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2016 Winter Holiday Event!

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    • Squishy

    Squishy

    Merciful Director
    Director
    Yes, it's that time again!

    This year, we're doing a Holiday Advent Treasure Hunt!

    The rules are simple. You and up to three other SVers team up and hunt down an answer to each clue. The questions, trust me, are pretty straightforward and shouldn't take you too long: we want this to be fun, not hugely strenuous!

    This is the 12 days of Christmas, so we'll unveil one each day leading up to Christmas Eve (we'll give you Christmas day off, ya slackers). You'll have until January 1, 2017 to post your answers.

    Every individual who completes the treasure hunt (whether in a team or otherwise) will receive a ribbon, and on top of that, we'll donate $2.50 to Doctor's Without Borders (up to an aggregate total of $1,000).

    Have some fun, win some prizes, get to know your fellow SVers better...what could be better during the holiday season?

    If you would like to 'register' a team, please go to this thread and make a post in the format of the example. Your team can be just you, or it can be up to four SVers. There is no advantage to playing individually, though, and you'll be at a disadvantage of not being able to spread out the effort.

    And for those of you just joining us, the full list of all twelve items you have to find:

    1. A Friend.     Introduce someone (or many someones) to SV! New SVers don't count against your team cap.

    2. A Video Game Plushie. Have someone on your team take a picture of a video game plushie that they either own, or have encountered in the real world.

    3. An exciting pen. Everyone knows LordSquishy loves pens, right? Show me a picture of the most exciting pen owned by a member of your team. Bonus points if it can do something really cool, like LordSquishy's pen that has a bubble level and a screwdriver hidden in it.

    4. Another fun place to be. So we know you come here, and you probably visit SB or QQ, but I bet you probably visit another forum too, you forum-polyamorous people. Link me to it!

    5. A thread that died too soon. We've all run across that one great OP which got no good replies. Find me a thread from SV's past (>30 days) that got too little love (>5 replies) and deserved more.

    6. A Landmark. What's exciting about your city? Have someone on your team take a photo of something cool in the city or town where they live.

    7. Your battlestation. Do you browse SV on a phone? A computer? Via a Terminator's belly button? Show us the battlestation of someone on your team!

    8. A pet. Does someone on your team have a pet? Who? What? Where? Why? Show 'em off for us!

    9. A memorial. We've all had someone in our lives who inspired us, someone who died too soon. Tell me a little bit (<500 words) about one of those people and why they were important to you.

    10. Interesting as fuck.     I don't know what it is yet, but anything. Manage to beat @Exposure in Titanfall? Screenshot! Fall off your skateboard and have your cat finish your trick? I'd love to see it. Show me and tell me something interesting that happened to one of the people on your team recently.

    11. A Good Work. Let's face it, most of the news on SV is bad. Show me something good. Find me a current news article from your town, city, country, state, whatever, that put a smile on your face and share it with everyone!

    12. A new idea. Have your new, baby SVer friend (from 1) tell us what they'd like to see on SV in the new year!
     
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    • Meet Nick, my 7-year old dog. Typhoon Ketsana survivor, and one big softie. Bit of a troll, since he likes to howl when the neighbor's kid plays his drums, and has a fondness for hugging my outdoor flipflops.
     
    Battlestation! It's not neat, it's not tidy, but it is extremely ergonomic - important given how bad my joints are - and has enough real estate and horsepower for me to do... basically whatever I want.

    The cheap tables I have turned out to be too flimsy for monitor arms at full extension - check the divot in the table on the left - so I braced them with some cheap cutting boards. I found out last time I moved that that cardboard box is at exactly elbow height and never bothered switching it out because this is the happiest my shoulder has been in years. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Leftmost tower is my desktop from two generations ago, now a linux server/dev box. I should probably swap it out at some point, it's about ten years old now. Middle tower is the computer I play with, currently running CoreOS and if it's still this stable in three months I might start migrating files and dev stuff to it. Right tower is my desktop and gaming machine, running Windows.

    I try not to feel bad about how much money I spend on my computers. I swear it's for work!

     
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    elykk said:
    I think your cat is deflated
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    There's actually a story behind that position.

    When my ma first got him, Boy was a pretty energetic kitten until he got nerve injury from jumping to high places a lot. He was fully disabled after that, which was how he got used to that deflated form.

    My Ma, from being ambivalent and rather reluctant about having cats, then had to give her full attention to taking care of Boy. It took months of clinic visiting, hundreds maybe thousands of ringgit spent, hours of my dad giving weird cat massage, that when he twitched his tail even just a little my ma was so happy.

    He's okay now, but ma becomes a bit overprotective over his health. He can get sick so easily, and a bit low on local cat hierarchy so always got injuries from fights with other cats.


    We call that his 'doormat' form, because he always does that in front of the house' backdoor leading to the kitchen outside, outright ignoring people coming in and out of the door right on top of him. He literally becomes a living, breathing doormat when he does that.
     
    LordSquishy said:
    I am so so tired but have four more days to go until I sleep...

    9. A memorial. We've all had someone in our lives who inspired us, someone who died too soon. Tell me a little bit (<500 words) about one of those people and why they were important to you.
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    My grandmother passed away this June from complications during a cardiac operation. She was missing a heartvalve and although the operation went well the stress the artificial heart placed on her vascular system was too great, causing basically every vein in her body to rupture. We had a closed casket burial.
    It was not an surgery done out of necessity but out of hope. She was doing fine and was incredibly involved in the community and decided to get the surgery so that she could keep going like that. A true rock in the surf; one filled with love and passion. If there ever was someone who lived life to its fullest, it was her.

    Earlier that month, just before my graduation finals, I received her final Christmas present to me: Two tickets to Final Symphony, a orchestral concert of Final Fantasy music. She used to be an opera singer and knew I love the great melancholy and power in the music, so we could see it together. I told her of the stories connected to the music and promised her to show her another rendition of the Hymn of the Fayth.
    I didn't make good on that promise until I sang it at her funeral.
     
    LordSquishy said:
    I am so so tired but have four more days to go until I sleep...

    9. A memorial. We've all had someone in our lives who inspired us, someone who died too soon. Tell me a little bit (<500 words) about one of those people and why they were important to you.
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    My best friend William and me grew up together. We where friends from the moment we met in third grade. When we got to middle school we both joined the wrestling team and where pretty good. In Highschool we both where in the same JROTC class for all of highschool. We did everything together. He was like a brother to me. When I joined the National Guard he joined the Marines. He was killed in a roadside bombing two years ago in Iraq. The last thing we talked about was how when he rotated back home how we where going to Miami.
     
    This year, I lost my grandmother. She was 86 years old, and had been suffering from Alzheimer's for something like a decade.
    My grandmother and grandmother, for most all of their lives, were farmers. They raised cows and chickens. They lived simply, never having or needing internet (though eventually they got satellite or cable, mostly so my grandfather could watch more sports and game shows). They taught me, over the years, to enjoy the ability to get outside the city and bask in the quiet and peace. To work hard. To treasure what I had.

    When I remember her, I remember food; canning food, baking food, eating food. Meals that warmed the belly and the heart.
    I think of music, of her singing hymns in church, steadily singing even as her voice showed just a touch of her age. Of her humming and singing when she'd be cooking or working.
    I think of warm, of crackling fires in the living room, of piles of blankets and quilts.
    I think of her sewing and quilting, of the quilts I have even now that are the work of her hands.
    I think of her getting up early and helping around the house and the farm, the day barely lit, but there was work to be done.
    I think of her and my grandfather, before the dawn broke, up and in the living room, doing devotions together. Their voices quietly reading, and then praying. Even when their hair was grey, their skin wrinkled, and their joints beginning to show their age, they would kneel down, their voices just audible enough. In a humble farmhouse in the country, yet somehow still a holy moment, a holy place.
    I think of all the times she told a joke or funny story, or saw or heard me, my brothers, or my cousins doing something funny, and she would laugh. It was one of those laughs that was...it was like a benign cackle. It didn't make you cringe, it made you smile.
    I think of how she always seemed to make even the smallest and simplest stories seem larger than life.
    I think of how she loved putting out hummingbird feeders, and how she'd always stop for a few moments to admire the little birds, their color shining in the sunlight, flitting about. Of how she kept a birdbath in the front yard, to watch all the various birds you get on a country farm to show up and wash up.
    I think of all the people who showed up to the funeral and the meals before and after, to mourn together, but also to celebrate her life.
    I shed tears as I remember, I shed tears as I curse and damn Alzheimer's.
    But I smile when I know and remember I'll see her again.
    Thanks, Grandma. I hope we can have cherry delight again in the Great Feast to come.
     
    LordSquishy said:
    I am so so tired but have four more days to go until I sleep...

    9. A memorial. We've all had someone in our lives who inspired us, someone who died too soon. Tell me a little bit (<500 words) about one of those people and why they were important to you.
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    Well, you said only one, so here goes.

    My uncle was a hard worker. He finished the vocation I am studying right now; he had a job in the local factory. He got fired in twenty years because of budget cuts, I think.

    After that, he started smoking and, well, my family has a history of heart conditions; my grandmother died because of a heart attack (?). He was 60 or so years old and his hands constantly shook; it didn't matter that he lived healthily in the countryside or that he worked all day every day in the fields—they were eating after a morning of picking olives when he clutched his chest, took a few breathless steps, and died. There was no chance of survival because they were in the middle of nowhere so Dad came home hours later. We got the news by phone; I remember watching Modern Marvels on the second floor when my brother came up to tell me he died. I first told him to cut it out with the terrible jokes but I came down and saw Mom absolutely wrecked on the phone.

    Three days later, I did not cry when we put the basket in the ground; complete strangers (to me) were all around and I preferred to not show my emotions to them.

    I saved it for going to sleep.

    He taught me not to lie, cheat, or steal; he taught me to smile in my approach to life; he taught me to work hard, be productive, and be efficient.

    There's a lot to pick up from that larger-than-life man; a bonfire that cast its light on all aspects of my life.

    But most of all, he taught me how to live a good, happy life.
     
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    My grandfather passed away earlier this year, after a long battle with some degenerative sickness no doctor could figure out. It was painful to see him go like that, but it was also, in some ways, a relief. He'd been a very physically active man before, doing auto repairs, carpentry, gardening. To see the man who once took me and my cousins on hiking trips every year gradually lose his mobility and waste away was terrifying and painful to behold. Shamefully, I didn't spend as much time with him as I should have, it was hard for me to even be in the same room as him, sometimes. I wish I'd done more. He'd deserved better. Towards the end he could barely leave his bed, and his inability to swallow food properly eventually led to the pneumonia that took his life.

    My grandfather never told me much of his past, what he told me, instead, was stories. Old folktales, comic shorts that I can't quite remember any more. It seemed to me that he never ran out of them. He always had time for us, for his grandchildren. He'd bring us with him when he had errands to run, introduce us to his acquaintances- they always seemed to know us, unfamiliar as they were. One of the very first things I remember is sitting in the back of his bike in a tiny little rattan chair as he pedaled his way to his rice fields. All of the fields he used to own are gone, now. He sold them to pay for his children's education. The field across the river, that we spent so much time in, was used to build a new mosque. He lived just long enough to see it finished.
     
    Squishy, Y U do dis ?

    Technically she's not dead yet, but if you're not happy just refresh the page, I promise you wont wait long.
    I have this friend, she's, I don't know, sixteen I think ? She's terminally ill, cancer they say. She lost 30kg in the last couple months, doctor are speaking of cutting her leg, too.
    So we speak everyday, she's delirious because of the shitton of drugs and painkillers she has to take. Yesterday she was telling me she was hallucinating and couldn't tell what's really there and what's in her mind.
    Fun fact, for added drama she's getting surgery on Dec. 24. They're gonna try to remove as much of the metastasis as they can, so she can suffer a bit longer.
    So now everyone in her entourage is hoping for her to die as quickly and painlessly as possible. I even recently had to convince her best friend not to kill her in her sleep.
    Why is she important to me ? Well she's my friend, nothing more than that, but no one should die that young, especially from such shitfest disease.
    About memorial, she gave me a flat wrench shaped ring (and I gave her one too, kind of an inside joke between us) that I almost always wear, at my finger or around my neck, tucked under my shirt.
    And I'm getting this tatooed on my ringfinger, as soon as I have some money to spare (and I think that will be after she leaves. Because deep don I want to have hope.)

    (shitty drawing I just made, as it's just her name in norse rune, as she's born in Norway)

    Yeah. This is gonna be a great christmas.
     
    My grandfather died about 10 years ago, he was the only one of my grandparents i really got to know because the others died before i was born. We frequently went on hiking trips and holidays with him, he was always there on my and my sisters birthdays and we went to visit him frequently. He was an avid hiker and loved the Alps, a hard worker who inherited his fathers business, kept it going and had his sons succeed him in turn, and a respected and well known person in his community.

    It was terrible seeing him getting progressively worse dementia over two years and in the end barely recognizing anyone anymore and doing nothing except sitting in his chair looking at the tv while barely reacting to what people around him did, i stopped visiting him about three months before his death which was around the same time he stopped recognizing people who weren't my father or my uncle.

    Now i need to go and cheer myself up or get my general apathy up and running again.
     
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