General

Seriously...I think the the whole world needs to watch Black Mirror's "Metalhead" and then tell me that pushing for this kind of AI is a good idea.

I found out yesterday that my biological father died. I don’t know how to handle it. I feel a sense of loss, but at the same time he abandoned my mother and I right after I was born and when I tried to connect with him after turning 18, that lasted about a year before he ghosted me again. I haven’t laid eyes on him in 20 years, and obviously he didn’t want anything to do with me… but I still feel loss. I’m at work trying to just get through but I feel this… remorse? Like, I could’ve done something different or better or whatever… but my head knows that wasn’t possible since he clearly didn’t think anything of me or else he wouldn’t have left twice.

I do feel a stronger sense of appreciation for what I have in life, and I damn sure will be a better father to my kid than he ever was.

This kind of sucks hard… but I don’t know why.

@BucketofJustice Sorry for your loss brother, or more specifically, sorry for the way this particular loss is making you feel. Doesn't seem like the easiest of situations, and I imagine it's tough to have a sense of "what could have been" at this point. Sending good vibes your way.

@BucketofJustice

Sorry to hear about the toughness of dealing with that. It can be extremely difficult to deal with thoughts of what if things had been different.

The following isn't the same, but a relative I've known since childhood isn't in a very good place currently, hasn't been for awhile. I'd say either depressed or something similar. Difficult to be around because of constant moping. Imagine a lot of the time you see a certain person they barely talk and look sad and sometimes keep their eyes closed. Every time I see this person I wonder if things would be different had we been closer growing up. If there's something I could have done. No way to know. And it saddens me every time I think about it.

Maybe there will come a time where I'll get over the sad feeling. My point wasn't to talk about the above. It was that I hear what you're saying about that sad feeling. And I don't have answers here. (Though that doesn't mean there aren't answers)

@BucketofJustice I hope you're able to get through this with a good and happy outcome. 💪

Very sorry Bucket....I cannot imagine what you are dealing with right now. It sounds like you were the only adult in the situation, even at 18.

I have a good friend who has three sons...and their biological father left them at an early age. Only 1 out of the three hasn't done the same to their kids. I hope he wasn't a link in that chain...and I know that link will die with you.

As a father, I can tell you that the son should NOT feel responsible for trying to cure the sins of the father. I view anyone that abandons their children as less than a man. How one feels about their child's mother is unrelated.

I feel like I might be rambling, but the points I really want to make are:

-It's not your fault or responsibility on fixing that relationship...I understand your grief at the end of these possibilities, but don't you dare blame yourself.

-I greatly admire your courage and dedication to your role as a son...I know that will tranlate to you being an excellent father. Good or bad: we can always LEARN from our parents and never underestimate traits that are in our DNA we get from our bloodline that push us to certain behaviors (good and bad)

-He lost out.

Thanks guys. I appreciate the kind words. I’m still processing, and I might be doing it for a while, but this helps. Thank you.

My biological father was an alcoholic and he and my mom split up before I even knew him. He was in and out of the lives of my older brother and me through the years until he died when we were in our early 20s. Our mom never said bad things about him to try and turn us against him and we had a decent relationship, but even though we called him "dad" it was not what people think of as a "father and son" relationship. He got hurt when he was in the Navy (non-combat related) and self medicated his constant back pain with alcohol. Even when he was around us or living with his mom (our grandmother) he never gave up drinking. It was hard to be around him when he was drinking and because of it he couldn't hold a steady job. He tried more than one program to try to quit, but was never successful. He made his choices and was responsible for his own actions.

Your dad gave you life and some inherited physical characteristics, but apparently little else. He made his decisions. Mourn his death, but don't mourn what you imagine could have been.

BucketofJustice wrote:
Losing a loved one or family member in this case regardless of the scenario can be heart breaking. I didn't know my father well and he was fairly abusive both verbally and physical but I have a feeling even if he did pass away, I would feel something. He helped in your creation and you perhaps have a hole left within you from his absence. Please understand you are not alone in this.

@BucketofJustice - sorry to hear man, but briefly reading your story and reflecting upon my own, sounds like it was for the better. Sadly, I think you'll always have that want for a sense of closure, but sadly ... won't ever have it. I had the same with my Dad after he recently passed, that I never had closure for all the bad things he did to me/my family, but ultimately I had to forgive him and move on. I can only imagine the challenge of living with what you went through, just know there's always another side to the story that you may never fully know/understand. Hopefully you will ultimately be stronger and better because of your own growth through the years due to his poor decisions. Stay strong man, and it's always healthy to talk about it!

I just want to say....my hat is off you guys and anyone who had a really bad parent. I cannot imagine the uphill battle your heart, mind and soul have to fight against with everything you must be feeling.

I don't want to come across like I understand how you feel...just know that I have full on respect for you all and all the men and women that dealt or have to deal with that.

Thanks guys for all the kind words. I still have a lot of different feelings going on, and I’m still processing everything. It’ll all be back to normal soon enough I think.

BucketofJustice wrote:

So I find this interesting because I was in a similar situation. Wasn't abandoned as early but he was a crap head and I think the last time I heard from him at all was 2002. It's hard to remember exactly, and that point was already several years after he was functionally out of my life. I actually have no idea if he is still alive or not and will probably never know. I periodically search his name but he's always been a "hustler" type and lived a bit off grid, didn't pay taxes etc Last I could find he was still alive in 2017 and living in Kansas City. The phone number listed on an account for him belongs to a woman officially which is no surprise, he's always been a mooch.

Anyway it's something I've thought about before and I'm really not sure how I'd feel if I found out he was dead. Probably torn like you are now. Best of luck trying to process this, it's always difficult.

A friend of mine made me a very very generous offer. He knows that I mainly game handheld and the occasional PC game. But my current PC specs are really not great, so I'm really just playing mostly handheld games. In order to broaden my gaming accessibility, he offered to sell me his relative's like new PS5 disc version for $280 (was hardly being used, so it was going to be sold).

But since I know that I tend to game handheld, and have a large gaming backlog, I thanked him for the amazing deal but said no thanks. He was surprised, understandably, and even offered to let me pay in installments. He feels that I'm missing out on a whole side of gaming, since I tend to game handheld and my PC can't reliably run higher performance games, so he really wanted me to have that PS5. Nice of him.

As good of a deal as it was, sometimes you need to be practical. It probably would have sat unplayed for a long long time.

I'm old enough now to know: you like what you like and just because you might "want" to like something...it will often go wasted. I'd really like to get into PC gaming, ironically...but I know I will never ever learn FPS with a keyboard and mouse. I just don't like it even though I fully understand it's control and precision benefits.

rayzor6 wrote:
This. Exactly. Well said.

I'm satisfied with the types of gaming I generally go for. True there are other games out there and I know that I might be missing out on some great PlayStation and PC games, but if I'm satisfied with what I'm playing, doesn't make sense to me to go for a different console. Games are meant to be played and enjoyed, not feel like a forced experience.

Devs are realizing this and starting to make more console like experiences for the PC. The Steam Deck is the first handheld PC to really make this somewhat affordable and I'm hoping the ASUS Ally is somewhat competitively priced. I'm currently playing through God of War on my Steam Deck and the experience is pretty solid.

Just spent several hours sorting through a 2TB hard drive that's been lying around for like 10 years. I've been pushing this off for ages, but it's been something I've wanted to do.

I went through all the folders, transferring what I wanted, and deleting a lot of things that I simply didn't need.

Felt great, like I made some space in my mind. The mind is complex. Perhaps it was holding onto all those folders somewhere in mental storage. But now that those folders actually were sorted, and many deleted, perhaps space was freed up mentally. Who knows. But it certainly feels like that.

nonamesleft wrote:

Human memory is complex and at times incomprehensibly frustrating. There are facts and figures from my college classes that I worked hard to put into my memory, but later could not recall them if my life depended on it. Other trivial things quickly come to mind years later even though I only heard them one time. Family and friends can tell a story about something I did or was involved in that I have no memory of or a completely different recollection of.

Tony wrote:

Memory is a strange thing. Think about your earliest memories. Can you see yourself in them? I bet most people can see themselves in their memories instead of remembering them from a first-person perspective. Isn't that weird?

Tony wrote:
You're right. It's incredibly complex. Something interesting is that the sense of smell is supposedly a very powerful memory trigger. So even if you don't have an active thought about something, you might just walk past a store and smell a certain store and you're suddenly transported back to a memory associated with that smell.

citizen_zane wrote:
Hmmmm. Interesting observation.

I wonder what that means regarding the mind when it's really young. Are earliest memories stored in a different place in the mind, and therefore treated differently?

I haven't seen my dad in person for about 9 years, and he just 'unexpectedly' RSVP'd to my daughters quinceanera in May. oof! I don't have any qualms with him, but it's just not my comfort zone. I'm the only one who is "less than excited", but I can't quite pinpoint why that is. I feel guilty about not being hyped.

akfa wrote:
Does he live far away, to have been away for 9 years?

nonamesleft wrote:

I live in Texas, he lives in Nebraska. Not super far, but we've just never been that close as a family, really. When I had kids I always wondered why my dad didn't do stuff with me that I LOVE to do with my kids, and realized he just wasn't that into being a dad I guess, so it's just been weird feelings all around.

akfa wrote:
So then why would he suddenly come to the quinceanera? Did he used to hang out with your kids and then one day just stopped coming over?

nonamesleft wrote:

He's retired, doesn't have much to do, I sent an invite to both my parents "as a memento" but my dad actually RSVP'd and said he booked a hotel for that day. Lol.

akfa wrote:
Well, you did send the invite 😅
Hey, maybe it'll be great. It's not like you're going to uninvite him, right?

nonamesleft wrote:

Yeah, I wouldn't uninvite him. What will most likely happen is I will dread it internally, be anxious, then everything will work out fine and I'll think, "That wasn't bad afterall".

akfa wrote:
Hopefully it's that at the least, or maybe even better.

You often lose 1/2 of the eraser of a pencil. Half sticks out, and the other half is being held in place inside that eraser holder. Once you use up the eraser, there's still 50% of the eraser stuck inside. What a waste. I needed an eraser earlier, but the protruding part of the eraser had been used up. I had to dig out the other half with a sharp thin metal stick.

I understand the design and function, but it's a shame for every eraser inside a pencil to get used a maximum of about 50% (I'm sure some people dig the rest out to use, but I doubt the majority do)

So, I started reading that thinking it was going to be some analogy about @akfa's Dad. Just thought it was a continuation of the conversation. Forgot I was in the Random Thought thread for a minute.

lol yeah, that was just some weird thing I needed to get off my chest to people who don't really know me, thus less judgment about my anxiety about it all. Lol. When I told a couple people I know in real life, they're like, "But that's your dad." It's easier to tell strangers some things.

John wrote:
Yeah, it was all pencil eraser. 0% analogy.

akfa wrote:
Definitely true sometimes. Certain things are easier to tell to certain people. For sure.

nonamesleft wrote:

I had that not to long ago. The pandemic and overall world being so hostile has really messed me up. There was a point for the first time in my life that I really didn't want to be here anymore. I wasn't looking to do anything to myself, but those thoughts of hopelessness were all consuming and I just felt that if I could verbalize it outloud ANYWHERE; that it would help. And it did.

rayzor6 wrote:

For sure. I had this happen with my divorce too, I bottled up tons of stuff inside, and wasn't speaking my problems outloud to anyone. One day I was having lunch with a friend and I think she could sense my anxiety and tension, and she asked me, "Soooo, tell me about what's going on at home." And just being able to verbalize a lot of my bottled up feelings to someone actively listening helped me a lot more than I expected or realized it would.

Swiss cheese really isn't supposed to have holes. The first person to make swiss cheese panicked when he noticed mice nibbling at his freshly made cheese and causing holes. So he told everyone that it's a natural part of the process of making swiss cheese. And to this day, the mice all nibble holes into swiss cheese and everyone thinks the holes are supposed to be there.

But if you look really closely at the edges of the holes in swiss cheese, you'll notice teeth marks.

And if you look really closely at the teeth of mice in the area, you'll notice bits of cheese :)

Push-ups burn 7 calories a minute, according to Google (accurate? Idk)

So if you can do push-ups for an hour non stop, you'll burn 420 calories. That's a lot. But can anyone even do push-ups for an hour?

nonamesleft wrote:
Yes, 21 hours was the world record.

ued222 wrote:
Wow. Just non stop? 21 hours of push-ups? That's 8,820 calories spent. Person was probably ravenous after the 21 hours.

Here’s a random thought, I wish people would stop bumping their post 200x!