Short version: 42 year old male with L5-S1 ALIF/PSF fusion scheduled Monday morning for pars fractures/spondylolisthesis (grade 2) has gotten scared by online stories and needs reassurance. No numbness, tingling, drop foot. Lower back is always tight and will pop when hanging from something. Doctor threw in gill laminectomy at the last minute at pre-op appointment and then let me talk him out of it which made me question the whole thing. Want to get back to being a high level athlete that can do powerlifting, ninja gym, Spartan Race, etc... but am not seeing enough success stories of this level to make me feel comfortable. If it's highly unlikely that I can get back to doing these things even after the bones have fused, I don't see the point. Please help!

Long version: Hi all, I'm 42 years old and on Monday am due to have what seems to be the very common L5-S1 fusion via ALIF/PSF due to pars fractures and grade 2 spondylolisthesis with disc degeneration. After my last visit with my surgeon I am growing more and more uncomfortable by the day. Before that I was excited about the prospect of getting my athletic life back. Basically what happened was I was speaking with the doctor's PA about the upcoming procedure and he threw in that I would be getting a gill laminectomy as part of the surgery which had never been mentioned prior. I asked the first three doctors I visited for referrals specifically if they felt I would need this and they all said no because it seemed I had plenty of space in my foraminal canal and foraminal stenosis had not progressed to the point that they felt I needed it (which explains why I don't YET have numbness or tingling). This was not a question I asked this doctor (stupidly) because I felt I had the answer since the other three doctors were all in agreement about me not needing it and I was more concerned with the ALIF procedure since the other three had suggested a TLIF. After he dropped that bomb on me, I questioned the PA about this and he ended up bringing in the doctor who started asking me about numbness and tingling which I had told him before I did not have. Then he said "ok, we won't do the laminectomy" but it almost seemed like either I talked him out of it or that he was potentially just saying to himself "whatever you want buddy" and if I have issues down the road it's on me. If he really thought I needed it I feel he should have defended his position more and if he didn't think I needed it, why did he want to do it in the first place? Keep in mind this is one of the most respected and highly decorated spinal surgeons in the Austin area. After I got home I started doing more and more research not just on the procedure and stuff like that but also stories from others which I had been avoiding because I know a lot of times people only post reviews and share their experiences when something has gone wrong and I didn't want to have my mind corrupted by what could be 5% of the results. What I have found has both reinforced why I didn't want to read about the surgeries of others but it has also managed to make me really paranoid about the procedure to the point that I'm on the verge of calling it off. What I need are some solid opinions of others that have had that exact surgery or know a lot about it to help me make up my mind.
A bit of background so you can have a better idea what my situation looks like. According to the surgeon, I likely suffered my pars fractures in high school (likely due to being a 50 foot 215 lb triple jumper if I had to guess) but didn't notice any symptoms until I was close to my mid 20s. Basically, I would have a herniation maybe once or twice a year after I stopped lifting weights at 22 for a couple of years due to a knee injury. I believe this is because my core was doing its job and when I let it go along with the rest of my muscles, the back issues reared their ugly head. After I decided to start lifting again at 25 I didn't really have any issues until I reinjured my meniscus again in the Air Force which forced another lengthy period of not lifting. When I came back, I did so too quickly and hurt my back pretty badly on deadlift due to my core giving out on the way down after going too heavy too early. Since then (about 2007) I would have 1-3 herniations a year from stupid stuff like bending down too fast to pick up my cat or tie my shoe without bracing properly but was still able to lift freely (over 500 lb. deadlift, 500 lb. squat, etc...) up until 2020 (oddly enough the week the U.S. started to shut down due to Covid). I was doing some deep squats with only 225 as a warm up and felt my back get really tight and audibly pop at the bottom of the squat. Since then I have had pressure in my lower back constantly that only seems to get better with hanging from something until I again hear and feel that pop in my lower back. This relief of course doesn't last but does seem to help a bit. My guess is that the spondylolisthesis (about 7mm now...grade 2) slipped a little bit further to the point that I am now feeling it all the time. Since then I have been unable to squat heavier than about 225 properly without serious discomfort and can't really push myself past about 400 on deadlift before I start to get worried about breaking form.
Things I've tried to avoid surgery:
Yoga (didn't realize that a lot of the back helping suggestions such as cobra pose and cat cow were really bad for my specific condition)
Physical Therapy (The guy told he that I had already done everything he would have me do)
Stretching (Got to where I could put my foot behind my head for the first time since high school and all my other stretches had similar results)
Chiropractor (no relief)
Corticosteroid injection (which seems to have helped but not enough to make me feel like I'm good to go)
Core strengthening (does seem to help but it's hard for me to work my core like I used to due to pain)

Right now I can still dunk a basketball, trap bar deadlift over 400, squat over 225 and do pretty much anything else I want to do but I definitely can't push myself anywhere close to what I could before the incident in 2020 mentioned above and I really don't enjoy working out as much if I can't reach new heights.
My whole reasoning for getting surgery:

Get back to being an athlete again (I have seen some success stories on here and YouTube such as people getting back into BJJ or powerlifting). As mentioned above I can still do a lot of athletic things but I pay for it. If I go play basketball I risk a herniation and at best I'm going to be stiff the next day. My doctor assured me that if the fusion is successful I should be able to get back to full activity but I'm talking about 500+lb deadlifts (with perfect form of course), 500+lb squats, power clean, clean and press, etc...
Get it done while I'm healthy and in shape as opposed to in my 50s or 60s and might not be able to recover as well.
Get it done before I finally have kids in 2024 or 2025 so their dad can pick them up and play with them without fear.
Get it done before I have numbness or tingling or drop foot which does not sound fun at all.

Reasons I'm now scared:

I am not seeing as many stories about people getting back to a very high level of activity as I would like. I want to be able to train with no restrictions while obviously respecting the hardware in my back and keeping my form perfect. Ninja gym, Spartan Race, powerlifting meet, etc... If I can't do these things then what is the point? I can function well enough now that I think I can avoid the surgery forever by just keeping my core strong, perhaps wearing the brace I got for after surgery and avoiding anything that could cause the spondy to slip further. I was lead to believe that once the bones had healed I would be good to go. Now I'm not so sure. Have many of you gotten back to the level of activity that I'm hoping for? I know a lot of people would probably be thrilled to walk or be able to sleep without pain but I need more or again, why do it?
What if I did need the gill laminectomy but the guy just rolled over when I challenged him on it?
I'm going to feel really stupid if I go from being able to walk and run just fine to having a hard time with daily activities due to complications from surgery just because I couldn't just let my desire to be able to dunk at 50 go gracefully. Is the success rate of this procedure worth the risk if I'm not too bad off?
I'm a PE teacher and I'm afraid that if this doesn't heal correctly it could have a big impact on my ability to do my job which I can do now without too many issues. Will I be able to tie a 6 year old's shoe once I'm healed up or is this gone forever?
I do not like taking drugs (barely take Advil...no alcohol, tobacco, opioids, weed, etc...) and do not like the idea of being in so much pain that I HAVE to take them for more than a few days. Hearing stories about people still on pain meds weeks later alone makes me almost want to call it off. Is it possible I can be off in a few days?

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated. I have about 36 hours do decide one way or the other. I was told that these surgeries have a high success rate but what I'm seeing online is making me highly doubt that. Assuming I do everything I'm supposed to on the path to recovery and wait until successful fusion, again, is this procedure and the possible complications worth it or should I just give up on my former abilities completely and only do safe activities that will hopefully prevent further slippage and wear my brace religiously?

I work for a ‘medium sized company’. So last year September time i started having time off time after a hospital visit about something then i got diagnosed with quite a serious condition and needed to have some treatment. I stopped working completely early September and haven’t been back since. Now as a company we only have 10 days ‘floating’ holiday that we can book off whenever as we have bank holidays ( and the following Tuesdays off ) as well as 2 weeks at Christmas. I think i had 2 holidays left to book off but i just used these when i first went into hospital to avoid losing a days wage, not realising i had to have all this time off.
Anyway Jump ahead to now. I’ve received my 6 months sick pay which ended a couple months back but was covered by UC which was nice, and I’m finally ready to start work next Monday. I’ve stayed in close contact with my boss and my friends were looking at going on holiday mid August but i was sceptical as i have had all this time off so i wasnt sure how my holidays would work. When i asked my boss he seemed a little annoyed i was requesting a week off already but he told me this wouldn’t be possible anyway as you haven’t worked your holiday yet. He then told me it worked something like every month you work you earn 10 hours holiday, so by august when we were going away i wouldn’t have worked enough to book a week off it would only be a couple days or so.
I’ve done some googling myself but can’t seem to relate something to my situation. It says you accumulate holiday pay while on sick pay so i should be entitled to it, but then it also mentions that is for people who don’t have the chance to book time off, where as i will have the chance come towards the end of the year.
So my question is as follows, is my boss correct in what he says or should i be allowed to book the holiday with no questions?

Newbie sa freelancing and first pay pa. Super delayed na nga since 1 month after namin magstart yung first salary (matagal ung verification&confirmation period nila). Tapos ang nakakairita pa, holiday ang tinapatan! So sa rule ni Deel app, if yung withdrawal is +/- 1 day ng holiday, 2 days after the holiday pa maccredit sa bank/ebank (June 14). Ndi man lang naiisip nung local payroll counterpart na Saturday na lang sana ibagsak 😭
Baka naman may mairerecommend kayo na wfh jobs na ndi delayed magpasweldo 🙏🏻🙏🏻 Nagapply na nga ako dun sa mga OF chatter pero wala naman nagrereply sa PM ☹️💔

On April 26th (at the time) 15 year old Alicia Markovich goes missing after what seems like a small argument with her father. She has never been found since and no activity has been seen on her bank account or with her social security number.
Year: 1987
April 26th
9:45 a.m: Alicia is picked up from her mothers (Marcie Vitko) house in Windber, PA by her father (John Markovich). She is taken to his house 45 minutes away in Blairsville for a visit.
3:00-5:00 p.m: Alicia and John get into an argument over the typical things such as grades, friends, and Marcie seeking for more child support (Marcie wanted the payment to go from $100 to $200). The exact time she has left this house is uncertain. Marcie makes multiple attempts to call Alicia, but to no avail.
April 27th
1:00 a.m: John calls Marcie and exclaims "Marcie, she's gone!" and says he is out searching for Alicia. At the time he thinks she may have gone to a neighbors house to visit old friends. John went to the trailer park where he used to live and a friend still living there said they had not seen Alicia or John all day in that area.
Marcie searches Blairsville for Alicia and puts up missing persons flyers while John goes to make the report. At first the police suspect Alicia is a runaway despite Marcie clearly not agreeing with this. Her main reason to object was Alicias lack of streetsmarts and her lack of history of running away.
April 28th
Trooper Sokol takes over the case along with the rest of the state police.
Year: 1988
May 5th
John's 1987 Red Subaru is stolen in the night and is found in Saltsburg, PA destroyed by fire.
Year: 1990
April 26th
Alicias disappearance is finally being treated as a suspected homicide due to it being 3 years with no word from her.
Year: 2000
October
John receives a two page letter detailing how Alicia was murdered and indicates where she was buried. The letter has a return address in New Bedford, NH. The police determine this letter a hoax after visiting the address. Here is what was released from that letter
What gave me the idea to contact you was when I saw by chance an old missing persons flyer posted on the side of a mailbox in Philadelphia about 3 weeks ago. The second time I saw it, it was like everything faded to grey. Nothing seemed real for a long time. I thought that it all had been forever buried. I had spent the last 13 years erasing and boarding up the name Alicia Markovich in my mind and by seeing that, it opened up the flood gates so to say to a limitless sea of remorse, guilt, anxiety, inner sadness, and depression."
Year: 2011
April 26th
The police hold a conference essentially saying they will be starting from scratch and re interviewing everyone and asks for anyone to come forward with information
Marcie puts DNA from Alicias baby teeth on file.
Sadly thats pretty much it for this case so far besides family and friends doing their best to keep her memory alive. Alicia has never been found nor have any of her belongings she may have had that fateful night. Police have never had any suspects or leads aside from that one hoax letter. The most we have to go off of is police suspecting she MIGHT have been picked up by a truck driver the day her and her father had that argument.
Sources:
https://uncovered.com/cases/alicia-markovich#timeline
https://charleyproject.org/case/alicia-bernice-markovich
https://justiceforaliciamarkovich.net/alicias-story (this one in particular has tons of information that while not exactly relevant helps to personify Alicia)

If you have any information please contact
PSP Indian Co. Trooper Murdoch 1-724-357-1978.

Originally posted by u/klimme56 in AmItheAsshole on April 16, '23 updated on May 28, '23. I have changed the initial to a fake name.

Trigger Warning: Toxic family, hints of possible alcoholism
Mood Spoiler: Ends with progress

Original
April 16, '23

AITA for not wanting my girlfriend's mother to move in with us?
I (23M) and my girlfriend (22F) have been together for almost 6 years. We just moved into a house that I bought and own, a month and a half ago. I'm a first time homeowner and this is my first time living on my own away from my parents. She's been living in an an apartment for a few years prior to moving in here.
We make enough to live comfortably, we bring home around $80k combined and as a result I was able to buy a pretty big house for the two of us, nearly the size of my parents home. I alone pay the mortgage and utilities, since it's my house. Girlfriend has been generous enough to buy groceries, subscriptions, etc. She also paid for some of the furniture we have when we moved in.
The issue here came up about a week ago. Girlfriend's mom "Ann" isn't well off, she lived in a trailer with her boyfriend and they broke up a few months ago so she'd been living with her mom and mom's husband. Ann's mom died a couple of weeks ago from cancer, and now her mom's husband is kicking her out. She has the possibility of living with my girlfriend's sister and her boyfriend (who live with the boyfriends parents), but Ann's been insistent on moving in with us.
I am firmly against this. It's my house, I'm very much enjoying living on my own, and honestly, I don't want anyone else here. It's not my fault that her mom hasn't done anything to improve her financial situation, and I shouldn't be forced to endure her consequences of her actions. The fact that (to my knowledge) she isn't even looking at apartments, other trailers in that area, or a JOB just shows me that she intends to move in here and stay here.
I can tell my girlfriend doesn't want that either, but wants to cave and ask me to allow it, though she's been avoiding the subject directly with me given the uncomfortable situation she's understandably in. I love her to death, but she's a massive pushover when it comes to her mom. She had me driving to Walmart to get food and cigarettes for her mom when we started dating, because her mom was too lazy to.
My girlfriend's sister has been saying I'm an asshole because we have a bigger house, and can easily take her in. I told her outright, "it's not my mom, and not my problem", which caused her to throw a tantrum on the phone, and she accused me of trying to make her mom homeless. I've been feeling guilty, but I want to hold my ground. I don't want to enable her mom to sit around here all day drinking.
So, AITA?

OOP gives more info in the comments:

Someone takes issue with him calling it "his" house, not "ours"

Although I love her and fully intend to marry her soon, for the lack of better words here, I didn't want to be the idiot who put his girlfriends name on the title, only for us to break up for some reason and have to deal with resolving that. If/when we get married and I let her start contributing to the mortgage, she'll be put on the title.
I can understand your argument, but I do want to communicate here that I've been working since I was 14 to get to where I am now. I was able to put a ton down on the house to make my monthly payment pretty low compared to what I net per month. Her buying groceries and paying for Amazon Prime/Chewy for her dog is more of a gesture of goodwill, rather than a necessity. I could still afford to live by myself were she not in the picture. I never communicate to her about the house that way, but I do darn right think it, because I need to be prepared should we ever split.
In my opinion it is my house, until she's on the title/mortgage, after we'd get married. I'm completely for equality in relationships but she didn't bust her ass working until 11PM every night as a farmhand at 14 y/o, lol
.
When I said that to her sister I was fed up after going back and forth for 45 minutes on the phone with her about this, I just honestly wanted to shut her down and end the call. I do acknowledge I could have handled that much better than I did.
On the bit about the sisters sharing the responsibility...this financial situation isn't unique to my future MIL. As I mentioned, gf's sister lives with her boyfriend in the boyfriend's parents house. Gf is the first one in their family to graduate college, and the only one in that family that has a job paying above minimum wage. This caused a lot of resentment from gf's sister about my gf. I don't see them cooperating on a solution here, but I will try to propose it.
.

About being able to afford his house:

I've been working for nearly 10 years now. Was able to put nearly 40% down on the house, mortgage payment is very low compared to putting 3% down like people apparently usually do.
.

Person asks where they can find a house that affordable:

(don't) Come to the great state of PA! Where you can get a house on 5 figures but can't buy liquor on Sunday!
.

About the mom:

Mother is in her late 40s, and no disabilities that I'm aware of. She used to work in a meat processing plant before COVID hit, but she quit because she didn't want to catch it and hasn't had a job since.
Nothing has been brought up about her contributing to the house. It's essentially been her attempting to guilt my girlfriend into letting her move in.
As to her position, she doesn't want her moving in either. But as I mentioned, she doesn't know how to tell her mother 'no' so she's been stalling her mom. I don't think it would be the end of the world to her if I just came in with a resounding 'no'.
This woman is in her late 40s, has no savings, has lived off of SNAP benefits since my gf can remember. She's done nothing to improve her financial situation. Spends what money she does get on beer and cigarettes.
I don't want to be living with her. I don't want my nice house ruined by cigarette smoke. I don't want to take care of a lazy 40 something year old that doesn't want to act like an adult and get a damn job.
.

About the mom smoking:

And she won't take it outside! Before all this started, when we would go visit at Ann's mom's house, I would have to immediately wash all of my clothing in their own load to get out the smell.
And if it wasn't obvious, the cancer that killed her mom was lung cancer. Currently taking my father as well, I'm really enjoying living in a smoke free home.

Judgment: Not the Asshole

Update
May 28, '23

Update to AITA post
Hey folks, a few people messaged me about an update to the post I made a while ago on AITA so here it is:
My girlfriend (now fiance) and I are fine. We talked about it and agreed since it is my house, I would be the one to grow a pair and say 'no'. Her mom came up to visit (probably to scout out the house she thought she would be living in) and I laid it all out for her over dinner.
After sitting down and having some small talk, I essentially said that under no circumstances would she be moving in with us, and that was that. She got pretty agitated, trying to guilt me with "what's the big deal? where will I go? I'll be on the street if you don't let me move in". I started to reiterate that it's not my/our problem, but I remembered some of the suggestions that the commenters on the original post gave, and suggested public housing, some local assistance programs like food pantries, etc. She still wasn't having it though. She's very entitled.
She said it would be a lot easier (for her, of course. These people only think of themselves) if we just let her move in, she didn't want to go through the hassle of applying for public housing, she doesn't want to have to go to the food banks, stuff like that. We kind of went back and forth, talking over each other and it escalated to the point that I kicked her out. Didn't lay any hands on her, but I took her plate of food and threw it out, and told her to get the hell out of my house. She left, after some yelling, and my new neighbors saw the whole show of her cursing me out and peeling out of my driveway, chewing up some of my yard during the process. So that was fun.
When the yelling started, my girlfriend retreated to our bedroom and after her mother left I went back in to find her crying. After giving her some time and cleaning up dinner (I didn't so much throw her mom's plate out as I did launch it at the trashcan, so it was everywhere) I went back in and we had a long talk about what happened. She told me I did the right thing, but I had scared her with all the yelling - she has a lot of childhood trauma, unsurprisingly, but I reassured her that her mom wouldn't be coming back, and this whole thing was over. So far, that's rung true. I suggested she give therapy a shot since her family is such a mess and she has a lot of baggage she could talk out and she agreed, only asking if I would attend some sessions with her, which I happily agreed to. She's been to 3 sessions so far alone, and a fourth one with both of us, and from what I've heard they've been going very well!
So that's pretty much it. Her mother has pissed off back to the hole she came from, and hasn't bothered us since. Asked her to marry me last week and she said yes, so I'm looking forward to starting this new chapter in our lives - and no, her mother won't be invited to the wedding. Thank you all for your helpful comments and suggestions, they really helped me out.

Flairing this concluded as OOP and his fiancée came to an agreement and Ann is not moving in
Reminder, DO NOT comment on the original posts or contact the original poster. I am not the original poster. This is a repost.

Good Afternoon :D Demographics: Male, Hispanic, California, Public CA School, Low-Income, Big School over 2k students, Immigrant
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Hooks: First Gen Immigrant, Low Income, Very bad school
Income: Less than 30k
Intended Major(s): Chemistry or Biochemistry
ACT/SAT/SAT II: I won't submit, no matter what lols
UC GPA = 4.15W/3.76UW Community College GPA = 4.0 Rank = top 9.9% 38/383 (currently)
Coursework: AP Chemistry, Ap U.S. History, AP Lang, in my senior year I am taking AP Gov, AP Lit, and AP Calc AB. I took Dual Enrollment. LATTC (CC) = Intro to Psychology (A) Intro to Sociology (A) American Sign Language (A), Stanford University (Actual University) = CompSci 105 (A+), and also took Communication 101 (A) at USC but through LATTC, and will take 2 other college courses at USC during the summer which are astronomy and sociology 2. I will also take one more college class in my senior year at USC.
Awards: Top 10% Stanford Class Scorer Across the country: Since I had an A+, I scored top 10% out of 4,000 students across the country who took the Compsci class. Students from the National Education Equity Lab program. National Honor Society for National Equity Lab: Since I scored that high, they put me in their National Honor Society. High Honor Roll all High School: this is common but I’ll put it anyway. CompSci 105 Certificate: Since I took the class they gave me a certificate. UCLA Three-day Writing Bootcamp Certificate: I attended a boot camp with the UCLA EAOP program, and I stayed in the dorms for 3 days and took writing classes with other students across LA. Peer Mentor Summits Certificates x3: Certificate showing that I went to the summits to learn about ways to talk to students and colleagues. Pal/CLEF scholarship x2: 400 dollars in total. USC Summer Program Certificate: I will be getting a certificate by the end of the summer program.
Extracurriculars: Mental Health Resource Website(11th): Currently working on a website to add mental health and school resources for students at my school. I am using html, css, and javascript to build it. Took my own initiative to reach out to professionals and students to help me with the project.
English Tutoring(9th-11th): I tutored 1 college students from El Salvador in their college English classes for over 2 years, 3 hours a week during the weekends and sometimes Fridays. Went over their lessons, and tried to prepare lesson plans for them.
Peer Mentor Club(leadership position, maybe president?)(9th-11th)
Work Experience(10th-11th): I worked at a shapewear store, I was in charge of the inventory, and sales, and I was a cashier at the same time. I helped with the inventory system as well. Invited to events by the CEO.
Pop-Rock Club(11th): So far I am learning how to play the guitar and we have done multiple fundraisers to get the instruments and equipment that we need.
Chess Club (10th-11th)(President)
Leadership(10th-11th): I only went to leadership for 1 year since they turned the club into a class, and my school goes by mesters so I only take 4 classes and I have 3 APs so it doesn’t fit my schedule. But when I was in leadership, I would organize events like pep rallies, I would help with fundraisers during Valentine's day or Christmas, holidays basically. I might help them when they do events but I don’t attend meetings.
Chemistry Club (President/Founder): I founded the chemistry club.
Programs(9th-11th): I am in multiple programs, including UCLA EAOP which is a program by UCLA, we go to UCLA all the time which is cool. I am in the USC UpwardBound, I take college classes with them on Saturdays, and in the summer I will be staying at their dorms for 6 weeks taking 2 college classes. We also have community service opportunities in the program. I am also in the Gear Up program, we go on hella field trips and I learn a lot from it. I am in the National Ed Equity Lab which allows low-income students to take college classes at schools like Stanford, Harvard, etc.
Community Service Hours: 300+ with Gear Up and other programs. Will also do community service through the city I am in and will volunteer at a good bank this summer.
Essays/LORs/Other: UC PIQS : Prompt #2: Showing my creative side, I will talk about how I use twigs and leaves to create creatures and characters in order to use storytelling and create a story in nature since my mom taught me that when we used to go to the mountains in my home country, El Salvador, and how that shows my creative side because I am able to express my emotions and thoughts through storytelling.
Prompt #4: Which is how I took advantage of an educational opportunity, I will talk about USC Upward Bound and how it allowed me to find the person I want to be in the future through their resources and tremendous love and care for me (I will go in detail about the opportunities the program provides) and I will mention how I am the first undocumented student to join the program since 1977 which is a huge accomplishment and I want to be able to represent my community and myself.
Prompt #5: My significant challenge and how I overcame it, I will talk about my moms health, and how I had to become an adult at a young age to be able to process the emotions in my household and how I got a job in order to buy school supplies like a laptop and an iPad, to not worry my mom.
And lastly, Prompt #7: Which is how I made my community a better place, I will talk about the mental health resource website and how my exigence was hating to see my friends sad and missing out on big opportunities like I did when I was down, so I created a website to give mental health resources to students at my school.
Schools I want to apply to: I want to apply to UC mostly. I really really want to go to UC Irvine. That is my top choice for sure, please be brutally honest with UC Irvine with my stats.
Little Background: I am really worried about my GPA because my history teacher was a terrible human being so she never gave me an A. And since my school is in the quarter system, AP classes are a year long, however the 2nd and 3rd quarter are called honor classes while we are still in the AP class. Therefore, the AP is 4 grades in total and the teacher gave me 3 Bs and 1 C which brought my GPA down SINCE THEY ARE ALL WEIGHTED. I have all As in my sophomore and junior year except my sophomore year I had 2 Cs. So really, only the APUSH class is the one ruining my life basically.
UCLA UC Irvine UC Riverside UC San Diego UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Cruz UC Davis UC Merced UC Berkley Stanford CSULB CSUF SDSU

Please help me share my go fund me, I really appreciate it guys. In case you don't click links, here is my story.https://www.gofundme.com/f/fired-for-attending-brothers-funeral-need-lawyerMy name is Ethan Wiley, and after spending 7 years in prison for defending myself against an armed assailant, I was released on parole November 21st, 2022 and began trying to rebuild my life as best I could. I have a community college degree and over a dozen certificates in drug and relationship counceling. The first thing I had to do was get a job, and after a few months of searching, I did, at the Pilot Flying J Travel Centers.

Unfortunately, I was fired from Pilot Flying J for attending my brothers funeral, reinstated, then fired again after severely injuring my ankle a few days before I was to return to work.

On the morning of February 10th, while at work as a maintence worker at the Flying J Travel Center in Lebec, California, I was notified of my 32 Year old brother, Richard Christian Wiley Jr's passing. Fortunately it was at the end of my shift, so I was able to go home and cry alone. I did not have the mental stability to inform my work of the situation at the time, so that night when I went back to my 12am-8am shift, I informed my manager, who told me to inform the general manager and ask them about how to get time off to go to his funeral. The GM shows up at 6am, and when he did, after a full nights work of cleaning gas pumps, oil spills and trash in 10 degree weather (without a jacket I might add, as the GM refused to provide me with one) I immediately asked him if I could speak to him in private, to which he blew me off so he could have coffee for another hour and a half. At 7:30am, he finally found the time to speak to me, and I broke down into hysterical sobbing and he told me I had to step away and gather myself. Once I was able to stop crying, I explained the situation and that my brother lived in Texas (I live in California) and so I will need time off to go to his funeral and help with preparations for the services and the burial. His response was that I should call in when I find out what days I need off, but that there was a corporate inspection this Thursday (we were speaking on February 11th, the tuesday before the inspection) and that he needed me to be at work that morning to get everything ready.

This guy showed me no commiseration or sympathies, just telling me that no matter what, regardless of my closest brother just passing away, he wanted me at work Thursday. They offered me no time off whatsoever to even get over the shock of my brothers untimely passing.

After his kind, compassionate words of support, he then requested that I go do several more things outside my job description before I went home that day, and for me "not to do anything stupid". So I did, and returned home to begin figuring out how to get to Texas and be with my family.

Later that day, after work, I found out that I had to fly out on Friday, and so regardless of his wishes, I would have to miss his corporate inspection to prepare.

I called the General Manager, and informed him that I would need a total of 7 days off to prepare and attend the services, which included the next 2 days (Thursday and Friday). His response was an exasperated sigh and then a solid tongue lashing about how he already informed me that I needed to be at work on Thursday because he has been understaffed and theres stuff that he wanted me to clean that noone had done since before I started working there. I apologized profusely for messing up his plans, but asserted that there was nothing I can do. Its my brother. I HAVE to go to his funeral and I NEEDED to be with my family. The GM gave another frustrated huff and puff, then told me "We have to have a talk when you get back" and hung up on me. I spent the next several hours crying for my brother, and worrying about losing my job.

How was I supposed to help pay for aservices, funeral and burial that noone in my family could afford, if I had just lost my job for going to the funeral?

What would you have done in this situation? What would anyone? Did my showing up at work the day after my brothers death not show my commitment to my job? Unfortunately for me it did not matter, as I later found out that the GM was out to get me from the beginning, and that he never wanted to hire me in the first place.

A few days later, after sleepless nights and grieving for the loss of my brother, I recieved a notice of my final paycheck being submitted to my checking account, and when I called a coworker, they said that an email had gone out informing everyone of my termination.

So, it was true. I had hoped I was just misunderstanding his words, but now I knew. Words cannot describe the crushing, heartbroken emptiness I fealt at that moment. I have never suffered so much, as I did in that one week, compared to 7 years in prison. How this man could live with himself after doing this to someone is beyond me, and I find myself crying even now as I remember how bad the next few days, and the upcoming funeral were. I had no choice but to make a gofundme just to help pay for my brothers funeral, as I had already gone into debt, and now that I had no job, I couldn't afford to even pay for my plane ticket, let alone help pay for funeral services or burial.

After returning home the next week, I found out through calling Human Resources that I had been reinstated or the termination stopped. Apparently the other managers had informed the GM that what he was trying to do to me was illegal. I was happy, but I knew it didn't matter, the GM had proven he was out to get me, and even admitted at my hiring that it was because he really needed someone and the other managers who had known me outside of work and their refferences were the only reason he was hiring me.

I was correct. I was set to return to work on a wednesday, and the sunday before I slipped on an unfamiliar step and hurt my ankle severely. I waited until Tuesday before deciding that there was no way I could work on an ankle this badly hurt, at which point I called my boss and explained the situation. I thought of a compromise that would prevent me from actually missing any work, and explained it to my boss. I had never recieved any training for my position other than a person showing me that basics of how to clean this or that, and there are videos we are supposed to watch that are part of our mandatory paid training. I offered to come in and complete the training I never recieved, and my boss thought it was a great idea, but had to call the GM to make sure it was ok. After she called him, she informed me that the GM didn't want me to come in while I was injured, and instead told me to stay home until I see a doctor, and that we would figure things out after.

I had an appointment scheduled for the upcoming monday, and after meeting with the doctor he advised I stay off my feet for a minimum of 5 days, and for me to see him on the 6th day. I asked him for a copy of his report and dropped it off at work, speaking with my direct boss and giving her a copy of the report, and was told to call them again after they time is up and I speak to my doctor. Once again, I did exactly as instructed. After the 5 days my ankle was still extremely swollen and painful, and so my Doctor set me up for Xrays and MRIs. I then called my boss and informed her of the severity of the issue and that I would likely need to take a medical leave, to which I was told no problem just keep them updated. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

I recieved a call a few days later after my first Xray, which showed no break but alot of swelling, which indicates tendon damage, from a Human Resources agent, who informed me that my request for Medical Leave had been denied, and instead I had been terminated from my employment with Pilot Flying J travel centers. When I asked why I was being fired, I was informed that on Thursday March 14th I had not called in to inform my boss that I would not be at work, and was listed as a no show/no call. Even the HR representative knew and verified that this was during the time that I was injured and waiting to see the doctor after I had already called an notified my boss and the GM of the situation and when my appointment was, and I was not supposed to call in every single day or so my boss and the GM had told me.

I never called in on any of the days I was off, because my work told me not to and that I didnt have to because I had already spoken to my boss and verified I would not be there until a certain date.

So after all of this, as a worker who recieved nothing but complaints, I was fired for doing what I was told.

I had been a model employee, filling in when others could not make it to work do to emergency or snow hazard, recieving numerous praise from customers, several of which spoke to the GM of how impressed they were at the new staff.

I immediately sought an attorney, and was matched with a group called Abramsons Labor Group. Who told me I have a no brainer case and would win with no issue, and that I should try to settle to make it quick if I needed the money. These people said that 50% was the standard rate for cases like this, and continued to pressure me to settle as quickly as possible. I did not want to, and after being strung along for several months, being scheduled for numerous attorney visits with different attorneys through the law group, this last week I finally had it our agreement terminated. Only after this was I provided with copys of my employee file that had been turned over to Abramsons by Pilot/FlyingJ. Here I discovered several manipulations, all of which are obvious but obfuscate the situation to where it makes any lawyer looking for a quick buck turn away, because it will take them a few minutes of work to prove the falsifications.

The GM even had the gull to add fake reports to my employee file, all of which were supposedly presented to me to sign, but have never been signed by ANYONE, let alone me, a witness, nor the gm himself! He literally just wrote up a few reports and put them in my file to make me look bad, but forgot to sign them.

I need help. I need to hire an actual attorney who will represent me and help me take this to a trial. I want people to be aware of what this company and scumbags like the General Manager who made me suffer like this are doing to people like me. They saw me as an ex convict parolee they can just take advantage of, use and abuse, and treat me like garbage. They never bothered to train me because they knew they didnt want to keep me.

Any funds donated will be used strictly for legal fees, and since I would not have to pay a portion of the awarded funds to an attorney, I will instead donate that money to several different charitys in my brother, Richard Christian Wiley Jr: my local food bank, Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous.

Please, anything you can do to help support my cause is better than nothing. Dimes, Nickels, Pennys, everything helps. Help me move forward and make a difference in not just my and my families, but the lives of everyone who has been hurt and sufffered because of the careless nature of the Pilot Flying J Travel Centers management.

For anyone who has come this far, I have included my employee file. I would also like to note that they have also taken out the praises I recieved from at least 2 different customers who were astounded at the quality of my work and customer service.

am i the asshole? I feel like this is a totally legitimate reason for requesting assistance but I feel dirty for doing it. I am broke, borrowing money just to pay rent, and the "pro bono" law groups are trying to just get me to take a deal for quick cash. I want.

Please help me find a place to share my go fund me, I really appreciate it guys. In case you don't click links, here is my story.https://www.gofundme.com/f/fired-for-attending-brothers-funeral-need-lawyerMy name is Ethan Wiley, and after spending 7 years in prison for defending myself against an armed assailant, I was released on parole November 21st, 2022 and began trying to rebuild my life as best I could. I have a community college degree and over a dozen certificates in drug and relationship counceling. The first thing I had to do was get a job, and after a few months of searching, I did, at the Pilot Flying J Travel Centers.

Unfortunately, I was fired from Pilot Flying J for attending my brothers funeral, reinstated, then fired again after severely injuring my ankle a few days before I was to return to work.

On the morning of February 10th, while at work as a maintence worker at the Flying J Travel Center in Lebec, California, I was notified of my 32 Year old brother, Richard Christian Wiley Jr's passing. Fortunately it was at the end of my shift, so I was able to go home and cry alone. I did not have the mental stability to inform my work of the situation at the time, so that night when I went back to my 12am-8am shift, I informed my manager, who told me to inform the general manager and ask them about how to get time off to go to his funeral. The GM shows up at 6am, and when he did, after a full nights work of cleaning gas pumps, oil spills and trash in 10 degree weather (without a jacket I might add, as the GM refused to provide me with one) I immediately asked him if I could speak to him in private, to which he blew me off so he could have coffee for another hour and a half. At 7:30am, he finally found the time to speak to me, and I broke down into hysterical sobbing and he told me I had to step away and gather myself. Once I was able to stop crying, I explained the situation and that my brother lived in Texas (I live in California) and so I will need time off to go to his funeral and help with preparations for the services and the burial. His response was that I should call in when I find out what days I need off, but that there was a corporate inspection this Thursday (we were speaking on February 11th, the tuesday before the inspection) and that he needed me to be at work that morning to get everything ready.

This guy showed me no commiseration or sympathies, just telling me that no matter what, regardless of my closest brother just passing away, he wanted me at work Thursday. They offered me no time off whatsoever to even get over the shock of my brothers untimely passing.

After his kind, compassionate words of support, he then requested that I go do several more things outside my job description before I went home that day, and for me "not to do anything stupid". So I did, and returned home to begin figuring out how to get to Texas and be with my family.

Later that day, after work, I found out that I had to fly out on Friday, and so regardless of his wishes, I would have to miss his corporate inspection to prepare.

I called the General Manager, and informed him that I would need a total of 7 days off to prepare and attend the services, which included the next 2 days (Thursday and Friday). His response was an exasperated sigh and then a solid tongue lashing about how he already informed me that I needed to be at work on Thursday because he has been understaffed and theres stuff that he wanted me to clean that noone had done since before I started working there. I apologized profusely for messing up his plans, but asserted that there was nothing I can do. Its my brother. I HAVE to go to his funeral and I NEEDED to be with my family. The GM gave another frustrated huff and puff, then told me "We have to have a talk when you get back" and hung up on me. I spent the next several hours crying for my brother, and worrying about losing my job.

How was I supposed to help pay for aservices, funeral and burial that noone in my family could afford, if I had just lost my job for going to the funeral?

What would you have done in this situation? What would anyone? Did my showing up at work the day after my brothers death not show my commitment to my job? Unfortunately for me it did not matter, as I later found out that the GM was out to get me from the beginning, and that he never wanted to hire me in the first place.

A few days later, after sleepless nights and grieving for the loss of my brother, I recieved a notice of my final paycheck being submitted to my checking account, and when I called a coworker, they said that an email had gone out informing everyone of my termination.

So, it was true. I had hoped I was just misunderstanding his words, but now I knew. Words cannot describe the crushing, heartbroken emptiness I fealt at that moment. I have never suffered so much, as I did in that one week, compared to 7 years in prison. How this man could live with himself after doing this to someone is beyond me, and I find myself crying even now as I remember how bad the next few days, and the upcoming funeral were. I had no choice but to make a gofundme just to help pay for my brothers funeral, as I had already gone into debt, and now that I had no job, I couldn't afford to even pay for my plane ticket, let alone help pay for funeral services or burial.

After returning home the next week, I found out through calling Human Resources that I had been reinstated or the termination stopped. Apparently the other managers had informed the GM that what he was trying to do to me was illegal. I was happy, but I knew it didn't matter, the GM had proven he was out to get me, and even admitted at my hiring that it was because he really needed someone and the other managers who had known me outside of work and their refferences were the only reason he was hiring me.

I was correct. I was set to return to work on a wednesday, and the sunday before I slipped on an unfamiliar step and hurt my ankle severely. I waited until Tuesday before deciding that there was no way I could work on an ankle this badly hurt, at which point I called my boss and explained the situation. I thought of a compromise that would prevent me from actually missing any work, and explained it to my boss. I had never recieved any training for my position other than a person showing me that basics of how to clean this or that, and there are videos we are supposed to watch that are part of our mandatory paid training. I offered to come in and complete the training I never recieved, and my boss thought it was a great idea, but had to call the GM to make sure it was ok. After she called him, she informed me that the GM didn't want me to come in while I was injured, and instead told me to stay home until I see a doctor, and that we would figure things out after.

I had an appointment scheduled for the upcoming monday, and after meeting with the doctor he advised I stay off my feet for a minimum of 5 days, and for me to see him on the 6th day. I asked him for a copy of his report and dropped it off at work, speaking with my direct boss and giving her a copy of the report, and was told to call them again after they time is up and I speak to my doctor. Once again, I did exactly as instructed. After the 5 days my ankle was still extremely swollen and painful, and so my Doctor set me up for Xrays and MRIs. I then called my boss and informed her of the severity of the issue and that I would likely need to take a medical leave, to which I was told no problem just keep them updated. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

I recieved a call a few days later after my first Xray, which showed no break but alot of swelling, which indicates tendon damage, from a Human Resources agent, who informed me that my request for Medical Leave had been denied, and instead I had been terminated from my employment with Pilot Flying J travel centers. When I asked why I was being fired, I was informed that on Thursday March 14th I had not called in to inform my boss that I would not be at work, and was listed as a no show/no call. Even the HR representative knew and verified that this was during the time that I was injured and waiting to see the doctor after I had already called an notified my boss and the GM of the situation and when my appointment was, and I was not supposed to call in every single day or so my boss and the GM had told me.

I never called in on any of the days I was off, because my work told me not to and that I didnt have to because I had already spoken to my boss and verified I would not be there until a certain date.

So after all of this, as a worker who recieved nothing but complaints, I was fired for doing what I was told.

I had been a model employee, filling in when others could not make it to work do to emergency or snow hazard, recieving numerous praise from customers, several of which spoke to the GM of how impressed they were at the new staff.

I immediately sought an attorney, and was matched with a group called Abramsons Labor Group. Who told me I have a no brainer case and would win with no issue, and that I should try to settle to make it quick if I needed the money. These people said that 50% was the standard rate for cases like this, and continued to pressure me to settle as quickly as possible. I did not want to, and after being strung along for several months, being scheduled for numerous attorney visits with different attorneys through the law group, this last week I finally had it our agreement terminated. Only after this was I provided with copys of my employee file that had been turned over to Abramsons by Pilot/FlyingJ. Here I discovered several manipulations, all of which are obvious but obfuscate the situation to where it makes any lawyer looking for a quick buck turn away, because it will take them a few minutes of work to prove the falsifications.

The GM even had the gull to add fake reports to my employee file, all of which were supposedly presented to me to sign, but have never been signed by ANYONE, let alone me, a witness, nor the gm himself! He literally just wrote up a few reports and put them in my file to make me look bad, but forgot to sign them.

I need help. I need to hire an actual attorney who will represent me and help me take this to a trial. I want people to be aware of what this company and scumbags like the General Manager who made me suffer like this are doing to people like me. They saw me as an ex convict parolee they can just take advantage of, use and abuse, and treat me like garbage. They never bothered to train me because they knew they didnt want to keep me.

Any funds donated will be used strictly for legal fees, and since I would not have to pay a portion of the awarded funds to an attorney, I will instead donate that money to several different charitys in my brother, Richard Christian Wiley Jr: my local food bank, Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous.

Please, anything you can do to help support my cause is better than nothing. Dimes, Nickels, Pennys, everything helps. Help me move forward and make a difference in not just my and my families, but the lives of everyone who has been hurt and sufffered because of the careless nature of the Pilot Flying J Travel Centers management.

For anyone who has come this far, I have included my employee file. I would also like to note that they have also taken out the praises I recieved from at least 2 different customers who were astounded at the quality of my work and customer service.

am i the asshole? I feel like this is a totally legitimate reason for requesting assistance but I feel dirty for doing it. I am broke, borrowing money just to pay rent, and the "pro bono" law groups are trying to just get me to take a deal for quick cash. I want.

Please help me share my go fund me, I really appreciate it guys. In case you don't click links, here is my story.https://www.gofundme.com/f/fired-for-attending-brothers-funeral-need-lawyerMy name is Ethan Wiley, and after spending 7 years in prison for defending myself against an armed assailant, I was released on parole November 21st, 2022 and began trying to rebuild my life as best I could. I have a community college degree and over a dozen certificates in drug and relationship counceling. The first thing I had to do was get a job, and after a few months of searching, I did, at the Pilot Flying J Travel Centers.

Unfortunately, I was fired from Pilot Flying J for attending my brothers funeral, reinstated, then fired again after severely injuring my ankle a few days before I was to return to work.

On the morning of February 10th, while at work as a maintence worker at the Flying J Travel Center in Lebec, California, I was notified of my 32 Year old brother, Richard Christian Wiley Jr's passing. Fortunately it was at the end of my shift, so I was able to go home and cry alone. I did not have the mental stability to inform my work of the situation at the time, so that night when I went back to my 12am-8am shift, I informed my manager, who told me to inform the general manager and ask them about how to get time off to go to his funeral. The GM shows up at 6am, and when he did, after a full nights work of cleaning gas pumps, oil spills and trash in 10 degree weather (without a jacket I might add, as the GM refused to provide me with one) I immediately asked him if I could speak to him in private, to which he blew me off so he could have coffee for another hour and a half. At 7:30am, he finally found the time to speak to me, and I broke down into hysterical sobbing and he told me I had to step away and gather myself. Once I was able to stop crying, I explained the situation and that my brother lived in Texas (I live in California) and so I will need time off to go to his funeral and help with preparations for the services and the burial. His response was that I should call in when I find out what days I need off, but that there was a corporate inspection this Thursday (we were speaking on February 11th, the tuesday before the inspection) and that he needed me to be at work that morning to get everything ready.

This guy showed me no commiseration or sympathies, just telling me that no matter what, regardless of my closest brother just passing away, he wanted me at work Thursday. They offered me no time off whatsoever to even get over the shock of my brothers untimely passing.

After his kind, compassionate words of support, he then requested that I go do several more things outside my job description before I went home that day, and for me "not to do anything stupid". So I did, and returned home to begin figuring out how to get to Texas and be with my family.

Later that day, after work, I found out that I had to fly out on Friday, and so regardless of his wishes, I would have to miss his corporate inspection to prepare.

I called the General Manager, and informed him that I would need a total of 7 days off to prepare and attend the services, which included the next 2 days (Thursday and Friday). His response was an exasperated sigh and then a solid tongue lashing about how he already informed me that I needed to be at work on Thursday because he has been understaffed and theres stuff that he wanted me to clean that noone had done since before I started working there. I apologized profusely for messing up his plans, but asserted that there was nothing I can do. Its my brother. I HAVE to go to his funeral and I NEEDED to be with my family. The GM gave another frustrated huff and puff, then told me "We have to have a talk when you get back" and hung up on me. I spent the next several hours crying for my brother, and worrying about losing my job.

How was I supposed to help pay for aservices, funeral and burial that noone in my family could afford, if I had just lost my job for going to the funeral?

What would you have done in this situation? What would anyone? Did my showing up at work the day after my brothers death not show my commitment to my job? Unfortunately for me it did not matter, as I later found out that the GM was out to get me from the beginning, and that he never wanted to hire me in the first place.

A few days later, after sleepless nights and grieving for the loss of my brother, I recieved a notice of my final paycheck being submitted to my checking account, and when I called a coworker, they said that an email had gone out informing everyone of my termination.

So, it was true. I had hoped I was just misunderstanding his words, but now I knew. Words cannot describe the crushing, heartbroken emptiness I fealt at that moment. I have never suffered so much, as I did in that one week, compared to 7 years in prison. How this man could live with himself after doing this to someone is beyond me, and I find myself crying even now as I remember how bad the next few days, and the upcoming funeral were. I had no choice but to make a gofundme just to help pay for my brothers funeral, as I had already gone into debt, and now that I had no job, I couldn't afford to even pay for my plane ticket, let alone help pay for funeral services or burial.

After returning home the next week, I found out through calling Human Resources that I had been reinstated or the termination stopped. Apparently the other managers had informed the GM that what he was trying to do to me was illegal. I was happy, but I knew it didn't matter, the GM had proven he was out to get me, and even admitted at my hiring that it was because he really needed someone and the other managers who had known me outside of work and their refferences were the only reason he was hiring me.

I was correct. I was set to return to work on a wednesday, and the sunday before I slipped on an unfamiliar step and hurt my ankle severely. I waited until Tuesday before deciding that there was no way I could work on an ankle this badly hurt, at which point I called my boss and explained the situation. I thought of a compromise that would prevent me from actually missing any work, and explained it to my boss. I had never recieved any training for my position other than a person showing me that basics of how to clean this or that, and there are videos we are supposed to watch that are part of our mandatory paid training. I offered to come in and complete the training I never recieved, and my boss thought it was a great idea, but had to call the GM to make sure it was ok. After she called him, she informed me that the GM didn't want me to come in while I was injured, and instead told me to stay home until I see a doctor, and that we would figure things out after.

I had an appointment scheduled for the upcoming monday, and after meeting with the doctor he advised I stay off my feet for a minimum of 5 days, and for me to see him on the 6th day. I asked him for a copy of his report and dropped it off at work, speaking with my direct boss and giving her a copy of the report, and was told to call them again after they time is up and I speak to my doctor. Once again, I did exactly as instructed. After the 5 days my ankle was still extremely swollen and painful, and so my Doctor set me up for Xrays and MRIs. I then called my boss and informed her of the severity of the issue and that I would likely need to take a medical leave, to which I was told no problem just keep them updated. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

I recieved a call a few days later after my first Xray, which showed no break but alot of swelling, which indicates tendon damage, from a Human Resources agent, who informed me that my request for Medical Leave had been denied, and instead I had been terminated from my employment with Pilot Flying J travel centers. When I asked why I was being fired, I was informed that on Thursday March 14th I had not called in to inform my boss that I would not be at work, and was listed as a no show/no call. Even the HR representative knew and verified that this was during the time that I was injured and waiting to see the doctor after I had already called an notified my boss and the GM of the situation and when my appointment was, and I was not supposed to call in every single day or so my boss and the GM had told me.

I never called in on any of the days I was off, because my work told me not to and that I didnt have to because I had already spoken to my boss and verified I would not be there until a certain date.

So after all of this, as a worker who recieved nothing but complaints, I was fired for doing what I was told.

I had been a model employee, filling in when others could not make it to work do to emergency or snow hazard, recieving numerous praise from customers, several of which spoke to the GM of how impressed they were at the new staff.

I immediately sought an attorney, and was matched with a group called Abramsons Labor Group. Who told me I have a no brainer case and would win with no issue, and that I should try to settle to make it quick if I needed the money. These people said that 50% was the standard rate for cases like this, and continued to pressure me to settle as quickly as possible. I did not want to, and after being strung along for several months, being scheduled for numerous attorney visits with different attorneys through the law group, this last week I finally had it our agreement terminated. Only after this was I provided with copys of my employee file that had been turned over to Abramsons by Pilot/FlyingJ. Here I discovered several manipulations, all of which are obvious but obfuscate the situation to where it makes any lawyer looking for a quick buck turn away, because it will take them a few minutes of work to prove the falsifications.

The GM even had the gull to add fake reports to my employee file, all of which were supposedly presented to me to sign, but have never been signed by ANYONE, let alone me, a witness, nor the gm himself! He literally just wrote up a few reports and put them in my file to make me look bad, but forgot to sign them.

I need help. I need to hire an actual attorney who will represent me and help me take this to a trial. I want people to be aware of what this company and scumbags like the General Manager who made me suffer like this are doing to people like me. They saw me as an ex convict parolee they can just take advantage of, use and abuse, and treat me like garbage. They never bothered to train me because they knew they didnt want to keep me.

Any funds donated will be used strictly for legal fees, and since I would not have to pay a portion of the awarded funds to an attorney, I will instead donate that money to several different charitys in my brother, Richard Christian Wiley Jr: my local food bank, Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous.

Please, anything you can do to help support my cause is better than nothing. Dimes, Nickels, Pennys, everything helps. Help me move forward and make a difference in not just my and my families, but the lives of everyone who has been hurt and sufffered because of the careless nature of the Pilot Flying J Travel Centers management.

For anyone who has come this far, I have included my employee file. I would also like to note that they have also taken out the praises I recieved from at least 2 different customers who were astounded at the quality of my work and customer service.

am i the asshole? I feel like this is a totally legitimate reason for requesting assistance but I feel dirty for doing it. I am broke, borrowing money just to pay rent, and the "pro bono" law groups are trying to just get me to take a deal for quick cash. I want.

[email protected] ------------------- There are many reasons why someone might want to hire a hacker to hack a cell phone. They may want to catch a cheating spouse, or they may want to find out if their partner is being unfaithful. They may also want to hack into a company’s computer system to steal confidential information.

How can I hack my spouse

If you believe that your partner is cheating on you, hiring a hacker to catch them in the act may be something to consider. By gaining access to their electronic devices and tracking their online activity, a skilled hacker can help you confirm your suspicions and provide evidence of infidelity.
While this option may not be right for everyone, it can be a quick and effective way to get the answers you need. You can hire a hacker to catch a cheating spouse easily.

What software to use to hack your spouse's phone

Phishing: A hacker can send a text message or email that appears to be from a legitimate source, such as a bank or mobile provider, asking for personal information or directing the user to a fake login page.
Malware: A hacker can send a malicious app or software to the target phone, which when installed, can give the hacker access to personal data and control of the device.
Social engineering: A hacker could impersonate someone the user trusts and ask for access to the phone, or trick the user into giving away personal information.

how to hire a hacker to catch cheating spouse online

When it comes to catching a cheater, there is no better way than to hire a professional hacker. A hacker can easily obtain all of the necessary information to expose a cheating spouse.
They can access emails, and text messages, recover social media accounts, and even financial records. In short, a hacker can uncover just about anything that you need to know to catch a cheater.

How to find a reputable hacker

If you suspect your spouse of cheating, you may be wondering how to hire a hacker to catch them. While it’s important to be careful when hiring someone to hack into another person’s account, there are ways to find a reputable hacker.
The best way to find a hacker that you can trust is by using [email protected] . You can find top hacking services on our platform. We provide a collection of hacking services from the best hacking of cell phones to hacking a spouse’s phone.
The first step is to do your research. There are many hacking services available online, but not all of them are reputable. You’ll want to read reviews and compare prices before making your decision.

Contact us at [email protected] for technical problems about your task or issue regarding hacking services.

Finally, trust your gut. If something feels off about a particular hacker, move on to someone else. With a little bit of research, you should be able to find a reputable hacker who can help you catch your cheating spouse

Signs your spouse may be cheating.

If you’re suspicious that your spouse may be cheating on you, there are a few key signs to look out for. First, pay attention to changes in their routine or behavior. If they’re suddenly working later hours or taking more business trips than usual, that could be a sign that they’re seeing someone else.
Another red flag is if they’re being secretive about their phone or computer usage. If they’re constantly hiding their screen from you or deleting text messages and emails, that’s a sign that they don’t want you to see what’s going on.
You should also pay attention to their mood and attitude. If they seem distant or preoccupied, it could be because they’re thinking about someone else. And if they start picking fights with you for no reason, that could be a sign that they’re trying to create distance between you two.
If you notice any of these signs, it’s important to talk to your spouse about what’s going on. They may be able to explain away some of the changes in their behavior, but if they can’t give you a satisfactory explanation, it may be time to consider hiring a private investigator or hacker to catch them in the act.

What type of information can be accessed through phone hacking

If you are considering hiring a hacker to help you catch a cheating spouse, there are a few things you should know about what type of information can be accessed through phone hacking.
Phone hacking can give the hacker access to a wealth of personal information including text messages, email, social media accounts, and even phone calls. Hackers can also use phone hacking to track someone’s location, as well as listen in on conversations.
While this may all sound very intrusive, it is important to remember that this information can be incredibly helpful if you suspect your spouse of cheating. With access to their text messages and emails, you will be able to see if they are communicating with anyone outside of your relationship. You can also use the GPS tracking feature to see if they are going places they shouldn’t be.
When you need to monitor your spouse or hack your boyfriend’s phone, using [email protected] tools will provide great results.

Why you should hire a professional hacker

If you believe that your spouse is cheating on you, hiring a professional hacker to catch them in the act can be a smart move. Here are four reasons why:

A professional hacker can access information that you may not be able to on your own.
A professional hacker can help you gather evidence against your spouse without being detected.
A professional hacker can give you peace of mind by catching your spouse in the act and providing concrete proof.
Hiring a professional hacker is often more affordable than hiring a private investigator.

If you’re considering hiring a professional hacker to catch your cheating spouse, keep these four reasons in mind. With the help of a skilled hacker, you can gather the evidence you need to confirm your suspicions and take action accordingly.

Why hire a professional hacker instead of trying it yourself?

When it comes to hacking, there are a lot of risks involved. If you’re not careful, you could end up causing serious damage to your computer or even getting caught and arrested. That’s why it’s always best to leave it to the professionals.
Here are some reasons why you should hire a professional hacker instead of trying to do it yourself:

They know what they’re doing: Professional hackers have years of experience and know all the ins and outs of hacking. They’ll be able to get into your spouse’s account without raising any red flags or getting caught.
They’re discreet: A professional hacker will be able to gather the information you need without your spouse ever finding out. This is important if you want to avoid a messy divorce or an ugly confrontation.
They’re affordable: You might think that hiring a professional would be expensive, but it’s very affordable when you compare it to the alternative of hiring a private investigator. Plus, you can be sure that the job will be done right when you hire a professional hacker.
They have tools that you don’t have access to: Professional hackers have access to sophisticated tools and software that allow them to do their job quickly and efficiently. You won’t be able to find these tools on your own, so hiring a professional is the best way to get the information you need on time.

What are the steps to catching a cheating spouse?

If you think your spouse is cheating on you, there are a few steps you can take to catch them in the act. First, try to notice any changes in their behavior. If they’re acting differently than usual, it could be a sign that something is going on.
Pay attention to how they’re using their phone and computer. If they’re suddenly being very secretive about their whereabouts or who they’re talking to, they may be cheating.
You can also try hiring a private investigator or hacker to help you catch a cheating spouse. These professionals can often find out information that you wouldn’t be able to on your own.
If you think your spouse is cheating, don’t be afraid to confront them about it. Ask them directly if they’re seeing someone else. If they deny it, you can ask for proof or evidence of their fidelity.

Conclusion

If you’re considering hiring a hacker to catch a cheating spouse, you will need the best hacking service online. [email protected] are one of the best providers of hacking services online. You can hire a trusted hacker online with a collection of hacking talent.

For further information about How can I hack my spouse and other related hacking services, Speak to a hacker anonymously on [email protected] for all your hacking needs

I'm a 28F currently dealing with a revenge obsessed ex-boyfriend (36M) who has been stalking me online for at least 2 years now and is hell bent on destroying my life. Basically I was his first GF in 7 years at the time and prior to the girl before me who cheated on him he claimed he never had a GF except girls who thought he looked like Harry Potter in middle school. He is 36 and doesn't have a lot of experience with women so the break up is apparently still difficult for him to process even though its 3 years later and we have not spoken except me asking him profusely to stop doing this stuff.
At the time we were dating a few years ago I was dealing with some identity issues during our relationship which I was honest with him about, (identified as bisexual at the time, but was questioning my sexuality). We had some disagreements about it and he would always ask why he couldn't stay over early on in the relationship (~1 month into it). I ended up breaking things off with him after roughly 4 months because I felt like we weren't compatible and also because I had lost my job at the time and was dealing with personal issues on the side (severely depressed, was in therapy for it).
We were friends for a short time after the breakup until things started getting VERY weird. He began circling the road next to my apartment several times per hour EVERY DAY. At the time I considered it strange but had a limited knowledge of technology other than basic CS classes I had taken in the past. The internet would randomly shut off for 30 mins - 1 hour for no reason. I would later find out in the logs the router was being hit with DOS attacks several times per day.
I would also see my documents on Google Drive opened by strange usernames of fake accounts, and eventually had a remote access trojan on my laptop after he sent me photos of us through Google Photos which I suspect he used to infect my computer. He would backspace while I typed, open and close windows, click random things on the screen, and straight up mess with me for several hours per day every day for MONTHS.
Then eventually the computer crashed and would never start again. It was a $1500 Macbook Pro. My new car also mysteriously got something poured in the fuel tank and after a few weeks and several hundreds of dollars of new parts no mechanic could fix the car. My apartment was broken into repeatedly with subtle signs of forced entry but nothing stolen. Examples: Pry marks on the inside of the front door, side door and back door, personal care items like body wash, underwear or bras stolen or moved, coming home to find personal documents like medical records, tax records, and bank info layed out on my bedroom floor shuffled around. I filed police reports each time it happened but couldn't prove it was him.
My car has also been broken into a few times now with my dashcam broken off the mount, hidden under the passenger seat, stick figures taking a dump drawn on my windshield, and nails in my back tire and spare tire. I believe he put a GPS tracker on the car because I have heard someone outside opening and closing the car door but nothing was stolen. So far no mechanic has been able to find a tracker and I couldn't either.
I had to stop using the wifi at my apartment because every device I use on that network gets hacked (multiple different laptops, 2 kindles, and 3 cell phones). I found a keylogger on my M1 Macbook Pro (~$2000) which he also placed persistent malware on and I can not get rid of despite wiping the hard drive 8 times since this January. He defaced my professional website I was trying to use to get a job twice (first time put a pic of nude child and set his hacker username as my bank account number, added a redirect link which I stupidly clicked on and then it downloaded some sort of spyware or RAT onto my device, 2nd time he put up 2 women doing the deed also nude).
He has had remote access to this computer for an unknown amount of time and I can not afford to replace it. My cell phone also booted up into safe mode the next morning and the background was changed on my work/school email account. I tried taking my computer to a repair shop and they claimed if he does have a RAT on it, it is likely hidden on the recovery partition and they weren't able to find it or get it off my computer. This is a $2000 M1 Mac and he already destroyed my previous Macbook Pro which cost me $1500.
I also had to buy a new cell phone after I kept getting creepy phone calls and phishing texts from unknown numbers. When he put the new keylogger on my computer recently I saw where he made a folder which he named the digits of my new phone number. I had just bought a brand new Samsung Galaxy and he already got the new phone number for it and hacked it. He kept enabled the camera and microphone and while I was eating turned on the camera and started recorded me while I was eating. I factory reset the phone and he was still able to control the camera and mic on it.
I have reported him to the FBI IC3 unit 6 times now in the last year and now he is getting cocky about it and knows he will get away with it so he keeps doing it. He knows I am broke with no money and can't afford a new computer, to move away, or to keep buying a new cell phone every month and he seems to get off on trying to destroy my whole life. I have not spoken to him in 3 years now and we do not talk at all. I sent him a FB message telling him to stop explaining to him I have been going through a lot since my sister died a few years ago and just want to be left alone. He keeps doing it and won't stop.
He also recruited my crush who I never mentioned to him to help him with the hacking (my crush is a system admin) and now my crush won't speak to me at all and hates my guts. I have no idea what he said to my crush or how he got them to come after me but they have been going full on nuclear and won't stop. I caught him staking me out a few days ago at the gas station across from a wifi hotspot I was using where he was just sitting there for an extended period of time watching me. Then when I started drive near him he inched his truck like he was thinking about if he was going to follow me or not. He also knows when I come and go at night and drives by my apartment minutes after I get home at different times.
This guy seems to think I owe him something and has a serious problem. I also find it creepy that he knows about my crush and is actively getting the crush to help him do this stuff just to hurt me. He just keeps doing all this and will not stop. While I am not the type of person to do anything crazy back, the police have done nothing and in terms of the hacking there is not a lot they can do. This is pushing me to the brink of self destructive thoughts because every time I turn my computer on I can't do anything without him snooping. He has access to my computer, my phone, possibly my apartment and car. What can I do to at least expose this guy. I don't think he is ever going to stop until he kills me and this has got to stop.

Many, many moons ago, I used to play the Maxis 'Sim' games.
For two months in 1999, I got up, went to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, washed my hands, shaved, showered, prepared breakfast, ate breakfast, cleared up, washed up, went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, dressed, went to work, came home, prepared the evening meal, ate the evening meal, cleared up, washed up and played The Sims, during which I told ‘someone else’ to get up, go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, wash their hands, shave, shower, prepare breakfast, eat breakfast, clear up, wash up, go to the bathroom, brush their teeth, dress, go to work, come home, prepare the evening meal, eat the evening meal, clear up, wash up, watch TV, go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, wash their hands, brush their teeth, get undressed, shower and go to bed.
Then I went to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, washed my hands, brushed my teeth, got undressed, showered and went to bed.
After two months I had an epiphany … and never played The Sims again.

However, I ought to mention that I got bored after about the first two days and went off-course somewhat …
My first sims died of shame.
I wouldn’t let them leave the dining table to go to the bathroom.
After a while, the shame of sitting at the dining table, soiling themselves in front of each other, resulted in such extreme Anorexia/Agoraphobia that they all starved to death in bed rather than go anywhere near either the kitchen, the dining table or each other — except for the one who died of fright after encountering the first ghost.
I felt a bit ashamed of myself after that and determined to treat the others better.
I got bored though.
Investigating a bit, I discovered that one way to make money was to have a sim die on a property from which it couldn’t leave.
So I came up with a story explaining why so many new sims kept moving in and then dying in this house …
It was a boarding house run by a woman whose estranged husband, fully cogniscent of the fact that she kept murdering them for their money (by building a moat around the house after they moved in, so that they couldn’t leave), kept sending newcomers to town there, because, even though they were estranged and living separately, they had a twisted Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolfe? sort of relationship.
As I said, I eventually had an epiphany and stopped wasting my life but, for a while, it was exhilarating … in a dirty, sordid, spiritually onanistic-masochistic sort of way

In Sim Tower, you could name up to six (possibly eight, I forget now) special ‘characters.’
I was amazed at how often I’d find the Office Bicycle in the same bar or restaurant as the the Philanderer from another office altogether … or the Jailbait from one apartment in the same ice cream parlour as the Pederast from another.
The sickest combo though was the two cleaning staff: Mrs Jones … and her daughter, Miss Jones — that’s right, born into a life of poverty, she was going to progress no further than her downtrodden mother … a life of soul-destroying pittance-wage slavery awaited her too.

But, however much fun it might be to oppress virtual lifeforms (https://angryflower.com/217.html), there comes a point in time when you have to stop playing with yourself, before you go blind (which is what will happen, if you stare at screens for too long).
So, for a number of years now, I've been pondering how best to go about sharing the misery with a wider public.
And I think I might be onto something.

The Player Characters take on the role of ‘ordinary Joe’ (or ‘Josephine’).
Monday to Saturday, from 09:00 to 18:00, they go to work in some mundane, menial role (like shop assistant, warehouse worker, bank-teller, whatever).
It takes an hour to get ready for work in the morning (90 minutes if they have kids).
It takes an hour to drop the kids off at school and/or get to their place of work.
It takes an hour to return home after work.
They sleep from 23:00 to 07:00.
In the four hours per day remaining to them (after the shops have shut) during the week … and the sixteen hours on Sundays … they cook and eat, go shopping, do the laundry, etc. whilst trying to find things to do that aren’t mind-numbingly, soul-sappingly, spirit-crushingly tedious — examples of such activities being, say, cow-tipping … or going to bars to get blind-drunk and forget how much they wish they could simply lie down, go to sleep and never have to wake up again … or whatever.
Adventures consist of questing for, and participating in, these activities.
Obstacles to overcome along the way include grinding poverty that is inescapable thanks to inflation outstripping wages two-or-more--to-one, unemployment, the gig economy, racism, misogyny, ill-health, the depredations of age, traffic jams, vehicle repairs, broken washing machines and the need to take a day off work to wait for the repairman, burglary, muggings, funerals for loved ones (so a reduced support network), the sociocultural oppression of the suburbs, acrimonious relationship breakups, feuds with unreasonable neighbours … and many other aspects of the futility and drudgery of Life.

Any takers?
[Here’s something to get you in the right frame of mind in preparation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo0ZTfDUO90]
Should I work on it and start a Kickstarter campaign?
Or just go back to tormenting helpless pixels?

The "R Mika is a bad character design" bandwagon never fails to disappoint. It's fucking Street Fighter. There is a green guy with electricity powers. He doesn't even electrocute you, he electrocutes his fucking self first and then you second. And you know what we did in the 90s? We shrugged our shoulders and nodded at each other, "Oh shucks! Capcom is so wacky!" What will they think of next? They thought of a 7 foot tall Mexican and then they took a lunch break for 3 months and decided that thinking of new characters for Street Fighter was hard work for a pre-globalized world with fair wages. Let's see, we can make a game in one year that pulls enough profit to pay for each employee that worked on this for....let me get my calculator out, that's 5 million dollars per person here at Capcom. Ahhhhhh just steal Bruce Lee and keep the money. And Fei Long was and is loved, for no reason, really. Back then, you could take risks on retarded ideas and people would still love you. Think about it - the fact that someone went to a board meeting, just got done making a sketch of Ryu, and another man spoke up and said said "Okay, and then we make an Indian guy with stretchy legs." And they did. And despite Indians having no cultural relevance to stretchy legs, or fuck, cultural relevance in fighting or games in general? We have Dhalsim. Are we better for it? Yes, he adds something to the game and because it was the 90s, it wasn't for diversity or hashtags, it was just because some idiots in Japan were not ashamed that they didn't know anything about India. They had no ideas then and they still released a Street Fighter every year because it was profitable. R Mika is a Dostoevsky character compared to T Hawk. They put Street Fighter on every system. They put it on a system with only 3 fucking buttons that couldn't produce anything that sounded human and told you to buy a controller for their game, and then told you to fuck off, No more street fighter games, and sorry about the controller you had to buy to play our game. Oh and all the characters sound like they have cystic fibrosis on the Genesis version, too. Look that up in Encarta. Games made money with no problem: For christ sake, they released a game where you needed to buy another game just to make the first game work - and it was a flagship Sonic game for $70 bucks...and it MADE money. Sonic and Knuckles was an extortion project, not a videogame. It didn't make "Uhh this game is successful, but we can't fund a sequel by ourselves" successful, it was "Let's put this faggot in a game about Pinball because Pinball rhymes with Spinball, a word we just made up." successful. The 90s were a time when you could make shit up without risk. You could fail at everything in life and still get a job in middle management making a good income. If Sonic Spinball could be made un-ironically, then so can your salary. Now kids without STEM degrees are called worthless by job-secure 59 year olds in hiring HR. "Look, I don't think you're qualified for this job, Microsoft Excel can be very daunting. 900 people are competing for this job, and I found 500 math PhDs in Bangladesh who are willing to do the work over Skype. "It says here you have a degree in History: I had a degree in history too, art history - it's just like regular history only less. Fuck you." So part of our interview is to figure out a way for me to justify why I can work here and why you can't - which is hard because, keep in mind, I have some brown people that will work over Gmail and pay for their own long-distance Skype credit, which saves me about 99% of an otherwise healthy worker's salary per year. A few questions: Do you have a math PhD? No? Do you have the motivation to work under pressure..hold on i'm not done...Do you have the motivation to work under pressure even if you're being paid in circus peanuts? It's not looking good for you. What makes you think you're in demand in a capitalist system that appraises your worth based on whether or not you can do a job better than poor people with the internet? Let me reiterate, I have a degree in art history - why should I hire someone that basically is just me + all other history? How do you think we stay competitive in the marketplace if we have people like me who have a degree in Peter Rabbit Illustration and don't seek out the absolute most unfortunate people with the best credentials? I have a guy with a math PhD from Nigeria that cleans our toilets remotely from a computer. What he doesn't know is that I piss all over the toilet seat on purpose. I literally just piss all over the toilet seat just to tell a black man to clean up my refuse, and godamnit if I will give back what Capitalism gave me just so I can go back to pissing vanilla-style. I work long-dick style from now on and I ain't going back to vanilla style. I can piss and shit anywhere I want and a black man controlling a robot will always be not that far behind me, remind me again why I'm not the richest man in the world? The economy has evolved - workers that used to use Excel 2005, now need to know Excel 2015 at this company - ...Excel 2005 was easy for liberal arts majors, but 2015? Much easier, actually. ..it's actually way easier for just about anyone to do work these days...and because of that, my piss gets cleaned by robots. Anyone can do this job and everyone needs it, hence piss robots. Only got one piss-robot but a long line of workers looking to pilot it. Poor people clean piss like it's their last day on earth...and if you piss as much as I do, they're spending their last day on earth a lot of times a day. It's Groundhog Piss day for these guys, and I am the groundhog. If some brown kid can convince me that I can call him racial slurs AND sign a non-disclosure agreement about said racial slurs, AND that he can get work done through GChat? Let's use the Groundhog Day analogy again..Name the only cool person older than 50. Bill Murray. I'm Bill Murray the Groundhog, baby. Devalue, debase, and reduce every last thing on this earth in the name of efficient markets and if you get to the end, you're Bill Murray. That's some economics they don't teach you in school. Welcome to the big leagues. I want a candidate that knows how economics works - not some socialist that reduces our competitive advantage in the world. We use Microsoft fucking Excel here. This isn't a fucking game. Microsoft Excel is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, and I'm still doing it 20 years later..it's practically the only thing I've done at this job for the past 20 years. The efficiency of being able to rename a servile little indian boy a SandNog on GChat in the same interface that I receive his work in and I get to pay him in beach shells? Uhh someone get me off the this gravy train because my goose is cooked and papa is ready to eat. That is why I voted Ron Paul - papa wants to eat. If the Efficient markets have worked themselves out to the point where I can call a desperate brown kid a sandnigger and get work that is more efficient and productive for it then we've won. Tell me what the difference is between a sandnigger that does good work and a white person that does good work? I'll give you a hint: If I can't call either of them sandniggers, there is no difference. Okay that wasn't a hint, that was the answer and I'm giving it to you long dick style. There are so many people from countries that I don't respect waiting to be hired... I'll eventually get to a Sophie's Choice situation - "Do I pick this guy who doesn't mind that I call him a CamelBoo (Jigaboo+Camel) or do I pick the white guy? Hold on with the Street Fighter and R Mika shit, I'm talking to you about economics - fucking always with the videogames, these kids. I pick the CamelBoo because Papa wants to eat. When I was your age, I could afford a car in 5 months on overtime pay alone, but I'm saving money on the fact that Banglor speaks a language that doesn't have a word for "Overtime". I want a payroll tax exemption for making him a non-salaried subcontractor, and he wants to understand why I keep asking for "More Clocks" in Google Translate. It's because your country is too poor to have a word that means getting more money at your discretion. It's a superfluous word for you. Of course you want overtime - that's like having four different words for "chicken wings". Of course I want to have the edible kind of chicken wings - I'm so rarely going to speak about a chicken's wings in the context of anything but fried chicken, the word is not necessary. Did you know that both Pakistan and the US don't have a word that represents the low-level humiliation of manning a robot that cleans my piss all day? Was there a word for the feeling of cool satisfaction that a man got from a nice shoe shine an affable and willing negro gave to man in Birmingham in the 1930s? No, but that shoe got polished. And so shall the toilet seat. That's a lot of math PhDs, that are literally just waiting to be called a nigger by me - a guy that still asks his employees to help him "log on the dotcoms" to check my aol email account. The real injustice is not that I continue to use AOL 3.0 like a security blanket, but that if a competing company is not filled with people like me I have to get more wizkid brown nerds to make up for it. I am a liability and yet I steer this ship away from the iceberg. I am the emperor with no clothes. I must bear the burden of the nakedness I have resolved to live in. I am exposed. And you are blaming me for spilling a little pee-pee or, god forbid, soaking the entire bathroom at work every 20 to 30 minutes? Even Jesus had to go to the bathroom when he was on the cross for 3 days. You think he just held it in because he was embarassed? Do you hold me to a higher standard than Jesus? It's a highly pissable bathroom and I'm a highly pissable man. That is my only sin. You think you have it tough because you can't get a job? I have to call 9000 kids named Rameen and sometimes I can't even make it to the end of the phone call to get to the part where I unapologetically make racial jokes that they don't understand. I called this one guy a SandySpook - you know, like the Sandy Hook shooting. I called him an entire massacre. SandySpook this, SandySpook that. I even got frustrated that he wasn't feeling shitty about himself, so I got obvious about it and started calling him "Dead Children". I literally called the guy Dead Children. He only started to notice that I was called him different things when I accidentally referred to him as "Dead Kids". If he had a problem with it, I got 8999 others who are willing to play part to their own degradation and abuse. I didn't make the rules of capitalism - if someone will clean up my piss by remotely controlling a robot for 5 cents an hour - do you get mad at the piss? No, you get mad at the toilet for being so pissable. Then you get mad at the entire bathroom for getting piss all over it. But do you blame the pisser or the piss-ee? No, he must piss. And maybe he doesn't have to piss all over the place, but who cares who has to clean up my piss if it isn't me? Were we talking about Street Fighter? Yes people were retarded and retarded people were a valuable part of the gaming economy. It was a good thing because we got interesting shit from retards. Retards with money are as useful as Investment Banks, they don't make anything to give the world, but they give their money to someone else that does and then the government has to give them welfare because they shit their pants too much. But it wasn't just retards that shit their panties... when UMVC3 was released so soon, people went apeshit. Maybe they didn't get the memo that that's how buying shit works. You are supposed to buy shit that you like and then it and things like it gets made again. You're not supposed to not buy shit that you like. Even fucking retard in the 90s knew that. There are indie games and then there are triple A games - the mid-tier games don't exist anymore, and 1 or 2 AAA games are all some studios budget out. The mid-tier is gone now. In the 90s, Capcom made SF2 for SNES and then they made SF2 for the Amiga. Is that really that crazy? Imagine being a Capcom employee in the 90s and you're coming back from your lunchbreak, which was a few days longer than you expected, in Italy, and you knew that you could make a profit by putting your game on a system that nobody has anyway - those SF2 devs had so much money that they didn't know what to do with: they literally did not know what to do with it. They made an Amiga SF2, an Atari SF2, a Commodore 64 SF2 - then they made some more SF2s, then they got millions of dollars for it. To this day, nobody knows what an Amiga is, yet they still pulled a profit on just the people that bought Amiga by accident. That's the 90s in a nutshell, you can make whatever you want because and you can make a profit from people that buy your shit by accident, and if you can't, you really had nothing to offer anyone. Buy more shares of Pets.com, it's 1997. Rocks.com and BagofEmptyAir.com are booming in the futures market. IT's the 90s and everything is great. This gravy train will never end." A few friends made Doom in a garage in a few months, and the economy had to start paying them in pussy because the dollars were all being used up. John Carmack was literally paid in stinky pussy for a few years. And this is why half of the 29+ year olds thought "Rai-You" says "Dookan" btw - nobody cared that Street Fighter sounded like shit, calculators were powered by lemons like 5 years before SF and you could make money investing in an internet company that sold ugly milk. There was a market for people that wanted to buy milk that was ugly. It was the 90s. You could make money just combining shit for no reason. In the 80s, Marketing scored it big by combining raisins and smokey black jazz musicians. To reiterate, they gave raisins blackface, and then told you that they go in your mouth, and ugh it was just gross - and back in the 80s, black people weren't useful or well-liked by white people until Social Networking, so really, the California Raisins were 0 for 0. Huge success. The 90s made Pogs successful. Pogs combined cardboard with itself to make garbage. And it was a phenomenon. You can't afford to make Street Fighter V in 2015, but we figured out a way to make people trade circles with value called money for circles of trash called cardboard, and then they sold us containers for that trash too: and nobody thought, hey isn't this Pogtainer a minitrash can? Did they sell me a mini trash can and call it a Pogtainer? Nobody just stopped and said, "Am I sure this isn't just a little trash can for cardboard?" for at least 4 years. People played with cardboard circles for longer than they played Street Fighter X Tekken, get your head in the game, Capcom. ...you can't afford to make your flagship fighting game. That's a problem. Just fucking scale back the technology already and make profitable games again. Games are too fucking expensive to make. Next gen is a disaster. It's unsustainable, just let it die. Start from scratch, bring back Lycos, pogs, ace of base, jell pens, and every other 90s codeword for trash because as soon as we start giving garbage value, so too will we get back to giving value to actual things. The commodification of capitalism was supposed to be scary because of the fear that we'll pump out shitty things that would sell. It's much scarier than that. We pump out shitty things that don't sell, and there are 9000 people waiting in line to do it, anyway. 9000 Bangladeshis working over the internet. 9000 people who work a day job on Reddit and Wikipedia, 9000 experts with LifeHack blogs stealing the same idea about saving money on shaving cream ortelling you why it's bad to shampoo your hair, 9000 girls who realize that they're not pretty enough to get paid to be naked unless they get cum in their mouth, the list goes on. In the 90s, If you waited 6 months, a computer three times more powerful came out, and internet speeds doubled - now instead of new computers, we look forward to pornstars that may or may not swallow cum. The innovation and progress of capitalism is truly upon us. We don't dare to wonder about things like space exploration as we stand in front of a threshold of doubt and a frontier unknown and take a step anyway. If we can't make spaceships, or find gratification in the grandiosity of an intrinsic sense of coming closer to something bigger than yourself, then just give me the porn. Everything is free, and if it's not, keep checking bittorrent, because it's probably fucking free. We forgot how to love, and when we see girls that love cum, we start to wonder and believe that we can love again, too. I'm not a homo, but that cum makes me feel things. And even if I was, she can guzzle cum like an Irishman at a swim-meet, i'll never love cum like that, not no way, not no how, not like that...and she does it for almost free, depending on how ugly she is. That's love. That's what I felt like the first time I played SFII - it kills me to know that the best times are behind me, and the closest I was to ever getting to experiencing what the true love of a mouthful of cum is like was when I was a supple, young child of 8. Things changed quickly because development costs were lower and shit was insanely expensive - Hardware and software was much more expensive than it is now - people paid $70 to $80 in 1990 dollars. That's crazy. People just threw money everywhere. There were companies that helped people sell things on Ebay, and they made a living. You can't even make a living on ebay selling things yourself. And the stockmarket proved that pyramid schemes could make you profitable - as long as someone that wasn't you had the shares of the hyper-inflated startup that tanked, it didn't matter that you made $50,000 buying options in a company that sells candy for raccoons, that's 50,000 shares someone who isn't me is stuck with. Chuck ROck 2 being $70 in 90s dollars makes a lot more sense now that people are burning money and raccoons have lollipops in their mouth, doesn't it? Square could justify selling a Final Fantasy game on a TI-83 calculator and still pull a profit. When a developer said "Jump" to a publisher for funding, they asked "How high?" right after "Are there at least 20 fat kids that are interested in buying this game to cover the entire budget?" Some of the most unlikeable, unfocus-tested, bullshit could make money because kids had grandparents. Nobody buys shit by accident and keeps it anymore, they'll argue on Apple tech support to get a refund for their 2.99 phone game. Why would you pay 60 bucks for a game with a caveman in it - they have never been able to make Cavemen likeable. But the 90s could try Encino Man, Chuck Rock, Joe and Mac, Flintstones, Adventure Island, Tomba... movies and games etc - what changed? Cave Men sure as fuck didn't - they literally sold Cave Man games to people and made a profit, now nobody wants to play cave man games? Fuck out of here. Cave Man games didn't change. People just don't want to waste their money playing as a Cave Man and they're willing to return the game and admit that they bought a game to play as someone stupider than they are. We can try to make the cave man cool, we can get Brendon Frasier, we can give them dinosaurs to ride on - no, like we have the internet now, nobody wants to play as a fucking cave man, not even by accident anymore. We're done. Nobody has made a cave man game since the 90s. Steam has a no-return policy and nobody so people will make sure they don't buy cave man games. There are no cave men in League of Legends or Dota. There are no Caveman in fucking any game that anyone likes. Would you rather live in an era where you could make money making things nobody likes and other things people like, or begging Capcom to look under the couch for development money for their most famous game that people already like. We had a market that was able to sustain CaveMan games being sold for 140 inflation adjusted dollars sounds bad, but let me tell you, Chuck Rock sold enough to get a Chuck Rock 2...on the Amiga, Amiga CD32, Sega Game Gear, Sega Mega-CD, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Try to sell me Chuck Rock 2 in 2015, I dare you. I fucking double dog dare you. Kickstarter's incentive system better find a way to account for sloppy, almost blasphemous blowjobs, if they want to sell Chuck Rock in 2015. Pile of shit. Novelty was everywhere because innovation was highly rewarded in a society that valued things. You open up a magazine and see new games all the time: "What's this? Samurai Showdown? That's different." Nevermind that I have to go to the arcade and pay enough quarters to hear what Ryu says clearly, look at all these games we're getting. Now that people can understand what Ryu says at home, arcades are fucking dead. Oh, yeah, what a coincidence. As soon as Ryu doesn't talk through a speak-and-spell arcades die. Yeah no connection. I'm 12, I can make money at school selling Mortal Kombat fatalities because information has value when nobody has access to it. Is that a good thing? Fuck no, it's not a good thing. But I made it a good thing. I convinced a kid that Kitana has a "Fuck-Ality" and charged him $5. I wrote random button presses on a napkin and made money for it. If that's wrong, I don't want to be right. No James, I wrote the code down right, you're just doing it wrong - keep trying if you want to see titties. "Keep trying for titties" - the maxim that made people who they were before the internet. We had to try for those titties, and we always did. Kids risked juvenile records to steal dirty magazines of porn that wouldn't stimulate a 13 year old's dick in 2015. There was porn in the everyone's woods, and for some reason, it was always of fat girls with like, i don't know, gunshot wounds and stretch marks..real nasty bitches..it was just fucking gross, but in the 90s you found beauty in anything, especially because seeing areolas was a rarity for a kid. Why is it always the same woman, though? It was the same fat bitch with the bruises and shit all over her thighs. She was the Heidi Klume of porn-woods. Kids these days can spell titties wrong in Google and Google will correct them. No trying at all. "You Searched for: Parks in Connecticut? Did you mean: Steaming Hot Latina Pussy and if so, I found a few videos that you might be interested in.. i mean, it's whatever, no big deal, it's just instant 40 minutes of 1080p pussy and you're 13, so you probably aren't making a decision consciously anyway, but just thought I'd ask...dude this is crazy, girls are practically dying to give their picture away on these sites man, we've got all these results for you for free! Yo, you're so lucky I'm hooking you up, like 15 years ago all I had were the same 12 Jenna Jameson pics for some kid. Got him super hard, though. I'm Google. I feel kinda bad that you're 13 years old and you can't get fully hard unless I bring you weird shit like girls with cocks fucking clowns in the ass. You can't get hard from regular porn, and If someone calls you a faggot for liking videos of girls with cocks, which seems reasonable considering I remember when all I had to do was find kids pics of Sable from WWF, then Twitter will make sure your parents will lose their job for transphobia. The only time a kid is reduced to jacking off to a woman that looked like she went down all the broken rides at the waterpark at Great Adventure is because he can't get off to normal women anymore because he's been exposed to so much porn. Weird shit is everywhere now. Cuckolding is its own category on porn sites - that shit never existed in the past. Now obese women with thighs covered in black and blues are starting to become a category, instead of something you shame-cummed to after finding in the woods. This is not what I had in mind when I thought Capitalism would ensure that the cream was supposed to rise to the top. The most undesirable and obese filth-hogs are more desireable than supermodels, because nobody can jack off to girls in swimsuits, not even 11 year olds. Supermodels don't make money. If you're a woman and you're getting paid for having your picture taken, it's probably because cum is being dumped on your face. The Age of Pussy Deflation - the internet age - where 50 minute porn videos are just a click away. Pussy just pussy now homie. Imagine telling Cindy Crawford, "Hey, you're really hot and everything, but if you don't get some semen in that mouth before you turn 39, I'm not quite sure you'll capture the MILF market, which is a great market, don't get me wrong, but it's heavily targeted towards black men, which is fine, but it overlaps with the market of guys who don't like black guys in porn, and you have to take a side, Cindy. Which side are you on, Cindy? This is a big decision for you Cindy - are you yay or nay on the black cock? And keep in mind, both parties want to see your mouth full of sperm. Yeah, I know it's kinda different than what you're used to, but Porn Stars are the new supermodels. We've all got cum in our mouths now, Cindy, it's up to you to decide how much you wanna get paid for it. She would probably get a job at Trader Joes. A woman like that lived in an era where her titties made her a millionaire, and they were covered up and now you expect her to put a cock in her ass for a 40 minute video you won't ever pay her for? But you will pay for Anita Sarkeesian's Patreon because you masturbate to dirty filth-women, but princess peach is a national treasure. Ono couldn't get enough money to develop Capcom's FLAGSHIP fighting game even after it was hugely successful because games take years and millions of dollars in 2015. And there is still some kid in a ketchup-stained novelty gaming shirt complaining about the textures. "Oh, this looks like ass. Oh his hair looks like bananas. Oh this design is dumb." Nigga, I found out about T-Hawk by opening up a magazine and reading an article written by a community college dropout that could still find work in the field because the publication market was healthy. You could NOT get hyped about T Hawk. For one, he was mexican - which was very unimpressive in the 90s. Hot sauce or premium burrito places or whatever hipster bullshit that made Mexicans so cool today didn't have fucking retards cheerleading it. Burritos were good, but not This Needs a Subreddit good. For 2, he's fucking stupid, okay? "Oh, this Mexican Mestizo fights to defend his homeland." Oh great, now the Mexicans are invading our videogames and I have to fight for his right to be here, too? Fuck it, it's the 90s. This might have value. I paid money for an Aerosmith CD, and I didn't realize what a ripoff it was until I was able to download music for free. Turns out music is free all the time. If someone puts a sticker on a CD, be careful because music is actually free. It's worth nothing. You can just get it. In the 90s, we didn't know that. We didn't know music was worth nothing and Columbia House sent us Alannis Moresette cds in the mail and charged us for it, we said, "Oh these cds are an investment. I can sell these back for 5x the amount. It's the 90s, even Alannis Moresette is worth something. Now level with me here, if Rush or Pink Floyd or whatever has a sticker on it that says $20, what are the chances that another musician, totally unrelated to them are worth exactly the same? The 90s made sure that whatever was worth less, was more valuable because of everything else. It was the Friendly Capitalism of the 90s - If you made a Genesis game, and you played as a rodent of some sort, then godamnit, Sonic ain't the only $60 ticket in town. Make the filthy fucking rodent say "gnarly" a few times and do me a favor, stop being a worrying faggot and get him a pair of sunglasses. Of course you're gonna make a profit it's the 90s. Nobody knows what they're doing and we're making a killing.. I'll give T Hawk a chance. I gave Dhalsim a chance, and I know I'm genuinely not racist because there's no way I can tweet about it to everyone, so that must mean it's true. You can't confirm racism anymore - not being racist can sometimes be hard, but writing hashtags are always easy - and the benefits from getting high fives from cool black people come faster in the latter case. You can have your cake and eat it too, in 2015 - and then you can take a picture of your cake and lament about how "Trayvon would've turned 19 today...this cake is for him." But as soon as you log off, Trayvon's cake is as dead as he is. And lucky for you, you can eat dead cakes because you're a selfish fat fuck sycophant that gets self-congratulatory black people to retweet your cake-morality. "The cake is a lie" you laugh to yourself, because memes are a thing now too. What a faggot you are, you wish you could tell yourself. Also we were used to getting games all the time, so it didn't really matter. A game could be developed in a year, risk being innovative with characters and systems, and still pull a profit because they didn't have a $5 million dollar Chun-Li's Eyelash Physics Studio. You think Darkstalkers is even a thing anymore? Capcom will sooner develop a game where Cops kill black people to get that Twitter cash and keep the Darkstalkers name in one go. That's called a two-fer. Darkstalkers is now a survival horror game. Resident Evil 4 let you kill Africans, now DarkStalkers is a game about cops stalking black people. The cops are female so it's okay. Kotaku writes, " Goodbye Darkstalkers the fighting game, hello DarkStalkers: The SocioPolitical Commentary" - people flip their shit on Twitter "Capcom is politically and socially conscious? Finally!" Finally Capcom is taking a political stance. I was worried about them. Capcom. The company that can't afford to make the most popular fighting game on earth, after the most successful iteration of their game in decades, finally DarkStalkers is saying something...oh and it has an unreleased Macklemore track? Where do I sign up for this? I thought I wanted a horror-themed fighting game that aestheticized everything awesome about design in a solid fighting game, but nah, this got the Feminist Frequency "This is Fine For Now" award. Fuck off. This is not fine. Fuck off with this shit. You're killing games. Nothing is fine for now, it's all fucked up when I could get 3 Darkstalkers games in 4 years and now I have to embarrass myself by being middle-aged faggot when FFXVI comes out. By the time the next Final Fantasy game comes out, who knows? I might be dead, so I have to settle for playing this shit. I don't want to play as a bunch of queers. I shouldn't have to plan how I want to be ashamed 9 years in advance, but this is what the gaming industry has done. If you go to the Capcom offices and ask, "When are we getting another Darkstalkers?" 2 things happen: The first thing is that Capcom starts laughing in your fat fucking face. "It costs more to make Ryu's hair look like not-bananas than it did to make Darkstalkers 3, and that was all of our not-bananas budget that has to last until the Ken DLC. We can make 5 Darkstalkers games a year, or we can not make Ryu have hair that looks like bananas, and trust us, they really look like bananas no matter what we do. It costs millions of dollars to get the bananas out of his hair - Playstation 4 is so advanced, but unfortunately bananas happen until millions of dollars and a few months gets them off. Right now the bananas are on Ken, but we expect to make those bananas go away too when Sony fixes the overdraw issue on our credit line. Event Hubs and NeoGaf are posting gifs of Ken's Hair and Shoryuken has started blogging about it - they are at max cpm, we can't fight it, we just have to pay to un-banana everything. Thanks to technology, it'll only put us back about...yeah, 7 theoretical DarkStalkers games. We can bear that cost, I think - I think we can recoup 40 Dino Crisis games if we hit our sales targets. Capcom financial information is quantified by the dead games it has because it's easier to understand for people in a world where NOTHING IS FUCKING VALUABLE. YOU CAN'T FUND YOUR OWN STREET FIGHTER GAME, THAT IS A RED FLAG. WHEN YOUR GAME COSTS 93.4 BREATH OF FIRES TO ANIMATE SOME NO-NAME SWEATER WEARING FAGGOT IN THE BACKGROUND STAGE, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. You don't even have enough money to give him any context - he cheers when both players die and when both players win, and he sure as fuck isn't cheering about street fighting in general, because he continues to cheer after the match ends. Just fucking don't have him at all, save your money at that point. Just fucking put the money elsewhere, no not in the fucking un-Banana hair jar - that's a waste of money too! Oh my god, you people have no fucking clue. What happened to you Capcom. What happened to you that you give anyone who says the word "Fundmantals" on EventHubs a job. You're Combofiending again. Combofiending the death of your company, and you pathetic bastards can't even see it. He spells every other word wrong on the Capcom blogs, but we Combofiending. Peter spelled Dragon Punch wrong again...Ahhh...we can't fire him now, we Combofiending. Peter, you need to proofread your work. But we Combofiending. The second thing that happens when you ask about Darkstalkers? EventHubs posts about how Capcom doesn't give a shit about their old IPs. Ono makes a statement on Twitter, "no, no no, we love our fans, but we can't afford to make a PS4 Darkstalkers game!" EventHubs posters come together, "How depressing. Capcom is just sitting on all their mega-fortune IPs! They don't know how to run a videogame company!" and make an online petition . "Ono-San, If this petition gets 92 signatures, will you release Darkstalkers 4?" Ono responds, "Listen all DarkStalk Fan! Sony no money for Capcom. Money hard to find for DarkStalkers series just like nut hard to find for squirrel in winter. Breath of Fire phone game now! So sad!" EventHubs and Shoryuken get an influx of inquiries about DarkStalkers and the Fighting Game community and blogosphere lights up. Everyone talks about how good DarkStalkers is, many of whom played it for 4 minutes at a roller rink are using words like "fundamentals" and "footsies" to make sure they sound legit. Capcom eventually realizes that they can make a $40 total profit if the online commotion of DarkStalkers is any indication of market interest. Ono petitions Jewish financiers to get funding after Sony's refusal. Darkstalkers 4 is a reality but Capcom will be indebted to Schlekestein Brothers investment bank for the rest of the company's life span. OH, and Part of the deal is that Ono has to join the IDF, too. Ono writes "I did it for you hardcore Darkstalkers fans!" when he shows off pics of himself in his IDF uniform in Israel." "This me serving our investors!" and holds up his little blanka figure in the foreground of a picture of a dead Palestinian child - you can't put blanka in front of everything and have it be funny. Nobody gives a FUCK that this is going on Ono's twitter, all they care about is that in the reveal trailer that was just released..and that Felicia's fur doesn't have real-time physics.."It's a war crime!". Everyone that pretended to like DarkStalkers is now on NeoGaf writing in a thread about how important 60 FPS fur physics are to the competitive scene. All posts start and end with, "Remember SF X Tekken". Kotaku releases a video showing that female representation per male representation in the trailer is problematic. Many refuse to buy a game that doesn't support 4k resolution. "Inadequate texture filter for a 2016 game" starts trending on Twitter. Surprisingly, the Jewish narrative in the trailer is universally praised. IGN lauds the trailer: "Capcom has taken Sasquatch and has evolved him in a bold and innovative new direction: He is now able to talk, which he does before every match by explaining why the Iran nuclear deal is bad for the western world." The Jewish direction is extolled by the FGC, as well: Maximillian makes a "I react to Demitri's yarmulka DLC announcement" video, which is publicized on all the major primetime news shows and Max is given a timeslot after Bill Maher. His show is similar to his Twitch channel: It's called "Assist Me" and he just asks for donations, which he gets. "Capcom is daring to be political in the current climate!" they say. Ryu takes up rabbinical study, eats kosher, and uses a bulldozer every 6 months to destroy Palestinian banks. Ono realizes that this is the key to the game's success, so he announces that "Holocaust-Remembrance costume pack in the works!" and he makes the Guinness book of world records for Most Retweeted Advertisement on Twitter. Everything is looking great for Darkstalkers 4 again. Then it happens: Chaos. Ono opens Arturo Sanchez Rosetta Stone.exe to translate what every 14 year old white kid in the suburbs is screaming over on Twitter. "4-frame buffer window? What a blowup. Frauds will body gdlk players. Dead game, says a kid with very thin wrists. "Trailer shows hard knockdowns on DP. Game is so dead." Ono tries to reply with his broken english into the his Rosetta Stone software but the program can't parse it. Ono's plea for the fgc to "No worry! We work on game and make better!" translates into "I have serious apprehensions about Zionism and Israel's use of unilateral force in Gaza and other occupied territories." People are disgusted by Ono's antisemitism and refuse to wait. Ono pleads, "Just give Capcom some time!" "Remember SF X Tekken?" says a cool kid on Twitter with an anime avatar. He gets a few retweets but no girls. "Because you certainly don't remember the 8 million." Okay now that gets him some girl retweets. Now that pussy is on the line, he's fighting for Israel. Ono realizes the perennial insight - the ultimate epiphany - if he, as an IDF soldier and puppet of the Israeli nation can be anti-semitic, is everything meaningless? Just as information has lost value in the internet age, so does the meaning of language itself atrophy too? Does everything die "just like Street Fighter X Tekken" and does nothing ever truly live, "just like Street Fighter X Tekken"? The irony is that the Holocaust wiped out the Jews from the streets without so much as a fight, but the Jews killed street fighter with the Holocaust. See how smart shit sounds when you reverse the sentences. Have you ever thought that perhaps smart shit is reversing the sentences? That is the second thing that happens.

Chapter 1

For decades, humans and a dozen other races expanded through local star systems, competing against each other but never gaining a significant enough advantage to allow one to dominate.

This continued until the Dominion arrived. A massive ship flew through known space, indifferent to the calls of inhabitants. Making no attempt at first contact, the ship ignored all sentients in its path, passing through every battle line unscathed, and instead dropped a mining station in a white dwarf star. Shortly after, a Dominion base was established in an nearby uninhabited system.

Confused, the humans and other races continued their attempts to communicate with the obviously vastly superior technology. Other Dominion ships came and went, often under military guard, but paid no attention to the line of ships outside their base and the sublight radio waves they were transmitting.

Finally, the commander must have gotten tired of seeing ships milling around and built a radio to initiate contact. He didn’t say much other than introducing himself and his race, and that it was their right as Class Two species to have a Dominion ambassador if they requested one. Despite the differences between the assembled aliens, they unanimously agreed.

A month later, Laen arrived from the Dominion.

The ambassador from Ultrua waved his tentacles around excitedly in the drab room. On the other side, seated in a comfortable but equally drab couch, the Dominion’s representative sat trying to focus on the words coming from the translator and not the non-sensible tentacle waving.

Laen nodded enthusiastically, trying to end the conversation. “Yes, ambassador, I agree completely. No, I can’t do that. Not even a little. Yes, as I previously mentioned—“

His next sentence was a little more excited than she liked and she dodged a tentacle that seemed aimed at her, although the translator on her arm assured her it meant ‘slime accumulated between shower tiles.’

“Ambassador, I realize Household Artificial Intelligence is your main export. No, I cannot authorize any trade of Dominion technology. Yes, I’m sure they’re very good machines—fine. I’ll take one.”

She almost immediately regretted agreeing to purchase something, as the Ultruin’s gesticulations became even faster. Laen struggled to keep up with the translator.

“Again, I can’t offer technology. How about…ah…umm…Gold! I’ll give you thirty tons of gold,” she said, suddenly remembering that the ambassador for the Achrans had promised that exact amount in exchange for a mineral survey of a nearby planet. She didn’t know what the market price for gold was in this sector, but she didn’t care. It was useless to the Dominion after they had moved to subspace quantum technologies centuries ago.

Judging from the way the Utruin was moving its entire body now, Laen guessed he was getting the better side of this deal.

“Yes sir, I agree. I’m happy we could come to an agreement. If you’ll excuse me, I have other duties to attend to.” She pointed to the door emphatically, and the ambassador reluctantly began oozing out of the room while continuing to jabber away in his native tongue. Or rather, tentacle.

“Yes, I’m sure. Wait no, just one. No, one unit, not one shipment.” She slammed the door closed after checking to make sure no tentacles were still inside the doorframe.

Laen fell on the couch, mildly hoping it would collapse and she would be seriously injured, just to bring some excitement to the day. She hated this. She had a promising career in a completely different field, and suddenly her life was turned around and sent to the darkest corner of the galaxy, just because some knuckle dragging squid who hadn’t figured out how to build nanoscopic singularities requested an ambassador.

She recognized the flaw in her last thought just as her wrist computer buzzed again. Angrily, she slapped the button. “What?”

The secretary recoiled on the screen, but remained professional. “Your next appointment is here.”

Laen forced herself to calm down. It wasn’t the secretary’s fault. In fact, she probably didn’t want to be here any more than Laen did. “Already? Did my last appointment go long?”

“I’m afraid so.” Laen wasn’t surprised. The Ultruin like to talk. Or punch. Whatever served as communication for his species.

“Alright send him in. Or her. Or it. Whatever comes through the door.” She ended the call and leaned back on the couch again, silently willing the supports to fail.

The door opened and a being two meters tall and relatively skinny stepped through. He seemed much more like what a proper sentient should look like. Her own race was not much different, except that she had blue skin. “You must be Laen. I am Bradley Cardot, the representative of the Human…” his voice trailed off as he saw the simple chair opposite the couch where Laen was seated, still covered in slime from the Utruin ambassador.

“I’m so sorry! Let me get a new one.” She activated her wrist computer. “Gren, I’m sorry to bother you,” she said apologetically, hoping it would make up for her outburst earlier. “The gentleman from the Human…sorry, who are you representing again?”

“The Human Confederation.”

“Right. Of course. Anyway, the chair is soaked and we need a new one. Can you grab one from…somewhere?” Her voice dropped almost to pleading. She couldn’t think of words any more. If anything else went wrong, she silently swore she would abandon all attempts of diplomacy and spend the rest of the day in a hot bath.

The secretary delivered a clean chair and dragged the soiled one out of the room, trails of slime following it. Laen suddenly had a horrible thought about where the ‘slime accumulated between shower tiles’ the Ultruins were so vehement about came from.

Mister Cardot sat in the clean chair and opened his briefcase as the door shut. “Miss Laen—I’m sorry, how do you wish to be called?”

“Laen is fine. It’s the only name I have, besides my social identifier number.”

“Right. Thank you again for seeing me. On behalf of the Human Confederation I’d like to welcome you and extend—“

“I cannot offer Dominion technology under any circumstances.” That was the first thing every diplomat asked for. Maybe she could save some time in this appointment and take a break before the next.

“I wasn’t…I didn’t finish…” The ambassador trailed off. Laen wished he would hurry up and leave. Her professional demeanor failed and she felt her face scowl as she tried and failed to keep smiling.

The human stared at her quizzically. “Are you okay?”

Laen was not prepared for that. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You don’t seem to be very happy right now. Is everything alright?”

She stared back for a few seconds. “No, it’s ‘fine’. Everything’s just peachy,” she bit out sarcastically. “You want to know how ‘fine’ this is?”

Bradley looked concerned, but she continued. The flood gates were open, and she was going to have her say.

“I didn’t want to be an ambassador! I was never interested in diplomacy or politics or xenos or any of that! I’m an accountant! Do you want to know how I got here?”

Bradley was silent.

“I was meeting a colleague in the government center. I walked past the door to the Executive Director of External Affairs and Relations Regulations Committee’s Record Keeper’s Assistant’s office, and the Record Keeper was in there talking to his assistant and he came out and almost bumped into me and he shoved an envelope at me and said ‘there’s a ship leaving the galaxy from dock one twenty four in fifteen minutes be on it and here’s everything you need to know.’” She was almost crying as she babbled.

The man had stayed perfectly still throughout her tirade. Laen hardly noticed as she launched into the next part. She had revealed too much, she thought. How would she fix this latest blunder? Hot tub for a day wouldn’t be enough. Not even a week. And what about Bradley Cardot? She didn’t even pause in telling him her deepest concerns. She couldn’t allow him to leave with that information. She would have to arrange an accident of some kind and get a new human ambassador. She had never killed or ordered anyone murdered before, and the thought made her stop mid-sentence.

She would have to consider how to deal with Bradley later. While she had a captive audience, she may as well spill her feelings, even if she had to kill him later to cover it up.

“Nobody cares. They never cared,” she said tiredly. “Do you know I had over a hundred coworkers? I was connected to the net during the whole trip. The only message I got the entire month I was traveling here was an automated mail to inform me of my job change.”

She turned around and dug through her bag. “See this pamphlet?” She held it up for him. It was a folded paper with a pleasing yellow color, titled “So You’ve been Conscripted to be an Ambassador? How to Avoid Embarrassing Yourself and the Dominion”. She tossed it to him and he broke his pose to catch it from the air. “That’s what they gave me to prepare me for this role. The Dominion doesn’t care about me enough to train me. They don’t care about you enough to send someone competent. There’s nothing you can offer them and they know it. I’m only here to satisfy some archaic rule somewhere.”

Bradley was flipping through the pamphlet. “This says you can order a preemptive strike against Class two civilizations!”

“Yeah, it does. Technically, beyond my presence and availability as a representative of the Dominion, you don’t have any rights at all. My contact at the Forms and Regulations for the Department of Ethical Treatment of Inferior Sentients and Species told me which forms to fill out to have any inhabited planet here glassed by the military with no questions asked, and no one back home would even blink. I could make myself the governor of all your planets and parade Dominion military ships around as long as I had the right documents to make the captains go where I wanted.”

Bradley was oddly calm at the revelation, and continued to read the pamphlet unaware that she was still considering revoking his living privileges after the conversation.

Laen sat in the couch and continued while he read. “Our technology is so much more advanced than yours. I’m not trying to be insulting, that’s just how it is. Our two civilizations don’t need any of the same materials. We’re only in this galaxy to mine white dwarf stars, and you’re still scraping asteroids for resources. If you didn’t try and make contact, we could have lived in the same sector for decades and never crossed paths.”

The human ambassador nodded. “Our people have a theory called the Fermi Paradox. It’s basically what you just said, where an alien civilization is so advanced they have no interest in us, maliciously or otherwise.”

Laen nodded. “Just a few minutes ago, I traded thirty tons of gold for a robot that changes the thermostat! I don’t want a robot! I’ll probably dump it out the airlock without opening it.”

Bradley’s jaw dropped at the price of a House AI. “That’s quite a lot.” He closed the pamphlet. “Do you know what you need? A vacation.”

She was about to ask what that was when he pulled his own computer from his pocket and turned it on. Although it looked similar, she was certain it was ancient technology compared to hers.

“Check this out. This is a beach in the Bahamas.” He turned the screen to show her.

Every hot bath she had ever had paled in comparison to the paradise in front of her. She could tell the temperature of the vista just by the reflection of the sunlight on the water, which stretched to the horizon. Never on all the city planets she had lived on could she have imagined so much wasted space.

She could almost feel the water on her body, and had an intense urge to know what the sand would be like under her feet.

“It’s beautiful.”

“Come on. I’ll take you.”

“I can’t. I have my duties to attend to, and I think I have to be impartial.”

“Not at all. Like you said, the Dominion doesn’t care what you do. You can even accept bribes.”

That made her pause. “Really?”

“Yeah. It was in the manual. Page fourteen, I think.”

“It explicitly said that?”

“From ‘unenlightened civilizations with no relevance to the Dominion’, yes.” He opened the pamphlet and pointed to a paragraph.

“Wow. I must have dozed off for that part. But you’ll still use this as leverage in negotiations, or something. How do I know I can trust you?”

He looked at her with something she couldn’t quite understand. Maybe pity, or compassion. “You said no one cares about you, that you weren’t important. I’m telling you that you are important. To everyone in this sector, you are the most important person in the universe. You have the fates of billions in your hands, even if they belong to Class two civilizations. We have to trust you to do the best you can.”

When she didn’t say anything he continued. “If you look upwards to the Dominion, you’ll find what you said is true. You and your job are completely irrelevant to them. But we, who you’ve been placed in charge of, care very much about you. Even if it’s only in our best interest.” He smiled. “I’ll make sure your trip isn’t interrupted with any diplomacy stuff. Unless you’d like some actual training.”

She laughed. “That would give you a huge advantage against everyone else in the sector.”

Bradley only smiled.

Laen nodded. She knew he was just diplomatic, being nice to the person with big guns behind her, but right now she didn’t care. “Alright. Let’s go.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah.” She activated her wrist computer. “Gren? Cancel all my appointments for the next month. I’m going with Mister Cardot. And use my diplomatic credit to treat yourself to something.”

One week later.

Laen was sprawled on the beach, her knees soaking in the gentle waves while her back relaxed in the heat from the sand. She had made Bradley find the exact spot in the picture, and he assured her she was lying on the very grains of sand depicted.

The beach was deserted aside from her, a waiter holding a half empty cooler full of beverages, and two dozen armed guards hiding out of view.

She had no idea what day it was. Bradley had promised two weeks of uninterrupted relaxation, and true to his word no one was able to introduce themselves without going through both his bodyguards and hers. Just beyond the horizon, she was sure, swarms of boats still challenged the police blockade, but here it was completely peaceful.

An annoying buzzing wafted over the breeze from her cabin. She had brought her wrist computer on the chance she might need it, but she hadn’t looked at it once since she got here. There was no need for any communication, as far as she was concerned. She had told her ship she would be back in touch and that she hadn’t been kidnapped and there would be no need for the Dominion to abduct another passerby to maintain headcount.

It was nice here. She should leave the ship and set up shop on Earth. It would give the humans an unfair advantage but who cares?

She did. She cared. Bradley was the only one who cared enough to ask if she was okay. She could care about them in return.

Laen applied another layer of sunscreen purposefully designed for her blue skin and laid back on the sand, closing her eyes. She had almost fallen asleep when she suddenly bolted upright.

“I forgot to give the Ultruins their gold!”

Chapter 2

Laen walked onto the cramped bridge of her Dominion-issued diplomatic shuttle to see the full force of the Ultruin battle fleet arrayed before her.

The shuttle’s pilot, sitting in the chair on the left, greeted her with a wave before turning back to the controls with boredom. She couldn’t blame him. Nothing exciting was going to happen for a long time.

She wondered what she was wearing, but couldn’t risk taking the time to look. The only thing worse than showing up in your pajamas to a diplomatic incident was showing up in pajamas and then appearing embarrassed about it.

On screen, the Ultruin ambassador was gesticulating angrily, unaware that Laen had only now gotten up from her bed.

It didn’t matter. The Ultruan language was usually fast and chaotic, with multiple tentacles making signs at the same time. But now the ambassador was using a very formal, very slow pattern. The movements took long enough to communicate anything that a few minutes of skimming the text logs was enough to catch up on his ramblings.

Once she finished, she interrupted the Ultruin. “Thank you for that speech, ambassador, but there’s no need to declare war. I have your gold in an Achran bank. I will tell them to transfer it immediately.”

She let her mind wander while the translation of the alien’s words crawled across the screen. There was a lot of movement for so little communication. It took about fifty separate gestures to form one word. Why was this language so inefficient? She glanced at the screen again and saw he was only half finished with his sentence.

What was in the kitchen? The tiny shuttle boasted a one-square-meter kitchenette with all the amenities of a fourth-class restaurant in the middle of a random slum back home. There should be some leftover green paste, or was it the orange paste? If Gren ate all the green paste while Laen had been on vacation, she was going to have some harsh words for her.

Her mind came back to the moment to see the Ultruin staring at her silently. After a look at the text logs, she forced her nicest diplomatic smile for the being threatening her life.

“Again, I apologize for the delay, but surely if I add a late-payment fee to what I owe you we can leave as friends. It’s not as if you’ve delivered the AI either, right?”

The shuttle pilot cleared his throat. Laen glanced over at him. He was pointing at a cardboard box sitting in the co-pilot’s seat across the aisle. It had Ultruin shipping labels plastered all over it like a hobo’s attempt at wallpaper. Laen briefly wondered what address they used to ship it to her shuttle in the middle of empty space.

“Alright, so you have delivered the AI. But is thirty tons of gold really worth declaring war over?”

The Ultruin gestured some more. Laen leaned over to the pilot. “When we’re done here, toss the box out the airlock,” she whispered. The pilot nodded.

“Really? Wars of reimbursement are permitted for transactions over twenty thousand Konevs? And I suppose thirty tons of gold is more than twenty thousand?”

More gesturing.

“That’s great, but we surrender. We’re willing to hand over what we owe you. No need for hostilities, right?”

Still more gesturing. Where had she seen those movements before? Suddenly she remembered and now she couldn’t get the memories out of her head. The Sushi place with Mark had been a disaster. First of all he was as generic as possible, without a single defining trait. And then the giant tentacle monster the chefs were about to serve somehow escaped and gobbled Mark up. At least he wasn’t able to ask for a second date, and when the Dominion army finally dealt with the monster the sushi was surprisingly good, though slightly singed. Laen watched the Ultruin and wondered if he had any distant relatives in her home galaxy.

“Alright fine, have it your way.” She turned the viewscreen off and turned to the pilot. “In case you didn’t get that, the entire People’s Republic of Ultrua has declared war on me personally, and the Dominion by extension.”

“I didn’t, thanks. Was I supposed to be paying attention?”

“Nah. I was barely paying attention. So the Ultruins are just going to shoot at us for a while, and then maybe surrender. Tell me if something interesting happens.”

The pilot smirked. “Will do. Class twos, am I right?”

She stopped halfway through the hatch. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He pulled his helmet off so he could turn to face her. “They’re just so dumb! I don’t know why we bother talking to them at all.”

A wing of fighters blazed past the windows, peppering the skin of the craft with tiny kinetic slugs. Realizing the shuttle had no fighter defenses, the fighters slowly flew in front and emptied their magazines into the sitting shuttle. Inside the shuttle, of course, it was completely silent. Laen stepped back into the bridge to address the pilot.

“There are some very nice class two people I met. Just because their civilizations aren’t as old or as advanced as ours doesn’t mean they as individuals aren’t every bit as intelligent as your or I.”

“Ma’am, I don’t mean to insult you, but surely the Ultruins have spent more money on ammo in their little war than they could have made if they just took the gold.”

“The Ultruins might be a special case, but this is still the action of one man. Even with the support of his government. All the others in the fleet are just following orders. You can’t apply a generalization of one individual to an entire group.”

Megaton warheads splattered across the windshield like bugs. The glass automatically polarized to prevent ionizing radiation from reaching the passengers.

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry I insulted your friends. Happy?”

It was probably as good as she was going to get. “Close enough. And thank you for refraining from making that comment while the channel was open.”

The pilot laughed. “No kidding. Do I look like a class two?” A horrified look crossed his face as he realized he made the same joke a second time. “No, I’m sorry. I just-“

Laen smiled. “It’s fine.” She gestured to the light show outside. “Let me know when they get bored.”

Walking back to her room, she stopped at the refresher station to check the mirror. She sighed contentedly. Sometimes, success was not showing up to a declaration of war wearing pajamas. Today’s definition of success meant forgetting to change into pajamas from yesterday’s clothing, and wearing that to a declaration of war instead.

She would take whatever victory she could, especially because Gren had indeed eaten all the green paste and left Laen with the disgusting orange stuff.

Bradley Cardot, the human ambassador looked surprised. “They just opened fire? Then what?”

Laen shrugged and reached across the table for a pitcher of cool-aid. They were sitting in an empty room at a high-end human restaurant reserved for diplomatic events. Being able to order almost any drink known to humanity, Laen naturally chose cool-aid. “I grabbed a snack and went back to bed until they stopped.”

“That’s it? How did it end?”

“After a few hours, I had my pilot fire a warning shot through a small moon. They surrendered after that.”

“What happened to the Household AI? And the thirty tons of gold?”

“According to the document they signed, I returned the AI for a full refund. However, the whole thing started because I forgot to give them the gold, and the Ultruins don’t have thirty tons of their own. To process the whole transaction I have to pay them the original sum, without interest, and then they will refund it back to me.”

Bradley was clearly questioning the mental capacities of the people involved in the surrender document.

“It was seriously the only thing we could agree on. I was ready to give them both the AI and the gold just to get out of the talks a few hours early, but they wouldn’t have it.”

“That does sound like them. It’s still troubling, though. You shouldn’t have been in battle. Doesn’t the Dominion have a military ship you could have called for backup?”

“Well yeah, but I wasn’t in any danger. All Dominion ship hulls are statically placed.”

“What does that mean?”

Laen paused. “You seriously don’t know? As in Universal Static Positioning?”

Bradley shook his head.

“The molecules of the hull are in a form of stasis locked to relative ship position. Nothing except weaponry or tools designed to disrupt that stasis can damage it. Didn’t you already know that?”

He shook his head again.

Laen suddenly had a moment of clarity. “Oh! I keep forgetting you’re a class two, and USP is class seven tech. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you-“

“It’s fine. And I appreciate that you don’t think of us as technologically inferior. Even though we are.”

“Please, don’t mention this to anyone. I’m embarrassed just telling you.”

“Laen, It’s fine. I wasn’t insulted. And I won’t tell anyone.”

The Dominion ambassador breathed easier. “Thanks. But seriously, don’t tell anyone about Static Positioning. I could get court martialed just for saying the name to a class two.”

The Human smiled. “I won’t. Humanity will learn it the hard way when we become class seven. But for now, you can’t continue traveling through space in a shuttle, even with indestructible armor.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Ultruin’s thought they could win against you because all you had was a single shuttle.”

“But there was a Dominion ship only ten minutes away, if I was actually in danger.”

“They knew you weren’t in danger. They wanted to intimidate you. If they were actually declaring war on the Dominion, they would have gone to one of the Dominion bases.”

“I suppose. What do you suggest?”

Bradley smiled wide. “The Human Confederacy would like to offer you a diplomatic warship.”

“A warship? What am I supposed to do with a warship? I don’t think even the Ultruin’s would hesitate to fight someone with one warship.”

“Ah, but it’s not just one warship. It’s one Confederate warship, crewed by humans. If the Ultruins or anyone else open fire on you, they are not only declaring war on the Dominion, who couldn’t care less, but on the Human Confederacy as well. And we do care.”

Laen nodded slowly. “And by riding in your fancy ship, I would also be officially endorsing you.”

The man cocked his head to one side and smiled at her.

She wasn’t sure what to say. Picking up her glass of cool-aid, she maintained eye contact and drank the contents while being intimidating as possible.

Sensing her trepidation, Bradley continued. “I’m sure a Dominion equipped shuttle has every luxury Humans can’t imagine, but it must be extremely cramped on board. You can just park your ship in the hangar and take a stroll down the corridors once in a while-“

Laen choked on the cool-aid and coughed all over the table, narrowly avoiding Bradley. She wiped the liquid running down her chin with her sleeve, abandoning her intimidating stance. “I’m sorry, did you say hangar?”

“Yes. The ship I have in mind has a small hangar that would be more than enough-“

“How big is the kitchen?”

“I don’t know, probably about the size of this room?” He gestured at the walls. They were about ten meters by twelve.

“Do they stock cool-aid?” She asked, while lifting the glass that contained what cool-aid she hadn’t spilled.

“They…certainly can.”

“And do they serve the food we just ate?” Bradley had treated himself to a pork roast, while Laen had consumed five consecutive grilled-cheese sandwiches.

“Not exactly, but we can customize the menu to your liking. All on the Human Confederacy’s bill, of course.”

“I’ll take it!”

Bradley took a deep breath. “I’m glad we could be of service.”

A day later, Laen was almost jumping up and down with excitement. She was trying not to actually jump, because if she had she would have knocked her head on the overhead. The Perseverance was a Human Confederacy heavy cruiser, which meant it was slower than a light cruiser and less armored then a dreadnought.

The passageways were just as cramped as one her shuttle, they just went in straight much lines longer. But there were more open areas, like the gym, hangar, and galley. The bridge was another area with a lot of open space, but that was just to fit more viewscreens and buttons and switches.

Her shuttle, which lacked a name, was parked quietly in one corner of the Perseverance’s hangar. The rest of her crew declined to step onto the “Human death trap” and preferred to stay in a ship that wouldn’t vent atmosphere if it hit a micrometeor going a mere quarter of the speed of light.

The kitchen had been her first stop. It was filled with appliances and machines with functions she couldn’t even guess at, but she made the head chef promise not to start the next meal until she was there to watch. Being able to eat food with texture while being in space would be the ultimate luxury.

Now, she was climbing through the many hatches to get to the bridge. Her first stop as commander of the vessel was the Dominion supply base, one of the two bases operated by the Dominion in this galaxy.

“Have we arrived, captain?”

Captain Williams turned to face her. “Aye, ma’am. We are within radio hailing distance.”

“Open a channel!”

She waited excitedly for something to happen. Nothing did.

“No response.”

“Why would they be ignoring me? Wait, did you say radio?”

“Yes ma’am, our sublight communication is radio based.”

“That’s why. The base doesn’t have radio equipment. Call my shuttle, please.”

The main screen changed to show her shuttle pilot reading something with his feet on the console, ignoring the red lights that appeared whenever his foot bumped something. Seeing her on his own screen, he jumped and straightened his posture, hiding his reading material under his seat. “Yes ma’am. How may I help?”

“Contact Commander Devrak, please, and route the call to the bridge of the Perseverance over the sublight comms.”

“Right away.”

A moment later, Commander Devrak appeared on the screen.

“Yes ambassador Lon, what can I do for you?”

“It’s Laen.”

“My apologies, Lon. Why are you interrupting my day?”

“Do you remember that piece-of-junk shuttle you gave me?”

“I was ordered give you the Mark 25 model. Otherwise all you would have gotten was an oxygen mask and a pair of plastic angel wings.” Commander Devrak apparently wanted nothing to do with this conversation.

“Haha, very funny. Well, I got a new ship! See it on your scanner?”

“Nope.”

“Of course you do. It’s the biggest thing around besides the station.”

Devrak squinted at something off screen. “Oh, there it is, I mistook it for a garbage scow at first. No, it is a garbage scow. Does it even have USP?”

Laen glanced around nervously. “Ah, no, these are class twos, Devrak. No USP for a while.”

“Well, have fun. Somewhere far away, preferably.”

“Wait wait wait. I haven’t even shown you the firepower I have.”

Devrak sighed. “Whoever decided to give you firepower is clearly the worst tactician ever. Fine. What do you want to do?”

“Just launch a training drone and watch!”

The commander leaned back in his chair and spoke to someone before turning back to the camera. “Your drone’s launching now.”

Laen turned to Captain Williams. “Do you have the drone in your sights?”

“Bogey detected on our starboard bow, twenty five degrees by ten. Mass: eighteen thousand kilograms. Distance: eleven thousand meters.”

Laen jumped up. “Main guns to starboard! Prepare a full broadside!” She didn’t know if that was proper military speak, but she had watched a dozen space pirate movies to prepare for this moment.

The captain nodded to his crew. “Fire on my mark. Three, two one.”

There was a loud reverberation throughout the ship as eighteen cannons fired simultaneously.

After a few seconds, the tactical officer spoke. “Target impacted.”

Commander Devrak, still on screen, looked bored. “Are you sure?” The drone doesn’t show any damage.”

The tactical officer continued. “Sixteen of eighteen shells hit the target.”

Devrak’s expression stayed the same. “The accelerometer doesn’t even show its course changed.”

The captain turned to Laen. “Normally, against a target of that size we would use missiles or flak guns. The main guns are accurate to a thousand kilometers if we’re firing on ships our size.”

“Thank you Captain. And you, Commander Devrak, for being a good host.”

“Unwillingly. Good travels, ambassador. I’d hate to hear something bad happened and I had to rescue you.” Devrak closed the connection.

Captain Williams ignored the commander. “Where to now, ma’am?”

She pointed her finger forward. “To the edge of the universe!”

Just then, her communicator buzzed. “Hello?”

“Ma’am, it’s Chef Ganovich. We’re ready to prepare the next meal, if you’d still like to watch!”

“Are we having cool-aid?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“With grilled cheese?”

“As you requested.”

“Don’t start without me!” Laen turned off the communicator and almost ran out of the bridge but turned back to Captain Williams. “Take us anywhere! I doubt Devrak wants to see us anymore!”

The captain sighed. “Plot a course for Earth.” Under his breath, he muttered “I hate grilled cheese.”

Chapter 3

In a darkened room deep within the Perseverance, four crewmen conversed secretly.

“She’s up to no good. We have to stop her.”

“And you’ve seen how she treats the crew. She would do the same in our place.”

There were muttered agreements as they plotted. Suddenly, the hatch slammed open and Captain Williams strode through, accompanied by Chef Ganovich.

“What’s going on here?” The captain said angrily. “Gentlemen, are you conspiring?” The crewmen shrunk back.

Williams raised his voice. “WITHOUT ME?”

No one made eye contact.

“I told you I would be five minutes late, and you’ve started without me! Were this on the record, you’d be reprimanded for failure to adhere to protocol!”

Crewman Banes stepped forward. “We’re terribly sorry, captain. I take responsibility. We were waiting like you asked, and I just mentioned how eating macaroni and cheese a fourth time this week upset my stomach, and that started the conversation.”

Williams nodded. “Apology accepted. Now, let’s get this started in an orderly fashion. I understand some of you have complaints about our guest. As your captain, I represent the crew to the higher ups, including Miss Laen. Crewman Banes, why don’t you start.”

“Thank you, captain. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve been having nothing but grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese, and nachos with cheese all week. I understand our mission is diplomatic in nature, but must we suffer just because she never saw cheese before?”

“That’s certainly a valid complaint, and one I share as well. Let’s hear Crewman Korenski.”

Korenski looked up with an evil grin. “She didn’t sign any agreement with us, but here we are ferrying her around the sector. She’s no good, I say. You saw what she did to the Ultruins, and that’s what she’ll do to us.”

The captain looked confused. “What, exactly, did she do to the Ultruins?”

“You saw, in the news, with the rest of us. The battle of…of…what was the battle called?”

Banes shrugged. “I don’t think they gave it a name. And it was in the middle of empty space, so there aren’t any planets to name it after.”

“There was that moon. The one she gave a piercing to.”

“Aye, though it wasn’t quite a moon. Moons orbit planets, and this object was sitting alone. It was more of a dwarf planet.”

“Don’t planets necessarily orbit stars?”

“Not necessarily. There are rogue planets between star systems.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.” Korenski shook the surprise off his face and returned to scowling. “What was this rogue planet’s name then? We can name the battle off of that.”

No one knew. Everyone took out their pocket computers and data pads to look it up.

One of the crewmen who hadn’t spoken yet found it first. “KX-9404-&kpX_\5.”

Korenski nodded slowly. “The battle of the rogue dwarf planet ‘kay ex dash nine four zero four dash ampersand, lowercase gee kay, uppercase ex, underscore backslash five’. It doesn’t really have a ring to it.”

Captain Williams checked the time. “Regardless, you were saying?”

“Right then. She dishonored the tenants of honorable warfare and humiliated everyone involved. The least she should have done is destroyed half their fleet in defense, and maybe painted some dents on her own hull to make it look like an actual battle. Instead the Ultruin commander surrendered without taking a single casualty!”

“And you’re upset…why?”

“It’s dishonorable. When I think about all those Ultruin sailors, returning to their homes unharmed when they should have been given honorable deaths, it makes me angry!”

Someone in the back spoke up. “Don’t blame the squids for having better looking wives than you!”

After a round of laughter, Banes joined in. “If you want an honorable death, Korenski, tell your wife what you tell us about her cooking!”

Williams spoke up. “Alright, that’s enough. Korenski, the Human Confederation is not allied or affiliated with the People’s Republic of Ultrua in any way, and we do not care whether they were humiliated or not. She conducted warfare in an honorable manner as far as we are concerned, and that’s as far as you need to be concerned.”

“Aye, captain.”

“Chef Ganovich, do you have anything to add?”

Ganovich cleared his throat. “As far as the food, Miss Laen appears to be a simple good hearted soul. All she cares about is watching all manner of meals involving cheese being made in ridiculous quantities. And maybe galactic domination. It’s hard to hear over the mixer. Regardless, she’s also a diplomat, and even if she demands the men stick to her meal choices, she will at least phrase it in a way that makes us feel better about it.”

“My thoughts exactly. Does anyone else have a specific complaint?”

Another crewman in the back spoke. “I’m responsible for cleaning her quarters. She leaves hairpins everywhere!”

“I’m pretty sure all women do that. Anyone else?”

The crewman wouldn’t be silenced. “And she has a dozen bottles of shampoo!”

Williams grimaced. “That’s even less of a complaint. Is there anyone else?”

No one spoke except the same crewman. “And you should see the shower drain!”

“I will speak with Miss Laen about the food. The other issues are not at all relevant.” Without waiting for a reply, the captain turned and walked out the hatch.

Williams met Laen in the executive conference room.

“Miss Laen, thank you for coming.”

The blue skinned ambassador was nervous. “Of course. What is this about?”

“I’m sorry for alarming you. It’s nothing serious. I just wanted to discuss something in private.”

Laen did not appear less nervous.

Williams continued. “We are happy to provide whatever food you enjoy, however, the men are used to a more…traditional diet in the service.”

“They don’t like cheese?”

“They do, just usually in much smaller quantities. And I don’t know about your species, but humans can get constipated from eating too much.”

Laen put a hand on her stomach. “Is that what that is? I’m sorry, I should have known you would object. Human space food is much more diverse than the Dominion’s. I was just so excited about being able to chew instead of just swallowing.”

“I understand. You can still order whatever you want, but would you mind if the crew returned to their scheduled menus?”

“Of course not. And there’s no need to treat me special. I’ll have what the crew is having.”

Williams smiled. “I think you’ll enjoy it. And I know there’s cheesecake for desert.”

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

I write this in hopes that the VA and LSGS close these loopholes, and that the diligence of verification of these sources is maintained by other veterans in addition to requesting methods to consider how to better verify VA contracted organizations. This post isn't about how efficient LSGS or any other contractor for the VA is, but rather the Information security issues that are present. Below is my experience and how I attempted to deal with this information security nightmare.
Imagine this, an unknown company contacts you asking for personal information, includes a clickable (and possibly infected) link, and has the leverage of ruining a months-long process by not quickly engaging them. Even with the diligence of attempting to confirm the credibility of this company, it has such a flimsy connection to the VA that the VA cannot immediately verify its affiliation, and calling this company's hotline results in hour-long wait times which confirm they know little more than what could have been stolen in prior events such as this exposure in 2006 which included millions of veterans.
This isn't a far cry from the VA randomly calling asking me to present my last four, date of birth and other information that might also be required to access my bank and other secured services, but at least I can call the main VA line with that person's extension or ask the VA to send a secure message to confirm the validity of their credentials via the VA messaging system.
I received a text message from an unknown number identifying themselves as Loyal Healthcare asking if I would be available for an exam regarding my claim in late April. I called the VA asking who, exactly, loyal healthcare was to the VA. It took them nearly 30 minutes to identify LSGS as a possible company contracted for my exam but refused to identify any outsourcing that they might have done. Because it directly affected my claim I had to make an immediate response declaring my willingness to engage.
Nearly two weeks later I received an email from lsgs.loyalhealthcare.com asking me to register. I called the VA again and one worker said they believed LSGS was a contractor with the VA assigned to do the exam but were unable to confirm that this was who was contacting me.
I did end up calling LSGS which I finally had a number for, but I want to note here that I am not anti-immigration. In fact, my mother was an immigrant and I am a minority, but when I called LSGS and the operator had a strong Nigerian accent, it was not a confidence-inspiring experience. If the infrastructure were more secure elsewhere in the system this wouldn't have been concerning.
I had to rely on an AP news release to confirm they even were contracted with the VA in the first place, and faith that the website, utilizing Godaddy's private registration feature (whois info), was firstly at least somewhat legitimate and second that it wasn't a doppelganger of an official source. Even after registering with the sketchy site that only includes a login portal as its landing page the information after this barrier is so sparse that it inspires zero confidence in its legitimacy.
The way that LSGS contacts, registers, and interacts with you is ripe and ready for scammers to slip their sticky fingers in between. It is a mandatory engagement in which the VA doesn't clearly declare what exact parties are engaged or how to interact with them. The registration process is obscure and the website is little more than a web portal and database call upon registration with obscured credentials. Their hotline is easily imitable as it requests more information than it will eventually provide or engage with.
Other than the VA phonebook including a contact number for LSGS, but could be easily not verified because not all veterans are going to go through the IS procedures and protocols I went through, there doesn't seem to be a good way to ensure this party is affiliated at all. And anyone who is looking to actually ensure the validity and security before establishing a relationship with LSGS will fall flat on their face.
I will be surprised if scams tied to this method of C&P contracting haven't already popped up. I'd go further to say that these scams must be thriving.
Please let me know if you found better ways to verify these kinds of contractors.

Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles died…
…when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia Martell...
...to lay the queen of beauty’s laurel in Lyanna’s lap.
https://preview.redd.it/95pwuazoe85b1.jpg?width=551&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e87e1d95f172a847411dcfa70440ffe6270a4c4c
He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, blue as frost.
Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals the thorns lay hidden.
https://preview.redd.it/trpwm2gxg85b1.png?width=962&format=png&auto=webp&s=aada9b3bc346f2eb376580e1a6cf296c2f0c2276
The phenomenon illustrates the power of unconscious inferences and implicit assumptions in perception.
This is the final part of a series exploring the hidden motives and actions of the main players during Robert's Rebellion, named LBJ in reference to the influence of Lyndon B. Johnson and the Vietnam War on GRRM's views and writings on war. LBJ also indicates considerations over whether Lyanna + Bobby B = Jon Snow. Previous installments include:

This series presented a case that, like LBJ's administration lied to the public about the Vietnam War, including by exaggerating reports of an attack on U.S. ships to coerce Congress into granting broad authority to escalate the war, the winners of Robert's Rebellion implemented a falsified propaganda campaign in service to their personal and political ambitions. They capitalized on Rhaegar's mistake at Harrenhal to form a believable lie that the crown prince abducted Lyanna, when in fact both she and Rhaegar were taken by rebel allies, with Rhaegar being tortured for the crime of crowning Robert's betrothed queen of love and beauty despite the presence of his pregnant, Dornish wife. The Kingsguard at the tower of joy betrayed the Targaryens, and they granted Robert access to the tower and Lyanna after his loss at Ashford, meaning Robert may be Jon's father. And yet either of Lyanna's guards, Arthur Dayne or Oswell Whent, may have had an affair with the she-wolf, and so not even Lyanna herself was necessarily certain of Jon Snow's paternity.
This part will show how Ned's thoughts and actions are consistent with this scenario.

Ned's Dangerous Secrets

Lord Eddard Stark is defined by his love for his family and his sense of honor and justice. He prizes loyalty and abhors the killing of innocent children, but these values are often challenged by the harsh realities of the world he lives in, leading Ned to dishonor himself in ways that haunt him. Ned Stark thus epitomizes the concept of the human heart in conflict with itself.
Our first glimpse of Lord Stark's internal conflict is in Bran's first chapter. Reading between the lines, it's apparent that Ned beheaded an innocent man, as Gared was not truly a deserter but had been chased south by a hungry, pregnant direwolf. Bran doesn't reveal what Gared said to defend himself, but it's easy to imagine he explained about the direwolf, which to Ned would come off as a lie or a slight against his house, given that direwolves hadn't been spotted south of the Wall in 200 years. Lord Stark also failed to heed the omen of the antler in the direwolf's throat; besides superstitiously signaling the danger of House Baratheon, it served as a sharp lesson that sometimes absurd, seemingly unbelievable things do happen, and so it's important to do due diligence before doling out harsh penalties. The Starks are conditioned to judge deserters harshly, however, which is why Arya murders Dareon the singer, even though his desertion was justifiable given that he had been placed at the Wall on a false accusation of rape. Neither Arya nor Ned conduct proper investigations, and so despite their good intentions, they both perpetuate injustice. Likewise, Ned staunchly supported Robert during the rebellion, and though he had very good reasons to do so, he failed to question the underlying assumptions and so unwittingly participated in perpetuating injustice.
Ned continues to dishonor himself at the Trident with his daughters, when he places loyalty to King Robert over truth and justice. Despite Ned’s desire to protect innocents, he cowed to Robert’s judgement, permitting Mycah's death and executing Lady himself, though he knew they were blameless. It’s thus easy to see how Bran’s vision of the Trident involves not only Robert’s black mountain of a shadow, but also his father’s shadows, represented by an ashen hound and a man armored in gold, indicating the dark and light sides at war within Lord Eddard Stark; some lights cast more than one shadow.

He looked south, and saw the great blue-green rush of the Trident. He saw his father pleading with the king, his face etched with grief. He saw Sansa crying herself to sleep at night, and he saw Arya watching in silence and holding her secrets hard in her heart. There were shadows all around them. One shadow was dark as ash, with the terrible face of a hound. Another was armored like the sun, golden and beautiful. Over them both loomed a giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there was nothing inside but darkness and thick black blood.

- A Game of Thrones Bran III
Ned’s personal demons are rooted in Robert’s Rebellion. When Robert tries to convince Ned to support the assassination of Daenerys and her unborn child, the second time, Ned protests that the purpose of the rebellion was to put an end to the murder of children.

“Whereas Daenerys is a fourteen-year-old girl.” Ned knew he was pushing this well past the point of wisdom, yet he could not keep silent. “Robert, I ask you, what did we rise against Aerys Targaryen for, if not to put an end to the murder of children?”
“To put an end to Targaryens!” the king growled.

- A Game of Thrones Eddard VIII
This may reference the Defiance of Duskendale, a tax dispute which escalated to King Aerys’s abduction and imprisonment, significantly contributing to his mental decline. Once Aerys was freed by Ser Barristan, he ordered the Darklyns and Hollards wiped out, except for young Dontos at Barristan’s request, and there were children among those slain. This act sent a signal to other nobles, putting them on notice that a whole family and their goodkin, down to innocent children, would be mortally liable for the misdeeds of a few.
So when Rhaegar blundered at Harrenhal, whataboutism dictates that the whole Targaryen dynasty was thus liable. This human tendency towards scapegoating and revenge is reflected in the people of Duskendale blaming Denys Darklyn’s Myrish wife Lady Serala for influencing his actions, leading them to mutilate and burn her alive. The grisly fates of those linked to the Defiance would incline Robert and his allies to ensure the abduction and imprisonment of Lyanna and Rhaegar was conducted with utmost secrecy, to protect their own families from the dragon’s retribution.
The reference to child murder may also relate to suspicions surrounding the untimely deaths of Aerys’s offspring, and it could reference the deaths of Brandon’s companions, depending on their ages. If the latter, it underscores Ned’s diminished resentment towards Aerys for executing his father and brother. It’s possible Ned felt that his wolf-blooded brother overreacted by riding to King’s Landing to threaten the life of the crown prince.

“It has a name, does it?” Her father sighed. “Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. ‘The wolf blood,’ my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It brought them both to an early grave.“

- A Game of Thrones Arya II
After Brandon and Lord Rickard were executed and Aerys demanded the heads of Robert and Ned, Ned could then justify rebelling against the throne not only to preserve his own life, but also to prevent the Mad King from extending his vengeance to wipe out both House Stark and Baratheon, down to innocent children. Ned's sense of honor is able to override his sense of loyalty in response to direct threats to innocents and his family, yet he lacks the moral and cognitive flexibility to defy kings who abuse their power to indirectly harm their subjects.
So for instance, Ned justly speaks out against and attempts to resign over Robert's assassination plans, despite the real danger of a Dothraki invasion. Yet Ned does not show the same zeal for preventing the indirect threat of the crown failing to pay its debts, even though this failure would induce lenders to fund wars against the Seven Kingdoms. The ethics of economics are perhaps more complex than murder, and so it's easy for Ned to be talked into allowing the expensive Hand's Tourney to go forward, rather than educating himself well enough to recognize that the crown's debts have the potential to harm the populace far more than any dragonspawn could.

He did not have to like it, though. And come spring, when the time came to repay all that gold, he would like it even less. Tycho Nestoris had impressed him as cultured and courteous, but the Iron Bank of Braavos had a fearsome reputation when collecting debts. Each of the Nine Free Cities had its bank, and some had more than one, fighting over every coin like dogs over a bone, but the Iron Bank was richer and more powerful than all the rest combined. When princes defaulted on their debts to lesser banks, ruined bankers sold their wives and children into slavery and opened their own veins. When princes failed to repay the Iron Bank, new princes sprang up from nowhere and took their thrones.
As poor plump Tommen may be about to learn. No doubt the Lannisters had good reason for refusing to honor King Robert's debts, but it was folly all the same. If Stannis was not too stiff-necked to accept their terms, the Braavosi would give him all the gold and silver he required, coin enough to buy a dozen sellsword companies, to bribe a hundred lords, to keep his men paid, fed, clothed, and armed. Unless Stannis is lying dead beneath the walls of Winterfell, he may just have won the Iron Throne. He wondered if Melisandre had seen that in her fires.

- A Dance with Dragons Jon IX
Consider Ned’s unwillingness to defy Robert when he points out the atrocities committed by the Targaryens.

“Nonetheless,” Ned said, “the murder of children … it would be vile … unspeakable …”
“Unspeakable?” the king roared. “What Aerys did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable. The way your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar … how many times do you think he raped your sister? How many hundreds of times?” His voice had grown so loud that his horse whinnied nervously beneath him. The king jerked the reins hard, quieting the animal, and pointed an angry finger at Ned. “I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves.”
Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If the years had not quenched Robert’s thirst for revenge, no words of his would help. “You can’t get your hands on this one, can you?” he said quietly.

- A Game of Thrones Eddard II
Ned does not hold the Targaryens collectively responsible for the deaths of his loved ones, insofar as he’s unwilling to use the Mad King’s unjust actions as an excuse to perpetuate the murder of Targaryen children. Ned is appalled that Robert condones the killing of children and he casts Robert’s hatred towards the dragons as irrational.

Ned did not feign surprise; Robert’s hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him. He remembered the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert with the corpses of Rhaegar’s wife and children as a token of fealty. Ned had named that murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince and princess were no more than babes, his new-made king had replied, “I see no babes. Only dragonspawn.” Not even Jon Arryn had been able to calm that storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to fight the last battles of the war alone in the south. It had taken another death to reconcile them; Lyanna’s death, and the grief they had shared over her passing.
This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. “Your Grace, the girl is scarcely more than a child. You are no Tywin Lannister, to slaughter innocents.” It was said that Rhaegar’s little girl had cried as they dragged her from beneath her bed to face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe in arms, yet Lord Tywin’s soldiers had torn him from his mother’s breast and dashed his head against a wall.

- A Game of Thrones Eddard II
When Robert reveals continuing trauma over his defeat of Rhaegar, his vengeance unsatisfied, Ned is oddly silent.

In my dreams, I kill him every night,” Robert admitted. “A thousand deaths will still be less than he deserves.”
There was nothing Ned could say to that. After a quiet, he said, “We should return, Your Grace. Your wife will be waiting.”

- A Game of Thrones Eddard I
Ned is disturbed by the notion that Robert would still hate Rhaegar.

Suddenly, uncomfortably, he found himself recalling Rhaegar Targaryen. Fifteen years dead, yet Robert hates him as much as ever. It was a disturbing notion …

- A Game of Thrones Eddard VIII
Ned’s feelings towards Rhaegar are neutral at worst, whereas he often acknowledges and excuses Robert’s faults, such as his uncontrollable rage and lust. If Ned believes Rhaegar is Jon’s father and that Lyanna willingly left with him, his charitable feelings towards Rhaegar might make sense. But then Ned should also realize Robert’s hatred of Targaryens is rational based on the official narrative involving kidnapping, rape, and murder committed by the dragons. If Ned instead suspects Robert is Jon’s father, it reconciles both his neutral feelings towards Rhaegar and incredulity over Robert’s hatred, as he knows Rhaegar’s only ‘crime’ was crowning Lyanna.
Ned is adept at suppressing bitter memories, so the absence of direct thoughts on Robert’s complicity in Lyanna’s abduction shouldn’t be construed as proof that it didn’t happen; Ned doesn’t think about Rhaegar’s complicity either. It’s noteworthy that we see Ned bury thoughts about the circumstances of Jon’s birth in the barrowlands, which are burial grounds:

“Would that we could,” Ned said, “but we have duties now, my liege … to the realm, to our children, I to my lady wife and you to your queen. We are not the boys we were.”
“You were never the boy you were,” Robert grumbled. “More’s the pity. And yet there was that one time … what was her name, that common girl of yours? Becca? No, she was one of mine, gods love her, black hair and these sweet big eyes, you could drown in them. Yours was … Aleena? No. You told me once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard’s mother?”
“Her name was Wylla,” Ned replied with cool courtesy, “and I would sooner not speak of her.”
“Wylla. Yes.” The king grinned. “She must have been a rare wench if she could make Lord Eddard Stark forget his honor, even for an hour. You never told me what she looked like …”
Ned’s mouth tightened in anger. “Nor will I. Leave it be, Robert, for the love you say you bear me. I dishonored myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and men.”
“Gods have mercy, you scarcely knew Catelyn.”
“I had taken her to wife. She was carrying my child.”
“You are too hard on yourself, Ned. You always were. Damn it, no woman wants Baelor the Blessed in her bed.” He slapped a hand on his knee. “Well, I’ll not press you if you feel so strong about it, though I swear, at times you’re so prickly you ought to take the hedgehog as your sigil.”
The rising sun sent fingers of light through the pale white mists of dawn. A wide plain spread out beneath them, bare and brown, its flatness here and there relieved by long, low hummocks. Ned pointed them out to his king. “The barrows of the First Men.”

- A Game of Thrones Eddard II
No one objected to Doran locking Arianne in a tower, nor were people too concerned when Baelor locked his sisters in the Maidenvault. Westerosi men treat women as property, and so Ned could forgive Robert for imprisoning his sister, especially as they were betrothed.

A storm of rose petals blew across a blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death.

- A Game of Thrones Eddard X
Robert Baratheon is a blue-eyed, death-dealing Storm Lord; this passage shows that Ned is at least subconsciously aware of Robert’s culpability in Lyanna’s presence at the tower of joy. It's also widely misconstrued as depicting blue rose petals, when it's actually fairly clear that the sky is blue and the rose petals are red, streaking the sky like blood...
Robert’s genuine grief over Lyanna’s death may permit Ned to absolve Robert of blame; this grief is the reason Ned gives for their reconciliation, after the deaths of Elia's children drove a wedge between them. Interestingly, Robert’s own death scene parallels Lyanna’s death: a bed of blood, squeezing hands and a weak smile, protecting Robert’s bastards, promise me Ned…

Robert took his hand, fingers squeezing hard. “You are … such a bad liar, Ned Stark,” he said through his pain. “The realm … the realm knows … what a wretched king I’ve been. Bad as Aerys, the gods spare me.”
“No,” Ned told his dying friend, “not so bad as Aerys, Your Grace. Not near so bad as Aerys.”
Robert managed a weak red smile. “At the least, they will say … this last thing … this I did right. You won’t fail me. You’ll rule now. You’ll hate it, worse than I did … but you’ll do well. Are you done with the scribbling?”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Ned offered Robert the paper. The king scrawled his signature blindly, leaving a smear of blood across the letter. “The seal should be witnessed.”
“Serve the boar at my funeral feast,” Robert rasped. “Apple in its mouth, skin seared crisp. Eat the bastard. Don’t care if you choke on him. Promise me, Ned.”
“I promise.” Promise me, Ned, Lyanna’s voice echoed.

- A Game of Thrones Eddard XIII
vs.

“She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and clouds above her and the rain to wash her clean.”
“I was with her when she died,” Ned reminded the king. “She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father.” He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister’s eyes. Ned remembered the way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. Ned could recall none of it. “I bring her flowers when I can,” he said. “Lyanna was … fond of flowers.”

- A Game of Thrones Eddard I
Once Ned realized that the rebels lied about Lyanna and Rhaegar's disappearance, outing the truth was unthinkable. Too many had already fought and died based on a malicious lie, and the truth would thrust the realm further into rebellion. Ned had a duty to protect what family remained to him, including both his newborn son Robb and Jon Snow, the son of his beloved sister. Yet notice how Ned stopped visiting Robert and never sent envoys to King’s Landing to leverage advantages for the North, despite his favor with the king. It’s as if Ned was avoiding Robert. So perhaps ‘promise me Ned’ was about keeping Jon’s parentage a secret, as Robert might stupidly try to legitimize his son by his beloved Lyanna, raising dangerous questions.

And when you have it, what then? Some secrets are safer kept hidden. Some secrets are too dangerous to share, even with those you love and trust. Ned slid the dagger that Catelyn had brought him out of the sheath on his belt. The Imp’s knife. Why would the dwarf want Bran dead? To silence him, surely. Another secret, or only a different strand of the same web?

- A Game of Thrones Eddard VIII
Ned cannot tell Catelyn the truth of Jon’s parentage because she’s a political climber and may support his legitimization for her own children’s sake. If Jon is the heir to the throne, Arya or Sansa could be married to him. Robb’s claim to Winterfell would not longer be under threat, and he could leverage diplomatic advantages as Jon’s ally. The Tully creed of "Family, Duty, Honor" has imbued Catelyn with fatal blindspots when it comes to advancing her children's interests.
Jon is hidden when Robert comes to visit, consistent with preventing the king from making a connection between Jon's birth and Lyanna's death.

“I glimpsed him once at Winterfell,” the queen said, “though the Starks did their best to hide him. He looks very like his father.”

- A Feast for Crows Cersei IV
Jon takes after his mother Lyanna, and he more closely resembles Robert than Rhaegar, with his dark brown hair and almost black eyes. Varys tells Tyrion he knows of eight bastards fathered by Robert, all black of hair; he says nothing of their eye color, and Varys is manipulative, so it would be unwise to take him at his word. If Maggy the Frog’s prophecy is correct, only about half of Robert’s children are accounted for; others may not resemble Robert so closely. Having a subset of children who resemble you does not guarantee they all will, and it’s not uncommon in real life for people to have a legitimate child who looks different from their siblings. Arya is an example of this, as all her full-blooded siblings take after Catelyn while she’s the only one who looks like Ned.
Ned’s research into couplings between Lannisters and Baratheons show black-haired offspring, and so he assumes the gold will always yield to the coal. There’s no evidence that he also assumes the cold will yield to the coal, that Baratheon seed is dominant over Stark genes. Ned misconstrues how genetics works, and we shouldn’t assume Martin doesn’t understand this. In the real world, it’s possible to have a history of a certain genetic outcome which is broken once enough new blood enters a lineage. In fact, fair-haired Laenor and Laena Velaryon, whose grandmother was Jocelyn Baratheon, demonstrate that Baratheon genetic traits can be diluted.

The seed is strong, Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed, and so it was. All those bastards, all with hair as black as night. Grand Maester Malleon recorded the last mating between stag and lion, some ninety years ago, when Tya Lannister wed Gowen Baratheon, third son of the reigning lord. Their only issue, an unnamed boy described in Malleon’s tome as a large and lusty lad born with a full head of black hair, died in infancy. Thirty years before that a male Lannister had taken a Baratheon maid to wife. She had given him three daughters and a son, each black-haired. No matter how far back Ned searched in the brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the coal.

- A Game of Thrones Eddard XII
Some think Ned hid Jon’s lineage because Robert would kill Jon if he suspected he was Targaryen, despite Ned’s surprise at Robert’s commitment to murdering Targaryen heirs and despite Ned insisting Robert wouldn’t harm his loved ones.

Ned shook his head, refusing to believe. “Robert would never harm me or any of mine. We were closer than brothers. He loves me. If I refuse him, he will roar and curse and bluster, and in a week we will laugh about it together. I know the man!”
“You knew the man,” she said. “The king is a stranger to you.” Catelyn remembered the direwolf dead in the snow, the broken antler lodged deep in her throat. She had to make him see. “Pride is everything to a king, my lord. Robert came all this way to see you, to bring you these great honors, you cannot throw them back in his face.”

- A Game of Thrones Catelyn II
Ned’s concern for Jon’s life didn’t prevent him from allowing Jon to take a dangerous vocation at the Wall. Sending Jon to the Wall makes even more sense if his potential claim to the throne would cause a political upheaval. This may be true whether he’s Robert or Rhaegar’s son, though it’s more important to keep this secret if he’s the son of Robert, as it has greater potential to damage Ned’s allies. The fact that Ned was willing to lie to Jon about what the Night’s Watch really is, sending him to a bleak, cold penal colony, is in line with Ned being an unwilling liar whose honor falls short when it threatens to undermine his king.

The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit and talk with him … pain shot through his broken leg, beneath the filthy grey plaster of his cast. He winced, his fingers opening and closing helplessly. “Is this your own scheme,” he gasped out at Varys, “or are you in league with Littlefinger?”

- A Game of Thrones Eddard XV
Ned recalls Lyanna’s misgivings about Robert’s nature and the promises he made to her after visiting Robert’s bastard by a girl so young he was afraid to ask her age (a girl who incidentally resembles Sansa in age and hair color).

“Robert will never keep to one bed,” Lyanna had told him at Winterfell, on the night long ago when their father had promised her hand to the young Lord of Storm’s End. “I hear he has gotten a child on some girl in the Vale.” Ned had held the babe in his arms; he could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his sister, but he had assured her that what Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that he was a good man and true who would love her with all his heart. Lyanna had only smiled. “Love is sweet, dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man’s nature.”
The girl had been so young Ned had not dared to ask her age. No doubt she’d been a virgin; the better brothels could always find a virgin, if the purse was fat enough. She had light red hair and a powdering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and when she slipped free a breast to give her nipple to the babe, he saw that her bosom was freckled as well. “I named her Barra,” she said as the child nursed. “She looks so like him, does she not, milord? She has his nose, and his hair …”
“She does.” Eddard Stark had touched the baby’s fine, dark hair. It flowed through his fingers like black silk. Robert’s firstborn had had the same fine hair, he seemed to recall.
“Tell him that when you see him, milord, as it … as it please you. Tell him how beautiful she is.”
“I will,” Ned had promised her. That was his curse. Robert would swear undying love and forget them before evenfall, but Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of the promises he’d made Lyanna as she lay dying, and the price he’d paid to keep them.

- A Game of Thrones Eddard IX
The king buys and lies to virgin whores and he fathers bastards like it’s a competition, but Ned could excuse Robert fathering a bastard on his sister because they were betrothed, after all, and the gods fill men with lust.

She had smiled then, a smile so tremulous and sweet that it cut the heart out of him. Riding through the rainy night, Ned saw Jon Snow’s face in front of him, so like a younger version of his own. If the gods frowned so on bastards, he thought dully, why did they fill men with such lusts? “Lord Baelish, what do you know of Robert’s bastards?”

- A Game of Thrones Eddard IX
Ned thinks about Jon Snow in relation to Robert’s bastards and lusts, then contrasts Robert to Rhaegar who wasn’t the type to visit brothels. Ned thinks that he hadn’t thought of Rhaegar in years; if Jon was Rhaegar’s, wouldn’t Ned think about him more often? This also establishes Ned as not particularly self-aware, as he does in fact think about Rhaegar on page before this.

There was no answer Ned Stark could give to that but a frown. For the first time in years, he found himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if Rhaegar had frequented brothels; somehow he thought not.

- A Game of Thrones Eddard IX
Ned’s friendship with Robert conditioned him to excuse male adultery, and so if R+L=J, he could excuse Rhaegar’s unfaithfulness to his wife. While Ned may hold himself to a higher standard in his own marriage, he can forgive a man for acting on his natural urges.
Ned does not extend his charitable take on adultery to Cersei, whose crime is not so different from what Lyanna is alleged to have done. Lyanna did not commit incest as Cersei did nor did she forsake her own marriage vows, yet if Ned believes Rhaegar is Jon’s father, he’s accepted that his sister broke her betrothal and disregarded the crown prince’s marriage vows, leaving two young children without their father, and bore a bastard. If Jon is a Targaryen, his lineage may legally permit him to commit incest, which Cersei would see as hypocritical.
Ned’s reaction to Cersei’s infidelity is partly informed by the importance of inheritance and legitimacy in their feudal society. Noble Westerosi women are conditioned to place their duty to their families ahead of their own lusts, a standard which is not imposed on men as seriously. It’s much easier to confirm a child’s mother than it is to establish paternity, which is why women are held to more strict sexual standards. Ned’s frigid sexual relations with Catelyn may even convince him that women are less driven by lust than men. Even so, Ned’s reaction to Cersei’s infidelity was primarily motivated by bias against House Lannister and loyalty to Robert. Consider that Ned hates Jaime, who killed a man who murdered Ned’s family, because vows involving loyalty to one’s king are very important to him.

His sword helped taint the throne you sit on, Ned thought, but he did not permit the words to pass his lips. “He swore a vow to protect his king’s life with his own. Then he opened that king’s throat with a sword.”
“Seven hells, someone had to kill Aerys!” Robert said, reining his mount to a sudden halt beside an ancient barrow. “If Jaime hadn’t done it, it would have been left for you or me.”

- A Game of Thrones Eddard II
Ned is inflexible about his sense of honor when applied to the Lannisters, whom he views as child murderers and oathbreakers, yet Ned bends his ethics for his family and king. For instance, he hates Tywin for his role in the murders of Rhaegar’s children, yet remains loyal to Robert who also condones the murder of children.
Ned took Theon hostage to keep Balon in check, and would have executed him in service to his king. He essentially held a child mortally liable for his father’s actions, which is the same justification Ned uses for rising against Aerys. So would Ned have followed through with executing Theon, despite defying Robert over the assassination of Dany and her unborn child?

Even inside fur-lined gloves, Theon’s hands had begun to throb with pain. It was often his hands that hurt the worst, especially his missing fingers. Had there truly been a time when women yearned for his touch? I made myself the Prince of Winterfell, he thought, and from that came all of this. He had thought that men would sing of him for a hundred years and tell tales of his daring. But if anyone spoke of him now, it was as Theon Turncloak, and the tales they told were of his treachery. This was never my home. I was a hostage here. Lord Stark had not treated him cruelly, but the long steel shadow of his greatsword had always been between them. He was kind to me, but never warm. He knew that one day he might need to put me to death.

- A Dance with Dragons The Prince of Winterfell
Ned also lies for his family, making his indictment of the Lannisters somewhat hypocritical. He claims his wife abducted Tyrion on his orders, when he had in fact ordered her to go home and prepare the north for war. He does not hold Catelyn responsible for the deaths of his men, which Jaime ordered in retaliation for Tyrion’s abduction, no more than he held Robert and his own allies responsible for the indirect consequences of abducting Lyanna and lying about it, including her death and the deaths of his father, brother, and countrymen.

“Pycelle swears it will heal clean,” Robert frowned. “I take it you know what Catelyn has done?”
“I do.” Ned took a small swallow of wine. “My lady wife is blameless, Your Grace. All she did she did at my command.”

- A Game of Thrones Eddard X
If Ned’s mind had not been clouded by the milk of the poppy, he may have had the foresight to understand the danger he placed his own family in by informing Cersei of the discovery of her children’s illegitimacy. He gave them a chance to flee out of concern for the lives of innocents, but sadly, Ned's sense of justice is unable to account for the indirect consequences of actions (except when applied retroactively to people he dislikes) and his mercy backfired. The meeting between Cersei and Ned in the godswood reveals that he would bend his ethics for his own children’s sake.

Ned thought, If it came to that, the life of some child I did not know, against Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon, what would I do? Even more so, what would Catelyn do, if it were Jon’s life, against the children of her body? He did not know. He prayed he never would.

- A Game of Thrones Eddard XII
Ned is thus the type of man who would willingly dishonor himself, lying or even allowing innocents to be killed, for the sake of protecting his own. Even Ned’s final act was a lie, choosing to dishonor himself to protect Sansa.

Her father raised his voice still higher, straining to be heard. “I betrayed the faith of my king and the trust of my friend, Robert,” he shouted. “I swore to defend and protect his children, yet before his blood was cold, I plotted to depose and murder his son and seize the throne for myself. Let the High Septon and Baelor the Beloved and the Seven bear witness to the truth of what I say: Joffrey Baratheon is the one true heir to the Iron Throne, and by the grace of all the gods, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm.”

- A Game of Thrones Arya V
Lord Eddard Stark embodies a simple truth, that the road to hell is paved with the best intentions. He is as grey as the direwolf on his sigil, a man who chose lesser evils out of a genuine desire to do good, who nonetheless perpetuated injustice. Let Ned serve as a lesson to readers, the lesson he should have taken from the dead direwolf in the snow: the man who passes the sentence might swing the sword, but apply due diligence first, and reserve harsh judgement unless guilt is certain. This lesson should be balanced against the understanding that failure to act can be just as harmful as decisive action, as was the case when the quiet wolf allowed the expensive Hand's Tourney to go forth despite the crown's massive debts. Ultimately, even the best among us will be tested with impossible moral dilemmas, and so it's important to have the capacity to show ourselves and others flexibility and forgiveness.

The damning conclusion? That the United States government had escalated the war all the while knowing that it was on the losing side of the equation. The report also confirmed that JFK’s administration had helped to overthrow and assassinate Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of the South Vietnamese government, which America supported. If our own government had no faith in our allies and our capabilities, then why the hell, readers of the Times and the Post wondered, were we still sending our men to be killed in Vietnam?
Support for the war at home was eroding daily; the protests were increasing, with voices calling, louder and louder, for an end to the conflict. Rebellion was brewing even from within the “silent majority.” Most of the POW/MIA wives had been in this camp for years. They had been trained to be strong government and military supporters, but they were now completely disgusted with Washington politics. Their suspicions about the war and those leading it were confirmed. McNamara was now right up there with Cora Weiss as a target of their ire. They knew to be wary of antiwar figures, but McNamara? Wasn’t he supposed to be on their side?
The Nixon administration was not implicated in the Pentagon Papers, though the president was incensed to see classified government reports leaked to the public. Instead of seeing the papers as a potential help, separating his administration’s policy on Vietnam from those of JFK and LBJ, “the leak of the Pentagon Papers brought forth a profound paranoia in Richard Nixon… The ultimate manifestation of this drive was the White House Special Investigations Unit, informally referred to as the Plumbers, whose first assignment was to raid the offices of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Later, members of the group would carry out one final mission, the Watergate break-in, which ultimately cost Nixon the very thing he had sought to defend: his presidency.”

- The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took On the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home Heath Hardage Lee
Look here to see this series in its full audio/visual glory with greater detail.

It’s kinda a long story. A year ago I(f29) was trapped working ona job I hated, but the good thing about it were my two coworkers, who were good and funny the majority of the time, so we hung out fine. One of my coworkers, let’s call her J(f48) was someone interesting, she is very religious and very attached to her brother's family, in my resume, she is a good person, and I liked working with her. So, why do I wanna cut ties with her? It happened last year, I made a terrible huge mistake. J needed money, a good amount, and she asked me if I could lend it for a small amount of time. J uses to buy clothes and then resell it, she has done this for years, and all the time I saw people buy from her, so I saw her a a responsible working person, and the money was on part to buy clothes and resell, so I thought I knew what she was doing, so I lended her the money. Oh god, I really hate myself for doing it. After I did it, J started to show her true colors about her and money. First, I discovered she was having problems getting the clothes, it was something that sometimes happens, but I didn’t know. Second, J was not as good with money as she made me believe, sometimes shee ran out of money, and the was a month the bank call us like three or four times a day just to consult J when she was planning to pay a debt she had with the bank for a loan she ask the bank (my anxiety was going crazy on every call). And third, and I think it is the worst, J likes to brag. Every time someone has something nice, she also needs to have one, like, a coworker had a new cell phone, J immediately bought a new one for her. One time my sister gave me a smart watch and some wireless headphones because she had bought better ones for herself. Well, of course, J saw my watch at work and she also bought one for herself. The worst part about me is that I could pass all of this about J, because I considered her a friend, but the day I couldn’t justify her any longer was when her birthday approached and she invited me first to a simple dinner friday night on a venezuelan restaurant from a friend of hers and my other coworker, and since it was a simple plan I was ok with it. But suddenly, she changed her mind about it, and she wanted to go to an expensive restaurant where each one of us had to pay too much. Our other coworker declined immediately, because it was too much money and his wife was also invited, so if they went they would have to pay double. I wasn’t sure about it, I had the money, but I didn’t want to spend it there. But my decision was clearer when at lunch hour J got a video call for her sister in law. At that time my other coworker was away doing another job, but a cleaning lady and I were there. At first the talk was polite, until it started to get gradually worse when SIL asked her “isn’t too much money going to this place?” so J answered a couple of things I don’t think were right.
First, she said she also invited her friends from a gym he was going, and she though the venezuelan place was not appropriate to go (you know, her friend’s place, and also, my other coworker was from Venezuela), she also said to her SIL “everyone has that money to spend, I will pay you guys your fee if there is a problem” and that’s the bragging again, and the worst for me was when she added “Well, I’m also doing this like a test, to see who is actually is there for me.” Hearing her have that comment was enough for me to break the glass about who she really was. But it was not my time to talk, SIL and her had an argument about how fake J was, how she was doing this to show herself as someone she is not, and that her gym friends were not real, and more comments. J ended up crying and ended the phone call, later our other coworker came to J crying, so it was definitely not my time to ask for my money back. But from that moment I learned my lesson, you don’t lend money to people, because you can’t trust them to pay you back. Of course, I wanted to shout to J about her bad attitude towards me, but as my mother taught me, you don’t fight for money, fighting for money is useless, because people would always get defensive, claiming being the victim. Instead of making an argument, I started to being more firm With J about payments, remembered every month about how much she owned me, and I respected her petition about talk this always in private (I used to asked in public, since she didn’t have shame in tell everybody she spends on her family and her stuff). After a year, half of her debt was paid, luckily for me, we both were now on a different job. I finally started to work at a place that goes more to accord to my university studies, while J finally took her chance to open a small store to sell clothes, since then she has a lot of stuff and I needed new outfits for my work, we agree J would pay me the rest of her debt with clothes she was selling, and I went one day and I got what I wanted over a year, no more money attachments to J. Yet something funny was happening while I was trying some pants, she asked me how I was doing, a simple meaningless chat, I mentioned her I also joined a gym, because it was something she recommended me to do las year (but at that time I was so sad to even think about exercise), the moment I told her she started to ask me at what gym I was going, how much I was paying, and how I was paying, I have a credit card, and she started to talk about how she is about how her gym membership is about to expire and she doesn’t have a credit card to sign for a new one, and it’s very important for her to keep going to the gym due to her health, the way she said this to me was clear enough to understand she wanted me to offer her to pay her new gym membership, like, are you crazy or I just look like a fool? Of course, I played stupid and pretended I didn’t get her indirect message, and proceed to leave when the clothes exchange was made, but not before J telling me “Let me know if the gym doesn’t work for you and I’ll buy you your membership” I simple left in my more polite way possible, but that’s it for me, I don’t want to keep this relationship with J any longer, I was a fool yet a good friend and lend her money once and she repaid me by dismissing her debt to me, but this is over, I’m not gonna take this any longer. My therapist said I needed to confront J about how I feel, because I could lose her friendship, but the thing is, I don’t care anymore, if J only sees me as a bank account, then maybe it’s better to end our friendship and leave with the happy memories. She messaged me two times already asking me about how I’m doing in the gym and if I’m planning on quitting. An let me get something clear, even if I decided to quit the gym I’m not giving her my membership, she will never pay me if I do, you have to pay every month and she already showed me how she doesn’t care about follow a deathline (she is very religious, and she likes to say stuff like “God will provide”, and like, no, God didn’t provide, I provide for you). The only thing actually makes me sad about this decision is the fact that by cutting out J I’m gonna lose my friendship with our other coworker, who is very important to me, he is a excellent person and never did anything remotely bad to me, but he is friends with J since way more time, and the have much in common, so I gonna miss him so much.

I studied and passed the MLO exam in December of 2020, but never submitted my application for licensure at the time because I couldn't afford it.
The reason I took the test was because there was a really promising job opportunity with a Mortgage Broker where I live (was a friend of a friend) and I wanted in. Unfortunately, it fell through right after I passed the test, and so I continued working my regular full-time job in an unrelated industry and have been doing so since then.
Growth-wise I'm doing reasonably well in the role I'm in now, and have moved up in the ranks at my current company, but I'm set on finding a new job elsewhere because I may reaching a growth ceiling in the role and department I'm in now.
For background, the company I'm with now is closely related to finance and banking. I'm 32 years old and was grossing about 6-7k a month, including overtime. I recently got moved to a salary position where I'll be making 75k/yr with no overtime pay. I also have 20k in company stocks that would be vested in January of next year (I will lose the 20k if I quit before then).
I work about 50-60 hours each week and the work is extremely fast paced and stressful ( I am ok with this).
I have no experience in private lending or real estate.
It would be so helpful for me to get some guidance and advice from this group on the following:

Am I correct in thinking that I still have two years to get licensed as that's how much longer my test results are good for?
Is it worth submitting my application/can I even submit the licensure application on the NMLS website if I don't have a sponsor?
What kind of jobs should I be looking for if I want to become a loan processor?
Should I first focus on gaining experience in the field via a part-time/mentorship/intern type role?
Will I see a dramatic increase in earnings if I commit to a career in loan processing?

Any help is super appreciated, as I feel like I'm going in circles and don't even know where to start.

We did 4 nights in Vegas this week, Mon through Friday, staying at the MGM grand.
MGM Grand Hotel: nice hotel, well located not too far down the strip. We had a grand king room and it was clean and well appointed and while not brand new, didn’t look worn down or dated. it was a perfect fit for the budget, and the confidence of having a smoke free room was great. We didn’t eat on site except for a lazy buffet day/pool day. Crowd was all conference and low key from Mon-Wed, not too busy at all, then on Thursday the unwashed masses began to appear, and the nightlife also became much more vibrant.
MGM Buffet: I got a two for one voucher through the myVEGAS Slots app and about 9 days of play. The buffet vouchers always seemed to be sold out but about 48hrs before my departure I managed to get one. Buffet was fine, the food and selection was good, the look was a bit dated. New menu items started showing up around 11am. Probably not worth the price for two full adults, but with the 2 for 1 it was worth it, the wife was very happy and I saved $30+ because of the app.
MGM pool: Lovely, we spent two full days here. All pools and river were open except the Splash pool, which looked okay but was closed the whole time, probably because things weren’t crowded. No problem finding good free seating, much harder to find free seating with shade but we got lucky on the Tuesday and there was decent cloud coverage on the Thursday. All seating on lazy river island was reservation only. Way quieter on a Tue than on a Thu. Didn’t get a floatie, they were $25-30+tax depending on the size, but never felt we needed one. Bag check was low key.
Cheap eats: we did Shake Shack and In n Out burgers and both were great, with Shake Shake winning by the tiniest of margins. Oh, and Evel Pie for a quick slice away from the bustle of Freemont.
Expensive eats: we did Momofuku and enjoyed the menu, best item (hard to believe) was the brussel sprouts and cauliflower.
Cheap activities: We enjoyed the volcano at the Mirage more than the fountain at the Bellagio, maybe because we came in with zero expectation. Too bad it won’t be there for long, glad we saw it. Pinball Hall of Fame was also a great value, we split $20 between the two of us and were there for well over an hour. Conservatory at Bellagio was way too tacky for our tastes.
Other activities: Blue Man Group was great, make sure you buy tickets from the MGM site and not from the BMG/Ticketmaster site, saved about $40/seat that way. Cirque de Soleil O had the most impressive stage set I’ve ever seen, magical really. Omega Mart was fun, we had 11:20am booking but would recommenf you book for 10am and make sure you’re on some drugs first. Vegas Neon Sign museum was good but short and felt a bit like a graveyard, lots of potential but $20/head was a bit high. Freemont was Freemont, but driving from Freemont down the strip at night was great and felt like out of a movie.
Side note: We rented a car on the Wednesday and did Red Rock National Park, Area 15, In-N-Out Burger, Pinball Hall of Fame, Neon Sign Museum and Freemont all in a day, it was totally worth it and added to the Vegas/Desert experience. Our only regret was that we could have spent 4-8 hours hiking at Red Rock but had tight 11:20am reservations for Omega Mart so that part felt rushed (we’re from Canada, seeing cactus and sand in the wild is wild!)
Other tips: don’t buy booze in the hotels/casinos, way cheaper at CVS/Wallgreens, same for food/snacks whenever possible. Uber from airport was $6 cheaper than taxi.
Canadian Tip: ATMs are a scam here. Casinos/hotels charge $9.99 just in ATM fee, it was 1/3 of that at Walgreen/CVS. And that’s not the half of it. Get your cash once and be done with it, and watch out, they will offer to “exchange” your currency during the purchase path, decline because there is a huge markup, let your bank do it instead. For example, I took out $400 USD, ATM offered to do the exchange with total coming out to $607.88 CAD but by declining that and having it use the exchange from my bank I paid $561.24, saving me $47 in scam markup.

Hello! Future GBC RPN student here with info and a question!
Question: Can anyone who is going into second semester please send me their syllabi from your first semester courses?
INFO:
You should 1000% attend the webinar that happens every Wednesday at 1pm (the link would have came to your email, otherwise you can email the pre-placement coordinator Suzette for one). The info she gives is SO useful in completing the Placement Pre-Requisite Forms! It makes it seem so easy and less daunting.
But here is some info I gathered from my session (this is all info from our emailed packages, just explained and summed up a little):

Make sure your deposit is paid by JUNE 15TH! If you don't do this, or contact someone about deferral right away, you will be kicked out of the program and put on a waiting list.
Start pre-placement process immediately. I recommend doing the checklist in the following order for simplicity and not to get overwhelmed:
Start the medical forms RIGHT AWAY - things on this list might take a while and sometimes labs lose blood work and you have to redo it - so call your doctor a week after you do blood work to ask for results.You HAVE to do the Hepatitis B blood work whether you have the vax or not so go to the doctor ASAP for a blood requisition and do your first TB shot while you're there. IF YOU SAY THAT IT'S FOR SCHOOL IT IS FREE AT SOME CLINICS (I went to SONAMED on Bay St. but ask around otherwise it's a total of $60 for 2 step TB).
1. NOTE: If you have previous MMRV vaccines you can find the records - you need a yellow vaccine card as proof for the ParaMed submission and your doctor can transfer the dates from that to the form - but if your records are all over the place like me then I recommend that you just ask your doctor for MMRV blood work to show immunity since you have to do blood work for Hep B ANYWAY.. it just makes the entire process much quicker and easier
2. NOTE: PRINT OUT AND KEEP THE CHECKLIST AND MEDICAL PACKAGE IN A FOLDER AT ALL TIMES. NEVER GIVE ANYONE THE ORIGINAL COPIES AND KEEP THEM AS YOU WILL NEED THEM FOR CLINICAL.
3. NOTE: Make sure your doctor signs and STAMPS the forms in the correct places! MONITOR THIS because you have to pay to get the forms signed and if they make a mistake you'll have to pay to resubmit to paramed.
Next do the police check. You cannot do this until after Canada Day, but don't wait till much longer to start because it also takes a while. If you live in Toronto and your Postal Code starts with an M then unfortunately your process is longer - you MUST print out the Police Form that Suzette emailed us on long legal paper and fill out the top and then mail it to her with a 20 dollar bank note from your bank. Any other jurisdiction (York, Peel, Halton, etc.) you can do the police check online
Finally you can do the rest (Standard First Aid, BLS, Mask Fit) as it only takes about a week and you can do it all in the same place. Suzette recommended Peak Excellence as it is the cheapest and offers packages. If you go to this link and click on "Certificates Package" you can select the options for a package - if you don't have anything you must select the package that is $140 and that will complete your requirements. If you already have certain courses done you can select a different package or only the mask fit (mask fit alone is $40) MAKE SURE that these certificates will be valid through the ENTIRE SCHOOL YEAR and will not expire half way through. Otherwise you have to make sure to renew them in time BEFORE CLINICAL STARTS.https://www.peakexcellenceshop.com - you can do it elsewhere but this is the cheapest according to the pre placement coordinator
REGISTRATION STARTS JULY 17TH!!!!! Program specific times will be put onto your STU-VIEW account on July 3rd! KEEP AN EYE OUT AND DON'T BE LATE TO REGISTER. If you need help accessing your sty-view account you can call the contact centre at 416-415-2000 and they will help you reset your account (make sure you have your student ID). DO THIS BEFORE JULY 17! YOU CANNOT MAKE A PARAMED ACCOUNT BEFORE REGISTRATION.
Now that your forms are completed you have to put everything together and submit it to ParaMed. This will be a LOT of pages, around 18: your entire health form and checklist signed by doctor, all the paramed release forms, yellow vaccine card, covid vaccine QR which can be downloaded from https://covid19.ontariohealth.ca/app-home , Standard First Aid, BLS, Mask Fit Certificates, Police Check
Since you have to pay to submit the documents to ParaMed, you can send a file containing all of your documents to Suzette and she will look it over and confirm that you have everything you need before submitting it to ParaMed.
Once you Submit to ParaMed they will get back to you within 48 hours - either they will give you a stamp which says you completed and are DONE or that you are missing something. If you are missing something you have 72 hours to fix it FOR FREE, otherwise they will charge you to resubmit any papers

I hope this helped clear up a few things about the pre-placement process, please let me know if you have any other questions! Can't wait to meet you all in September!

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L5/S1 ALIF/PSF Surgery Monday, thinking about canceling, please help!