How to program brinks timer 44-1010

Hello,
I inherited an old pinewood track for our church's AWANA program. The timer no longer worked and it needed a good amount of repairs, so I am refurbishing it and upgrading the timer and adding an automatic gate to it.
I have everything working except the solenoid I am using resets the gate after 3 seconds, which zero's out the timer - not allowing enough time for the cars to finish the race.
Do you have any advice for how I can over come this?The timer is MicroWizard Fast Track, and the solenoid and count down timer was purchased from New Directions.
Here's a video of all the components in action. This is from the under side of the track.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gyutxw8lfo0npt5tm9m64/20240518_172534.mp4?rlkey=i0zsn3ldoc07h7zjth1w2w4w3&dl=0
Thanks in advance!

I've grown resentments towards things like this. Even during meetings via cross talk. I would say something like "happy to have this program as part of my recovery "(key word 'part'). Then would strike a nerve in an old timer.
The response would be in a share or two later. Something along the lines of- "You know, I once had a sponcee that wanted to do the program his way, and he was seeking casual sobriety- said he was using AA as one of his tools.. and I told him AA is the only way!! He wouldn't listen and he would lie on his 4th and 5th step. Next thing you know, he thought he was too smart for the program and guess what? He's dead now!!"
Some meetings are "feel good" kind of love bombing and others are a complete devaluation and you better take our suggestions. To me, it seemed like a narcissistic relationship.
I went back to support a "friend" that wanted me there when she picked her white chip up. I had a member (20 yr medallion) that quoted me for baden- basically telling me that she told me so! And was getting high on her Guru status I guess. Had another member that grabbed me inappropriately from behind. Btw I did go "back out" and it was my first day sober. This might be a whole other post!
Anyways, this was a reply to another thread, but I copied and pasted to make my own. It was originally a response to "how do you respond" to when members tell you it's AA or death.
Sorry for the poor grammar, I'm still trying to get my head right!

Talking with a very diverse group as part of the Technical Advisory Board is useful. Surprise has become very common, as I find uncommon insights from most conversations. You can't take anyone for granted—they always have some unique insight from experience. My discussion with a Solution Architect gave me much information I would not have found otherwise.
I always try to give something back so it is useful to both parties. So, I will also be mixing in some of my thoughts here.
Newer technologies, such as React, Hotwire, and Turbo, have changed programming paradigms, requiring different ways of retrieving data from the server. This means using modern technologies like Redis because old tech no longer works well.
Products that thrive are not necessarily technically perfect, but they know how to build communities. WordPress is a great example of this. You need a lot of documentation and the creation of infrastructure over infrastructure, as people don’t read things and may not fully understand the system.
In some ways, this is understandable because nobody has time to stop and think anymore, especially with scrums and sprints. There is not a lot of time to stop and ponder in a 2-week sprint, which I have always felt is too short a period for a sprint because it does not handle unexpected downtime like PTOs or someone getting sick, etc.
The net effect is that we use technologies like appliances with a shallow understanding of their functions, probably not wielding their full power. We look for experts when almost everyone is working in the same manner. And often, even cloud support is not very helpful when you can get them on chat/ email/ phone.
One of his points was very interesting. He mentioned that many modern applications like React, Vue, sometimes Flutter, and Angular have a very frequent access cadence from the server—and in such cases, it is not the backend that has a problem but the front end.
Why are so many calls being made to the server? Is it needed? Sometimes, these API calls are not meaningful and are made just because of how the component refreshes. But, we tend to use Redis as a band-aid to solve this unrelated issue.
This goes back to something I have learned over time in software engineering. You cannot take anything for granted (these are from a .NET/ .NET Core/ Windows environment):

• CPU
• Memory
• Even Disk Space (log files filled up the drive)
• Now Disk I/O
• Threads
• Even Timers (timer threads can die when you have too many timers)
• Excessively "long" object hierarchies (hard to believe, but you have to see it to believe it)

Pretty much everything has a limit. I have found that applications that work well across different environments - especially resource-constrained environments always assume that everything is limited & hence, controlled.
More stories to follow.
#sqlserver #redis #azure #windows #dotnet #dotnetcore #csharp #apis #rest #performance #scalability

I had the most amazing experience in a medical setting, and I wanted to share it with a group that will be excited for me.
I went in yesterday around noon to check in. My boyfriend came with me, and they gave him a number to track where I was at on their giant tv in the waiting room. After an hour of waiting in the waiting room, the called me back to pre op. Got changed and climbed under some blankets that had warm air blowing under them. I answered some questions for the nurse, talked to the some other folks who were going to be assisting in my surgery.
I usually have terrible anxiety when it comes to needles. I mentioned to by surgeon that IVs are really scary for me and have had painful experiences both times I’ve had them. I was offered a shot to numb the back of my hand for the IV and it was so easy! The other nurse who I spoke with earlier popped her head in after and said “oh wow! That was quick!” And then looked at me “I’m so sorry. I should have been there to hold your hand!” Which I thought was super sweet. Then they grabbed my boyfriend from the waiting room while I signed all my forms, got my meds, went pee, and he got to meet my surgeon.
Finally, it was time for me to be wheeled back to surgery and him to go back to the waiting room. Once we started passing by other operating room, I started to feel the nerves. The operation room was huge with a big monitor with my all my relevant health info and bright lights. I scooted on to the table while they hooked up my arm and leg blood pressure cuffs, put a heart rate monitor on my earlobe, and gave me some oxygen before I got knocked out.
When I woke up in recovery, they gave me back my glasses and once I was more alert, the grabbed my partner. I was so happy to see him and cried a little bit. They gave me some oxy and gave me my meds to go home with and went over the discharge/home care info with my partner. They even sent me home with a couple of pictures! (My surgeon/OBGYN said it’s never too early to plan out the Christmas cards). The post op nurse had my boyfriend pull his car up while I got dressed and then I got wheeled out to his car. Of course the loading zone was packed so he had to park in the furthest end. Getting wheeled over there was the most painful part, going over those lines in the sidewalk felt like going over super tall speed bumps. But as we were driving home, the pain meds kicked in and I felt fine.
My boyfriend dropped me off and then got us some food and we relaxed on the couch. I could definitely feel my pain meds wear off, and kept timers to rotate and remember my rotation of meds. Other than that, my pain has been very well managed. Slept pretty well, even with the round the clock medication wake ups.
I definitely feel more tender today and have some good brushing around my incision below my bellybutton, but compared to my cramps I’m used to, this is a walk in the park! I notice that walking around and moving feels better on my incisions, and getting out of bed is probably the most “painful” part, but not too bad.
I am still in awe that I got this done finally! No more pregnancy tests or plan B if I forgot my birth control. I’ve opted to continue my birth control pills to manage my horrible never ending period, but now I don’t have to worry so much if I forget a pill. I truly thought this day would never come. I requested 3 weeks off dispute the recovery time typically being 2 since my job is so physical and mentally draining (ironically enough, I run a child are program) and was approved! I’m going to enjoy the next three weeks laying in bed with my dogs and not doing a whole lot else.
ETA: already reached out to the mods about adding my OBGYN who preformed my procedure. When we were going over the procedure, she asked me if I heard about this subreddit and the list of doctors (she had heard about it on TikTok) and I told her I actually tried to find a doctor on there that took kiaser but couldn’t find one that was taking patients and when I was trying to find an OBGYN off of the list. She mentioned that everyone in her practice would be more than willing to sign off on the procedure as long as they had thought it out, knew that it was permanent, and wanted it. She also joked about how she didn’t want to be on a list because she’s super busy, but whoops! She is truly the best doctor I’ve ever worked with, so I can’t not recommend her. Even my boyfriend thought she was amazing.

How common is it for retiring teachers to become complete assholes? We have a couple of old timers leaving this year and I’m just hoping they are acting this way as a coping mechanism on the way out the door.
Our music teacher has been at the school since 1993. She has been an amazing educator with the most amazing programs and we’ve always gotten along well. However, since we have hired her replacement THAT SHE HAS NEVER MET she keeps bringing up all the possible reasons he’s gonna suck. I’m like do you want music to fail at this school? No one forced you to retire. Sorry more and more of your colleagues are Millennials and Gen Z. (I’m Gen X.) Everything we do brings new criticism. I’m like this year needs to end before I don’t even like you anymore.
And she’s not the only one acting like this. I could go on a much longer diatribe about our GT teacher and all the bridges she is burning on her way out the door.

Right..
So I've been heavily testing out ChatGPT, specifically 4 and 4o.
I found (probably so has everyone on earth) some issues that need to be resolved.
I guess one issue is, there is zero evidence of any kind of intelligence. Not artificial or even equivalent to a baby.
This is nothing more than a glorified chat bot that can submit information to other services then process some information on the site or article and then reword and spit out what you can already see or read for yourself.
I made an auto talking chat bot back in 1998 for IRC that could do the same and probably more, it also had purpose built random varying timers for replies to make it look like a human was responding.
It could also give you information and respond with sarcasm and even engage with public channels along with private messages if it chose to. It could even do this without being asked.
I also gave it the ability via connecting to external apps and command prompt in windows, to find people's IP addresses, look up weather, try hack your PC or disconnect foreign users from the internet or freeze your connection.
But for that I had to activate WAR mode and assign it to a specific channel for testing, where people could come in and purposely piss it off so it would retaliate viciously by hacking them in some way.
So the year is currently 2024.... How far have we advanced and what can ChatGPT do that my bot couldn't do, using all the immense power and advanced hardware and software..
The answer is, not much.
So other than that literal fact, I have 2 actual issues I've found with it which does need to be resolved.

1. It forgets things completely randomly even when you tell it to remember or commit to memory for future prompts or use. I have to explain all over again and again every few hours, what I told it to remember to do.

It says yep, I remember.. I'm to do this..
So I ask it why it didn't, and like a foreign call centre worker, it responds with something like "my apologies, from now on I'll blah blah blah".
Then it does it again... So yeah, very useful.
The next thing I found is, if you tell it to remember to do something specific, in relation to say generating a type of document or prompt text for another program, if you ever add or change something you want it to ALSO do, it sometimes overrides the data or creates a few different subsets of data for that particular thing, and it randomly chooses which one of those to recall and use, or none of them.
It has an inability to properly merge or amalgamate that information and recall it.
The ability to have it generate images using Dall-E is a nice new joke of a kids toy like gimmick.
Example, trying to test it out, I said "make an image of 2 spaceships firing at each other in combat above Earth".
I also tried "2 spaceships flying directly at each other firing weapons, above planet Earth" and about 60 other variations of those prompts because I discovered a really weird issue...
It does 90% of what I asked, but consistently shows 2 craft side by side flying in the same direction shooting off ahead at nothing.
No matter what I tried, it kept showing them side by side.
I then said "1 f***ing spacecraft flying and shooting at another craft" and again... Same issue. It either showed 2 near each other going the same direction or just 1.
I tested the crap out of Dall-E via ChatGPT, and found at best it's useful if your a kid and say "give me a puppy" or show me a school bus.
Insanely ultra simple and nonspecific things you want done.
The quality of the overall image, the shading, lighting, textures etc. are at best a cartoon of some kind, worthy of being on a kids show, if the show was from the 1970's.
However, completely at random, after a ton of image generation requests, it might actually pop out a single super high quality image that I'm almost certain is an actual photo taken from somewhere that just so happens to closely match what you typed in.
I bet I could prove that, because the jump in quality and photorealism is about 10,000x for literally no reason. Then it's back to gimmicky kids cartoons at best.
I saved all my examples, so I can investigate it further.
For now, I see ChatGPT as a useful tool for irritating you and sending you into a murderous rage at its stupidity and lack of comprehension, not to mention it lies to you a lot.
"View this image and tell me what you think".
"I'm sorry Dave, I cannot let you do that".
"But you did it yesterday, why can't you do it now"
"I don't have the ability to view images, but you can describe it to me".
"I don't want to, you view it and tell me what you think"
"I can't do that.."
"You did it yesterday, so do it again"
.....proceeds to view the image then give me a run down on what it can see, which is pretty accurate, and doesn't fit the description, so I know it definitely viewed it.
If ChatGPT were a person, that person would have been jailed, beaten up, abused, fired or thrown off a cliff many times over.
All the hype about it, all the demonstrations, and all I see is a gimmicky chat bot that is possibly on par with my own from 1998.
Mine took me 6 months to make, and back then, it fooled everyone into thinking it was a real human.
It also ran locally from a windows 98 based PC with a dial-up connection.
All these companies need to stop lying, stop using the term AI, because that's literally a straight out lie.
I haven't seen a single thing that demonstrates even the smallest bit of intelligence or thought process.
It's just a chat bot with plug-ins.
It's a large collection of scripts and algorithms, stuck together with a fraudulent sticker saying "Artificial intelligence".
It's marketing hype and nothing more.
I suggest they fix their problems with it and maybe the programmers first need to go back to school and figure out the basics, like English & Maths.
Once they've done that, come back and teach the chat bot how to use them correctly.
I've got so very many examples that my head hurts.
It's still an impressive chat bot, but it's only that. 🤗

So for a while or so I've been playing older Sonic games just to see if they still held up. So far a majority of the games I played were at the very least good with some of the best ones being Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic rush. But something that might be my biggest Sonic hot take ever is that Heroes is one of the worst games in the entire Sonic series(unpopular opinion I know but let me explain myself). And just a heads up this is gonna be a long one because I got a lot to say about this game.
Because this game has a lot of aspects that I don’t like, I'm going to first touch on some aspects I actually like about the game. Even though not every character was written the best I will say some stand out characters I enjoyed are Cream and Omega, especially Omega but I wanna touch on Cream first. Ever since reading the IDW comics I've always had a soft spot for Cream just from how innocent and adorable she was and that sentiment continued with how she was paired with Blaze in Sonic Rush. I was admittedly nervous about how she would be portrayed in Heroes for reasons I'll get into later but she was handled alright. Nothing too groundbreaking but she kept her cute nature and even had some small moments of sass which was nice. The real star of the show was E-123 Omega. He really only has one thing on his mind with destroying Eggman and doesn’t really go through any sort of character arc, but that’s fine with me because the dude’s funny as hell with how aggressive and angry he is. He doesn’t have much of a face or eyes that are able to emote but you can still tell exactly what he’s thinking. I can’t explain why but every piece of dialogue that comes out of his…mouth?....speakers?...is hysterical. From “ANNIHILATE” to “USELESS CONSUMER MODELS” even down to when he says “GOOD” every time you pop an item box or balloon every quote is comedy gold with how monotone his voice is. The chemistry each team has with each other is nice to watch since from their dialogue you can tell that these trios have known each other for a while, are good friends with one another, or in Team Dark’s case just work friends(but their banter is still entertaining with how Omega keeps telling them to stay focused). And the music is good but as a Sonic fan that’s par for the course at this point. What I’m Made Of is a stand out banger for me.
But unfortunately that’s where all the positives end as we move into the negatives with one of the biggest being the physics of the game being poorly optimized. Throughout my playthrough I have run into so many bugs or victims of poor game design that I’ve lost count. But over half of my deaths have been due to the fact that there are no invisible walls to act as safety nets for players incase they misclick or even do something as simple as do a homing attack or perform a 3 hit combo with a power character, the latter happening way too often because power characters are the most reliable way to deal with enemies. Enemies bumping you are also a common way to die but not because of running out or rings, but because of the lack of walls keeping you on the platforms. Speaking of the homing attack, with how the movement physics work with speed characters I never use them because they end up being too slippery to control with instances where it feels like I'm fighting for control just so I can move forward in a straight line or hit a boost pad on a loop. The Light Speed Dash works whenever it feels like it and there’s no way to aim the homing attack so you pretty much have to press A twice and pray that rn-Jesus does you nice, otherwise you’re falling down a pit like you’re Scrooge McDuck diving into a vault of gold coins. And remember how I said enemies bumping you off cliffs was a common way to die? Well they can also just combo you for free because this game has no invincibility frames meaning you can get hit once and then instantly die if you or one of your teammates doesn’t pick up a ring right after being hit. This is especially apparent in horde fights like Robot Storm where you can get easily swarmed. And a staple mechanic from Sonic Adventure 2 that was butchered in this followup was the rail grinding. It was super fun to build up speed by balancing and crouching but now you just mash B with any real sense of speed being from a speed character. And heaven forbid you decided to grind rail with a flight character unless you like sliding at the speed of a snail, but you might wanna do that anyway to be save because if you switch rails the game doesn’t magnetize your character to it risking you to just shoot yourself off the map just for swapping rails or getting off of a rail.
Another awful aspect with the game is the team mechanic itself. It’s an interesting idea on paper to be able to swap between 3 characters to perform different actions based on what the level throws at you. But the problem with that is not every formation is balanced. The flying formation is awful in every way. The totem formation itself looks weird and looks especially janky with how it looks when going off a set of springs or going through a dash panel loop. How it controls itself makes absolutely no sense either; you jump and jump again to fly which drains a meter, which makes sense since Tails worked in a similar way back in Sonic 2 and still works like that in every other 2D classic style game. But I didn’t learn until the last story that the gauge only drains if you move forwards and won’t drain if you don’t move forward which not only makes no sense but doesn’t work like that in Sonic 2 at all. And whenever the meter runs out you might think that you would just glide down to the floor right? No. Instead the game halts all of your momentum and has you fall straight down like a boulder making flying based platforming impossible which was not the case in Sonic 2. And for some reason there’s a limit for how high you can go even though there’s already a limit you can fly for. Wanna know what game allows you to fly as long as you want until you run out of stamina? SONIC FUCKING 2 ON THE SEGA GENESIS/MEGA DRIVE. Sonic Heroes not only came out 10 years after Sonic 2 but was released on more powerful consoles so I'm baffled that they didn’t even try to make any of this shit work in any similar fashion. And this gets even worse for Sonic Heroes because you know how I just described how they would have improved the flying mechanics in Sonic Heroes? Well it WORKS EXACTLY HOW I JUST EXPLAINED IN SONIC ADVENTURE FOR THE THE DREAMCAST 1999. What the hell were they thinking with this!? This makes absolutely no fucking sense. And the Thunder Shoot attack? It doesn’t do much except paralyze enemies and hit targets meant to help you move forward in levels. Except it only does one of these things correctly since the game doesn’t auto target the targets meaning 90% of the time you’ll be constantly throwing your teammates into the ether while missing entirely as you try again and again to change your angle to hit the target just so you can move on with the average 10 minute level. And the switches you’re meant to pull are janky in their own right but the switches you have to fly for are the worst since no matter how close you get to that switch the game won’t register what you’re trying to do which is annoying as balls. And as the finishing touch all flying character have no differences in gameplay despite slight animations and apparently they have this unique attack they can do if they don’t have party members to throw with Thunder Shoot by pressing B again...but the game doesn’t tell you that and even knew that you’ll never see it in practice because if you toss a teammate with Thunder Shoot they’ll come back almost instantly.
And the biggest failure is that you can no longer spin dash in this game. It’s no big deal, it’s not like they removed one of Sonic’s most essential moves in his arsenal that was present all the way from Sonic 2 and was even in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, useless crap like that. Instead you have to use the stupid Rocket Accel which can’t be activated instantly like the spin dash with instead having the player get a running start to have your teammate boost you forward that doesn’t go as far as the spin dash in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2. It’s an alright concept that would be fine to keep if the spin dash remained in the game and not replaced with some trash faker that doesn’t hold up to the original. Which leaves us with the power formation which is the best formation by far but not by much. Power is the easiest one to control since it allows you to properly control your character at a moderate speed, a novel concept I know. But combo attacks that involve the character moving forward in a short burst are risky to use since you could wind up pushing yourself off the map which happens way more often than you’d think and more often than it should. And because they have to share data with all the playable teams they away Knuckles’ ability to climb walls in favor of a tacky looking team glide for platforming just like they took away the Spin Dash.
Another team related mechanic the game introduces is something called the “Team Blast” which has a gauge fill up every time you deal damage to enemies or collect rings no matter how you collect said rings(remember this for later). When a team gauge is filled you can perform a Team Blast by pressing Z that acts as a screen wipe that clears almost every enemy on screen. I say almost because it doesn’t really remove every enemy on screen because some doof over at Sonic Team thought it would be a good idea to give an ultimate attack that’s meant to wipe out all enemies on screen with a limited range, which is smaller than you’d think by the way. Each Team Blast has their own special effect that appears for around 10 seconds after the attack is used which i’ll be talking about when I talk about each team on their own but know that after Team Sonic’s Team Blast Sonic will be able to use the Light Speed Attack from Adventure 1 and 2…but that’s useless when you’re able to still fight as Knuckles and it fucks up your Thunder Shoot when attacking bosses.
And the next fancy mechanic they try adding in is the new level system. And I hate this system so much. The idea of the level system is that your character starts off dealing an ok amount of damage but can get stronger the more you level up by collecting orbs that can drop from enemies. Speed characters get a stronger spin dash, flight characters get a stronger Thunder Shoot, and power characters get stronger combo enders. The problem is that in terms of combat no Sonic game has ever worked like this. For the most part every enemy in a Sonic game that came out before and after Heroes is able to be one shot by a simple jump, roll, spin dash, homing attack, mech shot, boost or punch with the only exceptions I can name off the top of my head being Sonic Rush, Sonic Unleashed’s night stages, and Sonic Frontiers. But those 3 examples are excusable since with Rush it’s only one enemy that has more than 1 HP that doesn’t spawn often and with the other 2 being based more on combat than speeding through levels as fast as possible. Your team will only be satisfying to play after everyone as at the maximum level of level 3 which can be difficult to do since whichever orbs enemies drop when defeated are not only random for when exactly they’ll drop but it’s also completely random who the level up is meant for. Imagine needing to level up your power character to get through a large horde of enemies but instead all the levels go to the other 2 teammates that are virtually useless in a fight. “Ah dammit, I needed a power orb to get to level 2…ah well might as well give my other teammates their 50th orb of the fight.” The only ways to get guaranteed levels for a certain character is with certain item boxes and balloons scattered throughout the level and with checkpoints but the latter only works for the character leading the formation when touching the checkpoint, not to mention they’re single use only. And say you grinded all those levels so you can blitz through this level, guess what, if you die all of your levels get reset and it doesn’t matter if you only lose a life or game over. And i’ve made it very clear how easy it is to unintentionally kill yourself in this game.
Something else that isn’t properly explained is the hidden difficulty system. The problem is that each team campaign has a hidden difficulty system but the game doesn’t tell you that at all unless you want to willingly listen to Omochao(note that I played the tutorial and afterwards I actively avoided his tips on the main menu). The difficulty from easy to hard is Teams Rose, Sonic, Dark, and Chaotix being a gimmick team but the game orders them from Sonic, Dark, Rose, Chaotix which is bad game design because not only are people gonna wanna play as the main character Sonic the Hedgehog, but with how the stories are laid out players would instinctively play from left to right causing them to play the game on normal, hard, easy, and then gimmick which doesn’t make too much sense. I knew the difficulty levels before going in but I played in order of Sonic, Rose, Dark, Chaotix because I like Sonic as a character. But what I wasn’t prepared for is that this game is kinda hard even on the normal difficulty because the game is full of jank that can just kill you for playing the game as intended.
But now for Team Rose and Team Dark. Team Rose is so piss easy that it’s insulting for players who are well affirmed with the series. For one they force you to play the tutorial even after you’ve completed a story previously. Which btw this is the most bullshit tutorial in the history of gaming. Most games have pop ups with button commands and visuals to help the player out or they let the player figure things out themselves. Sonic Heroes does neither of these but instead have this little annoying ass robotic fuck hold your hand throughout the entire thing. What makes this worse is that every time he pops up to tell you what to do your character is stuck in place as you gotta wait for him to shut up so you can play the game only for you to be stopped by his rambling again and again and again until it’s finally over. And most of the skills players can learn on their own since it’s not that hard to just press a random button and get immediate feedback of “oh this button does this? cool beans''. Their moveset is also broken with Amy’s tornado attack being a moving projectile meaning you don’t have to willingly get in contact with the enemy in order to use it, Big having a combo that doesn’t have him move so he can’t fall off the map along with a broken belly flop that’s good for not only combat but weirdly enough platforming, and Cream…she’s just the flier. Their Team Blast is just a win button for no good reason. Not only does it give all of your teammates a free level, not only does it give your team a shield, but it makes your entire team INVINCIBLE. Ok game I get it, stop treating me like a baby. And the finishing touch is that all the levels are cut in half. Awesome. Setting up unrealistic expectations for newcomers and disrespecting older players in one foul swoop.
And then there’s Team Dark…oh Team Dark…when they said this was the “hard” mode they were lying. Because it should’ve been called “kaizo” mode. Enemies are everywhere including places they shouldn’t be, the amount of rings available is greatly reduced, And the bosses become borderline impossible to beat at times(except for the rival fights but we’ll get to that). And not only are there more enemies but the stronger variants of said enemies spawn more frequently. And you’d think their Team Blast would make things better, well yes and no but here’s why. Their Team Blast freezes time completely and I mean completely. Rings don’t spin, projectiles don’t move, even the timer doesn’t tick down. But the most annoying part is if you’re using your Team Blast to try and move forward the puzzles are stuck in time too until the gauge runs out so you gotta sit and wait to move on. And even after you move on the game will probably toss 3 giant armored robots at you at once that fight like mini-bosses(if you know you know) immediately after your Team Blast just ran out.
But before I talk about the final team with Team Chaotix I wanna talk about the level design! Yippee! Except not really because it’s all terrible. The locations and themes are unique in their own right but each level suffers from their own issues coupled with all the bugs that can kill you outright without the player having any time to think about what just happened. Ignoring the main bugs, Seaside Hill and Ocean Palace are fine first levels in all honesty. Power Plant’s elevator section is long and tedious and it’s worse if you have a character than use the Light Speed Dash along with a super stressful rising lava section that you gotta hurry up to climb or else you’re dead. But oooh nooo it’s not that easy because the lava moves faster along with the player which means if you’re too slow, you die and if you’re too fast…you die. Casino Park and Bingo Highway have pinball mechanics that will leave you stuck in one of the tables forever unless you’re a pinball god or just lucky. And we just love games marketed at children that encourage gambling addictions, especially if said gambling minigames are rng. Rail Canyon and Bullet Station rely entirely on rails which don’t work properly as I said before and Bullet Station in particular has a cannon that’s supposed to shoot you onto another rail track but in actuality it fires you straight into the death zone if you’re unaware about this and hold forward…and because it’s a Sonic the Hedgehog game you’re gonna do that. “Gotta go fast” and all that. Frog Forest and Lost Jungle have flying flowers that are so jittery they’re impossible to control, swinging vines with an awkward timing window, and it ends on a chase sequence against a giant crocodile that relies on the janky vines that last way too long. Hang Castle and Mystic Mansion are puzzle-filled mazes with ghost enemies that show up at the worst of times to jumpscare you…which is all the time, and everything else(we all know these levels sucks moving on). Egg Fleet and Final Fortress have tons of bullshit cannons that can home in on you, can snipe you out of the air which can hit you out of a platforming segment and send you falling to your death, crumbling floors, everything’s in the sky so there’s almost no floor to stand on, and rails. The worst part about it all is that all 4 campaign’s use the same exact 14 levels. You heard me right. ALL 4 CAMPAIGNS USE THE EXACT SAME LEVELS. Sonic Adventure 2 had 2 campaigns with levels that heavily differed from each other one way or another. Each campaign has either a speed level, a treasure level, or a mech level and even then it’s not equal to how many levels each type of level gets and each level has a different setting and music track. Rush is the one case I can think of where the campaigns had minor differences. Only thing is that those differences are huge. The levels are the same but they’re in a different order for Sonic and Blaze, Blaze plays completely differently from Sonic, Blaze gets her own music tracks, and Sonic has to use special stages to get the Chaos Emeralds while Blaze doesn’t need any to get the Sol Emeralds. And at the end of every other stage you gotta face off against-
Bosses! They all suck for different reasons. The mech fights boil down to mashing homing attacks like it’s a Mario Party minigame, the rival team fights are a joke, and the horde fights…oh my god the horde fights. I’m just gonna rip the band-aid off here. ROBOT. FUCKING. STORM. This is not only the worst “level” in Sonic Heroes but the worst boss fight out of any Sonic game I have ever played. Team Sonic’s is hard enough as is, Team Rose’s is a pushover(as is every boss in their campaign really), Team Chaotix…we’ll get to them later. But Team Dark’s has to be the boss fight that throws the bullshit at you. Don’t believe me well then let’s see here, we got; a long robot gauntlet that feels like it takes years to get over with, more enemies that spawn with a lot of them being the stronger variants of the enemies we’ve already be accustomed to, multiple giant hammer wielding robots paired with either robots that heal them or robots that sap all your rings which because it’s a Sonic game it’s basically life steal, and because this game was programmed with monkeys holding hammers the enemies will constantly knock your ass off the map and there is NOTHING you can do about it except pray. Pray to rn-Jesus that you can make it out alive with what little sanity is left in your body. And after all that Eggman has the balls to say what I'd call the worst line in any Sonic game, “Don’t get too excited boys! Those were the easy ones!”. It’s genuinely unbelievable that such a level exists. This was marketed towards kids. How is fucking little Casey who just got Sonic Heroes as their first video game gonna beat this shit? He’s not. Because the developers didn’t think about that just like they didn’t think about anything in this game except making a “fun” gimmick. But that’s not all. Because there’s one more boss...
Egg Emperor…and the bullshit continues. I definitely know what true evil is when facing this boss all right. The fight consists of running across a few platforms before making your way over to a bigger arena. The boss only has 3 attacks but 2 of them are what make this boss a slog to get through. He can fire energy waves by swinging his lance like he’s Cloud Strife and a charge attack that has no weaknesses that the game says activates whenever you’re too far from him. Because this is a Sonic game I figured that meant he can only charge if you’re too slow, but if you manage to run ahead of him he’ll charge anyway. But if you get too close to him you could risk either getting hit by a lance beam or by his massive hurtbox. And you might be thinking “why don’t you homing attack the body at that point?” and that’s because he has a shield that blocks all attacks and it’s only worth attacking his body after the second part of the fight where you go to that arena section. In the arena section you have to destroy some cannons and defeat some enemies before getting to the big man himself. You can make him drop his shield by using Thunder Shoot and follow up with your Power character but you probably wouldn’t do as much damage as you were hoping for since in order to do any real damage you’ll have to level your Power character up to level 3 which could take forever in this fight. After a certain amount of time the boss will flee causing you to chase after him again and repeat the boss cycle. But don’t go too fast because then you’ll wind up smacking right into his body or he’ll swat you out the air like a fly with a lance beam attack. And you can’t go too slow or else he’ll just charge at you which if he does it at the wrong time he can intercept your approach and boop you off the map meaning you’ll be dead. And if you thought that was enough, because the developers don’t know how to properly make things different between campaigns you have to fight this motherfucker 4 SEPARATE TIMES. And it doesn’t matter what campaign you go through because you’ll always have a tough time regardless of difficulty. I know it’s the final boss and that it’s meant to be a challenge but holy shit tone it down, there’s kids playing this shit.
And the last campaign involves Team Chaotix and they’re by far my favorite team to play as…and they still have problems. Instead of going through levels the same way you did 3 separate times already it instead focuses on missions. And I have mixed feelings about this. It’s great because it finally keeps things fresh and gives the player another way to experience the game that isn’t platforming focused. The problem is the fact that it’s still the same levels, levels that were meant for an action platformer instead of things finding an x amount of…I don’t know seashells. While the treasure hunting stages were my least favorite aspect of Sonic Adventure 2 they at least did a better job with the concept than some of the collecting missions in Heroes since the maps are built specifically for this kind of gameplay and there was at least a tracker telling you if you were going in the right direction. The Chaotix has you searching through levels you’re meant to speed through while not giving you any sort of tracker to tell you if you’re in the right direction. The Casino Park one in particular was the worst one because of the instructions: “Win 200 Rings!”. Anyone who sees this probably assumes they mean to use the slot machines since we’re a casino level with slot machines built into the pinball tables. But the thing is you can easily just collect 200 rings by playing the stage. But the game doesn’t say collect 200 rings, it says win 200 rings which is the dumbest piece of misinformation in this game and that’s saying something since this game loves to withhold information from the player for no reason. Like did you know you can fire your Thunder Shoot at nothing to charge your team gauge? Or that even though the game says to use a Speed character’s tornado to deal with shield enemies Power characters can punch right through them no problem? You probably didn’t because the game doesn’t tell you this. Anyway the stealth missions are the best ones because Espio’s invisibility is broken. And their Team Blast causes any enemy destroyed to turn into rings and for the duration of the meter any enemy destroyed turns into rings. This is the most broken move in the game. Why? Well remember when I said that the Team Gauge charges from attacking enemies and collecting rings? Well the game counts any rings collected towards the meter. Meaning if you destroy enough enemies at once with this attack you can immediately get your gauge back to repeatedly use again and again. It’s such an easy exploit to pull off that I'm not even surprised that this was left unchecked in all honesty. It even makes the dreaded Robot Storm look like a joke.
So that’s it. You beat all the 4 campaigns and you’d think that it’s time for the usual last story, right?...right? Well unfortunately special stages make a return and with that the 7 Chaos Emeralds. And this is by far the worst one. In the past special stages were unlocked by method of holding at least 50 rings until the end of the stage and jumping into a warp ring in Sonic 1 or holding at least 50 rings and jumping into a star post in Sonic 2 or by jumping into a giant warp ring hidden in the level in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Sonic Heroes decided they wanna be a bit quirky in a horrible way. In order to access the special stages in this game you have to collect a key hidden in the stage and bring that key with you until the end of the level or mission in order to unlock the special stages and collect the Emeralds…there’s so much wrong with this…Not only is it already easy for the game to send your ass to the shadow realm for existing but if you get hit and lose your key it doesn’t just fall out like rings do, it disappears completely meaning you’ll have to reload at a checkpoint or worse, restart the entire level every single time you get hit. And after you get through that bullshit we get to the special stage itself…if you’ve played this game you already know what’s up. The special stage acts similarly to the half pipe in Sonic 2 but except it’s a full enclosed pipe you run around in. The goal is to collect orbs to fill your boost meter and speed ahead to catch the emerald. It sounds very simple but remember, this game was coded by monkeys with hammers so the physics don’t function. Your character will constantly jitter around while moving making positioning yourself impossible when trying to collect the orbs. You have to pick between a Power or Speed character because Flight characters are too slow to do anything but even then you’re picking your poison. Do you wanna control your character better at the cost of speed or do you wanna go fast in order to get the emerald quickly at the cost of controlling your character? ‘Cause that’s exactly what it feels like. And I'm still not done because each Emerald is locked into every other stage. Sonic 1, 2, and 3 & Knuckles allows you to get the Emeralds as easy as the first 2 or 3 zones if you know what you’re doing. If you miss an emerald in one of the few stages they appear in you’ll have to repeat the level and do everything I just explained ALL OVER AGAIN. WHAT KIND OF COLLECTOR HATING SADISTIC BASTARD THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA WHEN THE EMERALDS ARE REQUIRED TO BEAT ALL OF THE STORY!? Before going in I knew how bad the special stages were while being blissfully unaware how bad the unlock requirements were so I used save states(yes I used an emulator) to collect the emeralds in a timely fashion. Not only did this end up taking longer than expected even with save states but I was forced to keep using them for every time I got hit, sent off the stage, or missed the Emerald causing my save file to corrupt and erase all my data. Which caused the auto save to fail and use exclusively save states to progress. And let me tell you, nothing’s scarier than booting up the game and discovering all of your save data has been completely erased even after you completed 2 campaigns previously.
Before I get into the last couple topics of discussion I'll touch on some minor things that don’t warrant their own paragraph individually. The voice acting is hit or miss with stand outs like Omega and Sonic and then there’s instances of some of the worst voice acting in the series with Tails where they deadass brought an 8 year old to voice the character. “Look at all those Eggman’s robots!”. But it gets weirder since Cream was voiced by an actual voice actress and Charmy was voiced by a teenager. Doesn’t help that the game has the characters not stop talking for every single damn action in the game. It’s the same cheesy lines for the entire playthrough. The game looks ugly with the admittedly improved models having textures that look like they’re plastic toys ready to be sold in some Walmart or Target. The pre rendered cutscenes might be revolutionary at the time but are horribly dated by today’s standards and the in game cutscenes that start at the beginning of boss fights and levels look extremely jittery and stiff with characters’ arms flailing to move into position, Omega’s eyes constantly bugging out, and the camera repeatedly having a stroke. Some assets feel like they are copy/pasted and slapped onto characters that don’t make sense. Omega and Big share the same aura color along with Espio and Sonic sharing the same aura color, purple and blue respectively. Omega’s triple glide animation looks exactly like Knuckles’ even though he could’ve been animated to use his thrusters. Rouge has a weird outfit change that is never used again. Some might think that it could be for censorship reasons but her chest is still exposed through a cleavage slit in the outfit which makes me wonder why they even bothered to change it. Plus her pink eyeshadow is less aesthetically pleasing than her iconic bright blue. It’s unclear if all the teams are doing everything at the same exact time or not making things really confusing.The way the characters are written are all over the place with a mixed bag across the board. Team Dark’s great as characters but then you have Tails who’s portrayed to act like some scaredy baby and Amy who’s been turned into a hyper thirsty yandere that’s willing to beat Sonic into marrying her. But all of that is nothing compared to how dirty they did Shadow.
Every team has their own mini story that drives their plot forwards; Team Sonic has to find and defeat Eggman, Team Rose is looking for their lost friends, Team Chaotix is tryna get the bread, and Omega, specifically Omega, is out to look for Eggman for revenge for locking him in a vault. Shadow though…ok first off, why is he here? He literally sacrificed himself to save the planet Earth from the space colony Ark with characters honoring said sacrifice and mourning his death, Sonic included…But then they decided to bring him back along with amnesia and a clone side story that makes him question who he is. The clone story is the dumbest shit in this entire damn game. As if it wasn’t enough to make him forget all the events of Sonic Adventure 2, which can kinda make sense if he was sent into a coma after crashing on Earth. But now he has to go through some midlife crisis level shit to try and figure out his past and if he’s even real, which spoiler alert: this game doesn’t resolve either plot point. These points were further developed and resolved by the next game; Shadow the Hedgehog which wasn’t the best game by all means but it gave more of a fuck to have a concrete story than Heroes ever did. And what’s worse is if the clones were gonna be brought up again in Shadow the Hedgehog and then be resolved in that same game then what the fuck was the point of doing any of this shit in Heroes!? All that did was leave Shadow’s story on a cliffhanger that accomplished nothing but made fans confused and left them with unanswered questions for 2 years until Shadow the Hedgehog came out.
But finally, after collecting all 7 Chaos Emeralds and beating all 4 Team campaigns you’re rewarded with the Last Story which reveals that Metal Sonic was the real mastermind behind everything that happened in the game so he can copy everyone’s data and assume a powerful new form…that takes way too long to transform into…with Metal Overlord…just to beat Sonic. Not even world domination, just to beat Sonic. While his dedication is admirable it’s a really shallow goal. Plus the buildup towards him being the main big bad isn’t handled as well as it could’ve been. All we get are a background element that people would miss if they’re too focused on just beating the level, an extra animation at the end of a boss cutscene that only appears for Team Sonic and Shadow’s story, and a few lines of dialogue from Team Chaotix’s “client” that makes it clear that it’s Eggman. But it would’ve been better to actually know how all of this happened in the first place. Metal Sonic shows up as Neo Metal Sonic as the first time we see him in this game with no explanation as to how he got this form or how he found out he can copy others’ abilities. Not even a cutscene or backstory from Eggman in the final story, instead he just complains about how they can’t defeat him without the Chaos Emeralds. Without prior knowledge I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that Metal Sonic just got a redesign since he hadn't made an appearance in the Adventure era at that time. How cool would it have been to have been given cutscenes showing us Metal Sonic twisting and contorting his body to not only show how he managed to do this in the first place but how far he’s willing to go to beat Sonic without spoiling the final form to leave the audience in suspense before the final act? And him not revealing that he copied Team Rose and Team Chaotix data kinda comes off as him not recognizing their strengths and calling them too weak to copy from, even if he didn’t say so himself. The segment where the teams do their best to weaken Metal Madness for Team Sonic is fine enough except the coding monkeys did it again and made it so that Flying characters can’t do any damage. But then there’s the final battle with Super Team Sonic…Team Super Sonic…uh…a Chaos Emerald powered Team Sonic. Admittedly the fight is really cool with Metal Overlord chucking entire battleships at the player and talking about how he believes he’s the real Sonic as What I’m Made Of blasts in the background. But there’s 2 major things that bring this fight down for me. Sonic Adventure 2 did a similar sequence of the cast of characters help Sonic and Shadow go super and defeat the big bad. Only difference being the buildup was more elaborate and the stakes were higher as if they failed the entire planet was at stake along with the presentation of the final fight being better in every way. One fight takes place in outer space while the other takes place in the sky a vague height above the ground. And most insulting of all they robbed us of bringing back Super Knuckles and Super Tails. This might’ve been because of the retcon of super forms only being possible with male hedgehogs but that was a massive missed opportunity. And after the fight is done Sonic drops one of the corniest one liners in the franchise, the 5th set of unskippable credits scrolls on screen, and the game tells you to do everything again but get to A ranks this time as one final fuck you.
In conclusion the game had a lot of…interesting ideas to say the least in terms of mixing up the Sonic formula. Unfortunately they used too much gas when trying to cook and sent the entire dish ablaze. I think if they let this game simmer a bit more and took at least a year to iron out all the bugs and mishaps since this game was developed in 20 months. As a comparison Sonic Adventure 2 took 18 months to develop and was still better. And while I've made comparisons to past Sonic games I wanna make it clear that I am aware of the flaws those other games have. After all, nothing is perfect. But Sonic Team at least could’ve made sure that their game was worth it in spite of these flaws by tweaking some game mechanics to make them more fun. And feel free to say why you’d think this game is peak Sonic. Alright that’s all, thanks for reading this far and have a fantastic day.

(repost because I made an embarrassing mistake in the title)
I (21F) have been in a relationship with my boyfriend (20M) for 2 years. We are French, so this might be hard to explain for people who don’t live there, but both my boyfriend and I went to study in a CPGE, a selective 2 year long program you can enter after high school if you have good grades. During CPGE, you are supposed to study extremely hard and then take a competitive exam to get into France’s Grandes Écoles (« The Grandes écoles in France are extremely selective higher education establishments which admit students on the basis of competitive exams » according to WordReference). We also have selective and good Universities but I guess Grandes Écoles are seen as better on your resume. Anyway, I am one year older than my bf and when we met, I was in my last year of CPGE. I basically hated the highly competitive system and got so depressed I had to go on antidepressants. I didn’t study for the competitive exams because I just wanted to go to uni and be over with this part of my life. My boyfriend has a very different view on CPGE : he seems to like it and really wants to join a Grande École (let’s call them GE). He even repeated his second year of CPGE last September because he wasn’t accepted to the GE he wanted. I respected his decision even though I thought it was a bad idea. I have always encouraged him to make the decisions he wanted to make, but objectively, I can see he is really struggling. He is very bright and smart, but competitive exams are meant to be taken by people who are quick, effective, and who can handle stress. My bf works very slowly and even though he won’t admit it, he does seem quite depressed and anxious. It has taken a toll on our relationship : we can hardly see each other because he has to study all the time. He also refuses to allow me to sleep over at his place because me being there reminds him of all the work he has to get done and then he gets more stressed and starts acting coldly towards me. I have been patient because CPGE only last 2-3 years and I was also depressed and anxious when I was there myself. Now, I am getting my master’s degree in a good university, and I have regained my ability to study without getting anxious. I have been waiting for him to finish his CPGE so we can finally enjoy life together and be happy.
Right now, my boyfriend is taking his competitive exams. He finished the writing sections yesterday. He told me he failed even though he doesn’t have the results yet. I asked why he though that and he told me he hadn’t been studying for the last 2 months. To be honest, I don’t care if he goes to some prestigious school or not. But I know he does want to get into one and I want him to be happy. But knowing he hasn’t been studying for the last two months really pissed me off. I know he is depressed and stressed but I feel like I did my best to encourage him and motivate him to study with me, and it's annoying he refused my help every time only to fail by himself. I have been waiting for him and yet, he just abandoned studying after 3 years of « can’t see you, have to study » that kept us apart. Sometimes, it feels like I want him to achieve his dreams more than he does.
But here is what really made me mad. He told me he had applied to GE also through another route : by having to send a cover letter + recommendation + CV / resume. I thought it was such a good idea, better fitted for someone like him who likes to take his time and not rush through a timer. I asked him multiple times to send me his CV + cover letter so I could review them (I tend to be very good at making those and language is definitely my forte). He sent me his CV, we corrected it together, and today he sent me his cover letter. It was full of awkward phrases and stuff so I took time out of my studying schedule to tell him how to make it better and was very happy I could finally be of help. Then, he told me that actually, he had already sent his version of the cover letter yesterday night, so he couldn’t change it anymore. He told me he wrote it one hour before the deadline and asked a discord server of people who are in GE to help him write it. He never mentioned it to me last night, and I wasn’t busy whatsoever.
It’s hard to explain but I feel betrayed and I am really mad at him. II feel like he is purposefully screwing up his life and I don’t understand why. I keep offering him support and help and he keeps denying it or takes it when it’s too late. I also feel like he doesn't take anything seriously, including myself : he asks my advice, I take some time off even though I am very busy with my master's thesis, read his letter and write out huge paragraphs of text to help him. He then proceeds to say "Thank you so much, I will change my letter." and then "Nevermind, I was joking, I already sent it yesterday night.". I am annoyed that he is not taking his future seriously, and that I am more invested into it than he is. It’s annoying that he made me wait for 2 years because he wanted to go into a top tier GE, but now, he is screwing up everything almost on purpose, with apparently, no backup plan. I feel like I have been waiting for nothing, he didn’t have to retake a year if it was to just slack off and fail his exams. Also, if he gets mediocre results, it also means we probably won't be able to live in the same city anymore (top GE are in Paris, where I live), and our relationship wil go long-distance. I already told him muliple times that I would'nt like this, but apparently, studying hard for his own future and for the future of his relationship is not a prioirty of his.
I am sorry if I sound bitter, I know I shouldn’t make it about me, and I want to be sad for him, and to comfort him, but to be fair, I’m not even sure I can right now. I want to help him improve, not to watch him act like an idiot. When I ask him why he doesn’t study he says « because I’m a dummy ». I’m starting to find him pathetic and I hate that. I love him, but it’s hard to respect him when he doesn’t even try. It’s exhausting having to always worry about him, but at the same time, I feel like a huge AH. He is obviously suffering, and yet, I am mad at him.
Tldr : my boyfriend failed his competitive exams because he hasn’t been studying for 2 months even though it has been 2 years of not being able to see each other that frequently because he « had to study ». I keep offering my help and trying to motivate him to study with me but he turns me down all the time. I feel more invested in his dream than he is. I am mad at him for not putting more effort into his dream, and don’t know what to do about this whole situation.

I (21F) have been in a relationship with my boyfriend (20M) for 2 years. We are French, so this might be hard to explain for people who don’t live there, but both my boyfriend and I went to study in a CPGE, which is basically a selective 2 year program you can enter after high school if you have good grades. During CPGE, you are supposed to study extremely hard and then take a competitive exam to get into France’s Grandes Écoles (« The Grandes écoles in France are extremely selective higher education establishments which admit students on the basis of competitive exams » according to WordReference). We also have selective and good Universities but usually, Grandes Écoles are considered better. Anyway, I am one year older than my bf and when we met, I was in my last year of CPGE. I basically hated the highly competitive system and got so depressed I had to go on antidepressants. I didn’t study for the competitive exams because I just wanted to go to uni and be over with this part of my life. My boyfriend has a very different view on CPGE : he seems to like it and really wants to join a Grande École (let’s call them GE). He even repeated his second year of CPGE last September because he wasn’t accepted to the GE he wanted. I respected his decision even though I thought it was a bad idea. I have always encouraged him to make the decisions he wanted to make, but objectively, I can see he is really struggling. He is very bright and smart, but competitive exams are meant to be taken by people who are quick, effective, and who can handle stress. My bf works very slowly and even though he won’t admit it, he does seem quite depressed and anxious. It has taken a toll on our relationship because we can hardly see each other because he has to study all the time. He also refuses to allow me to sleep over at his place because me being here reminds him of all the work he has to get done and then he gets more stressed and starts acting coldly towards me. I have been patient because CPGE only last 2-3 years and I was also depressed and anxious all the time because of similar reasons. Now, I am getting my master’s degree in a good university, and I have regained my ability to study without getting anxious. I have been waiting for him to finish his CPGE so we can finally enjoy life together and be happy. Right now, my boyfriend is taking his competitive exams. He finished the writing sections yesterday. He told me he failed even though he doesn’t have the results yet. I asked why he though that and he told me he screwed everything up and hadn’t been studying for the last 2 months. To be honest, I don’t care if he goes to some prestigious school or not. But I know he does want to get into one, and so, I want him to be happy and to get what he wants. But knowing he hasn’t been studying for two months really pissed me off. I know he is depressed and stressed but I feel like I have been waiting for him and I have been encouraging and trying to motivate him to study with me, and yet, he just abandoned after 3 years of « can’t see you, have to study » that kept us apart. Sometimes, it feels like I want him to achieve his dreams more than he does. But here is what really made me mad. He told me he had applied to GE also through another route : by having to send a cover letter + recommendation + CV / resume. I thought it was such a good idea, better fitted for someone like him who likes to take his time and not rush through a timer. I asked him multiple times to send me his CV + cover letter so I could review them (I tend to be very good at making those and language is definitely my forte). He sent me his CV, we corrected it together, and today he sent me his cover letter. It was full of awkward phrases and stuff so I told him how to make it better and was very happy I could finally be of help. Then, he told me that actually, he had already sent his version of the cover letter yesterday night, so he couldn’t change it and add the modifications I advised to add. He told me he wrote it one hour before the deadline and asked a discord server of people who are in GE to help him write it. He never mentioned it to me last night, and I wasn’t busy whatsoever. It’s hard to explain but I feel betrayed and I am really mad at him. I feel like he is purposefully screwing up his life and I don’t understand why. I keep offering him support and help and he keeps denying it or takes it when it’s too late. Also, I am annoyed that he is not taking his future seriously, and that I am more invested into it than he is. It’s annoying that he made me wait for 2 years because he wanted to go into a top tier GE, but now, he is screwing up everything almost on purpose. I feel like I have been waiting for nothing, he didn’t have to retake a year if it was to just slack off and fail his exams. I know I shouldn’t make it about me, and I want to be sad for him, and to comfort him, but to be fair, I’m not even sure I can right now. I want to help him improve, not to watch him acting like an idiot. When I ask him why he doesn’t study he says « because I’m a dummy ». I’m starting to find him pathetic and I hate that. I love him, but it’s hard to respect him when he doesn’t even try. It’s exhausting having to always worry about him. I don’t know what to do, and I’m looking for advice on how to approach this situation, deal with it, etc.
Tldr : my boyfriend failed his competitive exams because he hasn’t been studying for 2 months even though it has been 2 years of not being able to see each other that frequently because he « had to study ». I keep offering my help and trying to motivate him to study with me but he turns me down all the time. I feel more invested in his dream than he is. I am mad at him for not putting more effort into his dream, and don’t know what to do about this whole situation.

Hello friends!
As the title states, for those of us arriving to the farm on Tuesday we have exactly 25 days to bring it all together. What better way to celebrate 25 days away from being back home than with 25 tips for a great Roo. 2 years ago I did a daily series with 100 tips. Last year I did a daily series with 50 tips. This year it's cut and dry, one take, one day, top 25 tips from a Roo and festival vet. Let's do it.

1. Water- Drink it. A lot of it. All of it. Let it run down your chin you little water slut. Staying hydrated is the #1 way to have a great Roo and consequently the easiest way to end up in the med tent if you don't. There's water stations in the campgrounds and in Centeroo, use em. It's hot. Bring a hydropack, water bottle, or whatever kind of water container you prefer.
2. Beat the Heat- Or at least try. Bring a canopy for camp and some tapestries to hang around. Battery powered fans. Misting fans. Cooling towels. Clacking hand fans. An umbrella. An umbrella hat. Hang out under the trees, tents, signs, or any other thing that will provide some relief from the heat. Bring and USE sunscreen. It truly can't be expressed enough how hot Roo can be and trust me when I say getting a sunburn on Thursday or Friday can make Saturday and Sunday rough.

*PRO TIP- Bring a bucket or collapsible bin of some kind to put some cold cooler water in it for a foot bath. Your feet and your entire being will thank you.

1. Meet Your Neighbors- One of the things that makes Bonnaroo great is the sense of community that comes along with it. Whether it's passing each other on the way in and out of camp, the lazy morning hangs, catching some shows, the pregame beers, keeping an eye out for each other's camp, or sharing that one thing you forgot to bring; Befriending your neighbors can and will take your Roo experience to the next level.
   
2. Lights- All of the lights. Like Kanye said; flashlights, battery powered string lights, solar lights, lanterns, LEDs, nightlights, or something like that. We're camping in the middle of bumfuck nowhere middle Tennessee. Yes, they do provide some lighting in the campground but it's still dark. Keep a small flashlight in your bag, you'll need it.
   
3. Comfy Shoes- Comfy BROKEN IN shoes. Whatever is your comfiest footwear, use that. Imo at least, Bonnaroo is much less of a fashion show and is much more about being comfortable in the elements while adding in the 30-40-50 miles of walking, dancing, skipping, and frolicking you will do. Getting some insoles will also help your feet make it through.
   
4. Begin Physically Preparing Thyself- If you haven't already. Nobody needs to be in peak physical condition by any means, but doing some cardio, walking, a bike ride, etc. and getting out in the heat beforehand will go a long way when it comes to the marathon gauntlet that is Bonnaroo. Get a little uncomfortable before we get really uncomfortable in a few weeks.
   
5. First Aid kit, Butt wipes, Chafe cream, Baby Powder- A few of the most important personal things that will do wonders for that swamp ass and Roo Rash. Skip TP all together and just bring butt wipes, your butt and chafed thighs will thank you. They will also thank you when you apply that chafe cream and your legs are slip slidin' and glidin' all night long.
   
6. Make Campsite Noticeable- Lights, balloons, pinwheels, signs, wackly inflatable tube men, a blimp. Do something to make your campsite stand out a little bit when things get a bit weird and can't find your way back home.
   
7. Catch a Sunrise- Specifically a Pretty Lights one Saturday night into Sunday morning, but any sunrise is meaningful on the farm. One of the things that make Bonnaroo unique from other festivals is the fact that music of some kind is going until sunrise. This is no easy task, even for professionals, but the payoff at the end is worth every second of tiredness to get you there.
   

10.High Five Everyone- This one's big. High Fives have been a staple at Bonnaroo since 1842 when Colonel Mustard high fived Trey Anastacio's great great Uncle and the rest was history. High five everyone. Everyday. Anywhere. Anytime. There may or may not be a winding high five line in front of the arch this year, but that's no excuse to not throw a hand up and watch the magic happen. Not getting enough fives? It means you aren't giving enough. Dish em out like pizzas and hot cakes.

1. Prepare for All Types of Weather- Hot, cold, windy, rainy, snowy. Plan for it all regardless of what the forecast says. Tennessee is like Florida where the forecast has changed 14 times since I started writing this. Bring your swim trunks but also a hoodie and beanie. Bring a couple blankets for the chilly nights. Bring a poncho if you're going to melt. Don't forget to stake down the tents and canopies. Prepare for it all.
   
2. Check out the Plazas- Plazas, which used to be "pods", are themed areas throughout the campgrounds that offer entertainment and programming of all different kinds. Each plaza contains bathrooms, showers, medics, wifi, staff, charging stations, and information that can be beneficial.
   
3. Bring Something To Sleep On- Air mattress, cot, inflatable couch, in the car; whatever it is make sure it's something somewhat comfortable to catch some precious Z's on. We only get a few hours of sleep while on the farm, make sure it's the most comfortable you can possibly get for maximum efficiency.
   
4. Patience is a Virtue- Whether it's in the car line, beer line, bathroom line, or any place that requires waiting; just be patient. Go with the flow. People are working their hardest to get you through whatever line it is, just enjoy the ride. Getting upset, frustrated, etc. doesn't do anybody any good when we're all trying to get to the same place. Just have some patience and trust me it will go a long way. Don’t forget to save some patience for your crew when setting up camp and things get testy.
   
5. Bring Things to Trade & Give Away- This concept is not unique to Bonnaroo but some festivals in general; bring things to give away. Think small, inexpensive, yet meaningful in the right situations. Squishy animals, pogs, green army men, pokemon cards, hat clips, clothespins, marbles; the possibilities here are pretty endless. Having things to give away will just up your Roo experience that much more.
   
6. Keep Valuables locked in the Car- Even though Bonnaroo is by in large a safe place, any public event that draws 60K+ people also brings the bad apples. Anything over 20$ we lock in the car and out of sight and hide our keys at camp. Also please do not bring ANYTHING of substantial value in which you will be upset if it goes missing, broken, or lost. Don't bring grandmother's precious jewels with you. If it has value, lock it in your car.
   
7. Bring Cash- Yes Bonnaroo like most events is moving toward a cashless event, however having cash on you will alleviate some of the issues that go along with so called cashless. There will be things wandering through camp which only require cash, some vendors take cash, and having that peace of mind will frankly go a long way when a card simply won't do.
   
8. Pace Yourself- Bonnaroo is a marathon, not a sprint. Although I whole heartedly endorse full send Thursday, pacing yourself throughout the weekend will leave you some energy left for Fred Again Sunday night. Stay hydrated, take naps, and don't feel bad when you have to take a load off to catch your breath.
   
9. Live In the Moment- Be. Here. Now. Take it all in. Stay off your phone. Embrace the journey. Embrace the moment. Live it. Be it. Accept it. Enjoy it. Don't over plan and don't force it. Let it be. Bonnaroo only comes around once a year and it's in our best interest to make every second count. Keep your head up, eyes open, and enjoy every moment the farm gives us.
   
10. Foster the Bonnarovian Code.
    

a. Prepare Thyself
b. Play as a Team
c. Radiate Positivity
d. Respect the Farm
e. Don't be that Person
f. Stay True Roo
Embrace these basic yet powerful principles and you are on the right track to having a wonderful Bonnaroo experience. Not only do these principles apply to the farm, but they also translate well to our everyday lives.

1. Cooler Maintenance- Tried and true ways to keep your coolers cold as long as possible without spending a fortune on ice. FROZEN WATER BOTTLES. Probably the most beneficial festival hack there is. Layer the bottom of your coolers with frozen bottles and shove ice packs in there as well. Dry ice when used correctly will keep coolers cold for days. Keep coolers out of the sun and closed as much as possible during the day. Before packing coolers, bring them inside and throw some ice in them to cool them down. May the cold be with you, always.
   
2. Wear Whatever the Fuck you Want- Sorry for cussing. But seriously. Wear whatever feels right. Wear a costume. Wear something wild. Wear something basic af. Wear a wig. Wear nothing. Wear that dumbass thing in the back of your closet that hasn't seen the light of day since 2004, let it out. Whatever you wear just make sure it's comfortable. And if you wear something that isn't comfortable, just know we appreciate you and the sacrifices you're making for the greater good.
   
3. Get Merch Early- The good stuff goes quick. The popular sizes go quick. Don't sleep on it. If there's something you see you want just get it and be done with it so there are no regrets later, not even one letter.
   
4. Camp Chairs, inflatable couches, Stools, Pussy Couches, Blankets- Basically just bring things to sit or relax on. Camp chairs, couches, inflatable unicorns, and stools for camp and a blanket for inside Centeroo. Blow up couches aren't technically allowed in the venue but neither are substances and glowsticks and there are certainly neither of those at Bonnaroo.
   
5. Battery stations, Power Banks, Solar Chargers- Bring whatever you need to keep your electronics charged without having to use the courtesy outlets. Bring a jackery or similar power station. Charging things in the car is a move as well as a DC inverter which plugs into your car cigarette lighter. We only get a short amount of time on the farm, don't spend it teathered to an outlet. Bring the power.
   

Honorable Mention Tips

1. Check Camping supplies ahead of time.
2. Don't forget your ID, wristband, and parking pass. (This one is pretty important and should probably be higher up)
3. Bring a backpack or Fanny pack that fits in the allowed guidelines.

That's all I got for the time being. Anything I missed please feel free to add below. For all the first timers joining us this year I would just like to say welcome to the farm. Embrace and enjoy every second you are there. To all the vets coming back, can't wait to see you fuckers again real soon. We're almost there. Happy Bonnaroo Yall!

I'm looking to display a number of bread recipes and bread maker settings etc on my kitchen tablet dashboard. It will include size, ingredients, quantities, any special steps (e.g. a different kneading paddle), program number, and the cook time. I plan to also use that cook time to notify everyone when it's finished so someone can remove it from the machine.
I'm planning on doing this in Node Red. I already know how I could accomplish this, but not necessarily in the most efficient way, so wondering if anyone has any suggestions.
I plan to have a new page on the dashboard which will show 3 buttons, medium, large, extra large. So you first select the size of whatever you want to make. I will have 3 folders in my media folder in HA each populated with the different quantities for the same recipes, the button press will update the path so that it searches through the correct folder.
Once the user has selected a size it'll navigate to a new page populated with all the possible recipes. Here is where I'm hoping I can take some short cuts. I realise I can create an input boolean (switch) for each recipe, but I'm wondering if instead, I can simply call a script and send the text of the button to the script. I can then use that as a reference to find the matching file name in the media folders. Is that possible? If not, can anyone think of other shortcuts which will avoid me having to make loads of input booleans? It has to be as user friendly as possible and large, so I don't want to use a dropdown box helper instead.
Once they've made the selection, it'll go to a third new screen. I'll use a Function Node in Node Red to locate the file name, read the text file and send it to an edit text which will be displayed on a markdown card. I might do individual steps and have a previous/next button and have the steps announced over Alexa too.
For the actual data, I plan to dynamically create them using Dictionaries and I will be manually adding each recipe from the manual first (well, not all recipes, maybe 10 or so for now). It will read line by line, e.g. Dry Yeast - 1 tsp, split at the "-", add "Dry Yeast" as the Key, and "1 tsp" as the Value, and then do the next line. I think this part is pretty efficient, and requires not much work other than initially writing out the recipes, but open to suggestions on other methods. It'll also display and announce the program number and cooking time.
Below the recipe there'll be a button saying something like "Start Timer" which the user presses once they've pressed start on the bread maker. It then grabs the cooking time stored in the Dictionary and sets an Alexa timer in the kitchen, and a timer in Node Red which will send a notification to our phones when the time is up.
I know it sounds like a lot of effort, but genuinely quite useful. This is the first time I've had household approval for an automation! I was asked if I could make the recipes digital, so I suggested I go one better and make it interactive!
So yeah, any thoughts or ideas please, particularly where it comes to setting up quite a few buttons on the dashboard to select a recipe.
Thanks.

First off, congrats to everyone for the past application cycle! No matter what your outcome was, it's a big accomplishment to have gone through the whole process. I'm a non-trad who was accepted to Queen's this year, on my 2nd application cycle. I will be 27 when I start this Fall. It feels surreal and I always told myself I'd write a post about my journey if this day ever came - and here we are.
I didn't decide to apply to med school until after I finished undergrad, and while doing my research, I always wished I could read/hear perspectives from others with my background. Even though everybody's path will be different, I hope that my story can provide some insight (or even hope) for other non-trad applicants out there.
Before we start, here are my stats because that's important:

• cGPA, OMSAS: 3.53
• wGPA, UBC: ~85%
• MCAT: 515 (127/129/130/129)
• Casper: 4th
• IP: BC and ON

I'll go in chronological order, briefly describing some of the major events that led me to today, starting from high school. Please ask me any questions in the comments - (almost) nothing is off limits :)
TLDR: I was a software engineer who quit after a year to go to grad school and pursue medicine. It took me 4 years from when I decided to pursue this to getting accepted at a Canadian school. I did a Masters in stats and applied 2 times. My biggest takeaway is to do a lot of what you are passionate about, do it well, and take it far (for me, that was teaching and research).
Some demographics:

• My parents and I immigrated to Canada from Asia when I was 3
• I grew up in the GTA and did undergrad in Ontario
• I'm the first person in my family to pursue med school. My immediate family and I are the only people in our whole family who live outside of Asia, and nobody in my parents' network of family friends is in healthcare either.

High school, 2011-2015: I was always interested in medicine as a kid, but math was always my favourite subject. I applied to several science and math programs, and was choosing between Western Med Sci and Waterloo Math. I did not apply to Mac Health Sci and looking back, I'm not sure why (perhaps a sign that I didn't believe in myself). I ended up choosing Waterloo Math and giving up on the medical school route in grade 12, for a few reasons: the math program had 6 co-op terms, meaning I'd graduate with 2 full-time years of job experience, and I wasn't particularly good at biology and didn't have strong reasons for pursuing medicine back then. Med school also seemed like an impossible goal, especially since I didn't have any mentors in the field.
Undergrad, 2015-2020: This was honestly a fun time for me. I double-majored in stats and CS and I did 6 co-ops, 5 of which were in software engineering roles. I had originally planned to do actuarial science, but quickly saw the earning potential in the tech industry and made it my goal to get a job at a big tech company. A lot of personal stuff happened during this time as well that affirmed my decision pursue a software engineering career. One part of it was that I didn't want my parents to worry about me, and being able to show them that I was able to do well for myself in tech felt really good.
Halfway through my co-ops, I realized that I wasn't feeling the most fulfilled in software roles, but management roles also didn't appeal to me. I didn't really take the time to fully explore this feeling, and it was easy to put it away in light of the high income and getting to live in big cities for internships. Still, I did well in my co-ops and built up my software skills. After realizing that "grades don't matter for getting tech jobs", I let my grades slip. It wasn't until 4th year that I decided I wanted to keep the door open for grad school, and starting taking classes I liked and getting better grades. I graduated with an 82% average, with my grades all over the place (which I'd later learn was bad for calculating my OMSAS gpa lol).
Throughout undergrad, I still wanted to be involved in clubs and stuff, so here's a list of all my undergrad ECs. All these were only 4-8 months long.

• 1st year: I was a member and president of my first year residence council
• 2nd year: I was in a leadership position at the statistics club
• 3rd year: I was an event coordinator for co-op students in a city away from home
• also 3rd year: I was part of a club that builds software for non-profits

Another activity from undergrad that made it onto my application was a research project I did at one of my co-ops. It was in NLP and I worked on it even after finishing that coop term. It ended up taking 4 years to get published.
Full-time software engineering, 2020-2021: I signed a return offer from one of my co-ops, and had planned to move to Seattle in the summer after graduating to start working. But Covid changed all that. I moved back home with my parents in the GTA and worked at my software job remotely for the full year.
It was during this year that I was really feeling unfulfilled in my job, and did a lot of thinking about how I wanted my career to look. I started to remember that med school was something that I once wanted to do, and I also started reading/watching a lot of content from people in medicine with non-traditional backgrounds. My partner, who is also from Ontario, was accepted to an international med school, and many of our friends were also getting into schools in Canada around the same time, so this reaffirmed to me that it was actually possible. While working for the year, I made a plan to apply to grad school (academia would be my back-up) and take the MCAT. Here's what my 2020-2021 looked like:

• July: started full-time work
• December-January: wrote personal statements and applied to 5 Masters programs in biostatistics
• February-April: acceptances to Masters programs came in, and I was studying for the MCAT
• June: took the MCAT, scored 508, and told my manager that I'd be leaving by August to start grad school

During this year, I also wrote out a 3-year plan that included my masters and 2 application cycles. I wrote out what courses I would take to fulfill prereqs, which schools I would apply to each year, and what my back-up plan would be. I think this was important to do rigorously since it gave me a clear idea of which schools I was eligible for, and how much work it would take me to become eligible for the rest of them.
I will also add that this is a rather objective recount of my process that year. In reality, I completely recognized how insane it was to quit my job to go to grad school, and I'm super lucky that I was able to.
Grad school, 2021-2023: I moved to BC to start my Masters in statistics in August. This choice was partly to gain IP status in BC, but mostly, this was really the best program for me out of the schools I applied to. Even looking back now, I would have chosen this program even without the IP consideration.
Here's a breakdown of everything I did during the first year of my Masters:

• Started a new volunteering role (tutoring) right away. Still doing this today, almost 3 years later.
• Took a first year English class to fulfill the UBC requirement. Side note: it felt very odd being a 25-year-old in a class of 18-year-olds, but I did well in both classes probably because of being older. At first, I dreaded taking these classes since English was never my strong suit. But being older meant that I allowed myself to be truly curious about the topics being taught, and I treated it more as an experience to learn more about the world than to just check off some boxes.
• Took the MCAT again, at the end of my first year of MSc. I had already confirmed a supervisor by then, and thankfully she is/was incredibly supportive of my goals. I took it in June 2022 and got 515.
• TA'd stats courses throughout the year
• Started working on my thesis research with my supervisor

First application, 2022: I applied only to UBC for my first application cycle. In retrospect, I should have just applied broadly right away, but I didn't feel like I had enough references built up by then. And UBC doesn't require references unless you get an interview. I honestly had very high hopes of getting an interview this year, and was crushed to receive a rejection in December with an NAQ of 50-75. I thought that my application was unique, but upon reflection, I realized that the lack of volunteering and community service was a big gap in my application.
So here's a breakdown of everything I did in my second year of my Masters and beyond:

• TA'd stats courses throughout the year, and was the head TA for one of them (I think this showed leadership and commitment to teaching)
• Started another volunteering role at the food bank
• Took another first-year English course
• Continued my research with my supervisor
• Got offered (and started) a lecturer role for an undergrad course at the university, which was such an amazing opportunity. My supervisor helped me a lot with getting this position, since I TA'd for her one semester and she recommended me to the department. This was a class of 150, and I was also in charge of a few TAs. I ended up teaching this class 2 more times after this!
• Finished my Masters in August 2023
• Started working full-time as a biostatistician in September 2023
• A first-author paper I started working on during undergrad was accepted in Fall 2023. I had been working on this on-and-off for the past 4 years so it was incredible for the work to finally pay off!

Second application, 2023: This time, I applied to UBC and every school in Ontario that I was eligible for: Queen's and Mac. I was rejected by UBC pre-interview again. Same NAQ, and my total score didn't change. I was totally crushed and thought it was over for this year. I was very honest with myself about the Ontario applications - Mac was a total throwaway application and Queen's felt like a complete gamble. I was rejected from Mac pre-interview but one fateful day in January, I received an email from Queen's. It had a very generic "Application Status" subject line and I opened it fully expecting a rejection. I was totally shocked when it said I was invited for the MMI! And a few months later, I was also invited to the Panel.
Some of my thoughts and preparation for the interviews:
MMI - Aside from the usual resources that are posted here, I also took advantage of the following:

• Support system: I had a lot of support from my partner, who had gone through MMIs from non-Canadian schools, and many of my friends who were already in med school.
• Resources: I paid for a prep session on AcceptedTogether and had a positive experience there. I also used the BrightStudent question bank and although the questions were good, the explanations and overall experience were mid. But their YouTube video was extremely useful.
• Mindset: Throughout my whole MMI prep, I was honestly very interested in exploring each prompt, and I think this mindset was extremely beneficial for making my answers both unique and genuine. During my Masters, I also took a class that covered topics in social determinants of health, and I semi-regularly enjoy reading about current events in this area, so both of those pieces of background were super helpful for me.

Panel - I was so happy to receive a panel interview, and knew that I could not mess this up. I prepped with a few different friends of mine who were in med school, and another friend who was going through Ontario interviews too. Going in, I felt very prepared, and in the days leading up to it, I even felt like my answers were on autopilot and a bit over-prepared. So I really tried to relax and "be myself"/answer genuinely during the panel. The real panel felt quite cold - I didn't get any feedback from my interviewers, and was a bit thrown off by some of the questions. I was also cut off by the Kira Talent timer at the end, and didn't get to say goodbye or thank you. For the rest of the day, I ruminated on all my answers. The content of my answers felt somewhere between "why would I say that" and "just fine" and "great", but I was definitely feeling a bit bad about the whole experience.
Decision Week, 2024: That brings us to this week! In the week leading up to the decision, I flip flopped between "My panel hated me, there's no way I passed the vibe check" and "My answers were good, my MMI felt good, why wouldn't they accept me". I opened the email at 6am (Pacific time) with zero expectations - I truly had no idea what was waiting for me on the other side. The first word was "Congratulations!" and I didn't read much farther than that before I started celebrating :)
So that's it. I told a lot of people I work with, my Masters supervisor, my parents, and my friends, and it felt amazing to deliver this good news. My closing thoughts about my whole journey are that even though I do think my application was great, I still got incredibly lucky. At any point in the process, I could have gotten an undesirable outcome, and there was nothing I could do to control that (other than my efforts prior). I also relied a lot on my support system, and was so lucky to have had + made friends who are in med school or were practising already.
I just feel so grateful to be starting this Fall, and I'm happy to say that my high school self would be in absolute disbelief if she could see where I am today. That statement is a sign to me that I'm on the right path, and I'm just so excited to be starting this long, hard career that is medicine.
If you've made it to the end, thank you for reading!! If you can relate to any part of my journey and have questions, please send me a comment or DM - my inbox is always open.

Need advice ! Family owned agency decreasing benefits, pay, and over looking seniority.
I 24 have been working for a family owned agency for about 3 years. Started at 17 an hour with a matched 401k. Off weekends as a csr. found interest in getting licensed. The benefits at the time out weighted so I dived in.
We are an independent brokerage working with about 5 standard carriers and access to over 30 non standard carriers. We primarily handle P&C as well as all court ordered bonds. We have some goals I believe around 10k a month in premium. But they rarely do checkins or accountability.
Over time I was I given additional tasks outside of my original duties of answering the phone and servicing clients. Just before passing my insurance exam I was taking care of all of the service work for all of the agents that work in our agency (3) as well as essentially being a personal assistant to our agency principal from scheduling meetings, over seeing his schedule, and even attending networking meetings in his place. as well as handling the surety bonds billing, filing, and notating.
After a year I received a dollar raise to 18. Shortly after I was officially licensed in P&C. I was then beginning to receive lists of quotes from our agency principal and expected to completely quote renewals with explanation on the coverages and why I chose certain endorsements for “ practice and experience” but no compensation for helping. On top of all of the additional day to day work.
Eventually I began building my personal book of business and this was becoming impossible to juggle.
This carried on for months until October of 23 when our principal finally decided to hire in for my position and move me to a full time producer roll. ( there was only me handling all things insurance and bond related for almost 2 years)
Now I am building my book of business while still running quotes for my supervisor with no additional percentage for helping.
They have me networking twice a week.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays I spend 3 hours straight driving around and stopping into spaces to get leads. They tried to convince me that it’s better to claim the mileage on my taxes at the end of the year than to receive a stipend for gas. I am not sure what the standard is so I didn’t say anything
This move changed me to a salary and commissioned producer. This is where my issues really begin. I am salary but making less due to the consideration of commission. I was at about 1200 every two weeks and now I am about 800. Which has been tough because my commission isn’t stable. Also After switching and because I am being paid differently I was kicked from the 401k program.
No 401k and no insurance. They have been “ trying” to get things set up but that was back in October. It’s now may and I haven’t accrued any additional retirement.
They are additionally making changes to our vacation and personal time in our handbook. Bringing my vacation time down to only 5 days a year. also removing pay from personal time and only 3 sick days for a whole calendar year!
To top it all off they have hired in two additional part timers that start soon with raises after 6 months, starting at 22 dollars an hour. The one girl monitors the agency principals application work for him and the other part-time marketing cultivation sending out letters and making calls.
I am looking for additional opinions on how I should self advocate regarding my pay, workload , and time off.
I feel that it is long over due but because I struggle with ADHD and I am on the spectrum self advocating can be a huge challenge for me.
Outside of getting a percentage of commission for call ins. There doesn’t a seem to be many benefits staying with the agency.

Need advice ! Family owned agency decreasing benefits, pay, and over looking seniority.
I 24 have been working for a family owned agency for about 3 years. Started at 17 an hour with a matched 401k. Off weekends as a csr. found interest in getting licensed. The benefits at the time out weighted so I dived in.
We are an independent brokerage working with about 5 standard carriers and access to over 30 non standard carriers. We primarily handle P&C as well as all court ordered bonds. We have some goals I believe around 10k a month in premium. But they rarely do checkins or accountability.
Over time I was I given additional tasks outside of my original duties of answering the phone and servicing clients. Just before passing my insurance exam I was taking care of all of the service work for all of the agents that work in our agency (3) as well as essentially being a personal assistant to our agency principal from scheduling meetings, over seeing his schedule, and even attending networking meetings in his place. as well as handling the surety bonds billing, filing, and notating.
After a year I received a dollar raise to 18. Shortly after I was officially licensed in P&C. I was then beginning to receive lists of quotes from our agency principal and expected to completely quote renewals with explanation on the coverages and why I chose certain endorsements for “ practice and experience” but no compensation for helping. On top of all of the additional day to day work.
Eventually I began building my personal book of business and this was becoming impossible to juggle.
This carried on for months until October of 23 when our principal finally decided to hire in for my position and move me to a full time producer roll. ( there was only me handling all things insurance and bond related for almost 2 years)
Now I am building my book of business while still running quotes for my supervisor with no additional percentage for helping.
They have me networking twice a week.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays I spend 3 hours straight driving around and stopping into spaces to get leads. They tried to convince me that it’s better to claim the mileage on my taxes at the end of the year than to receive a stipend for gas. I am not sure what the standard is so I didn’t say anything
This move changed me to a salary and commissioned producer. This is where my issues really begin. I am salary but making less due to the consideration of commission. I was at about 1200 every two weeks and now I am about 800. Which has been tough because my commission isn’t stable. Also After switching and because I am being paid differently I was kicked from the 401k program.
No 401k and no insurance. They have been “ trying” to get things set up but that was back in October. It’s now may and I haven’t accrued any additional retirement.
They are additionally making changes to our vacation and personal time in our handbook. Bringing my vacation time down to only 5 days a year. also removing pay from personal time and only 3 sick days for a whole calendar year!
To top it all off they have hired in two additional part timers that start soon with raises after 6 months, starting at 22 dollars an hour. The one girl monitors the agency principals application work for him and the other part-time marketing cultivation sending out letters and making calls.
I am looking for additional opinions on how I should self advocate regarding my pay, workload , and time off. I feel that it is long over due but because I struggle with ADHD and I am on the spectrum self advocating can be a huge challenge for me.
Outside of getting a percentage of commission for call ins. There doesn’t a seem to be many benefits staying with the agency.

the new Apple Pencil Pro allows for shortcuts programmable to its squeeze gesture, so just wondering how you’d go about programming it to change function depending on the open app.
Example:
If Spotify Open: change song If Goodnotes open: record audio If Books open: set timer

I 24 have been working for a family owned agency for about 3 years. Started at 17 an hour with a matched 401k. Off weekends as a csr. found interest in getting licensed. The benefits at the time out weighted so I dived in.
Over time I was I given additional tasks outside of my original duties of answering the phone and servicing clients. Just before passing my insurance exam I was taking care of all of the service work for all of the agents that work in our agency (3) as well as essentially being a personal assistant to our agency principal from scheduling meetings, over seeing his schedule, and even attending networking meetings in his place. as well as handling the surety bonds billing, filing, and notating.
After a year I received a dollar raise to 18. Shortly after I was officially licensed in P&C. I was then beginning to receive lists of quotes from our agency principal and expected to completely quote renewals with explanation on the coverages and why I chose certain endorsements for “ practice and experience” but no compensation for helping. On top of all of the additional day to day work.
Eventually I began building my personal book of business and this was becoming impossible to juggle.
This carried on for months until October of 23 when our principal finally decided to hire in for my position and move me to a full time producer roll. ( there was only me handling all things insurance and bond related for almost 2 years)
Now I am building my book of business while still running quotes for my supervisor with no additional percentage for helping.
They have me networking twice a week.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays I spend 3 hours straight driving around and stopping into spaces to get leads. They tried to convince me that it’s better to claim the mileage on my taxes at the end of the year than to receive a stipend for gas. I am not sure what the standard is so I didn’t say anything
This move changed me to a salary and commissioned producer. This is where my issues really begin. I am salary but making less due to the consideration of commission. I was at about 1200 every two weeks and now I am about 800. Which has been tough because my commission isn’t stable. Also After switching and because I am being paid differently I was kicked from the 401k program.
No 401k and no insurance. They have been “ trying” to get things set up but that was back in October. It’s now may and I haven’t accrued any additional retirement.
They are additionally making changes to our vacation and personal time in our handbook. Bringing my vacation time down to only 5 days a year. also removing pay from personal time and only 3 sick days for a whole calendar year!
To top it all off they have hired in two additional part timers that start soon with raises after 6 months, starting at 22 dollars an hour. The one girl monitors the agency principals application work for him and the other part-time marketing cultivation sending out letters and making calls.
I am looking for additional opinions on how I should self advocate regarding my pay, workload , and time off. I feel that it is long over due but because I struggle with ADHD and I am on the spectrum self advocating can be a huge challenge for me.
Outside of getting a percentage of commission for call ins. There doesn’t a seem to be many benefits staying with the agency.

This is more so about an event that happened a month ago but the crushing weight of it all has set in and I want to use it as a precautionary tale for anyone else in the future. Apologies for the ramble/length of it in advance.
I had gotten into my dream program for my discipline but I was mentally and spiritually not ready. Once I received the offer in February, I was excited but it slowly turned into a deep fear and distain to the point of my chest hurting, incessant headaches, getting regular heart palpitations. My discipline is (or was) computational biology and I had begun to sow seeds of doubt/overthinking in my applications during the winter before. I somehow slowly began to convince myself I’d never amount to any great phd student and my work would be worthless and terrible if I even tried. I ruminated unendingly, stressed unendingly of having forgotten how to code and would never love it again, and that my masters and undergrad theses that I had worked incessantly on in undergrad and masters school were all worthless and built off of the work of others rather than anything I was actually proud of. I didn’t want to acknowledge I was capable, I convinced myself I hated what I accomplished and I’d be miserable if I tried to find joy in what I did again.
During my visits to the most beautiful campus I’d dreamed of for so long, I felt a deep pit of hate towards what I’d do if I was there and that I’d be slaving away for nothing useful for anyone. I dissociated during my interviews with the faculty during the visit, only thinking about how this wouldn’t work out, giving my spiel about my research, and feeling pained whenever they complimented me on how impressed they were with my application. I was angered by how happy the PhD students seemed with their quality of life. I asked them questions like “how often do you work 12 hour days alone? How do you manage depression with your work?” I explained how I worked for two years in isolation in a basement lab on two separate 200 page theses in the span of two years on top of some pubs in undergrad and grad school and was wondering if there was any similar sense of stress and loneliness. They looked confused.
This pain morphed into a warped idea of: “I’d be bettemore useful being a doctor instead because at least I could help people, be useful, and the work load wouldn’t be as stressful. It’s more stable and sounds easier! I’ve shadowed a few times, I could do that! Looks fun!”
I got obsessed with analyzing the volatility of my industry and the way contributing to this science would be terrible for humanity. That AI would displace the coding jobs, that there were too many PhDs in the world and not enough MDs. I convinced myself I hated coding. I convinced myself I hated doing science.
The PI who was interested in me was so excited to work with me, I was excited to work with him but my doubt and fear mounted everyday and I increasingly convinced myself it wouldn’t be good for me to do this and I needed to be a doctor instead. The idea that I was taking up space from people who actually wanted this spot became a mounting burden mentally as well.
Up to this point, the whole year I’d been living at home with my parents with no friends doing nothing but extra coursework and part time consulting to keep me busy so the mounting depression and loneliness led to excessive rumination on how I needed to not do a PhD.
Then the April 15 deadline. I didn’t press accept or deny. I pressed back and forth between the two options on the portal, then the timer ran out. And it all set in what I had done.
Instead of the relief and calm I hoped for once it ran out, I was met only with a deep sense of grief and despair. I informed the PI who was interested in me about what happened and apologized to him for not being able to accept at this time. he immediately called my phone. I explained how I just couldn’t at this time, that I just had too many doubts. He told me “it sounds like you just have imposter syndrome, in my 30years I hadn’t seen an applicant at your level for a while, I think you’d be a great scientist, if you still are interested we can still get you in.” Then it finally set in. I am a scientist, i need to create knowledge, not just regurgitate and apply it. I just had developed an unhealthy relationship with my work in the past and had distorted who I actually am and am talented at through endless rumination. I then told him yes, I do want to attend and he let the dept know.
In the end, I didn’t get in. The whole dept understood my situation and were willing to still accept but the head of the grad school said no. Nothing could be done after the deadline. I implored her for an explanation why if the program wanted to still accept me, why I couldn’t get in. It had only been 24 hours past the deadline by this point. Still just “I can appreciate your dismay, sorry need to apply next year.” The program wants me to reapply next year as they really loved my application but now Im honestly just trying to figure out if/how I’ll ever even get in again in a year, gain trust back from the dept, and whether I should give up at this point.
Don’t let the your thoughts on why things won’t work out dictate how it can work out for you. You don’t have to know everything or be completely competent in all the disciplines entering in. Doing a PhD is about being trained to figure that out. I have to learn to forgive myself for denying myself the opportunity to try.

TL;DR I have several questions on FLG RNG in mGBA:

1. What does RAM address 0x040000A0 show?
2. If the above is not the location of the timer corresponding to the game's initial seed generation, how would I view the actual location of 0x04000104 in mGBA's memory viewer?
3. Why does Real96's script show negative advancements under certain conditions (e.g., loading to a state before initial seed generation)?
4. Can these glitched advancements be corrected without restarting the game?

Post
I've been trying to enter the FLG RNG manip scene. Something I've been in interested in is figuring out how to manipulate the initial seed. I use mGBA and Real96's FLG script, since I've learned that it's much more precise than my old tools of VBA-RR and the pokemonstatsdisplay Lua script (shoutout to u/xPorki btw).
After an entire day of trial-and-error and digging around old forums, GitHubs, and Reddit posts, I learned that FLG does not create initial seeds the same way it creates what the script calls the "Current Seed." The latter is really just the PID. Before setting the initial seed, the script assumes a starting current seed of 0 and modifies it according to the usual algorithm cited here. Of course, the current seeds generated here don't matter. Once the initial seed is set, the algorithm restarts, passing that seed as the first value and iterating it to produce the PIDs. Moreover, there appears to be no relationship between the current seeds before the initial seed and the initial seed. (I literally wrote the current seed at every frame before the initial seed was generated to check—if a relationship exists, it's not as simple as taking some combination of the last few frames' seeds).
I've learned that FLG stores the initial seed in RAM address 0x0202000. To generate it, the game apparently uses an incredibly fast timer (according to this post and Blisy's page, much faster than 60 fps because it runs on processor clock cycles, not frame rates). This timer supposedly exists in address 0x04000104. I tried to investigate this location and ran into some problems...
First, mGBA's memory viewer only shows locations that are multiples of 10. Thankfully, this limitation includes addresses like 0x0202000 and 0x3005000 (where the current seed is stored in USA versions of FLG, at least according to Real96's script), but 04000104 remains elusive. I presumed the memory viewer binned addresses, such that any fluctuations at 04000104 would be captured by 04000100 or 04000110. At least, the viewer implies that's how it works: if I try to inspect 04000104, the viewer takes me to 04000100. But this address doesn't change. You know what does change, though? 040000A0 fluctuates wildly as the intro cutscene plays, at least as fast as 60 fps.
That said, 040000A0 exhibits some unexpected quirks. First, that address remains strangely quiet during certain portions of FLGs intro cutscene. For example, I've noticed that it'll read 0000 0000 0000 0000 during moments when the screen is pitch black. Other times, the address will be oddly regular, with readings like FEFE FEFE FEFE FEFE or even FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF. Given the former observation, I suspect 040000A0 has some relationship with the game's graphics. It also stays at all zeroes during the "Previously on your quest" scenes. Second, the address continues fluctuating after these scenes end and you can move around. I thought the timer influencing the initial seed was unique to that seed; shouldn't it stop once the initial seed is set? Lastly, I was not able to find any relationship between the initial seed and 040000A0's readings. For example, I once got an initial seed of 1FF9 and kept careful track of 040000A0's readings up until that point. 1FF9 did not pop up anywhere. In fact, none of the RAM addresses in the viewer window (which ranged from 04000000 to 040002A0 for me) seemed to match. It's possible that, since the timer supposedly runs far beyond 60 fps, the initial seed simply showed up at a pace that did not correspond to a specific frame. Searching the memory for the initial seed also brought up no locations besides the expected 02020000.
Eventually (and somewhat anticlimatically), I learned that you can just modify the initial seed directly using the memory viewer. Simply go to the initial seed's location, type the one you want, and you're done! Real96's script correctly displays the new seed. There is one catch though: its advances counter appears to suffer from some kind of integer overflow. For example, advance 41000 can suddenly become negative 4294926295. As you might expect, this glitch makes calibration much more difficult, as I'd have to track what frame I was on before the overflow occurred and do some extra arithmetic to determine what negative advance corresponds to the positive target (the counter appears to still iterate at the correct rate).
I tried seeing if advances, like initial seeds and PIDs, have a distinct location in memory. The script appears to calculate advances using the LCRNGDistance function, which passes in two seeds as "states." Based on some comparisons of these states, the function operates with RAM addresses listed in the JUMP_DATA hash table, meaning I'm out of luck unless I'm willing to do some serious math or programming. (I suppose that, in retrospect, the current advance obviously couldn't be stored in a single location because so many things can influence it.)
Interestingly, directly changing the memory is not the only thing that causes the script to experience overflow (or whatever that error would be—I didn't study CS lol). Back when I first started hunting for specific seeds (i.e., yesterday), I realized that if I make a savestate during the intro cutscene and load back to it after the initial seed has been set, the script will also show negative advances. My guess is the glitch has to do with the getRngInfo function, which resets the advance counter whenever the initial seed is equal to the current seed (which occurs upon resetting/booting up the game since both seeds are 0 at frame 0) or the temporary initial seed (which the script initializes as 0) is not equal to the actual initial seed (which happens the moment the initial seed is set). Because the counter was reset between the two states I loaded, it might have expected a different value than the one it received. Or maybe going from a post-initial seed state to a pre one in mGBA alters the memory such that it affects the JUMP_DATA and messes with LCRNGDistance's value.
Overall, I hope this lengthy post meticulously explained my thought processes, so a kind soul can see where my head is and try to provide some insightful advice on the questions I posted above.