Absolutely do so…if they’ll let you. Ever since I took a few international trips a few years back…one to India, one to Malaysia, and a couple more to the Dominican Republic…they don’t want my blood. Used to be, the Red Cross called me every few months. Now, after the last time I tried to give and was rejected due to my past travels, they’ve apparently taken me off their list because I never hear from them.
Since I grew up in the Netherlands, I am part of the list of people that can’t give blood.
i gave blood until i woke up with about an hour missing… that put a fear in me. might take it up again sometime.
I’m very appreciative of the donors. I don’t know who they are, but that blood saved my life. I don’t know about your experience but for me getting blood was miserable. It made me sick each time. When the doctor told me they had to put an 8th unit in on my sixth or seventh day in the hospital, I remember feeling this overwhelming dread. The blood goes in cold and it makes you feel cold. As soon as it started mingling with my blood I felt like I had a low grade fever, and it sort of made my skin crawl. It’s an absolutely miserable experience and I wouldn’t wish it on an enemy.
An interesting side-effect is that even though my kids and GF got sick a few times over the next 18 months I did not. Not even a hint of a sniffle. I often joke that I received the blood from 8, 18 year old virgins, and it made me immune to common illnesses.
Thank you to everyone who donates.
I’ve done pretty well with horror, but moving into sci-fi, and fantasy, has been a game changer. I wrote a bunch of zombie books, but I’ve found my most successful work to be in thrillers, as well as a weird sub-genre of fantasy called LitRPG. Imagine regular people getting stuck inside of video games, and they have to level up, and advance their skills to survive. It’s very Ready Player One, and started with a bunch of Russian writers a few years ago. Although it didn’t get amazing reviews, mainly due to my misunderstanding of the expectation from readers (they only like happily ever after), my first LitRPG did pretty damn well. I’m working on a sequel, but right now I’m finishing up a book that is very much inspired by PUBG like games.
So as a fellow poor person, I have also donated plasma to keep the lights on or get enough money for some measure of joy. But Armando, those needles are ginormous compared to the needles they use to just take whole blood. The experiences are totally different, so I would encourage you to try the whole blood donation.
Funny thing about plasma donation, I did it for about a year and every time I would go in there they would say something like I don’t know how I’m going to get that big ole needle in that little vein of yours, they cycle through phlebotomists like you wouldn’t believe, and I would have to tell them every time, yeah try the other arm… and of course by then I am tense as hell because how new are they not to check the other arm on their own. I also learned the drug addicts can apparently have their veins collapse which sounds just awful.
I think there’s probably roughly equivalent amounts of jargon in academic CS as academic physics. (I have a Theory of Maximum Jargon, but let’s not get into that here.) Unfortunately (perhaps), because the universe is under no such obligation, as you say, the only real way to build up your intuition is to do problem sets. At least as far as I can tell.
Damn. I have given blood for 40 years, ever since I found out my job would pay me for the time it took. Back in the day we talked about doing the plasma thing but none of us did it, we never needed the money that bad I guess.
The blood bank now does something like that and last time they asked if I might be interested. After your story the answer will always be no.
I have seen people pass out, but it was always a very short thing. Most were awake as they hit the floor. I have never heard of anyone actually being out for an extended period.
My brother passed out the first time he gave blood, hasn’t done it since. The quality of the person taking your blood does make a difference.
BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD
Hi I’m Sam Posten. I’m an engineer who is into technology, home theater, gaming, firefighting, fishing and hunting.
I used to review games for Gamepen back when that was a thing in the early internet days. I think it was one of IGNs first acquisitions before it became the Borg.
I played Everquest 1 for 18 years. I quit 3 months ago. There I was Kadath Dreamfire of the Nexus, the Burning Champion. So you know, kind of a big deal (not even remotely). Cazic Thule to Ayonae Ro to something to Bristlebane to Tribunal.
Today I review hardware and software for HomeTheaterForum.com where I am an advocate for Dolby Atmos and 4K / HDR. I have mostly Paradigm speakers with some SVS, KEF and Hsu too. I have 1 7.1.4 setup with a front projector and a few other 4K 5.1.2 setups throughout the house.
I love vidya games. If it has pixels I’m all for it. Tho vectors are cool too. Vectrex forever.
Atari 2600, Commodore 64, Genesis -> about 10 different generations of PC. Today I game equally on PC and X1X. X1X supports HDR and Atmos, the PC not so much. I am totally into VR too, playing all 3 major headsets.
I don’t have kids, I have toys. Mostly of the photographic variety. Nikon and Drones.
Have you tried flying on your VR goggles? DCS world or il2 sturmovik?
Yeessssssssssssss. Fist bump I still regret selling mine. Loved that thing.
Depending on when you were there I was on Bristlebane and a few others as well. I topped out many years ago with some guild doing heavy runs on just about everything and burned out. Then I went to WoW and did the exact same thing, not once but twice. It was then I hung up my MMO shoes and have enjoyed (relatively) not being tied to a game as though it was a job. It’s really hard giving up, enough so that I understand the “addiction” term thrown around sometimes.
As with many others around here on MMO’s I had maxed characters for most classes by the point I left Everquest. I also two and even three-boxed for a while, as though the challenge of playing on my own wasn’t enough of a headache. By the way the solo ability is what drove me to WoW, eventually. But only after a couple of other MMO stops along the way.
Nice to meet you, Sam.
After reading your explanation, I could see a ton of interest in different gaming genre books. When you write them do you ever specialize so much that you have to seek out any licensing arrangements with specific games?
I didn’t. I made up a fantasy world, the rules, weapons, spells, and all that stuff. It involved a lot of spreadsheets, and copious notes. One thing I’m not a big fan of in this particular genre is how characters in the game worlds become over powered very quickly. I tend to write with some degree of realism, in fact, I got my friend Peter Clines to give me a blurb for Shards of Reality, and he noted that I my work always has a certain degree of realism. So my characters don’t have an easy time, and when they get hurt or killed, it hurts. Plus they wake up naked and have to do a corpse run. I don’t think anyone can wake up in fantasy land, and immediately know how to use weapons, spells, and the like. One of my favorite parts of RPGs is the beginning, when those levels come at you, and you learn how to balance your characters. So that’s what I tried to do.
My girlfriend has a publishing company, and she got the licensing rights to a popular card game. There were a lot of contracts, and legal stuff. I don’t think I ever want to go down that rabbit hole. It’s easier for me to just make stuff up.
Just read a bit of your bio and wanted to say to another former Navy and IT engineer, cheers!
I’m Will Swannack. I think I’ve been a member since 2008. I came here from a link on a 1up article suggesting some of the best video-game communities, and this one fits my tastes quite well. I like and play RPGs most often, but also love roguelikes and strategy games. In general, I prefer experiences with some heavy mechanical abstraction and don’t dig games with high verisimilitude (like basically anything first person, excepting the Etrian Odyssey series). Right now, I’m bouncing between Pillars of Eternity 2 and Slay the Spire.
I spend more time lurking than posting so you may not see my name pop up too often, but if you spend time in any given years board game thread my name will show up a lot more often. Video games were my passion for a long time, but in the last few years I’ve felt like I’m spending more time trying to reignite that passion rather than actually living it. Board games have mostly taken that space in my brain at the moment.
Most of my professional career has been in game development at a variety of smaller companies (though I spent a couple years at Popcap). I’ve moved into the VR space for now, but I do miss game dev.
I have a strong desire to make strategy video games with personal narratives, so I’ve been trying to combine roguelikes and strategy games into something like that for a while. I made a simple roguelike Through to try and understand how numbers in abilities and items work. Then I made a bigger strategy roguelike called There is Only Power to see how to add narrative and thematic structure to a roguelike. Now I’ve been stalling for a couple years on a post-apocalyptic merchant roguelike with the goal of tackling bigger themes with a similar structure. The “stalling” bit shows how well that’s going.
I really like reading threads of people who have radically different opinions than mine. I like trying to view a game through a different lens and then revisiting it to see if I can fully empathize with a different viewpoint. I quite like Tom Chick’s reviews for that reason: They’re often quite foreign but focused on experience and emotion, so they’re easier to try and inhabit for a unique perspective.
Had a lot of fun playing this when you wrote about it previously. I still probably have the screenshot of when I won a game too!
I’m really super happy to read that! It makes my day any time I hear people like the games I’ve worked on.
Will, I’m feeling a Steve Jackson vibe from where you’re going. How about a Car Wars style game with the merchant/trading back-end for repairs and extended gameplay?