Hey thank you so much amouseinmyhouse for responding (and also thanks to Elisza and also dashnhammit down below there out of this thread). I want to sit down and read through everything and that was what I intended to do, but my morning just went from 0 to panic because apparently I'm having surgery tomorrow. I know that has NO bearing on anything we're talking about but I didn't want you guys to think I was one of those people that came in and said "Hey let's have a difficult conversation....LOL BYE!" I'm going to sit down and read all of this and write up a thoughtful response once I'm not completely drugged up and hopefully we can continue the conversation at a later date (thank goodness this site seems to rely less on only current conversations being worth it.)

Sorry about that and everybody have a good weekend!

Like GingerBeardMan said, getting a divorce is a major headache, even if it's uncontested - not only in the amount of money and paperwork but the sheer amount of stress involved. Breakups are awful but there's something about the whole concept of legal separation that adds another layer of anxiety. Not sure where you live but for me in a situation where we had no children together and no joint property it still cost $2,000 just for paperwork. I had tried one of those "do it yourself divorce" kits that you can get for 20 bucks online or so and it wasn't state specific enough and I finally had to say "screw it" and talk to a lawyer. Then my ex refused to sign the paperwork because he was in one of those "please one more chance please let's get back together" things so I had to deal with that stress. I couldn't just block his number because I had to keep heckling him to do the damn paperwork. I finally told him, "Look, if you want to do this contested we can because I've got more than enough proof to claim adultery on your part." We really couldn't have done it contested because it would've been another $3,000 and I didn't have that much money because he'd also destroyed my credit and left me with $24,000 in debt but thankfully he didn't call my bluff on that and signed. If for some reason you do cave in and get married then for the love of god keep your finances as separate as possible and don't make any major purchases together that'll tie you up financially (houses, cars, co-signing loans, etc.). Then there's also the headache of untangling things you wouldn't think of like frequent flier miles and Costco accounts and who's carrying who on their insurance and cell plans and stuff.

Honestly OP, it's not worth the headache if you're not sure. And from the tone of your post it sounds like you've already made up your mind. Having a future with someone isn't the fiery and passionate "I can't live without them!" thing necessarily but it also isn't "meh" which is the feeling I'm getting from you. It sounds more like the relationship is comfortable and familiar and that's as good a reason as any to keep running with it which won't make for a healthy partnership.

Alright I've been on Hubski less than a week but y'all seem like nice sensible people so I'd like to ask a question that I've been having problems with for awhile and I think it's because I haven't been able to have a sane conversation with someone about it that doesn't devolve into people getting defensive. I'm having problems with the concept of white privilege. Well...not problems. I get it in the Louis CK sense that if I got in a time machine right now and showed up anywhere in history with very few exceptions I would probably not be persecuted or enslaved (unless I happened to land in the Irish slavery part)....otherwise I'd probably just be told to sit down and shut up because I'm a woman. Ok. I get that and I respect that. Here's the part I get confused on.

The first time I heard the term "white privilege" thrown around (on reddit, surprise surprise) I asked what exactly the parameters were for white privileges and shared my experiences as some others were. I grew up poor in a reasonably sketchy neighborhood with lots of gang activity right on the US Mexico border. I got the crap beaten out of me regularly for being one of the only white girls in my class. I got asked to leave stores on two occasions because their "clothes weren't for hueras" (the general jist of it). I took shitty jobs, sometimes several at a time and sometimes things nobody wanted any part of and dragged my way through college. I didn't get anywhere I was going with my social connections and like lots of people I scratched and clawed my way to get where I am. And I immediately got shouted down as someone trying to deny their white privilege because I could've used it to improve my circumstances and I'm sitting there going, "How? How the hell was I supposed to improve anything about that situation by being white?" Meanwhile a guy I follow on Twitter was piled on about his white male privilege when he was half Asian and grew up so poor he had been living on donated food infested with ants, but again his human experiences came down to the color of his skin and his gender with everything else taken out of the equation.

So I guess what I'm curious about is...well not so much "how am I privileged" because once again, I get in a time machine and I won't find myself in a crappy situation more than likely, but where does socio-economic privilege come into this whole matrix of privilege? Because I hear people talking about white privilege and male privilege and all these other privileges but you ask about socio-economic and they go mum. I've had frustrated friends point out it's usually "trust fund scholars who majored in gender studies" saying all this so they're uncomfortable with the socio-economic aspect themselves, but I don't think that's it.

I'm hoping someone can have a discussion with me about his because I'd really like to understand it, and it frustrates me to a degree (probably because I've seen too much of the ridiculous radical stuff on Tumblr). Yes I know, it's not your job to educate me but give me a push here or something.

Haha thanks. Not so much personal reflection as general grumbling. I'm pretty bitter about how upgrades are handled at least on our campus. We get these tiny little pots of money and we're trying to make stuff better for the students so it's environments they want to learn in and that professors can actually teach in and then the contractors look at the individual departments and say "Yeah we understand you want to replace this fifty year old cracked chalkboard, but you also need a fire suppression system which is X million." So we ask the powers that be and the powers that be say "Well we don't have that kind of money." I spent a lot of time running cables up in the ceiling last summer and even though we got one small portion of tile tested I kept thinking "With my luck there's something that's going to kill me up here."

Thankfully all our asbestos is in our floor tiles which we're blithely carpeting over and in the tape used in the drywall. The incident with the window shade did happen last year but I think the worst thing that happened was we went home covered in mouse poop, fiberglass and dead roaches. Guess I'll know in 40 years. :-/

Oh and I was writing the story while I was watching the guy lay carpet and thinking "Oh my god that's a different color she's going to be livid." ;)

Did that to me yesterday right after I'd thrown up a post in the writing prompt thread with a few huge and stupid typos in it. The horror.

One of the many reasons I started referring to myself as an egalitarian instead of a feminist. I don't think that just men should have to sign up for selective service here in the US when they turn 18. Why should we get special treatment and get a pass on that? If we want equality then we've got to take the bad with the good.

I've been reading Chernobyl by Frederik Pohl on the sly here and there. Really interesting fictional account that brings in some different things than "this is how you make an RBMK reactor explode" to "this is what the mentality of the government and the communist people and other people dealing with the accident could have been." Very interesting read that puts a human face on something I've done a fair bit of technical reading on before.

That's the fun reading. Mostly I've been reading my research statistics textbook. I'm so tired of regressions and coefficients...one more week and I'm freeeeeeeee.

Just speaking from reddit experience, the Ask Reddit sub there tended to wade into controversial waters. Sometimes people felt the burning urge to answer one of those questions like "Have you ever cheated on your ex" "Have you ever hired a prostitute" or "What have you done at work that should've gotten you fired" as a catharsis, or a need to get it off their chest, or just to brag and in those cases I think the throwaway just felt like an added layer of protection. Truth be it told I'd lived in my reddit account for long enough that if you looked through my post history and were determined and bored enough you probably could've found me other places online or my friends or family could've recognized me if they knew who they were looking for. The most scandalous thing they probably would've learned would have been terribly bland but some people have more exciting lives that they want to share and if those details made it back to them then there could be ugly repercussions.

Here you go. Strangely it only happens on iPad. I don't have the same issue on my phone. But that's after clicking on a tag and scrolling all the way up. The top half of the top post is cut off as are the links to follow the tab.

She hadn't meant to kill three people. She hadn't even meant to harm or frighten three people but there it was. The carpet color was where it all began to go wrong. The office buildings hadn't been updated properly since the 1950s. She'd been chipping away at it a little bit with the leftover funds every year taking it from ghastly grey dungeon to a place that people would actually want to work. New furniture that didn't leave you with a sore back and aching wrists from improperly placed keyboards. More power outlets. Wifi that actually worked (she'd never seen her employees so happy as the day that they weren't all scrabbling to tether their multiple devices to the network).

The improvements hadn't gone smoothly though. The building was under multiple safety code violations which made the contractors difficult to work with. They always wanted to add more and more expensive things to the budget. Surely the fire sprinklers should be coming out of the building owner's budget. Then there were electrical problems and structural problems. But changing mundane things like those things didn't make for happy employees. Tangible comforts did, and so that was what she pushed for.

The latest round of renovations had been exasperating. The carpet installations had been delayed half a dozen times. The new blinds for the conference room had been lost on a UPS truck somewhere in Pennsylvania. And the project manager she had been relying on simply stopped returning calls. Hearing that the carpet had finally shown up was a pleasant surprise that made her a little less hellbent on getting home to a migraine pill and a cold beer. But it was the wrong color. The wrong fucking color. How hard did this have to be?

"Why didn't you text me?"

Her right hand employee was surlier and more tired than usual and appeared to be assing off on some website transcribing War and Peace for all she knew.

"It's the same carpet."

"It's NOT. It's lighter. Much lighter. Come here and look."

They stood on the offending slightly-too-brown squares in the conference room where the apologetic carpet installer had already been raked over the coals.

"Maybe the rest of it's just dirty."

"Don't be silly it can't be that dirty."

She didn't know why she bothered. All she had wanted to do was make a change. Make an impact. She wanted to use these last two years before she retired to achieve what she had dreamed of for thirty-five years of workforce drudgery: being a boss that people would remember as really getting something done. And every irritating simpleton she was working with had to argue with her or try to impede things.

"So the carpet's the wrong color and this thing...this damn thing is still here," she grumbled yanking on the tattered old window blind. The din was resounding and she would have stared in wide-eyed shock if she hadn't had to snap her eyes shut from the cloud of dust that now permeated the room. Her right hand employee was doubled over coughing and the carpet installer was completely coated in debris. The window blind had finally given way after forty or so years of use and had come crashing to the floor, bringing a small cascade of ceiling tiles with it, several of which cracked as they hit the floor.

She fulfilled her dream that day, but not in the way she had expected. She would be remembered as the boss that made an impact, mostly by the families of the carpet installer and her right hand employee whose lungs had now been permeated with a twisting fibrous miasma of asbestos.

I had a similar issue - I can't follow tags from an iPad because the link to do so is hiding under the header. I can scroll up far enough to see it but then it pops back down.

I think if Apple had released this a few years ago then it'd be doing much better. It seems that they're doing a lot less proactive innovating and are now falling more and more into reactive thinking. I regularly work with two Apple engineers who are usually completely aglow about whatever the new tech is that's coming out and when I asked them about the watch there was a somewhat uncomfortable, "Oh yeah....that."

The problem is we've got devices that do most of this stuff for us. If I've got to keep a phone in my pocket to interact with my watch then what's the point of the watch? (And on a selfish side note, those watch faces need some work. Snoopy or GTFO.) I've got a Fitbit that shames me about my activity levels that I invested in when Apple didn't have a horse in that race, and why would I give up technology that I know and that works for the latest great shiny thing. But maybe therein lies the problem: Apple's still riding the wave of expecting people to get the latest greatest shiny thing even if it's not bringing anything new to the table and that model can't sustain itself forever.

It's hot here at night to begin with (70s-80's in the evenings usually). My dog not only sleeps with me but she burrows under the covers and pushes right up next to me. My boyfriend sleeps on the other side of me. And dog number two usually nests on my legs. So it's like being in a furry, somewhat pleasant, but mostly miserably hot straight jacket. Couple the fact that I'm sweaty and covered in dog hair with the issue that when my hair gets sweaty it does kind of a Flock of Seagulls thing and no amount of brushing will fix it, showering in the morning is a necessity. (And I just dated myself horribly with that comparison....yikes.)

I hadn't seen that but it was an interesting read. Thanks for sharing!

I was three years older than the very first intern I trained at my job. I remember thinking it felt really strange that I was supposed to be an expert teaching these kids job skills and I'd only been at it three years longer than them. During the downtime we'd talk about music and TV shows and general celebrity gossip things.

This last May I was shuffling through applicants and realized that the college sophomore I had just interviewed was born the year I graduated high school. I can't be 18 years older than them...there's no way. But then I realized that my role apart from supervisor has changed. I've gone from being the person the same age who was lucky enough to have a full staff position to something of a big sister to "mom" worrying about them when they don't call in and bringing things for the staff fridge so that when they take a long shift they still get a healthy meal rather than a cup of coffee. I guess one day I'll be "work grandma".

That was when it hit me that I'm old and that I'm just going to keep getting older.

Fair enough but it's probably a topic we'll have to agree to disagree on. There's been a reasonable sized avalanche of bad behavior on both sides.

I read that awhile ago. Sacco is definitely one of the cases I think about in this context. (I hadn't noticed before that Sam Biddle was one of the people that pushed her into the limelight. With that in mind I will admit that I indulged in a bit of schadenfreude thinking of him dealing with the blowback of his "bring back bullying" tweet.)

It seems like it's so frequently a stupid joke among friends, but people don't realize that it just takes one person to take it beyond that list of friends to the shark tank.

Like you, I comment frequently but never really post content. I think reddit ruined it for me. In all my years of posting I only had one post with more than 9 points of positive karma and it wasn't even something amazing and unique - it was pictures of my dog in the BeforeNAfterAdoption sub.

Small subs were welcoming but I didn't discover this till after years of posting to the defaults and getting immediately downvoted had taken all the fun out of it for me. I guess even though I viewed them frequently I didn't realize that the defaults were so cut throat.

I have a 7 minute drive to the bus terminal and then a 45 minute commute to work by bus, followed by 20 minutes of walking to get where I'm going. It's still more stress free than driving. Plus I get in some good gaming time on the bus with my 3DS. I played the bulk of Majora's Mask and Shin Megami Tensei IV on my commutes to and from work.

The thing that immediately springs to my mind is making someone who has committed a perceived offense "go viral." I've seen lots of Facebook posts and Tumblr posts saying "this person did something to me that was wrong, share it and make them famous" (aka it's time for death threats and to call their employers and suggest that unsavory things happen to their mothers and children because there's no such thing as polite internet outrage.) Bonus points if you include loaded buzzwords that may or may not apply to the situation at all but will evoke strong emotions: racism, misogyny, pedophile, etc. There's lots of problems with this obviously: people act on one person's account of the story and often don't ask for the other person's - they just jump on the righteous crusade bandwagon with their pitchforks and torches. Also sometimes the person on the receiving end of the witch hunt didn't do or say anything of the sort and it's an unfortunate case of mistaken identity, revenge, or a straight up urban legend. And then there's the larger problem of mob justice. There's few to no occasions in history when a mob of angry people being judge, jury and executioner has positive outcomes.

Keep in mind my views are very localized....everything's drier than an old stick out here. We're on fire alert most of the warm months. You can only buy the "safe and sane" ones in the city (i.e. fountains that stay on the ground) but you can drive 10 minutes to the reservation and get the illegal stuff which is what everybody does. Our neighbor's backyard got burnt pretty bad one year. I'm always afraid a dud is going to land in any of the piles of dried brush and tumbleweeds and set off something bad. And then there's dipshits down the street who were so drunk they kicked the mortar over and shot three huge shells down the street and past my neighbor's three year old son (it exploded maybe 200 feet from him).

I get the patriotism and blowing stuff up because Murica but the number of people who can't use them responsibly and who use them regardless of the danger it's causing are what worry me. I'd be just as happy if we kept it to public displays around here. Green and soggy places can do what they want. Now if you'll excuse me I think I need to go yell at some whippersnappers to get off my lawn.

7th Guest and 11th Hour are great puzzle games that'll frustrate you in good ways. (For any iOS users seeing this, do NOT download the iOS version...awful awful port).

If you don't mind adventure games, as others have suggested anything Sierra did was great. I recommend the lesser mentioned Colonel's Bequest & Dagger of Amon Ra which are both murder mysteries and Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist which has some reasonably questionable and hilarious comedy. (I've also heard great things about the Gabriel Knight games but have never had a chance to play them.) Or if horror is your thing check out Phantasmagoria for 7 discs of somewhat campy, ridiculously gory, banned in several countries amusement. Return to Zork was also fantastic even if you'd never played the original Zork games.

Also kind of a weird one but I really liked playing Inca. You're an Inca (surprise!) who....has a spaceship and fights Spaniards in space and stuff. Because reasons.

I think there's an issue of "can I replace this" and "do I care" when it comes to other sites. Every time a change gets made to Facebook or YouTube people get up in arms, vow to leave, etc. but more often than not they don't because there's not another site that caters to that specific need, or there are alternatives but they're not as well supported or don't have the content users are looking for. I think the other thing is people get very invested in sites that they're not paying a thing for and it almost feels like a personal betrayal on some level and they fail to realize that they're basically there to generate revenue.

All that being said, I think Reddit is an interesting case because it's not just "there's changes to the site that I don't like" it's "I don't like the way you're treating employees that we've come to know and love and we think you're a lying sneak." That human element may be what actually makes this more effective than our usual angry fist shaking.

I started off with a wretched job and an abusive boss, but I made friends with the people in the department I wanted to be in and they got to see some of my work. When they had an opening I applied with them and didn't really even need to interview since by then they all knew about my projects and that I'd fit in well with their team.

So really I guess my advice is take any job you can get in a company that's in the field you want to be in, even if it's being the punching bag and copy machine wrangler for someone in middle management. Then network network network so that when something comes up that you WANT to do, you're ready.