What Do You DoNow?

Firstly, I need to dig through the archives I have of this place, see if it includes my old avatar. I hate this gender-neutral grey bullshit.

On to business: What do you do these days? I joined this forum as a 12-ish year old who played Arcanum, D2, and didn't know shit about anything, to a twenty something IT guy who doesn't know shit about anything. Biggest difference is that now I'm working my way through Titan's Quest, hoarding car parts to old Mercedes, and planning an Icewind Dale-inspired tattoo.

 

I bought Diablo III ROS Legendary Edition because it was Xbox Gold for only #15* (only $22.75!) to find out it's no longer supported by Blizzard for the latest awesome patch iterations which I guess I "should have researched" which nonetheless I should be held accountable for - presuming that a company should want to patch their own game without consumers confirming that beforehand. Silly me and my sour grapes.

The mac I had given to me by my PhD "doctoral training partnership" (a standard UK deal with the devil) is going down the pan just after warranty (I can't even play my bought-for PoE!), and yet I need a working laptop - it sucks. I had to download an app to easily delete other "normal" apps which should be easily deletable and are hogging my memory but which are some how a pain to remove. The irony is too much for me to accurately produce a decent metaphor.

I have no money currently for reasons I'm not going to get into (and are largely boring anyway for popular consumption anyway). My PhD is going nowhere - basically I have my enzymes and I have my "things they are supposed to work with" substrates (in the science community "putative" is the word people like, people literally get a science boner over it) yet they won't get it on. And I'm trying to work towards things which fight a severe form of cancer, I mean jesus won't cancer give people a break? It's at the point where I either get a publication in Nature or Science (literally the biggest journals out there) or I entirely fade into complete obscurity and suffer from shittier future job prospects (many other people are jostling over this particular breakthrough worldwide) which is a complete delight in terms of stress and pressure.

So putting aside my total first world problems, my life is completely peachy. I to am interested in hearing how everything is going for everyone else, and I'm glad to hear from DF again (though I would be happier if we all took Andrew Ryan avatars and agreed BioShock was the best game ever made).

*PS Besides from deleting my MapKeyChanger app to alleviate the aforementioned mac problems (RAM/CPU usage, yadayadayada), somehow I can't change # to pounds fucking sterling even though that's what my keyboard should type which I changed it to because I was obligated to do minor coding. I will be able to do it, but the effort will leave a tremendous sadness inside.

 

I joined HoL when I was 19 with one whole year in the Army under my belt. Did 7.5 more years, got out, Joined the National Guard, and went to college for a while. Now, after a seemingly interminable period of waiting while various bits of paper with my name on them got shuffled across numerous desks, collecting signatures along the way, I'm going back into the Army. Turns out the civilian life just doesn't suit me, so I'm gonna go fly around in helicopters until I'm 40, then reassess. Going special ops this time around, so it should be a little more exciting.

 

I joined as a pseudo-intellectual 19 year old who thought he was better at everything than he actually was, and bought Arcanum on a whim several weeks before.
Now I'm a pseudo-intellectual 28 year old who can run CNC machines and is on his way to becoming an engineer. This is because when I complete my current course, I'll have a year to prove I'm worth my employer investing in, which will allow me to earn any degree useful to my current company. Considering the nature of my employer, I could become a doctor of plasma engineering.

 

I joined when I was a software engineer writing accounting software on the 5th floor of a generic office block. These days I'm a software engineer writing accounting software on the 6th floor of that same generic office block. Since the office block in question only has six floors, I conclude that I've reached the pinnacle of my career.

 

Interesting stuff in this thread, good idea DF.

I'll throw my story up here later when I'm not so brain dead from quite possibly the shittiest day of work all year.

I don't know why I bothered to post this either.

 

I joined The House of Lords six years ago as a twenty-something who had about six years prior to that been introduced to Arcanum in college. I must have been obsessed with Arcanum at the time and was looking for and surprised to find a community for such an obscure game. Since joining THoL, I finally completed a playthrough of Arcanum.

Presently as a thirty-something I still work the same job developing and maintaining test software for a semiconductor company. The only things to have changed in the past six years are that I am less active, have taken up drumming with a few friends, do some hobbyist programming, and have moved on to a better girlfriend.

EDIT: It's nice to know the who's who of THoL.

 

When I was 14, I bought a pirated version of Arcanum and when I got stuck at some place for like... two weeks, I went online to find the solution and stumbled upon a thread here. Soon after I signed up.
Went to university at 17, dropped out at 19, toured Europe with my band, got a shitty job at some office. After working there for a couple of years I finished a BA and got the position of sorta-project-manager, mainly dealing with budgets and stuff.
Quit my job and took a year and a half to myself; used said year to write a book. Ran out of money, went back to the same company, this time as proper project manager. Project was done so I wasn't needed anymore. Sat at home for over half a year. Now I work as an account manager in a binary options company.
The book is still unpublished, and I hardly even try to achieve that by now. Still write short stories on a weekly basis.

 

Judging from my August 2006 join date, I signed up with the House right at the beginning of my 2nd year of pharmacy school. My father is a big influence on my gaming habits, and he had purchased Arcanum when it came out in 2001, which would have put me in high school at the time. I remember "borrowing" a bunch of his old PC game CD-ROM disks when I moved out of my parent's house to go to school and Arcanum was in the pile.

During my undergraduate studies and for the 1st year of pharmacy school I was heavily into World of Warcraft, to the point where I was raiding with my 40-man guild 3-4 nights a week. Doing this on top of a rigorous study regimen while also going out and socializing with my classmates lead to almost no sleep and a embarrassingly low GPA during that first year of school. I then stopped playing and found Arcanum, and shortly afterwards TA, and began playing cRPGS again as they were a bit less addictive and made time management easier.

So, to sum it all up, when I joined this site I was a early 20's-age recovering WoW addict and busy college student looking for his RPG fix from a safer source. Currently, I am a working professional pharmacist who often regrets a medical career choice that requires so many goddamn nights and weekends, but is generally happy and still playing way too many video games for a man his age.

 

I've been playing the Beta of Battle Fleet Gothic Armada and loving it for the most part. Needs more content and game balancing but that's a Beta for you.

 

If that's all you've done with your life then you don't really belong here with all of us high achievers.

 

I've basically been a hobo this whole time.

 

I live free from the shackles of modern civilization.
You are between addresses right now.
He is a hobo.

 

He is a hobo.

You are not a wizard.

I AM A WIZARD.

 

What kind of wizard?

 

short answer: the.

 

The masturbating wizard, apparently.

 

that would be the long answer

 

Yeah, sure it is, buddy. Really long. Uh-huh.