He should make all the money he can, laugh off the haters (whatever haters there are - I have only heard people talking either about how much they like the game, how frustrating the game is, or how nuts it is that it is making so much money for what it is). He could ride it out for a few weeks (or months, if he's lucky) and retire. Especially in his part of the world.

This artsy-fartsy turtle-head-back-in-shell thing is pretty crazy.

I have seen people toil for many years for absolutely no return.

In both instances, subjected to "the internet is mean" behavior.

I will trade you making very little or making nothing and getting the worst of the internet in exchange for getting $50k/day for it, until the ride ends. In fact, for $50k/day, you can have my direct phone number. In fact, you can come to my house and piss on my carpet and blow smoke in my face all day long, for as long as the $50k keeps coming in.

Unless there is some sort of mental instability involved, I can not understand any developer - no matter how random or unexpected - saying "oh, the internet is so mean, I'm taking my stuff down and you can keep your $2,200/hr".

Also, can we dispense with qualifying everything with "the internet is mean"? this has been the case for decades. We don't need to preface every comment with it and qualify everything we ever say with a comment about how the internet is going to be mean to you for what you're going to say. We all know the internet. We've been here with it for a very long time. It is getting almost as obnoxious as when people begin every sentence with "to be honest", only it makes people come across even more insecure.

(I know this was a bit of a rant, but I've been realizing in recent months that a whole percentage of every podcast or article or show I ever watch that has anything to do with the internet can be attributed to the people on it whining about the mean internet or prepending forthcoming statements with how the internet is going to be mean to them for saying something.

Are we still going to be doing this in another twenty years or are we going to be over it?

Nothing has really yet replaced it in quality, but that is only due to the stubborn userbase that clings around. Even us stalwarts will eventually give up the ship, though and say goodbye to our three and four digit UIDs after being thoroughly fed-up with the direction the site has taken.

I keep looking for a new home on the internet, after about seventeen years on slashdot. I haven't found one yet. Places have a user base that is too fleeting. Or a poor signal to noise ratio. Or a poor curation/submission process. Or a poor discussion system. Or awful moderation. Or too much moderation. Or they mix in too much non-tech/geek content.

Really, it is kind of sad. It was an almost daily part of my entire adult life, stretching back to late '97. That, usenet, and IRC have been the most enjoyable, content-filled, tools I've ever found and each filled with a great group of people.

Why am I on the computer all day and all weekend? Because I'm paid for it. Do you ask a mechanic why he spends all day with cars? An author why they spend all day reading books and hunched over a typewriter? What an idiotic question. I'm tired of this Anthony-Robbins-esque content around here really just being used to pimp the author's newsletter.

She believed that the indian on the phone was from Microsoft and somehow detected that her computer (and every other computer in the house, including the 27" iMac I bought my mom for mother's day) were infected. They pinched her for $250 bucks per machine ($750 total). Gave them her credit card number. Let them install shit on the machines. Everything.

Even after I called her and explained to her what just happened, she took a ton of persuading to cancel her credit card (I don't even know if she ever did that), because she was STILL worried that despite what I (a software engineer of two decades) told her, it "might still be legitimate".

Also, who calls back numbers they don't recognize? If you're a number I don't recognize and you don't leave a voicemail, then fuck you!

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/27/the-woody-a...

FFS, she won't even construct memories that she'll recall later in life for another couple of years. This is all really kind of absurd.

There have been countless services and websites over the last decade that somehow get or require massive infusions of money. Tens of millions of dollars, even. It blows my mind. Why does your website that mostly just regurgitates tech news in blog format each day (and usually only about cell phones and tablets, at that) require twenty million dollars of capital? You need a couple servers at rackspace and a couple people at home in their underwear surfing the web and parroting existing stories and news throughout the day.

When I hear "snapchat is incredibly cheap to run", what I hear is "it is reasonably priced to run, like most other services should be, but without the bloated and inflated needs that others somehow ladle onto their sites/services".

1. Create a short article repeating common sense that everyone should know. 2. JOIN MY MAILING LIST!

So, really, it's hard to reduce these ingredients to a sex or gender.

5) I don't really care what your gender is (unless it is particularly germane to the topic of discussion) and I don't take it into account with regard to the content of my posts or responses.

People aren't taken aback at the office, when they deal with female engineers. Why should it be any different on the internet?

I understand women often have to deal with these awkward situations online. Granted. But let's remember that these are a minuscule fraction. It's like walking down the streets of New York and applying the reaction of one construction whistler cat-calling someone passing by and painting the other four million men in the city.

Of course, when you're on the receiving end of encounters with the one person in a massive group that always zooms in on you, it likely feels disproportionate.

I get the maximum vacation time our company allows (after about eight years, you get something like 21 days per year). I currently have the maximum banked amount allowed (two years or 42+ days worth). My vacation accrual has been maxed-out for years, because I do not use it.

In my eighteen years of adult life, I've never taken a vacation day, have only used a sick day one time (I generally work through the illness, but there was one day when I could not get out of bed and was practically unconscious for almost two days), and I've worked almost every holiday (Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, MLK, July 4th - you name it). The only exception was about thirteen years ago, when my dad died and my boss forced me to take a week of bereavement off.

I know a lot of people look forward to using their vacation time and getting away from work. I don't like people who act like working is the worst thing and just sit around staring at the clock waiting for 5:00pm to strike, so they can bail -- but I don't judge or begrudge people who have a strong work ethic and then take advantage of their vacation time. They've earned it.

For myself . . . well, I don't care much for travel and most of the things I do for side projects and self interest can be done at my desk or in my back yard. I enjoy working, often do it off the clock for my own enjoyment, and I can fit in my own projects around the time I work, so I have no particular need to take time off of work to make time for my own stuff.

I suspect I'd feel differently if I had to commute. If I had to travel an hour or more to work every morning and then the same amount back each night, I would be exhausted. I'd probably hate it. Not the work, but the trappings of it. I could see a vacation being desperately needed. Since I've telecommuted almost my entire life, I don't have that particular stress, though. I think that counts for a LOT and I really appreciate it.

On the other hand, there are people like my mother. Someone who has spent most of her life in the food service industry. Has worked at the same company for about twenty years, now, and gets only a week or two of vacation per year . . . UNPAID. As a result, she has never traveled (she won't even come visit me in the home I bought since moving halfway across the country), she doesn't really do anything on vacation, and frankly, doesn't ever take time off if she can help it. She needs the money; can't afford two weeks of "unpaid" vacation.

I don't know if I will change as I get older. We have chosen not to have children and my fiance, though much younger (10yrs) than myself, is very much fine with doing her own thing like me. We have our passions and allow each other to indulge them. She loves traveling (having formerly served in Afghanistan, she has seen more of the world in the last five years than I've seen in my entire life). Anyway, the point is that I have few obligations to be concerned with. That allows me additional freedom to not care about my vacation time, I think. Maybe as I age, I'll want to do other things besides work. Or maybe I'll just need a day every couple weeks to nap and will burn vacation that way. Who knows?

Unfortunately, the sports meant I never had an opportunity to find anyone to play the campaigns with. To this day - in my thirties - I've only played for a few weeks with other people and that was fifteen years ago.

It's probably the one thing I really regret. That I didn't find people that were also into it and, as an adult, find a way to regularly group together with them. It seems like it would be an incredible blast. Especially since being an adult means having all the money for the fancy custom maps and all the guides and everything.

Long live the memory of Gary Gygax.