When I was 19 I tried an IRC Vampire the Requiem game. I got banned after arguing with the admins about the rules (in retrospect I was right about how things worked but they’d already house ruled it and I should’ve just gone with it). In response I wrote a whole website for managing character sheets, and a connected IRC bot to handle dice rolls, and pull things from character sheets.

I did all of that, and then proceeded to run a terrible vampire game on IRC for a couple months. The code was all in PHPNuke so it’s useless now. But it taught me a lot about coding for the web. During that time I showed my work at a job interview as a software dev, and I got a job while still in college. But as part of the coding questions, I learned that you can use sql to join tables. I went home and started rewriting a lot of stuff, but the game died before I was finished.

I once met this girl who let me touch her boobs and do other fun stuff. In order to make that more convenient, we rented an apartment together. Which meant I needed a job to pay rent. Eventually we wanted a nicer place, so we bought a townhouse, which meant I needed to make more money and get a better job. Then we wanted kids, which meant a bigger house, car, etc etc. So needed a promotion to keep up with growing bills and spending.

Now I’m in my 40s, have a bunch of kids, work too much. And all I wanted was to touch some boobs and stuff.

A coworker once said I sounded a little flat on Teams, so I bought a USB Audio Interface, boom arm, shock mount, shotgun mic. Couldn’t stop there, of course. Bought two studio monitors, foam pads for the speakers, and audio foam for my bare walls. A little over board, but now my coworker can hear me apply chapstick like I’m two inches from their ears.