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rezdragon · 4 months

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2014 and My Writing

I just wrote about this in the script I'm working on, but I thought I'd go a little more in detail in a separate post. I've talked about this before on Twitter a few years back, but writing a script about it has put some fresh perspective into my head. Let me tell you about the time that I went from obsessively writing nearly every day, to not writing at all for three years.

I say that I have always been a storyteller, as growing up, I made tons of stories with the toys in my room and each day was like a new episode in the complicated plot of "The Beanie Babies On My Bed."

2006 is when I really started using a computer regularly, but it was 2007 when I wrote my first short story, which was like twelve pages long (which is long for a 12 year old). And from then on, I was hooked on writing. Every year or so, it seemed like I had some kind of new story going on. Not because I finished the previous ones mind you, I would just get bored of it, or the idea became too big and I couldn't finish it. Orintheous' first backstory was developed around this time (that's how old she is).

When I was introduced to Smash Machinima in 2008, it was a match made in heaven for me. A lot of the stuff I was writing was just loose video game fanfiction and now suddenly I could make that real? Sign me up, 13 year old me was PUMPED.

And so in between my school work, I would be writing up scripts and other various short stories for machinima. I still have dozens of scripts for projects that never got a voice. This absolutely affected my attention in class except for English. Thanks to my constant writing, I excelled at English, especially the writing assignments.

My high grades in English continued into my high school years (also where my deep depression started), and by 10th grade, I was completely BURIED in writing a novel with a fantasy setting (Note: Do not have your first novel be a fantasy setting). I filled up several notebooks with drafts of short stories, scenes, and scripts. And when I wasn't trapped at school, I'd pour hours into Microsoft Word, making more short stories, scripts, etc. I just loved writing.

One of my proudest moments was in my creative writing class. The teacher gave us the blank assignment of writing a short story, but it had to be under 5 pages. I, the obsessive writer, argued that 5 pages was too short, and told her I had a 12 page story for her. She told me that if that story sucked and wasn't written well, she would outright give me an F on the assignment for making it over 5 pages.

I got an A.

In that same class, we had to submit poetry to this American Poetics Society or something like that, and I wrote a poem in 20 minutes about how I hated summer. And not only did I get a A on that assignment, that poem got selected to be in that year's published book of young authors (a book I SADLY COULDN'T BUY).

I kinda fell out of writing by 2013 because of d e p r e s s i o n, but I still had a lot of pride in my writing. Once I got out of school (and machinima) I sadly didn't have much to write about anymore, but I still kept up on it with fanfiction.

And then we get to college.

So in 2014, I was forced to go to college for a number of reasons, but the bottom line is that I did not entirely choose to attend college. To make it worth my while, I went for a degree in Graphic Design. I took a few fine art classes too, and I did learn something from those that I still apply to my work today. And I also took English 1, under the guise that it would be an "easy class" for me to get out of the way early.

It was not. Suddenly, the writing that let me fly through high school English without a thought was getting C's and D's. Even long essays I had to write about books we read were failing. I also couldn't pass any of the tests; I couldn't understand what was happening. For the first time in my life I was failing English? Me? Someone who considered themselves a writer?! And don't think I didn't try. The professor I had wasn't an asshole, he was great, and he tried his best to help me pass the class, but something just did not click and I failed English 1. This was during an already rough time in my life, so I didn't take this failing very well. I stopped writing, just full stop. And I wouldn't write again for some time.

Fast forward to 2017, I'm watching all of my old machinima from back in the day, feeling a little sad that I never finished what I had started. I decide to jump back in (for various reasons), and I was planning on working on a previously failed machinima series, but then I made a joke video on April 24th of 2017...

This joke video was a machinima called "Orintheous Declares War On RyeDragon." It was a word for word remake of a video made by PMK94 when he declared war on me for switching my Smashsona to Lucario back in 2009. That original video spawned an entire video series where PMK and I went back and forth trying to one up each other like the children we were.

Well, this joke video, made 8 years after the original, woke PMK up from retirement, and he responded to the video with a machinima of his own. I was so thrown by this because I honestly did not expect this and I thought: "I have to follow this up with my own video."

And for the first time in 3 years, I wrote an original script, performed it, and published it to the world, that video being "Orintheous' Plan Begins." And once again, PMK and I went back and forth with each other, spawning the original Orintheous' Revenge.

The scripts for the original OR were the first bits of completely original writing I had done in 3 years. I mean it when I say I went from writing almost nonstop to not writing at all. I didn't write anything in those three years and I honestly feared I would never regain my love for writing. But a silly little series about recolored Charizards reignited my spark, and while it took awhile to make a flame, that flame exploded in 2021.

By 2021, I got my love of writing back in full force, and once again, it was thanks to Orintheous' Revenge. I spent the first half of 2021 working religiously on writing the plot and other elements for OR, just like I had done before for my fantasy novel. Orintheous' Revenge was merely the warmup though, preparing for the main event of 2021, which would be The Disaster Archives.

All of the writing I do for TDA today would not be possible had it not been for Orintheous' Revenge. College nearly killed the writer in me, but Orintheous, the god of life, brought it back. As I am currently writing a 46 page script about the events of 2021, three years after the fact, it honestly feels weird to me to even think about the fact that I went three years without writing anything. I'm back to being incredibly dedicated to it, just as much as I am to my art.

I have always been a storyteller, and I will tell my story, either with recolored Charizards or beanie babies on my bed. I'm not super vocal about calling myself a writer, but if you ask me, I will gladly tell you:

"Yes, I am a writer."

More specifically, I call myself a script writer, as I love writing dialogue. I don't think I could ever write a novel again haha.

#deep dive #taking a break from writing by doing more writing #god my hands are so sore haha

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iampikachuhearmeroar · 4 years

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y’know i love memes as much as anyone else on this hellsite and the internet in general. but one meme i can’t stand now, as well as a joke used by older comedians about ~kids today!!!! am i right???~ that i can’t stand now, is the one that’s like “all 10 year olds want today is an iphone or an ipad or a macbook for their birthday or christmas! all i got for my 10th birthday/christmas as a kid was a tennis racquet and a tether ball that hit me in the face! kids are so spoilt today! you better get an i-job to i-pay for your spoilt mac-ass!”

because like.... do you not understand that in today’s increasingly over-connected world, ipads and macbooks or other tablets/laptops are pretty much required school equipment now, if your 10yo kid’s primary/elementary etc school has a ~bring your own device~ policy for kids in years 4-6??? like obviously yes, some schools will provide students with laptop/tablet trolleys and stuff.... or also the government might have a program to roll out laptops/tablets to schools (like australia did under rudd and gillard).... that some schools will literally put “parents must get a reliable tablet computer or laptop computer for their child to use for assignments”. when it comes to high school, i imagine that they’ll need their own laptop/tablet the whole way through their time there, if there is no longer any school provided or limited school provided laptops/desktop computers/tablets.

that’s besides the point that laptops etc are even more so required now than ever before, after everyone was forced to do homeschooling because of covid??? so. practically. a kid asking for a macbook/ipad or other tablets/laptops for their birthday or christmas, isn’t such a bad idea for a present??? even if yeah. apple is overrated and overpriced to the max. but suck it up and pay for your child’s future education??? even it means getting a cheaper laptop or tablet for your kid.

all i can say on the above point is that yes. the idea of ~bring your own device~ policies does set many families back- especially those in/from lower income areas/backgrounds or single parent families... considering that a decent tablet will set you back at least $500 and a decent mini laptop is around the same.... but bigger and better laptops are around $1000 on sale (windows) or idek like $1,200 on an apple education pricing deal. like yeah. it’s a demarcation thing and also setting some people up to fail. and again, this has been made increasingly obvious during covid due to different families acces to buying laptops/tablets or other internet connection means. i also understand that these big ticket item purchases of tablets/laptops hits the hip pockets of everyone harder during the pandemic, especially if you’re struggling with debt like mortgage repayments or whatever while being made redundant or are being paid less while working from home.

okay. not to sound like a spoilt brat of a kid, but i got my first laptop, an i-book G4 for my 10th birthday in 2005. then almost 10 years later, i got a macbook for my 18th birthday (and for my HSC/end of high school exams) in 2013. yes, this is the macbook that i promptly fucked up two years later in 2015, by trying to encrypt the hard drive, since i was taking it to uni and it had all my internet passwords remembered on it along with my banking details. the same goes for my other windows laptop... where the hard drive just decided to fry itself like 4 months into me using it, along with the trackpad. and that was a $1,200 ASUS laptop (bought on sale) that i was using for uni. and then finally my little HP stream laptop’s keyboard shorted out halfway through a creative writing class (that was $500 and it only has a 28gb hard drive so it’s very light and good for transport).

but my point is, me having my own laptop (as opposed to using the family computer only) helped me immensely in my studies..... and they were literally fucking essential to me both in business college and uni. but they were also helpful in late high school, considering that 90% of my assignment work was expected to be typed out in microsoft word or powerpoint or excel (for maths and science). or for more creative projects, i was expected to use adobe photoshop and video editing software like imovie or adobe premiere pro (art/computer tech/drama/that weird year 7 subject i did called INTEL) and garageband/sibelius (for music). how on earth was i supposed to keep doing work on adobe photoshop or word etc at home if i didn’t have my own laptop to continue the work???

because as a final point, for me, literally by year 10 in 2011, NOT ONE of my assignments was expected to be handwritten (bar my actual exams or in class tests; also state tests/exams etc; or if it was a poster or visual art). if you dared to turn in something handwritten, the teacher and student interaction would be like the following example:

teacher to a kid whose handed in a handwritten assignment: did you not read the assessment outline? it said WORD PROCESSED WITH WORD! what is this handwritten thing? okay fine. i’ll take it this time. but read the outline next time, timothy!

timothy: *stammers out* s-sorry miss/s-sorry sir *stalks away from the teacher’s desk in embarrassment and shame*

the teacher, probs thinking to themself: weird that a kid thinks they can hand in something handwritten. silly, really.

the above scenario was the same for me in years 11 & 12. also, by year 9/2010, we were using the education management system moodle (and maybe early stage presi for online presentations) for both of our HSIE subjects (history and geography) and i think a couple of other subjects, during most lessons and especially for class work that involved group work/class discussions, via online discussion boards function. my year group was actually was actually one of the test year groups for the early models of moodle. so by the time i was in uni, i was a native to using moodle; so i could skip the “moodle help tutorial” subject portions on it in every class.

hell, for today, i wouldn’t be surprised if foreign language subject faculties in high schools are now using school subscription class accounts or something for duolingo or babbel. and today, kids are learning coding from like year 4 onwards, i think, on apps at school as part of their science & tech studies lesson portion of the day. how on fucking earth are kids meant to keep up with their class work progression on coding apps or whatever, at home, if they don’t have their own laptop/tablet??? ridiculous. how would kids fare today without their own laptop/tablet, if all of their classwork for homeschooling is on like google drive/cloud or whatever other open source drive/open source cloud software their school uses?? or any other apps that their school might use??? obviously we are seeing this play out in real time during the pandemic, world over, where if a child is in a single parent family or if their two parents don’t have adequate enough resources/have been fired or let go from their jobs/juggling working from home and homeschooling; then it’s hurting these kids likelihood of doing well with distance learning.

but yeah. my point is that if your kid is asking you for a laptop or a tablet (regardless of brand) for their birthday or christmas, maybe buy them one?? because you never know. it may be the very thing at the top of their student resource list for the following school year. and also. do you know what stops kids fighting over their access to the family computer/tablet to do their assessments etc??? buying them their own personal laptops or tablets. even if they do cost an arm and a fucking leg. get your heads out of your asses and help your own goddamned kids (or relatives if it’s a nephew/niece etc asking for one) like you’re supposed to.

okay. for phones. i’ll admit i wouldn’t like a 10 year old having their own phone, because of social media being so easy to access on them. but if you don’t allow them to use the app store and don’t allow them to download instagram/facebook et al..... and give them the phone solely for safety reasons, i think that’s fine?

i’ve had a phone since i was 10 years old. also not to sound awfully clichè, but i turned out okay??? i had to have a phone back in year 4/2005 due to safety and also family issues. do you know what my teachers did with it? locked it away in their desk til the end of the day. obvs they had to remind me to take it home sometimes (bc i did leave it behind at school in the desk a few times lmao) but yeah. i was alright. if a kid wants a phone..... maybe make a compromise and get the classic nokia 3310 or something?? like i obvs agree that kids as young as 10 defs don’t need a smartphone like an iphone or a samsung galaxy. but a rock solid and basic nokia 3310 or whatever with no wifi access??? that’s good enough imo.

#life #about me #shut up ilona

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quiet-onset · 6 years

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One Normal Case

Hsquad Write-a-Thon Day 2: Crossover Day - Psych x SPN (fight me, I dare you)

Pairing: Sam Winchester x Reader

Word Count: 3,947

A/N: I know I missing day one, but my computer shut down in the middle of writing, so I have to write it all over again (insert rolling eye emoji here). If you’ve never watched Psych, I definitely suggest it; It’s hilarious! Don’t forget to tag me in your writing if you participate!

“Shawn.”

“Gus.”

“Shawn.”

Shawn sucked his teeth loudly, “Come on! You really don’t want this case?”

“No, Shawn, I don’t want this case. I didn’t want the last case. Or the one before that. Or the one before that.”

“What about the one before that one?”

“No!”

You chuckled at the pair from behind your newspaper, growing accustomed to their bickering. You hadn’t been a part of Psych Investigations for more than a year, but they were already like the big brothers you never had. You’d join the team as their brains; you were the best when it came to technology. Phones, computers, security systems, you name it.

“Don’t laugh at us.” Shawn teased. “You haven’t even given us your thoughts.”

Gus looked at you pointedly, “Yes, let’s hear what the other sane person thinks.”

You parted your lips to speak, but Shawn spoke up, his brow furrowed and his hands up defensively, “I already said what I think.”

“I think,” You started. “That the rent is almost due, and we’re broke, so sorry, Gus.”

“I am the winner. Suck it.” Shawn sang in a ridiculous voice.

“You suck it!” Gus retorted.

“You suck it!”

“Both of you suck it!” You interjected. “Now, let’s go.”

It was a matter of time before the three of you were in Gus’s blueberry of a car. The two decided that a pit stop for food was necessary, so you arrived at the station ready, bellies full of chicken tacos. Shawn stepped through doors, calling for the attention of the tall detective, “Lassie, sound the trumpets and roll out the red carpet! The master is here!”

“Spencer. Guster.” Lassiter nodded. “You.”

You rolled your eyes as you looked up at him playfully, walking towards the interrogation room. “You know, just because you don’t know how to use Microsoft Word doesn’t mean you have to take it out on me.”

He followed quickly behind, “I know Word! It’s Excel I don’t know.”

“Ouch, self-burn!” Shawn said from the rear.

Gus snickered, “Those are rare.”

“Shut up!” Lassiter said quietly. “You all need to tone it down today — Spencer, I swear to God if the next word you say is in a deep voice, I will strangle you myself.”

Shawn looked at Gus, then to you and Lassie before clearing his throat, “Point taken. Continue.”

When you arrived in the spectator area of the interrogation room, you looked through the glass with confusion. There were two men in suits you didn’t recognize, questioning the suspect that had been apprehended.

To say they were attractive would be an understatement. They were a pair of Adonises. They were clearly very tall, and their suits formed to their bodies well. One had short brown hair, a stern look on his face as he pointed down to the picture and back at the suspect. The other leaned back in his chair, observing the suspect as he pushed a strand of his long, shiny hair away from his face.

“Jesus, Y/N, close your mouth.” Shawn chuckled.

“What?” You defended. “They’re attractive. And one of them might have better hair than you.”

“You take that back.”

“Who are they?” Gus interrupted with the obvious question.

Lassiter glared at the two, “FBI. They say they’re laying claim to the case.”

“No, we need this case, Lassie.” You said urgently.

“Captain says we’re only supposed to help if asked. Otherwise, I don’t want to see any of you anywhere near this.”

You huffed as Gus and Shawn answered with a yes that obviously meant no. Looking back into the interrogation room, you saw the two men stand from the table. You watched the man with the long hair pull his suit jacket closed with one hand as he followed the other. In a matter of seconds, they were standing in front of you and the rest of the gang.

The one with short hair spoke up, his voice gruff as he directed Lassiter, “You keep him locked up until further notice.”

“We’ve got some leads we’re gonna follow up on, but we’ll be back. So call us if you find anything.” The taller man nodded.

The other looked at you, Shawn, and Gus, a look of boredom mixed with confusion in his eyes. “Who are you?”

Shawn stepped up first, as usual. “I am psychic detective, Shawn Spencer.” He pointed to Gus. “This is my partner, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,” Then to you, “And our assistant, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt.”

“His name is my name, too.” You added with a smile.

The one with long hair let out a quiet chuckle, while the other deadpanned Lassiter. “What the hell is this?”

“These are a bunch of dimwits who were just leaving.”

“I was not and I shall not. I shan’t.” Shawn started simply. He turned to the FBI agents, scanning them quickly. He noticed that the stern one had bruised knuckles and placed his fingers to his head; his signature psychic move. “I sense that you’ve been in a fight recently.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s what he does.” You told him. “He’s a psychic.”

“Then what does he need you two for?”

Gus shrugged, “Sometimes we help. But most times, we’re his self-control.”

“Also!” Shawn said loudly. He pointed to the tall one and looked back at you, “That one is single, so you might wanna hop on that saddle.”

Your mouth dropped open as you punched Shawn in the arm. He groaned loudly, holding his arm as you looked back at the FBI agent, who was simply smiling and laughing. The other one shook his head and walked past you toward the exit, “I don’t want these clowns near this case, Lassiter.”

“Noted,” Lassie answered.

You watched as the remaining agent pulled out a card and handed it to you, “You’re not supposed to be actively working on the case, but if you happen to come across something, give us a call.” He trailed off, asking for your name.

“Y/N.” You felt the heat creep up through your neck as he smiled.

“Y/N.” He repeated, a kind smile on his lips.

He was gone moments later, and Lassie took the suspect to lockup. Shawn and Gus began to tease you, singing about how you now had a boyfriend in the FBI. Before the two could start their ridiculous attempts at belting, you punched them both in the arm, “I hate you both.”

“I didn’t even do anything,” Gus whined.

Shawn rubbed at the spot, “Now, my flawless skin is gonna have a bruise. I hope you’re happy.”

As you looked down at the business card, reading over the name and phone number, you smiled, “Actually, I am.”

“John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt?”

“It was a joke, Dean.”

Dean rolled his eyes as they got into his car, preparing to go for the first lead. He huffed as Sam settled into his seat. “This was supposed to be a break from crazy, Sam.”

“I know, and it will be. Just relax.”

Dean let out another annoyed sigh as he drove toward their first lead in downtown Santa Barbara. After everything the brothers had been through, they just wanted a simple case. Open and close, like they used to do. Call it the Winchester way of getting back to normal. But, of course, every case had a catch.

This catch seemed to be a wanna-be psychic, Tweedle-Dee, and Tweedle-Dum.

“Maybe he really is psychic,” Sam said. “You don’t know.”

“If he was really a psychic, he would’ve turned and run at the sight of us.” Dean scoffed.

“That other guy and the girl vouched for him though.”

Dean side-eyed his brother, rolling his eyes at Sam’s naïvete. “Is this about the girl?”

Sam returned the favor, “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, I know it’s been awhile since you got some, but are you really gonna go for the girl who is the assistant to a quote, physic detective?”

“So you think she’s crazy?” Sam asked with a light chuckle.

“Batshit. All of ‘em.”

Sam thought back to the way you punched Shawn in the arm and the way you tried to hide your smile when he handed you his card. He bit his lip to keep Dean from noticing his smile, “Well, if they’re working for the Santa Barbara PD, they’ve gotta be doing something right.”

“Sure, whatever.” Dean waved him off as he pulled into the parking lot of a commercial building. “All I know is that I’m not gonna be responsible for them getting killed, so they need to stay away from this.”

The brothers went into the building to follow up their first lead. Based on the autopsy report, they were fairly sure they were dealing with a wraith. The suspect in question was a janitor in the building where the victims saw their therapists. So, all that was really left was to find out which of the therapists was the wraith.

As the two approached the doors to a group therapy session, Dean heard a familiar voice. “No, the guy is Yin and the girl is Yang, but they work together to outsmart me when I solve crimes. Did I not introduce myself? I’m psychic detective Shawn Spencer, and this is my partner, Michael ‘Mailman’ Wobbles.”

“My legs are uneven.”

Dean groaned and ran a hand over his face, “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“I’m gonna check out reception.” Sam chuckled, leaving Dean to deal with the two men.

When Sam arrived at the reception desk, he saw you once again. You were sitting behind the smooth wooden desk with an earpiece in your right ear, typing away on the computer as if you belonged there. He chuckled to himself; to any other person, you’d be the perfect picture of a cute receptionist. He, however, knew better.

When he walked up to the desk, you didn’t look at him. The sound of the pads of your fingers hitting the keys on the keyboard filled the silence. Same cleared his throat, and you finally looked up. You smiled at him, “Oh hey, what’s up?”

“So you’re a receptionist now?”

“I’m basically a receptionist at Psych anyway. Shawn and Gus never let me do the fun stuff.”

“Gus?” Sam asked.

“The other John Jacob…”

“Gotcha.” Sam nodded, a small smirk tugging the corner of his mouth upwards. “So, Psych must be where you really work.”

You looked back at him with the same face. “Yep. Mind telling me where you really work?”

Sam was taken aback, “Excuse me?”

“I’m really good with computers and hacking and stuff. Shawn had a premonition of sorts, so I did some digging.”

“You hacked into the FBI?”

You shrugged at his surprised face, “You say that like it’s hard.”

Sam couldn’t believe that they’re cover had been blown so quickly. That combined with the fact that you technically worked with the SBPD had him on edge. He and Dean could not get caught again. They had too much to worry about without having to figure out how to escape the police again.

You noticed the worried look on his face as you returned to typing. “Don’t worry, we haven’t told anyone. Shawn and Gus are actually kind of in awe.”

Sam let out a nervous breath, “You say anything confident enough, and people will believe you.”

“Apparently so.” You snorted.

Sam leaned in closer to you, lowering his voice to a whisper, “There are things going on here that you don’t understand.”

You’d have been lost in his eyes if you weren’t so prideful, “And you do, Agent?”

“Yes, I do, and—“

Suddenly, Sam's eyes were locked on the security camera feed behind you. He saw not one, but two wraiths. Their true faces showed on camera, their rotting flesh pulling apart at the seams. But when Sam turned around, they seemed like two normal therapists having a conversation. “Do you know who they are?” Sam asked, nodding in their direction.

“No, but I can find out.” You said slowly, your brow furrowed in confusion.

“I need names and addresses.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s something I have to deal with. Just,” He paused when you handed him the printed sheet of paper, two names and addresses listed on it. He sighed as he looked back up at you, sensing the all too familiar weakness of emotion building up in his chest. “Just stay away. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

You sensed a level of sincerity in his eyes and nodded, “Whatever you say, Sam.”

Sam thanked you and turned to leave before doing a double take. With a small smile on his lips, he asked, “You know my name?”

“The internet is a vast place. Tell Dean I say hi.”

You watched as Sam laughed quietly and turned to leave again. It wasn’t until he was out of sight that you pulled the information back up on the computer. You opted to scribble it down instead of waiting for the printer. You got up from the receptionist’s desk and quickly made your way to the entrance where Dean had just finished scolding Shawn and Gus. “2554 Cobalt. 6243 Brentwood.” Shawn whispered.

“What the hell are you talking about, Shawn?” Gus asked.

“The enormous tree of a man with the hair of a wild stallion. The paper in his hand had two addresses on them.”

You jogged up to them, “You were right. They’re not FBI.”

“Well, we gotta tell Lassie,” Shawn said, reaching for his phone. You smacked his hand away and rolled your eyes when he whined.

“I think they’re doing something dangerous. We gotta go after them.”

Shawn gasped, a grin slowly appearing, “An adventure, you say?”

You both looked to Gus, who folded his arms, “No. Nuh-uh. No way. You can’t keep dragging me into this white nonsense, Shawn.”

“Normally, I’d be with you, Gus. But whatever these guys are into, I don’t think the police can help.” You offered.

“Besides, I need you, Gus.” Shawn threw his arm around his best friend. “Who else would keep me from doing too much white nonsense? Otherwise, I’d just spiral into the pool that is White Nonsense, trademark, and you know I can’t swim.”

“Yes, you can, Shawn.” Gus glared at him.

Shawn sucked his teeth, “Oh, come on!”

You and Shawn stared at Gus until you could feel him breaking down. He rolled his eyes before roughly digging his car keys out of his pocket, “I swear, if I die, I’m haunting both of you.”

You chuckled as you followed them to the Blueberry, “Gus, you’ve literally had a gun pointed at your face before. What could be worse than that?”

It could, apparently, be worse than that.

The three of you had been sitting in the Blueberry for a few hours down the street from the first address when one of the therapists arrived. You recognized Dean’s old Impala parked across the street from the house and hoped they hadn’t noticed you. You watched as the therapist pulled into her garage. Before the garage door could close, you saw her walk to the trunk of the car. She hit the trunk with the palm of her hand just the garage door closed completely.

“I think someone’s in there,” Shawn noted.

“What do we do?” Gus asked.

Just then, you saw Sam get out of the car and lean over to speak to his brother. “Guys, look.”

You all watched as Sam pulled out a gun from the back of his pants and headed toward the house. Gus leaned back in surprise, “So, we’re just gonna watch a fake FBI Agent break into this lady’s house?”

“Don’t be such a wuss, Gus.” You teased.

“Yeah, Gus.” Shawn snorted.

“So I don’t wanna be an accessory to murder, and, all of a sudden, I’m a wuss,” Gus muttered.

“If you were an accessory, it’d be sunglasses. Maybe a sleek watch, but that’s a bit overboard.”

“Um, I’d make a sexy-ass watch, Shawn.”

“Can we focus here?” You clapped loudly, gaining their attention. “Because the other therapist just got here.”

It dawned on you then that Sam had gone by himself. His brother had driven off to God knows where, so Sam was outnumbered. You unlocked the door and slid out, “I’m going inside.”

You could hear the pair calling after you, but you kept jogging towards the house. You snuck around the side to get to the back, trying your best to stay quiet. You noticed that back door was open, so you slipped inside.

You pressed your back against the wall of the kitchen, leaning over slightly to get a glimpse of the living room. That’s when you saw a heinous sight.

A young girl, probably no older than twenty-five, was tied to a chair and gagged as tears ran down her face. You could hear her trying to say, “I’m not crazy! I’m not!” As she sobbed into the gag. She saw you then, and her eyes widened. You gestured for her to stay quiet as the two therapists smiled at each other, saying something about sharing her. You looked around the room to try and come up with a plan when you saw it.

In the mirror, you saw their faces of rotting flesh and almost gasped. It was like they were dead, but only in their reflection. The moment you parted your lips to gasp, you felt a hand over your mouth and an arm around your waist.

You were pulled back against the wall, the confusion never leaving your face. When you looked up, it was Sam’s eyes that were boring into your own. He placed a finger to his lips and gave you a pointed look that definitely meant you’d talk about that later.

“What was that?” One of the therapists, Dr. Franklin, asked.

“I’ll check it out.” The other, Dr. Hanley, said.

Sam quietly handed you the gun which trembled in your hands. He went into his suit jacket and pulled out a long metal blade. Your mouth fell opened when he reared back, grunting as he sent the blade through the heart of Dr. Hanley.

You felt the urge to scream as blood started to flow from the wound, but someone else had beaten you to it.

When your head turned, you saw Gus shrieking at the sight, Shawn stoic next to him. “What the hell?” Shawn shouted.

“Look at his reflection!” You called to them.

You watched their expression change slowly from surprise to fear when they caught sight of Dr. Franklin’s rotting flesh. “Oh my god. Oh my god!” Gus screamed.

“Get the girl and get out! Now!” Sam ordered as he began to fight Dr. Franklin.

“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Gus said, already headed out the door. Shawn grabbed him by the collar and gave him a disapproving look when the first gunshot sounded. They scrambled for the wall, pressing their backs against as another gunshot sounded.

“Sam!”

Suddenly, the front door was kicked open, Dean on the other side. He quickly saw the wraith and aimed his gun, shooting three times. The wraith turned, unharmed by the bullets. “The one time I don’t use silver bullets,” Dean grumbled.

You peeked back out to see the wraith headed towards Dean. Sam was on the floor, cradling his head with blood pouring out of his shoulder. Dr. Franklin must’ve shot him, you thought.

You turned to Shawn and Gus, “Get the girl out.”

“Are you crazy?” Gus asked. “We’re not leaving you here!”

“Just do it!” You demanded.

They gave each other reluctant looks before heading into the living room and untying the girl, leading her out fairly easily since Dr. Franklin was preoccupied with Dean.

With Sam nearly incapacitated and Dean unable to kill the wraith, you knew there was only one option. You scrunched your face in disgust as you leaned over and yanked the long silver blade out of Dr. Hanley’s body. Slowly, you walked over to Dr. Franklin with the blade in your hand, your presence undetected. You watched in fear as a long needle started to protrude from Dr. Franklin’s wrist. Then, after taking a deep breath, you raise your arms over your head and forcefully brought the blade down through Dr. Franklin’s chest.

His body fell over to the side as you offered Dean one of your bloody hands. He cleared his throat before quietly thanking you, taking your hand. You both went over to Sam and helped him up, his groan of pain rumbling through his chest.

When you arrived outside, Shawn and Gus were comforting the girl as the sound of sirens became evident. Dean looked at all of you with sincerity, “Thanks. You were actually a big help.”

“So what are we gonna tell the police?” Gus asked.

“That rotting flesh people were trying to kill this girl.” Shawn started. “Obviously.”

Dean tried not to deadpan the two but patted them on the shoulder anyway. “Just let us do the talking.”

“I leave town for one day, and you’re in a fight with kidnapping therapists.” Jules hugged him tight as he chuckled. “Shawn, promise me you’ll stop doing stupid stuff.”

“You know I can’t promise that. Stupid is in my nature.” He told her, kissing her forehead.

She turned to Gus who patted her on the back. “You know I’m looking out for him.”

“Sadly, I am, too.” You told her. You quickly found yourself looking past Jules at Sam who had just finished wrapping up his gunshot wound. He was with his brother, a smile on both their faces as he sat in the back of the ambulance. Jules followed your eyes, and she gasped.

“Which one?” She asked.

“Long hair,” Shawn said.

“Y/N!” She grinned, slapping your arm.

“And he’s single.” Gus teased.

“If you don’t go over there right now, I will be disappointed in you forever,” Jules warned as she tucked into Shawn’s side.

“I’m going, I’m going.” You laughed.

You approached the Winchesters with a shy look on your face, immediately catching Sam’s attention. When you stood in front of the two, Dean rolled his eyes with a small, endearing smile on his lips. “I’m gonna go fill Lassiter in.” He said, letting his hand rest on your forearm as a gesture of thanks before leaving you to speak with Sam.

“Wraiths?” You asked.

“One of the many supernatural creatures we hunt.” He nodded. “Hey, I really just want to say thank you. I’m not sure what would’ve happened if you weren’t there.”

“Well,” You grinned bashfully, “If you really want to thank me, I can think of a way or two.”

“Really?” He smiled, his dimples indenting deep in his cheeks. When you nodded, he laughed and offered you his hand. “C’mere.”

He pulled you closer until you were practically standing between his legs. You leaned down instinctively as he tilted his chin up, brushing his nose against yours. It was only when Sam heard your quiet, cute laugh that he pressed his lips to yours. You cupped his jaw, reveling in the scruff that tickled your palm as your lips moved languidly together. When you both pulled away to breathe, you heard Shawn’s voice rise over the murmur of police officers.

“I saw that in a vision! I predicted that!”

Your forehead resting against Sam’s, you both laughed breathlessly.

Sam raised an eyebrow, “Is he really psychic?”

“Not at all, no.” You chuckled, pecking his lips once more. “But don’t tell anyone that.”

“I would never.”

#hsquad write-a-thon #sam winchester x reader #supernatural x reader #supernatural fanfiction #psych the tv show #psych #day two

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britesparc · 4 years

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Weekend Top Ten #465

Top Ten Games I’d Like to See on Game Pass in 2021

After a few weeks of earnest thinking and tyring to be creative, I’ve lapsed back into a wishlist this week. I used to do a lot more of these – films I’d like to come to Prime Video, games I’d like to see on Windows Phone, that sort of thing – so regular readers should be thankful that I’ve branched out more as time’s gone on.

In a way today’s list is another chance to review my big Christmas purchase, the Xbox Series X. Through a combination of presents and canny offers I was able to get, alongside the console, a year’s subscription to Game Pass Ultimate. Game Pass has been called Microsoft’s “real next-gen console”, in that they are very clearly positioning the future of their games business around it. And it is a very, very tantalising offer: dozens if not hundreds of games available at the touch of a button, playable on console, PC, and – via streaming – mobile phones. I had Game Pass once before, last year, and it was great; I chose not to keep up the sub because £11 a month (or even £8 for the most basic service) is still quite expensive when you’ve got large games that you own outright sitting there unplayed or uncompleted. But last time around the “xCloud” streaming service was still in closed beta, so it’s nice to see it rolled out more officially now. The interface is better and it seems to run a bit better, and games that support touch controls on a phone certainly perform better. I’ve found it a great way to play Slay the Spire, for instance; a turn-based card game is quite forgiving if you momentarily lose connection or the visuals start artifacting or something. Anyway, it’s great; the whole service is great. I love the fact that you get frequent (if very slight) rewards just for using it. It’s a great incentive to come back regularly or try new games. I wouldn’t have played something like The Medium or Ori and the Will of the Wisps without Game Pass; and allows me to play something like Planet Coaster or Crackdown 3, that I enjoy dipping in and out of, but probably wouldn’t buy at the moment. And for the kids, it’s great; Disneyland Adventure is a really fun game for the nippers. Although they mostly just play Minecraft.

But of course like Alexander Hamilton I’ve never been satisfied, and in that grand old tradition of doing wish lists, this week’s list is just the games that I’d like to see on the service. That’s it! Nothing complicated about it. just ten (or, well, kinda more actually) games that I think should be on Game Pass. Now, I’ve tried to be realistic about this; so I’ve not added games that aren’t actually out on the Xbox yet, such as Fall Guys (which I really hope will be on Game Pass). Ditto games that have just come out; you’ll see Assassin’s Creed down there somewhere, but not Valhalla, as that’s, I dunno, less likely right now? Same with Hitman 3; I really want to play that, it looks excellent, but I’m not expecting it to turn up on Game Pass anytime soon, coz it’s just come out and been a really big hit. There’s a slight exception to this rule though, as you’ll see.

So there we go: if anyone from Xbox is listening, here are the ten games I’d most like to see on Game Pass, if you please. Oh, and everything is meant to be on the Xbox unless otherwise stated.

Civilization VI (2019): and its assorted expansions please! Civ is my absolute must-play always-on go-to game on PC, and from what I’ve played of the console conversion, it’s a very good adaptation. Last year I was on the xCloud beta and Civ VI was one of the games you could stream; but oddly it’s never, to my knowledge, appeared on Game Pass proper. With Quick Resume, dipping in and out of a session would be even easier (and good god damn it takes a long time to load on my PC). Bonus: this works pretty well on mobile, although it can be hard to read the text on a phone screen.

Assassin’s Creed Origins and/or Odyssey (2017/2018): I’ve never really gotten into an Ass Creed game, so it’d be nice to experience one of the newer ones, but that’s not the real reason I want these on the service (besides, the one I really want to play is Valhalla, coz Vikings innit). Last year Ubisoft offered the “Discovery Tour” modes of both these games up for free on PC; my kids ate them up. They loved exploring ancient Egypt and Greece, and it tied into their studies at school. To free up my PC and because they’d look a lot nicer, I’d love them to be on the Xbox, too.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 (2020): I guess Skate or something is on Game Pass through EA Play, so I could scratch my board itch if I wanted, but it’s not quite the same. I want that nostalgia blast of Tony Hawk action. We used to play this on my girlfriend’s (now wife’s) computer, although I must confess I’ve utterly forgotten all the controls. Regardless, it’s a good fun party game and feels perfect for the service. This update in particular looks really worthwhile, with nice graphics but – hopefully – the same excellent gameplay. Dunno if Spider-Man is still in it, mind.

Minecraft (2011): now, yeah, I’m pretty sure Minecraft is actually on Game Pass on the Xbox; and, indeed, we own it. Whilst I feel that Minecraft is now so ubiquitous and has its own ecosystem that maybe it could become free-to-play, I definitely think that the PC version of Minecraft should fall under Game Pass for PC. Although I’m not sure that would really help my kids, as they’d need to be signed into my Game Pass account to play, wouldn’t they? See, MS needs some kind of family account thing going on.

Hades (2020): another PC games! Yeah, I quite fancy Hades. I remember playing the first Diablo, sometime very shortly after the actual fall of Satan, and liking it. Hades has got a lot of good reviews and all the nice people seem to be saying all the nice things about it. So I’d like to try it out, but I know, deep down inside, that I’ll just keep going back to playing Fallen Order and Gears 5 (or Civ on PC), so it’s not really worth buying. But if they added it to Game Pass on PC? Yes please.

Control Ultimate Edition (2021): ah, is this adding a brand new game? Depends on your definition. I really like the look of Control (2019). It looks like the sort of game I’d enjoy playing. And, yes, Control is technically on Game Pass. But with the super-shiny next-gen version imminent (with sexy ray-tracing!) then that’s the version I want to play. Not the filthy old degenerated version that can run on my old Xbox One. There’s a lot of justifiable controversy about the release structure of Control on next-gen, but given how pretty much all Xbox One games on Game Pass automatically give you their Series X/S versions through Smart Delivery, Control really stands out. As Ultimate Edition is on PlayStation Plus, I feel like a Game Pass version should come through sharpish.

Lego Marvel Super Heroes (2013): this is arguably the first of my “just being lazy” picks, and really it could stand in for a few different titles. We love the Lego games in this house, and our favourites (that is, mine and my kids’) probably remains Marvel Super Heroes and its 2017 sequel. Seeing as quite a lot of Xbox 360-era Lego games are on the service, it’d be really cool to add some of the newer ones, what with the excellent-sounding Skywalker Saga imminent. I mean, the first Marvel Super Heroes was an Xbox One launch title; they’re not exactly “new”. We own these, along with several more, but it’d be so nice to be able to hop in and out quickly without having to root around for a disc. And y’know, if they wanted to add the Lego Movie adaptations, or DC Super Villains, then why the heck not?

Cuphead (2017): I really want to play this! It looks amazing. I just want to experience that, y’know? Except here’s the problem: I know I would utterly suck at this. I’m pretty rubbish at platform games in general, and 2D shooters I’m even worse at. I’ve heard this game is quite hard. I am not good at hard games. And especially nowadays, when I only have time to breeze through stuff on super-easy (I have come to terms with playing games in “Story Mode”). So I just don’t think there’s any point in my buying it. But on Game Pass? Instant download.

Marvel’s Avengers (2020): is this “new”? I dunno anymore. Regardless, it feels like it’s had its moment, so coming to Game Pass wouldn’t be too outrageous. I’m gonna be honest, I’ve never felt like this looked particularly good, but then I hear people say how it’s a decent third-person action game where you play as Ms Marvel, and that sounds pretty cool. Maybe divorced of the hype and the unrealistic expectations there’s a fun no-frills game to be found. I’d love to discover it on Game Pass.

Star Wars: Squadrons (2020) or Cyberpunk 2077 (2020): now this is where we really get into lazy territory. I got both of these games for Christmas (and, obviously, they’re both new), and I really like them both (Cyberpunk runs really well on Series X). However, I got them both on disc; Cyberpunk specifically I wanted on disc to get the gubbins such as a map of Night City (I’m a sucker for stuff like that). And I think – yeah this sounds terrible – having to get up and get the box out and put the disc in is actually an impediment to my playing them. Sometimes I’m sat there and I think, shall I play Cyberpunk? And I realise I’d have to move, and I think, nah, I’ll just play Red Dead or Fallen Order or Witcher or Gears Tactics or Forza or Halo or Planet Coaster or Ori or Medium or Slay the Spire or Full Throttle or Crackdown or Two Point Hospital or Minecraft Dungeons or Perfect Dark or Doom or… you get the picture. I know I’m going to hell, don’t worry.

Anyway, there we are! Good games? Good games. Cheers in advance, Microsoft.

#top ten #xbox #games #game pass #ea play #microwave #retro gaming

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austinpanda · 5 years

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Dad Letter 120819

8 December, 2019

Dear Dad--

Happy Sunday. Things are moving! My job situation isn’t moving (I’ll start temp work by the first of the year.) but we’re still looking for a job for Zach, and today, we visit our new friend Josh, at his place, for the first time, and he promises to make lamb and rice for dinner.

I own snowshoes now! Zach’s mother likes being generous, and wants me to know how much she welcomes me into their family, so I now own snowshoes. Zach’s snowshoes got here first, and they are primarily blue. Mine arrived a couple of days later and are primarily red. Snowshoes aren’t the quaint, oversized tennis racket things of yesteryear. Not anymore. Now they’re high-tech, all metal and plastic, and the tampons coming out the bottom of the shoes (okay, crampons) are vicious-looking toothy metal things. I will scrutinize them to see if the murder crampons come off for self-defense, in case I run into a bear, or someone trying to steal my wallet. (Tampons, motherfucker! Slash, slash!)

Oh, about my interview at the temp agency: Yeah, I blew that shit away. I kicked it’s ass. I crushed my enemy, saw them driven before me, and heard the lamentations of their women. (That’s from Conan the Barbarian.) I’m fairly certain I impressed them greatly, both in person, and in the results of the four assessment tests I took.

About those four assessment tests! They were all done online, from my living room, and mostly they went okay, except I didn’t think I typed as fast as I could have, due to an unusual test format. Also, the tests kept freezing up! I’d answer a question, and click to indicate I was ready for the next question, and it would sit there for a good two minutes, doing nothing. When you’re taking an assessment test for a job, and you like the idea of being able to pay rent, and buy food, it’s disconcerting. The computer would say something like, “Gonna have to resubmit your information. Click OK,” without explaining what needed to be resubmitted, or to whom, or whether the test was still working, or whether the test is even still ongoing. Perhaps that shit is built into the test on purpose, to record how many times you click the mouse in panic.

But I got through the four tests. Took two last Saturday, and two last Sunday. The first two were easy. One was math, and you’re allowed to use a calculator, and grammar, like identifying which sentence uses an apostrophe correctly. Could have done that one in my sleep. Second one was the typing test, on which I did well, but I didn’t think I did as well as I could have. Sunday, I took the Microsoft Word test. That was hard! But I figured I aced it. Then I took the Microsoft Excel test. Excel, if you recall, is spreadsheets, and I had to watch a bunch of YouTube tutorial videos to familiarize myself with its use. They seem to have worked!

Here were my results:

Math, grammar, filing: 47/47 100%

Microsoft Word: 30/30 100%

Microsoft Excel: 29/30 97%

Data entry alphanumeric: 15,355 characters per hour, 99.6% accuracy

About the data entry alphanumeric, that’s my typing speed. I checked, and 15,000 keystrokes per hour is about 62 words per minute. That sucks, because I usually type about 95 words per minute. Must have been that weird test format. The woman interviewing me at the temp agency, however, loved that 15,355 score, and said what they really hope for is something near 7,000 words per hour. I could do 7,000 with my dick, with a boxing glove on it. Clearly, they were delighted with my score.

So obviously, these are the scores of some sort of super-human, high-level black belt clerical master of all time and space. And I seemed to have done well with the rest of the interview. I wore a nice shirt and tie and sweater. I had good answers to their stress-inducing questions, like, “Describe a time when you disagreed with a coworker or superior. What steps did you take to address the problem, and how did the situation resolve?” I had a great answer for that one. By the time the interview ended, I was wondering if they were going to hire me to work with them at the temp agency, just because of my super-human clerical abilities, but no such luck. Although it seems obvious that they’ll be able to find work for me.

I got my Maine driver’s license! If you put it under a black light, an otherwise-invisible moose lights up. There’s other stuff that illuminates under a black light, but I think the important part is that at least part of the design is a moose.

Being this far north helps me to understand how it’s possible to freeze to death, and why it must’ve been so difficult for people to live here during (for example) the 1700s.

We got 3 inches of snow last week. We looooooove it.

Someone invented a Die Hard Advent Calendar! It’s a paper skyscraper, and little Hans Gruber falls from the top, falling down one floor with each passing day as Christmas approaches.

I’ve discovered a downside to living up north: the backs of my hands and the tops of my feet are ITCHY AS FUCK. I’m having to become one of those lotion-using people.

Got a new fridge! Our old one didn’t work, and made our milk go bad. We finally got around to asking the leasing office pukes for help, and they had a replacement installed that day!! And it works wonderfully.

More next week. Much love to you both!!

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makingoutinyour30s · 7 years

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put on your own oxygen mask first

Dear A,

First off, you are definitely a dad right now. As perfectly exemplified by your inability to edit your post to add on a closing mark. Oh girl. :)

Maybe I could feel you pacing while I was out that night. It was not really a “fun” evening. And I am having a difficult time trying to figure out if/when I’m putting too much pressure on things. For myself included. I think about my two dates with DD2 and I definitely began pushing that too soon. I understand that there are times when we meet people and we immediately want them around all the time, and they us. But that’s not always the case. And it is often the case that someone needs time to thaw out - if you’re scared, if you’ve been hurt, if you have some Really Big Thing You’re Too Nervous To Tell Someone. I don’t think it’s fair of me to expect that someone knows immediately if they want to spend a solid weekend with me. Because I also feel really strongly that spending a solid weekend with DD4 watching Stranger Things was part of what did us in. I digress.

Last night we went out to play board games at a local brewery. He texted me in the morning asking if I wanted to go. And I did. And A, I had a really great time. An old school (as in, two months ago :) DD4 and S good time. I laughed a whole lot. We played several board games with a cluster of strangers who were great. And at one moment between turns I sat back, looked at the people and place around me, and felt that familiar grateful feeling for this new life. An exclamation that is often running through my head is, “A year ago I never would have thought I’d be here! And I am so glad I am”. There was a piece of art I found in LA when I visited WCBFF a few months ago:

And I felt that way last night. I felt happy to be at this game night with new people. Invited by someone who, one year ago, shouldn’t/wouldn’t have been in my life at all. Yes, perhaps DD4 isn’t a love interest in this new story. But that doesn’t mean he’s a bad cast member. It just means we perhaps slotted him into the wrong role. I also felt grateful for his friendship. I’ve been seeing him very regularly for the past two months and I really, really like it. What a great, funny, joyful, energetic friend I’ve made. How lucky I feel to be meeting such excellent new people.

Though.

There is still some confusing stuff. On my cab ride to the event I was nervous. I was worried that because we’re now (i think?) friends we’d be too separate at this event. That I’d find myself on an opposite side of the venue playing a board game with a bunch of strangers wondering what I was doing there. I reminded myself that I could leave if this happened. But I arrived and my friend is back. We laugh a lot and he’s easy to talk to again. Except, he continues to touch me a lot in adolescent ways. He taps me on the shoulder. He turns his whole body towards me and grips me by the shoulders to exclaim when he’s excited. He leans across the table into me. He asks if I’ve eaten and if I want to get dinner afterward. He pays attention to me the whole night. He does not leave me feeling “lost” in a crowd of new strangers. When we go out to dinner he touches me more. We get sucked into watching a terrible movie and we’re laughing so much and hypothesizing what’s coming next and he’s got his arm on my chair or he’s giving me a quick rub on the back or gripping my leg. And I just don’t know what to do with this. If he wants to friendzone me, I need him to do a much better job. I was excited to hang out with my friend DD4. But I found it very confusing to be touched so much. No other person in my life touches me this much. And if someone did, I’d assume they were interested in me. Toward the end of the night I wondered if he was going to kiss me because I honestly had no idea (the answer is a resounding ‘no’. And I’m pretty sure he skipped off pretty quickly to make it abundantly clear that wasn’t going to be happening).

I remain incredibly confused. I was very O.K. heading into the night to hang out with my newfound friend. But it was tough to receive, what felt like, affection. He didn’t quite feel like a friend. He, honestly, felt like a boyfriend. And I felt more comfortable than I have with him in a bit because I was able to go into the evening with no expectations and no attempts at looking charming or cute or whatever other things I attempt to be when I’m on a date.

So, there we are. I have no idea what this is doing for him and my brain is a little wonky today over it. I had dreams of a new buddy relationship that now feels a little ... strange. It would have felt terrible to be ignored by him and set adrift at an event full of strangers. But it also doesn’t feel great to be on the receiving end of mixed signals when I’ve just finished repositioning this into my brain. We’ve got post-Thanksgiving plans and I will see what happens. If I need to have another talk with him and ask him to please stop sending me mixed signals so we can just enjoy being friends together. I want to feel grateful for the friendship I can have with him - being invited to events I wouldn’t have found myself at before, getting a little drunk, and laughing a whole lot over a plate of french fries. But I can’t do that if I feel like I’m always being flirted with. The bison are with me a little today but I’m trying to remind myself that every day doesn’t have to - or get to - feel like a manic dream. And as I’ve said of myself for my adult life, I like valleys with my peaks. Some days have to be valleys for the peaks to feel oh so good.

And then, before moving on, I will also let you know I have a coffee date with a new gent Saturday afternoon. A handsome dressmaker who told me, unprompted, that the last book he read was James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time”. And, fun fact, A, I happen to love Baldwin so much I have two copies of that book on my shelf. I look forward to adding DD6 to the ranks for at least one afternoon to get out of the constant DD4 stewing.

So now, let’s put on your oxygen mask.

A! Moving is a really big decision! I remember the months when we were waiting for our acceptance letters to roll in and we both spent so much time weighing the options we didn’t even know if we had yet. Where would we prefer to live? Where would be good places for our partners to go? What would the transition be like? Could we afford it? Who had the best faculty for our areas of interest? And when you got your options and knew you had to leave our shared city it was such a difficult decision. It’s supposed to be! I think you’re being awfully hard on yourself for something that should, I think, take up a lot of brain space.

One thing I worry and wonder about for myself right now is the potential for making superficial decisions. I have been a very thorough decision maker all my life. I have been patient and I have followed the rules. Do you think the decision to move could be superficial? Sometimes I can romanticize how good something was simply because it was in the past. I don’t think that was the case for you at all living in Chicago, but maybe? Are you worried about something you’ll have to walk away from in Vancouver? I worry about making a superficial decision in the near future because, as it has become abundantly clear, I am a love junky. It would be stupidly easy for me to make a dumb decision because I believe I’m falling in love. You must remember: my parents got married (and remain oh so happily married) after knowing each other for only three months. I believe in love really big time, A. And I worry I will follow it to a dumb place.

One thing I’m thinking is that this does seem like one of the first times in your adult life that you’re making a decision for yourself only. The past few years years you’ve had to make big decisions with a partner in mind. I have personally found the idea of this shift to be terrifying, even though I’ve got 2.5 more years until I have to start making big life decisions as a Solo S.

I think we are both shuffling what our visions of the future are in a lot of ways. This divorce has, oddly, made me think more about what I actually want to do with myself. Maybe being a professor isn’t as important to me and affecting change via institutions is. When I put on my high school drag for fieldwork days I always think, “This is what I’ll dress like when I’m running a youth research institute at Microsoft and heading to meetings where I get to present myself as a The Big Kid with the PhD.”

A, you know I had dinner with our very, very dear acquaintance NQ Sunday night. I really can’t say enough about how good that dinner was for my soul. People like NQ remind me of the good in the world and that this is why we keep moving. And why people and being good are just so important. Maybe it’s weird to say, but when I see people like NQ I think, “I want to be good so that I am a person someone like NQ will be proud to call their friend and a fellow human in the world”. I bring this up because he is also going through a Very Big internal shift. Something must be in the water. And something about the best people I know all mulling the world over together, but in separate ways, feels just so comforting to me. A, we’re all Amateur Adults. You’re right, I do tend to move with a lot of conviction within this world. I am lucky to feel that. But I think part of it comes from a massive amount of loyalty (which, as we have seen in things like my marriage and even on a much smaller scale with DD4, is also a major weakness) I feel within the world. I aim my ship and I do not waver. We Do Not Stop because we have started and you always finish the things you start. So, I do not believe I give myself much opportunity for thinking about what could have happened had I taken an alternate path. And just as there are problems everywhere, there are also massive amounts of joy everywhere!

Here’s the major thing I’ve learned since the Really Hard Time: when decisions have been made (either for or by you), move with their current. Had I attempted to fight the current OH threw me into, I’d still be out there struggling. My parents visited this weekend and it was the first time they saw me as a Healthy Person. The last time they saw me I still spent hours staring into space, intensely meditating every morning, weighing 15 pounds less, stewing on my own thoughts. My dad told me how worried he had been about me. I told him that it would have been appropriate for me to be in that place an entire year. That only several months in that place is actually a little weird. He agreed, and also told me how strong I am. When I was struggling with leaving my neighborhood and telling him over and over how scared I was of running into OH and his girlfriend my dad said, “Where is the athlete I know? You have a game face. Use it.”

So, A, my food for thought: there will be missteps in every direction you move and every decision you make. There will be a way to second guess and believe that had you stayed put (or had you moved) things would be better. But also, if you get here, or wherever else you might go, and it is just So Very Wrong, you can leave again. You can find a better place or you can go back. This life is just too short. It is too short to not try all the cake and work on eating it. Don’t be too scared. The worst that can happen is a tummy ache. We’ve all got you.

xo, S.

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componentplanet · 4 years

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Surface Laptop 3 Review: Can Ice Lake Freeze Out a Core i7-7700HQ From 2016?

Note: While the ExtremeTech publishing system only allows us to list one author per story, sometime-ET author Jessica Hall also spent significant time with the Surface Laptop 3 and contributed her own experiences, thoughts, and evaluation of the laptop to this review.

The Surface Laptop 3 is the third iteration of Microsoft’s “standard” laptop and one of the all-around nicest systems I’ve ever used. I’ve hammered on the Surface Laptop family in the past because I didn’t think the hardware deserved the price premium. I was curious, however, to see what kind of additional value Ice Lake could bring to the system. One of the reasons I dislike the high prices on the first two generations of Surface Laptop is that users were stuck with Intel integrated graphics from the Skylake era. The Core i7-1065G7 brings far more graphics horsepower to the table than previous Intel CPUs — hopefully improving the Surface’s value proposition in the process.

Objectively, the Surface Laptop 3 is a very nice laptop. I’ve had fewer bugs or issues with this system than any OEM laptop I can ever remember testing, and while I can’t claim to love literally every detail, I like it far more than most.

The system we’re reviewing today is technically a Surface for Business laptop rather than the standard consumer Surface, but the only difference as far as I can tell is that Microsoft sells 15-inch systems with Intel CPUs in the Surface for Business section, while its consumer division uses Ryzen CPUs in all 15-inch systems.

Specs: Intel Core i7-1065G7 2256×1504 3:2 Display 16GB RAM 256GB SSD Platinum (Metal) Finish

All Surface for Business systems are currently out of stock at Microsoft.com, but this configuration retails for a base of $1,699. As of 3/25, it was on sale for $1,549.

Note: It is not clear if the Surface Laptop 3 uses a 15W configuration or the optional 25W “TDP Up” mode. We’ve assumed the latter.

The Competitors

I’ve got a pair of laptops here to compare against that should make interesting competition for the Surface Laptop 3. First up, and the oldest system here, is a Razer Blade Stealth from early 2016. Like the Surface Laptop 3, the Razer Blade Stealth is a thin machine with a high-resolution display and an integrated GPU.

Razer Blade Stealth (2016)

Image by PC Mag (4K review unit).

Specs: 12.5-inch, 2560×1440 Display Intel Core i7-6500U (2C/4T, 2.5GHz – 3.1GHz) 8GB LPDDR3-1866 256GB PCIe M.2 SSD

The Razer Blade Stealth (link to current model) is a plausible stand-in for the kind of machine a Surface Laptop 3 customer might be upgrading from. While it has a much smaller panel than the SL3, it emphasized many of the same traits — long battery life, a high-DPI display, thinness, and as much performance as could be squeezed into the form factor.

Next up is a very different type of comparison:

Alienware 13 R3 (late 2016)

Photo by PCMag

Specs: 13.3-inch, 2560×1440 OLED display Intel Core i7-7700HQ (4C/8T, 2.8GHz – 3.8GHz) 16GB DDR4-2400 RAM 512GB PCIe M.2 SSD GeForce GTX 1060 (6GB)

The Alienware 13 R3 (late 2016) was an upper-midrange gaming laptop when new, and it maintains solid frame rates in titles released today. Its 45W CPU means that the Alienware 13 R3 will very likely be faster than the Surface Laptop 3 in any performance tests — the question is, by how much? I also wanted to compare the Surface’s excellent LCD against the OLED panel on the Alienware. How does a relatively early OLED compare with a brand-new LCD after several years of use?

Display Comparison

The Surface Laptop 3’s display is excellent and continues Microsoft’s long trend of top-notch displays in its Surface line. I wasn’t sure if I’d like the 3:2 aspect ratio, but it’s excellent if you work in office applications or value vertical space. I was never bothered by the letterboxing on video content.

I can’t give you specific colorimetry measurements on the panels, but I compared all three systems in identical viewing conditions using the same browser (Chrome) and the same content at both 100 percent and 50 percent system brightness. This does not calibrate the panels to an external standard like 200 nits — it means I compared them at the 50 and 100 percent mark of their own individual ranges.

At 100 percent brightness, the Alienware 13 R3 easily beats both the Surface Laptop 3 and the Razer Blade Stealth. This is to be expected, given the nature of an OLED panel, which emits light directly and can, therefore, be completely off when displaying black. LCDs use backlights, which means the depth of black you see on screen is a function of how good your panel is at blocking its own backlight. We watched clips from Stargate: Atlantis, Downton Abbey, and Avengers: Infinity War on all three panels.

While our rankings didn’t change at 50 percent brightness, the degree of difference did. If I was comparing on a 100-point scale, at 100 percent brightness, the three panels might have rated, say, 92 (Alienware OLED), 84 (Microsoft Surface Laptop 3), and 75 (Razer Blade Stealth). At 50 percent brightness, the gap between them would be more like 92, 89, 86.

I don’t typically use the Alienware OLED at full brightness because I’ve been leery of wearing out the panel and my battery. Furthermore, the panel Alienware uses is calibrated for vivid, eye-popping color at the expense of accuracy. This approach has sold Samsung hundreds of millions of Galaxy devices and I enjoy the way color looks on the OLED. But it isn’t very accurate and shouldn’t be mistaken for such.

The 1440p display on the Razer Blade Stealth is the least attractive of the three, but that honestly doesn’t feel like a very fair criticism. The Surface Laptop 3 has the best LCD I’ve ever seen on a laptop and the Alienware is an OLED. The Razer isn’t bad, in any sense; it just isn’t quite up to the standard of the first two.

Audio Comparison

The Surface Laptop 3 speakers are top-notch. You’re never going to get standalone speaker performance out of a laptop, but Microsoft devotes more internal space to its speakers than other companies and you can hear the difference. There’s some additional technical data available in this Reddit thread, though the author points out that his testing was done on demo units in a store.

The Surface Laptop’s speakers (the two silver rectangles). Image by iFixit.

Highs are crisp and clear on the Surface Laptop 3. Distortion from low bass is nonexistent, even at 100 percent volume. The laptop is surprisingly resonant — while the bass response is a bit flat at the bottom, the Surface Laptop 3 doesn’t sound nearly as thin as most laptops do. Mids and vocals are also strong. If you want a laptop with speakers that can plausibly fill a (small) room and sound good doing it, the Surface Laptop 3 is an excellent choice.

We tested the Surface Laptop 3, Alienware R13, and Razer Blade Stealth with the following songs:

Taylor Swift – You Need to Calm Down Velvetine – The Great Divide Allie X – Paper Love The Prodigy: The Day is My Enemy Home Free – Man of Constant Sorrow Disturbed – The Sound of Silence Alan Walker – Sing Me to Sleep ES Posthumus – Nara

Collectively, these pieces of music cover a wide range of styles and frequency ranges. The Surface Laptop 3 excels at all of them. Neither highs nor lows distort, even at maximum volume, in any content we tested.

Compared with the Surface Laptop 3, the Alienware R13 had roughly the same amount of bass but less emphasis and clarity at high frequencies, and isn’t as loud overall. If the Surface Laptop 3 were a 9/10, I’d rate the Alienware as a solid 7 — it’s not quite as good, but you could watch a movie on it with another person and you’d be able to hear everything.

The Razer Blade Stealth just isn’t as nice. While the system has reasonably good tweeters, there’s no bass response to speak of. If we rated sound solutions in terms of their similarity to butter, the Surface Laptop 3 is an actual, bovine-based, butterfat emulsion while the older Alienware is a solid margarine brand you’ve heard of before, like “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter.” The Razer, or at least the Razer’s bass response, is best-classified as “Memories of Bass.”

Typing, Trackpad, Feel, and Flexion

The Surface Laptop 3’s keyboard is comfortable to type on. I prefer it to the Alienware 13 and definitely more than the Razer Blade Stealth. The trackpad is far better than either the Razer or the Alienware. Both of these systems have downright awful trackpads that are much too sensitive. If I have to use either of these systems without a mouse, I tend to leave the trackpad off and to rely on the touch screen instead. In contrast, I only use a mouse on the Surface Laptop 3 when I’m gaming.

Marvel of marvels: A trackpad you won’t mind using.

The Surface Laptop 3 wins the flexion test, displaying absolutely zero despite being a 15-inch laptop. The Alienware has always flexed, on account of the plastic in its construction. The Razer Blade Stealth doesn’t flex, but it’s also the smallest laptop of the three and the least susceptible.

One of the only things I genuinely dislike about the Surface Laptop 3 is the way it handles its Fn keys. On most laptops, the top-most keys are reserved for F1-F12, and the secondary laptop functions are mapped to the FuNction (FN) key. On the Surface Laptop 3, the Fn key is a toggle switch and the media and system control functions are primary. The actual F1-F12 function is secondary.

This works perfectly well for typing, but it rather sucks if you play games like World of Warcraft and want to remap the keys for other purposes. You can use the toggle switch to have F1-F12, but if you then need to take a screenshot, lower the volume, or change the screen brightness, you’ll have to hit the Fn key (to switch back), adjust the desired setting, and then hit the Fn key again to regain use of F1-F12. It’s not remotely handy.

Two other minor complaints: I dislike half-height arrow keys and I detest the power button also being on the keyboard next to the delete key, where you can whack it reaching for Ctrl-Alt-Del. The F1-F12 issue could be an annoyance for anyone who relies on software keystrokes that use those functions but also uses the media buttons at the same time. The other two are strictly personal taste.

Performance Testing

While I’ve included some performance benchmarking in this review, it’s not the primary focus. I’ve spent more time describing various aspects of how the laptop feels and looks compared with emphasizing performance testing. That’s not an accident. Laptops are a much more integrated product than your typical desktop CPU, and while I’m not saying that performance doesn’t matter (obviously it does), we’re taking a look at three systems broadly separated in time and sold into somewhat different markets, not comparing between multiple systems fighting for shelf space today.

With that said, we’re interested in two specific trends: How does the Surface Laptop 3 compare with the Razer Blade Stealth in the 15W / 25W TDP space, and how well does it compete against the 7700HQ — a CPU from several generations back, but with more thermal headroom?

One thing to be aware of, regarding gaming on a Surface: The laptop doesn’t like all of the lower resolution modes it needs to run at in order to deliver playable performance. 1080p works in every title I tested, but some games will run in forced windowed mode with the desktop visible in the background if you pick a resolution the GPU doesn’t like. I was able to find a playable option in every case. The 16:10 aspect ratio is the closest mathematically to the Surface’s 3:2, but 4:3 is an option as well.

Cinebench R20 shows the 7700HQ ahead of the Core i7-1065G7 by about 13 percent in multi-threaded, but the Ice Lake CPU returns the favor in single-threaded, where it leads the 7700HQ by 1.23x. The Razer Blade Stealth does its best, and we should all be kind to it.

PCMark 10’s Extended test appears to show the Core i7-7700HQ with a decisive advantage — but let’s break those tests down and see where it’s coming from.

The Surface Laptop 3 clearly winds up losing the way it does because it’s being run over in Gaming. The gap between the Alienware and Surface is much smaller in every test and the SL3 even wins the Essentials benchmark by a solid margin. This test is clearly lightly threaded given how well the Razer competes, and Ice Lake shines in these scenarios.

The Alienware 13 R3’s SSD is the most-worn and has never been wiped via Secure Erase, which could be degrading its performance a bit. The Surface Laptop 3 clearly benefits from the improvements to PCIe storage over the last few years.

Very few people would run these kinds of 3D renders on a laptop, but I included them for a reason: I wanted to see if relative performance between the Surface Laptop 3 and the Alienware 13 R3 would change as both systems heated up. The answer, in a nutshell, is no. Sustained clock speeds during the Blender 1.0Beta 2 benchmark were 3.39GHz (Alienware), 2.98GHz (Razer) and 2.5GHz (Microsoft). The 7700HQ maintains a consistent leadership position, but neither the Surface nor the Razer shows an unexpected falloff.

GPU performance is tougher to compare. The Razer Blade Stealth might rival a ham sandwich’s performance if you can find a way to render 3DMark with a little mayo and tomato. Ice Lake is capable of achieving genuinely playable frame rates in at least some games, but settings that stretch Intel Gen 11 are a cakewalk for the GTX 1060. There’s not a ton of point to running comparative benchmarks when we know exactly which way they’ll go in every single case.

When I saw the Razer Blade Stealth unable to hit playable frame rates in a nine-year-old game, I decided to save both it and I some torture and dropped it from our other comparisons.

Shadow of Mordor offers frame rates that are multiples of the base resolution of the display, making it impossible to find a common resolution between the two systems. The 1280×960 resolution on the Surface Laptop 3 is 1.2MP, while 1696×964 works out to ~1.6MP for the GTX 1060. Despite this decidedly unequal workload, the Alienware wallops the Ice Lake CPU. At the same time, however, Shadow of Mordor is playable at these settings on the 1065G7.

Finally, here’s Metro Last Light Redux. Again, the Surface Laptop 3 isn’t capable of putting up a fight against the GTX 1060, but it delivers the playable frame rates that the Razer Blade Stealth is incapable of approaching.

Here’s how I’d think about GPU performance:

If the most gaming you’re going to do is WoW Classic, League, Stardew Valley, or FTL — in other words, very old games or very, very lightweight ones — older Intel GPUs like the Razer Blade Stealth’s are adequate. For most intents and purposes, systems like the Razer Blade Stealth do not play games.

If you want a system that could be described as “gaming-adjacent,” with the capability to run some older AAA games at reasonable frame rates/detail levels, the Surface Laptop 3 has enough graphics power to get the job done. It’s a laptop that can run some games, but not a gaming laptop.

If you want an actual gaming laptop, buy a laptop with a discrete GPU. The GTX 1060 is four years old this year and beats the pants off the 1065G7, but draws vastly more power to do it.

Battery Life

Note: The 4K version of the Razer Blade Stealth from 2016 was widely panned for poor battery life. The QHD version wasn’t nearly as bad. While it didn’t set any records, it wasn’t abysmal, either.

Amusingly, while the Alienware 13 R3 started with a much larger battery than either of the other systems, according to PCMark 10 it’s also quite degraded, at 30 percent wear. The remaining capacity is 53.8, almost in-line with the other two systems. The Surface Laptop 3 has a 46Whr battery while the Razer Blade Stealth is only slightly smaller, at 44Whr.

We used PCMark 10’s Video and Office battery life benchmarks for our testing. All systems were set to Balanced performance, with screen brightness at 50 percent. Wi-Fi was left connected, with all three laptops in maximum “Battery Saver” mode.

We can’t make any statements regarding industry battery life trends from 2016 to 2020 using just one data point from each time period, but there are a few things about the Surface Laptop 3 that impressed me. It’s not just that the battery run-time is significantly longer than the Razer Blade Stealth; it’s that the overall experience of using the laptop is also much better.

Fan Noise

The Razer Blade Stealth is completely silent in normal, low-power operation and can ramp its fans to a deeply obnoxious pitch. This laptop’s sonic signature is proof that a quiet dental drill is not necessarily a better dental drill.

I have permanent hearing damage in my left ear caused by previous close-range chronic exposure to white noise and am leery about how much fan noise I expose my ears to now as a result. The Alienware 13 R3 is so loud when gaming, I will not use the laptop for that purpose without capping the frame rate at 30-40 fps.

To be crystal clear: The Alienware 13 R3 has nothing to do with the fact that I have hearing loss and I am not claiming that using the laptop in its default configuration will cause hearing loss.

Limiting the Alienware to a reasonable noise level also limits how much of an improvement the GTX 1060 can provide. In games like World of Warcraft, which I played on both systems, I typically limit the Alienware to 35fps in order to keep the fan noise to a tolerable level and my lap from igniting. Gamers who typically play with headphones on don’t need to worry about any of this, obviously.

The Surface Laptop 3 doesn’t pack anywhere near the GPU performance of the Alienware 13 R3, but it doesn’t get anywhere near as loud, either. While the fan pitch is higher than I like, it doesn’t have the Razer Blade Stealth’s drilling note.

Performance Analysis: More Than Meets the Eye

There are some really interesting trends in the data that we’ve gathered. Reviews from 2016 show that the Razer Blade Stealth’s CPU performance was well-regarded. Compared with the Surface Laptop 3, however, the Razer is a putz. Part of that is because Intel stepped up to quad-core chips with Coffee Lake, but not all of it. Ice Lake’s single-threaded performance is 1.36x higher than the Core i7-6500U and some of that gain is going to carry over into multi-threaded scenarios.

The Alienware 13 R3 is a really interesting match-up against the Core i7-1065G7. Statistically, it’s about 1.13x – 1.2x faster than the top-end Ice Lake CPU. There are two ways to look at those results and both are valid.

First, the Alienware 13’s 35W CPU has held up far better than the Core i7-6500U. It’s unambiguously faster than the Core i7-1065G7 in every rendering test and most of PCMark 10. If you want to buy a laptop with a good chance of lasting some years, a higher TDP CPU is obviously helpful.

Second, Intel has done an excellent job improving Ice Lake’s performance-per-watt. The Core i7-1065G7 has a 15W TDP with a 25W option while the Core i7-7700HQ is a 45W chip. While TDP can’t be treated as a proxy for power consumption, the Surface Laptop 3 is scarcely thicker than the Razer Blade Stealth but provides dramatically more performance.

As far as GPU performance is concerned, the Razer Blade Stealth isn’t capable of any meaningful gaming whatsoever. It can handle titles like WoW Classic or League of Legends, barely. You won’t mistake the Intel Core i7-1065G7’s GPU for a discrete card, but you can do some gaming on this solution, especially at lower resolutions. The Alienware’s GTX 1060 remains a potent performer, but if you care about fan noise you may find yourself locking down your frame rates.

Each of these three systems represents a different balance between performance, battery life, noise, and weight. The Razer Blade Stealth is the lightest, smallest laptop, but it also has weak battery life and an unfortunately tuned fan, with no gaming capabilities.

The Alienware 13 R3 has a gorgeous display and by far the highest gaming performance, while the Surface Laptop 3 blends the benefits of a metal construction and a 15W/25W CPU for better battery life with a 10nm SoC from Intel and a much-improved iGPU.

A Fabulously Balanced Laptop

The Surface Laptop 3 isn’t a gaming laptop, but it can play older titles and modern games with more modest GPU requirements. It won’t blow your socks off, but it’s a much faster solution than any previous GPU Intel has ever shipped.

Gaming is the weakest link in the Surface Laptop 3’s armor, and when even gaming performance has improved by this much, that chink isn’t very wide. We’ll see what happens with AMD’s Ryzen Mobile 4000 15W CPUs when those arrive, of course, but Intel has still delivered very real improvements over its own previous GPU architecture.

Is it perfect? No. The price is high for the limited amount of included storage and Microsoft wants a whopping $400 for 256GB(!) of additional SSD capacity. Objectively speaking, there are other laptops with better specs than this one for less money. If you want to game, specifically, there are laptops in this price range with much faster GPUs. At the same time, the Surface Laptop lineup has improved in some significant ways since the first systems shipped. According to iFixit, the Surface Laptop 3 is also far more repairable than the original. The Surface Laptop earned iFixit’s first 0/10 score, while the SL3 is rated 5/10.

But what the Surface Laptop 3 does offer is a remarkably well-balanced system. Sound, audio, keyboard, and trackpad are all excellent, and the 3:2 form factor is much nicer for Word or Excel than 16:9. The GPU performance uplift and overall CPU performance increase relative to 2016 is downright impressive, and we’re glad to see Intel fielding a much better GPU overall with Ice Lake in 2020.

Now Read:

AMD and Intel Go Head to Head in the Surface Laptop 3

Best Games for Laptops and Low-End PCs in 2020

Global PC Sales Could Fall 30 Percent in 1H 2020, Economic Outlook Bleak

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/308262-surface-laptop-3-review from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2020/03/surface-laptop-3-review-can-ice-lake.html

#Surface Laptop 3 Review: Can Ice Lake Freeze Out a Core i7-7700HQ From 2016?

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ignaciusgray-blog · 5 years

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Ninja’s eighty,000 Mixer viewers show that he’s bigger than just Twitch

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins — the Fortnite livestreamer and all-around entertainer — had his first exceptional broadcast on Microsoft’s Mixer platform; within the moments before his broadcast formally commenced, the wide variety of humans looking his movement crossed 50,000 and 60,000 people to land, in its first moments, someplace around 76,000 units of eyes. (It grew to eighty,000 just after Blevins’s first victory.)

Mixer competes with Twitch, YouTube, and facebook for a extraordinarily slim share of the livestreaming marketplace. the day past, Blevins introduced his circulate to the service, in a tweet that blew up gaming’s nook of the internet; he was leaving at the back of 14.7 million fans on Twitch, and putting out for a provider that, relatively, nobody knew an awful lot approximately. Blevins is probably the maximum famous streamer inside the world; the fact of his leaving Twitch, which dominates livestreaming, became a completely massive deal.

thus far, the circulate seems like it's been a success. nowadays, Blevins streamed from the pink Bull tent at Lollapalooza, the Chicago tune festival. even as the wide variety of visitors was lower today than the heaps of visitors he pulled in closing 12 months, it’s nearly double what he’s been locating there for the remaining numerous weeks, as Polygon’s Austen Goslin first noted. Even before Blevin’s first circulate on Mixer, his channel had located 370,000 paying subscribers, an impressive range for any streamer and one that became not misplaced on Blevins himself. That stated, Mixer is offering two months of free subscriptions to Blevins’ channel to everybody who signs and symptoms up.

at some point of the movement, the gang’s strength was infectious; it regarded impossible for every body looking in individual to prevent yelling. Blevins was his ordinary hyperactive self — slamming cans of red Bull, one of the day’s sponsors — and the gang cheered for each removal he earned. He turned into in excessive spirits, searching down each participant he may want to discover and exploding them into showers of multicolored objects. whilst he misplaced his first games especially early, Blevins managed to discover lower back to back victories towards the ninety nine other warring parties at the map. (“It’s smooth. It’s smooth. GGs,” he said, after his 2d win of the day.) At its fine, Fortnite is a twitchy, fluid sport of reflexes and aid management that rewards inventiveness just as a whole lot as it rewards accurate purpose; at his exceptional, Blevins has both, even though he’s now not a professional.

quickly into his matches, Blevins found a accomplice: the musician Mitchell Brown, who data beneath the call youngster Quill. “i used to be literally greater frightened to play this than to carry out my set,” Brown said, after he’d been knocked out. Which seems authentic: Blevins, a former professional Halo player, is the maximum popular online game player on the planet.

The day at Lollapalooza became leading up to Fortnite Friday, a weekly Fortnite tournament for celebrity players, streamers, and experts. within the games earlier than the match — wherein he turned into to play with Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf, the sixteen-12 months-vintage who’s the game’s most recent international champion — Blevins became appearing: calling his shots, showing off for the crowd. “I freakin’ love you guys,” he stated. “allow’s cross!”

playing the game nonetheless seems fun for him. “i can’t let you know the closing time I planned a consultation to sport till Fortnite came out,” Blevins advised Brown. He changed into nonetheless excited to rise up inside the mornings and run squads with his boys, is what he meant.

sixteen) The Outer Worlds swaps Fallout’s publish-apocalypse for art deco in space

Obsidian enjoyment is a studio first-rate acknowledged for building at the paintings of others. Its maximum famous games up to now are titles like Knights of the vintage Republic II, Fallout: New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2, and Dungeon Siege III. Even the studio’s higher-acknowledged original paintings, just like the Pillars of Eternity collection and non secular derivative Tyranny, are modeled on antique-school RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale collection, and Planescape: Torment.

So it’s no longer entirely unexpected that, regardless of being a totally new franchise, The Outer Worlds (now not to be burdened with the excellent and extremely further named area-exploration sport Outer Wilds, which came out in advance this yr) attracts on Obsidian’s own beyond RPG and movement reports to create some thing that’s both new and familiar.

As Brian Heins, a senior clothier at Obsidian, informed The Verge in an interview, The Outer Worlds isn’t supposed to comply with up any particular past sport. “It’s more like this is our next Obsidian RPG,” he explains. “because among, like, KOTOR, New Vegas, Stick of truth, they all have form of the same DNA going for walks thru them, that is Obsidian’s fashion of RPG.” That said, upon getting a risk to play a few hours of The Outer Worlds, there are simply a few huge influences here from Fallout: New Vegas (and, by means of extension, Fallout three), if simplest because of genre. The Outer Worlds is a primary-character sci-fi action RPG with a massive emphasis on conversational structures and gunplay. That was usually certain to draw comparisons to Fallout, in particular when the developer is already regarded for working on a Fallout sport before. In that vein, The Outer Worlds does experience a lot like that now relatively uncommon form of unmarried-player, stat-targeted RPG. Your person has a full listing of stats that you could cognizance on. Your guns have stats. Your armor has stats. Your skills have stats. Your companions have stats. Stats galore, with plenty of capacity paths for how you play. participant desire is also a big part of the game. while there's, ostensibly, a major storyline — one which sees players awaken a long time inside the future on a misplaced colony ship and thrown right into a conspiracy in the a long way-out Halcyon solar device — The Outer Worlds didn’t appear specifically invested in the fact that I pursue it. i was dropped right into a demo revel in some hours into the sport. I had simply started out wandering round a planet once I without delay commenced talking / negotiating / capturing my way inside and out of conditions. practically every communication is full of communicate choices. Did I want to be polite to the group chief who’s asking you to music down his lacking tablets? Be flippant? Use my man or woman’s intimidation capabilities to demand an extra reduce? Or use my charisma to lie about what I recovered, maintaining 1/2 for myself? That’s just one communique from one incredibly minor sidequest. The speak (at the least for non-playable characters) is absolutely voice-acted, too, despite the fact that my character was audibly silent, despite the fact that I may want to select exactly what i was announcing. in the course of my time, I performed matters highly honest — charging into an enemy facility, gunning down robots and safety guards alike with the help of my companions. but there appeared to be plenty of other options, like sneaking in the back, disguising myself as a shield, or mucking approximately with the equipment powering the factory. the sport additionally adapts as you play. I died loads in my demo to a selected type of giant alien monster, and i used to be granted a “flaw” that altered my stats against those creatures within the future, as an example.

In another example, player picks can deeply trade how the plot performs out. “you may kill every NPC in the sport and you may nonetheless entire the game through doing so,” Heins says. “It adjustments the sport dramatically. There’s certain quests that can or might not be available based on who you killed or when you kill them. generally for quests, if there’s anyone who’s a plot-essential NPC, in case you kill them, we attempt to have a few manner that allows you to advantage some thing facts or item they’re intended to provide you … we attempt not to fail quests primarily based on players doing the matters we permit them to do.” Conversely, players can be capable of play almost all of the sport as pacifists. Heins says that you could “usually get by means of without killing any people,” despite the fact that there are a few creature encounters in which gamers will nevertheless want to lodge to combat. (however they can theoretically farm that out to their associate characters.) For all of the emphasis on preference, the Fallout influences also are nonetheless pretty heavy. There’s a time-slowdown mechanic that allows gamers to specially target regions on enemies, which is largely Fallout’s VATS gadget. There’s a diffusion of factions — corporations, in the Outer international’s destiny — that are at odds with each other that gamers can help out or antagonize. There are companions that you can recruit who’ll be a part of you on your adventure and remark alongside the way. while the art deco stylings help set The Outer Worlds aside, it can most effective do so a great deal to distinguish the gameplay. That’s now not necessarily a bad element, though. After some hours of The Outer Worlds, it feels like a recreation from a barely extraordinary era. It performs like a tightly targeted single-participant adventure without a game-as-a-service payments, in-app purchases, or tacked-on multiplayer. Even Bethesda has began to move far from that, with the nevertheless-extremely-arguable video game Fallout seventy six.

And in a international wherein video games try to suck players into an endless loop to squeeze each closing dollar and minute of interest out of them, that type of awareness — even if it’s no longer the most original of conceits — feels find it irresistible is probably enough.

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podcastcoach · 5 years

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Fine Tuning Your Content With Audience Surveys

I had not "take the temperature" of my audience in a while so I put together a quick survey. I use Google Forms, and did some number crunching in Excel, and made a report using Mail Merge in Microsoft word so I could easily consume the data.

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What My Audience Let Me Know

Audience:

Audience 80% Male 20% Female

Age: 31-40 41% 41-50 41% 61-70 18%

How far they listen 7% Listen to at least 75% 93% listen to all of it

Do You Currently Have a Podcast? Yes - 90% No - 10%

Perfect Length of Podcast? 0-29 3% 30-45 59% 46-60 28%

Have you ever told a friend about the School of Podcasting? Yes - 90% No - 10%

What Do You Like About the Show:

Question of the month and your knowledge of podcasting

Learning the best ways to podcast

The up to date changes that would affect the day to day podcaster.

You consistently provide concise, actionable advice to help podcasters be successful.

Interviews with interesting podcasters and how-to content

Multiple topics and specialized guests this way I can identify with other podcasters who’ve encountered the same trials & tribulations in connecting with their audience

I really like the real-world examples you cite of how people have made (or are making) their podcasts successful.

The high-quality production, how much you assuage my concerns about podcasting, identify speech patterns that drive me crazy, and overall the feeling that you're actually talking to me.

General updates on how and with what to create, manage, and grow your podcast and audience

I like your honesty and transparency most. The topics I enjoy are tips on creating content and marketing content.

Honest Information about growing audience and sponsors

I like the honesty, the fact you'll tell the truth and also aren't afraid to give your opinion. Specific sections, I like when you do anecdote, which is odd as I didn't when I first started listening. Just goes to show not to change your format.

The interviews, also gear talk when you have it.

Just listening to Dave talk with excitement about what's important to him. I always enjoy the Because-Of-My-Podcast stories.

You think about the person who is just starting out and the people who have been at it a while. (so helps me learn as a newbie, but also stretches me to research other things). Love how you use sound effects. Think it captures attention well!

Expert interviews, and Last Five in Five (bring it back!)

The analogies, which helps anyone at any level understand the picture you are trying to paint (even the painting with peanut butter)

The interviews with industry personalities and gear/service reviews. But most of all, it's just your personality that keeps me listening.

Your humor, varied topics, pace, transitions, and awesome ideas and content.

I love the end of episode bloopers.

What you'd Like to Change:

The same podcasters on all the time, how about some variety? For example, if the horse podcasting guy is on, I turn the show-off, sorry, but it's just not my thing. Other than that, I love everything else about the show!

Email responses seemed to shorten then stop altogether after a while. Keep emailing/engaging consistently.

While it doesn't bother me, I think too often you reference "old" movies, songs etc. and go with your "back in the day" quote which may not resonate with a younger audience.

For example, for me, I don’t need to hear all the steps of math to get to an hourly rate for $60,000 a year. You could just tell me you did the math and give me the bottom line number.

Not this show, but your Rodeo - there is too much 'snide' comments. But hey, I was born British

I think that Podcast Rodeo Show is a disservice to your expertise and kindness. but that's another show.

Sometimes the sound effects get a little too morning zoo for me.

All the extra sound effects you’ve been adding (more in the last year or so? Maybe 6 months?). Also, I know you’re against dates on your blog posts, but I wish you had them. Context matters & if I know it’s several years old, that might impact how I approach something.

Sometimes there is so much repetition between this show, ask the podcast coach, podcasters round table, the feed, and new media show. I love all of them but fell a little disappointed when there’s too much overlap in topics.

A lot of assumed knowledge from previous episodes or technologies or podcasting

I guess the only thing I worry about is I hear you on all of your other shows & know that you have a full-time job & do all of your school of podcasting stuff. I don't want you getting burned out! Take care of yourself, Dave!

The only thing I could think of is the occasional repetition (Anchor sucks - it's okay to NOT make money with your show - stop checking your stats)

Personally, I'm tired of "beginner" topics. I understand you make money helping people start, but I can imagine even a beginner would appreciate your expertise on more of the "improve" your podcast topics (which you do, but I want more of them).

I’m not a big fan of the easy listening/jazz music you use under your commercials. It does not command authority.

The occasional crass comment or innuendo is a bit annoying. I know it doesn't happen often, but when it does it makes me cringe.

I get that you need to share personal stuff occasionally, as we should all do, and provided it's kept in proportion then I'm fine with it. First and foremost I want you to be a teacher, not a chat show host.

For instance, when you did the 5 in 5 with the podcaster talking about atheism and I had to stop and pray for him and I was bummed that there are so many podcasts about people that are fallen away from the church. So even the stuff I cringe at in your podcast, help me grow and give me a reason to pray. I haven’t done my show in 5-6 years and yet, I still listen every week. Keep up the zany antics and stellar content Dave

Not the biggest fan of most podcast intros. I would prefer you to start talking IMMEDIATELY about the show by possibly asking a few questions...the state that we will get into it further in the show. Example: What mics should you use when walking around outside and recording? What is the difference between condenser blah blah blah? We will get into it today!! I’m Dave Jackson, and I thank you for being here at the SCHOOL OF PODCASTING! Now, let's talk mics.

Contributors

Pedro My Stuttering Life

Brandon from Florida Focus Podcast

Lee from We Have Cancer

Win from A Diary of Fashionista

Martha From Martha Runs the World

James from Where We Buy

Bill with the You With a Mission Podcast

Jas from Giving Up the Ghost

Steph from Stephfuccio.weebly.com

Mike from Create Pod

Alex from Spirits and Lyrics

Lee from This is Rammy

Jeremy from Transmissions Podcast

Brandon from Seahawkers Podcast

Garret from Good Patron Podcast

Kelly Two Ewes Fiber Adventure

Oscar from Deep Listening

Laura from Reviews and Randomness

Scott from What was that Like Podcast

Steve Stewart Money Plan SOS

Matt from The Author Inside You

JD from Bookworm Banquet

Paul from the Fighting Through Podcast( WWII)

Tim from the Sled Dog Podcast

Lee from Covert Nerd

Darwyn from Dealing with My Grief

Steve Work Comp Pulse

Richard Grimshaw

Hershy Orenstein

Ismael

Matt Simpson

Paul Capps

Conclusions:

You need to know why you are doing a podcast, and who your audience is and what they want. If someone suggests something that doesn't' fit the audience or your goal. you need to ignore it - this show is not for them.

You can't please everyone.

Keep in mind the new listeners, and don't get bit by the "curse of knowledge" and leave them in the dark.

Your audience wants you to be honest and concise. They enjoy your personality (some followed me to other shows) so let your personality out.

Be willing to try new things if your audience wants them, and they fit your goals.

I hope you enjoyed episode 681.

Question of the Month

What was the last thing your shared (that wasn't your content)? Why did you share it? Go to www.schoolofpodcasting.com/question before August 23, 2019

Work With Me

Join the School of Podcasting or let me be your podcast mentor

Check out this episode!

#podcasting #podcast #coaching #new media

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mcjoelcain · 6 years

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How to talk to people (even if you don’t know what to say)

You’ve probably been there before:

You walk up to a group of friends talking. Stand there awkwardly while waiting for one of them to notice you. Wish for death.

You start telling a story to a group of people and — in the middle of it — realize the story sucks. Continue anyway.

You go to an event and instead of meeting people, pull out your phone and furiously check email.

With your friends or family, you have the BEST stories, but if you just met a group of people, all of a sudden your mind goes blank and you have nothing to say.

Today, I want to teach 3 systems that helped me know how to talk with confidence and know exactly what to say in any social situation.

They are:

Perfect Words

Story Toolbox

Question Toolbox

Let’s get to it.

How to talk to people system #1: Perfect Words

A while back, I went out to coffee with a good friend of mine. Now normally, when I order coffee, I just say, “Hey, I’ll have a latte. Thank you,” before going on my way.

But when my buddy went up to order his coffee, he had four people around him absolutely cracking up within seconds. The barista was smiling. People around him were laughing. And everyone seemed to just really enjoy his presence.

And guess what he said that got all this going. It was, “What’s good today?”

That’s it! From that one line he was able to start a great conversation.

Now I want you to check out the rest of his conversation — and see what you notice:

MY FRIEND: What’s good today?

BARISTA: (smiling) Everything is good.

MY FRIEND: (teasing) Everything isn’t good. Tell me the truth!

BARISTA: Well, we just got a new cold-pressed coffee machine and I hear that’s supposed to be good.

MY FRIEND: No, I mean what would YOU get if you could get anything?

BARISTA: (laughs) I actually think that our scones are the best things ever.

MY FRIEND: Well, I’ll have two of those please!

A few takeaways:

He’s just saying normal things. There’s no magic line or canned jokes here. My friend was just saying simple things that, on their face, aren’t very clever…but none of that mattered!

He had a lot of energy. The way my friend said things was way more important than what he said. If he went into this situation with low energy and delivered everything in a monotone voice, he would not have gotten the same positive effect.

The cashier LOVED this. She spends all day listening to those aforementioned monotone voices order the same thing over and over. Finally, she got someone who broke that monotony and made her smile. My friend brightened her day and was memorable.

My friend did all this by leveraging a system called the “Perfect Words.”

What are the Perfect Words? Luckily for you, they created a whole book of them called…

…the dictionary.

The truth is there are no Perfect Words.

Instead, it’s how you say things that determines how you come off.

To show you what I mean, I’m going to give you three phrases and show you exactly how you can use them to open a great conversation:

Hi, how’s your morning going?

Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Ramit.

Good morning. How are you?

These three simple phrases have no “magic” to them — and yet they’ve worked millions of times since the dawn of conversation openers.

What I want you to do now is start to consider the different ways you can deliver these phrases.

Here are three simple ways you can do that:

Smiling. Many of us don’t typically smile when we’re opening a conversation. We’ll say things like, “Hi, how’s your morning going?” and deliver it like we’re a doctor giving bad news.

But when we DO smile, it’s the instant ice breaker. And it’s so simple to do.

So practice letting your smile “fill your face.” I used to videotape myself speaking to find out I wasn’t smiling enough. It gets easier once you start practicing.

Slow down. The speed in which we say something can have a huge effect on how people perceive us. When we’re nervous, we tend to speed up the way we talk. When we slow down though, it gives people time to connect with you. Couple that with a good smile and you got a winning system.

So try slowing down what you’re saying by 50%. It will feel sluggish, but this is perfect for everyone else. It helps to enunciate your words too. Young Ramit got way ahead using this one tip.

Change your tone. Way back in the day, I had no tonality whatsoever when I talked. I’m sure you could close your eyes and not tell if you were conversing with me or Ben Stein. Eventually I realized this, so I started to speak with more energy — and it did WONDERS.

Try taking whatever level you’re at when you normally talk, and add 50% more energy into your voice. What feels weird to you is NORMAL to everyone else.

Action step: Implement the Perfect Words 3x/day for a week

I want you to use the three phrases above every day for seven days on different strangers. It can be your Amazon Prime delivery guy, your barista, the checkout lady at the grocery store, whoever!

As you use the phrases though, keep in mind the different ways you can change up how you deliver your words (smiling, slowing down, and changing your tone).

A few other things to remember:

They’re called social “skills,” and like any skill, you can get better at them. We’re starting small on purpose. As you get more used to it, you can start to scale and open conversations with more people.

Most people you talk to are bored all day long. This means you’ll be doing them a favor by engaging with them just like my friend was with the cashier at the coffee shop.

Note their reactions and your reactions. Did the person you’re talking to start smiling and laughing because of your energy? Or did they retreat because you made them uncomfortable? How did you feel while you were smiling or talking slowly?

Don’t worry if this doesn’t feel comfortable right away. It’s not supposed to. Just trust the system.

How to talk to people system #2: Make a Story Toolbox

I’m a firm believer in the idea that telling a story is the best way to engage someone. It doesn’t matter if you’re with friends or if you’re trying to sell a product. A good story can make a world of difference when it comes to building a good first impression (notice the beginning of this very post…).

That’s why you always want a large well of great stories to draw on.

You can create your Story Toolbox using any tool you prefer, such as:

Google Docs (what I use)

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Excel

Evernote

A physical notepad

It doesn’t matter what you record them with as long as you ARE recording them. These stories could be funny, entertaining, or serious — and you might actually want to organize them as such.

Action step: Create your Story Toolbox

Designate a place to put your stories, and start by adding five of them.

If you can’t think of five good stories, think back to the last time you hung out with your friends or family.

What did you talk about?

What made everyone laugh?

Every family has an embarrassing/hilarious story. What is it for your family?

Hang out with your friends or family in the next few days, and write down the things you naturally talk about. This will help seed your Story Toolbox for the first time.

How to talk to people system #3: Make a Question Toolbox

If you want to keep the other person you’re talking to engaged, there’s no better way to do it than with a thought-provoking question. It helps you always have something to say and talk to someone you don’t know.

Of course, depending on the context of your conversation, you’re going to want to have different questions for different scenarios.

I remember once, my friend noticed me checking this girl out at a bar, so he goaded me into talking to her. So I approached her and this exchange went down:

Ramit: Hi, I’m Ramit.

Woman: Hi, I’m [whatever].

Ramit: You look like a vodka soda girl. (I know, I know. I don’t know where this horrific line came from.)

Woman: …no.

I was surprised by how she just shut me down, so I decided to have some fun.

Ramit: Aw, c’mon. I’ve been right 100/100 times for the last 5 years. How are you going to break my streak like that?

Woman: I’m a recovering alcoholic.

Shortest. Conversation. EVER. But a funny story now.

If instead, I came in with my question toolbox filled with questions that weren’t awful pick-up lines, I might have had better luck. That’s why you’re going to want to craft different meaty questions for different scenarios.

Action step: Create your Question Toolbox

So the next time you’re making small talk, take note of great questions you hear and ask. Save them in your Question Toolbox for later.

Here are a few good sample questions to get you started:

Networking events/industry conventions:

What made you decide to do X?

What are the biggest challenges when it comes to your industry?

If you had to do X again, what would you do differently?

As you gained more experience in X, what became more important and why?

What would make today/this event successful for you?

What still surprises you about X?

Dates:

What are your biggest goals right now?

How do you spend your time?

Playful questions like: Which do you like more — pancakes or waffles?

What do you hate most about dating? (This question is both interesting and can help you avoid doing the thing they hate.)

What’s your favorite restaurant in the city? Why?

Which Spotify playlist is the soundtrack to your life?

Baristas/wait staff:

What’s your favorite thing on the menu? Why?

What’s the craziest thing someone tried to order this week?

Have you ever written somebody’s name wrong on purpose because you didn’t like them?

BONUS: If you really want to exercise your social muscle, check out my video on improving your social skills. It’s less than 30 minutes.

youtube

Enhance your small talk

Small talk is a CRITICAL part of life and building relationships — it’s what helps people get to know each other, establishes meaningful connections, and lays down the foundation for great long-term relationships.

The term “small talk” is actually a complete misnomer because of its HUGE impact on forming relationships and developing unshakable confidence. As such, it takes a lot more care and nuance than just getting right down to the point.

If you walked right up to a CEO you admired at a mixer or convention and said, “I REALLY LIKE YOU. GIVE ME A JOB, PLEASE!” how do you think she’d react? She probably wouldn’t give you that job.

But if you went in with some care, and drew her into an amazing conversation and THEN asked her for a job (or better yet just advice or a coffee meeting), she’d be a hell of a lot more susceptible to it.

The key is realizing that confidence and the ability to carry a good conversation are skills — and like any other skill they can be learned, honed, and mastered.

I used to feel uncomfortable and out of place during social events too — but over time, I’ve developed hacks for confidence in new situations.

I’ll show you exactly how I do it in these 3 short videos. Just enter your email for instant access.

How to talk to people (even if you don’t know what to say) is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Money https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/help-my-mind-goes-blank-when-i-talk-to-people/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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krabbe35sutherland-blog · 6 years

Text

12 Effective Tips To Get rid of Bad Thought and feelings (As well as Embrace Beneficial Thinking).

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luxus4me · 6 years

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MakeUseOf Directory http://j.mp/2HANC4N

Had enough of Google and want to switch away from it for good? These are the best alternatives for all the major Google programs and services.

Since its debut in 1997, Google has consistently launched new apps and services that change how we use technology. Most of them are really good too, and so you end up using Google apps by default for several needs.

But all of these free services do cost something: privacy. Google is notorious for collecting and storing data on you. So if you’re concerned about privacy Concerned About Privacy? How To Keep Google At Arm's Length Concerned About Privacy? How To Keep Google At Arm's Length Concerned about Google's data collection policies in light of all privacy issues? It might not be a bad idea to keep Google away from your Internet activities. But just how can you do that? Read More , it’s a good idea to switch from Google services to their best alternatives.

1. Ditch Google Search, Use DuckDuckGo

Duck Duck Go is all about privacy while giving you as good of a search experience as Google does. You actually won’t miss Google Search if you switch, and in fact, you’ll find exclusive DuckDuckGo features 6 Cool DuckDuckGo Features You Won't Find on Google 6 Cool DuckDuckGo Features You Won't Find on Google In a world ruled by Google, at least where search is concerned, it’s sometimes hard to imagine a worthy alternative. DuckDuckGo is one website that is trying to offer such an alternative. If you’ve been... Read More that Google doesn’t have. The keyboard shortcuts alone are reason enough to use it.

Gmail has long been the best email service you can use, but there has been one good contender since Microsoft revamped Outlook.com.

The new Outlook.com is packed with features The New Outlook.com Is Here: Everything You Should Know The New Outlook.com Is Here: Everything You Should Know Microsoft has overhauled Outlook.com. If your account hasn't been migrated yet, it will happen by the end of this year. Have a look at what's new in your Outlook.com inbox. Read More and accomplishes almost everything Gmail offers. In fact, some of its unique built-in features are better than what Gmail gives you 7 Outlook.com Tricks Everyone Needs to Know 7 Outlook.com Tricks Everyone Needs to Know We bet you didn't know about these Outlook web app features! We'll show you the best ones hidden in plain sight. Time to replace your desktop email client? Read More , like the ability to make alias emails and how it helps you achieve inbox zero.

3. Ditch Google Maps, Use Here WeGo

This is one service where Google is still far ahead of any competitors. Waze, Maps.me, Apple Maps, and other map services do the basics well but aren’t as feature-filled as Google Maps. For now, the best alternative 6 Google Maps Alternatives and Why They Matter 6 Google Maps Alternatives and Why They Matter Google Maps isn't the only free map application on the web. These Google Maps alternatives bring useful features and helpful information to help you go around your world. Read More is Here WeGo. The maps are as accurate as Google’s own, and live traffic information is updated as regularly too.

Google’s Docs, Sheets, and Slides make an excellent productivity suite, but why use those when you can get the original office suite, Microsoft Office, for free? Docs and Word are both as good, but when it comes to Excel Online, Microsoft’s offering is miles ahead of Google. And there are plenty of other reasons to use Office Online Don't Pay For Word! 5 Reasons You Should Use Office Online Don't Pay For Word! 5 Reasons You Should Use Office Online Office Online is the free and cloud-connected version of Microsoft Office. Limitations are compensated by features, useful even to users of desktop Office. Best of all is its Read More , including the fact that it works with Dropbox too.

5. Ditch Google Drive, Use Dropbox

Google Drive gives you more free space than Dropbox, but don’t forget, Dropbox has been doing this for a lot longer than Google has. Plus, it’s a company with only one job: cloud storage Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. OneDrive: Which Cloud Storage Is Best for You? Dropbox vs. Google Drive vs. OneDrive: Which Cloud Storage Is Best for You? Have you changed the way you think about cloud storage? The popular options of Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive have been joined by others. We help you answer which cloud storage service should you use. Read More . That’s a little more reassuring than someone like Google or Microsoft, who have diverse interests.

Google Alerts is excellent to track any word popping up on a new page on the internet, especially in news. There are two excellent alternatives 10 Alert & Notifier Websites to Keep Track of Stuff You Might Otherwise Miss 10 Alert & Notifier Websites to Keep Track of Stuff You Might Otherwise Miss Read More for this. Talkwalker Alerts is a free service that mimics Google Alerts, and even offers an RSS feed. But if you don’t mind paying, Mention is better at monitoring news as well as social media. In fact, it’s better than Google Alerts.

7. Ditch Google News, Use Yahoo News

Google News doesn’t make news of its own, but aggregates articles from various publications. Ideally, you should switch to a proper news organization to read news that is censorship-free Top 5 World News Websites Guaranteed Free From Censorship Top 5 World News Websites Guaranteed Free From Censorship Is there no place for the reader to turn for unbiased news? The short answer is an emphatic yes. These five popular news websites are free from censorship. Read More . But if you want a similar experience as Google News, then Yahoo News is the oldest and best alternative news aggregator The Best Alternatives to Google News That Help You Stay Current The Best Alternatives to Google News That Help You Stay Current While Google News is convenient and easy to use, there are other ways to get your mainstream, niche, or even personalized news, delivered to you on your desktop or on the go. Read More , while also adding its original articles into the mix.

8. Ditch Google Calendar, Use Fruux

If Microsoft hadn’t bought and shut down Sunrise, that would be the best calendar around today. But now that it’s gone, Fruux is the perfect Google Calendar alternative Time Management Gets Easier with 8 Google Calendar Alternatives Time Management Gets Easier with 8 Google Calendar Alternatives When you have a ton on your plate every day and need a way to visualize and manage your time more efficiently, one of these calendars might be the answer for you. Read More . It’s cross-platform, works mostly like GCal does, and integrates with other sites and apps too. This actually lets you use a single calendar for events from Outlook, Gmail, Facebook, and other services. Not bad, eh?

I never thought I’d see a day where some app is better than Google Translate, but you need to check out Microsoft Translator to believe how good it is. This is one app which you should switch to right now, whether you hate Google or not. And hey, it works really well as an add-on for Microsoft Edge 10 Best Microsoft Edge Browser Extensions You Should Try Today 10 Best Microsoft Edge Browser Extensions You Should Try Today The latest Windows 10 Upgrade finally brings browser extensions to Microsoft Edge. We have examined the handful of extensions available and show you which ones are worth your time. Read More too.

10. Ditch Google Chrome, Use Opera

If you’re still using Google Chrome, you need a reality check. Forget about alternatives like Edge and Firefox, every Chrome user should make the switch to Opera. It’s pretty much like using Chrome, but better, since it comes with several useful built-in features like VPN and battery-saving mode. Plus you can install Chrome extensions on Opera, so you won’t miss out on your favorite add-ons. I switched and I’m never going back I Switched From Chrome to Opera and I’m Never Going Back I Switched From Chrome to Opera and I’m Never Going Back Any browser works. There's only one reason to pick one over another: it's more in line with how you like to browse the web. And you might prefer Opera, too. Read More .

11. Ditch Google Domains, Use Flame Domain

Google Domains lets you buy and register domains, manage them, add email, and even turn them into short URLs How To Make Short URL's on Your Domain with Google Apps How To Make Short URL's on Your Domain with Google Apps Read More . But you don’t necessarily need Google Domains to do all that. There are plenty of sites which let you do all this, but try out Flame Domain for an interface and experience similar to Google’s. Plus, it works really well with Google Apps.

12. Ditch Google Sites, Use Weebly

You don’t need to be a web developer to make your own page with Google Sites Make Your Own Free Multipurpose Web Page With Google Sites Make Your Own Free Multipurpose Web Page With Google Sites Read More . But there are other (and better) website creators for non-coders, like Weebly. Just check out some of these awesome Weebly web pages 9 Weebly Websites That Actually Don't Suck 9 Weebly Websites That Actually Don't Suck Weebly offers uber-simple, drag-and-drop website creation and free web hosting. Not all sites end up looking well-designed. But let's look at some of the best examples of Weebly websites. Read More to see the possibilities with this free website creator.

13. Ditch FeedBurner, Use FeedBlitz

Since Google bought FeedBurner, the RSS creator for sites, webmasters have been looking for good alternatives. FeedBlitz should be your first stop. It gives you everything FeedBurner does, including automated newsletters and statistics. It’s not free, but you will pay only as much as you use. The pricing is sensible in that it increases only as your subscriber base increases. And importantly, you aren’t charged extra for features like mailings, funnels, and lists. If you absolutely don’t want to pay, then check out these free FeedBurner alternatives 3 Free Alternatives to Google's Feedburner 3 Free Alternatives to Google's Feedburner Read More .

Google Groups let you create private discussion groups 10 Ways To Make The Most Of Google Groups 10 Ways To Make The Most Of Google Groups Once Google Groups was on the cutting edge of online social interactions. Social media is now the elite. With an upgrade recently, Google Groups has come out to create an identity of its own. Read More . It’s the same concept as Facebook Groups or Mobilize, but both these alternatives give you many more features. You will get instant messaging, analytics, event management, and other such abilities that are essential to managing a large group. Unfortunately, to use Google Groups, Facebook Groups, or Mobilize, you need to register for an account on their respective sites. Sigh…

The new Google Photos is the best photo management app Get Free Unlimited Photo Storage & More with Google Photos Get Free Unlimited Photo Storage & More with Google Photos If you aren't using these hidden Google Photos features, you're really missing out. (Hint: There's free and unlimited photo storage!) Read More around. Nothing else matches up, but the only one to come close for a regular user is Amazon Prime Photos, which offers similar unlimited photo storage How to Share Unlimited Photos With Your Family on Amazon Prime How to Share Unlimited Photos With Your Family on Amazon Prime Amazon Prime has a new feature called the Family Vault that lets you share unlimited photos with your family! Here's how to take advantage of it now. Read More and sharing. All you need is an Amazon Prime account, so it’s not technically free. But hey, why would you not have a Prime account anyway?

Are You Scared of Google?

It’s convenient to use Google for all your needs, but don’t forget, this is a corporation. How much do you really trust it with your data and private information? It’s advisable to diversify your needs across several apps than under one brand.

Are you scared of what Google would do with your data What Does Google Know About You? Find Out and Manage Your Privacy and Security What Does Google Know About You? Find Out and Manage Your Privacy and Security For the first time, search giant Google is offering a way for you to check the information it has about you, how it is gathering that data, and new tools to start reclaiming your privacy. Read More , or do you trust Google to do the right thing?

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huldacampion-blog · 7 years

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Your Chance To Name A Condominium.

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andrewdburton · 5 years

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Death by a thousand cuts

I've been on the internet for a long, long time.

Via local Bulletin Board Systems, I started reading USENET newsgroups — mostly Star Trek and comic book and computer game stuff — during college in the late 1980s. I got sucked into the world of MUDs. Soon after graduating, I heard about this new thing called the World Wide Web, so I installed Mosaic on my Macintosh SE.

Before long, I taught myself HTML and built my first website. Eventually, in 1997, I started my first blog — back before blog was even a word!

I was drawn to the web (and the internet) in part because it seemed so egalitarian. Anyone could start a website about anything, and as long as they produced great stuff and shared it, people would read. I also liked the fact that almost everything was free. It didn't cost anything (besides your $19.95 monthly dial-up service) to access any of this information. The early web was a de facto sharing economy.

Best of all? The web was a wide open space, a blank slate, a platform free from dominance by mainstream media. Little people like me could have a voice.

None of this lasted long.

The Monetization of the Web

Soon, banner ads came along. I hated banner ads when they first appeared. “My site will never have banner ads,” I told my friends. (This was my first real lesson that you should never say never. My friends have been giving me grief about this for more than fifteen years!)

In 1998, Google arrived and changed everything. Until that point, web search was a miserable experience. It wasn't very good and it was overly monetized. Google was the opposite. It was amazing and had no monetization at all.

Hahahahahahahaha. How things have changed. Today, Google is all about ads. And using it is more and more a miserable experience. Look at this mess:

How long until Google has transformed itself into AltaVista?

In time, the mainstream media realized that the web wasn't going anywhere. By the early 2000s, they were treating it as an important part of their operations. By the early 2010s, the web had become the most important part of most media companies' platforms. And if it hadn't, those companies would soon be dead.

Meanwhile, two parallel (but related) trends developed.

First, there was the rise of “software as a service” (Saas). In the olden days — 1995, say — when you wanted a computer program, you went down to Circuit City and bought it. You paid for it once and you owned it forever. As “web apps” became a thing, companies shifted from one-time payments to a subscription model. Today, even big companies like Microsoft and Adobe have adopted the practice of continually charging for their products. (And if they don't use a subscription model, they often “sunset” their software, which is essentially the same damn thing.)

Second, forward-thinking sites and companies learned there was money to be made by disrupting existing business models. Netflix is a great example. Founded in 1997, this company has single-handedly destroyed multiple industries, most notably retail video. And, eventually, Netflix began to disrupt the monolithic television industry itself! Initially, this was beneficial to consumers. Now, in 2019, it's become apparent that oops, nope it's not. (See also.)

Twenty-five years ago, when the web was young, it was all about free. Anyone who could afford a computer and a $19.95/month dial-up connection was free to create and publish whatever they wanted — and free to consume what other people had created. It was like some sort of digital utopia.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Today, the web is most decidedly not free. And it's getting less free with every passing month. Let's be honest: More and more, life online is fucking expensive. It's like death by a thousand cuts.

This morning as I was pulling together the latest edition of the GRS Insider — this site's weekly email — I experienced the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. And that prompted this article. (And delayed the newsletter haha.)

First, I tried to read a New York Times article: “Health facts aren't enough. Should persuasion become a priority?” But I couldn't. I've already read one article from the NYT this month: “D.I.Y. Private Equity Is Luring Small Investors”. It used to be that the NYT was free. Then they instituted a limit on article consumption unless you subscribed, but it was a limit I could live with (something like ten articles per month). Besides, I could bypass the paywall with my browser's incognito mode. Then they got wise to incognito mode, which is fair enough. Now, apparently, you get one free article per month.

Next, I wanted to read this article: “Families Go Deep in Debt to Stay in the Middle Class”. I mean, I really want to read that article. But I can't. It's at The Wall Street Journal and the WSJ has been locked behind a paywall for years.

Crashing into paywalls is a daily occurence now. No — it's an hourly occurrence. I follow a promising link and bam I'm brought up short because I have to pay to access the article. This happens at newspapers, magazines, and even internet-only sites. It makes me grateful for the publications that produce terrific content and still provide it for free. (One example? I find that I'm frequently drawn to articles at The Atlantic. They provide top-notch quality without asking for payment. But for how long?)

Meanwhile, the subscription software model is starting to take its toll too. I completely understand that some apps and services require subscriptions in order to function properly. I pay a monthly fee to have Get Rich Slowly hosted on a webserver. That makes sense.

It does not make sense to me that some of the tools we use to build Get Rich Slowly require monthly (or yearly) subscriptions. There's no ongoing maintenance. There's no draw on the vendor's resources.

It does not make sense to me that my favorite weather app for the iPhone requires an annual subscription. In fact, it's insane. (Yet I still pay it.)

It does not make sense to my that Pzizz, a sleep tool that I've used for over a decade, moved from standalone pricing to subscription pricing. (And hey, Pzizz people, how many times do I have to pay for your product before you give me lifetime access? Because I've paid three or four times already.)

Generally speaking, SaaS and subscription plans aren't necessary — they're just profitable for the companies that use them. And as long as we keep paying, they'll stick to the model.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

The “cut” that's really going to mess with people's minds? The upcoming high price of television.

When Netflix and Hulu and similar companies came along, they offered low-cost alternatives to cable. Cord cutting became an act of frugality. I ditched cable television in 2007 and have never looked back. Until now.

Now, big media companies have recognized that they too can get on the act. They too can inflict one of the thousand cuts.

CBS was quick on the draw. Want to watch the latest Star Trek shows? No Netflix for you! You have to pay $10 per month for CBS All Access — or $6 per month if you're willing to put up with commercials.

Disney is a heavy hitter and they want to get in on the act. Disney+ — coming November 12th — will cost $8 per month. Want to watch the latest Marvel and Star Wars shows? Want to watch Disney and Pixar movies? This is your only option.

By far, the most popular show on Netflix is NBC's The Office, which accounts for a mind-boggling 7% of all Netflix viewing in the U.S. NBC knows a golden goose when it sees one. When its current deal with Netflix expires, it's yanking The Office and using it as a tent pole to launch its own subscription service.

Meanwhile, Netflix and Hulu and Amazon all offer their own original programming. (At least the latter is free for folks who pay for Prime, which is nearly one-third of the United States. Holy shit!) Apple will soon get in on the game and they're using big names to draw viewers: Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and more.

youtube

Streaming used to be a cheaper alternative to cable television. As Consumer Reports notes, these days it's a toss-up. And soon, streaming is likely to be the more expensive option.

Note: The one huge advantage to this proliferation of options? Users can pick and choose which content they subscribe to. For years (or decades), folks had been asking for a la carte pricing for cable channels. Well, I guess now we have it.

No Free Lunch

To provide supporting evidence for this article, I started to make a list of all of the software subscriptions I have, my software that's being “sunsetted” and needs to be upgraded (Quickbooks 2016 just notified me yesterday that it's no longer supported), the most common paywalls I encounter, and the television-related payments I make. I gave up. It's a doable thing, but it'd take too much time right now. It's a project for another day.

I know I sound like a cranky old man (again!), but I've had enough. I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore! Except that I probably am.

“Don't you expect to pay for services?” Kim asked me as I bitched to her this morning. “How does anybody run a business if it's free? In your mind, their business model should be to not charge the customer?”

Okay, fair point. I don't want to be taken for a choosing beggar.

As somebody who runs a website himself and knows how much it costs (in terms of time and money) just to maintain my tiny corner of the web, I absolutely do not begrudge anyone the desire to make money.

And, in fact, my biggest challenge since repurchasing Get Rich Slowly two years ago has been balancing my desire to provide excellent information without destroying the user experience with monetization. It's a delicate balance, one that I'm not sure I'm achieving. (But hey, I'm working on it!)

My frustration is that there are just so many companies extracting a pound of flesh from me. It's too much.

Yes, I realize most (of not all) of these expenses are voluntary. Yes, I realize this is capitalism in action. Yes, I realize there are often free (or cheaper) options. Yes, I realize we can't reset the internet to 1995. Believe me: I've been thinking about this issue for years now. I understand all of this stuff. But I don't like it.

In the end, my solution recently has been to KonMari my digital life. I've removed most of the apps from my iPhone and iPad, opting to cut those with subscription fees first. When possible, choose software with a one-time fee instead of an ongoing subscription. I try to steer clear of sites with paywalls. I killed Hulu. (But then Kim promptly joined.) Even though I love Star Trek and the Marvel Universe, I refuse to pay for CBS All Access and Disney+. I never will.

But then, I was never going to have banner ads on my website either, was I?

The post Death by a thousand cuts appeared first on Get Rich Slowly.

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samuelfields · 7 years

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How to talk to people (even if you don’t know what to say)

Readers will be surprised to hear that I wasn’t always the charming, hilarious, and stylish personal finance expert they know now.

Hell, I was so awkward I made Urkel look like Robert Downey Jr.

Which is why I had to smile when I got this email from an IWT reader named Emily a while back:

“How do you approach companies/or anything else when you don’t have any confidence? I seem to go mentally blank. And the words don’t come out at all. Backwards and not in order.”

And you’ve probably been there before:

You walk up to a group of friends talking. Stand there awkwardly while waiting for one of them to notice you. Wish for death.

You start telling a story to a group of people and — in the middle of it — realize the story sucks. Continue anyway.

You go to an event and instead of meeting people, pull out your phone and furiously check email.

It’s a fascinating paradox. With your friends or family, you tend to have the BEST stories, but if you just met a group of people, all of a sudden your mind goes blank and you have nothing to say. Most people are willing to say “that’s how it is,” but you can actually fix by implementing the right systems.

Today, I want to teach three systems that helped me know exactly what to say in social situations, and — more importantly — how to say it.

They are:

Perfect Words

Story Toolbox

Question Toolbox

Let’s get to it.

How to talk to people system #1: Perfect Words

A while back, I went out to coffee with a good friend of mine. Now normally, when I order coffee, I just say, “Hey, I’ll have a latte. Thank you,” before going on my way.

And guess what he said that got all this going. It was, “What’s good today?”

That’s it! From that one line he was able to start a great conversation.

Now I want you to check out the rest of his conversation — and see what you notice:

MY FRIEND: What’s good today?

BARISTA: (smiling) Everything is good.

MY FRIEND: (teasing) Everything isn’t good. Tell me the truth!

BARISTA: Well, we just got a new cold pressed coffee machine and I hear that’s supposed to be good.

MY FRIEND: No, I mean what would YOU get if you could get anything?

BARISTA: (laughs) I actually think that our scones are the best things ever.

MY FRIEND: Well, I’ll have two of those please!

A few takeaways:

He’s just saying normal things. There’s no magic line or canned jokes here. My friend was just saying simple things that, on their face, aren’t very clever…but none of that mattered!

My friend did all this by leveraging a system called the “Perfect Words.”

What are the Perfect Words? Luckily for you, they created a whole book of them called…

…the dictionary.

The truth is there are no Perfect Words.

Instead, it’s how you say things that determines how you come off.

To show you what I mean, I’m going to give you three phrases and show you exactly how you can use them to open a great conversation:

Hi, how’s your morning going?

Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Ramit.

Good morning. How are you?

These three simple phrases have no “magic” to them — and yet they’ve worked millions of times since the dawn of conversation openers.

What I want you to do now is start to consider the different ways you can deliver these phrases.

Here are three simple ways you can do that:

Smiling. Many of us don’t typically smile when we’re opening a conversation. We’ll say things like, “Hi, how’s your morning going?” and deliver it like we’re a doctor giving bad news.

But when we DO smile, it’s the instant ice breaker. And it’s so simple to do.

So practice letting your smile “fill your face.” I used to videotape myself speaking to find out I wasn’t smiling enough. It gets easier once you start practicing.

So try slowing down what you’re saying by 50%. It will feel sluggish, but this is perfect for everyone else. It helps to enunciate your words too. Young Ramit got way ahead using this one tip.

Try taking whatever level you’re at when you normally talk, and add 50% more energy into your voice. What feels weird to you is NORMAL to everyone else.

Action step: Implement the Perfect Words 3x/day for a week

I want you to use the three phrases above every day for seven days on different strangers. It can be your Amazon Prime delivery guy, your barista, the checkout lady at the grocery store, whoever!

As you use the phrases though, keep in mind the different ways you can change up how you deliver your words (smiling, slowing down, and changing your tone).

A few other things to remember:

Most people you talk to are bored all day long. This means you’ll be doing them a favor by engaging with them just like my friend was with the cashier at the coffee shop.

Don’t worry if this doesn’t feel comfortable right away. It’s not supposed to. Just trust the system.

How to talk to people system #2: Make a Story Toolbox

That’s why you always want a large well of great stories to draw on.

You can create your Story Toolbox using any tool you prefer, such as:

Google Docs (what I use)

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Excel

Evernote

A physical notepad

It doesn’t matter what you record them with as long as you ARE recording them. These stories could be funny, entertaining, or serious — and you might actually want to organize them as such.

Action step: Create your Story Toolbox

Designate a place to put your stories, and start by adding five of them.

If you can’t think of five good stories, think back to the last time you hung out with your friends or family.

What did you talk about?

What made everyone laugh?

Every family has an embarrassing/hilarious story. What is it for your family?

Hang out with your friends or family in the next few days, and write down the things you naturally talk about. This will help seed your Story Toolbox for the first time.

How to talk to people system #3: Make a Question Toolbox

Of course, depending on the context of your conversation, you’re going to want to have different questions for different scenarios.

I remember once, my friend noticed me checking this girl out at a bar, so he goaded me into talking to her. So I approached her and this exchange went down:

Ramit: Hi, I’m Ramit.

Woman: Hi, I’m [whatever].

Ramit: You look like a vodka soda girl. (I know, I know. I don’t know where this horrific line came from.)

Woman: …no.

I was surprised by how she just shut me down, so I decided to have some fun.

Ramit: Aw, c’mon. I’ve been right 100/100 times for the last 5 years. How are you going to break my streak like that?

Woman: I’m a recovering alcoholic.

Shortest. Conversation. EVER. But a funny story now.

Action step: Create your Question Toolbox

So the next time you’re making small talk, take note of great questions you hear and ask. Save them in your Question Toolbox for later.

Here are a few good sample questions to get you started:

Networking events/industry conventions:

What made you decide to do X?

What are the biggest challenges when it comes to your industry?

If you had to do X again, what would you do differently?

As you gained more experience in X, what became more important and why?

What would make today/this event successful for you?

What still surprises you about X?

Dates:

What are your biggest goals right now?

How do you spend your time?

Playful questions like: Which do you like more — pancakes or waffles?

What do you hate most about dating? (This question is both interesting and can help you avoid doing the thing they hate.)

What’s your favorite restaurant in the city? Why?

Which Spotify playlist is the soundtrack to your life?

Baristas/wait staff:

What’s your favorite thing on the menu? Why?

What’s the craziest thing someone tried to order this week?

Have you ever written somebody’s name wrong on purpose because you didn’t like them?

BONUS: If you really want to exercise your social muscle, check out my video on improving your social skills. It’s less than 30 minutes.

youtube

Enhance your small talk

The key is realizing that confidence and the ability to carry a good conversation are skills — and like any other skill they can be learned, honed, and mastered.

I used to feel uncomfortable and out of place during social events too — but over time, I’ve developed hacks for confidence in new situations.

I’ll show you exactly how I do it in these 3 short videos. Just enter your email for instant access.

How to talk to people (even if you don’t know what to say) is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/help-my-mind-goes-blank-when-i-talk-to-people/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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