It's Personal...

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Sat Aug 22, 2015 7:54 am

radthemad4 wrote:I dual boot Linux Mint (a lot like Ubuntu, but designed to be more familiar to Windows users, e.g. has a start menu, minimize, maximize and close buttons are on the right, etc.) on my pathetically underpowered netbook. It had become so slow on Windows XP that the mouse cursor used to lag even with nothing open and running. I figured that I might as well try this Linux thing since the thing was damn near unusable. Windows is still there though I don't use it anymore on that machine (I do have and only use Windows 7 on a desktop with a real video card though). Linux Mint isn't super smooth on it or anything, but it performs way better than XP does on that machine.

So, it can make old almost unusable machines usable, which is pretty cool.

As I alluded to above this is what I did with my first laptop after it started being basically unable to run Windows at all due to sheer instability - dual booted for a while but ultimately made it a full boot.

That was with... whatever the current version of Ubuntu was in '09, so interface has changed.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:47 pm

http://onanunderwood5.blogspot.com/2015 ... tters.html

"I'm so white and nerdy..."

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 10:38 pm

The url "onanunderwood" immediately made me think of both Conan and Onanism. Both were surprisingly relevant to the article at hand (although the masturbation was purely of the mental variety).

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Aug 28, 2015 7:16 pm

I started working on a crappy little smut story to put up on Amazon, in the vein of the "Billionaire Dinosaur Forced Me Gay" thing.

...I wound up writing 500 words on the the socioeconomic status of goblins. I looked at the amazon preview for the "inspiration" and I think I vastly overestimated the amount of world building. The first (novel-sized) page of Dinosaur Billionaire is just "welp, got hired by a dinosaur CEO!" "but son! I'm racist against dinosaurs! They'll take advantage of you!" and absolutely zero explanation of why the fuck there are dinosaurs. This makes sense, given that the story is only 3500 words. It also gives me an incredibly low bar to clear...

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Fri Aug 28, 2015 7:39 pm

A lot of the ultra-low-wordcount porn stories on Amazon are a result of their policy not to pay the ebook authors until the readers go through 10% of the pagecount - so for a very short story, if you open it up to page one, they get paid and are happy.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Fri Aug 28, 2015 7:47 pm

Ancient History wrote:A lot of the ultra-low-wordcount porn stories on Amazon are a result of their policy not to pay the ebook authors until the readers go through 10% of the pagecount - so for a very short story, if you open it up to page one, they get paid and are happy.

Note, that policy only applied to Kindle Unlimited, and no longer applies. They switched Kindle Unlimited to payment per page read just to counter that sort of thing.

Of course, if the customer buys it outright you get paid a full royalty based on how much the customer paid, either 30% or (70% - $0.15/Megabyte)

It's just that a lot of people are willing to read cheap crappy porn over monthly subscription service than they are to hell out money for it alone.
But Kindle Unlimited requires exclusivity. If you go with sales alone, then you can also list on Barnes and Noble, and other ebook sites.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Aug 30, 2015 1:12 am

I seem to randomly have acquired at least one girlfriend.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 1:18 am

The dramatic turnaround of Arioch's sex life gives me a fair amount of hope for people in general.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Aug 30, 2015 3:40 am

Getting away from the craphole I grew up in helped, making actual money helped more, and getting my crazy at least slightly under control helped more.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:01 am

Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to? That is all stuff I need to get done.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:09 am

Helps that I had family in the midwest that were willing to put up with me for a year until I got my shit together.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 10:11 am

Yeah, unfortunately, my family is either here in Sacramento, or in Connecticut, which is only an upgrade in that it's not as fucking hot. Also, I'm not entirely sure I have any actually marketable skills, or that I'm good enough with any I do have to actually be hireable.

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Aug 30, 2015 11:21 am

All I have to my name is a 2 year liberal arts degree. However, I am fairly good at bullshitting and making it sound like I know more than I do. Generally people hiring for really good jobs can spot that pretty quick, but it did manage to get me a lower middle class job doing tech support. And really, even with inflation I'm making more money than I have in my life (then again, it might not have been a good thing that I was running a class I wastewater treatment plant and only making just over 20k, I was most likely allowing my skills to be undersold by a great deal. Live and learn, I suppose).

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 12:42 pm

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I seem to randomly have acquired at least one girlfriend.

You were walking in the tall grass and suddenly a wild girlfriend appeared?

erik · Post by **erik** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 12:55 pm

hyzmarca wrote:
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I seem to randomly have acquired at least one girlfriend.
You were walking in the tall grass and suddenly a wild girlfriend appeared?

or something like this

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 6:16 pm

Achievement of the day: "I can't believe you just applied rule 34 to the Voynich manuscript. Well done."

Count Arioch the 28th · Sun Aug 30, 2015 8:06 pm

hyzmarca wrote:
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I seem to randomly have acquired at least one girlfriend.
You were walking in the tall grass and suddenly a wild girlfriend appeared?

Something like that. I just never expected to meet a tall, intelligent, curvy, hyper-busty, bisexual gamer with a libido through the roof. The fact that her girlfriend also seems to really like me is a nice plus.

Seriously, if this is a dream I don't want to wake up...

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 8:38 pm

Considering the implications for me, I'm pretty cool if you never wake up from this dream.

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 10:08 am

I was wondering about that 'at least' part. That explains it.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Mon Aug 31, 2015 10:24 am

Count's karma wheel finally turned around fully.

RelentlessImp · Post by **RelentlessImp** » Wed Sep 02, 2015 11:50 pm

Is it wrong that I wanna trade places with Arioch?

Shiritai · Post by **Shiritai** » Thu Sep 03, 2015 1:02 am

RelentlessImp wrote:Is it wrong that I wanna trade places with Arioch?

It just means you're new to this board.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 3:03 pm

http://onanunderwood5.blogspot.com/2015 ... oward.html

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Sun Sep 06, 2015 7:35 pm

Well, I applied to to a startup contest by something called The Spark Centre, out here in Ontario. Some contest called IGNITE where you give a pitch and stuff, presumably pseudo-Dragon's Den style? Could get like, 50k for my business if I ever won. Guess I'll find out if I'm accepted in a week or so if I'm accepted.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 4:39 am

Fingers are crossed!!

---

So my iPod Touch's cubic charger thing decided it wasn't gonna work anymore today. And even though Ess has a USB charger for his Fire, Apple hates playing well with others, and wouldn't even register that it was plugged in.

I got fed up and decided it was time to get one of those wall outlets with USB ports in addition to normal outlets on them - my brother had bought a couple of the outlets for me for my birthday. So I installed a new outlet today, all by myself. And because it's a 4 amp USB outlet, it charges everything hella fast. I'm planning on getting a few more. They're epic, and I have a new skill.