# Celebrating small victories and achievements — add yours( *warning: off-color posts*)



## aj47 (Jun 4, 2016)

I shared my printer with my family on Google Cloud Print.


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## Sleepwriter (Jun 4, 2016)

astroannie said:


> I shared my printer with my family on Google Cloud Print.




That sounds interesting, but I can't think of anything I would want for them to send to my printer, or me their's.


as for my small victory, I made a vegan meatloaf out of seitan (wheat gluten) and it was edible.  Needs more seasoning though.


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## aj47 (Jun 4, 2016)

They don't have printers.  So, homework is a major one.  I had done this before, under Windows, but now that I'm on Linux Mint, I had to relearn how.

Did you make your own seitan?  I tried that once and it was a total flop.


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## escorial (Jun 5, 2016)

I picked up a book in a major retailers and thought i might buy this and found it later that day in a charity shop for a £1


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## JustRob (Jun 5, 2016)

My project to build a replica 1960s computer involves finding both original vintage components and also more modern substitute ones which are themselves becoming rare. My latest discovery on the Internet was a small stock of a very specific type of wire in a warehouse in Poland. It will be delivered to me here in the UK tomorrow. Even if I never manage to build the computer I will at least have put together a complete kit of parts for someone else to do so. Even though it is only fifty years since this particular type of computer was on the market building one now seems no easier than the Jurassic Park project. Vintage computer enthusiasts around the world are following my progress with interest apparently, so every tiny step is a victory and I don't think about the long term. This week it's a parcel from Poland while last week it was one from San Francisco, but gradually it's all coming together. 

Unfortunately my original objective was to find a use for the enormous collection of electronic junk in my home, but so far this project has just resulted in it getting even bigger. Oh well.

The project website is http://honeypi.org.uk/


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## dither (Jun 5, 2016)

Stumbling across this place.


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## Sleepwriter (Jun 5, 2016)

astroannie said:


> They don't have printers.  So, homework is a major one.  I had done this before, under Windows, but now that I'm on Linux Mint, I had to relearn how.
> 
> Did you make your own seitan?  I tried that once and it was a total flop.




No, bought it off Amazon.   kinda interesting stuff, just work it like bread dough, once you have it all fixed together.   My next venture, when I get the time is to make sausage with it.


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## JustRob (Jun 5, 2016)

dither said:


> Stumbling across this place.



Victories and achievements are relative to what we consider to be the norm in our personal lives. On the grand scale they may seem quite ordinary.

This weekend I received in the post a substantial catalogue for mobility aids, mobility scooters, Zimmer frames and so on, addressed to me specifically. No doubt some marketing person thought that this obviously expensive to produce volume was worth sending to someone like me in their seventies. If they had seen me dancing to Michael Jackson's_ Billie Jean _while simultaneously drying our cut glass wine glasses after using them for their intended purpose at lunchtime, then they may have felt that targeted marketing is still in its infancy. To be honest I would have preferred something by the Village People, maybe _Macho Man, _which our computer chose to play later in the afternoon. It did bring home to me that what to some may seem everyday others would regard as a significant achievement. Certainly I would have had I usually been in need of a Zimmer frame but fortunately I don't and dancing spontaneously is still a part of my life. My primary mobility aid is actually a high performance car, the unimpaired petrol-head's wheelchair. I have never in my life relished owning a motorbike though. Let's be sensible.

As this is allegedly a writers' forum, I should also point out that stereotypes are strictly for marketing men to consider, not for the likes of us more perceptive writers, so steer clear of them in your writing. It is said that one should make one's characters larger than life for them to have any impact on the reader, but that isn't easy in practice. If anyone tells you that your characters are implausible then be wary. One may write about implausible situations but implausible characters are actually difficult to imagine given the quite unlikely but genuine ones around in reality.


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## aj47 (Jun 5, 2016)

I baked a pizza for 5 extra minutes (it said 12-18 minutes and I baked it 23) and it was perfect.  It didn't look cooked enough before.


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## am_hammy (Jun 5, 2016)

I've had a very productive day off. Usually when I'm off from work I freak about going to work the next day and today so far, it's been nice. Might not sound like much, but it's huge for me.


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## Bard_Daniel (Jun 6, 2016)

I had a doctor's appointment Wednesday but my boss gave me tomorrow and Wednesday completely off.

Nice.


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## 20oz (Jun 6, 2016)

Masturbating for a whole 12 seconds. World record for me. nthego:


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## aj47 (Jun 6, 2016)

20oz said:


> Masturbating for a whole 12 seconds. World record for me. nthego:



however my having to put a warning in the thread title is a defeat.


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## aj47 (Jun 6, 2016)

Installed the Java(TM) Software Development Kit on my system.  The right way, using the advanced packaging tool system and not just downloading the tarball from Oracle's website.


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## Sleepwriter (Jun 6, 2016)

I managed to not die after inhaling a sip of water. Scary stuff. All I could do was wheeze until I could cough the water out.  Good news is that my lungs got cleaned out.  Bad news is they still hurt a little.


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## 20oz (Jun 6, 2016)

Fine, fine, fine. Real small victory: I finished and platinum'd Uncharted 4. :butterfly:

If you don't understand, it's game stuff.


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## Boofy (Jun 6, 2016)

I've completed all the others but I can't get Uncharted 4 unless I buy a PS4 or find a half decent emulator, because they didn't make it for PC ;-;

I did 100 percent The Witcher 3, recently. I bloody love that series.


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## 20oz (Jun 8, 2016)

Being at work. Seriously, I wanted to quit for a long, long time. I'm doing this out of necessity.


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## Ultraroel (Jun 8, 2016)

Just ordered my first real gaming system! <3 <3


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## 20oz (Jun 8, 2016)

Ultraroel said:


> Just ordered my first real gaming system! <3 <3



And which one is that, buddy?

Ummm... small victory... small victory... I finally chose a game to play. I had a tough time choosing what to play next. It's a childish game, rather embarrassed to say what it is. 

I can safely say it's not Elmo's Letter Adventure.


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## aj47 (Jun 8, 2016)

I've solved my 1000th Sherlock puzzle.  That's the Everett Kaser Sherlock, not the other one.


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## Ultraroel (Jun 9, 2016)

Hhaha! Nice!

I play CSGO, WoW And DOTA 2. Had the intention to start streaming and to get my gf into streaming too.
Had a low budget, I live in Bulgaria, so for 600 USD I got:



CPUIntel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor$189.99 @ NeweggMotherboardGigabyte GA-B150M-HD3 Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard-MemoryKingston HyperX Fury Black 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory-StorageSeagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive$51.99 @ NeweggStorageSeagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive$51.99 @ NeweggVideo CardGigabyte GeForce GTX 950 2GB OC Edition Video Card$128.98 @ NeweggCaseZalman Z3 ATX Mid Tower Case$40.98 @ NeweggPower SupplySeaSonic ECO 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply 

Gonna swap one of the Seagates with an SSD.
But that's pretty much it <3


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## aj47 (Jul 1, 2016)

I can play two chords on the guitar.  A week ago, I didn't even *have* a guitar (it's a loaner).  

There are several songs with two chords (these are G and D so I can do anything with a I and V).  The song I practice with is Tom Smith's "Telly-Taley Heart". Originally titled "Billy Ray does Edgar A" it is the story of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" set to the tune of the Billy Ray Cyrus song "Achy Breaky Heart" (by Don von Tress).  You can listen to Tom Smith perform it on Bandcamp.  My fingers hurt (and will for the next while while I develop my callouses) but dayum, it's cool to make the right sounds come out of the guitar.


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## Gyarachu (Jul 1, 2016)

astroannie said:


> I can play two chords on the guitar.  A week ago, I didn't even *have* a guitar (it's a loaner).
> 
> There are several songs with two chords (these are G and D so I can do anything with a I and V).  The song I practice with is Tom Smith's "Telly-Taley Heart". Originally titled "Billy Ray does Edgar A" it is the story of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" set to the tune of the Billy Ray Cyrus song "Achy Breaky Heart" (by Don von Tress).  You can listen to Tom Smith perform it on Bandcamp.  My fingers hurt (and will for the next while while I develop my callouses) but dayum, it's cool to make the right sounds come out of the guitar.



Just add the C and the Em chords and you'll be able to play nearly any song you'd want to play!

(It was easy to make friends in college when you could have anyone playing a song they recognize in minutes. Seeing their eyes light up as the realization dawned made me feel so fuzzy inside, and still does just remembering it. :love-struck


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## aj47 (Jul 1, 2016)

C is an asskicking chord.  I've tried it.  Em is ez but dunno what I can do with it.


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## Gyarachu (Jul 1, 2016)

astroannie said:


> C is an asskicking chord.  I've tried it.  Em is ez but dunno what I can do with it.



Look up the Cadd9 chord instead. It's basically C's cooler cousin, and is as often as not used in it's place. And it's way easier--just the G shape with your first two fingers moved down a string. 

As for what you can do with the Em... Most songs can be broken down into those four chords (transcribed to fit the key, of course). By FAR the most (over)used chord progression in the history of western music is I-V-VI-IV (that'd be G-D-Em-C in our case). You want proof? Here's a video you may have already seen:

[video=youtube;oOlDewpCfZQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOlDewpCfZQ[/video]


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## LeeC (Jul 2, 2016)

Played around till I got the html and css to produce acceptable and consistent viewing as both .epub and .mobi files**. I'm getting too old for this technical stuff, but one needs some technical knowledge (or money to pay others) to produce a book file for viewing. Those Smashwords and Amazon .doc converters produce substandard results in my experience. 


** Used Sigil to be able to build and fine tune at the code level, and Calibre to convert the .epub to .mobi and .azw3 until I got acceptable and consistent results.

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What's considerable detail effort is building a html5 version for online reader subscription sites like Scribd. The first edition of my book they converted from a .doc and it came out difficult to read.


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## Darkkin (Jul 3, 2016)

When applied to a literary construct it is essentially like the rhymed couplet in poetry.  One basic building block that can be adapted in a zillion different ways.  Either way, these guys are vastly entertaining.  And I finally bit the bullet.  I edited Turtle upon Tide...

[video=youtube_share;oOlDewpCfZQ]https://youtu.be/oOlDewpCfZQ[/video]


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