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Ok, I'm proud of myself on this one. We had guests over yesterday and after everything was done I put my son to bed. He's 8 and big into zombies and monsters and whatnot, but lately he's scared himself and started wanting a night light on again. Last night he asked if I would sleep in his room with him, so I talked with him and had him tell me exactly what he was afraid of. It was mostly the imaginary monsters, with a little bit of old house noises and an odd shadow on his wall. We fixed the shadow issue by moving some stuff around, explained the house noises and the imaginary nature of monsters. I could tell this helped a little, and even though he accepted it was imaginary, he was still scared. So, imaginary guardians to combat imaginary monsters. I told him that if the bad guys are imaginary, then imaginary good guys could protect him. He agreed to this concept. I took a bunch of his stuffed toys and put them in the bed with him. We talked about the fighting prowess of the various species (shark, dragon, bear, etc.) The chicken ended up being a lookout. Santa and the Cat in the Hat were the captains. I told him he was now the general of a stuffed animal army, and not only was he excited about the "game", he was ready to go to sleep by himself. He's in there explaining his defense to his mom now.

To be perfectly honest, I win now because I fucked up so dramatically early on but eventually learned from it. I've worked hard, but I've also had some lucky breaks and God, whatever that may encompass, has smiled on me at some pivotal moments. Tiger's wrong. I did give up. For about three years, give or take. I just didn't stay there. I typed out a bunch of stuff, and then realized that it didn't matter and it didn't fit this thread. So, instead, just let me tell you a story Wayne Carter, a teacher who influenced me greatly in high school, once told me. A traveling salesman approaches an old farmer on his porch. The saleman hears a dog whimpering and moaning, and as he steps on the porch he sees a hound pup laying on the porch near the old farmer's rocking chair. He ignores the pup and starts talking to farmer about his wares, but the dogs moaning and whimpering grow and grow. The farmer never mentions the dog or pays any mind to the sounds, but the salesman has finally had enough. The salesman asks, "what's wrong with your dog, mister?" The farmer replies, "he's laying on a tack." The salesman mulls this over and says, "well, why doesn't he move off of it?" The farmer replies, "I guess he hasn't experienced enough pain yet." That's it. No moral was given. In the brashness of youth I thought the lesson was "stop bitching and moaning, fix the problem." I still think that's part of it. The other part took me some years and experience to truly grasp. How much pain will you put up with because the surroundings are familiar? Because its the status quo, because its the easiest course of action, because its all you know up to that point and you aren't willing to expand your horizons or upset the routine? Probably more than you think. Once you adapt your worldview its no longer about complain or fix it. Its discovering what the tacks are, if they are big enough to make you move, and what moving entails. Some tacks you'll live with. Some you won't. How much pain will it take you to move?

You know what they say, take care of your fucking self because no one else will. Seriously though man... so are you just going to "take care" of everyone for the rest of your life? At some point you have to let people fall on their ass so that they can see that they need to get their shit together. Sometimes a little tough love is needed. I'm sure you've heard of something called enabling. You're enabling them to continue to live in their own shit. The best way to help people sometimes is to stop helping them.

Seems like no matter what you do, everyone else around you is going to take your money and you'll never be free. If you're cool with that, then by all means its your decision. At your age it is not your responsibility to take care of people who dont want to take care of themselves, and will never change. If you want a better life, you need to move out and move on. There are plenty of jobs that you could find that pay enough for you to take care of yourself in your own apartment. Maybe you need to move far away and make a life for yourself. It is YOUR life, after all.

Boom boom baby. Doc, do a vid of you shooting this:

I agree with McNasty, the world is turned upside down, the apocalypse is at hand. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

Cloud services have been acting up this weekend, I had to create a temporary character and was on level 4 (10 before) with no guns or vehicle. When I returned 2 hours later everything was there.

So I just had my first online mission that wasn't a race. Me and PrivateParts were playing a job called "Crooked Cop". Good mission and I recorded it. I'll be recording a comm over it later on and it's only like 6 minutes long. It'll be going on the community channel, not my own so be sure to check it out

There is tons of blue collar jibs in San Diego BTW. http://www.bluecollarcrossing.com/m/jobs/l-San-Diego-CA-jobs.html

If you were on Xbox 360, I'd play it with you. Multiplayer is a blast. I love that it's co-op as opposed to competing against each other.

Its not that he's winning its that he has busted his ass to get where he's at. Making the best if his situation and not giving up

I'm solely recruiting people for multiplayer, they can go back and play the campaign for ME1-3 when I've finished with them. xD

I thought you got a job and moved out? Why put up with your crazy sister?

Im in like 3 crews anyways so i don't mind. But if im on really late/early when you guys are on then im down for playing.

Sorry that came off as a bit harsh. What I meant was that breadcrumbs and shit will attract them, it's good practice to keep your house as clean as possible for many reasons, this being one of them. As for getting rid of them, fuck knows. You can kill them, but they'll breed faster than you can. If you've got an infestation, it'll take months and months of proper treatment to sort it out. This will cost a FUCKTONNE of money. If I were in your shoes, I'd clean the place up as much as I can, spend the cash you were going to spend on roaches on getting the damage your sister caused fixed (do it yourself, ask for advice here if you need it, holes in walls are easily fixed) and then get your landlord to sort it out. If he doesn't, take photos of your living conditions, show him the photos and tell him that you're going to send them to your council's health and wellbeing department and watch how quick it gets sorted. He can get into massive trouble for that. Don't tackle the cockroaches, that's a side effect of not being able to call your landlord. Solution: call your landlord. For this, you'll have to sort the damage first.

In my case I say it's my education which lead to my current job From 1982-1985 Achieved mu BSEE (engineering bachelor's in just over 2 years and graduated 1st in Class). From 1992-1994 MSEE (masters) + PhD This lead to Jobs with ATI (now AMD), Cisco systems and Intel and a pretty darn good living for me a my family. With this we were able to instill the importance of education to our kids. My son should be going to University next year and has been accepted (already) in Canada's top 5 University. my daughter is looking into engineer.

I don't know if its much of a story, but I've increased my net worth by a fuzz over $200,000 since I started keeping track in '02. I grew up without much money and was completely ignorant as to how to handle it. At that time, I had owned three Camaros and a Corvette (one at a time, I traded "up" often), was about $36k in debt, and living off of the GI Bill and an entry level IT job. I was actually living off of credit, but too ignorant to realize (or possibly to depressed and drunk to care) the long term impact. For person reasons I think I've explained in the past, I wanted to hit the "reset" button and went overseas as a contractor. I was instantly making a lot more money and having a lot fewer temptations to spend. I realized that I now had surplus money and had no idea what to do with it. I decided I should educate myself and started with Ric Edelman's book, "The Truth About Money." That book fascinated me and lead me to "The Richest Man in Babylon." Both books contain the simple concept of "no matter what you make, someone is getting by on 10% less. Find out how, live like that, and invest that 10% in your future." So, I did. Because I seldom half ass get interested in anything, I continued to educate myself. I read more books, I took online classes, I subscribed to a few periodicals on personal finance, etc. This was the single most important thing I've done educationally speaking. Now some will doubtlessly say, well of course its easy to increase your net worth when you suddenly get a high paying job. is is easy to continue that when your pay is cut dramatically? Because that's what happens next. I contracted for two years, which let me put the lid on a lot of my debt and get some emergency savings put up. I came home with about $40k net worth, including the equity in a house that I put a reasonable down payment on, cash savings, and the starts of my investment funds. When I came back stateside I worked two part time jobs. My total income was less than $22k for the year, and I had a new wife and son. I still increased my net worth by $5k that year. After that year I got on the police department, which required a move to a new city. While the salary was reasonable (especially after the first two years), I couldn't sell my old house and it sat on the market for a year. Plus I had the expenses of moving. I reluctantly became a landlord. Today, not including my pension and 300 hours of accumulated time off the dept has to pay me for if I leave or retire, my net worth sits at around $165k. $8300 in ready cash, $66,000 in stocks, gov't bonds, and other investments, and $91,000 in equity in real estate. I have one property paid off, and two still with a mortgage. The only non-mortgage debt I have is my 2012 Dodge Ram truck loan at 1.39%, the first brand new vehicle I ever bought. Not bad for a single income household. Some of it has been skill and education, without that I couldn't have continued to be disciplined and invested, but I've also had some great luck. I've wasted money, I've made mistakes, but overall the past 10 years has been a success. At this point in my life, I could save more if I wanted to, but I've struck a nice balance between saving for the future and spending on today, but without the knowledge and discipline that would be a lot harder to do.

Saw this line posted on another forum ... 'Moyes spent 11 years trying to get Everton above Man UTD and now he's finally done it'.

I still kick myself for not being able to get tickets for his show at Barona Casino...

Come who else in your 40's remembers this one....

1983 - The Outsiders; my girl wanted to watch it. This years Halloween theme for her job might be The Outsiders so she was going on about how much she loved the movie and how great it was. I fucking hated it. Actually left and went to the store while it was on I was so bored. Asked her what happened when I returned, she said two things. Two things happened in 30 minutes wathcing a 1h:55m movie. Fuck that shit! Once you get over the all-star cast its a piece of shit.

How about Breaking Bad? Kicks the zombies asses.