Teamworks at home

Like the title says. This happened a couple weeks ago and I’ve kinda just been in a depressed state but I figured if I’m finally gonna talk about my shitty former boss might as well come here.
I had a vacation planned for a while that I requested PTO for way in advance so that I had time to speak with her, move meetings and deadlines around, etc. We had our weekly 1-on-1 the day before I left and she chatted me up about it like everything was normal. Asked where I was going, what I was gonna do, etc. I made a jokey comment about how this was my first real vacation in years and how excited I was to have some real time off, and she had a kind of stale/unimpressed reaction to that. She also in a roundabout way tried to inquire about how much my trip cost, because she “was looking at going there someday”. I didn’t directly answer because it felt off to me that she would ask something like that, seeing as she makes 10x as much as I did, but it was definitely not a cheap trip.
For context, from the day I started she never treated me with respect or basic decency. I dealt with numerous comments and inappropriate questions about my disability, my “inability” to complete tasks without mistakes (tasks that she was supposed to train me on and never did, or assumed I would figure out how to do myself after getting help from others in my dept), and just lack of empathy and understanding when medical emergencies rose due to my disability or other things. I chose to “rise above” and never spoke up about these comments or anything because A) none of it was (purposely) in writing or recorded, and B) I didn’t want to give her ammunition to fire me given the state of the US economy.
Anyways, I get home from vacation, and I find that all of our meetings for that week were cancelled. Typically when she would cancel a meeting, she would reschedule as soon as she was available. But these were all important meetings between us that she just cancelled without saying a word to me. This went on for 2 days, until mid-day Thursday I’m called down to HR’s office where I’m told I’m being laid off without any kind of warning, and also without severance. This bitch is sitting there holding back a smile the entire time I’m holding back tears. I get handed my last paycheck, walked back to my desk to collect my things, and was escorted off the property. Which, in hindsight, was definitely an “F you” from her to me, since she knew I’m a one-car household and I was then forced to wait outside in the middle of the rain for my partner to leave work and come get me.
I don’t know why I didn’t say any of this to HR before I left, because at that point what did I have to lose, but something in me just said to keep being polite and respectful even while being told I’m losing my job and income for the foreseeable future.
I know this is more of a vent-y post so I apologize if those aren’t allowed here, but I just needed to say somewhere FUCK HER. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for managers just to treat people with basic fucking respect or how it’s ethical to seemingly know for a good chunk of time that I’m getting laid off and not say anything. Had I even had an inclination I might be losing my job I would have cancelled my entire vacation and kept saving that money.
TLDR: My boss seemingly knew I was getting laid off but waited until I came back from vacation and work for 2 days to have HR tell me.

Hi, I’m looking for someone with whom I can develop a very close emotional connection - either a monogamous romantic partner or super close platonic relationship. Not seeking anything short term. I’ve had several extremely close friendships, but I’ve never been in a real romantic relationship.
I wouldn’t be ready for anything IRL for a long while, so I’m looking for something purely online and primarily text based for the time being. Someone I can talk to every day, ideally play games with and watch stuff with, basically a dedicated partnership. North American preferred but not required.
I live under a rock and almost everyone agrees I’m weird/unique. Most people aren’t very compatible with me, mainly because I’ve been so isolated. With that said, please PM me to exchange more info and see if we get along.
A bit about me:
I’m around 30 years old, and I’m a trans woman (>5 years on E).
I’ve spent basically my entire life playing games (primarily MMO and FPS). If you aren’t an active gamer, or you don’t have a history of gaming, we might have trouble connecting.
I don’t personally keep up with news or politics, and don’t use social media (besides browsing some reddit and a lot of twitch/youtube).
I’m attracted to women and men, but lean more towards women.
I’m very inexperienced romantically and sexually, but I have a decent understanding of what I want in a life partner.
I have great difficulties with mental illness - something to be discussed. Hundreds of hours spent in therapy, so I’m not completely in the dark, but honestly mental illness rules my life. Hopefully it won’t be like this forever.
In some ways I can be confident, but as a rule I’m pretty reserved/scared/submissive. I don’t let people run me over but I strongly desire someone who is at least a little more outgoing/dominant than me. I want someone to hold my hand.
NEET and still live at home.
Clingy if I really like you.
Not a fan of horror.
I don’t drink or smoke.
Mostly a homebody, but I’d love to get out more.
Pretty clueless about most things, but I’d love to learn about whatever you’re into.
Basic physical stuff:
White/Asian.
Few inches above average female height. BMI of 20, for whatever that’s worth.
I began my transition years ago but it’s been a winding path. Still in progress. Definitely outside the norm. I often feel like I don’t relate to most trans women but idk. I have had an orchiectomy and do not plan on having a vaginoplasty.
I have an androgynous (perhaps soft butch?) appearance but want to feminize further. You probably won’t find me attractive unless you’re okay with some masculine attributes. Feel free to ask me about stuff.
I will not reply to any comments. Please message me directly.
Requirements: 26 to 36 years old, intelligent, trustworthy, conscientious, compassionate, open minded, communicative, online often.

Last week I delivered every package on my route, went home, and took 2 days off. The next morning I got a block and went to the warehouse to pick it up. I clicked "I've arrived" like I normally would to check in, however instead of the normal check in process the app tells me I have 11 packages left to deliver from my previous route 3 days ago.
I called support and let them know I delivered every package that day and I was confused why the app isnt reflecting that. The first support tells me he put in a ticket it will be fixed in 30mins. He asks me to wait at the warehouse and keep refreshing the app until the issue clears so I can continue picking up my next block. I wait the 30mins and call support again because the issue isn't fixed. The next support agent says the first one lied to me and it will take 24 hours to clear and I should go home and skip my current block. She said not to worry because she submitted a ticket explaining the missed block.
The next day I take another block and hope the issue is fixed. Lo and behold 10 of the 11 packages are now cleared from my itinerary and I can check in finally.
However there's a new problem that apparently led to my deactivation. The 11th package was now showing as "customer refused, do not deliver" return to warehouse. This is odd because last week when I delivered it the package was not marked that way.
I immediately call support and email them so there's a paper trail. Support tells me it's an app error and they'll investigate. They tell me it won't effect my standing. I proceed to email support and the @jeff email every day since and have called multiple times about the issue. They keep just giving canned responses about not worrying and they have all the info the need. They tell me I don't need to keep contacting them about it.
Tonight I suddenly got an email saying I'm deactivated for not returning packages to the warehouse that I was supposed to return. I can only assume it has to be from that bugged route because I rarely ever have undelivered packages, and on the rare occasion that I do I've always immediately returned them or returned them before 10am the next day when they were closed.
I've sent an appeal but I don't expect much after having such a hard time getting support to even acknowledge the bug I've been having for the past week that Ive called and emailed 10+ times about.
Has anyone ever successfully appealed a deactivation?
TLDR. Banned for not returning packages that I delivered.

I'm 23 now (will be 24 in October), unemployment due to mental health issues and still living at home.
I feel like at that age i should've been living on my own for a long time, have a job and a finished or nearly finished education. Other people who are younger than me or are the same age have already achieved all of this things, i just feel so behind.
It's silly i know, but i just feel so old. Like i see people who are 18 moving out, having jobs, finishing there education and starting their life and I'm here with 23. How old will I be when i start? 30?

Hello, about once a day we find a big poop from a new cat we are fostering on the floor. The previous owner also said this was a problem but as we look for his new permanent home I would like him to be properly trained. The cat is 6months, we have 4 uncovered litter boxes for our 3 cats and the foster so 1 box each. Three in the living room and one in the bedroom. I have put his poop in the box and brought him too it, and when put inside litter box he growls at me. I’m just not sure what to do because he’s healthy. Any advice is appreciated

So my dad has two dogs (siblings and one female, one male) that are unsocial and aggressive towards strangers and other dogs. They are about 5 years now.
Backstory is: My brother in law found them in a dumpster in a bag as very small pups...they were the only two alive. With lots of care and love they survived, I spent about a week tending to them (My parents were away on holidays) and we call them Eevee (f) and Dili (m). So at the time I was away studying in uni and would only be there for the weekends and at first they were just cute and sweet puppies. As they grew I noticed my parents were pampering them too much, maybe because me and my siblings were already living apart and they felt lonely, it was like they were their children. I started living with my boyfriend about 1 year after that.
So things were starting to get progressively worse. They didn't train them at all, they would let them destroy everything from blankets, to dog beds, to shoes and just started walking them in isolated places like the woods or the beach. They did this because they were starting to bark at other people and dogs. I told them to keep walking them in places near people but they ignored it...I also went abroad about 3 years ago so it became harder for me to try to help.
Fast forward to now, my mother passed away about one week ago. I am on my dad's house so we can be there for another. My mother had a hoarder problem and the house is a mess so we are gradually starting to clean and declutter. But there's a lot of problems because of the dog's behavior. To name a few:
They are way too excited and bark a lot. Any sound outside and they go crazy and go to the front yard to bark (we have a house with walls around, they can't see outside, only through the gate gap). The neighbors aren't really happy with all the barking.
When we get back home they jump on me and my dad and even though they are small medium sized they sometimes hurt my dad with they paws and my dad is 73 years old, he still has good mobility but I am concerned they might make him fall someday. Oh and he keeps saying he has to pick them up when they are like this (mostly with the female) which also isn't doing any good to his back pain.
They shred blankets, plants, the couch and even the car...(my dad keeps letting them go into the backseats, even though they could comfortably stay only in the trunk which is connected.) This also makes me sad because I was the one that helped him picking a new car some years ago, it was almost brand new and now it's awfull.)
He often goes on walks with them but he tries to avoid other people or dogs. He already had issues where our dogs saw others and tried to attack them so I am afraid one day this can be very problematic. They never bite people but they are aggressive, barking at them closely which can be scary.
Eevee, the female, sometimes pees on the couch just suddenly and I told him she might have a problem so we should get her to the vet...she also pees inside sometimes. I suggested we got dog beds and try to keep them off the couch but my dad said they would just rip them off.
He also can't never go on holidays because he says if the dogs were home alone, even if someone went there to take care of them, they would be howling and be missing him all the time.
I think Eevee's the most problematic one in terms of behavior, she is seems smarter than Dili and usually wants to domanite him so they sometimes get in fights. She is also very jealous and I think Dili learned a lot of bad behavior from her since he seemed more social and calmer than her before.
But yeah, I am sorry for the long post but I think I shouldn't let any details out. I would say they behave like this because they weren't trained at all, were not socialized properly and I know it was my parents fault and my dad keeps with the same routine... He is stubborn but he loves them very much and he thinks that this way he is being good to them. He also used to give them people food while eating meals but I think I made him understand that it's very harmful for them, and they are getting a bit overweight, especially Dili.
This had been a very hard time for my family because of our mother's loss so I just want to try to help my dad so when I leave at least he can have more piece of mind regarding all this issues.
I have started to watch some videos about how to socialize aggressive dogs and try to calm them down more but I just wanted to know if someone had any advice for this situation, TIA.
TL;DR: Dogs are not socialized properly and are aggressive towards other people and dogs.

Hi everyone,
I recently purchased a used RX570 GPU from a local store for gaming purposes. At the time of purchase, I tested it in FurMark for 15 minutes and it worked fine. However, when I ran the same stress test for about 2 minutes after taking it home, the GPU lost signal, even though the temperature was only around 70deg and the average wattage was 90w. The PSU is an unknown brand named aigo ck 500 500w, and the CPU is i5 4590s. The GPU's fan was still spinning at full speed, but the display showed no signal. Two connectors were plugged in, one for the GPU and one for the iGPU. When I hit the reset button, it booted up, but the RX570 was not showing up on the device manager, although the GPU's fan was still spinning at max speed.
I tried starting up the PC again, and it worked fine, but the same issue occurred when I ran FurMark. Upon further investigation, I found out that the GPU was previously used for mining crypto, and the seller restored the original BIOS before selling it to me.
I'm not sure whether I should return the GPU for a replacement or try to fix it myself. Has anyone had a similar experience with a used GPU? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

I’ve been with my boyfriend for 5 years and we have a 3 year old daughter. I speak 3 languages: English, ASL, and my native language. My grandma had experienced a lot of erasure of her culture by her husband which affected my mom in her childhood. My mom made it a very important thing to teach me and my siblings her language as children so we would never lose it. If we argued we had to do in our language, it was a great way to make us stay sharp. My aunt is deaf (dad’s brothers wife) and she can lip read and speak but prefers ASL. My parents also had us go to ASL classes when we were young and in high school so we could communicate with her. So majority of my immediate family (aunt,uncle,cousins,siblings) know how to sign and I was fluent by the time I was 13.
My culture has always been very important to me and I’ve always wanted to stay connected to my heritage. My boyfriend has no connection with his culture besides knowing he’s Italian. My daughter is 3 1/2 and can speak fairly well. I wanted to start teaching her both of my languages and I’ve also read that teaching kids asl when they’re babies is a great way for them to communicate. I was speaking to her the other day in my language and my boyfriend got upset. He said that she’s too young to learn and it’ll be too confusing for her. He says that children who grow up in bilingual homes have a harder time in school. While that may have a slice of truth that doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t learn. I was pretty good at school, I didn’t graduate top of my class but I always had good grades. This really pissed me off and I asked when he would want her to learn and he said “maybe when she’s in high school”. It is so much harder to learn a language when you’re older rather than when you’re young. He should know that as he failed Spanish 1 in high school. I feel as if he doesn’t want her to learn at all. He’s never learned more than a few words in asl even though I’ve tried hard with him because my aunt deserves to participate in conversations. He’s gotten mad before when me and my cousin were signing to each other because he didn’t know what we were saying and we were being “rude”. We were talking about something personal so he didn’t need to know anyways. Ive gotten over him not caring to learn languages, but I believe my daughter needs to learn. There’s so many benefits being trilingual and personally I feel it’s amazing to be able to communicate with different people. Where we live also has a large deaf population so it’s not uncommon to see deaf people in public.
I want her to learn but I don’t know how to do this without my partner supporting it. Am I wrong? Should I wait until she’s older maybe 5-8? I know it’s not on purpose but it makes me feel like he doesn’t respect how important my culture is to me. Should I just teach her anyways without him knowing or is this a serious thing that I should address with him? Can anyone with similar experiences give advice?
TLDR: I am trilingual and want to teach my 3 year old languages now while she’s young. My boyfriend says she shouldn’t learn until high school, but he doesn’t speak anything but English. How can I do this without his support or am I wrong and should wait?

Fuck…
When I was 14
Well let’s go back to when I was 10, I guess.
I was a big fan of John Lennon and David Bowie and Elvis Presley.
But I had a condition..
Dexterity/motor skill problem.
I still have it to this day.
my hands are always shaking, And I exhibit the penmanship of a toddler to this day
I found an old guitar in my grandma‘s closet while we stayed with her in Los Banos before we moved to Reno Nevada From San Jose California.
My grandma and grandpa did not know how the guitar even got there in the first place, but they were old and maybe one of them bought it at one time and forgot.
I asked Grandma If could take the guitar.
I think the guitar was called “Aslin Dane. Ariel Pro III…”
This unique strat-style guitar seemed older than the redwoods my family had recently said goodbye to.
That was when I was 10….
We lived a normal life in Reno after that and we all loved the high dessert and mountain air.
I was 14 and now and we were assimilated in northern Nevada.
I had spent four years trying to even play a chord or a note on this mysterious guitar and ground my fingers away on it daily, but my hands were too shaky.
I couldn’t write a song.
I couldn’t do anything.
I prayed to God, even though it was a joke.
I didn’t believe in angels or God or the Bible.
My parents are both atheist my father is a man of science.
I grew up as an atheist I had no religious disposition at the time.
Subsequently, I got into heavy metal, dark hair, dark music and occult Ouija board shit. Not because I believed in anything really, but because I thought it was cool.
I was like: “there’s no god anyways so I might as well just be dark as I can be”.
it was a phase.
It was a fad.
So, arrogantly, I came home one day.
I still could not even pretend to play the guitar and I was angry because I thought I deserved talent.
So…. midnight one night, I decided to take every family album; every picture of myself that I could find in the house, my yearbooks throughout the years. I took these pictures and I drew pentagrams on my forehead and crossed out my eyes.
I then lit some candles and I said: “I know there’s no god, because if there was a god I would be able to play this guitar”
….I swore allegiance to the devil if he would come right now and show himself and make me able to play.
Maybe five minutes after I said this out loud and had lit the candles and did the séance…
Well, i should say that it must’ve been 2004 and there were zero electric vehicles at the time.
Though there weren’t electric vehicles in those days, I would describe what I heard and five minutes later; slowly prowling up to the front of my house, as an electric car.
It sounded like a heavy piece of metal moving with no engine.
Almost like how the Jetsons ship sounds.
And then I immediately started to sweat cold sweat.
The candles were still lit and I swear…across the wall in front of me, I saw an anthropomorphic face… A devilish face, cast a shadow that spread across my closet doors in front of me.
I was like “well at least the car stopped and they went somewhere else” because another five minutes later it was silent.
Just when I thought the coast was clear, I heard the rickety glass screen door being pulled open from our front door. It was an incredibly heavy and loud outer-door… But I didn’t hear the actual wooden front door, or anything like the locking mechanisms, nothing like that. So I thought it was just the wind blew this the heavy glass door wide open, so abruptly.
After five minutes or so, I heard heavy footsteps in the house, spaced between at least 30 or 40 seconds.
They were coming up the stairs to the second floor where my bedroom was.
I used to sneak out and smoke pot with my neighborhood friends, so I knew the spots on the staircase to avoid and it seemed like whatever was coming up there, purposely stepped on the loudest parts of it…like they knew the house as I did.
Another five minutes in silence, I just think that I’m imagining it all, but then….I start hearing footsteps 30 seconds apart.
Heavy footsteps, taunting me, by stepping on the loudest parts of the sub-floor underneath the carpet of the second landing.
I tried to convince myself it was a dream, but I was too alert and conscious of what I was trying to summon.
I could not have slept that night if you paid me $1 million dollars.
I was wide awake and terrified.
So…these footsteps came down through the hallway, to my door and they stopped loudly
I’m thinking to myself “why won’t my dad get up? I want my mom get up.
Nor did my brothers awake nor my sister…aren’t they terrified too?’
10 minutes passed. I didn’t hear anything.
Then just as I was saying “phew” and wiping the sweat from my forehead; I heard three loud knocks; “boom, boom, boom.”
I was like ‘this is not happening right now!’
I tried to get up to turn the candles off and shred the Satanic photos I made of myself, but I’ve never been so afraid and I was unable to move.
“Boom boom boom!’
it was always three knocks… each set louder and louder, until at least 6 or 7 AM.
The next day, of course, I was still awake and only opened the door when I heard my family having breakfast.
I went downstairs and I literally shoved my older brother while he was sitting having eggs and hashbrowns at the table and I accosted him and I said “what the hell man? Why were you banging on my door all night?
He genuinely had no idea what I was talking about.
My dad‘s room was only 5 feet across the hall from where I was, and my sisters room was literally a foot away from my door to the left.
Nobody heard anything and they looked at me like I was crazy.
I felt I was crazy.
I had just stayed up all night listening to this thing pounding like a fireman or policeman at my door and that was when I first genuinely Said a prayer to God.
Two or three weeks later I casually picked up the old creepy guitar that was still in my closet….And I could play.
I mean, oh, boy could I play.
But there was nothing inside of me that was cheerful about this new gift that I was given.
And I always knew from then on out that it was a curse.
Since then, I have become a protégés guitar, bass player and singer.
But every time I write a new song, there is a shadow of my soul standing over me.
I try to think that, since I didn’t open the door for Satan; that God has rewarded me with the gift to play, but I know that my gift is a curse and I may either already be in hell or I am going that way soon.

So my dad has two dogs (siblings and one female, one male) that are unsocial and aggressive towards strangers and other dogs. They are about 5 years now.
Backstory is: My brother in law found them in a dumpster in a bag as very small pups...they were the only two alive. With lots of care and love they survived, I spent about a week tending to them (My parents were away on holidays) and we call them Eevee (f) and Dili (m). So at the time I was away studying in uni and would only be there for the weekends and at first they were just cute and sweet puppies. As they grew I noticed my parents were pampering them too much, maybe because me and my siblings were already living apart and they felt lonely, it was like they were their children. I started living with my boyfriend about 1 year after that.
So things were starting to get progressively worse. They didn't train them at all, they would let them destroy everything from blankets, to dog beds, to shoes and just started walking them in isolated places like the woods or the beach. They did this because they were starting to bark at other people and dogs. I told them to keep walking them in places near people but they ignored it...I also went abroad about 3 years ago so it became harder for me to try to help.
Fast forward to now, my mother passed away about one week ago. I am on my dad's house so we can be there for another. My mother had a hoarder problem and the house is a mess so we are gradually starting to clean and declutter. But there's a lot of problems because of the dog's behavior. To name a few:
They are way too excited and bark a lot. Any sound outside and they go crazy and go to the front yard to bark (we have a house with walls around, they can't see outside, only through the gate gap). The neighbors aren't really happy with all the barking.
When we get back home they jump on me and my dad and even though they are small medium sized they sometimes hurt my dad with they paws and my dad is 73 years old, he still has good mobility but I am concerned they might make him fall someday. Oh and he keeps saying he has to pick them up when they are like this (mostly with the female) which also isn't doing any good to his back pain.
They shred blankets, plants, the couch and even the car...(my dad keeps letting them go into the backseats, even though they could comfortably stay only in the trunk which is connected.) This also makes me sad because I was the one that helped him picking a new car some years ago, it was almost brand new and now it's awfull.)
He often goes on walks with them but he tries to avoid other people or dogs. He already had issues where our dogs saw others and tried to attack them so I am afraid one day this can be very problematic. They never bite people but they are aggressive, barking at them closely which can be scary.
Eevee, the female, sometimes pees on the couch just suddenly and I told him she might have a problem so we should get her to the vet...she also pees inside sometimes. I suggested we got dog beds and try to keep them off the couch but my dad said they would just rip them off.
He also can't never go on holidays because he says if the dogs were home alone, even if someone went there to take care of them, they would be howling and be missing him all the time.
I think Eevee's the most problematic one in terms of behavior, she is seems smarter than Dili and usually wants to domanite him so they sometimes get in fights. She is also very jealous and I think Dili learned a lot of bad behavior from her since he seemed more social and calmer than her before.
But yeah, I am sorry for the long post but I think I shouldn't let any details out. I would say they behave like this because they weren't trained at all, were not socialized properly and I know it was my parents fault and my dad keeps with the same routine... He is stubborn but he loves them very much and he thinks that this way he is being good to them. He also used to give them people food while eating meals but I think I made him understand that it's very harmful for them, and they are getting a bit overweight, especially Dili.
This had been a very hard time for my family because of our mother's loss so I just want to try to help my dad so when I leave at least he can have more piece of mind regarding all this issues.
I have started to watch some videos about how to socialize aggressive dogs and try to calm them down more but I just wanted to know if someone had any advice for this situation, TIA.
TL;DR: Dogs are not socialized properly and are aggressive towards other people and dogs.

He kept tossing onions into his hat and missing the mark. He dropped his spatulas like five times while attempting to juggle and flustered, he served everyone the wrong dishes.
It was Carolinas birthday and the staff sang happy birthday to another Korean girl sitting at our table and called her my gfs name..:
Carolina made me give up the sauce earlier that month and I almost attributed my hallucinations to withdrawal symptoms.
I found out how wrong I was to think that or that I was even going mad at all, later that evening.
Thankfully Carolina was infinitely patient and we both shared a healthy amount of appreciation for irony and clowned on stupid things a lot, not at all unlike her lackluster birthday party.
We laughed it off.
As soon as the door to our room slammed shut, we stopped laughing but, not to worry. The night had a whole lot more of laughter coming our way.
Yes, it was freezing in there. It reminded me of a meat cooler in a butchers shop. It was just missing the cow carcasses hanging from hooks.
We sort of expected this and it was snowing like hell outside so it wasn’t that unfathomable.
We cranked up the heat but instead of heat the only difference we noticed as a possible result was the unmistakable smell of death and rot.
I pulled the mini fridge out, looking for a rat or mouse. My bartending experience taught me that even something as insignificant as a mouse can smell like trench in World War One.
Nothing.
Thankfully my girlfriend started to speak up about all of the things that weren’t adding up and what do you know? The shadow man silhouette was growing once again and the sound of passive but persistent scraping was once again audible.
We lay down together and I decide to come clean and tell her about the shower incident, only after she unsteadily whispered: “babe, I think this place is haunted.”
When I uttered the word “laughter” in me recounting of the shower episode, I was interrupted with the sound of sitcom style canned laughter followed by a round of applause that can typically be attributed to the ending of an episode.
She heard it, them, also.
I had to know.
“Did you hear it too?”
She choked back alligator tears and nodded bleakly.
The next thing that happened was the adjacent room to us in the hallway as well as the room at the end of the hallway to our right started opening and slamming and this continued all night. There were sounds of drills or table saws coupled with ballroom music and intemperate drunken ranting and heated arguments on the other side of our door until, you guessed, dawn.
We had three nights left that we paid for but at first light we threw all our belongings into our luggage and ran down to the front desk.
I gave the key back to the girl working the desk.
I told her that we were leaving early and that judging by the sound of the massive party and maintenance occurring on the 16th floor, I figured she would be happy to hear that she could rent the room to the drunks that saturated the floor.
“Sir, you two are the first guests we’ve had on the 16th floor in 5 weeks or so.”
On the trip home, it dawned on us that, though the nearby rooms doors were opening and closing but we never heard the beeping of the door key cards being used.
I scoured the internet for the old woman from my dream and I found a website that had an illustration of her and with her pet iguana and those dead white eyes.

We took all the clean towels and covered the macabre paintings and collapsed into bed.
That night I had the worst sleep paralysis episode I had ever had.
I just remember that I was sitting up in bed, looking at the door to our room because something was behind the door that made me bolt up and start sweating, despite the brumal chill that came over the room.
The sound of as like a cat scratching to be let inside.
Suddenly the door burst open violently and there was an apparition of an elderly woman in a pure white evening gown.
She was levitating about a couple feet off the ground. Her eyes were white like a severely blind old dog.
Below her there were snake like lizards that made figure eights, chasing each others tails in some ritualistic undulating circle.
The apparition floated to the foot of my bed. Her arms were outstretched in front of her, shoulder height like Frankenstein and the lizards followed her wherever she went.
The old woman began shrieking like a banshee and the room filled with blinding white light.
Next I’m laying in bed screaming and Carolina is shaking me out of my vivid and lucid sleep paralysis.
She was terrified.
I sprung out of bed and ran to the door to see if it was still locked.
We tried to shrug it off and return to bed but the room was so I cold I was expecting to see my own breath.
Carolina pointed out that something sounded like it was scratching the window lightly and a distended humanoid shadow was cast across the wall.
I opened the curtains to see if it may be hail making the noise as we were way too high up for it to be anything else.
The shadow figure would vanish each time I yanked the blinds open but it and the scratching would manifest again a few minutes later each time.
The thermostat said the room was 80 degrees and we had the cranked to no avail. It would get progressively colder and colder each night until exactly sunrise and then it seemed the heater would finally function properly.
So, I gave up on sleeping but my girlfriend slept well into the afternoon.
I called down for more towels but nobody came so after an hour I took the one down that we had hung over easily the must unnerving painting in the whole room.
Just above the toilet was the saddest sack of shit wino clown that appeared to have the wounds of Christ in its wrists and of course, just behind the clown was like a wendigo or skinwalker entity that I hadn’t noticed initially.
Regarding the painting, my girlfriend took pictures of all of them just because she knew that no one back home would believe that they were real. Also, they were so complicated that it’s truly hard to describe exactly what was going on in each one. The best comparison I could make was if Hieronymus Bosch used oil paints and charcoal on an average sized canvas and had a hard on for clowns.
After a year or so, she and I both felt that the photos of the paintings should be deleted as we both experienced frequent sleep paralysis the following year or so. Part of me regrets that decision.
Oh well.
It was 2016 so it didn’t help that it was that year where disturbing clowns were popping up all over to the point where McDonald’s nixed Ronald McDonald for good.
So, there I am in the shower with my back to Clowny McAntichrist and I’m feeling distinctly like I’m being watched.
I allow myself to revisit my nightmare from the night before but suddenly there was only one thing I could think about…
The disembodied, Krusty the Clown cartoonish laughter that suddenly manifested near my right ear.
I yanked the shower in the direction I thought was off and ended up scalding my neck and butt and almost completely ate it.
I pulled the shower curtain open from the other side and searched the entire room for whatever made that noise.
At this point, I was convinced that it was my turn to go crazy seeing as my older brother lost his mind around the same age. That’s another story but he is a homeless schizophrenic meth who talks to himself and went full on Syd Barret with out any prior indication of mental health problems.
Heartbreaking as my brothers descent into madness was, I was selfishly more afraid of waking up one day just as insane as he is.
I couldn’t tell Carolina what I was experiencing. If I was losing it, she is the last one I would want to find out about it.
We went to a dinner show thing at a Japanese restaurant called Ichiban.
Our cook was awful.

I throw parties at home where I make cocktails and "bartend" and I've done a couple private parties, but this is a different animal. Not that I didn't have respect before, but I have a completely different respect for the job. I did alright by everyone's accounts, so that's a plus. We'll try it again next Saturday...

Hi everyone,
I recently purchased a used RX570 GPU from a local store for gaming purposes. At the time of purchase, I tested it in FurMark for 15 minutes and it worked fine. However, when I ran the same stress test for about 2 minutes after taking it home, the GPU lost signal, even though the temperature was only around 70deg and the average wattage was 90w. The PSU is an unknown brand named aigo ck 500 500w, and the CPU is i5 4590s. The GPU's fan was still spinning at full speed, but the display showed no signal. Two connectors were plugged in, one for the GPU and one for the iGPU. When I hit the reset button, it booted up, but the RX570 was not showing up on the device manager, although the GPU's fan was still spinning at max speed.
I tried starting up the PC again, and it worked fine, but the same issue occurred when I ran FurMark. Upon further investigation, I found out that the GPU was previously used for mining crypto, and the seller restored the original BIOS before selling it to me.
I'm not sure whether I should return the GPU for a replacement or try to fix it myself. Has anyone had a similar experience with a used GPU? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

I'm going to take a provably unpopular stance and go into detail explaining why I think Peragus is not just a fun and thoughtful level, but also why I think it was designed and executed well. This is stupidly long, so be prepared.

Peragus Viewed Through the Lens of Design Intent

Before beginning to talk about why I enjoy Peragus and why I think others often do not, I think it's helpful to establish what Peragus actually attempts to do in order to analyze whether it is successful in its goals, and also why its design intent strongly impacts how people perceive the level as a whole.
Game levels are not always (or even often) just a calculus of "will this be fun?" Often, their design is imbricated with the game's themes, pacing and tone. This can range from the obvious--there is a reason Dead Space takes place on a run-down, damaged vessel with bad lighting, for instance--to the subtextual: is the reason Dragon Age: Origins concludes on the top of Fort Drakon, the very simbol of the King's power in Denerim, meant to represent the player overcoming the forces in Ferelden which stood against them and rising to the heights of power? Or is it meant to be a nod to Alistair, and the future which is intended for him?
However, between the obvious and the subtextual is, I would argue, a third category which often represents major design decisions which nevertheless are not directly tied to core gameplay components (such as movement, combat, or the plot of the game at large) and are focused instead on achieving a specific and narrow design objective, such as the creation of a unique tone or atmosphere. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to this as Structural Design, and this is the level at which I believe Peragus operates.
With this in mind, what is Peragus's design intent, and what is that design intent intended to accomplish? Let us first examine, in broad strokes, what Peragus actually does to the player, and from there we can work to extrapolate the broader intent of Peragus as a level. Peragus:

1. Unceremoniously dumps the player into an unfamiliar situation with no known allies, where the only two living beings they encounter are of suspect natures and loyalties;
2. Continually suggests the possibility of further human interaction to the player, only to continue pushing it further and further away, eventually revealing it was never possible at all. This also serves to make Peragus into a 'ghost station', where your only human interaction besides Kreia and Atton are the holo-logs of people you will never meet--because they died before you even awoke--speaking with great anxiety about the terrifying last days of their lives;
3. Goes to great pains to ensure that every victory is immediately followed by a defeat: you open the holding cells, but the admin terminal is cut off; T3 unlocks the mining tunnels, but is immediately ambushed and eliminated; you get through the mining tunnels, but the airlock is shut against you; you breach the airlock and enter the dormitory level, but the miners are all already dead, and the turbolift is sealed against you; you unlock the turbolift and can use the Harbinger to get to the fuel depot, but now you are on another ghost ship, with Sith present and hunting you; you reach the fuel depot access, but Kreia is badly wounded en route. At no turn do you feel in control of anything, often feeling as if you're just barely staying ahead of disaster;
4. Systematically removes pillars supporting the player, including the "death" of T3, the revelation that the HK-50 unit which was supposed to be your property was the architect of your capture, and Kreia's departure from the party and wounding by Sion;
5. Sequentially ambushes the player with unexpected encounters at extremely high threat for their level, eventually moving all the way to stealth ambushes by Sith Assassins.

Now, I strongly suspect that for many people I have just provided a convenient list of the exact reasons why they don't like Peragus. However, I am going to make the controversial argument that Chris Avellone does not simply hate his playerbase and did not design a level solely to make them suffer. To analyze the intent behind these design decisions, let's quickly take a look at the broader themes of KOTOR 2 overall:

1. Trauma and wartime PTSD, with an emphasis on redemption and/or coming to terms with one's past
2. Isolation from an in-group (Jedi), society as a whole (you are treated like a Jedi, even though the Jedi refuse to claim you), and the self (the loss of the Force and the Exile's inability to grasp what happened to her)
3. The failure of authority figures and systems to adapt to change or challenge without repression
4. Betrayal, both of ideologies and individuals, by superiors and juniors/inferiors, and also the self (Atris is queen here)
5. Self-Reliance and Actuation
6. Despair and Hopelessness
7. Disdain and/or disregard for common people's suffering

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it addresses the core themes of the game, and works well for our purposes. As you'll note, not every single theme is addressed well in Peragus; the Exile's trauma and PTSD, as well as isolation from the Jedi and the Force, are touched on on the edges but largely left as teases for the player, with the promise that they will learn more in the future. Similarly, while the failure of authority is touched on very lightly with the intra-miner conflict over whether to help or sell the Exile, the sub-plot with Coorta is extremely tangential and, unlike in other cases where challenges to authority are presented, we as the players are clearly not meant to sympathize with the challenger (Coorta); I would go so far as to dismiss this plotline as relevant to the correlated theme.
Yet a stunning amount of the remainder matches with shocking--and repeated--closeness to the game's themes:

1. There is hardly a module in Peragus where we don't see a betrayal. Excluding the ubiquitous presence of mining droids--whom we are constantly reminded betrayed their handlers through the presence of corpses, blaster scarring and holo-logs--there is also HK-50, who betrays the crew of the Harbinger, as well as the station administration and Coorta through his play-acting as the maintenance officer, as well as his "master" the Exile; Coorta, who betrays the station administration and his own boss, Sien, whom he indirectly murders; and Sion, who betrays Kreia once more on the Harbinger (though of course, their exact relationship is not known to the player at the time). Although no direct betrayal occurs through them, Peragus also contributes to an overall atmosphere of uncertainty and mistrust by cultivating a mysterious veil around the pasts of Atton and Kreia, forcing the player to question whether or not their own companions can be trusted.
2. Virtually the entirety of Peragus is done entirely in single-player, placing the Exile (or T3) alone against the unknown, and often truly dangerous, threats of the station. Even during those sections where you play as another character or gain additional party-members, these companions are lost suddenly twice: once when T3 is ambushed by HK-50, and once when you are ambushed by Sion. It also focuses somewhat on actuation, with the Exile starting to recover her connection to the Force, beginning her journey to come to terms with her past almost from the moment she awakes.
3. Despair and hopelessness is the big one. Peragus is deliberately devoid of human life, but the station was almost paralyzed by indecision and concern even before the fatal mining accident occurred, with different staff at each others' throats; mounting casualties from sabotage; and even more mundane (yet still consequential) concerns about the fate of the Republic and their fuel shipments to Telos. The hopelessness of the people on the station before they died well-complements the player's own hopelessness, as they are continually thrust into situation after situation where, despite their best efforts, matters always seem to be beyond their control. The almost endless sequence of "just one more try" attempts to resolve your situation hammers that hopelessness home fiercely, to the point that, when you encounter all the miners already dead, you might want to just sit down and give up yourself. It helps (or doesn't, depending upon your view) that Peragus is deliberately designed to encourage the player to think that absolution is just around the corner: everything is brightly-lit, well-maintained and clean, excepting those few areas where droids have damaged equipment. You keep thinking that you will find other people any minute, but they're never there. Instead, you just have an eerie, empty, doomed station filled with enemies and constant, mounting failures to escape it.
4. While not necessarily obvious, I think disdain for common people is another major theme of Peragus. HK obviously cares nothing for the miners and kills them all to get to you, as does Sion for the Republic soldiers on the Harbinger, but I would argue these are only the most obvious readings of the situation. The sleeper angle here, I think, is the Peragus administration: they don't care about their own mining staff enough to stop drilling, even as they are dying left and right. They constantly try to memory wipe the droids even when it's clear it isn't working, and issues are only mounting. They start to pull double-shifts to keep quotas up as more people die, instead of going into lockdown to try to salvage the situation. It's the first time we don't see clearly "evil" forces casually throw people away, but simply misguided, fatally aloof people. It's an important strike against the black-and-white morality system of the original KOTOR, and it comes nigh-instantaneously.

So, to finally bring this all together, what does all that say? Here is my thesis: Peragus is an intentionally-designed example of structural design intended to encapsulate the core themes of KOTOR 2. The intent behind representing all of these themes so early on, and in an isolated environment, is to present them to the player as a comprehensive introduction to the intended tone of the game and a means of preparation for content they will encounter in the future.

Does it Work?

Here I want to make the somewhat obvious but nevertheless important point that you can really, really dislike something and that thing can still succeed at what it intended to do--it might not be what you'd like it to have done, might not be done in the way you would've preferred it to be, and might just be downright unpleasant to you, but it can still achieve what it set out to. With that in mind, does Peragus stick the landing?
Operating under the assumption that our thesis is correct, I would issue an emphatic yes. In my most recent playthrough of KOTOR 2 I did not skip any dialogue, even alien VO; fully unlocked all holo-records and terminal entries and read them in their entirety; and defeated every enemy in the area (including every stealth group aboard the Harbinger), as well as doing some crafting. I did all that, and I was still off of Peragus in 3 hours, 30 minutes. The level manages to condense almost every single major theme of the game into a runtime of 210 minutes. And that's an example from me being slow.
People often complain about Peragus being unbearably long, and I understand those complaints, but viewed from this perspective, doesn't it seem incredible Peragus is as short as it is given the sheer thematic density it presents? It does to me; I often wonder if it even could be shorter and still succeed in the all-important attempt to subvert the player by constantly forcing them to fail in their efforts, breaking down their hope into hopelessness. Again: you might not like that, but is it not masterfully accomplished?
To me, Peragus feels like a master-class in design, constructing a compelling, localized narrative which leaves the player thirsting for more information about the uncertain and seemingly dangerous immediate past--both of the Exile and of the galaxy more broadly--while also managing to tie in almost all of the game's critical themes and introduce the player to what they should expect to see going forward. I can't think of a single tutorial level which accomplishes an introduction to the tone and themes of its product better than Peragus does for KOTOR 2. The closest is probably Dark Souls, but I hope it won't be controversial for me to say that it doesn't exactly deal with the same kind of heady themes KOTOR 2 does.
Still, success in objectives, as we've already noted, does not automatically mean a fun design. There are plenty of games that accomplish their goals admirably, but their goals suck, or the moment-to-moment gameplay and plot through which these goals are conveyed is unfun or tedious. Before we get to why I think Peragus is not just a successful but a good level, let me take a moment to acknowledge the criticisms frequently leveled against it.

Criticisms of Peragus and their Validity

I already touched above on the idea of length as a problem, and why I believe it is virtually impossible for Peragus to achieve its goals while being any shorter. This is not to entirely dismiss length as an issue; between Peragus and Telos, for those who aren't fond of the tone, structure or story of Peragus the intro to KOTOR 2 must feel like pulling teeth, even as compared to the terribly long Taris and much more bite-sized Dantooine, K1's cognates. Yet I do think that, with the objectives of Peragus in mind, the rationale behind the length is understandable. Peragus is not just long for the fun of it; its length gives it the ability to dangle sequential objectives in front of the player only to wrest their victory away each time, a critical component of its design intent.
Confusing design is a common complaint here on the sub, in that you frequently switch areas and characters, running in circles and often with only half-answers about what's happening. This issue is, I feel, more an artifact of initial impressions than a real point of failing for Peragus. A lot of people here now played this game as children. Jumping between the Exile and T3 then back without seeing T3 again for hours could easily be disorienting to a 12-year-old thrown into an unknown setting, but less so to an adult. Peragus does have you going in circles at times, especially when you later retrace T3's exact steps down the fuel depot, but I would not say that it is at any point structurally confusing.
The absence of many RPG elements is also noted. Despite playing a roleplaying game, Peragus is not just a zone where the player has barely anyone to interact with, it is also an extremely linear experience with barely any alternate means of achieving objectives (most of what little exists in that vein is token--bashing terminals to open doors instead of using conventional unlocks, for instance). The latter issue I fully agree with and believe is one of the few major failings of Peragus, though I would suggest that it's possible that alternate options were cut to avoid additional confusion for new players by overloading them with alternate routes, or bloating an already-long tutorial level. The former issue, however, we can see is a core component of Peragus's design, not just to establish the isolating and disconcerting atmosphere of the station, but also to introduce that the player will frequently need to operate alone throughout the course of the game. Thus once again, while this criticism is valid, so too is Peragus's rationale for its design choice.
Bad combat design is also often discussed, however this is very subjective and perhaps even outside of the scope of this analysis. I think that the mix of droids and assassins is interesting enough and the stealth teams add tension and threat as a welcome break in the monotony of droid combat at the 2/3 point of the level, but I understand many might not agree. That said, bad fights can contribute to disliking a level without contributing to a failure of its design intent, so even in the event that players don't like the combat, there's still the possibility to appreciate what Peragus sets out to achieve.
Among the most frequently-mentioned criticisms of the zone is a lack of replayability. This is understandable: Peragus is, at its heart, a massive murder-mystery, and when you already know the answer much of the tension that drives the level is no longer present. I fully acknowledge this as another problem with the level, though I do also want to note the same problems exist for virtually every other game which is designed around a mystery.
There is also a final--and, in my opinion, critical--complaint one often hears, but because of how important it is to my conclusions, I will save mentioning it for last. First, I want to explain why, despite its problems, I think Peragus is not just a triumph of design, but also simply a fun level.

Fun?

Fun is a buzzword subjective, so I can't just say "Peragus is fun, fuck you haters" and leave it at that. At this point I'm 18,000 characters and 8 hours in to this post and regretting my life choices, though, and holy fuck I really wish I could.
Ignoring my poor decision-making, we have touched on whether Peragus succeeds in its intent already, but not how it succeeds in its intent. When you wrap all of the themes contained within up in a Peragus-shaped box, what do you get?
The absence of NPCs or companions, while perhaps unconventional from the perspective of an RPG, leaves the player free to experience the mystery of the station without the risk of growing distracted or having their expectations muddled by other characters' perspectives. However, the main thing that the absence of NPCs achieves, and the reason I love Peragus even after 30+ playthroughs, is the punishing isolation which the player is made to feel virtually from the first moment. It is this isolation which leaves me coming back for more, and which more than lets me ignore the fact that I know where every enemy spawn is, know the mystery of the station, know just what every log says. I respect Peragus's design. I devour Peragus's atmosphere.
This atmosphere is, I think, actually part two of three in the Unholy Trinity of why people dislike the level. Aspect #1 is its length, but the atmosphere is, I think, an oft-overlooked bit of first impression that leaves a consistently sour taste in players' mouths. Because I would go so far as to say the atmosphere of Peragus is almost crafted too well.
Peragus is not a conventionally enjoyable level to play. You are alone. There are no people around you, but by all appearances there should be. Your "friends" are suspect, there are threats around every turn, and your attempts to escape are constantly, meticulously thwarted. And throughout all this, you are alone. We have spoken of all of this before in the context of design intent, but not in terms of the effect that actually has on gameplay.
I previously saw a user call Peragus a survival-horror experience, and another user said they were out of their mind. I don't think they were--I think that's exactly what Peragus is. Peragus is a horror game, complete with its own lumbering monstrocities hounding your every step in the shapes of HK-50 and Sion, and like all horror games, it is patently uncomfortable to experience. You are constantly looking over your shoulder (metaphorically and, perhaps, actually as well), constantly on alert for an ambush, constantly, desperately hoping that the next door you open will finally have someone behind it. But you are ALWAYS alone. Your attempts to escape are ALWAYS thwarted. The monsters are ALWAYS one step in front of you. You literally do not feel safe and confident that you've escaped until you finally see that hyperspace window open in front of you.
That is a triumph of design. And that is also, I am confident, the root of why so many people dislike Peragus. It isn't just the individual elements like the length, the constant defeats, or the ambush teams that make people hate Peragus. On their own, those are annoying but not damning, and even in aggregate without a total failure of all other aspects of design they could not, in my opinion, explain the hate which Peragus consistently earns. I am not dismissing the criticisms which I addressed above, nor their place as a component of the dislike for Peragus. For some people, I'm sure that really is all there is to it, and the atmosphere of the zone has minimal effect, if any whatsoever. But for more, I'm sure that it's left some deep-seated scars.
I say this because I was among that number. When I was younger, I hated Peragus. Even before TSLRCM I loved KOTOR 2 more than the original, but I always tried to speed through Peragus. I didn't like it. I couldn't talk to anyone, and it wasn't fun. I just wanted to rush through it to get to Telos, because there were people there, and that's where the story really began.
All that's true, of course. But though I didn't have the vocabulary for it at the time, the main reason was because I felt uncomfortable playing Peragus, even after I learned what the mystery was. I always felt like a rat in a cage made just for me, alone and hunted, even when I knew what to expect. Maybe for other users, once they finally suss out the story of the station that sensation goes away. It's certainly diminished for me by now. But it's still powerful, and the recognizance of just how masterfully the level had to be designed to construct that intentional feeling of helplessness consistently impresses me and leaves me wanting to experience it again. But for many of those who were kids when they first played KOTOR 2, I'm sure that just like me, a terribly unexpected impression was left, the remnants of which might manifest themselves still today in a deep-seated dislike for the level.
And that finally begins to touch on the final reason which I think helps explain why Peragus is hated.

The Poison Pill: The Divide Between Expectations and Intent

The final piece of the Unholy Trilogy standing against Peragus is none other than KOTOR itself. That final complaint you hear so often (so often that it almost boggles my mind) is that Peragus feels nothing like KOTOR. In some ways that's true, certainly--what other KOTOR level is a horror experience? But users who make this complaint take it beyond that, often suggesting that Peragus is almost the root of all evil, because it's the "start" of KOTOR 2 becoming a radically different game than the one they wanted it to be.
KOTOR 2, in many ways, both benefits and suffers from being a sequel: while it gains an established universe, history, set of characters and guidelines for its plot, it also inherits expectations about its structure, themes and tone from its predecessor. People went in to KOTOR 2 expecting a continuation of KOTOR, and instead they got a horror level that makes them feel extremely uncomfortable while it systematically subverts every major theme of the original game. And then it kicks the tone of KOTOR in the 'nads for good measure.
In other words, people had expectations, expectations which were inherently impossible to meet within the confines of the themes of KOTOR 2 as a whole and the design intent of Peragus specifically as a level. I do not say this to put the blame on those who went in with those expectations; after all, a sequel is meant to share much of the DNA of its antecedent even when it innovates, and especially for those of us who first played as children there was no reason why anyone should have believed differently. Rather, this is merely to acknowledge the implicitly obvious fact that people almost always play KOTOR first, and that leads them to anticipate something wildly different than what they receive when they start KOTOR 2. And, when what they receive is not merely different but disconcerting, it is--I would argue--natural to react viscerally. The whiplash is normal, if not necessarily by design.
But here I will ask my final question: is it be by design?
I would argue that yes, it is. KOTOR 2 is a game which is so wildly different from the original in structure, themes, tone and even relevant historical events that an introduction to prepare players for that difference is not only beneficial, but nigh-mandatory. Peragus is the amalgamation of all of the common themes of KOTOR 2 not just as a matter of coincidence, but, I would argue, a very conscious acknowledgement that the game needed an introduction which would make it abundantly clear to players that the experience they were in for was not like the one that they should be expecting. Peragus is, for lack of a more elegant way to put it, your alarm in the morning. You might well hate the little son of a bitch, but it serves a critical purpose. Once it goes off, you know what to expect.
Put another way, Peragus walks so the rest of KOTOR 2 can run. With all of the shock and frustration at dashed expectations and unexpected design decisions out of the way within the player's first hours, by the time they are on the Ebon Hawk and speeding to Telos, they have been reshaped into a blank(er) slate that is primed to accept the much different story of KOTOR 2 without as visceral a negative reaction.

Conclusion

Peragus is a level which is intentionally designed to present the player with the core themes of KOTOR 2, and often multiple examples thereof. Parts of the level suffer as a result of these design decisions, but most of the problems users take issue with can be traced back in some capacity either to bad memories of the level or design compromises that were made intentionally as a result of the level's intent as an introduction to the themes and tone of KOTOR 2. This decision was made, I argue, due to how different KOTOR 2 is from the original game, as a conscious effort by Obsidian to ensure that the player was prepared from the beginning to experience a radically different game than the original title and to ensure that subsequent levels would not suffer from consistently missed expectations from users continuing to assume the game would eventually become similar to the original title once again. In the process of achieving this goal, Peragus also achieves a unique atmosphere which I argue is akin to a horror game, which sets it apart from any comparable level in either game, and indeed in Star Wars more typically.

Memory Transcription Subject: Ovook Tkarna, Captain of the United Hope
Date [Standarized Human Time]: August 22, 1898
"I repeat, unknown ship, you have trasspased into territory of the Krakotl Alliance. State why are you here and who you are or you will be considered a hostile"
The bird, or at least I thought that it would be classified as a bird, said again, his (her?) patience running low due to our lack of a response to the order given to the crew
"A-apologies"
I finally said. Though I hadn't recovered from the shock of finding a civilization on what was suppossed to be a normal exploratory mission, I was still the Captain of the ship, and it was my duty to take the lead in situations of high importance, and he doubted there was a situation of bigger importance than a First Contact situation
"This is Captain Ovook Tkarna, Captain of the Exploratory Vessel 'United Hope', and she is my Second in Command, Arkhor Sanjalis"
The bird looked at Arkhor, their eyes apparently examinating closely the apparence of the girl
"We were supossed to explore this system for a future colonization... Well, that was when we thought that this system was uninhabited and that there wasn't inteligent life here"
The bird quickly put their gaze back on me, eyes narrowing at the answer
"Exploratory Vessel? In all of my carrier I have seen Cruisers with less weapons than those of your vessel! Hell, MY Cruiser has less weapons than your vessel!"
The bird said, venom behind those last words. Even though this was a serious situation, I couldn't help but notice how it used the word "Cruiser" to refer to their ships, but that didn't make sense. Even if their ships were bigger than his ship, the United Hope only classified as a Large Skaknar [Heavy Frigate], and that was because it had been built on the almost finished hull of a Jaknar class. Nevertheless, that gave two possible options for an explanation: their shipbuilding capabilities were still young, and as such they classified things like Skaknars [Frigates] as Shaknaruks [Star Cruisers], which would at least give some security to the Commonwealth even if conflict was the last thing they desired. Or, their shipbuilding capabilities were so advanced that they could fit the firepower of a Shaknaruk [Star Cruiser] in a ship slightly bigger than a Skaknar [Frigate], which would mean terrible things for the gigantic ships back at the Commonwealth
"W-well, I- Uhm..."
I stuttered, trying to find the words to respond to the acussations of the bird. Luckly, Arkhor apparently already had something prepared
"That is due to uncommon circumstances"
The bird again shifted their attention to Arkhor, and I did the same, waiting to see what she would said
"The United Hope was built upon the hull of an old battlecruiser, and leaving aside some point defense lasers, most of the weapons are mere husks without the necessary power to operate"
The bird narrowed his eyes at the answer that Arkhor gave, and I looked at her now with confusion, since everything she had said was a blatant lie. Yet Arkhor looked at me with a look I was familiar with, a look she had given me many times in situations that seemed hopeless during maneuvers that seemed suicidal. The "trust me, I know what I'm doing" look, and so I mantained my silence for now
"Hmm.... Wait there"
The bird finally said, and after that the communications link was closed, which at least gave the crew some room to breathe, and many let out breaths of air they didn't know they were holding
"What in the name of the Great Shankala was that!?"
I screamed at Arkhor, bewilderment in my voice because of what she had said, to which Arkhor answered with a surprisingly calm look
"That, bugbutt, was a de-escalation of the situation in which we found ourselves in"
She said, as if what she had done had been the only course of action that could be taken, which only confused me even more
"A de-escalation? You call lying a de-escalation!?"
I said, raising from my chair and taking height by raising half of my body segments in the air, which gave me a pretty intimidating stance, since both my arms and pincers were quite notable in that position. Of course, I didn't let the small legs of those segments move, even if I wanted to, since that was something generally seen as vulgar if done outside of the privacy of one's own home
"NO, Ovook"
Arkhor spat, also raising from her chair. Even though, technically, the Arthroplakrans were bigger than the Karkranians, the reality was that an Arthroplakran could only rise themselves to half of the segments that composed their bodies, since trying to do otherwise would put way too much weight on the exoskeleton, damaging the armor or, even worse, breaking it and hurting said Arthroplakran, while the Karkranians were completly fine due to their tails being relatively shorter compared to the rest of their bodies. Which, in short, meant that Arkhor was almost the same height as me, and that only made the discussion we were having all the more intimidating for the rest of the crew
"I call it 'keeping important information about the Commonwealth and our ships safe'. Did you see how that... That bird looked at us? It was like they were ready to take us out as soon as we said something that they didn't like!"
I stood in silence for some moments, principally because she had called me by my name. Dating back to our days in the Academy of Brooma, when we would usually just annoy each other, it had become a sort of silent rule that we would only use our real names in situations of utmost priority and importance, which, to be fair, was a pretty accurate description for our current situation. I quickly snapped out of that, shaking my head a little before looking back at Arkhor
"That's EXPECTABLE, Arkhor! We showed up uninvited, into a system that could possibly be already claimed by them, while having more weapons on this exploratory vessel than they seem to have on their warships!"
Arkhor looked at me with a mix of bewilderment and irritation on her look, and I couldn't help but flinch a little, since deep down even I didn't completly trust my own words, that were more like excuses rather than possible justifications after seeing how aggressive the bird had been towards them, even after they said that the United Hope was just an exploratory vessel
"That still doesn't make sense! We arrived here without any of our weapons ready, we complied with everything they told us, and even if we did try to attack them, we are outnumbered! Hell, it should be us the ones over the edge, not them!"
I sighed as I put a hand on the space between my antenna, while Arkhor lowered her head a little, still with a little of irritation on her look. This situation was stressing me, stressing her and likely stressing everyone else on the bridge, and the fact that that bird hadn't returned yet only made the situation more tense
Though, thinking better, it was probably a good thing that it hadn't returned yet; the little discussion between Arkhor and Myself would have probably prompted the bird to take them as prisioners or maybe even fire at them if it misinterpreted the situation
"Uh... H-hey, guys?"
Kraftan spoke, breaking the spontaneous silence that had fallen on the bridge, and getting the attention of both Arkhor and Me
"Look, I don't want to fuel this paranoia about the intentions of our mysterious guests here. But..."
He trailed off, before putting on display in the bridge the image of one of the vessels of the birds, probably having being taken by one of the cameras in the hull of the United Hope
"I have to say, those spaceships appear to be quite advanced, and REALLY well armed"
The attention of the bridge quickly settled on the image displayed by the holoprojectors, and some small gasps were heared trought the bridge at the sight of the vessel
The vessel, for starters, had dozens, maybe hundreds of small turrets with what appeared to be railguns or maybe coilguns spread throught the hull. In a way, it remainded me of the Support Kinetic Guns that the United Hope had, yet they were painfully small, way too small to actually serve as normal Support Kinetic Guns. Maybe they were Small versions? Those were usually found on any ships on the navy, from Snalknals [Corvettes] and Small Skaknars [Light Frigates] all the way to the Large Shandukark [Heavy Battlegalaxies] and their variants due to the fact that those guns were less energy consuming than the Laser Cannons found on bigger ships, and could serve as more powerful Anti-Air weapons; yet the vessel in the screen was big, maybe not as big as a Small Kharfnak [Light Destroyer], but it should be able to satisfy the energetic need for some Laser Cannons to serve as Anti-Missile defense
So why was it using only kinetics?
Maybe it was merely a matter of doctrine, it was possible that those birds favored cheap saturation fire instead of the precise but energetically costly shots of the Laser Cannons, even if that also came at the expense of the probability that some missiles could get through the defensive fire. Though maybe the birds trusted them enough to take that risk
The scanners also detected a considerable number of missile launchers, and something werid was that the scanners didn't, or couldn't, detect any form of energy based weaponry, which made me wonder a little about the why of that. Yet all of that quickly became meaningless as I, and probably the rest of the crew, got a good look at the bow of the ship
There, menacingly protruding from the hull of the vessel, was a Heavy Main Kinetic Gun, or at least an analogue of one, if that made sense
"..... T-that's impossible"
"Well, unless they, somehow, managed to create hyper realistic visual illusions, its very much possible"
"M-maybe it's an error! Are you sure that you didn't mess up the scanners before we departed?"
"I did the standard revisions SIX TIMES before departing from Graekyo, are you really cuestioning the job I have done for the past twenty years right now!?"
Both Alvja and Kraftan argued, the logical part of their brains being momentarily shut down due to the shock of the sight of the weapon, and honestly I couldn't blame them
Main Kinetic Guns, or MKG's, were the primary anti-asteroid and, most importantly, anti-ship weapons that the warships of the "Sharuk Abkayla" [Stellar Warforce] used. Unlike Support Kinetic Guns, these were only found on two types: Main Kinetic Gun, and Heavy Main Kinetic Gun, with the principale difference between them being that Support Guns had various types of shells and could be grouped into batteries of up to four guns in a turret and used against a big variety of targets, while Main Kinetic and Heavy Main Kinetic Guns were only capable of shooting anti-ship munitions (fired in bursts of three in the case of MKG's, and a single round in the case of HMKG's), and usually ran throught a quarter (or, in case of HMKG's, half) of the warship, protruding from the bow of the vessels, with the only similarities being that both used a revolver cannon system to maximize their fire rate and being a chemically-electromagnetically powered hybrids as to minimize the energy required to fire them
The thing is, even with all that, Main Kinetic Guns still used a lot of energy from the reactors, to the point that some weapons had to be deactivated in order to fire the ones found on Khragnaraks [War Constellations] and Shandukarks [Battlegalaxies], while 'smaller' ones being found all the way down to the Large Kharfnak [Heavy Destroyer] still being capable of draining an important quantity of energy from the reactor
And yet, there it was, an HMKG in a ship no bigger than a Medium Kharfnak [Destroyer], seemingly existing only to confirm my fears about the technology of these aliens, and laugh at our reactions as dread set in each and every single one of us
If these.... Birds.... Had the capability to put such a weapon in a, relatively, small vessel, it frightened me to think what else they might have that we didn't know about, and I imagine that many crew members were having a similar thought to mine
"THAT'S ENOUGH YOU TWO!"
Arkhor screamed, snaping me out of my thoughts and back to reality, at the same time that she got the attention of Kraftan and Alvja, snaping them out of their argument
"We are in the middle of one of the most important moments in the history of the Commonwealth! We cannot afford to get into infighting and argumenting against each other now!"
Both of them hunged their heads in shame, and quickly directed their attention back at their posts while Arkhor gave a tired sigh
"So, what now?," She said, looking back at me "I'm pretty sure that we are aren't exactly authorized to just give sensitive information to them, and it doesn't seem like they will be willing to accept vagueness in our answers"
Sometimes I hated when she was right, and this was one of those times. The Commonwealth certainly wouldn't look at us with good eyes if we gave information that they didn't want us to give; yet the Birds were seemingly on the edge, and any answers that they didn't like would certainly make our situation worse, maybe even lethal
I really wished we were instead dealing with a Proton Storm rather than this
"Ovook?"
Once again I snapped out of my thoughts, seeing the concerned look on Arkhor, and the rest of the crew for that matter, in the periphery of my sight
Of course, I was still the Captain of this ship
"Our situation is delicate without a doubt," I finally said, trying to give a semblance of calm in my voice "I.... Believe.... That if we want to make it out of here unscathed, then we will have to.... 'Create'.... Some information that they might ask us"
Looking around through my various eyes, I could notice that a numerous part of the crew seemed to have calmed down; though my relief was short lived, as I noticed that the entirety of them were Karkranians, while the Arthroplakrans all seemed just as distressed as before
Damn it, were my antenna twitching? Maybe my mouth parts were moving nonstop? Judging by the looks in the Karkranian side, it seems that, at least, they didn't really bother studying the visual cues of my species. I mean, it was a little irresponsible, since the Captain of the ship was an Arthroplakran, but at least that meant that they swallowed my facade of calm; not much, but it was a start
"So," Arkhor said, looking a little irritated "Essentially we have to do what I did since the start?"
I chuckled internally, even in a life or death situation, she still found ways to annoy me a little
"Of course not," I said, moving my head to face her "Because, now, I'm authorizing you to do it"
Arkhor gave an exasperated sigh while she lightly moved hee head from side to side, but in the end, she chuckled a little and sat back on her command chair
"Alright everyone, y'all heard mister authorizer, everyone back to their duties!"
She seemed to inject a little of her eagerness in the crew, and soon everyone was back on their stations to do their part to the best of their abilities
"Just so you know," Arkhor said, looking at me with one of her side facing eyes "When we get back, I'll say that this was my idea"
With some amusement in me, I walked back to my chair, sitting comfortably in it while I chuckled a little
"I hope that you have the same amount of creativeness as you do of smugness"
With a final laugh between the two, I adjusted my captain's hat; it was a little annoying how it covered my eyes, but nevertheless it wasn't a big deal
"Alright," I said, more to myself than to anyone else, while I took a deep breath and exhaled to finally calm myself "Let's make the Homeworld proud"
[First] [Next]

Every time there's a disturbance, record what you can. Get a separate device just for it so you can use your phone when you need it for something else. Use an old phone. Get a little audio recorder.
I thought the problems were the 2nd floor. When they moved out within a year (unusual here), I learned in the empty time that the 3rd floor was the primary unreasonable noisemaker after hours most days (and probably a big reason why the 2nd floor moved out, at least they told me the 3rd floor was a terror). I'm fine with normal noises at normal times; I can tolerate some things at bad times, but when it's persistent yet random within time ranges (hard to prove), and majorly affecting my ability to function the next day (or even just relax at home in the evening or night) 3-5 times a week, that's a real problem that deserves real solutions.
I've got some things recorded. However, this last time, after sleeping peacefully for the first night this week, I'm awoken by a loud booming/banging... like somebody dropped a couch against the wall. I go up, see the mother talking sternly to someone in the parents' room (likely the father) (normally they're noisy AF this time of night, though I usually don't hear anything but the loudest things from within my place). I knock on the door, they don't answer for a few minutes even though they were standing right there and I can hear multiple people talking.
They completely gaslight me and say I woke them all up 😆 OK. It's war. I wish I'd have recorded what I saw and heard because it would have proven that they were flat liars. So, they don't care about anybody but themselves, they don't wanna adjust to their new surroundings (they're immigrants and only speak Spanish), they want everyone to adjust to them (they're literally the noisiest place in the complex whenever they're noisy).
Anyway, that's my advice to you. Don't trust anyone, record everything, catch people like this in their lies, get them busted, make them move, because they're not gonna change for a damn second. They are "might makes right" people, and they live in a dark world where nothing matters but their delusion of a power hierarchy.

I work a seasonal job (summer and winter when I’m home) where I am a coach at a private gym/training facility. So I actually am up on my feet interacting, correcting form, and helping manage the floor pretty much the whole time when I work. The pay isn’t anything too special and I just enjoy it(+ I get free membership!!). If I was to stop working there and start counting those hours as volunteering instead, would this be good for med school applications? I’m assuming this counts as non-clinical hours? Also idk if it’d be beneficial or not ( I’d gain roughly 160 hours each summer and roughly 50 in the winter). I am also looking into volunteering at the hospital when not at the gym to get the clinical hours. This process is something I’m learning as I go so some input would be great!