#if there’s any errors blame Google docs

[thebellekeys]

Daisies on your nightstand: On Cordelia Carstairs (Meta)

Voilà, I've finally reached the last part of my character breakdowns for the The Last Hours trilogy. I've done Matthew, James, and Grace, and now I'll be wrapping it up with Cordelia before I revamp some older pieces on setting and themes. I'll probably put all of these in a Google Doc for funsies.

Ah yes, Cordelia "Daisy" Herondale. I have mostly good things to say about her until I don't. There is an argument to be made that Cordelia is a careful combination between Tessa, Emma, and Clary, which is why she mostly works but also doesn't always work. She has the best qualities of all of them and was particularly great until after the Paris escapade, in my opinion. I think she's actually an improvement on certain aspects of each of those aforementioned women (yes, even Tessa) which is why her lackluster-slash-unfinished ending grates on me so badly because we could have had it all, rolling in the deep. That being said, Cordelia is still my bestie, I love her, and now let's get into it.

NB. I won’t be dealing with anything concerning the supposed sexualization of Cordelia or the question of Orientalism, because I don’t believe Cordelia is unfairly sexualized or depicted in an Orientalist way. I have a piece on this from 2021 if you like. Please read some actual Edward Said before you start using words you don’t know or victimizing a mixed-race half-Brown character because her love interest thinks she’s very hot.

Cortana Ex Machina

So we've reached the section of the meta where I start complaining about Cordelia and/or James in their capacity as main characters. My problem with Cordelia, as well as James and Lucie, is that nothing they did ever had any repercussions besides making them temporarily suffer or giving the reader fuel to sympathize with them. Nothing was ever their fault and they were always the victims of circumstances and otherworldly events, especially by the start of Chain of Thorns. There were no transactions in Chain of Thorns, no tit for that, just a sweet payoff from the narrative and plot that conveniently got our main characters out of the red when they most needed it. And I think that speaks to a wasted opportunity considering that Cordelia literally swore herself as paladin to the Mother of Demons. It wasn't Cordelia's fault, absolutely not, but it was a situation she provoked by her own volition. Which is such a delicious dilemma to put a character through. But, alas, a bad thing can't be Cordelia's fault in The Last Hours. It's for this same reason that Lucie bringing Jesse back from the dead also had no consequences in the story for either of them.

You might be thinking: It was an accident, a mistake, a trick, an error that was naively made, and it wasn't our character's fault. And to that, I say... bestie, so was it with Matthew. Matthew made a mistake, an innocent mistake made when he was fourteen because he chose to believe lies and rumors because he was a child that didn't know how to see himself in the world. None of us blame Matthew for the potion debacle, and yet the narrative and the plot ensured that he had to suffer the consequences of that mistake and feel the repercussions of it. The potion was the nucleus of Matthew's strained relationship with James, of Matthew's alcoholism, of Matthew's suffering and sadness that he has to actively work to heal from and undo in the trilogy. And so, why, I ask, did Cordelia swearing herself as a paladin to Lilith of all people not have any long-term consequences in the story for Cordelia as a warrior? The solution to all of Cordelia's problems lies in the fact that Cortana can do literally anything the story needs it to do and Lilith being in a church at the right time. Lilith duped Cordelia and used her core insecurity and her central character conflict (see next section) against her. Lilith preyed on Cordelia's warrior heart and her sense of chivalrous honor more than once, and yet there was no resolution to the conflict, no playing around with Cordelia's "fatal flaw".

O' self-liberation, where art thou?

So as I had mentioned in a meta piece after Chain of Iron had come out, I’m in defense of the Fairstairs interlude. Not because I ship Matthew and Cordelia as an endgame (never did), but because Cordelia’s story is a reactionary one of blossoming and the Fairstairs interlude allowed for Cordelia’s evolution. Cordelia starts off Chain of Gold essentially forcing herself to follow the Shadowhunter Edwardian model of a respectable woman and putting aside her desires and ambitions to secure her family’s reputation and place in society. Instead of pursuing her own dreams of being a warrior, she decides to search for an eligible husband to restore her family’s reputation and then later settles for a semi-unwanted marriage with a man who she thought was always in love with another woman. We see Cordelia repressing her desires and her goals intensely throughout the first half of the trilogy – only really in pockets of fiery passion with James and her adventurous trip to meet “Wayland the Smith” do we see Cordelia temporarily break her self-imposed shackles in the first two books. Cordelia is strongest when she's running off ambition and chivalrous adrenaline (see: James likening her to Boudicea more than once). But she reaches a breaking point when she thinks, at the end of Chain of Iron, that James is continuing an “affair” with Grace and runs off to Paris with Matthew, wanting to forget her pain and freely give herself to adventure and pleasure. Key word being free; it's the release she's after. She throws caution and societal restriction to the wind, aided of course by Sona’s urging to not supress her dreams and desires as a young woman. We have a recurring theme here now. It’s that classic repression-to-self-liberation emotional pipeline women often go through so much 19th-century literature written by female writers.

Lilith serves as an apt symbol for Cordelia’s own romantic and personal situation at that time. Lilith, semi-biblically, left a man who could not love her the way she wanted to be loved and instead chose to pursue a more dangerous infernal lover outside the confines of the godly union of marriage. This is loosely mirrored by Cordelia leaving James, our Adam figure perhaps, who she thinks will never truly love her or respect their marriage at that specific time, for a wilder, freer creature like Matthew (who, I don’t actually think has anything thematically in common with Sammael besides being the Side Man in the trio but let’s roll with it). Lilith is a figure that was absolutely demonized for over two thousand years, the boogeyman of Puritan culture. She symbolized demonic femininity and ungodly rebellion, even though an argument can also be made that her story is about the repossession female agency, but let’s not deep it, because Lilith is Categorically Bad in the context of TSC. Nonetheless, with Cordelia (unwillingly) serving the Biblical Demoness of Female Rebellion, while simultaneously in the act of rebelling against her own unhappy marriage and the gendered constraints of Shadowhunter society by going to Paris with Matthew, I feel as if we never get to see Cordelia have her “kick society in the face moment”. She’s serving as a paladin to the mythical figure that represents female sexuality and agency, one who actively weaponizes Cordelia’s feelings of inadequacy and repression in the book, and yet we never see Cordelia ball those dark, restrained feelings up and unleash them back to the world. Chain of Thorns leaves you asking for more, feeling like Cassie turned the stove off when the pot was just beginning to bubble over. But moreover, I find that Cordelia serving as Lilith's paladin could also have been expanded upon as a plot point instead of having Lilith's "death" being because she was standing in a church at the wrong time. In the novel, Cordelia didn't really defeat Lilith (or symbolically defeat what Lilith perhaps represented as pertains to her own life and sense of self).

I think the whole self-liberation storyline fizzles out midway through Chain of Thorns. I’m not saying I wanted Cordelia to do something scandalous and risqué in Paris (I mean, if we’ve ever talked in the DMs, you know I did, but this ain’t about me). But I feel as if Cordelia didn’t get a dramatic moment to subvert her own character or destiny. Cordelia ends up the happy wife of the man she was often very frustrated with and does so in the confines of a regular idyllic marriage. I do not have a problem with that. I think it makes sense. Jordelia is my ship. Don’t twist my words. My criticism, or what bugs me personally about it from a narrative perspective, is that it feels circular and unfinished as a character arc. Cordelia spent so much of the trilogy stretching the rubber band, but it never burst, did it? Her dissatisfaction with her life at the start of the trilogy ends with an inevitable contentment with her life when I, perhaps erroneously, thought it would end with a semblance of revolt or subversion. That’s not a bad thing at all; it’s very safe. Cordelia had the opportunity to burn the ribbons of Shadowhunter respectability, but she put out the lighter in Chain of Thorns, instead becoming its paragon.

Concluding Thoughts

Having some perspective now, I think Cordelia is probably my second favorite Shadowhuner female protagonist after Tessa (yes, she's surpassed Emma, because Emma's arc after Lady Midnight was not what God had in mind and I'll stand by that). But, yunno, there's always room for improvement and I'll always be here to be a little annoying about it when it comes to the Historical Shadowhunters. It felt like Cordelia lost a bit of her, I don't know, corporeality? in Chain of Thorns. Her personality, her poise and vibe, and her romance with James are lovely. I wouldn't have Jordelia be any other way and I stand by that. But I maintain her ongoing emotional conflicts and intermittent identity crises were dealt with in a "Netflix fantasy series" way. Let me know your thoughts on Cordelia and how you're feeling about The Wicked Powers and Sword Catcher!

[supercimi]

recently i hadn't been successful at getting myself to write

althu i defnitly have the want to write feeling, but my time hadn't been timing very well ;<

okay maybe im also lazy --;

but i have managed to brainstorm stuff while busy with real life stuff so that's a good thing :D (althu i mainly did that without writing it down because i will be mid work or chores but it's alright..i remember some of it...or i will....probably -x-;)

funny thing is when i do finally have some free time i will do anything but write TwT

even browsing my old stuff :D the stuff that never saw the light of day >:3(kinda proud of that for some reason?)

was reading what seemed like a piece i wrote for some tag game or something? it really didn't feel like something i wrote xD

according to google docs i last opened that one back in 2020? but im not sure when exactly i wrote it

btw it's incomplete and probably willl never be(maybe? who knows?) but here it is cuz it made me laugh ;3

======loading========

Today was awful, and not okay, kinda awful, nope. It was just awful. 

ok, that was a bad start, let's be classy.

Hello, 4th wall alien, this is Ribbica, and your day can’t be worse than mine. 

Also, I am lost.

How lost?...well…*looks around*...somewhere underwater I guess?

*you are filled with disbelief* 

*it shows in your reading*

You don’t believe me, do you? Well, can’t blame you. Who’d believe some fictional character they are reading about?! 

…..

Oh, you are still reading?....guess aliens aren’t all that bad.

Then seeing as you are my only source of escaping reality. I'll rant about my awful luck recently, we cool? Rather, you don’t get to say no.

.

..

 'Hello and welcome to our esteemed yeeting service, here we can throw off any stress or emptiness you feel!' 

It started with a flyer smacking my head on the way to work. With all the wind and sand in the air that morning, I am lucky it was just a flyer that hit me.

What? It was windy, yes. But windy weather won’t pay bills.

Anyway, seeing it odd I threw it right away, go smack someone else’s face.

That certainly won’t be the last time I see that ad, or so my gut was warning me. But I ignored it, work won’t do itself.

As if howling winds and angry bosses weren’t enough, the weather kept getting worse.

One day it was just strong winds.

Another was heavy rainfalls.

The rest were nearing a typhoon.

But nope, work won’t be cancelled, can’t work outside? work inside! working online to be exact, all the lagging and errors didn’t make it any easier.

Another thing to add to my stress. Hmm? What? You also had to work online? Oh then maybe studying?..hmm strange didn’t know aliens needed to do that.

Anyway, the weather cooled off, enough to be a freezer yeah. But we were getting the hang of it.

Sadly that meant no going out, getting out meant freezing to death, not getting out was dying of boredom or nagging bosses in the comfort of your own house, alone.

At least I could practice painting. If my crazy workload ever lessened, Being an overworked adult isn’t fun.

Join a good company they said, having so much work they’d pay well they said, 

Yup, wonder why.

The odd ad chose those days to strike again. Online this time.

Even creepy ads were cooped at home huh?

 By that point, I had just gotten nagged at online and ran out of my comfort food.

So it was just me and this ad, I ignored it for being annoyingly tempting.

Then it was the same old routine: wake up, prepare for work over some fruits, work, work, some more work over noodles, lagging and heavy workload crashes, other work, and so forth.

I might as well have turned into a computer from how much work I did.

Even my beauty sleep was spent dreaming about work.

As if accompanying my tired self, the weather outside was getting quite crazy.

Once it’s a blizzard, another a typhoon, others a sandstorm.

Scientists were theorizing about all this being a dream, seriously just what happened?

Leaving the world crisis aside. Work went on as usual.

Those slave drivers didn’t relent at all. I had good pay at least, didn’t get to relish in its benefits at all, but, meh. Who needed entertainment anyway. Lol 

*you strangely feel a certain camaraderie with this character*

Don’t gimme that look, I don’t need a 4th wall breaking alien to pity me.

Anyway, being a work zombie was my life at that point, didn’t matter that scientists found out about a black hole nearing earth and causing an utter disaster, didn’t matter that earth was being colonized out in space, didn’t matter that my car was stolen by a crazy monkey. None at all.

At least until the power went out, a blackout in the middle of a global crisis, who would’ve thought?! Just nice!

My work-zombie mind couldn’t process what happened and had the great idea of going outside.

[dirty-urie]

Date Night

Third Person

Brendon x Sara (OC kinda)

College AU

PWP Oneshot

NC-17

5.4k Words

Disclaimer: This is a fictional story using the names and/or likeness of at least one real person. This is intended for entertainment purposes ONLY. Please do not share or bring up my work with anyone other than fellow fans. Any similarity to real-life events involving these characters that have not been shared with the general public is only coincidence. Just because I’ve included something in my fics does NOT mean I condone, support, or encourage that behavior, language, or action in real life. Please practice safe and consensual sex practices, and just be a good person.

Warnings in Order of Appearance: Real Person Fic, Crude and Vulgar Language Throughout, Mentions of Alcohol, Brief Joke About Forgoing Contraception, Talk and Consumption of Pornography, Unprotected Oral Sex, Female Receiving Oral, Intercourse, Male Receiving Oral, Female Masturbation, Use of a Non-Sex Toy as a Sex Toy, Minor Social Anxiety

Author's Notes:

1. I spelled Sarah's name wrong on purpose because I felt bad writing porn about her. Brendon's technically permitted to write about him, so I'll do that without guilt (okay, with some guilt, but I feel guilty about everything. I have anxiety), but I respect Sarah too much to do that to her. That being said, I didn't want to use a random name, so I decided on a middle ground. Here's Sara, who is both not a real person and also not not married to Brendon Urie in real life. Schrodinger's OC. Okay, thank you for putting up with me.

2. I don’t know if I’m going to write any more third-person fics. I know they’re not really that popular, but for some reason, this spoke to me in third, so I embraced that. Anyway, give it a chance, and if you don’t like it, give whatever I publish next a chance.

3. This used to be split into two parts because I uploaded it on mobile, but I have since condensed the two parts, and now the whole thing is on this post.

Brendon fumbles with his keys as he unlocks the door to his apartment. Sara won't be there for another little while, but he's anxious to get inside anyway. His roommate is away visiting his family for the first time in nearly two months, and he hasn’t gotten any real alone time with his girlfriend since then. It’s hard, and Brendon knows Sara’s been struggling too because she spent their whole coffee shop study-date the day before whispering to him about how she's been practically crawling out of her skin. Brendon shivers at the memory of her hot breath against his ear as he slams his front door shut and hurries to his bedroom.

He's thinking about all the nasty ways he wants to get back at her for getting him so worked up in public when, speak of the devil, his phone buzzes, and Sara's name pops up in the caller ID. Actually, "Brunette from Creative Writing" pops up, but he swears he'll change it one day. Sara jokes that they'll be married with a whole flock of adult children, and she'll be calling him from the bingo hall as "Brunette from Creative Writing." God, he fucking loves her.

"Hey, babe, I just got home," he says after he hits the answer button.

"Okay, I just got out of my lecture, but I'm stopping by my dorm to grab my duffel bag, then I'm going to the drugstore to get condoms that aren't the shitty university clinic ones, so I won't be there for almost another hour," she tells him.

"Noooo, just come straight here. You can just wear my clothes all weekend. And condoms are so unnecessary; I'll just pull out," Brendon whines.

Sara laughs into the phone, knowing he doesn't mean any of that. "Oh sure, in that case, I'll come right over. Did you want to pay me $400,000 to raise a child in cash or check?"

"Uh, check, but you're gonna have to wait a bit to cash it," he replies.

He can practically see her rolling her eyes, even through the phone, "I'll be there in an hour, but I'll bring you something fun from the drugstore," she says.

"Fun like sex fun or fun like gum from the checkout stand fun?"

"You'll just have to wait and see, love you, bye!" she tells him through the phone before hanging up.

"Love you too, babe," he says sarcastically to no one. He walks into his bedroom and makes sure it's spotless. He doesn't want anything whatsoever to get in the way of fun, sexy times once Sara gets here.

His apartment is clean; he has wine and groceries in the fridge, enough money saved up to rent a movie and order dinner later, and no homework, so once Sara shows up with the condoms, he’ll be good to spend the entire weekend at home with her. With nothing else to do, he climbs onto his bed and grabs his laptop. No harm in a little pre-gaming, he figures, pulling up his favorite porn website while he waits.

He clicks on the first video without too much thought. It’s a girl, one Brendon recognizes, wearing a tiny thong and nothing else, and playing with a small bullet vibe while her boyfriend watches. She’s wet, probably just with lube and not actual bodily fluid, he realizes, but at least they bothered to make her look physically aroused at all.

He gets invested in the video, in the new toys that the boyfriend hands her, in the way both of their arousal grows as time goes on. He gets so engrossed that he’s beyond startled when Sara interrupts with, “Starting without me?” eyeing the erection already straining through his jeans.

Brendon laughs with glee now that she’s finally here, “No, no, no, just passing the time while I wait for you. No touching yet, see," he says, holding up his hands and waving them around before pausing his video.

"Well, don't stop on my account," Sara scoffs. "I don't mind you starting without me as long as I'm there when you finish," she murmurs.

They both moan, Brendon in response to her words, Sara in response seeing Brendon's cock twitch in his pants, “Ah fuck, babe, that’ll be sooner than I’d like if you keep talking like that.”

Sara climbs in next to him and snuggles against him so that she can see his computer screen, “Ooo, she’s hot,” she says, pointing to the girl now getting eaten out by the guy who, coincidentally enough, doesn’t look dissimilar to B.

“Yeah, I like a lot of her work,” Brendon says back, disinterested in the video playing on the laptop now that Sara’s actually there in the flesh “hey, you should take your pants off,” he suggests, totally smooth and subtly.

“You’re such a guy, B. No ‘how was your day? Are you hungry? Can I get you something to drink?” she teases.

Under normal circumstances, Brendon would object to such slander on his impeccable moral character. But, well, there’s not a lot of blood in his brain right now, and he knows that she would just respond with more teasing, further delaying the Fun Sexy Times, so he rolls to his side and kisses behind her ear, pressing his cock against her leg in an attempt to tease her into pliability. It works; she melts, whimpering a little bit as heat pools deep in her stomach when she feels just how turned on Brendon is. “You feel so nice, B. Bet you’d feel nicer without this layer of denim between us. Can you help me?”

Brendon unbuttons her pants and moves down to slide them off her body, moving his mouth along the newly revealed skin as he works them off. He’s paying so much attention to the warm flush of her thighs that he almost misses her panties: dark red lace, even darker where she’s soaked through them, and so delicate that they’re nearly see-through.

“Oh fuck, babe, that’s gorgeous. Are you wearing a matching bra?” he asks.

She answers by sitting up and pulling off her t-shirt, revealing the same thin lace. Her nipples are hard, practically poking through the delicate material.

Brendon settles back on his heels to fully take his girlfriend in, now stripped down to just her matching bra and panties set.

Sarah grins down at him, “Why do I get the sense that I can expect this set in every color for my birthday? Although, I know for a fact that I can get the same reaction from you wearing full-coverage high-waisted granny panties,” she thinks aloud after seeing Brendon’s wide-eyed awe.

Brendon isn’t paying attention, though. His mindset shifted from the fun and playful sex they usually have to lust-fueled passion as soon as Sara took her shirt off. Don’t get him wrong, they have great sex, but they normally have to do it fast and quietly and spontaneously, so they’ve gotten good at not taking themselves too seriously, at laughing at Brendon’s old superhero boxers, and then getting to business. Now that he has the chance to really take his time to appreciate, no, worship her as she deserves, he wants to do it right.

He moves off his heels and crawls over her body, supporting himself with one muscled arm as he moves in to kiss her. She picks up on the change in mood immediately, grasping the back of his head to deepen the kiss. He’s throbbing against her thigh now, even through his jeans, and she’s worried that she might come just from feeling him.

She, too, loves their normal sex, but even though it’s fun, it can’t always be as intimate as either of them would like. And it’s a shame too because as good at Brendon is at fucking, banging, screwing, whatever, he’s damn good at making love. At making sure she’s safe and supported and in absolute bliss, even when they’re hooking up in someone’s bedroom at a party, but especially like this when they’ve got hours and total privacy.

When her moans increase in pitch and frequency, Brendon crawls back down on the bed and settles between her thighs. “Darling, these panties are a gift to humanity, but I’m afraid they’re going to get in the way of some things I have planned. You don’t mind if I take them off, do you?” he says, voice deep and gravelly. He mouths against the soaked fabric while he waits for her response.

After taking a moment to collect herself and catch her breath, “God, Brendon, please, I need your mouth, fingers, cock, something,” she whines.

Now that he has her permission, he moves his mouth from her core to the waistband against her hip and bites it, just letting his teeth scrape her skin as he pulls down. Whether intentionally or not, Sara arches her back up, making it easy to slide them all the way down her legs. He kisses her way back up her legs, but instead of stopping between her thighs, he keeps going up. He licks up across the flat planes of her stomach all the way until he reaches her bra. Just like with her panties, he mouths over the fabric first, inching up slowly before sucking on one of her nipples through the lace.

As much as he loves how her breathing gets faster and heavier just from that, he can’t resist the actual mouth-on-skin that the low cut of the bra allows. He sucks a pink mark on each breast and then moves to lick and suckle gently on her neck. They’ve both agreed that they’re not middle schoolers and visible hickeys are beyond tacky, but they both go so wild from neck stimulation that it can be hard to resist spending a few minutes sucking a licking at the rapidly-beating pulse points.

As much as Brendon wants to keep teasing, Sara’s squirming like crazy, and he’s worried that if he kept going in the same way, she’d come before he got to touch her for real. He finally settles between her thighs for real this time, kissing and sucking gently on her vulva for just a second or two. Sara is quivering by the time he moves down to suck on her clit. As soon as he finally makes contact with the sensitive hood, she screams out in ecstasy, taking full advantage of Brendon’s roommate’s absence. He sucks around her clit just like her nipple, a few short staccato bursts followed by long, drawn-out pulls. He moves his tongue gently the whole time to stimulate her further.

Both of her hands are tangled in his hair, tugging hard when he moves from sucking on her clit to licking across her entrance. He licks across the opening in broad strokes before his tongue enters her, rubbing her clit with his thumb the whole time. He waits until her thighs are clenched tight around his head, and she’s bucking up against his mouth before he slips two fingers inside to rub over her g-spot.

“B, stop, I’m gonna fucking come!” She shrieks.

He lifts his head without slowing his fingers, “You don’t wanna come?”

“Want you to be inside me when I do. Inside me for real, not just fingers,” Sara pants, trying hard to distract herself from her building arousal.

As much as Brendon’s disappointed that Sara won’t come on his face, after all, he’s been hard for over an hour now, and he would love to get out of his restrictive jeans and get a little more stimulation than rubbing himself against the bed.

He crawls out of bed and peels his shirt off. Now it’s Sarah’s turn to marvel at her lover. His cheeks and chest are flushed a deep pink from the exertion and arousal, his face is shiny with spit and her juices, and his cock is tenting the material of his pants.

Sara strokes over herself lazily, it’s not nearly as good as Brendon, but it’s something to take the edge off while she watches Brendon unbuckle his belt to strip his pants off. He’s moving slowly on purpose. He always did love to put on a show.

Once he’s down to his black boxer-briefs, he asks Sara where she put the condoms when she came in.

“B, I love that you’re so distracted by me, but the bag is right next to you on the nightstand,” she answers.

“Hey, I’m not wearing my glasses. That’s not fair,” Brendon replies softly. He turns and opens the plastic bag with the drugstore logo on the front. Sara laughs when his eyes visibly widen. “Should I be scared?” He asks, holding up a large vibrating dildo.

Sara laughs. “No, love, I just wanted to get some toys I could leave at your place,” she answers as he pulls out a bullet vibe, two different types of lube, a cock ring, massage oils, whipped cream, a multi-pack of condoms, and yes, gum from the checkout stand.

“...I may have gotten a little carried away in the sexual wellness aisle,” she admits.

Brendon’s eyes are still the size of saucers, “God, no kidding, babe, this is all incredible,” he says, stripping off his boxers and opening the box of condoms to tear a packet open with his teeth. It’s a bad habit, and usually, Sara would scold him, but she’s so worked up that she spreads her legs in anticipation anyway. Her mouth goes dry while he strokes himself with lube before he rolls the condom on.

He finally, finally, finally settles over her. “Is this position okay?” he asks.

“It’s perfect, baby; I love getting to see your face when you push into me,” she answers, whining as he drags his cock across her opening.

That’s good enough for Brendon. He rocks forward into her slowly, partly because he’s a tease but partly because he wants this to last as long as possible. After pushing in deep to rub back and forth across her g-spot, he starts thrusting in earnest, relishing her moans and pants.

“Oh B, you feel so good,” she cries out.

“You feel even better, love. Squeezing so nicely around me. So tight and wet,” he says.

Sara scratches down his back in sheer bliss. Brendon’s rhythm is steady, but he’s moving just slowly enough that they can both relish every thrust without feeling overly needy or impatient. She pushes her thighs together to feel him even better inside her.

His thrusts falter for a second, and he chokes out a gasp. “Love you, love feeling you,” he groans, “but it’s been nearly a month since we last had sex, babygirl. If you keep that up, I am going to come.”

She relaxes her thighs just a little bit. “God, I love how sensitive you are right now, babe, responding to my every touch so much. I love you collected and composed too, but it’s such a treat having you so weak for me,” she marvels, stroking the back of his neck.

A shiver goes down his whole spine, and he devotes all of his energy to not coming. “I haven’t touched myself since we last had sex,” he admits, “I figured if my sweet girl couldn’t get off, I couldn’t either. It’s been such a challenge, but fuck, it was worth it. I’m so on edge for you.”

She tightens around him, moving her hand to touch her clit. “Shit, Brendon, that’s so fucking hot. I’m just thinking about you late at night, hard and aching thinking about me, but controlling yourself so it could be all the better when we finally reunited. Did you ever cheat? Did you ever jack yourself but force yourself to pull away right before you came to roll over and go to sleep? God, I bet you had so many dirty dreams. Bet you woke up humping a pillow because your body needed to get off so bad. Bet you’d struggle to hide your hard-on in public when your mind wandered even just a little. Such a dirty needy boy, but so so good for me, aren’t you?” she pants out, squeezing tighter as she talks.

He laughs, “You know me so well, sweetheart, all of the above is true. My roommate was thrilled to have all the hot water for himself this month because… I took a lot of cold showers. I’ll leave it at that. Now, if you don’t mind, I believe you’ve taken my job,” he says, replacing her hand on her clit with his own.

Sara falls back and goes rigid, crying out. He circles his thumb faster as the pace of his thrusts picks up. “I’m gonna come!” She shouts.

“Do it, come on me,” Brendon whispers.

Sara contracts around him, shrieking and convulsing as she comes on him before melting back onto the bed.

Brendon leans down to nip at her shoulder and then kiss her lips. “Good, baby?”

She nods, eyes closed and still panting hard.

“I’ll give you a second,” he murmurs, mostly to himself before pulling out and collapsing down next to her. He strokes over himself while he waits for her to come back down to earth, still rock hard.

“Shit, B, you still haven’t come,” she finally realizes, “do you want me to blow you?”

His cock twitches at the thought.

“Or I could ride you? Let you watch my tits bounce as I fuck you?” She suggests.

“That one wanna be back in that perfect cunt.”

Sara moves to straddle him, rubbing her clit against his tummy and kissing him before moving back to settle on him for real. She lets him thrust up into her a couple of times before moving herself, relishing the way his muscles tense under his flushed skin.

Brendon loves being ridden. He wouldn’t say it’s his favorite position, but it’s up there. It’s even better when Sara takes her bra off, as pretty as it is, and he gets to see her entire naked body. She gets herself at the perfect angle and rides him as hard as she can.

“I’m really not going to last long,” he warns.

Sara tangles her hands back in his hair just like he loves. She’s pulling out all the stops to get him to come. “God, B, me neither, I didn’t think I had it in me, but I’m right back on the edge. Just rub my clit, and I’ll come.”

He moves his hands from her ass to touch her clit.

She shudders, “B, I’m gonna come!”

“Me too,” he grunts out, “do you want me to pull out?”

“No, wanna feel your hot come inside me, even with the condom,” she answers before coming again. Even harder this time as waves of pleasure roll through her entire body.

The rapid contractions around his cock trigger his own orgasm, and his entire head goes blank as he gets lost in the sensation. Sara collapses and situates herself in his arms just as they’re both starting to come down.

He moves, but she stops him. “Honey, I’ve gotta,” he starts, but she whines and shakes her head, knowing exactly where he’s going, “I’ve gotta pull out so we can clean up and eat dinner. Round two after Italian?”

She finally nods but wraps her legs tighter against him anyway, “just two more minutes. Then we can go be romantic.”

***

“Sara, sweetheart, food’s almost here,” he whispers thirty minutes later. He’s wearing pajama pants with no shirt, and his torso’s still wet from the shower he took to rinse off. “Do you wanna go get yourself cleaned up while I set up the coffee table to eat?” He asks.

Sara shakes her head, “I get clingy and needy after sex-”

Brendon cracks a grin because he knows this, of course.

“So you’re stuck with me for the next couple of hours,” she finishes.

“Mm, that’s fine with me, babe. I just want you to be comfortable,” he responds, kissing her forehead.

She moves up into the kiss and realizes that a shower might be nice after all, “Actually, I am a little sticky. Come into the bathroom with me?”

“Anything you want, love,” he says, scooping her up and carrying her to the shower.

He turns the water on for her and then goes to sit on the counter while she rubs off the sweat under the spray. “B?” She calls.

“Yeah?”

“I know it’s nothing fancy, but when you rubbed my clit in little circles, I nearly died on the spot. Normally when I’m alone, I just stroke back and forth, but god, it felt so good to feel something new,” she says. Brendon doesn’t respond immediately. “B?” She calls back timidly, shy now. “B?”

She’s getting worried that he left without her hearing, so she pulls back the shower curtain and has to choke back a moan. Brendon’s still sitting on the counter, his head tipped back on the mirror, palming over himself through his PJ pants.

“God, Sara, sorry, I just love hearing how I make you feel, and I couldn’t help it,” he tells her.

Sara shuts the water off and walks across the bathroom to Brendon, paying no mind to how she’s dripping all over the tile. She yanks him up to his feet and drops to her knees on the padded bathmat in front of the sink. She pulls his pants down just enough- no underwear, she observes without surprise- and takes him in her mouth, getting him slick enough that she can stroke him to total hardness with her hand. Once he’s fully hard, she takes him back in her mouth and sucks hard, making his knees tremble. She bobs her head up and down, stroking him with her hand when she doesn’t have his whole length in her mouth.

He’s bracing himself against the counter to stay upright and not buck into her mouth. She moves down to just stimulate the tip while quickly stroking over the rest of him.

“Can you come for me? Food is going to be here any minute,” she says, looking up at him with big eyes.

“You playing with yourself down there, baby? Getting all wet from sucking me off?” He asks, the dirty talk getting him closer to the edge.

“Oh, you know it, gets me so hot, making you feel good. I wish I had one of my new toys, though,” she pouts before licking his dick again.

Brendon gropes behind himself blindly, trying to find… well. It’s not a vibrator, but it does, well, vibrate, he thinks, hitting the button on his electric toothbrush. He hands it to Sara, who puts it between her legs without hesitation, pressing it against her clit.

She goes weak, moaning a buzzy hum over his cock while she sucks. She knows he’s close by the way his balls are drawing into his body, so she goes ahead and lets herself go. Tightening the pressure around his cock.

“Shit, babe, I’m gonna come,” he warns, hips bucking. “Can I come in your mouth or…?”

She holds up a thumbs up, and he comes, most of it staying in her mouth, but some ends up dripping down her chin. She swallows, and Brendon hands her a wad of toilet paper to wipe off the rest with.

He tucks himself back into his pants and then helps her back to her feet.

“Can I have my toothbrush back, love?” He requests softly.

Sara blushes and takes the still-vibrating toothbrush out from between her legs, “Sorry, I forgot I still had that.”

“No worries,” he responds with a soft chuckle, kissing her forehead. He takes the toothbrush and turns it off before rinsing it off under the sink. “Gosh, you did a number on this thing. It’s soaked,” he marvels, “My perfect messy girl.”

Just then, there’s a knock at the door. “Perfect timing, must be the food. I’ll deal with that while you get dressed?” He suggests, and she nods, still a little dazed from the orgasm. Well, orgasms, plural.

She goes back to his room, where she stashed her bag and rummages through it for her pink silk slip nightgown. It’s super simple, just spaghetti straps with a straight-across neckline and then deep pink fabric straight down to just below her ass, but Brendon loves it. She suspects it’s just because she can’t move very much without flashing her butt, but he insists that the slip itself is gorgeous.

As she’s getting dressed, she hears the door open and Brendon apologizing for his relative state of undress, saying he just got out of the shower. Brendon’s naked more often than he’s clothed, so Sara just shrugs it off until she hears a giggle and flirting coming from the delivery girl.

Brendon stammers out that he has a girlfriend, but he’s flattered, but that doesn’t seem to be deterring the delivery girl, who makes an extra point to linger her hand on Brendon’s as she hands him the food. Sara strides out of his bedroom, “Hey, B, have you seen my panties? I can’t find them in your bed or your bathroom or the kitchen or the sofa, so I wonder if I left them in your pocket during our multiple rounds of lovemaking,” She calls before pretending to spot him and the girl for the first time by the door. She scootches in next to him and kisses him on the cheek, plastering a sickly-sweet smile on her face. “My apologies, didn’t know you had a guest,” she lies, shooting death beams at the delivery girl whose hand is on Brendon’s bicep. The girl retracts her hand, and Sara grabs a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet on the doorside table to tip her. Sara knows Brendon would’ve already tipped her on the website, but this more of a ‘please don’t touch my boyfriend without his consent tip’ than a ‘thank you for your work tip.’ “Have a nice day, ma’am,” Sara tells her, shutting the door.

Brendon smirks, but there’s a weariness behind it, “Way to save the day, baby. Getting possessive?”

“No, I love it when others check you out. Just validates how hot I am for you. You just sounded like you do when you get overwhelmed at the grocery store, and I figured you were feeling a little claustrophobic,” she explains.

Brendon nods. “I don’t mind a flirt, but she was getting way too handsy. And even then, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world; I just felt a little vulnerable being shirtless and all. She probably just wanted a big tip. I bet that works for her a lot. And y’know, I probably shouldn’t have been shirtless at all. If I was in a restaurant, they’d have every right to kick me out, so really, I’m lucky she didn’t blacklist my address,” he rambles, turning to get plates and silverware from the kitchen.

Sara touches his shoulder and grabs the bags of food from him. “Hey, B, you don’t need to justify your feelings, okay? I get it; she was in your space. Both your personal space by touching you and your physical area by being near your home. But it’s sweet of you to give her the benefit of the doubt. You’re probably right, I would guess that works with nine out of ten guys; she was cute. And hey, I gave her a nice tip to get her to go away, so it worked on us too.”

“And you got to brag to a stranger about our hot sex life, so it really did all work out in the end,” Brendon half-jokes, and she’s happy to observe that any panic seems to have left his body.

“Mhm, my favorite hobby. Maybe we should order dessert, and I can change into something even more slutty. This shows my ass so nicely, but my chest is totally covered,” she suggests, and he cracks a real smile for her. “Seriously though, you’re totally good?”

“Yes, ma’am, everything’s perfect,” he responds, and he’s telling the truth.

“Good, let me set up dinner then. You go relax on the sofa,” she orders.

Brendon goes to sit on the couch, knowing better than to deny a direct request. Sara plates the food and brings it to the now dim living room, where Brendon’s lit three candles in the center of the table.

“Awww, how romantic,” she praises, settling against Brendon with their food.

“I had more romance planned, I promise, I just weighed my options, and I cared more about snuggling with my girl than trying to overdo it on decorating the living room,” Brendon responds. “I do still have wine in the fridge if you want that?”

She twists around to kiss him. “The romance level is perfect. Consider me totally romanced. I think I’ll wait on the wine until later if that’s okay? It’ll make me sleepy, and I’m still interested in a round two,” she says, resting her hand against Brendon’s thigh.

“Whatever you want is fine with me, love,” he says, sighing contentedly.

***

“You’re falling asleep, babygirl.”

“Am not.”

“Your eyes are closed.”

“Your eyes are closed.”

Brendon smiles, “Do you wanna keep watching the movie, or do you wanna go to bed? If you’re sleepy, that’s fine, but we’ve gotta move to the bedroom then,” he murmurs.

Sara moves off the couch and stretches, turning on the light. “I’m not even tired; I took a nap earlier. It’s just the dim lighting and carb surplus. C’mon, let’s keep watching, it’s only 10 and we’re not even to the, ‘paint me like one of your French girls’ scene.”

“Okay, if you insist, then we’ll soldier on. I’ll get dessert,” he agrees, getting up to head to the kitchen.

“Ooo what’s for dessert?” she asks.

“Cannoli and coffee,” he responds.

Sara moans playfully. “God, Brendon, I’m so turned on right now.”

Brendon rolls his eyes. “I’ll try not to take offense that you’re more attracted to sweets than me.”

Sara wraps her arms around his waist from behind him. “I’d choose you over cannoli any day. Someone could offer me a thousand cannoli and I’d scoff in their face and then go kiss all over you. I love you, babe. Thank you for a great date night,” she says before spinning him around to kiss him.

“I love you too,” Brendon whispers against her lips. “Tonight was wonderful, and I owe it all to you.”

[ffxiv-angora]

Day 10: Heady

It’d taken bells for Shria and the coeurls to hike this deep into the jungle of eastern La Noscea. It was hot and unbearably sticky. But she’d do it as many times as she needed to so that they could have a safe place to stretch their legs with the cubs away from any cities. It was easy to see that they’d started to miss the freedom they had up in the northern forest of the tribe. Perhaps they’d go visit soon.

Shria tossed down the pack she’d been carrying with her as soon as they made it to a small clearing with plenty of trees surrounding it along with a stream. Two of the larger cubs nearly bowled her over when they ran between her legs to make a beeline for the water. The remaining two were still with their parents who’d taken their time to catch up. Ayanga, their mother, slowly padded her way to a nice sunny spot away from any soon to be wet cubs. That left Khums in charge of babysitting duties. He didn’t mind. The smallest of the cubs joined in on nap time with mom while her brothers romped in the stream with their father. Shria was honestly content to just quietly sit and watch them. But that wasn’t her main reason for coming out into the jungle.

She was no mage by any means. But somehow just a moon ago she’d managed to use some sort of strange magic. She wanted to do it again and practice...if she could figure out just how she’d even done it in the first place. Had she told her family about this weird magic? Absolutely not. They had enough going on already.

Shria gave herself a good amount of space so she could jump on the balls of her feet and wave her arms around. Loosen up. Angora and her brothers always made magic look so easy. She could do it! Super easy. Right? Right. Totally! Shria adjusted her stance so her feet were firmly planted and her hands were close in front of her. Jharak and Angora always were making balls of fire and lightning. Maybe she could do that.

Eyes closed. Deep, slow breaths. Shria fries her best to reach out with her own aether to feel anything and…

“Hhhhhh!”

...Oh if only Ayanga, who’d now flopped onto her side to watch all this, could speak. She’d tell her small lizard that the only thing she’d managed was to sound like she needed to use the bathroom. Shria huffs, puffing out her cheeks. Somehow she could feel Ayanga judging her.

“What if I just…”

Shria plops down onto the grass. This time she sits with her legs crossed and tries a more...meditative approach. You know, feel the nature around her. Isn’t that how the healers did it? Shria closes her eyes again and tries her damnedest to concentrate. She hears the wind gently rustling through the leaves, distant bird calls, and...Khums splashing in the stream like a maniac with the cubs. Still no magic. Shria groans, flopping onto her back. What was she doing wrong? How had she done it before? Sure, she’d been in the middle of being attacked by a bear the last time but she wasn’t about to try and replicate that situation.

It’s when the necklace around her neck shifts a bit that she remembers something. There had been burning. At one point it’d been around her neck but it’d also been in her pocket. Shria always carried a “part” of her animals just to feel like they were always with her. Simple things like feathers and scales. Some of them were strung onto her necklace while more awkward pieces were kept in her pocket or bag.

Shria shot back up and quickly dug through her pockets where she eventually pulled out a small glass vial. Inside was a decent amount of fur from both Ayanga and Khums. The two of them shed enough to make an entire new coeurl. The fur was not missed. The small au ra hopped back up to her feet.

“Maybe…?”

The vial is firmly grasped in both of her hands and held close to her chest. Shria closes her eyes now for the third time. This time she tries to focus on the feeling of the lightning magic that her coeurls used. It was hard to forget seeing as she’d been getting zapped by the cubs for moons now. Her grip tightens and something seems to shift with her own aether. The glass of the vial quickly starts to heat up to an almost uncomfortable level. Burns or not, Shria was not letting go.

There’s a heady rush of aether that surges through her arms. The overwhelming feeling nearly sends her falling onto her ass, but she stands firm after a sway or two. This aether wasn’t hers. How was she using it? The air around her crackles with electricity. Shria tries desperately to control and redirect the aether, but it’s too much. Too wild. A large bolt of lightning streaks down from seemingly nowhere and just as it makes impact with a nearby tree, the vial in Shria’s hands shatters.

Shria yelps both from the deafening crack of lightning and the scolding hot shards of glass in her hands. The remains of the vial are quickly dropped as Shria frantically waves her hands.

“Oooowowow! Hot hot hot!” Shria freezes, slowly turning to face the now decimated tree that was only a few fulms from where she was standing. “Wh-...Did…” She spins around so quick that one might worry she gave herself whiplash. Her eyes were wide and practically sparking.

“A-Ayanga!! Did you see that?? I did that! I did mag- annnd...you’re not even looking.”

As if on cue, Ayanga let out the loudest yawn the coeurl could manage. Shria just pouts, crossing her arms with a huff. At least she got an encouraging hoot from Khums. There were no thoughts behind those eyes of his but at least he tried.

[inkagnedotv]

Just as Facebook’s Antigone Davis was live on CNBC defending the company over a whistleblower’s accusations and its handling of research data suggesting Instagram is harmful to teens, its entire network of services suddenly went offline.

The outage started just before noon ET, and nearly four hours later, there’s no sign of restoration. No one from the company has offered an explanation of the issues or estimates for when the problem will be fixed. This is the worst outage for Facebook since a 2019 incident took its site offline for more than 24 hours, as the downtime hit hardest on the small businesses and creators who rely on these services for their income.

There are signs Facebook may be close to restoring services, and finally getting updates for its DNS registration. After failing all tests for most of the day, a test of ISP DNS servers via DNSchecker.org shows most of them successfully finding a route to Facebook.com. Facebook and Instagram are still down, but that’s a good sign that things are returning to normal.

On Twitter, Facebook communications exec Andy Stone says, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.” Mike Schroepfer, who will step down from his post as CTO next year, tweeted, “We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible.”

Inside Facebook, the outage has broken nearly all of the internal systems employees use to communicate and work. Several employees told The Verge they’ve resorted to talking through their work-provided Outlook email accounts, though employees can’t receive emails from external addresses. Employees who were logged into work tools such as Google Docs and Zoom before the outage can still use those, but any employee who needs to login with their work email is blocked.

Facebook engineers have been sent to the company’s U.S. data centers to try and fix the problem, according to two people familiar with the situation. That means the outage, already Facebook’s most severe in years, could be further prolonged.

A peek at Down Detector (or your Twitter feed) reveals the problems are widespread. While it’s unclear exactly why the platforms are unreachable for so many people, their DNS records show that, like last week’s Slack outage, the problem is apparently DNS (it’s always DNS).

Cloudflare senior vice president Dane Knecht notes that Facebook’s border gateway protocol routes — BGP helps networks pick the best path to deliver internet traffic — have been “withdrawn from the internet.” While some have speculated about hackers, or an internal protest over last night’s whistleblower report, there isn’t any information yet to suggest anything malicious is to blame.

Instagram.com is flashing a 5xx Server Error message, while the Facebook site merely tells us that something went wrong. The problem also appears to be affecting its virtual reality arm, Oculus. Users can load games they already have installed, and the browser works, but social features or installing new games does not. The outage is thorough enough that it’s affecting Workplace from Facebook customers and, according to Jane Manchun Wong, Facebook’s internal sites.

—Richard Lawler & Alex Heath, The Verge

[strongbearceo]

5 Biggest Mistakes CEOs Make

A CEO serves as the general public face of your business enterprise, liaise among the board of administrators and personnel, and make certain your crew feels heard and happy. For higher or worse, your selections effect each issue of the business, from the lowest line to worker happiness.

While now no longer each misstep you are making will cause bankruptcy, every horrific selection can purpose the business enterprise’s recognition to take a hit. To direct a thriving business enterprise as a CEO in any industry, right here are 5 not unusual place errors to avoid:

1. Not Knowing When To Delegate

Executives frequently fall for the lure of looking to do the whole thing themselves. After all, you could likely whole a challenge quicker and less expensive than all and sundry else, and also you agree with your self to do it correctly.

But except your business enterprise is in its infancy, getting worried within side the every day sports is definitely greater of a hassle than a help. When you’re caught within side the weeds, you don’t have the time or intellectual readability to cognizance for your business’s middle vision.

2. Not Recognizing That Your Expense Costs Aren’t Everything

Everyone desires to enhance their backside line, however you want to be strategic approximately which prices you try and cut.

Think approximately mail consolidators, the third-birthday birthday celebration organizations that the U.S. Postal Service hires to type a number of its mail. While mail consolidators do store the USPS 5-7%, this isn’t the entire story.

On the surface, saving 5-7% sounds great. But within side the lengthy run, trimming prices with out keeping first-rate and performance will value you greater in refunds and disgruntled clients, now no longer to say the damage on your logo identification and recognition.

3. Always suppose within side the lengthy-time period

Building a logo doesn’t appear overnight, and you need to continually teach one eye closer to the destiny in an effort to be competitive.

I admit I’ve been responsible of having so engrossed within side the brief time period that I lose sight of my business enterprise’s lengthy-time period vision. But whilst you’re now no longer searching ahead, you’re like a horse carrying blinders. You see best 3 ft in the front of you in place of the complete horizon.

4. Pay your humans well

Instead of paying a bit greater for the quality humans, they receive excessive worker turnover. But the greater turnover you have, the greater you need to pay for training. Worse yet, you’ll earn a recognition for treating your people poorly.

Besides paying your personnel greater, you ought to display them you care approximately what they do. If I ran a trucking business enterprise, for instance, I’d get my business drivers license. I’d show that I honestly experience the freight motion and appreciate the quantity of labor my personnel positioned it.

5. Never blame your crew

As a CEO, you need to receive duty—even supposing something’s now no longer your fault. In the logistics world, parcels wander away or broken and providers don’t supply on time. Trucks crash, destroying the bins and their contents.

But that is par for the course. There’s continually a threat with the use of a third-birthday birthday celebration middleman or riding on a public road. As CEO, you need to talk this fact on your clients in a sleek way.

If you are taking duty for mistakes and in no way blame your crew, each clients and personnel will appreciate your authority.

To know more about Entrepreneur, you can follow CEO Strong Bear by connect with him on social media:

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[ambymyself]

what’s going on

hi

im gonna start a stupid journal again because.... i need an outlet right now. i started journaling a many years ago and only made like 5 documents on google docs and i reread them and now im embarrassed. i really talked ugly back then, but that is who i was and i have to accept that. i never really planned on posting them publicly but now i feel like i want to, even tho i am embarrassed by them a little and i bet nobody is gonna read them anyway. i just feel like if i start doing this publicly, i should start with the beginning, so that is what this is first post will be. i might just post them all right now. i really want to fix the grammatical errors in them but i remember back when i first started i wanted to break the “rules” and talk how i wanted to talk so i guess i’ll stick with that for now. welllll, here goes nothing. this is #1

---

the start

saturday april 8, 2017

how do I start this. I don’t want to be all “hey everyone, it’s me! this is my first...what is this!”

you know what. I don’t even care. whatever. anyways, hey. it’s me. who am I? a bony ass  anxiety-filled ugly piece of shit. well, I’m not that bad. I’m rude, but only to people I don’t have respect for. like my dumbass stepdad. I won’t bitch about him just yet, it’s my time right now. I’m the star of the show.

lemme tell you more about me.

I’m an intelligent person (is that a positive mindset or egotistical?), but I’m just lazy and I procrastinate too much. way too much. if I have any homework or missing work that I need to get done at home, I’d completely forget about it and just sit on my computer all night. I say all night because I’m always awake at night. right now my sleeping schedule is

wake up at midnight (or anytime around midnight. 10p-2a)

sit on my computer until 4a or 5a, because that’s what I should be doing on my free time

take a quick nap until 8a for school

be at school until 3p, where I come home and fall asleep, if I don’t eat anything

and back to where we started

‘’what do you do on your computer all night???’’ you may ask, even though it is a dumb question, considering that there’s a lot you can do on a computer.

honestly, now that I think of it, I don’t do that much on my computer. all I do is play video games (Overwatch is my favorite) with my friends that I met a few years ago. they’re cool, they’re older than me, but I trust them. I don’t like to let people know that I talk to people on the internet because it makes me sound pathetic, because I don’t talk to anyone in real life. but fuck those bitches, right?

anyways, I… forgot what I was gonna say. what the fuck. don’t leave in the midst of writing to go get a drink because you lose your train of thought. oh! all I do is play games and talk to people on the internet because I have no actual friends.

that’s it. that’s my life at the moment. I’m bummed (bummed, really? no better word?) about being alone during the day, but talking to friends at night makes me forget about all of that. I think the reason I have bad social anxiety is because nobody ever talks to me. it’s hard for me to engage myself into conversations because - you guessed it - anxiety! I’m fine when other people start talking to me, but whenever I do talk my voice is always quieter than a mouse. when people are able to hear my voice, however, they’re surprised at how “deep” it is. it’s not deep. it might sound deep because I’m talking quietly, but it’s not deep.

I really want to be different. I want to have friends, be social. seeing everyone having fun and doing great things (it might not sound great to them) on social media while I’m sitting at home in my bed isn’t great. I can blame anxiety for me being too lazy to do anything about it, right? well. I guess I can blame whatever the fuck I want. I can blame everything if I want to, no one said that you need a reason to blame.

my mom doesn’t really understand what anxiety is. just like a lot of my family. they think that it’s just some little game that I’m playing, and they tell me to “just talk to people,” “be social,” and “it’s all in your head.”

!?!?!?!?

OF COURSE IT’S IN MY HEAD. it’s a mental disorder. an illness. my brain is ill. brains can get sick too, it’s an organ. just like a pair of lungs or a heart. whenever I say my brain is sick, they don’t believe me. instead of actually thinking about it and understanding what my deal is, they just jump straight to the you’re just doing it for attention bullshit. but that’s not the case.

INTERRUPTION - as I’m typing all of this, I’m thinking about what happens if I actually keep this going for a very long time. what if I actually let people see what I’m talking about? what if it gets published? who knows. for now, it’s for my eyes only.

enough anxiety talk for now. maybe I’ll share my thoughts on it in the future. I realized I haven’t talked about my family yet. I love my family. I’d do anything for them. I would definitely 100% sure I would lose my shit if I lost just one of them. family is all I got. my family is big, it’s not too big, but it’s big. I have my mom, my brother, and my bum ass stepdad. I don’t like my stepdad. I hate him, 100%. He’s the definition of a piece of shit. I still won’t talk about him yet. oh, and I have a bunch of pets. we have 2 cats named Eugene and Bo (Eugene is sleeping behind my laptop screen right now,) and 5 dogs, KC, Drew, Gizmo, Tiny, and Chico. they’re all different breeds, a german shepherd, a chihuahua, a pug, a shih tzu, and some german shepherd/rottweiler mix, I don’t know what the hell she is but she’s cute. I love my pets more than I love my family.

I also have 2 aunties, and 2 uncles. I don’t see one of my uncles very much though. I also have a shitload of cousins, too. there’s 2 cousins that are the same age as me, and I got to grow up with them. we were best buddies forever. well, until middle school. I still talk to one of them, but the other has other friends now. but we sometimes do things together still. last year we went to Hawaii and the movies.

I talk to my second oldest cousin a lot now. we talk everyday. we like to talk mad shit about everyone, especially our families. we’d be hated by everyone if they saw what we talk about. we have the same sense of humor. it’s great.

I only have one grandma and grandpa. they’re from my mom’s side. I love them very much. my grandma and I like to talk shit about my ugly ass stepdad a lot on Facebook. my mom doesn’t know that though. they love all of us (the entire fam) and is always making sure we’re well fed and have everything we need. if we ever needed anything, literally anything, they’re always there. that’s why I love them. they’re my favorite in the family.

okay, I’m not trying to get sentimental. I think that’s enough talking about me. I think I’ve talked about everything about me, sadly. well, I haven’t really talked about where I live.

I, along with my big family, live on a small reservation in Minnesota. we’re native. I love my culture, it’s the best culture there is, if I do say so myself. I didn’t grow up learning our language, because I went to a white people school. it wasn’t really all-white, there were other races there, but I like to call it white people school because it’s filled with mostly white people. I had very bad attendance, and because of that, I got bad grades. so I got kicked out.

I’m happy about that, though, because that forced me to go to the school in my town, where we learned about our language and shit. it’s way better than my old school. growing up I thought that this school was filled with shitheads who don’t know how to behave (yes, I know. there’s always those people in every school, now shut up.) but I was wrong. I like the people at this school. they’re different than people at other schools, but I like that.

woah, I just looked at how much I’ve written and GOD DAMN. that’s a lot. I think that’s enough about me.

---

4:22a

it’s 4 now. I’ve been writing for a long ass time. I didn’t even write that much. my brother’s friend is sleeping on our couch. I bet all of my food for the weekend will be gone in no time. my mom’s not home all weekend, she’s in Minneapolis.

I’m starting to get hungry, but I don’t want to go in the living room because it’d be fucking awkward if he woke up to me getting food. I don’t know why I’m not okay with that, I’m just not. I guess I’ll starve to death.

……

update

after I finished typing that, I went out and grabbed some chips. he wasn’t asleep, he was sitting on his phone in the dark. was it awkward? yes. fuck.

I’ll probably just eat these chips and watch some YouTube videos. that’s enough for today.

----

11:51p

I woke up at 1-ish today and saw that my friends were playing Overwatch (they’re not usually awake at noon??) so I decided to get on and play with them for a bit. it wasn’t super great, but it also wasn’t bad. it wasn’t bad at all, I love playing games with my friends.

when we were done, I noticed that everyone in the house was gone, and that it was complete mess. I forgot what I did all day. I think I just sat on my computer. what a great life!

I took a shower an hour ago, and now my eyelid is dry and it’s swollen. why me? what I did? please, lord, don’t do this to me.

----

wednesday april 12, 2017

4:00a

it’s already wednesday? this week is going by fast. nothing big happened this week.

wait, just kidding. my mom bought plane tickets on… I don’t know, but she bought plane tickets to Florida. we’re going for my birthday. but my brother isn’t coming, though. whatever. it’ll be fun.

[financenfreelance]

Freelance Jobs You Can Easily Do on Your Phone 💜

What skills can you use to make a legit income freelancing on your phone?  Well listen up, dear reader, because I have the tea on making money on mobile devices. Let’s start this article on Freelance Jobs you can do on your phone!

Are you a freelance beginner wondering if you can work as a freelancer with JUST a smartphone?

I can’t even blame you for being curious.

Freelancers are self-employed, independent bad asses.

I know when I started, I was looking for every and any way to get started. And compared to the 9-5 struggle, freelancing is a dream.

Make money with your smartphone

There are so many advantages to freelancing, such as:

Flexible work hours. Forget waking up at 8am.  Wake up at 1pm, have a mountain dew, and get cracking at your own time.

Say yes or no to whomever you please. Are you tired of dealing with Susan’s continual BS but can’t get away? There are no Susan’s to deal with in freelance work, because you choose who you work with.

Control how much you get paid. You can charge people for trying to rush you. Increase your prices if the work is tougher. You are in total control.

You provide a service to others based on their skills. They don’t have to deal with bosses when it comes to their projects.

Freelancing is also fantastic for side hustlers who want to earn a part time income.

It can be done from anywhere, so those who work from home or dream to work in Starbucks can do so if they please.

But let’s get back to the point. You’re probably wondering:

Can I work as freelancer from a smartphone?

The short answer: yep.

Your phone is basically full-fledged computer.  With built-in tools like internet access, text processing, and access to millions of free and paid apps, there is no reason that you can’t do freelance work from your phone. That’s right. Make money with your smartphone.

Let’s not forget that you also the ability to easily communicate with clients.  You have 24/7 access to clients through phone call, video, text, or email. Disadvantages of Freelancing on Your Smartphone

But it would be just plain irresponsible for me to not let you know the disadvantages ahead of time so that you’re prepared.

Some disadvantages include:

Your phone screen is quite tiny compared to a laptop or desktop monitor. This can be a huge pain. That is especially the case or jobs that require more screen space or having multiple programs and windows open.

Your phone also simply doesn’t have the same processing power as a desktop or laptop.

Some software is a lot harder to work in on the mobile app version

Mobile can glitch and overheat a lot easier than traditional computers

The battery life of smartphones is not as good as laptop computers, and sometimes having to stop to charge will be a huge disadvantage in time crunch situations

Still, with that being said, I would not try to discourage someone who is trying to become a freelancer and doesn’t have the resources yet to purchase a computer. For more info on getting yourself together, check out How to Stay Organized as a Freelance Beginner

If you have a phone, you have enough to get started. And if you’re a freelance beginner, be sure to check out The Ultimate Freelance Guide for Beginners for info on how to get started with freelancing.

What freelance jobs can you do on your phone?

It’s easier now than ever to just simply work from your phone, depending on the type of services you wish to offer.

Social Media Manager

Virtual Assistant

Photographer / Videographer

Writer / Proofreader

Customer Support Rep

Secondary Researcher

Editor

1.  Social Media Manager

This seems like a natural place to start. One of the best freelance jobs to handle solely on your phone is a social media manager.

As a social media manager, you would be responsible for helping your client manage their online presence.  This would include posting, managing pages, improve content and engagement, and the like.  You would also be interacting with customers and members.

Don’t forget, your client’s main objective will probably be to grow their following and increase their reach.

Ultimately, if you have excellent communication skills, and know about trends, hashtags, and follows this could be great for you!

Apps you might use for this job

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Snapchat

YouTube

Pinterest

Tumblr

Discord

Google Sheets, Slides and Docs

Management platforms like Tailwind, Planoly, Buffer, and Hootsuite

2. Virtual Assistant

So, what does a virtual assistant do?

In short, they pretty much do what regular assistants do. As one, you are going to be perform a variety of tasks that a client will need done, like making appointments or calls, sending emails, and creating reports.

You’ll be providing administrative services to your clients.

If you are good at following instructions and can also think on your feet, this can be a great job for you! If you have past customer service experience, it’ll be even better!

Because of unique specialties, tasks, and niches, this could be one of the highest paying jobs you can do freelancing if you work it out properly.

Apps you might use for this job

Google Sheets, Slides and Docs

Microsoft Office

Quip

Microsoft To Do

Calendars

Plus, anything niche related for your clients.

3. Photography and Videography

This choice will require you to get creative. Literally.

But with how amazing the camera specs are on phones these days; it is increasingly easy to create beautiful photos and videos from your phone.

Capture photos for your clients of needed people, places, and things. Those who are very detail-oriented and have a keen eye would be great for this freelancing profession.

Important: Make sure you are used to and okay with critique of your artwork.

If you have a decent lighting method, knowledge of and an eye for composition, and a will, you can definitely make legit money creating freelance photography for clients.

Apps you might use for this job

Camera App on your phone

Adobe Lightroom CC

Instagram

Dropbox

VSCO

Snapseed

Mextures

TouchRetouch

Afterlight 2

4. Writer or Proofreader

Freelance writing has exploded over the years and for good reason.  People are reading tweets, articles, books, ads, and everything under the sun.  Everything the light touches was written by somebody… so why not you?

So, if you enjoy writing, the demand is exceptional, and the time is now.  Overall, this can be perfect for you if you’re willing to put in the work.

There are also so many specialties to go into!

Article Writer

Content writer

Copywriting

eBook Ghostwriter

Editor

Niche writer

Proofreader

Social Media writer

….and so many more!

Apps you might use for this job

Google Docs

Microsoft Office

Grammarly

Dropbox

Evernote

Trello

Gmail

5. Customer Service

Freelancer Describes Customer Support jobs perfectly on their site:

“Customer Support refers to the services offered to customers before or after they buy products or services. Customer Support can refer to contacting the support centers of a business by phone, fax, email or live chat system. Then the customer support agents help the customer with a technical problem or general query by pointing him or her to the appropriate help pages or resources. “

Overall, to be a good candidate, you should be good at typing, research, and communication with others.  Also, you will need a lot of patience to be successful, as this job can get stressful. With all of this being said, it can still be a great way to make money with your smartphone.

Apps you might use for this job

Phone App Software

Gmail

Outlook

Microsoft Office

Grammarly

6. Secondary Researcher

Some companies cannot put in the time to do their own research.  That is where you come in.

As a secondary researcher, you can perform market research, competitor research, review statistics, or analyze trends.

So, this choice would be great for someone who is very organized, analytical minded, and curious. If you love to read and are you competent at putting together reports of your findings, then a secondary researcher job may be for you!

Apps you might use for this job

Google Docs

Microsoft Office

Instapaper

Grammarly

Dropbox

Evernote

Trello

Gmail

Recommended Article: Freelancing Tips For Beginners: What I Learned My First Year

7. Editor / Proofreader

Do typos, grammatical errors, and subject-verb disagreements bother you to no end?

If so… I’m surprised that you’ve made it this far in my article and I’m so sorry for mistakes that may have offended you.

But still, as I’ve said above, written content is on the rise.  And nothing is perfect on the first, second, and in my case, third written draft.

Still, you can earn legit coin if you have a critical eye and skills in proofreading. All of this being said, this can be a great freelance job you can do on your phone.

Apps you might use for this job

Google Docs

Microsoft Office

Instapaper

Grammarly

Dropbox

Evernote

Trello

Gmail

Read my story on why I started freelancing and how I went from broke to $1000 a week.

More Posts on Freelance Success

Freelance Skills You Can Learn in a Week

Freelancing Tips For Beginners: What I Learned My First Year

How to Set Goals for Your Freelancing Business

How to Stand Out as A New Freelancer

6 Tough Lessons Learned From Freelancing For 6 Years

Advice For Freelance Beginners

How To Start Freelancing for Beginners (2021)

How to Start Freelancing While Working Full Time (2021 Guide)

Best Paying Freelance Jobs to Start Now (2021)

Freelance Jobs You Can Easily Do on Your Phone

How to Stay Organized as a Freelance Beginner

Mistakes You’re Making on Your Freelance Portfolio

Quick Guide to Setting Freelance Goals in 2021

The Ultimate Freelance Guide for Beginners

[clarencenicholsonata]

20 Best Must-Have Slack Apps (Paid & Free)

I’ve worked both remotely and in a cluttered office space. One thing I learned in both places is that team communication tools either help you to successfully execute your projects, or leave your entire department in disarray.

Slack is one of the best tools to communicate and organize your team and projects all in one place. Since it was released in 2013, it's grown to be one of the most trusted team collaboration tools, with massive brands like AirBnB, Shopify, Target, and Lyft on its client roster.

What makes Slack so easy to work with is the freedom to integrate other tools and software focused on improving project management, customer service, coding, and more.

Instead of searching through Slack’s App Directory and experimenting with app after app, only to go through endless trial and error, I've listed 20 of the best Slack apps to boost productivity for you and your team.

1. nTask

Site: nTask

Free: Free basic account

Price: Upgrade at $2.99/monthly per user.

Background: nTask is a task management tool that's designed for tracking issues, giving feedback, and managing various teams and projects along with added features like:

Time Tracking & Timesheets

Meeting Management

Issue Tracking

Risk Management

Pros & Cons: nTask, like most Slack apps, provides a seamless integration so you can start working on your projects right away. nTask support provides you with online tutorials so you can find your way around its user-friendly platform. You can create a checklist, schedule meetings, share files, and give feedback on individual projects.

However, nTask doesn't have a timer for its time management features. Sometimes you'll have to switch platforms between Slack and nTask’s desktop platform to make updates or assign multiple or complex tasks.

2. Time Doctor

Site: Time Doctor

Free: Free trial available

Price: Starting at $9.99/month

Background: Time Doctor is one of the most optimized Slack management tools out there. Unlike most management apps made for small or large teams, Time Doctor offers features that can work for single freelancers and sizeable organizations alike.

Pros & Cons: At first glance, the Time Doctor App looks like a simple time management app. On closer examination, it proves to be a project manager’s swiss army knife. Capabilities include:

Real-time tracking (with a timer)

Assigning and receiving updates on task

Chat monitoring and screenshots

Detailed client reporting

Payroll management

Attendance and break tracking

Combine Time Doctor with other add-ons like Salesforce, Google Drive, and Dropbox for extra horsepower.

The only cons to this app are the time-consuming and complex processes required to merge your current business account and HR information with the Time Doctor, and then slow integration with Slack.

Reviews on the mobile app haven't been all that great either, which means it might not be a fan favorite. Nonetheless, you should still try it out for yourself before making a decision.

3. Wonder

Site: Wonder

Free: Free Forever

Background: If you're tired of placing sticky notes and staring every single item in your Slack chat, Wonder is the perfect app for you.

Pros & Cons: Wonder is a hybrid of post-its and voice notes to help remember passwords, terms, and anything else. The only con I've found so far with this app is that installing it requires a wait time. You'll have send a request through Wonder’s home page and then wait for Slack to approve it.

4. Dropbox

Site: Dropbox

Free: Free trial available

Price: Starting at $12.50/month

Background: Dropbox has always been rival to Google Drive, and after its brand and user interface refresh in May 2019, it added a few features to make your Slack and Dropbox integration flow better than ever before.

Pros & Cons: You can easily share files straight from Slack to Dropbox and vice versa without switching from platform to platform. You'll receive updates on changes or documents shared with your teammates. There are not many cons to Dropbox, as the features are limited to saving, editing and sharing documents.

5. Tettra

Site: Tettra

Free: Free account available

Price: Starting at $39/month

Background: If you run a customer service or technical support agency, Tettra is the perfect Slack app for managing your knowledge base and finding every FAQ answer in record time.

Pros & Cons: If you have an information driven team then Tettra, previously known as Tettra Wiki, is made for you. It’s your very own Wikipedia, tailored to your company's policies, procedures and more.

Tettra gives you the option to make individual pages public or private, give read-only or editing access, and provides content analytics for each page, question or document, so you can improve along the way.

You can also search and share answers from Tettra in Slack without leaving the platform. Tettra goes a step further to provide your team with automated content suggestions so you can optimize your knowledge base.

It does take some time to connect to Slack, and you have to be very careful with how you structure your knowledge base over time, page permissions and access.

6. Statsbot

Site: Statsbot

Free: Free account available

Price: Starting at $45/month

Background: With the help of SQL and Javascript, Statsbot turns your raw data sources into data your team can analyze, monitor, and track.

Pros & Cons: This is one of the best data analytics tools, next to Google Analytics, except that it easily allows you to streamline, share, and access reports in Slack. Statsbot provides reports like

Predictive Analytics

Profit Analysis

Trend Indicators

Financial Forecast/Budget

You can schedule what time you'd like to get your reports or export them as you need them. Statsbot also allows you to set up notifications or alerts you automatically when there's a spike or unusual activity in data for specific reports, so you're ahead of the curve.

You can get reports as detailed as they can be, or you can simplify them to share with teammates who might not be as keen on reading through massive data sets.

The main drawback is that set up may be a bit complex if you're not used to inputting or driving aggregate data through an analytic system. The cost to access features, reports and adding teammates is also pretty pricey.

7. Donut

Site: Donut

Free: Free account available

Price: 10 user minimum for $49/month

Background: Donut is a Slack app that's centered around providing a smooth onboarding process and features to help build company culture.

Pros & Cons: Donut provides custom onboarding services and features for new hires and stakeholders in HR, sales, and engineering right in Slack.

A significant pro that attracts most people to Donut is their team building features. For example, Donut will randomly pair employees from other teams that don't know each other well and let them schedule a coffee break with them, or collaborate for light projects using Slack commands like #coffee-buddies, #lunch-pals, or #donut-friends-forever.

Small, in-app nudges like this help to make team building and growing company culture more engaging and fun rather than obligatory meet and greets for medium and large organizations.

The only con is that you'll have to pay to play with Donut. To get access to most, if not all, of its best features, you'll have to upgrade your account.

8. Quip

Site: Quip

Free: Free trial available

Price: Starting at $10/month (with $12 per user)

Background: Quip, known for being Salesforce’s partner in crime, is also a great Slack app for project collaboration and sales management.

Pros & Cons: You can use Quip to organize, edit, and share documents, sheets, or client projects to get work done as a team with Slack’s direct messaging feature. You can also share workspaces, feedback, or communicate on the document as your team works alongside each other.

The only con is that Quip is mainly another version of Google Docs, except for its detailed user dashboard and more engaging project collaborations. The only advantage is that you can integrate more apps with Quip + Slack to streamline your workflow.

9. Asana

Site: Asana

Free: Free account available

Price: Starting at $9.99/month

Background: Asana is a Wishpond favorite, so our review may be a bit biased. But you can't blame us; Asana is one of the best work management platforms out there. It helps our team stay focused on the goals, projects, and daily tasks to start and finish the month organized and on a high note.

Pros & Cons: Asana allows you to set deadlines, assign projects to team members and add comments, updates, or remarks so you can track each project progress. You'll also get email updates if any changes or projects are submitted.

Asana offers a "Workload" feature where you can view what projects your coworkers are working on, and what their workload for the day, week or month looks like so you can reassign or reschedule tasks accordingly.

The only con is that Asana on its own isn't that great, you're just left with a workflow and project management app. With its integration with Slack, you'll get to experience the full wonders it has to offer your team.

10. Kyber

Site: Kyber

Free: Free account available

Price: Starting at $3/monthly + 14-day free trial

Background: Kyber is an affordable team management app that helps you to keep track of your project in Slack.

Pros & Cons: Kyber is similar to Asana, but with team polls and surveys, and gives you the option to plan meetings right in Slack. You also have access to a Kyber dashboard where you can monitor and add tasks for your teammates.

Kyber gives you the option to send yourself a morning task list, task reminders (plus recurring reminders) and project status so you can see what's on your plate when you start and end your day.

Kyber does offer team collaboration, but its strong suit is really in personal productivity more than anything else.

11. Maker.io

Site: Marker.io

Free: Free trial available

Price: Starting at $49/month

Background: Marker.io is a troubleshooting app that helps you to solve any issues, catch bugs and technical issues with Slack

Pros & Cons: You can use Marker.io to find issues your team may be having with Slack without going straight to your developer.

This app also gives you the option to share or take partial screenshots. Marker.io also sends you detailed troubleshooting reports and resolutions so you can see if you can resolve the issue on your own before passing it along to your technical team.

One of Marker.io’s best features is that you can integrate Marker.io + Slack + other apps for a 360 approach to project management, using Trello, Asana, GitHub and Jira Software, to name a few.

12. Lever

Site: Lever

Price: Request a custom quote

Background: Lever is a popular recruiting platform that helps you to find the right candidate with the help of Slack, allowing you to recommend or list requirements for potential hires. Lever is essentially HR meets Slack.

Pros & Cons: Used by top brands like Shopify, Netflix, and Lowes, it's become one of the most trusted recruiting software names to date. Don't just take our word for it: Lever was awarded as a G2 Leader in Spring 2018, along with taking home Capettera's Best App for Ease of Use 2018 award, showing that Lever put its money where its mouth is.

Lever provides features to ensure that you recruit the best of the best, allowing interviewers to provide direct feedback to each candidate, transition the onboarding process and allowing team members to give input on candidates to see who'll be the best fit for their team.

Lever also offers advanced recruiting features like an interview kit, integration with LinkedIn Recruiter, and caps your candidate headcount so you can limit offers. You can also boost employee referrals with trackable social links just like LinkedIn.

The main drawback is that you'll need additional accounts like LinkedIn and apps/software to optimize Lever, along with its high prices. But depending on what you're recruiting needs are, it might just fit the bill.

13. Stripe

Site: Stripe

Price: 2.9% + 30¢ per successful card transaction

Background: Stripe is a payment app that allows you to accept, track or refund payments through Slack.

Pros & Cons: Stripe offers ecommerce and online payment integrations and free API to build a custom ecommerce experience. You can also set up a recurring subscription and invoicing with the option to connect your Quickbooks account.

A major con is that the more you integrate Stripe with other payment options (for both local and international) the more fees you attract. Stripe also doesn't accept PayPal payments, which can put you at a disadvantage since many global shoppers use PayPal to make purchases.

It also isn't fitting for business looking for a single processor for online and offline payments. Think of it as an extension, like Mastercard, Apple Pay, or Visa.

14. Timebot

Site: Timebot

Free: Free account available

Background: Time bot is time management app you and your team can use in Slack to track your work, projects, and days off.

Pros & Cons: Timebot is an HR friendly tool for Slack, allowing you to know who's on sick leave or vacation. You can also request time off, call in sick, or track your project time - all without leaving Slack.

A major pro for Timebot is that you don't need any extra programs to track your time, which makes it perfect for team managers, supervisors and your HR team so that communication and management can be requested and accepted effortlessly.

15. Monkey Test It

Site: Monkey Test It

Free: Free account available

Price: Starting at $9/month

Background: Monkey Test is an app that looks for bugs, broken links, missing images, and any other issues you might be having with your Slack or website.

Pros & Cons: Monkey Test It allows you to easily schedule tests and get notified for bugs or issues that need to be resolved. It also provides API integration

If your business needs high volume testing, checking and monitoring your Firewall/Intranet access or white labeling, you can request a custom plan from Monkey Test It.

16. Google Calendar

Site: Google Calendar

Free: Free account available

Background: Manage your meeting, work hours, projects, and plan team collaborations with Google Calendar through Slack.

Pros & Cons: If you live on Google Calendar, then you're in luck! You can integrate your current Google Calendar with Slack without switching back and forth between the two platforms. You can book your Google calendar events and Hangout meetings in Slack. When the time is approaching, Slack will send you a notification to let you know.

17. Voicea

Site: Voicea

Free: Free account available

Price: Starting at $7.99/month

Background: Voicea is an enterprise voice assistant (EVA) bot that helps to record your notes, meetings and saves your most important information through Slack.

Pros & Cons: When you add Voicea as a meeting attendee, it syncs with your Google Calendar, so it's in the meeting ready to record notes when you are. It also comes with a mobile app you can use for on-the-go meetings.

You can track internal, interviews, research, and customer meetings all at once or over several online meeting platforms, which gives you the flexibility to keep track of your sessions no matter what platform you use. It also comes with a simple interface and integration so you can get started right away.

The drawback of Voicea is that it doesn't work very well if you're in a room with multiple people talking via one device. Not everyone likes having their meetings recorded, so you'll have to ask for permission ahead of time.

18. Paymo

Site: Paymo

Free: Free 15-day trial available

Price: Starting at $9.56 /user/month

Background: Paymo is a great app for businesses or freelancers for invoicing, task management, and more.

Pros & Cons: You can create a to-do list, time tracking, detailed reports, and invoices with Paymo, all through Slack. Paymo also gives you the option to develop milestone tracking and customizable templates to share with your team or clients.

New to Paymo? They have responsive customer service and an online academy to help you with common FAQs you might have. The con is that you'll have upgrade to access the best features Paymo has to offer.

19. Standuply

Site: Standuply

Free: Free account avaiable

Price: Starting $7/month

Background: Standuply is a team management app that helps your team to keep updates on who's doing what with daily updates.

Pros & Cons: Standuply is made for remote workers or busy team members who want better communication, less meetings, and an active company culture. Standuply sends scheduled meeting messages to each team member asking them what they did yesterday and what they'll do today. You can also track team performance through Standuply through Slack.

You can also set meetings and reminders based on your team members time zones. You can also integrate Standuply and Slack with other apps like Giphy, Product Hunt, Medium, and more.

The only con Standuply has is that it's not as customizable as you would like it to be, but it gets the job done.

20. Harvest

Site:Harvest

Free: Free account available

Price: Starting at $12/month

Background: Harvest acts as a time management tool that allows you to track time and invoices so you can manage your logged hours.

Pros & Cons: If you're a freelancing company or service that gets paid by the hour, Harvest can help you to get paid, manage your hours, and bill your clients seamlessly. You can also integrate payment apps like Quickbooks, Paypal, and more, so you can sync and invoice payments in Slack without leaving.

Once you've integrated Harvest with Slack, all you need are a few Slack commands to get started. You can also view your hours and payments in Slack.

There have been some comments about the user interface on Harvest online platform when compared to using the app on Slack, but I think that's more of personal preference.

Summary

Have any other apps in Slack that you’ve loved using? Comment below! We’d love to hear them!

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[serverfirm]

How we do HumanOps at Server Density

HumanOps came from experience of Server Density’s team being on call. In the early years, I was on call 24/7 for long periods of time. As the team grew, we implemented policies and processes to help share the load and deal with the challenges of being interrupted or woken up.

Through building and selling a monitoring product that is designed to wake people up, we noticed that our customers were experiencing the same kinds of challenges with on call that we had experienced ourselves. Talking with customers revealed this was common within the industry so we examined our own approach and researched best practices within the industry. This led to creating a community to share and discuss a set of principles we called HumanOps.

Just like transitioning technical practices to adopt the ideas of DevOps, bringing faster deployment, modern tooling and shared development / operations responsibilities, we are hoping HumanOps will help organisations adopt a human approach to building and operating systems.

Here’s how the HumanOps principles work at Server Density.

1. Humans build and fix systems

At the heart of HumanOps are the humans building, running and maintaining the systems. It might be obvious but it’s important to state as the first principle because without acknowledging that running operations necessarily involves humans, it’s too easy to just think about the servers, cloud services and APIs.

In practice, this means ensuring that in all aspects of systems design and management, you think about how humans are involved from the beginning. Areas to consider include:

What aspects of the system operation can be automated? Removing humans from the day to day operation is ideal because they should only be involved when something goes wrong that the system cannot fix.

What alerts should you configure to involve humans? At what point does the system need someone to investigate a problem and is it critical, or something that can be resolved during working hours?

When humans do have to get involved, how is that involvement highlighted to the rest of the team and management? Are you keeping track of out of hours alerts, the frequency and long term trends?

2. Humans get tired and stressed, they feel happy and sad

This is the starting point for improvements to your processes. When working with computers, you can reasonably expect them to perform in the same way regardless of the time of day. This is, of course, the key benefit of computer systems – they can reliably execute tasks without getting tired.

A common mistake is applying the same logic to humans, or simply not thinking about how humans react differently in different situations. Emotions, stress and fatigue introduce variability so catering for this is an important part of designing the system.

An example of this is dealing with human error. Computers don’t make mistakes. They won’t suddenly press the wrong button because they were too tired. Humans can, and without the right training and safeguards they probably will. Human error is a natural part of any system, and understanding how that can affect things is important. It should be considered a symptom rather than a problem, and encourage you to look deeper at the context that allowed a human to make the wrong decision.

Training is one to way to help here. The goal is for training to be as realistic as possible, so when the real thing happens it feels no different from training. This helps to reduce stress in difficult situations, because you know what you’re supposed to be doing. Stress arises from uncertainty coupled with the pressure of knowing the system is broken, so anything that can be done to alleviate that is beneficial. AtServer Density, we run war games to simulate common alert scenarios, so that everyone knows what they should do in each situation.

3. Systems don’t have feelings yet. They only have SLAs

SLAs are a well understood method of defining what you should expect from a particular service or API. You should be able to easily determine whether a service is hitting its SLA or not, and what happens if it doesn’t. This makes it easy to gauge your expectations.

4. Humans need to switch off and on again

Similar to #2, unlike computers which can run constantly for many months and years, humans need time to rest. Responding to alerts and dealing with complex systems quickly takes its toll, so time to rest and recover must be built into the processes. A human can only maintain focused concentration for 1.5 – 2 hours before needing a break or suffering from deteriorating performance.

The way we deal with this at Server Density is through how we schedule our on call rotations. The primary/secondary roles cycle through the team and we have specific response time guidelines depending on whether you are primary or secondary. This helps to reduce the feeling of being tied to your laptop e.g. the secondary isn’t required to respond as quickly so doesn’t necessarily have to be close to their laptop at all times.

Further, we have on call recovery time off booked automatically for the next working day whenever you respond to an alert out of hours. The responder has the choice to forgo that time off if they wish but the company will never ask them to do that. This ensures responders have sufficient time to recover and there is no pressure on them not to take it e.g. By asking them to actively request it vs it being given automatically.

5. The wellbeing of human operators impacts the reliability of systems

Giving people time off after dealing with alerts overnight might sound like us just being nice to our team. However, as nice as it may seem there is also a business reason behind it – people who are tired make mistakes and there are many examples of major outages caused or made worse by operator fatigue.

Just like insurance, it can be hard to show a direct benefit because you’re hoping you never have to use it. The benefit of reducing the chances of human error is that something bad does not happen. That can be hard to measure, but there is logical reasoning that if your human operators are happy, they will make better decisions.

6. Alert fatigue == Human fatigue

Receiving too many alerts is known as alert fatigue. It’s when you receive so many that you tune out and ignore them, potentially missing something important. It defeats the point of alerting, which should be a rare event to notify humans that something serious is wrong.

Solving this involves auditing your monitoring to ensure that the alerts you get are actually actionable, and should be actioned.

7. Automate as much as possible, escalate to a human as a last resort

This is linked to #6 because alerts should only ever reach a human if the system can’t fix itself. Waking someone up to reboot a server or perform a simple manual action is not acceptable. Where something can be scripted, it should be. Humans should only ever be involved to diagnose complex issues and perform unusual actions which must have human decision or supervision.

Unfortunately, this is difficult to solve after a system has gone into production. This is because with modern technologies such as Kubernetes and cloud APIs, it is possible to automate recovery of almost every type of failure but it is a lot of work to retrofit new technologies to legacy systems. Of course, there is a cost in both running redundant systems and the time required to implement, but it will repay itself with the time saved from your human team and the reliability offered to customers.

The right principle to apply to building new infrastructure is that nothing in production should ever be done manually. Everything should be templated and scripted, so it can be handled automatically.

When retrofitting legacy infrastructure, a balance has to be struck because it may not be realistic to rewrite major components into containers, for example. But there may be ways to achieve similar goals e.g. Moving a self-hosted database to a managed service such as AWS RDS.

8. Document everything. Train everyone.

Nobody really likes writing documentation but it quickly becomes necessary as your team grows and as the system becomes more complex. You need sufficient documentation such that someone with limited knowledge of the detailed internals is able to resolve problems with checklists and run books.

Training is just as important, and will help to reveal deficiencies in the documentation. Running realistic simulations in addition to walking people through how things work is essential for anyone on call.

At Server Density we make use of Google Drive to help make our documentation easily accessible and searchable to the whole company, but there are plenty of other options for hosting your docs.

9. Kill the shame game

Getting to the root cause of a problem will almost inevitably mean that you find that someone made a mistake, didn’t plan every scenario, made mistaken assumptions or introduced a bug. This is normal and people should not be shamed as a result because they will be less likely to want to help discover the problems next time.

Nobody is perfect and everyone has broken production at least once! The important part is not blaming an individual, but learning how to make the system better and more resilient to those kinds of problems. It is almost never the case that someone deliberately caused a breakage and so people should be comfortable owning up to their mistakes as soon as they realize them, so a fix can be implemented quickly. Failures should be viewed as an opportunity to learn and get better as a team.

The way to implement this is with the principle of blameless post-mortems. This involves completing an analysis of the incident to understand what went wrong right down to the root cause but without singling out an individual at fault.

10. Human issues are system issues

There is a tendency to consider human and system issues separately. It is normal to be able to justify spending on additional system capacity and failover but managers are less used to thinking about human issues with the same priority. All the principles above highlight why human issues are just as important, and so they should be given the same time consideration and budget.

When planning our development cycles at Server Density, we often prioritise tasks based on whether the fix will reduce the number of out of hours alerts. Implementing fixes for issues discovered in our incident post mortems becomes high priority if the issue is waking people up, or has the potential to in the future.

11. Human health impacts business heath

The justification for #10 is that if our human health and wellbeing is impacting on our work and contributing to system problems, and system problems are causing loss of revenue or reputation, then human health is directly related to business health. Hiring is expensive and time consuming so looking after your team is just good business.

12. Humans > systems

Although it is important to consider humans and systems to be the same in terms of level of impact they have on each other, and how interconnected they are, humans are ultimately the most important. After all, why does your business exist in the first place? To provide a service to other humans! And why do people do a particular job if not to help provide them with a living?

Not only that but improving life for your own team is easily justifiable. To be able to hire and retain the best people, you must have good working practices. Constantly being woken up, blaming people for errors and not fixing problems will eventually take its toll on people. Increased stress levels over a prolonged period of time can have significant health impacts and has been linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and diabetes. Many organisations are unintentionally impacting the health of their employees in significant ways.

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[primrose-path-of-dalliance]

rating: General Audiences characters: Riza Hawkeye, Roy Mustang summary: In the aftermath, the events of the Promised Day finally catch up to the two. Brotherhood canon. word count: 2811 also on: FFN

shoutout to @thecookiemonster77​ for betaing this fic and catching so many errors in it! (and also gushing w me about these two in the google doc comments—they're so soft and silly.) a million thanks friend!!

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

—Helen Keller.

Finally, the door shuts with a small click, and the kind nurse leaves Roy to the quiet darkness of the hospital room.

He sits crosslegged on the bed, peering with aching eyes into the nothingness at what he knows is a plain, white wall on the other side of the room, and imagines for a ludicrous moment that the intensity of his gaze, if he could stare and will it hard enough, might pierce through the curtain of darkness. And everything would be fixed.

But the Truth isn't that simple, and he scoffs at himself. You fool.

Roy closes his useless, godforsaken eyes, pressing his fingers into them with a grimace, and pulls his attention away from them to the rest of his senses, his remaining tethers to the world around him. He needs to be reminded that he isn’t simply floating, alone, in an empty void of blackness. And as he focuses, he can hear people bustle outside his door, solid businesslike footsteps and shuffles, the occasional squeak of a wheelchair passing by from room to room and muffled murmurs leaking through the cracks. He realizes, as he finally registers the complaints of his wounded palms, that his hands have been clenched for some time, stiff fingers digging into the cool sheets of his bed, and with a long exhale, he relaxes them and winces at the pain until it dulls again to a mere ache. He carefully places one on the inside of his elbow, where a fresh bandage holds a dressing firmly in place over the small wound where a PVC used to be. (Roy presses the butt of his palm against it and grimaces; he always seems to bruise after getting his blood drawn.) And surrounding him, filling his nose is the familiar stench of hospital convalescence: arid and sterile, the faint taint of bleach sticking like a film over every surface.

The smell nauseates him. Hospitals, like the battlefield, lost their idealistic charm for him a long time ago.

Nearby lies Lieutenant Hawkeye, her breathing irregular in her sleep but strong. Roy can't see it, but he knows an IV line is hooked up to the back of her hand, steadily feeding her veins a drip of blood.

She fell asleep while the line was being put in, which he's relieved about to an embarrassing degree. A severed jugular vein is serious business, and even in his blindness he can still see the dark lake of her blood beneath her, growing vividly by the second as she demanded him, the light fading from her eyes, to let her die.

They're ridiculously lucky that the good doctor didn't go for her carotid artery instead. Mei's alkahestry, as capable medical aid as it is, does little in the way of lost blood. And then for the lieutenant to stand back up in spite of that, and keep fighting by his side—

Roy's relieved. He's relieved, and grateful, and glad, because she horribly needs the rest.

And maybe, he considers wryly as he rubs his temple and grimaces, he does as well. God knows how the lieutenant would scowl if he stays awake brooding for any longer. His head is beginning to throb, joining the aches of his eyes and bandaged hands.

Roy then smiles self-deprecatingly—his issues have nothing on near-death by exsanguination, all things considered. He massages his eyes before lying down and, turning his eyes up to what he presumes is the ceiling, listens to his lieutenant, alive, breathe softly for a time. At some point, he slips finally into a restless doze, confusing, nebulous dreams darting about the edges of his awareness like bolts of flame alchemy, taunting him. Roy reaches for them, grasping at the tendrils like straws until they transform into pyres of firewood. Sparks drift into the dark sky.

"Roy," teenage Riza says quietly from behind the small campfire. She's swaddled in a blanket and warming her hands up near the flames, gazing into them with thoughtful, innocent eyes. Not those of a killer’s. "Why do you like alchemy?"

Roy spears a marshmallow and thrusts it into the fire. He passes one already done a golden brown over to Riza. "What do you mean?"

She looks at him, bereft and dressed in mourning black, from the other side of her father's grave. Her eyes are heavy with the faded scars of grief. "Because it destroyed my family."

A wind buffets the sticks of marshmallows in his hands until they're yanked away, flying up over the graveyard and into the clear blue sky. Roy watches them disappear with an oddly detached, nostalgic sorrow, and when he turns back around, the two of them stand in their dress blues and beige overcoats, surrounded by the sandy outskirts of the Eastern Desert, and Riza stares with horror at all of Ishval burning before them.

She turns to him, eyes accusatory—and betrayed. "I trusted you."

Roy flinches from that uncompromising blame, from the guilt, unable to meet her glare, and when he looks away he's at one of the military camps in Ishval, awaiting the trucks that will finally send them home. He gazes up at the Führer of Amestris, who stands with his hands on a sword hilt, draconian and victorious, atop a mass of corpses both foreign and native-born.

"You have to fix this, Roy," Hughes says from beside him, where Roy can't see, "so that this never happens again, and make amends for all of us. And for god's sake, man, get yourself a wife! You need all the support you can get now that I can't be your best man anymore."

Roy scowls bitterly; even in death, Hughes just has to bug him like this. But when he turns to give Hughes an irritated retort, he's met instead with an expanse of white and a Gate that looms ominously before him. From behind, where he can't see, the Truth speaks.

"A hopeful vision for the future, surrounded by the answer; you neither need nor desire this knowledge." A giant eye blinks open at him from within his Gate, and an ancient, instinctual terror wells up within him—his soul recoils from that darkness, as it had then, and Roy is suddenly a bug pinned underneath that solitary alien gaze. An insignificant insect met with the undivided attention of God, the universe, All, and One.

And himself.

"Yet here you are, Roy Mustang, paying the price for a choice made for you," the Truth muses.

Tendrils reach out to grasp him, the blue of alchemy instead of ink-black, and God grins at Roy as he's pulled away into the depths of his Gate, the hell of Edward’s nightmares and now part of his own.

"The one punishment you never meant to receive. Ironic, isn't it?"

Roy's eyes snap open to darkness. For a moment, half-delirious, he can see the knowledge of the universe in the empty expanse of his sight as he had before, streaming past in bright, overwhelming cacophony—and then the moment ends, Roy closes his burning, blind eyes again with a grimace, and he groans softly as he realizes just how exhausted he is now. The nap was a mistake.

Riza's voice rises warily out of the silence. "Sir?"

Her bare back is to him. Somehow, she kneels on the tent floor with strength, shoulders firm and taut with anticipation but not fear, and Roy, gut twisting, doesn’t understand that trust he sees in every line of her back (because didn't he break it, again and again with every snap of his fingers in this horrible desert) as he stares grimly, distantly at the tattooed alchemical sigils, running the most careful of calculations through his mind, before the circle on his glove begins to glow blue and he snaps—

"Are you awake? Colonel?"

"Yeah," he murmurs, still grimacing, shaking his head loose of the fading muddle and rubbing an eye with one clammy, aching hand. Sweat beads on his brow despite the chilliness of his sheets, and Roy sluggishly considers whether he's coming down with something. "I'm awake. How are you feeling, Lieutenant?"

"Like I belong in a hospital, sir," she replies wryly.

"Hah."

Roy can almost feel the lieutenant's eyes on him as he sits up, bed creaking, and pauses in the middle of a brief dizzy spell. The stab wounds in his palms throb to the beat of his heart.

"Are you all right, Colonel?"

"Just tired. Nothing a good night's sleep won't cure."

There's a pregnant pause, and a bed nearby—the lieutenant's—creaks. She's moved, no doubt with suspicion. Why does she have to be so good at spotting his lies? "Colonel, it's nighttime. You've been asleep for at least seven hours." Her tone implies that he hasn't exactly been resting peacefully either.

Seven hours?

Afterimages of his dreams flicker in the darkness.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine. It's not like I can tell what time it is with these eyes, Hawkeye," he snaps, jabbing thumbs towards the aforementioned organs and instantly regretting it as pain lances through his palms. Roy can't help but hiss and cradle his hands to his chest.

"Sir!"

"I'm. Fine," he grits out, wounded hands still agonizing as he drops them again into his lap.

"Sir," and this time her voice is stern. "You've been shaking."

Roy's hands tremble rebelliously, as if to corroborate the lieutenant’s words. He would look at them to verify for himself, if he could see—though he suspects she's right. He's freezing, and just like that, the unbidden ire drains away to leave him in a tired slump. "I said... I'm just exhausted, Lieutenant. Worry about yourself. You're the one who almost died earlier today."

To his chagrin, Roy's voice softens with far too much emotion than her CO’s voice ought to, and he turns his face away from her. He's such a fool, such a fool.

She sighs, and the exasperated fondness in it might as well drive a knife through his heart. "You're such a hypocrite, Colonel."

Her bed creaks again, an IV stand rolls quietly across the floor, and then she's beside him pulling up a chair. The legs rasp noisily against the linoleum.

His eyes widen, even if he can’t see. "Lieutenant. Your neck, you should be resting—"

"Princess Chang did a fantastic job with my injuries, sir. I might not even need surgery if the exam tomorrow morning turns out well. So with all due respect, stop being ridiculous and shut up," she says briskly. Shocked into submission, Roy does so, and sensing his bafflement, she adds with dry humor, "Well you're blind now, aren't you? What I said with a glare I'll simply have to say out loud now."

Roy snorts as she covers his shoulders with his overcoat, and when she takes his hands, he grips them back as tightly as he can, cautious of her PVC and IV.

"I suppose I forgot you almost lost me too," he murmurs.

His lieutenant laces the fingers of one warm hand through one of his. "Yes, you did."

A small smile makes its way onto Roy’s face; he can't help it. The last time she displayed this much affection outright... well, she thought he'd died. He has the impulsive urge to reach out and lay a hand on his lieutenant’s neck, over the bandages he knows are there—a tangible reminder that she’s okay, that the pulse of her heart still beats on—but the sheer unprofessionalism of the idea keeps Roy’s hands still within hers. Touching her like that... Besides, between his blindness and his luck, he’d smack her in the face instead.

His smile widens, even if it is with a drier edge to it. "How about this, then. I'll try to stop mother-henning people if you promise never to get your neck cut open again."

"Deal. Although I expect your end of this promise to be much harder to hold up."

"I said 'try', I didn't say promise."

Roy doesn't need to have it said aloud to know the look the lieutenant is giving him now, and he snickers until the return of his shivering sobers him again. For a moment there, he forgot about his condition. "I... might be sick," he finally admits.

"Don't worry, Colonel. We all figured you weren't quite right in the head a long time ago."

Roy turns a blind glower towards her—he tries to be serious for once and she continues to sass him—albeit one with no real fire to it. In all honesty, she's not entirely wrong; no one whose end goal happily risks their head in a noose could be completely normal. "Then what are you for following me, Lieutenant?"

"I'm merely a bodyguard."

"Hardly."

She rests her shoulder against his, lending him warmth, continuing as if he didn’t speak. "You're the silly, egotistical, quixotic man who thinks he can get away with protecting everyone."

Roy finds himself smiling tenderly, closing his eyes and leaning back into her, and after the briefest flicker of fear, aggressively decides not to care, not to reassert their usual boundaries of aloof, arrogant superior and strict, stoic subordinate; it’s not as if the lieutenant is concerned. Hell, as if they didn't already cross the line—as if their hand holding alone wouldn't be damning enough for anyone who happens to waltz into their hospital room. But no one else is in their room, no one else will be coming to their room, no homunculi are keeping constant tabs on the two of them any longer, and Roy Mustang desperately needs to humor himself because this is the first time he’s been alone with Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, his best friend and love and moral guidance in the flesh since her near-death less than twenty-four hours ago.

God, where would he be without her? _Dead myself, a thousand times over, in a thousand different ways. _Not for the first time, Roy is reminded of how much he doesn't deserve her. He raises the back of her hand to his lips slowly and kisses it. She allows him to. "You flatter me, Lieutenant."

"Oh, Colonel," she says dryly, softly.

They sit in companionable, affectionate silence for a while, hands clasped and leaning against one another, and Roy vainly wishes that he could see her. She’s right beside him, and he misses her.

"Worry about yourself, sir," she finally says, "please. You're ill. Get some rest."

"I'll try."

The lieutenant moves away, taking her hands and warmth with her, and the sudden absence of them strikes Roy with almost real pain as he listens to her IV stand roll back into place beside her bed. He turns his eyes towards her, remembering the image of blood pooling beneath her body, of her back scorched by his flames, searching for the strength in her face and frustrated by darkness instead.

"Lieutenant," he says. "I'm sorry."

There's a moment of still silence before she lets out a brief breath, like a small, bemused shake of the head, and she knows he’s talking about more than his chronic inability to worry about himself. Her bed creaks as she climbs back into it. "It's all right, Colonel. The fact that you can still say sorry and be sincere is enough."

The weight of his sins has never felt more palpable. "Really?"

"You have a good heart," the lieutenant states simply, as she has before. "And you're trying to right our wrongs."

"They can never be repaired," he murmurs, and he knows she nods.

"But you’re trying. And if you can, you will make our hopes reality, which is much more than anyone else in this military can say for themselves. I know I’m praising you for something you don’t want to be praised for, but it’s the truth. Perhaps you're blind now, Colonel, but you still have vision."

Roy blinks rapidly a few times, and he has to stop himself from balling his hands into the sheets of his bed before he aggravates the wounds yet again. "Oh, stop," he finally croaks, voice wavering. "You'll make me blush."

He can almost feel one of the lieutenant’s smiles on him, soft and warm. "Of course, sir. Now, go to sleep."

Roy manages a mock-salute. "Yes, ma'am."

Somehow, his attempt to lighten the mood succeeds, and the lieutenant chuckles as she settles down. The sound buoys Roy—he’s had so little occasion to hear it in the past year—as he puts his coat aside and lies down himself.

“Lieutenant?”

“Hm?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, sir.”

And this time, Roy’s dreams are kind enough to send him back to the campfire days of fifteen years ago and stay there for a while.

[topicprinter]

Hey guys!It has been a little over a month since my last update and a TON has happened. Sorry for the long post, but hopefully some people appreciate a detailed dive into everything.A really really really brief recap of the past fourteen partsI started in December of 2018 with $1,165 with the goal of making $10,000 in one year. In 2019, I had bought and sold over $40k in baseball, football and various sports trading cards. I had a few great successes ($1,165 into $3,085 before fees - $2,771.20 into $6,200.10 before fees - $1,086.68 into $3,190.54 before fees) and a few duds. I generally sell my cards on ebay, but utilize auction houses every now and then. The biggest bottleneck I face is submitting cards to PSA (a third party grading company), a card might have a 2-4 month turnaround time. To successfully "flip" you need to balance some of these purchases with shorter flips. In 2019, I ended with a final profit of $9,262.28 – a tad bit short of my goal. In 2020, my goal is $20,000 (fitting). Using my margins from 2019, I would need to sell around $85k in cards.You can find the previous installment hereCOVID-19 UPDATEFirst, I hope everyone is safe and inside. I am fortunate enough to be working from home and busier than ever – I do mostly forecasting and budgeting for a company in Manhattan, so it has been very busy on my end trying to keep pace with everything that is changing.I’m going a little stir crazy here in my one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. With the business, things have largely been unaffected. Some auction houses have pushed their auctions by a few weeks, I’m seeing a slight uptick in sales and have tried to use the time to go through some old inventory. The biggest disruption has been with PSA. PSA (as of now) is back and operating at limited capacity. I have well over 1,000 cards with them (over 300 for this project alone) and am experiencing significant delays which has had a negative impact on cash flows and inventory turnover. Luckily, it’s not a huge deal for me, but for this project – which has a limited budget and a large amount of inventory sitting with PSA, it’s frustrating.The strategy is to continue sending material to PSA and continue trying to focus on items that can be sold without grading. I’ve also been breaking up some orders into multiple submissions when possible. The working theory on my end is that if each PSA order takes 20-30 weeks to fulfill and I have 20-30 orders with them at any one time, I should get an order each week fulfilled. Right now I have 19 orders with them.PurchasedFirst up is a cool group of 1887 boxing cards purchased for $403.40 after fees. Some baseball card collectors will recognize the “Allen & Ginter” brand – which has a modern set issued by Topps. These are the original cards. They appear to be in mid/high condition. I sent them all to PSA and will wait to see the grades.I bought a really beat up group of 1954 Topps cards for $662.22 in April. The Ted Williams gray back caught my eye and bought it with the hopes that there may be a couple other gray backs in the lot, unfortunately there were not. 1954 Topps were issued with a white back (see the photos), but there is an incredibly rare variation which has cards with a gray back. The “variation” was likely a printing error which was later fixed, only the first 50 or so cards in the set have this issue. To give you an idea how rare it is, PSA has graded 3,907 1954 Topps Ted Williams cards, of them only 28 are gray back. This card alone will recover the bulk of the cost of the lot. I will send a few cards to PSA and the rest sold as a lot (already listed).There was an REA auction that ended April 19th that I won quite a few items in. For this project I won a pair of 1934 R310 Butterfinger Premiums for $720 and a group of 1947 Bond Bread Jackie Robinson cards for $2,220. Both were a steal in my opinion. I have some experience with the R310 premiums, selling a Gehrig in February for $1,250 and a Ruth just last week for $1,000. I have already sent both to PSA and will hopefully get them back in a couple months. I am extremely excited about the Jackie Robinson cards – the 1947 Bond Bread set was a regional issue that was given out at participating grocery stores that sold Bond Bread (a brand of sliced bread). This set (all featuring Jackie Robinson) was issued two years before the 1949 Leaf and 1949 Bowman card, which are widely considered to be his “rookie” cards. This set has been underappreciated for years and only started to gain in popularity recently. I would say each of these cards (despite their poor condition) should bring in around $1,000. I have already sold one for $1,200 and should do very well on this group.I purchased another high grade 1959 Topps set, this one for $3,620 after shipping. If you remember, last month I purchased a nice set from Small Traditions for only $1,557. That set was missing the Bob Gibson rookie and a couple other high-value cards. Just like the previous set, I will send some cards to PSA and sell the rest.Finally, I purchased a 1973 Topps high grade set for $2,512.40 after fees. I don’t want to criticize this auction house (because I think they do great work), but they really should’ve highlighted the graded cards in the first picture. I have the value of the graded cards alone at $4,500 in their current condition. I will likely pick a few cards out for PSA and send the rest to PWCC for a quick profit. Pretty happy about this one.What SoldAnything that was sitting stagnant from 2019 was listed as a $.99 auction a couple weeks ago. I sold the remaining pre-war cards that I bought in July, led by the T206 EPDG Jack Powell card, the pre-war lot ended with a $32.72 loss. Not great. I blame Grey Flannel for selling these cards trimmed, but it could’ve been much worse. Another stagnant item was the 1957 Swift Meats set, which sold for $680.00 which was another loss. I’m a little disappointed in this one – it’s an item that I probably could’ve sold for $1,000-1,300 if I let it sit for another year, but felt that I could make more if I had the cash.The wax wrappers continue to sell well. I have sold 13 since the last installment for a little over $600. I might try to push these a bit and start auctioning them off to generate cash. These have been very profitable for me without much effort, so it might be time to clear out what’s left and move on.The B14 blankets haven’t been moving nearly as quickly as the wrappers, selling only three via BIN since the last installment. I did auction off some of the duplicates, which averaged right around $10 per blanke. It looks like I have 63 left in inventory, including a few rare and expensive copies, so I am not too concerned about these. I may try to auction off a few additional duplicates this week though.I sold the two Mickey Mantle cards that were returned from PSA. The 1953 Topps card sold for $986.75 and the 1953 Bowman sold for $530.00. These cards were from December REA Mantle lot. I have now sold $2,753 worth on the $1,800 lot with another $600-800 worth with PSA.I also sold the majority of the 1953 Topps set purchased back in February through PWCC. The Mantle sold for $900 and the set (which I picked through) sold for $1,325. This is a great example of why I use PWCC, in total PWCC grossed $2,609.50 (I also sold a few myself) without any work on my end. I bought the set for only $1,472, picked out some cards for PSA and then sent the rest for someone else to sell. It worked out great.PWCC also sold the cards left over from the 1959 Topps set purchased in March. I picked out 152 CARDS to send to PSA and gave PWCC the remaining group to sell, which they sold for $1,058.75. I should do very well on this group too (if I ever get these back from PSA).PSA UpdateHere is a link to the Google Doc with the status of all of my PSA cards. The spreadsheet also includes a summary of where the project is.PSA is back running at limited capacity. They used this crisis to change up their submission model – before you could submit all types of cards together in one order (vintage baseball, modern baseball, Pokemon, etc). Now, they are requiring you to submit trading card games separate from sports. They are also asking you to submit vintage cards separate from modern and “ultra modern.” It makes submitting a little more tedious, but sounds like a reasonable request. Nothing has really moved since the last installment, but I will keep everyone posted.Below is an updated summary:For items purchased in 2019 (denoted with a “*”), the “cost” column represents the ending 2019 inventory valuation. For items purchased in 2020, the cost column is the cost. In the Google Sheet I included an in-depth P&L with full results and 2019 details.ItemCost*SoldFeesInventory^Profit1936 Goudey Lot (8)*50.0056.50(8.48)-(1.98)Hank Aaron "Odd-Ball" Collection*150.00777.29(116.59)-510.70(16) Pre-WWII card lot w/ Cobb*1,300.001,708.52(256.28)-152.24(23) Sandy Koufax 1950's and 1960's lot*250.00299.50(44.93)-4.571977-1979 Topps Baseball Rack & Cello Packs (6)*250.00380.00(57.00)-73.001957 Swift Meats Game Set (18)*800.00680.00(102.00)-(222.00)(36) 1950s-2000s Multi-Sports Collection*500.001,265.51(189.83)150.00725.681933-1989 Wax Pack Wrapper Hoard (650+)*400.001,350.99(202.65)250.00998.341941-2004 Multi-Sport Group (33)*800.00475.89(71.38)450.0054.511912 B18 Blanket Find (100)*1,270.80702.50(105.38)700.0026.331962-63 Parkhurst Hockey Lot (45+)*500.00287.26(43.09)400.00144.171953 to 1969 Mickey Mantle Group (16)*1,000.001,516.75(227.52)600.00889.241956-1959 Baseball Star Collection (48)*1,130.00167.04(25.06)1,000.0011.981961-1969 Baseball Star Collection (61)*804.95257.78(38.67)600.0014.161948-1965 Yogi Berra Collection (26)*1,400.00399.50(59.93)1,050.00(10.43)Lot of (4) Signed Perez-Steele Postcards676.59--676.59-1950's-1980's Football Wrapper Lot (42)920.001,160.51(174.08)300.00366.431953 Topps Partial Set (208)1,472.002,855.13(428.27)150.001,104.861953-55 Dormand Postcard Set (47/52)685.00804.85(120.73)250.00249.121959 & 1960 Venezuela Topps Lot (34)216.0058.66(8.80)200.0033.861959 Topps Baseball High Grade Set1,557.301,132.80(169.92)1,000.00405.581970 Topps Super Proofs Lot (12)405.41423.75(63.56)200.00154.781887 Allen & Ginter Boxing Lot (14)403.40--403.40-1954 Topps Starter Set (119/250)662.22--662.22-1947 Bond Bread Jackie Robinson Lot (6)2,220.001,200.00(180.00)1,850.00650.001934 R310 Butterfinger Ruth & Gehrig Lot (2)720.00--720.00-1959 Topps Baseball Near Set (571/572)3,620.00--3,620.00-1973 Topps Complete Set2,512.40--2,512.40-$26,676.07$17,960.73($2,694.11)$17,744.61$6,335.16*-denotes inventory purchased in 2019 valued at 2019 y/e figures.^ -inventory on hand is valued at a conservative estimate of fair market value for remaining items.`-grading fees are expensed when the card is sent to PSA, fees are not paid until PSA has completed the order. Fees that are expensed, but not paid are sitting in Accounts Payable below.2020 Grading Fees`: $2,070.18Current On HandCash: $382.19InventorySee the Google sheetALSO! If anyone is interested in what the financials for this project would look like, see below. With 2019 officially in the book, I moved the final 2019 financial statement over for a year-over-year comparison:As of 5/18/20202020 YTD2019 FinalCash$382.19$1,680.15Accounts Receivable$-$-Inventory^17,744.61$10,605.75Accounts Payable`($3,434.53)($1,858.62)Retained Earnings($9,262.28)$-Initial Capital($1,165.00)($1,165.00)Revenue($17,960.73)($40,163.15)Cost of Goods Sold$8,931.46$22,582.96Fees (15% of Rev.)$2,694.11$5,956.97Grading Fees$2,070.18$2,360.93FORECASTMy goal is $20,000 profit for the year. Right now I’m only at $4,264.98 – PSA has dramatically slowed turnover, but I am still hopeful to hit my original goal, gross margins are up in 2020 compared to 2019 (50.3% vs. 43.8%) and net margins are also up (23.7% vs 23.1%). Sales more than doubled since the last installment and with the current margins, existing inventory levels represent approximately $35.7k in revenue and $8.4k in net profit. I just need to get it sold.I look forward to continuing to update everyone on this. Hope you enjoy as much as I do.Jason

[writerspink]

Lorem Ipsum – About

“Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit…”

“There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain…”

The standard Lorem Ipsum passage, used since the 1500s

“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.”

Section 1.10.32 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum”, written by Cicero in 45 BC

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?”

1914 translation by H. Rackham

“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”

Section 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum”, written by Cicero in 45 BC

“At vero eos et accusamus et iusto odio dignissimos ducimus qui blanditiis praesentium voluptatum deleniti atque corrupti quos dolores et quas molestias excepturi sint occaecati cupiditate non provident, similique sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollitia animi, id est laborum et dolorum fuga. Et harum quidem rerum facilis est et expedita distinctio. Nam libero tempore, cum soluta nobis est eligendi optio cumque nihil impedit quo minus id quod maxime placeat facere possimus, omnis voluptas assumenda est, omnis dolor repellendus. Temporibus autem quibusdam et aut officiis debitis aut rerum necessitatibus saepe eveniet ut et voluptates repudiandae sint et molestiae non recusandae. Itaque earum rerum hic tenetur a sapiente delectus, ut aut reiciendis voluptatibus maiores alias consequatur aut perferendis doloribus asperiores repellat.”

1914 translation by H. Rackham

“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”

Notes from lipsum.com…

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using ‘Content here, content here’, making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for ‘lorem ipsum’ will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

The standard chunk of Lorem Ipsum used since the 1500s is reproduced above for those interested. Sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” by Cicero are also reproduced in their exact original form, accompanied by English versions from the 1914 translation by H. Rackham.

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn’t anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.

Lorem Ipsum – About was originally published on PinkWrite

[worldupdatereviews2017-blog]

Software program Intelligence: Why gradual is the brand new down

New Post has been published on https://worldupdatereviews.com/software-program-intelligence-why-gradual-is-the-brand-new-down/

Software program Intelligence: Why gradual is the brand new down

Consumers have little persistence for slow Software reviews, with 40 percent leaving behind an internet site that takes greater than three seconds to load.

The average time it takes to fully load a mobile touchdown web page is 22 seconds, consistent with Google’s today’s studies.

At the same time as developer groups may also scramble to get crucial components back online after they move down, urgency around fixing overall performance issues doesn’t have a tendency to warrant the identical attention.

Groups are likely aware consumer’s expectancies have changed, however, do not forget overall performance optimizations to be a lower priority than possibly they ought to be.

In recent years, generation to reveal the performance of Software program applications has reached new heights. Deeper insights into how programs are absolutely performing for quite users are easily within attain. In reality, Software program intelligence now paves the way for teams to position Software program fitness at the coronary heart in their release cycles and lift those troubles into the view of the whole crew.

Except the app goes down absolutely for customers, conventional alerting structures can live quiet. Existence goes on as regular as technical groups sit in the happy lack of information, unaware their customers are having sluggish and buggy user studies.

Normally 70 percent of people abandon their on-line shopping cart before finishing the checkout system all the way via to price. 22 percent of those blame Software mistakes and crashes.

You likely had been there yourself: Remaining your browser window in frustration or abandoning a purchasing cart due to the revel in being slow, going for walks into insects, or the software crashing totally.

How to Select the Excellent Health facility Software program? ‘Clinic Software’ is a type of PC program that is used by docs, physicians, nurses and other healthcare professionals to shop and access affected person statistics, history, clinical records, billing information, schedules, appointments and so forth. If you are thinking about hiring Sanatorium management Software, make certain you control to decide which Software capabilities you could maximum gain from. But, these selections must preferably be made through your Health center management and IT managers, as they’re the ones who’re responsible for keeping all the data to be saved and shared. Additionally, be sure to be aware of the truth that this Software program can be accessed from any computer that has a web connection.

The underneath-stated suggestions will be used to guide you on the right path Even as choosing your healthcare management machine.

5 tips to Pick the Pleasant healthcare control Software

1. most hospitals and clinics decide on opting for Health facility Software that provides no longer only one, but Also several exclusive functions without delay. You ought to opt for something comparable because the health care experts together with medical doctors and nurses benefit from the scientific intelligence structures immensely.

2. It’s far Satisfactory to obtain the advantage from Clinic Software program that enables your Health facility or clinic to get admission to digitally save statistics in regards to scientific records, patient symptoms and that enables them to fit such details with the Software intelligence regarding medical diagnoses.

3. Another aspect to keep an eye out for is patient control. This notable characteristic empowers nurses and medical doctors to a hold music off while patients need to move in for a surgery, while they’re alleged to acquire remedies, and so forth.

4. You must Additionally don’t forget to opt for a healthcare management machine that enables your nurses and caregivers to peer the affected person’s medical history, ranging again in time after they were being handled by means of Every other healthcare expert. This may assist them to provide the patient a continual treatment, reducing down on the undesirable waste of time.

5. Attention on hiring Software that gives smooth and convenient usability. That is a key factor, in particular, while the nurses and medical doctors use it to hold their register and signal outs. A hard interface will interfere with this selection and could lead to unattended shifts, unsuitable payroll data, and other returned workplace errors.

Health facility control Software is created for health specialists to ensure a clean functioning and erase the possibilities of creating errors and dropping on critical time. make sure to take note of all the above-cited recommendations Whilst equipping your Hospital or health facility with Health center control Software.

Approximately the SAP BI tool: It’s miles a reporting machine which seamlessly connects with the SAP Software program to extract the records so the person can record the statistics with person friendly front cease tools. SAP BI also can connect to other external records resources. The main gain of connecting to SAP Software is that SAP Software program has inbuilt extractors in the machine. The extractors may be leveraged to quickly installation the SAP BI system. those sap extractors are pre-constructed they have got all of the Commercial enterprise rules applied.

Intelligence Profession possibilities in new Implementations

As soon as the SAP Software program is stable, clients want to install SAP Business intelligence. That is due to the fact walking reports in SAP Software program directly degrades the SAP machine overall performance. SAP Enterprise intelligence is a part of all of the SAP ECC structures. For small customers, they could run SAP BI and SAP Business Software within the same gadget. This manner they do not have put money into steeply-priced Software program

With the acquisition of the Business gadgets Software SAP is pushing all the customers to migrate to the new SAP Commercial enterprise gadgets front stop. Then way there will be a lot of work with recreating the reports, trying out and documentation. If experts has reporting experience they could with ease assimilate into the SAP Enterprise item consulting market

If you have any type of Commercial enterprise warehouse experience then that may be leverage to get into consulting Profession. The fundamental concept of making the reporting is equal. you could upgrade/tweak your competencies to adapt to the brand new environment. most of the federal Government Clearance Careers calls for US Citizenship and clean private document. You have to be ready to open up your private Life. The investigations will get into your personal finances and relationships along with your own family and buddies. This could now and again be very can in depth.