After re-organzing my living quarters I was left with little to no space for a desk along my walls, so I went ahead and did something rather neat! ^_^, also there was bonus space so I setup my soldering workbench up here now!





So? thoughts, opinions, maybe I should add something? I do plan to add more shelves just fyi, but besides that I'm open to just about anything atm!

so this will be my new journal/blog for the public relating to living life as I do, in this post modern world we live in, one ruled by megacorps, where technology is supreme, the street makes it's own uses for things, and the disparity between rich and poor is vaster than the grand valis marinaris on mars.

hoping people are at least somewhat interested.

SpookyZ.

**********************************************

life is pretty straight forward to the techie, we blend in, do our best at our jobs, keep the corps happy.
but when we aren't working the fun begins.
I access my devices with a radio frequency chip in my hand for security, I've got monitors both for my terminals and for the various cameras guarding my living space.
I am a hacker in the truest sense, not those nonsense lies they spread in the media.

I am a cyberpunk, I live in that world, where life is hard, people have to adapt to radical changes in society, and those who don't upgrade are left behind.
I support transhumanism, I desire to upgrade and improve myself, H+ will always win in my book.

I grow bioluminescient plants for home illumination, that which isn't illuminated by the technology I keep with me that is.

I dumpster dive for tech when I see it, I fix it, I restore it, I use it, everything has a purpose.
I collect things, old game consoles, old computers, even the oldest of machines still has a use of some sort, my 286 plays some of my favorite old dos games, I love it.

thus I sit here, illuminated in the electronic glow of the various devices I've obtained, this being my first true post, a beacon to those who are being dragged down with me into the abyss, I don't stare into it, I embrace it, and I'm all the better for it.

I am a cyberpunk.

SpookyZalost, Signing off.

Post your random screenshots from C:S (or any other city building game for that matter) here! I'll start with a screenshot of the newly built Eisenhower Dam, which produces a whopping 768 kWh...

I think Alerts would be very helpful for this forum.

MyAlerts works for 1.8 with some adjustments.

Has anyone here heard of ElkArte?

http://elkarte.net

It's a free and open source forum software that comes out the box with a lot of features! I recently installed it on one of my forums just to play with it and it is really nice! It's the only forum software, apart from MyBB, that I have installed in 3 years. Here is one of the biggest ElkArte forums: http://foreforums.com

I'll admit it. Ever since Windows failed (again) on my PC, I am now religious as a linux user. I don't even really care what I use as far as distributions are concerned (although secretly I do, but I'll pretend I don't to avoid being divisive ). Personally, I just use Ubuntu because it's popular and well supported, and just about everything works great with it. I have found myself going back and forth between Unity and Gnome 3, but I really have found Unity to be a pleasant desktop environment to get the hang of. It's not all that well designed as far as the annoying dash is concerned, but with the exception of the dash, everything else is clean and simple. Open applications are very easy to get to as well on the side launcher, and the HUD is pretty nice to avoid going through annoying menus constantly. 

I'll admit that I'm certainly not afraid of the command prompt, as I have done server maintenance that has my skills fairly sharp, but honestly, I find linux a lot easier to use as an everyday user. With windows 8, you don't know if the setting you are looking for is buried somewhere deep in the control panel, in the settings app, or in some side panel on the start screen. It's a real pain to figure out where everything is, and it lacks any consistency whatsoever. To be fair, the settings application in Ubuntu is pretty crappy, but at least everything truly is easy to find and it's in one place. It beats having to search three different areas in windows for a simple setting, or constantly having to switch between fullscreen "apps" (which are littered with ads) and the normal programs. 

Then of course, no anti-virus software or system maintenance/defragmentation software is required, which is quite nice, particularly considering how often I somehow managed to get malware on my PC as a windows user. No annoying restarts are required for minor updates either, and the hard drive and RAM requirements are significantly lower. Many free programs are also available for linux, and I have yet to run into anything I need that I don't have (besides microsoft word maybe, but I found WPS office to be a decent replacement for my needs). 

So yeah, I am now pretty much completely windows-independent. Anyone else here just as excessively religious about using linux? 

Screenshot of my awesome linux-powered desktop

I recently got my desktop working again. I have absolutely no idea how I did it. I think it was a power supply issue, but oddly enough, the last two times I tried to replace it did not help me. For whatever reason, a couple months ago, it worked when I gave it a third attempt. 

The first thing I did was reinstall Windows 7 to get rid of all the crap I had on there before I switched to my (fairly) new laptop. Being that I'm used to either windows 8 or Ubuntu (with me refusing to touch windows nowadays), I was a little surprised at how outdated windows 7 felt, but meh, hey, it was a working PC! I quickly realized that having everything on one computer was better because everything was in one place. I didn't feel like transferring files and programs between two computers constantly, so my newly working computer has been taken off of my desk. 

Anyone else have two PCs that they use actively? Are they for different purposes, or do you generally have two or more PCs that are used equally for the same purposes? 

Hello everyone! I am going to showcase my forum - CoD Glitches today.

Call of Duty Glitches is a forum for people to showcase Call of Duty glitches, tricks, tips, exploits, mods, and more. Though the main idea of this forum are glitches, I would welcome any Call of Duty fan interested in learning about the glitching scene.

Here are the features of the forum:

• Well Working Responsive Theme
  
• Member of The Month
  
• Clip of The Week
  
• User Friendly Award System
  
• Alerts
  
• Custom Statuses
  
• Country Flags
  
• Interesting and Fun Profile Fields
  
• "PRIME" user group that is exclusive to members who post at least 10 high quality glitches in any Call of Duty game
  
• Tabbed profile system with comments and friends
  
• No username styling - all users have the same username color and styling. Groups are identified by badges - Administrator, Staff, PRIME, MOTM, and COTW
  

So here in the US, anything over 40 hours requires 1.5 times your regularly paid rate for those extra hours. I personally am not a fan. It really discourages people from hiring employees to work more than 40 hours, and with today's wages as far as "minimum wage jobs" (with "minimum wage jobs" really meaning anything less than about $10/hour or so), you can't really make good money working 40 hours/week. 

What results? People work two jobs to get 50 hours/week rather than just working 50 hours/week at one job. It's a lot more stressful to work two jobs, especially when you end up with scheduling conflicts, and you can't commit as easily to one job. That said, it has its advantages too. It's easy to pick up a ton of hours when you need them, and you have a backup plan if you get fired from one job. I've done the whole two jobs thing before, and I've seen the advantages and disadvantages first-hand. 

I'm paid just under $10/hour right now, which is good for what I do, but it definitely puts me in the lower working class for sure. That, my friends, is why I'm in college. However, the real struggle comes in when you end up working 36 hours/week because they want to keep a buffer to prevent you from reaching 40 hours. That's 10% of your monthly income that you lose all because they can't risk letting you go into so much as one hour of overtime. 

I can't really make the best case against raising minimum wage at least a bit, considering 7.25 is not enough at all to support yourself at 40 hours/week unless you get very creative. However, the 10.15/hour minimum wage seems excessive to me because a large part of the market can't support it, and yes, I have worked minimum wage jobs before. I know exactly how it feels, and in my opinion, the other solution for the average worker is to, well, work more. More work = more productivity = a better America, and when people have to get two jobs because they can't work the 45 hours they need at one job, or they get scheduled 36 hours/week instead of 40, it gets rough. (Not saying 40 hours/week isn't the ideal, but the fact remains. Many of America's lower working class industries can't afford the upcoming $10+/hour minimum wage, and Americans can't afford to work for lower wages and to only get 40 hours/week. )

This thread is in the mature discussions section primarily because this is where most debates end up landing, so just for the sake of consistency, it's posted here. Anyway, what is your general opinion on overtime pay? Should it remain at 40 hours, have the 40 hour limit raised, or be removed altogether to let the market do its own thing? Are the labor regulation laws something that could be considered a good thing? 

EDIT: I feel I should clarify my own personal point of view here as well. If a company requires you to work 70+ hours a week, I think that could be considered excessive with today's cost of living, even at low wages such as $8.25/hour that is commonly paid for many lower class jobs. I personally feel the definition of full time should remain, but that the requirements for overtime pay should be adjusted. I do see a huge difference between working 45-50 hours/week at one job, and working 70 hours/week, for example.