New members, meet new friends. Welcome!

Good post. I would add that in my experience, for technical fields in particular, jargon is actually the problem. Whenever I am learning a technical matter I tell myself that the majority of any confusion I have is likely due to jargon, the concepts themselves are often simple. Usually this ends up being correct and I look back afterwards and think “why was I scared by that weird symbol? It just means X which is obvious now”.

I love this thread, and I don’t post often on Qt3, although I lurk here just about every day. I don’t know why I don’t post more often, I figure my stuff will just bore people. I joined in '09, and I’m 2 months shy of 50, and I spent almost 25 years in IT before I quit my day job 2 1/2 years ago to write full time. I self-publish, but I’ve had a NY lit agent in the past, as well as a publisher. In 2014 I fired my agent because I had a feeling the self-publishing world was about to explode so I took a chance. This was while she was shopping a book, but she never seemed to be available for a call, or to answer an email. The book ended up being a bit of a flop, but my next self-published title was a pretty big hit for me, and I made more in one month than I had made in a year with my publisher.

I used to spend a lot of my spare time gaming. I got hooked back around the Ultima 5 days, but I do remember playing Aklabeth in high school on an old Apple PC. To this day my all time favorite game is the original Xcom, but Skyrim is a very close second. I honestly have no idea how many hours I’ve sunk into that game over the years on PC, and consoles.

I don’t have a lot of spare time for gaming these days. I spend the bulk of my time either writing, or on the business of writing. I like to say that writing the book is the easy part. Getting people to find the damn thing is the hard part. Luckily there is a very strong indie author base out there, and more often than not we help each other out. I used to do conventions about 5 or 6 times a year to build a reader base, but it was expensive. Buy a table, print a bunch of books, and hope to hell I could sell enough to justify the cost. I only do a few now, but I go to a convention called Texas Frightmare every year. I actually just got back to Seattle after spending an awesome weekend in Dallas for the con. Years ago I worked hard to get people to stop at my booth. When I go to Texas I have people coming to me, and they say “give me what’s new.” It’s really surreal at times.

I started writing in 2008 and attended a number of writing classes to learn the craft. My first book was published in 2009, and it was pretty terrible although it sold well. I look back on that thing now, and I want to change just about every sentence. Live and learn…

I’d love to spend a few days immersed in Pillars of Eternity 2, because RPG’s, especially the old school sort, are my thing. It’s killing me, but I’m knee deep in finishing off a book, and want to get it out to my editor and beta readers soon.

I almost quit writing 18 months ago. I had a crazy episode where I collapsed, and almost bleed to death from a tumor in my gut. I coded in the ER a few hours later, and a lot of the days following are a blur. I had 8 units of blood, and they cut an 8" incision in me, and resection my intestines. Recovery sucked, but anemia was what almost killed my writing career. I went for months with low blood, and when my doctor put me on a simple iron supplement 3 times a day, I was back to normal in a matter of days. I remember siting on the edge of the bed, and telling my very supportive girlfriend that I was going to quit writing and go back to a day job. A weeks later, and with my blood levels stable, I pulled my head out of my ass, and wrote a book that went on to be my 3rd best selling book of all time. I’m actually working on a book for writers and go into this in a lot more detail, but it’s not a dry read. It’s more about the mistakes I’ve made, while equating things I’ve learned with simple writing, and writer lessons, but most of it focuses on the business of writing. I’m calling the book ‘#IndieAF’.

See, this is why I don’t post much. LOL. Ramble ramble ramble.

image

Come on old man, show us where the bad man touched your favourite game… Or are you cranky because you can’t afford a VR rig? Feel free to come on over and fly mine.

You have a VR set up? So do I. Ain’t they so cool? I feel sorry for people like that old guy that don’t have one. :)

Yeah man, especially if you have a thing (or used to have a thing) for simulated airplanes. VR fits that like a glove on a HOTAS.

@Crusis a post != a book, so you are allowed to ramble unedited :P do post more :D

Agreed.

Do you write horror novels? I will have to let my wife know. PM me some of your favorite books and I will show her as she loves horror anything.

Very interesting too. Glad you are back to writing.

Also love the conversations on work experiences so far. I have my own thoughts and opinions, but it is interesting to hear more views on the subject.

Glad you pulled through Crusis and continued doing what you seem to love.

You have my attention.

It’s funny, I read his post and for some reason that didn’t register.

I wad a defense contractor for a while. Because we always drop shipped and because of an extensive security and background clearance that took days to fill out (it was worse than taxes) we could sell anything to the US government they had a RFB, RFP, or standing PO for. Some of the things we bid on and sold:

$2000 each genetically modified mice.

A smoking machine that had a giant 1000 cigarette hopper

The cleaning and repainting of Anzio Annie at Fort Lee

Communion and mass services for an army base for a whole year

MP5s to the Navy

Red Dot sights to to the Marines

A whole crapton of ammunition for a Marine base.

100,000 gallons of fuel oil to Fort Dix. I got burned by this one because there was a winter storm in between the time I won the contract and the time I they finally sent the stupid signed PO. Usually this was immediate but in that case there as some snafu on their end and it took a few days. The price of fuel oil floats on the commodity market and it went up with the winter storm. Damn you nature!

The current hot tub/spa in the football team’s locker room at West Point. This is my personal favorite. :) You will notice if you ever see it or ask a team member about it that it does not have the team mascot on the bottom, they rejected my idea to throw that in for the low low price of $750.

Makes me think of Grosse Pointe Blank.

Mr. Grocer: No? You remember Burma?
Martin Q. Blank: Yeah, I do.
Mr. Grocer: That nut, General Kwang? You were like a… colonel in that army, weren’t you?
Martin Q. Blank: Yeah, yeah, he sold you all those tanks, you shipped 'em to Alabama…
Mr. Grocer: T-34s, I took a bath on that.
Martin Q. Blank: Yeah, that was fun.

Oof. I’m afraid to ask. Also, what a bargain!

I choose to read that in Zoidberg’s voice.

Oh man, I don’t know how well received Murphy’s humor would be these days, but my friends and I almost died laughing at his stuff in the 80s. Even with the disparaging stuff he’d say about Asians.

I’ve been meaning to post here for a while, and the stuff about imposter syndrome is now making me jump in.

I joined relatively recently–2014, when Tom wrote an article on why Imperialism 2 is the best strategy game ever, and it happened to be on sale at GoG, so I got it and promptly agreed. I think Tom only approved me because I had three games to give away, having just got a new graphics card that came with some shooters or something.

I’d been lurking for awhile before that; don’t remember how long, but I guess I missed some drama because people kept referring to “the drama” and “the other forum.” I also cannot remember for the life of me how I found Qt3 in the first place.

I, too, went to a small liberal arts college. Majored in physics, went to software for a year, then went back for a physics PhD. If you’ve got any questions on quantum computing, I’m happy to take a stab at them. I then went back to software, where I’ve been for almost two years now, a small cog in a large multinational you’ve definitely heard of.

Re: imposter syndrome. I figured out early on that most physics students (especially the dudes) are full of it. So as a white dude, I didn’t really get hit by imposter syndrome until after I got my PhD and started as a software engineer without ever having taken any computer science courses. (I still think I got lucky in my job interview.) I was fortunate enough to be familiar with the idea: my wife does a lot of work related to women and minorites in science, and the idea has been around there for a while. My company also tries to tackle it head on in your
indoctrination orientation, and people accept it as a thing. That really helped me learn to ignore it. So I’d say to everyone who posted above: yes, sounds like textbook imposter syndrome; yes, it’s a thing; no, you’re not alone.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to wait until they are in a bundle where I can also get a genetically modified cat and dog.

Yeah they aren’t like super mutant mice assassins or anything. If I remember right they were predisposed to get some disease or another.

“Oh hey, you’ve been gengineered?”

“Yep.”

“What kind of superpower did they give you?”

“I die more easily.”