California condos 60 units. HOA.
It was a weird and unexpected outcome. We believed we had a solid base of owners that were motivated to change the board.
The inspector said there were about 30 ballots to count. We had close to 30 owners saying they were voting for us. We lost about 5 who said they missed the deadline to send their vote, for whatever reason. We knew the other board had their 3 plus a couple of neighbors, who are benefiting from them, on their side. It made sense and we thought we for sure had won the election on a landslide. I and one of the old board got the exact number of votes to win, 15 My running mates both got 13. The other two old board members got 8 and 4. Second round. First round we had not enough votes to win.
The math doesn't make sense. The only people that usually vote are the members in the building and most of them were very angry at the old board. And for both of us to win we overlap and owners had to split their ballot and vote for me and the other board at the same time.
We have two board seats out of three and it is a win.
The property manager tried to influence the election and during the election meeting tried to steer the inspector into canceling the election.
Is this acceptable outcome? It does feels fishy but sometimes I think this might be totally possible.
Move on? We have lots of things to do. I wish didn't had to deal with a left over from old board. He can only be removed by members vote. They don't seem to be very reliable.
Any thoughts? Thank you.

First Chapter
Chapter Thirteen
Corporal McCoy had figured out the best reason for getting in good with an udhyr. They had four arms, therefore the hugs were twice as nice. They now lay in her room, with him lying on her bed and her lying on top of him, with her ensconced in the aforementioned hug-squared. She’d been able to get ahold of her Switch, and at the moment was in the midst of some happy early-morning gaming. Takh’s head rested upon hers with a gentle and welcome pressure while he watched her play. By now she was so used to him that even the little random clicks of his mandibles didn’t cause her any fear.
She was still trying to figure out if she and the alien XO were an ‘item’ or not. Zawahir had, with his usual enthusiasm, explained to her that both the udhyr and knuall-toua were pretty much like humans, with equal numbers of both males and females who reproduced sexually. He hadn’t gone into details on how exactly Tab A fit into Slot B, but the overall idea was clear. The auhn were a little more complicated; the ratio of females to males was more like seven or eight to one, plus there was the added wrinkle that the males were non-sapient and about as smart as the average pet dog. That had resulted in a very matriarchal society, of course, one based around clans of females protecting their stable of fertile males with appropriately auhn-like ferocity. The spider-like xyrax were…well, both. Completely hermaphroditic; there was quite a complicated social dance before they reproduced as to who was going to bear the resulting egg. McCoy was sure that, however it worked out, it would look adorable.
“So this Kirby can eat anything?” asked Takh, breaking into her ruminations.
McCoy tapped at her controls on autopilot, hoping that the damned thumbsticks wouldn’t break. Again. “Yep. Fun fact, waaay back in the 80s, Nintendo got sued by Universal Studios, who claimed that Donkey Kong was a ripoff of King Kong. John Kirby was the attorney who successfully defended them in court, and in gratitude they named this character Kirby.” She continued her tapping. “I think they gave him a sailboat as well.”
“Mmm, I must admit a sailboat sounds nice right about now. This place is very nice, but it’s a bit too cold.”
She wriggled against him. “You said it. You and me, off the coast near Nice? Floating in the warm azure waters of the Mediterranean? I can wear a nice little bikini I’ve got saved up for just such an occasion.”
“Oh! Uh, well, yes. That does indeed sound quite nice…”
She grinned. Takh was a dork, but a giant lovable dork and it was always great to get a reaction like this out of him. Even if it didn’t lead anywhere there. As far as she knew, the udhyr reproduced like frogs. Maybe she should discreetly quiz Zawahir on the whole Tab-A into Slot-B thing, just to make sure she wasn’t setting herself up for disappointment.
Of course, she’d just managed to get to the final boss of this particular level when the siren howl of the alarm went off. Haley McCoy blinked as she went from supine four-armed cuddling to standing in an instant, placed upon the floor by Takh’s upper arms.
“The unholy hell?” she muttered, but she was already in motion as she sprinted towards her gear, laid out so as to ensure maximum efficiency in getting it all put on. “Takh?” she called out as she started strapping her armored vest on.
“Yes? What do I do?”
“Simple. Anyone comes through that door who you don’t recognize, kill ‘em.”
“I…I don’t know, I’m still understanding how different humans look from each other, I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“You’ll know,” she said with finality as she picked up her carbine and racked the slide. “Okay. Follow me…”
The door to her room smashed in as a figure clad in black armor came through screaming “Earth belongs to HUMANS!...”
That was all he got out before Takh grabbed the man’s head and simply hurled the offending figure over McCoy and into the far wall. The window set in that wall shattered with the resulting impact, making the corporal duck.
“Fuck me, Takh.” She looked at the broken figure of the oh-so-very dead intruder, then back up to the worried-looking XO. “I mean, not literally. Okay, well you can if you want to, and I for sure would like you to…you know what? Let’s put that whole discussion off to the side for now until we can sit down and have ourselves a nice long chat, okay?”
“That sounds like a very wise strategy, Haley. What do you need from me?”
She finished putting on her headset and helmet. “Right now? You need to stick right behind me while I get you to the bunker.”
“You want me behind you?” Takh’s mandibles quirked in a grin. “That sounds like a very nice place to be.”
“Stop distracting me, you giant dork.” McCoy moved towards the door with a grim set to her shoulders, ignoring the lovely fact that her alien maybe-boyfriend was now checking out her ass. She swept the outside hallway….nothing visible. Then she heard some commotion from off towards the kitchen area.
__________
Martinez surged to his feet upon hearing the alarm, his half-eaten horizontal-cut pimento sandwich now forgotten. “What the fuck…?”
Matt was on his feet as well, with a strange look in his eyes that the corporal had never seen before. “You two. Corner. Now.” He pointed at the corner farthest from the two entrances to the kitchen.
The corporal was on the smaller side, even amongst his fellow humans, but something in the Marine’s tone made him turn and tackle the huge alien. Kexal, to his credit, somehow knew that Something Was Up and accepted the tackle, otherwise there was no way in hell that Martinez could have moved the giant creature.
Just as he did so, he caught a glimpse of a dark form, clad in full armor, holding a rifle, gliding around one of the entrances to the kitchen. In a panic, he fumbled for the pistol at his hip.
Martinez prized himself on his reflexes. But still, he had time for one blink of astonishment as Toke all but teleported himself across the ten feet of intervening space, pushing the intruder’s rifle up towards the ceiling and out of battery as his own arm flashed in a wicked arc. The corporal caught the merest glint of a small but cruelly-curved knife, like a predator’s claw, in the Marine’s fist.
There followed quite the epic spray of blood from underneath the attacker’s armpit, followed up by a few more cruel swipes which made sure that the tendons in that shoulder were destroyed and useless. Toke pulled the rifle away from the now-dangling limb.
Somehow, the black-armored attacker managed to speak in spite of what must be massive pain. “Earth will NEVER submit to…”
Toke’s voice was as hard as granite. “Tell your shit to someone who cares.”
Two more vicious swipes across the man’s throat resulted in a cascade of crimson down his black-armored front, and the would-be assassin toppled to the wooden floor.
“Martinez.” Toke’s robotic voice shocked him back into awareness.
“Y…yeah?”
“Got a pistol?”
“Of course.” He checked to make sure that he had it in his hand. Huh, that was strange. He didn’t remember drawing it, but there it was.
“Good.” The lean man tossed the purloined rifle towards Martinez, who caught it automatically in his off-hand. “Take this. Check this dead motherfucker for extra mags, and take ‘em. You’re on Kexal, understand? Get him safe to the bunker. Anyone you don’t know personally comes at you, you shoot ‘em.” His black, mechanical gaze shifted towards the alien. “Kexal? If Martinez goes down and someone attacks you, you have my permission to yank their arms off.”
The giant planetologist stared in horror at the bleeding and probably-dead sapient before him, then shook himself. “Of course. Yes. I’ll protect myself.”
“No need,” said Martinez as he looked back at his newly-christened charge. He racked the action on his just-acquired rifle, which looked to be a standard AR-platform civilian carbine. The corporal wished for something full-auto, but this was at least better than a pistol in terms of range and punch. “I’ll get you to safety, sir.”
He turned back to ask Matt just what the fuck was going on…but he only saw empty air.
__________
Cécile Savoie was not having a good day. She’d accepted the position of overall chief of security at Camp David with delight…at first. Dealing with the day-to-day of protecting one of the most targeted people on the planet, that she could deal with no problem. Because it was one person. It was an unspoken agreement between all of the agents that SAILOR was the priority. Even the First Husband could be sacrificed if need be.
But then she’d had a bunch of damn aliens dropped in her lap, along with an equally weird group of special-forces types. The latter were what really ground her gears; the aliens were genuinely nice and apologetic about being such a bother, but the human soldiers were the types who would crash on your couch, drink all your beer, and then steal your sweetheart when you weren’t looking.
She crouched behind a little berm to the west of Camp David, the other members of her patrol stretched out alongside her in a roughly north-to-south line.
“Moseby! Report!” she yelled.
She heard a few thumps, then a few cracks in her earpiece which were followed up by echoing reports from the building behind her. Thankfully she heard her agent’s voice in her earpiece. “Shit! Wow, um, you’re really good with that knife…”
She then heard a muffled phrase that sounded a bit like ‘give it to me, son’, and the next voice in her ear was one she was unfamiliar with.
“This is Captain Matthew Tocco, USMC, whom am I speaking with?” The voice sounded as if generated by an AI.
“I’m Agent Savoie,” she responded. “I’m in charge of the Camp David security detail, who are you?”
“I just told you who I am, Agent Savoie. And I just saved the life of one of your agents. Now. Let’s cut through any sort of jurisdictional bullshit. We have at least two confirmed active hostiles in the complex, two more are confirmed down. We’re sweeping the compound to make sure there are no others, plus making sure that our esteemed guests are safe inside the bunker. Where are you located? We need to coordinate our defenses.”
The information made her see literal red. The attackers had made it into the compound? How? There must be some angle, some safe passage made by somebody. She was going to find out who had made that safe passage, and those people would burn. Oh yes, they were all going to burn…
“West of the complex,” she snapped. “We’ve set up a perimeter along the ridge there.”
“Got it, Agent Savoie. Oh, and please don’t shoot me when I show up.”
She ran through various scenarios for the next few minutes, trying to figure out who on the team had betrayed them. And there must have been such a betrayal in order to get armed hostiles into the actual buildings. Her further musing upon vengeance was cut short as a tall, lean man seemed to all but materialize next to her. He held a small, curved blade in a reverse grip in his right hand; that blade dripped red blood. She almost pointed her gun at him, then relaxed. “Captain Tocco, I presume?”
“Call me Toke.” The guy sounded like he was out for a day on the beach.
“Who the hell are you…wait, you’re with the group in there, right?”
Matt nodded. “Yep. The rest of us are in there bundling up our guests and making sure they’re all safe and sound. Actually, by now Corporal McCoy should be…”
Agent Savoie flinched again as a small but very stacked woman seemed to suddenly appear like condensing smoke at her other side, out of the brush. “Speak of the Devil, and she shall appear.”
The tall man grinned at her. “You are pretty damn good, corporal.”
“Hell that means a lot coming from you, Toke. By the way, that’s a nice kerambit. Anyways, everybody on Team Alien is tucked in and unharmed. I got Takh in there fine. Martinez even tagged a couple more bad guys while he was escorting Grakosh to the bunker. Fair warning to everybody listening on this channel, he’s gonna be aaaall sorts of smug about that and it’s gonna turn into a story of taking out four dudes before this week is out. But, right now, it looks like only four of the OPFOR made into the complex…however they did that…so the rest must be out there.” She pointed towards the leafless woods beyond the little rise.
“Any word from Shaw?” asked Toke.
Savoie narrowed her eyes. “Something bad happened in DC. Sounds like an artillery or mortar attack.”
“Shit.” McCoy looked troubled. “This is serious business, then. State player?”
“Maybe,” said Toke. “But it could be some private group with some proper funding behind ‘em. Agent Savoie, do you have any word of a helicopter or plane going down nearby?”
“A Chinook,” she replied, “Went down about thirty minutes ago thataways.” She motioned to the west, out into the wintry forest. “Then we had one of our patrols out in that direction go silent. That’s what triggered the alarm.”
Matt grunted. “Yeah, that’s how I’d do it. Make it look like a crash and infiltrate that way. Right.” He touched his ear. “You just keep this channel open, right?”
“Where are you going?” asked McCoy.
“Out there. You need eyes on assholes, and I’m gonna give that to you.”
McCoy tossed him her carbine. “At least have a gun on you, dude.”
He caught it with his off-hand, since his main hand still held the dripping-red kerambit. He grinned at her. “All right. You got a pistol?”
“Of course.” She pulled it out and racked the slide.
He tossed the rifle back to her. “Give me that instead. We’re gonna need to concentrate some proper firepower here. This might be a proper light-infantry invasion in progress. We need to organize ourselves into a skirmish line running along this ridge, south-southwest to north-northeast. Get whoever you can on your team in there out here to bolster our firepower, understand? Dig in.”
“Got it.” The little corporal’s eyes blazed with purpose as she handed her pistol to Matt. “Now go get you some.”
“Believe me, I will.”
Savoie blinked in astonishment as the tall man vanished again.
“Yeah, he kinda does that,” said McCoy. “Dude could give sneaking-around lessons to fucking Batman.” She pulled a map out of one of the pockets on her cargo pants. “Now, Agent Savoie, how many people do we have available? Let’s get ourselves properly set up.”
__________
Wade stepped carefully over a fallen branch, his boots making almost no noise at they met the soft mulch covering the forest floor. From the curt statements in his headset, it sounded like the four heroes who’d been infiltrated into the devil’s nest had been cut down. There was no word yet if any of the alien menace had been eliminated. That was a shame, but hopefully it drew attention away from his own unit. He and his comrades made up the secondary and much more armored thrust, one which not even the vaunted Secret Service could counter. The latter were armored, yes, but only armored against pistols and they only wielded pistols themselves. He and his team had rifles, level-four body armor, helmets, and most importantly proper communications.
A voice crackled in his ear. “Hold position. The security detail is forming into a defensive line. It looks like they know we’re here.”
“Set timer?” Wade whispered into his headset. His team had a set time to accomplish their mission, before the entirety of the United States military-industrial complex landed upon their heads like the proverbial Wrath Of God.
“Yes, set timer. Twenty minutes.”
There was a soft chorus of “Twenty minutes, aye,” in Wade’s ear as he tapped his own smart-watch to start the timer. “Twenty minutes, aye,” he murmured. As he made to step over another downed branch, he paused.
Something was off. He couldn’t say why, but the air itself seemed a little more still than it should be. He turned to his left and saw a blur heading for him…he tried to raise his rifle, but it was too late…
__________
Cécile Savoie’s head snapped up as she heard a few cracks from the treeline which could only be the sound of firearms. “Anyone see anything?” she whispered into her earpiece.
There followed a myriad of “No, ma’ams” in her ear. “Keep a sharp eye,” she murmured. “Don’t fire on anyone not in black. We do have a friendly out there, he’s supposed to be giving us intel…”
Matt’s voice sounded in her ear. “Indeed. Bagged one of ‘em, on the outer edge of the advancing force. Looks like civvie gear, carbine is only semi-auto. This is a well-funded civilian effort, not a state actor.”
She checked her watch. “Got it. Fifteen minutes until we get backup in place, what do you need from us?”
“Hmm, that explains the ‘twenty minutes’ thing. Right, they know they’re on a timetable. You all need to be, and I hate to put it this way, the meat shield. It looks like they’re going for a solid push towards you, no stealth. Fourteen hostiles all told, and if this guy’s gear is any indication they’re all up-armored. Class Four. Center of mass is no good, go for head or limbs.”
Savoie’s mouth was now dry. “Understood.”
“Don’t worry, Agent. I’ll be behind them, and I’ll do what I can to sow some dissention in the ranks.”
__________
“Wade, report!” hissed Horace into his microphone.
No reply.
He took in a breath to issue another demand when a voice sounded in his ear. Horace had once gone swimming in the ocean off of Florida, and had by pure chance come across a great white shark. He still remembered the vacant gaze of the giant predator, who was probably idly wondering if Horace would make a good snack for today.
This voice brought up once again that dread; it was the voice of a pure predator. “Who is this?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“The one who just took down…Wade, was it?”
“Sidney, get eyes on Wade!”
“Will do…” There followed a long, long silence before that shark-like voice spoke again.
“You just got Sidney killed too, asshole. Care to keep going? I got no problem with that. Or do you all want to call this a day? You can do that too, you know.”
“Everybody down!” Horace snapped before going prone himself. That taunting voice still sounded in his ear.
“Okay, now you’re all down and less of a target. What now, genius? You got…hmmm…about twelve more minutes before all of the backup in the world arrives. And they will find you. You know what? You’d better hope they find you instead of me. Because I give less than two shits about that whole ‘Geneva Convention’ crap.”
“Maintain radio silence,” said Horace, as he tried to wriggle his way forward.
“Oh, you’re still trying, Mister Leader? How cute. Let me put it this way to you fourteen…sorry, thirteen, assholes. You’re done. Nailed. The best you can hope for is to get some lawyers who want to make a name for themselves. Worst case? You get put in a room with me, and if you have any sense in what passes for your brains you will spill your guts. If I’m honest, I kinda hope you put up a brave front and don’t say anything. It’s been a very long time since I got to cut loose. Gotta keep up that certain set of skills, yanno what I mean?”
“Maintain radio silence,” grated Horace, as he continued to wriggle forward.
Then, all of a sudden, he realized he was looking at boots. A pair of boots, planted in front of him like a goddamn World War Two commando movie. He glanced upwards, hoping against hope that it would turn out to be a gag like that one comedy where it was just boots…
No.
It wasn’t just boots.
Horace looked up into a man with the eyes of a shark, as well as the quite threatening muzzle of a pistol.
“Hey there, my Little Buddy-O,” said Matt. “Whatcha doin out here?”
__________
Milton came to with a gasp. “Shaw…”
A gentle hand laid upon his shoulder. “Shh, dear. He’s fine, everyone’s fine.”
He gazed up at the white-tiled ceiling above him. “But…” He turned to look into the face of the one person he loved above all else…well, her and Johnny. “He’s okay?”
“He’ll live. Just like you. You big doofus.” Teresa leaned forward to kiss his forehead. “I saw the footage. You threw yourself at all of those senior citizens, which might just count as assault with a deadly weapon. Then you went and managed to get all the way across the stage towards Sadaf. You really don’t know when to give up, do you?”
“Guess I don’t”, he chuckled, then glanced down at his arm. His former arm. “Whoof. That medic was really quick with the tourniquet, I’ll give him that.”
“With you and with Sergeant Shaw,” said Teresa. By now she was pretty much clambered on top of him, tucking his big head into the nape of her neck; it was his favorite place to be. He inhaled her scent with relish, before suddenly realizing someone was missing.
“Johnny?” he asked.
“Oh, right,” she said, before making an imperious snap of her fingers to someone out of his line of sight…right before a little ball of energy burst its way into his room.
“DADDY!” yelled the little firebrand, before smacking into his side. Milton hugged them both to himself, realizing that, no matter what happened next, he was right now in the best place possible.
“Keep it all down to a dull roar, okay?” said a voice off to his left. A very recognizable voice.
He picked his head up to stare in that direction. “Shaw?”
The sergeant gave him a casual wave from his own hospital bed. “Hey, slick. Good ta see ya up and about.”
Milton grinned. “You too, you old fart.”
“Aw hell, I ain’t that old. So. Just out of curiosity. Did that torniquet on your arm hurt like hell?”
The agent cuddled his son closer. “You better believe it.”
“Okay, got it. Just for reference, if you get one on your leg it also hurts like a motherfu…uh, hurts like crazy.”
Milton winked at Shaw. “Don’t worry, my son has heard worse. Why are you here?”
“They put you both in one room,” said Teresa. “Something about it being easier to guard. There was an assault on Camp David too, from what I’ve heard.”
“What?” Milton tried to pry himself up off of the bed before getting a mutual shove-down from his wife and son.
“Relax, my man,” said Shaw. “Toke was there. He and my peeps took care of it.” The sergeant looked at the acoustic tiles above him. “Gonna have to promote McCoy and Martinez. They both really stepped up to the plate.”
__________
President Correa rubbed at her temple. “This ‘Toke’ is a menace.” She was seated behind the famed ‘Resolute’ desk while still trying to show the appropriate deference to the barrel-chested man in front of her, clad in a crisp dark-blue dress uniform.
“Let’s be fair, ma’am,” replied General De Vries, “He helped this situation become less complicated, not more. None of our alien…refugees? I suppose that’s a good a term as anything. None of them got killed, hell none of them even got injured. We collected the thirteen of those remaining while trying to assault Camp David. Overall we have ten dead, including the four who somehow made it into the complex and the Secret Service patrol. The attackers had top-of-the-line gear, civilian but first-rate.”
She slammed her fists into the desk-top, making a nearby mug filled with coffee jump. “I fucking VACATION there, General! Me and my family, understand?”
“I know, ma’am. Do you want me to do this questioning…properly?”
She somehow picked up what he was putting down. “No. You have my permission to go off the chain.”
“Then consider me and Toke off the chain, ma’am.”
“Wait…you’re going to use him?”
“He has had experience in similar matters, ma’am. If you prefer, I don’t need to use him.”
She shook her head. “No. We need intel, and fast, on how the fuck this happened. Plus not to mention we somehow had an artillery attack in the midst of goddam DC.”
“I cannot speak for the FBI,” said De Vries with deceptive calm. “But believe me, we will find out how this all happened. And it will never happen again, of that you have my solemn word.”
The president slumped in her seat. “What about those injured in the DC attack?”
“It was a precision single artillery strike, ma’am. Probably GPS or maybe laser-guided, we’re still trying to figure out which. If Sergeant Shaw hadn’t intervened as he did, Captain Sadaf would be nothing but pulverized meat right now.”
She looked up at him with a cynical quirk to her eyebrow. “Did his saving her get caught on film?”
“Oh hell yes. Footage from several phones, it’s all gone viral.”
“Good, make sure it continues to go viral. How is Shaw? And Agent…um…sorry, my brain is going twelve different ways…sorry, Agent Milton Vila, right?”
“You are right, ma’am. Both are still in the hospital, but both are stable. Milton lost an arm, and Shaw lost one of his legs below the knee.”
“Fuck.” It was one of the rare times that De Vries had heard the president swear. “Both can be helped with prosthetics, right?”
“Not my area of expertise, ma’am, but yes. They’ll both live, and we’ll make sure they have the very best technology available.”
President Correa suddenly grinned with an expression that the general somehow knew was going to lead to Complications in his near future.
“You mean the best human technology, don’t you?” she asked, with deceptive calm.
“Well…yes, of course. I mean, Zawahir Ibn Harith is still trying to make sense of how the aliens heal themselves. It’s true regeneration, if I understand it right. Damage to the central nervous system is still kind of hard for them to deal with, but otherwise they can pretty much heal anything.”
The president examined her fingernails. “So…growing back a limb or two should be the proverbial walk in the park, yes?”
“Um…” The general’s eyes widened. He now realized why this unassuming lady had won two terms to the highest executive office in his particular country. “Oh, yes! Of course!”
“The plans for repair efforts on the Rithro have costs which are already pretty much alongside the Manhattan Project,” said President Correa. “Why don’t you appoint Zawahir as the lead of this particular effort? We’ll call it Manhattan-Light.” She fixed General De Vries with her eyes. “Imagine it. Two people, grievously wounded in the line of duty while protecting one of our alien refugees, an effort which was caught on multiple cameras…imagine them then walking out onto a stage with intact limbs.”
“It will make quite the photo op, ma’am.”
“Indeed. I’m glad we understand each other, General.”

I have been unable to find an indicator that shows deviations +/- from the moving average similar to Bollinger Bands but uses ema instead of sma my searches have been bust. I could try to create one using substitution of an ema equation but my math is rusty. Anyone know of an a weighted bollinger band type indicator?

Why on earth do kids feel the need to lie when they aren't even in trouble? 😑
I asked my daughter to switch the laundry for me and when I got it out of the dryer later there were easily 30 dryer sheets in there, Totally excessive. Also the box of dryer sheets is gone (probably got tossed out). I let her know "Hey babe, next time, please just do like 3-4 sheets. However many you put it was way too much."
Her: "I didn't. I only put in 2."
Me: "......Okay.... so why was there so many in with my laundry?"
Her: "Because I saw there was a ton leftover in the dryer."
Me: ".....And you didn't think to take them out before switching the laundry? You just left them in the dryer?"
Her: shrug
Me: "And not to mention the entire box itself is gone? And I'm the one who does the laundry and the shopping so I know how many we had left?"
Her: "Idk. Like I said. I only put in 2."
BRO WHY??? 😂 What is the point of lying right now?! I straight up told her that the math ain't mathin' and to stop digging the hole she's in because I wasn't even mad about the dryer sheets but now I kinda am over the unnecessary lying!

I do Edexcell IGCSE for English, all my sciences and maths - it feels like im the only one 😭

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So I just beat saints row reboot last night and as someone who's beaten them all at least 3 or 4 times each plus red faction series and agents of mayhem(sadly). Maybe more with friends. These are my genuine thoughts.
The volition originally stated they wanted to recapture the feeling of 2 while having it be updated with the humor and zaniness of 3. Did they capture that? Yes!....and no.. The issue isn't the writing but time. Times have changed. Alot of fans don't want to recognize that. Should it have been the over exaggerated 90s style thug sim with 3rd grade jokes like before? Sure it could've.. but that's only for the OG fans right? Sadly today's climate, despite how any of us feel about it, can't really support that kind of storytelling anymore. Not when you're trying to run a business. Did it get crazy like 3? God, yes. From helping grannies murder credit card Thieves to reposessing BANK VAULTS to flinging myself across the air with a Weight launcher.. is it got as many crazy weapons as 3 did? No. But it's serviceable. I really liked the energy wall that let's me blast through cover (though I mostly used it just for damage boosts). The volition once said that Saints Row is a world of superheroes and villains without costumes. Agents of mayhem was that world with costumes. Does it feel that way? Yes. A thousand times, yes. You're an unstoppable murder machine whose only weakness seems to be the affirmation of your friends. Is that a bad weakness? Well, apparently, that's the Crux of your characters' personal story. And it was kinda....weak. But that isn't to say much.. the writing has never been anything more than Whelming. It's not underwhelming or overwhelming. Just general whelming.
The Engine: I made a post here once asking about a weird glitch that got solved by turning Ray tracing on. A lot of users here felt the need to claim the engine was shit. I can honestly say that in my recent completion, I've seen quite a few physics bugs.. and that one graphical glitch. Is that a shit engine? Well..if you say yes, then you're saying they all had shit engines....and they kinda did. I've seen the same things and more in all the older games. Double ultra, especially in the one we all place on a pedestal, SR2. I can't tell you how many times I'd go to do a certain mission involving blowing up a building, for it to suddenly crash, and abort that mission. However, the building still blew up somehow, and I got hard locked out of progress. Did ANYTHING like that happen in the reboot? No, thankfully. Does that make it better or worse? No. As much as it sucks to say glitches are here. Testers aren't taken that seriously, and often, a lot of the bugs get passed over despite being cataloged. Am I letting my knowledge of game development influence my feelings of the game? Yes. I think we all should. Merit should be recognized at every layer. What did it take to make? Or you could just hate a company name. I'd rather point the blame at the ones at fault like share holders or dev team leaders forcing changes.
The gameplay feel: it felt like..saints row? They didn't change mechanics very much. I'm glad that it kept to form, and I'm not sure what could've or should've been different.
The world: it feels..empty. sometimes the streets will have zero cars or people unless I go to a new zone or area on the map, and suddenly the game engine decides to populate. But truthfully, I saw the world as nothing more than a collection space to grab collectibles and go to the next objective. Exploration didn't feel GOOD it felt.. tacked on? Unnecessary?
Ever play LA noire? It felt like that games world a bit. If I could just skip traveling at all and just auto start activities, I would.
The third act: What can I say? It happened suddenly. It was obvious(I lowkey suspected kevin or eli. They both have that easily turnable kinda personality). The way the villain acted was new, though! Caught me off guard. Never had a villain that wanted so deeply and terribly to demand friendship, my friends, at the cost of their lives. He was unique. Yo, but like the title says, that last fight went HARD. The cinematography, lighting, music, the slow walk, sizing each other up. Then the Quickdraw. You can and pribably will disagree, but that gave me MGS4 ending fight feelings. Just 2 beasts throwing hands.
Tldr&final thoughts: It starts off strong but quickly plateaus around the mid point. The engine was no worse than previous titles, often looking as nice as Gta at max despite me running at mid settings. the writing was okay for what it needed to be for the new generation of saints. The world feels empty and unnecessary. The story is purely an origin and a kind of generic personal drama of accepting your strengths and weaknesses but not told in any way thats unique (power of friendship, ya'll) and the ending fight scene is pretty cool especially with context but I'd reccomend giving it a quick view on youtube if you dont wanna beat it. I'd give a solid 6.5/10. above average and fun enough to go back to. Nothing special or groundbreaking, but I personally couldn't or wouldn't be able to see the flood of complaints this game got. The review bombing and all the vitriol really felt unwarranted. But then again, everything expressed here is my personal thoughts, opinions, and experiences. Everyone's different.

TL;DR: girlfriend worked as a topless waitress starting when she was 16, after fleeing abusive home. Now she claims there is nothing wrong with that and I feel really uncomfortable with that.
My (M29) girlfriend (M31) (dating 5 years, living together 2) grew up in an abusive house and her mother was too afraid to permanently leave her father. When she turned 16 and could legally move out she did, she worked full-time as a waitress in the evenings while finishing high school. After a bit money was tight, and another girl in the house offered to set her up with a job at a topless bar. She “borrowed” her older sister’s ID, applied, and got hired, making like $2 more an hour.
She doesn’t remember exactly how old she was, but she remembers having to turn down the offer of a 17th birthday bash with friends because she had a shift and didn’t know anyone to switch with, so she was 16. At some point around 20-21 she started bartending there, and eventually transitioned to fully clothed bartending elsewhere.
She only told me a month ago. I had hit the point where I realized I’m desperately in love with her and want to spend the rest of my life with her. Being the suave gentleman that I am I told her that in roughly those words. She was overjoyed and slightly overwhelmed. But a few days after I told her that she told me she had been wondering what type of father I’d be, and that she loved watching me play with my brother’s kids.
A few days again after that, she nervously told me we had to talk. So we did. She told me a lot, much of it I knew. But she was basically laying out what our future would look like. I won’t go into details about her family, but we agreed that if we have kids there will be multiple family members on her side that would never see our kids, and her mother would never be around our kids without one of us present.
Then she told me about working as a topless waitress. I think to her it felt cathartic. There was no one in her life that knew, and I think she felt a bit bad about keeping it secret for so long. We talked for maybe an hour about it with me being understanding at first. I figured she was a broke college student who needed money, and tits get you money. I’m not a big fan of sex work, but bare boobs and no physical contact (except for the groper customers) is not a huge deal to me. She was relieved that I was fine with it.
Until I did some math. She initially didn’t tell me when she started, she just said “used to work as a topless waitress” and told me a bunch. When she was talking something was nagging in the back of my mind, and eventually it clicked that the dates meant she had to be like 17 or 16 when she started. When I asked her that she went silent and looked at the floor for a minute. Then she told me the part about being in grade 11.
So I hugged her. I wasn’t mad. She was a scared teen who escaped an abusive situation who used her sexuality to survive. And then we talked some more. And as we talked I got uncomfortable. I thought I would be supporting her with a painful part of her past, but again something felt off. Here’s what I am struggling with:

1. She insists that nothing wrong happened. The manager didn’t know she was underage, the customers didn’t, and she knew what she was doing, so no wrongdoing. In her eyes.
   
2. She knew that she got attention for looking young. She was a skinny, blondish-brunette small-breasted girl, and she quickly ended up with lots of regulars. She said it wasn’t a big deal because the bar tended to always keep a few skinny girls on staff, there were customers who “liked ‘em young twigs”. She saw it as basic supply and demand.
   
3. She said that even now, from an adult perspective, she doesn’t see what is wrong with it. She said that if someone is in a safe workplace and able to make sure no one finds out then it’s fine. She seems to think that something is wrong only once the law finds out.
   
4. I asked her what she would tell someone now if she found out someone she cared for was considering illegal sex work. She thought about it, and told me she’d tell them all the uncomfortable stories she has, warn them of consequences, tell them how much tips she made, then leave it to them to decide.
   

We ended the conversation somewhat peacefully. She was unhappy that went from supportive to unhappy, but we didn’t fight. But the more that time has gone on the more I can’t deal with this. I would be completely fine with her having compassion on her younger self, that is healthy. I would be fine with her saying that at the time she felt it was totally OK, or that in hindsight she feels like she had no other option. But she fully defends it, as if she thinks topless 16-year olds serving drunk men who grope without permission is fine.
Since then we’ve talked twice about it, no change. I tell her I’m uncomfortable with her current attitude, she tells me it’s her past and it’s in the past. Yes, it’s in the past, but it’s how she now feels about underage sex work that makes me uncomfortable.
What the hell do I do? I love her. I was picturing her as the mother of my children. I want to move past this. In a way, I feel like she is secretly insecure about this, and her defense of it is a security measure for her. I suspect that might be the case, to her it seemed like a huge deal to tell me. Or she just now trusted me. Like if she admits there is something wrong then suddenly she’s a bad person who abused herself. What scares me is what might happen if someday we have kids and she talks to them about life choices and says things like this.
Is there any way to move past this? Do I just accept how she feels about her past? Keep telling her why I’m uncomfortable? Leave the best thing that ever happened to me? Stay with her and maybe never have kids? Proceed with a family and hope her attitude changes by the time it matters? Has anyone been through a similar thing of dealing with a partner's past, specifically when you want to be supportive but struggle with it?
Thanks. I used a throw-away account for protection. I originally posted in a different sub, but it was quickly removed. I wonder why.

I’m not talking about ancap, but people who think that everyone should be left alone but we still ought to have a government monopoly on violence. Take, for example, taxes. The average libertarian probably agrees with the idea of the NAP, however can still justify taking peoples’ money. Are they just egalitarians?

Please contact the mods for help with any of your assignments. we offer quality work that is very affordable, and have great turnaround time, mods contacts are

• DISCORD ID; John254#6423
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Little bit of a rant, I was at the park yesterday and was surprised by the average load times of a train around 3-5 minutes. What made this situation a bit worse was that there was 3 train operation happening at the same time too, so for about 2 minutes a 3rd train is just siting outside the exit station waiting to unload.
Has there been some crazy change to how ride ops have to operate, or were you guys short staffed?
I understand that training is still going on, but it seems silly to run 3 train ops, if the crew can't even handle that at the current time.
On the other hand a ride I was surprised was running 3 train ops, Steel Vengeance, and I do want to point out that they were killin it, the line, all day. So props to them you guys really were "slayin" it.

As the text says. Exam is scheduled for this Friday.
I just finished to take the 175 question SH and these are my resultsÇ
SH 1: 69% SH 2: 67%
Both considering the "expert" questions. On the mini exams, my average is 66%.
Overall, it seems to be good, but I don't feel pretty confident on it, to be sincere. I will work in some remaining questions I have and a review on Thirdrock's notes till Friday.
Your feedback is appreciated.

My Dell vostro 3400 started having audio static from a few weeks ago. Its not that bad when i first turn on my laptop, then gets worse and worse the longer I use it, i.e. restarting sorta "refreshes" the static. But then a week ago my audio went away completely, there's a red X below the sound symbol on my taskbar. It says "no speakers or headphone plugged in", which isn't true. So i went into device managers -> sound, video and game controllers, and the audio driver I was using was Cirrus high definition audio driver, I tried updating that with microsoft generic High def audio drivers to no avail. Next I tried uninstalling the drivers and rebooting my laptop, which reinstalled all the uninstalled drivers, still no good.
Now here's where things get extra f*cky; I have no idea what I did, but now no matter how many times I restart my laptop, the audio drivers aren't getting reinstalled. I asked around and got told to go to Dell support website and download the correct drivers for my specific machine there, and so I complied and downloaded Realtek high def drivers. But when I install and look for it in device manager, it's not there! And still no audio too! But when I look for Realtek audio drivers in Apps & Features, it's there for some reason.
Any idea how to get sound back? I'm honestly at my wit's end.

I’m currently planning on taking a Sociology course during the summer semester, it starts in July and ends exactly a month later. I know in general that these classes are accelerated to cover as many topics as possible within a short timeframe, but I want to know what i should expect. I attempted a math course before in the summer, but withdrew because it was too intense. Thanks for any advice!

Looking for a free or low cost online math program for a kinder student. I like the simplicity of CTC Math, but hate that you have to pay for it. Zearn is difficult to follow, and the K math is too hard for my little guy. He also has adhd, and finds it very boring. I can’t stand Khan academy. I have had a lot of difficulty using it on the computer, and when I downloaded the app on the tablet, it wasn’t the same thing as what was online. I also find the interface very complicated and not user friendly.

I’ve been commuting on a beater for 2 years now and this is my first “real” bike. Was between the FX2 and FX3 but decided on the 3 ultimately for the carbon fork (the paths I ride on aren’t the smoothest) and the simplicity of the single drivetrain. I was a bit worried about the gear range but I hit a top speed of 30 and felt like I still had room to go on the gears when speeding downhill. At the end of the day, I bought it for fitness and my first ride went extremely smoothly! Pumped with my newest purchase and excited to put some miles on it (and hopefully improve on that average speed!).