this fence gate, but he didn’t know what size, what materials, and where to install it.

I fired him. A welder’s reputation means everything. I’m not about to make a thing for a customer who doesn’t actually know what he wants. I did him a favor by walking away and not taking his money.

Tinkering with my 3D Printer. It’s a filament printer, but after a lot of fine tuning, I’m able to print small D&D miniatures with mixed quality. It’s not perfect, but it is getting closer.

Back in the day, a smartphone was a major upgrade. They continue to improve which is just amazing. I came from an age of wall phones and dial-up internet.

It’s not really a tool, but I’m very careful about what I upload online. I never use my real name and I never upload identifying selfies or things that can lead to my identification.

The internet has become a nasty place full of nasty people who have no shame, online and in real life.

A 3D Printer. It replaced a lot of bad habits and it stuck for me. Plus I’m creative and I love to tinker, so it was perfect.

Right now I’m trying to use my filament printer to create quality D&D miniatures with mixed results. Fine tuning is getting closer and closer to resin print quality.

A strong sense of spatial awareness, accurately eyeballing measurements, and reverse engineering things in my head without physically taking them apart.

It comes in really handy as a welder, machinist, and a 3D print hobbyist.

College while working full time. Four years of barely getting any sleep while working full time and going to school full time. Even my teachers made comments about how late I’m staying up. They can see on their Canvas website that I’m turning in papers at 3 or 4 in the morning.

Bomb makers don’t typically suicide run with their own bombs. They get some poor brainwashed chump to do it for them.

Feel free to judge, I’ll own it.

But I like Papa John’s. A stuffed crust with BBQ sauce, bacon, sausage, and pineapple.

My butthole suffers for it, but it’s worth it. Very tasty.

This is why I don’t use my real name on the internet, nor do I post selfies.

I see triple A, and red flags go up. Didn’t Bethesda brag about being a triple A gaming company right before crapping out Starfield?

I like a number of songs by Sid Maudlin. However, some years ago she and her music entirely vanished from the internet. From what little information I could find, she retired and tried to erase that part of her past, along with every single one of her songs.

She was super aggressive with DMCA takedowns and would hit just about anything and everything that mentioned her name or her music. But the internet being what it is, it never truly went away. I think she’s either relaxed a bit or given up trying to take everything down.

No explanation of these pills and what they do?

Hold onto your butt’s for these. I have two that were equally awful.

I had a date with a guy I met on a dating site. His profile picture was of him standing way back in the background, so I couldn’t see what he looks like. But what the hell, he asked and I said yes.

He asked me out to IHOP at 9pm which is an unusual choice, but sure ok. I showed up a little early and sat at one of the booths. This guy walks in looking absolutely absurd. He’s wearing a fedora, a tacky animal print tshirt that’s way too large, tons of jewelry on his wrists/neck/fingers, cargo shorts, an attempt at a beard, and sandals with socks.

Not going great, but maybe he’s a nice guy with no sense for fashion. I’ll give him a shot.

We greet, he sits down, and with a raspy smoker voice, he begins to explain each and every piece of jewelry and what magical properties they bestow upon him. This one wards off evil spirits, this one wards off wraiths and phantoms, this one gives me the power to read emotions, this one allows me to talk to god, and on and on.

Clearly they weren’t working as I was very uncomfortable at this point. A man of his age dressing like that, being superstitious, and believing in magic? So very many red flags. I decided I never want to meet him again, but I was determined to finish the date on a positive note.

But then his ex-friends came into the IHOP, and shit went south quickly. They began to argue and shout at each another. Apparently my date was kicked out of their Pagan religion group… thing? My date was really bitter about it and decided to bring a date to this specific IHOP at this specific location and time because he knew his ex Pagan group regularly meets there. I think he was trying to prove something by having me there, but I don’t know what.

I paid for my half of the meal and slipped away. My date never noticed that I left. If his ex-Pagan group noticed, they didn’t say anything.

My second equally bad date was meeting another guy on the same dating site. He was an ok looking guy, 5 out of 10. But then again, I’m no beauty queen either so ehh, why not.

We were going to the movies for our first date, but we arrived suspiciously too early. He said he got the movie time mixed up, but we can pass the time walking around in the Petsmart store nearby. You clever clever man, that’s exactly how to melt my heart. Kudos to his plan.

We walked around the pet store, looking at all the cute animals, then we went to go see the movie. I don’t know why, but he refused to sit next to me. He insisted on keeping an empty seat between us. We ended the night and went our separate ways.

He called me again, inviting me to his Dungeons & Drafons game, which of course I said yes. Hell yes! But as it turns out, he had absolutely no interest in dating me. All he wanted was a female to join his game and play certain NPC roles in his campaign.

I’m ashamed to say I did the voice acting for his NPCs. After that, I never heard from the guy again.

No. I don’t care about him watching prerecorded porn videos on the internet. But if he’s sex chatting with someone live, I take issue.

I’m frustrated with all of my friends and acquaintances who claimed they’d love to play D&D some day, yet can never seem to find a group to join.

I’m a DM and I have a brand new campaign starting tomorrow. I’ve been putting out announcement for almost two months now, and those same people are making excuses or ghosting me.

I have the game location, the maps, the miniatures, spare books & dice, and I’m rather adept at teaching new people. I’m just short on people who actually want to play.