It's Personal...

[Mask_De_H]

Congrats on things going well, Prak; getting the meds that click is always a great feeling. Be sure to check in with your doc alongside the hormone therapy, since heavy stressors can screw with moods and may require an adjunct dosage/medication change.

HRT is some heavy shit and it's great you have a chill doctor and got directed to a specialist; take full advantage of them

[Leress]

That's good to hear...read, Prak.

[Grek]

Congrats, Prak.

[Prak]

Thanks guys. On the topic of Heavy Stressors, I told my mother about starting transitioning today, since I figured eventually she'd either notice the extra pill bottles, or the new tits...

That conversation went about as expected. She's concerned that the therapy will do harm to my body, and that I'm just confused and trying to make dramatic changes because I'm just confused and trying to rebel, or something.

My dad thinks they're enabling me and that because I haven't had to really struggle, I'm confused or something. He sounds like he's getting close to chucking me out.

So then I went to check with a manager about a stock position at another location of a chain I did stock work for over the Holidays. Apparently, I sucked at it, so they won't rehire me.

And the Denny's that was desperately in need of a new cook hired someone with real industry experience. I just have experience in my program's kitchen.

So I'm feeling like a failure

[Stahlseele]

Of course.
Life gave you something nice, we should all have been suspicious of what was to come next.
Sorry to read that.

[sendaz]

Congrats Prak on taking another step along your path.

And you are NOT a failure, do not doubt yourself.

For your mum, talk to her and reassure her that you will still be you, just now MORE the full you.
Some people fear that folk go through this and somehow come out a total stranger. Odd I know, but the fear is there.
Talk to your doctor/consultant and see if they might be willing to talk to your mum if she has any concerns about the safety of this or can point you to someone who can walk her through this. The fact that she is worried about your health means she is being a mother and any surgery/series of treatments has its risks.
For your father, that's a bit tougher. I do not know if you have siblings, but does he feel you are somehow becoming 'softer' or 'weaker' because you are changing gender?
If he thought you weren't struggling enough before, well the good news is you can honestly tell him you will face a load more struggles on this path. Maybe not what you want to be reminded of, but you will still face glass ceilings and outright discrimination at times.
Remind him this is not some supposed escape to a easy life, but a serious decision you are making that will take strength both inside and out to see it through.
As for jobs, do you have day labor agencies or other hiring agencies in your area you could sign up with? While you do a lot of different spot jobs this way, it brings in a paycheck while you are looking for something more permanent and sometimes the day jobs can lead into hiring on a full time basis.

[Prak]

It comes down to them just not accepting that transgenderism is a real thing. They think that we're just making shit up and running away from things. On top of this, they fear that I will do irreparable harm to my body with the hormones, and refuse to listen to studies or trust my doctors. In the last decade or so, they've really been going down the GOP anti-science rabbit hole, and think that doctors will just sign off on whatever. My dad isn't really one of those macho manly types, so it's not that I'm become softer or weaker, for him, he just is a conservative who thinks this is all fantasy bullshit that's super dangerous. Because science is evil.

[Josh_Kablack]

Re: feeling like a failure.

consider this fellow: He dropped out of grade school. Ran a country store. Went broke. Took 15 years to pay off his bills. Unhappy marriage. Went into politics. Lost four campaigns. Delivered speech that was panned by the Times. Attacked daily by the press and despised by half the country. Despite all this, imagine how many people all over the world have been inspired by this awkward, rumpled, brooding man who signed his name simply,

A. Lincoln.

As for the job, parental and transgender issues, I feel bad you weren't in my neck of the woods five or six years back -- fully fifty percent of my social circle back then was either able to get you a restaurant job and/or some form of trans/genderqueer/poly/regular ol queer....

[violence in the media]

Congrats on the good stuff happening, Prak.

[Prak]

Thanks guys. Once I have a day available to do so, I'm going to look at staffing agencies. Hopefully I don't get a shitty one this time.

[Omegonthesane]

I always feel a bit empty expressing my wish for someone's success instead of actually acting to help bring about that success... but here's to your success.

[Aharon]

I'm pretty happy right now After my breakup four years ago, I didn't have any partners. Recently, two poly pairs have invited me (separately) in their dynamics as secondary, which is a lot of fun. Not the same as being in a monogamous relationship or the primary in a poly relationship, but still really, really good!

Soo... In one of those pairs, I got feelings not only for the girl, but also the guy (I didn't realize/know I was bisexual before). He isn't interested in pursuing anything sexual, but his roommate is. The roommate is cute, adorably good-natured and basically what I look for in partners. However, he would be my first male partner and I'm a bit afraid of going for it

[Eikre]

Yeah, if you're holding back because you don't feel like you have the identity foundation to pursue a gay thing in best faith, then tarry no longer; a dalliance with a straight-ish dude who ends up not really being down is a Queer-101 practicum.

Just go for it. Spoon that man. Come to a new, empirically-researched quorum on cockology. Double-team his friend and permit those balls to touch.

[erik]

First up. Aharon, stop being so gay and get with that man.

So I have to share this because AT&T is awful. Despite living within Indianapolis which is supposedly a large-ish city, I am in a crappy internet provider zone. ~5 years ago we tried to get U Verse for faster internet since we are on DSL which claims to offer 3MB/sec DL (hahaha, never close). They arrange a time and all that and then never show because it's not available. A few years later we try signing up again when they say it's available fo reals now. And again waste our time because of course.

So we scheduled to upgrade to 18 MB/sec with U-verse since it would cost the same as what we are paying right now anyway and maybe 5 years later they have their shit together. Today was the day!

Nope. They were supposed to be here between 1-3pm. They arrive at 2:55 (just made it!) and when my wife mentioned we were upgrading because the speed is shit and constantly turning off and on, the technician told my wife that ATT is trying to get people off of DSL and have been slowing things down. Wow. I'm pretty sure that's illegal, but hey, I wanted to upgrade for about 5 years anyway. Anywho, turns out they cannot install to our place because there's a break in the line between us and the hub that is like 4-5 miles away. Somewhere. The technician said they might contact us to reschedule after the line is fixed. Oh, and would she like for him to plug the old DSL line back in? Thankfully she said yes, but it sounded like she was on the fence and was thinking about letting me hook shit back up outside. I worry about mrs erik sometimes.

So once again ATT has been the Lucy with the football to our Charlie Brown. Nice that they admitted to intentionally shitting on our internet connection tho, before I thought it was just incompetence, like the time I had no internet for literally over a month because they thought it was my router and refused to send a tech (it was a broken line outside of house, destroyed by squirrels who hate ATT even more than me apparently).

Every 6 months or so I search for another provider and also sacrifice a virgin goat to Google hoping they bring their fiber project to my town. Maybe some day.

[Maxus]

That tallies EXACTLY with what happened with us switching to U-verse. I live in the boonies, DSL speeds were 700 KB/s. Then suddenly they dropped to 200 KB/s and AT&T started selling us U-verse. They brought us up to 400 KB/s.

But now they tell us they can't deliver on the promised speeds when they were selling U-verse because we're too far from the hub.

[Stahlseele]

Which is, sadly, how basically ALL ISPs work.
Well, the big ones that are not just local/regional anyway.
Vodafone claims each customer is treated just like a corporate/business account customer . . well, i do support for both private and corp/business account customers, and yep, they are both treated equally. Equally bad.

And look at your contracts, you usually can't even sue them because the contract does not specify a set speed you get but a maximum of what could, in theory, be achieved. They allow you to get up to 16MBit for example, and switch a 16MBit profile to your line. And then if the line/hardware can not handle it, due to the hardware being too old or the line being too long and narrow and you only get 8MBit/sec? Or even less?
"Well, you are shit out of luck buddy! We do not claim to give you 16MBit, we claim to give you up to 16MBit! NYYAAA!!! "

What exactly are they offering as an alternative if they are trying to move people away from DSL? Cable? LTE/4.5g? Cable has its own specific problems, because it is a shared medium and DSL is not for example, but it can reach higher speeds at least in the download sector than DSL usually does. LTE/4.5g is basically Mobile Internet. Including usually traffic limits on what is supposed to be a landline/fixed net replacement <.<

Cable often has some kind of traffic limits as well. Because reasons.
Nowadays, even certain DSL tarifs get the limited traffic before limiting bandwidth to barely above ISDN speeds for some fucked up reason.
Basically, they are trying to sell you faster lines with less free traffic so you use it up faster and have to buy speed buckets for more traffic or some shit. Yes, you read right, it's DLC for Internet Access!

Small time regional/local ISPs are usually much better for customers than the big ones. Also a bit more expensive. But they get hindered every step of the way when they want to expand their own webs.

Little known fun fact? An ISP will make absolutely NO MONEY AT ALL in the first 2 to 3 years of your Internet Contract existing, because they need to supply you with the needed hardware and a technician to switch the lines around and make sure it works initially. If you complain about anything and they actually have to do something to fix it, like replacing your hardware or sending out a technician to fix your line somewhere, then that time extends to 4 to 6 years, depending on how much work they have to put into actually supplying you with the stuff they are contractually obliged to supply you with. Which is a working internet access and phone line. No mention about quality or capacity or anything. Just a straight up digital WORKS YES NO. Works poorly? WORKS! DONE!

Knowing this, you can kind of understand why they try to do as little as possible while keeping as many customers as possible, because they only start generating a profit so far down the line.
Which is also the reason why all the shiney new product special offers only ever count for new customers, not already established contracts either.

All this, of course, is no consolation to the shafted customers in you at all, but at least it should help you understand a bit about why you are getting the no lube treatment.

Things like google fibre are few and far between, because not many corps have an interest in going into actual infrastructure and usually don't have the kind of funds google has available to play around with.

Oh, and the reason why other technologies like Cable and LTE/4.5g and Fibre are pushed over DSL? Not because they are BETTER but because they are routed differently and that means they have little to no problems with the IP4v Adresses being all gone.

If they simply switched everything over to IPv6? THAT Problem would immediately vanish into thin air. And make DSL again a more viable alternative, simply because it is a cheap and simple tech comparatively.
But because it relies on, usually, decades old copper cabling, it still has to fight with the usual physical problems. Resistance due to wire length and diameter. Signal to Noise Rario due to several cables being close to each other in the same trench.

This is where VDSL for example tries to "improve" on things. Simply due to higher frequency and usually no analog/ISDN phone line but VOIP so you have the whole line/spectrum for the actual internet access. VDSL and in future vectoring is a very short range thing. And it only works if the outdoor DSLAMs are connected to the big switching panels, usually located in the old post office buildings, via fibre already and then you can only have about 100m or so from the outdoor DSLAM to the APL/phone jack in your wall before the signal degenerates too much and the performance goes down again.

[Josh_Kablack]

First up. Aharon, stop being so gay and get with that man.

So I have to share this because AT&T is awful.

Amatuers.

Now maybe if they would have gotten you off DSL by disconnecting your service without telling you, then double billing you for the new and "improved" service, then not actually telling you the phone number for the bundled landline, then continuing to double bill you after disconnecting the wrong phone number, then they would be competitive with Verizon's ISP customer service.....now that Verizon has improved so much from when I had them 10 years back.

[Ancient History]

http://imgur.com/a/6anQj

[Neurosis]

@Bobbie: That's awesome. <3

If anyone cares for some bizarre reason, here's an update on my personal well-being.

TW: Massive, stupid intentional self-harm.

J.M. Hardy giving me the boot for life from the SR freelancer list was not the only reason for this, but it was a major factor. I was whacked out on benzos, drunk as shit, high on six bowls of weed, and had just finished running a kickass game of Delta Green. I was also just by chance holding a huge ass knife (I've since thrown it out of the house).

I spontaneously tried to kill myself, didn't take a full-round action to perform a coup-de-grace and rolled a natural 1 on trying to attack myself. So the only result was a 7"x2"x2" gash in my left arm that didn't even manage to hit an artery.

My girlfriend made me an awesome field dressing like Sarah Connor does for Kyle Reese in The Terminator, restoring 1d4 hp.

I haven't been to the hospital yet.

My best friend is a Registered Nurse. He's on his way over with a medical kit now, so no more forum posting for me after this.

I will be fine, bleeding stopped, no signs of infection. Stitches, lots of them, are probably mandatory. They're gonna fucking hurt.

[Ancient History]

Goddamn, dude. Take care of yourself. I hope you heal up soon.

[Prak]

Jesus. This is why you should pick one mind altering substance at a time, and not add on more.

Hope you heal up well.

[erik]

Take care of yourself Schwarz. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

[Neurosis]

Physical survival update:

I am fine, 16 staples and a truly badass trauma surgeon (he reminded me of a Street Doc with exceptionally bad beside manner for a Street Doc, ) later, my left arm is most of the way reattached.

The last clause of that sentence was hyperbole, but I did do a number on myself, stupid idiot that I am.

The following spoiler is text, not a picture of my gory wound. I'll TW for that shit if and when.

The surgeon was a fucking trip. In Shadowrun 4E terms, he clearly had at least 13 dice in First Aid or whatever they called it in 4E. He also had somehow gotten his MC to let him trait the Uncouth disad...twice.

In fact he reminded me of SR in general. He said he'd been a battlefield surgeon in the Middle East, but not with any US Armed forces, that he was out there doing "bad stuff" with "missionaries? mercenaries? can't remember, maybe both".

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that this guy was probably actually a Shadowrun character in real life.

For efficiency, I'd rate him 10/10. For bedside manner, I'd rate him WTF out of WHY HAVE YOU NOT BEEN FIRED YET? My friend who's an RN said he was pretty much par for the course for ER Trauma Surgeons.

He unironically threatened to kill me four times during the procedure, and that wasn't the worst part.

Pics as soon as I'm allowed to take the dressing off. I'll spoiler them for people that don't like to look at gnarly self-inflicted drunken fired-from-Shadowrun related battle wounds.

[sendaz]

So Schwarzkopf = Neurosis? Cool..

Didn't realize it was you man.

As for your Doc, you stat him up and we will add him to the pool of NPCs to spring on the cubs who take the docs for granted.

[Stahlseele]

Ah, so that's you.
And now the name fits.
Don't do that again.
And most docs i have met are like that.