My second PC was one that I ordered back in college. First generation Athlon. It lived a good long life. It was a fileserver for many years after I retired it as my main machine.

It's replacement was my longest running machine. A first generation Athlon x64 machine in 2004. It was my first PC build from scratch for myself. I forget the clock speed but it was around the 1.6 to 2 Ghz range if I remember correctly (I may be wrong). It only started with 256 MB of RAM, but eventually I maxed it out at 768 MB. It also started with a low to mid grade ATI video card (that was also a video capture card!). I built it in a big case so I could hold a ton of hard drives. I harvested drives from older machines to slowly increase my storage over time. I built it as a mid-range machine that had room to grow with upgrades for a few years so it could last a decent amount of time past it's "prime". It had a long life as my main machine. I did a ton of graphics work on it and recorded a lot of television, ripped the commercials, and dumped those files to my server. I realized when it finally died, I had a longer relationship with this computer than I did with my wife!

After I bought a decent laptop for my graphics work, I used this box as the basis for my MAME arcade (around 2011). It ran several different front ends over the years and has run almost every Windows release from XP all the way to Windows 10 (avoided Win 8 like it was the plague). It should have stayed on Win 7 but one of my kids did the free upgrade at the arcade which required a ton of work to get running my emulators again. Some of my drivers were not allowed to be installed for some reason, specifically the graphics drivers, so I had to find an unofficial driver to make it work again.

It seemed faster running Win 7 over even XP. I had 20+ GB of arcade roms from the 80's to the late 90's/early 00's and ran emulators from Atari to Dreamcast/PS2/Xbox really well. I had bought some decently sized SATA hard drives to hold ISO's for disc based games. That machine stayed ready to play in that old Mortal Kombat shell for many, many years. Many quarters were pumped into that arcade (even though there was a "coin" button for each player).

Finally, it started to have some strange hardware problems that I could not diagnose. Random restarts here and there that would happen at the worst possible times (in the middle of your personal best Galaga run!). Finally one day, the screen went entirely wonky (very technical term) in a splash of colors and rendering the desktop as a distorted, super-imposed image before it went dark. For good. I had a laptop years ago and was told that something on the motherboard had burned up when it essentially did the same thing. I could power the system on but no POST, nothing would load. Nothing would even show on the screen.

The Black Box (named for it's powder black giant case), once called "The Obelisk", had played it's last game of Galaga in the spring of 2018. I harvested the hard drives to go in an old Pentium 3 box that was just laying around in a closet and reloaded my frontend to resurrect my arcade. Unfortunately all of the other hardware was horribly outdated by now so they would just be added to my computer graveyard and I eventually culled the really old crap. I thought about mounting the motherboard, processor, RAM, and graphics card on the wall in my gameroom in memory of that glorious machine.

Currently running a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2 from 2015 after the display went out on my original Cintiq Companion in 2019, I bought this one used. The machine is long in the tooth but it runs Creative Cloud pretty well even now. It only has 16 MB of ram and a 3.1 Ghz Intel i7 with a really crappy Intel graphics chip (so no gaming). I hope I get a few more years out of it before I finally build a new desktop.

Going back to my alma mater to go from my Associate's Degree to a Bachelor's degree is nearly 4 times as expensive as my first degree. Basically another year of school costs almost 4 times as my initial time in college that I started 25 years ago. I payed out of pocket tuition and books and the rest of it with student loans. Those excellent high school grades and extra curriculars didn't earn much in regards to scholarships.

But I made it work, and I paid off my loans within about 8 years of graduation. It sucked. I had many years of sacrifice to make that happen.

Everything gets more expensive over time. Not quite sure why everything keeps outpacing wages. College costs are ridiculous. I sent a son to live at university for a semester and it all cost more than my entire Associate's Degree 25 years ago. I could afford to go to that school 25 years ago and in fact almost did. It was within my means 25 years ago, fresh out of high school. Today? Not so much.

Most of the ones in my field require a Bachelor's Degree or you won't even be considered. These are all entry-level graphic design jobs that pay only a few dollars more than where I work now (manual labor, I needed a job). Most of those jobs that require a Bachelor's Degree are less than $24/hour. Back in my younger days, a degree was rarely a requirement, but if so an Associate's Degree was good enough for "entry-level". But now some HR goon picked buzzwords and requirements to make the job posting. After a layoff, I spent a few weeks updating a portfolio, resume, and literally most of 2022 applying for well over 150-200 jobs.

No one gave a shit.

Very few responses. Sometimes I got the "due to your advanced experience we cannot afford you for this job". Thanks, I guess? An ego boost is nice but I need a good paying job where I could use my talent and experience. I was told to get that degree, work hard, learn constantly to get better to practice your craft. Become indispensable and you will make it. That's a joke. You get laid off. But I am jaded and defeated so my perspective is flawed.

I wasn't a real applicant because I only have an Associate's Degree that I earned 23 years ago as of this month. Almost 27 years of experience earned on the job (and mostly off the job because I like to learn) across just about any media, designing just about...well...anything. That means nothing compared to that extra year in college that I don't have, just making the same projects using the same software that I had used during my Associate's Degree. So basically, nothing new, just a similar, fancy piece of paper with a different word on it. If I spent more money and time, that just makes me better?

Even with that more "valuable" degree, it doesn't bring much more compensation. Inflation and increased prices on everything from houses, rent, food, gas, etc. just keeps moving that goal post of a comfortable wage. $24/hour was pretty damn good wage 24 years ago but today it's just a little better than what I have right now.

I loved my time in college. I really enjoyed spending time with my creative peers and collaborating on projects (good training for future jobs). The access to technology and software was easier there and when I started college in 1998 compared to now when you can educate yourself on graphic design online with YouTube. The education in college? To say I learned absolutely nothing would be a lie, but I learned more on my own time practicing my craft than I ever learned on campus. College is great and I think that if you want to join a field that requires advanced education, then by all means go to college. Otherwise, getting on the job training or some kind of vocational education seems to be the way to go.

Companies might want to consider finding good people that are capable of growing and learning and putting those people in the right places rather than looking for a fancy piece of paper. I worked with a ton of "uneducated" people who were highly skilled at what they did due to just getting good training. I liked most of my peers that I graduated with but there were only about 10-20 of us in my class that were truly great at what we did. I wonder how many of my peers are now like me and working outside their field? Or how many failed upwards into a better design job?

Plus the GOP (and even the Dems in some cases) will elect a warm body just to have the seat in order to have the power and party-line vote, regardless if there is an actual pulse or even neural activity that approaches sentience. Common sense and education certainly isn't necessary. That's why the GOP wanted Herchel Walker. He would have done what he was told, despite werewolves and vampires and his "thoughts" about them.

One of those morons (Hank Johnson, unfortunately a Democrat) thought Guam would tip over if there were too many people on one side. As if the islands on planet Earth are not part of the Earth's crust (which is also under the ocean ) and instead float like a boat or a raft on the surface of the ocean. He should have been immediately thanked for his service and calmly escorted out of the chambers, never to return. He should have lost his seat and been immediately replaced. He should have lost all of his benefits and had to go back to a menial job. Representative Johnson tried to play it off as a joke because he was trying to call attention to adding 8,000 Naval and Marine personnel to an island of 180,00 people was a significant stressor to the resources and population of Guam. But instead of saying that, he came across like a complete moron and essentially wasted The People's time. If I did the same shit at work, I would be reprimanded.

I'm sorry, I don't expect any of them to be experts at anything, but if it's something that is legislation or investigated by a committee, they should at the very least have a basic, rudimentary and correct understanding of the hard data of the topic at hand. I expect them to learn much more about the topic at hand in order to be better informed so they can investigate or legislate properly.

God...I wish my Hank Johnson example was for a Republican. But the same holds true for both parties, but usually it seems like the GOP ones are dumb as paste and can't learn...anything.

I have been a Type 1 diabetic for 30 years as of this month. I've been diabetic for almost three quarters of my life.

Back in the late 90's in my "diabetic support group" in high school, our school nurse showed us an article and a study about a device on your wrist being able to read your blood glucose. The problem of course was reading through your skin effectively and it required a pretty powerful laser. The reliability of the reading was dubious at best and it was difficult to get consistent results, if any result at all.

That was around 1998 when I graduated. I've read about a few breakthroughs here and there since then as I have an interest in this but still nothing viable. I HATE checking my blood sugar, so much so that often I "forget" to do so which is not a responsible thing for an adult with diabetes to do. I have been diabetic long enough that it should never happen. But you have work, kids, a spouse, car troubles, home repairs, your own burgeoning side business, mowing your yard, etc. that sometimes you're literally rushing from one thing to your meal and right back to some other high-priority thing. Plus it's not always convenient or viable to make everything stop for you to sit down, open your kit, get setup, prick your finger and wait 15 seconds for a result (it used to be 90 seconds back in the day!). It reads like an excuse, but it's an explanation. Sometimes you have to step away from life just to get a reading way early so you can be prepared for a meal or activity.

I had a CGM (Constant Glucose Monitoring) device with my insulin pump and it was a miserable experience. It was a probe that you changed every three days that you stabbed into your abdomen. It hurt CONSTANTLY and you still had to check your blood glucose several times a day to make sure it was in calibration. Not a big deal, but it was constantly uncomfortable or even painful for a skinny dude like myself. It worked well most of the time and it communicated directly to my pump. My A1C was basically perfect when I had it.

Now that it's been a few years there are a few other systems like the Dexcom which I am interested in pursuing. I've heard great things about it.

I know that scientists can't just wave a magic wand and make it work. There are obviously technological and biological hurdles that I know of but even more that I am ignorant. But it's been several decades since I first saw a prototype device that kinda, sorta worked. Two years ago Apple was on the cusp of delivering the goods and now we basically have the same article again. It would be nice to have a result.

Physical media rules. I spent much of the early 2000's to almost 2015 purchasing so many DVD's. Most of the bigger action/sci fi/fantasy movies, most of the good animated stuff, and the biggest part of my collection was TV seasons on DVD.

I was broke, still paying back student loans, then I found torrents. I bought the special stuff on physical media (saved my pennies for a cool collectors or limited edition) but I just downloaded most of everything else because I couldn't afford a lot of extras. And if a movie sucked, I could just delete it instead of wasting $12-$20. Netflix was one of the only streaming services when I started and even back then it had just added streaming to go along with the DVD mail service. I subscribed to Netflix for convenience of course, but I kept downloading whatever I could. I even resorted to a few Telesync captures back in the day for movies still in theaters because I was impatient for the actual release.

I downloaded everything to my PC (it was full of big hard drives) and just watched it on PC. Or I burned a few movies to a DVD-RW here and there so I could watch a few new downloads on the big TV. Then I finally bought a Western Digital streaming box that was awesome! I could just stream anything from my PC across the network to that thing and watch whatever! Eventually I had to get a 4TB NAS to hold my collection. I actually started ripping my physical media for a few years and stored it on my network too (but even now I'm not even a quarter of the way done). It was just more convenient to stream everything instead of finding a disc. And eventually there was the rise of multiple streaming networks.

Fast forward to now. We have more income so we can afford several streaming services (even with all of them it's cheaper than cable TV) and I have no means to play any of my physical media outside of my PC (which itself will needs my USB external disc drive). 99% of my media is in storage since we moved the last time, as are most of my gaming consoles (which was how I played my DVD and Bluray discs). I have only downloaded a few obscure things here and there in recent years that I just can't find anywhere else. I don't pirate much anymore. So if our internet goes down, we aren't watching anything in my house unless we find something cool on the NAS.

I hate when movies leave a streaming service. My kid wanted to watch Into the Spiderverse so we went to Netflix to watch it. It had been on that service forever. I was surprised that it's no longer there! But I can purchase or rent it on Amazon Prime! Physical media or torrents mean you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want instead of relying on streaming services to have a special deal with a movie studio or a network in hopes that you can find what you wanted to watch.

It's a difficult road. There is such a cost in purchasing physical media and then you need the space to store it. There is a huge convenience to streaming but it sucks when deals go away so the movie or tv show goes away or something odd can't be found anywhere. Same with video games. I like the convenience of a digital copy but I don't like when they shut a server down. Something like the WiiWare store no longer exists or Xbox Live for your Xbox360 so you better hope you never need to download something from them again. But all my physical copies of NES, SNES, N64, GC, Wii, WiiU, Xbox, Xbox360, XboxOne, PSX, PS2, PS3, PS4 games still work fine.

Adobe XD (Experience Designer) is their UI/UX tool. It started first on Mac, then about 8-12 months later they made a Windows 10 version (it supposedly required API's only found in Windows 10). The Windows version initially started out a few versions and updates behind the Mac version. There was always a features gap for awhile which was very annoying! Within about 6 months to a year, all of the features were finally on par between the Windows and Mac versions.

It's a cool program. Lots of neat features for building a UI and interaction. You can easily make Libraries in this program that you can share to your other Creative Cloud apps. You can now actually design in Photoshop or Illustrator and open those native files up in Adobe XD and just keep iterating your design and making it interactive. The actual design tools are like Illustrator/Photoshop Medium. You can do many of the same things in a somewhat similar interface, but not everything. Similar keyboard shortcuts. Sometimes it's a little more natural to make your graphics in one of the other apps then import it into Adobe XD.

My one big gripe about Adobe XD is the lack of an easy way to export usable HTML and CSS code. You can export HTML/CSS snippits for your coders and all of your images to help them put a web interface together. But I would appreciate being able to export a usable website for a graphic designer like myself. I can code and do okay but it would be far easier for a visual person like me to set it up and all of the interactions and behavior in Adobe XD and have it generate reasonable code.

Adobe Muse was released several years ago (and was retired with barely a whimper a few years back) that let visual designers setup webpages without writing much code at all. You could actually export a full website that you could upload to your server. The generated code was an abomination to all things holy in the universe and took a ton of time to clean up. The code was very dirty, chock full of long, random text strings to represent objects in your HTML and CSS instead of being able to name things yourself that made it difficult to edit outside of Muse. I worked on one project that took so long to modify the code that I finally just stopped and rebuilt it from scratch in code.

Adobe XD was cool. I had never really used Figma but I heard it was pretty easy to use and also let you make some cool things with it. Adobe used to be VERY excited about Adobe XD, constantly adding new features (at least 3-6 feature updates every few months and a bigger batch of feature updates at AdobeMAX in the fall). The last year or so it's like Adobe just gave up on it. I can't think of the last feature update which was probably about a year ago. It must have been so minor that it didn't stand out in my mind. The rest of the 2022 updates were just usability/bug fixes. AdobeMAX in 2022 didn't say shit about Adobe XD but they had a segment with Figma's founder about Adobe's pending Figma purchase.

Guess they will put Adobe XD out to pasture and adopt Figma for their UI/UX tool? Adobe said that Figma will be part of the Creative Cloud family of apps but it would be kept somewhat separate (for reasons that I can't remember...maybe it was pricing for current Figma customers?). It's really sad. I wish that Adobe would have just kept putting in the work for Adobe XD and keep pushing it and giving it other capabilities (like full HTML/CSS/JavaScript export) rather than buying the competition. Adobe XD has potential and promise to be greater than it is but I guess it lost its luster so Adobe doesn't give a shit about it anymore.

I was a graphic designer for a large printing company for almost 15 years. There were some weeks that I required all five 8 hour days to get all of my work done. And I mean clocking in at exactly 8:00 am, taking a 30 minute lunch, and keeping all meetings and conversation away from my desk to an absolute minimum (my team could stay working and talk amongst the cubicles). Basically pop in your headphones, put your head down, and get shit done. I was lucky and had few direct calls from customers and most communications were instant messages or emails with colleagues at corporate.

We designed for a lot of manufacturers who had new models of equipment each year which usually released during July or shortly after (like car manufacturers shutting down for a model change which required new labels and branding). Big implementations like a new customer with a big project or maybe steady parts of the year (usually early spring to the end of summer) sometimes required 40 hour weeks. Sometimes there was simply too much work to get done in the standard amount of time. Sometimes even a few hours of overtime (10 hours or less) every few weeks. We had to maintain our current customers and take on the new customers or big projects.

I would say that at least 6-7 months of the year would have been perfectly fine to have four 8 hour days. We were required to have at least 6-7 hours of productivity per day (tracked through a work management system). Even "working" 5-6 hours a day, my team would routinely get 8-12 hours of work done. We were VERY efficient and good at our jobs. That being said, we didn't just dick around and play on the internet on company time as a rule. We still tried to be honest and work while on the clock. But if we didn't have our nose to the grindstone for peak time, we just slowed down a little and spread that work out. We were constantly reducing our estimated durations for designs and decreasing our turn-time for our customers and still got a metric shit-ton of work done by actually working less than 8 hours a day. We were routinely the top design team in the company in terms of quantity and quality.

They could have kept us at four day, 32 hour weeks for most of the year and we would have been fine. And most of the cases of four day work weeks involve the employers still paying the employee for a 40 hour week (a free 8 hours of pay!). I know that our occasional bouts of burnout would have been mitigated with an extra day of rest. I also believe that if our sales and customer coordinators could have managed our workflow a bit better, we could have maintained a four day work week even during peak times. There was a TON of inefficiency before the work came to us (missing information critical to design and manufacturing that slowed us down).

I have been working 40-60 hour weeks since I started working as an adult in 1998. At every job I have ever been at, there was almost always wasted time and it's not always employees just screwing around. Manufacturing jobs could be problematic but I say just give employers incentive to employ more people so they can keep more people working spread across more crews. Those same incentives can be used to increase employee pay a bit so everyone can get out of the deficit they are in.

I know it's not as simple as that but I guarantee that employee efficiency will increase and people will come to work for more pay and a few less hours. I now work outside of graphic design in a physical labor job due to lack of employment opportunities in my area. I'm already going to come in and work and do a great job (that's what I do). Pay me a little more and give me another day off? I'll be motivated to put in that same quality of work without the fear of burnout.

At first I was totally against the idea of subscription-based software. I always thought it was stupid to keep paying someone for the privilege of continuing to use their software because it was of no benefit to me. Then Adobe stepped into the game with Creative Cloud. I've used all their software since the mid 90's but was too poor to actually purchase any of it. Several hundred dollars for just an upgrade? Twice that or way more for the full version? Way out of reach of a lower-middle class high school kid (at the time I started). So I began my long career of software piracy on DAILUP, taking days to download 50+ zip files for Photoshop 4.

So now I can spend just over $700 a year (divided up as a smaller monthly bill) for every bit of their software catalog with free updates? Sounds like a deal for a professional like me. I use all of it. It saves me from scouring the internet to find cracked versions or just a crack (which can be buggy or loaded with potential malware), make sure I have a working serial number, check and change my host file periodically to keep the software from phoning home. It was fun when I was a single, twenty-something doing this and felt like I was at least "hacker-adjacent" by doing this edgy, illegal computer stuff. It was an absurd thought to have and a ridiculous process to endure.

It has to have value for me in order to earn my hard-earned coin. As a thirty-something parent, I valued the safety and security the subscription gave to my career and my home network. I had newer software than the corporation where I worked. Plus I earned enough extra cash on side projects to completely pay for the subscription. It was a low cost that didn't impact my ability to take care of my family. The monthly cost is small enough that I never had to consider skipping a Creative Cloud payment so I could pay another bill. There's no conceivable way with my lifestyle that I could save up thousands of dollars each year to stay up to date on the old model of buying a license. The same is true now as a forty-something parent and grandparent.

Only two big gripes about the Creative Cloud subscription: Adobe swallowed another company (Substance) and they have their catalog of 3D software locked up as an additional subscription which is lame. I used to do a lot more 3D work in my youth so Substance 3D would be a cool new toy to learn. I was excited until I found out it was not included with the standard CC subscription. The other complaint is the updates. There used to be a few smaller sets of new features added to all their software throughout the year, then a bigger update around Adobe MAX (their yearly conference) that had even more cool new stuff. Lots of bug fixes throughout the year, which is great. Now most of the updates are just bug fixes then maybe one or two refinements or features added at Adobe Max if you're lucky. Now they seem to focus on one aspect of Creative Cloud each year, one year video, the next year it's Photoshop, etc. which is lame. There are enough teams at Adobe to focus on each product and keep up their promise of new features.

It still has value to me but it's lost a little of the luster and excitement as the company doesn't keep up with their promises. Still happy to have the subscription for now. If Microsoft started this crap with Windows? I would start sailing the digital seas again or just keep my older copy of the OS. Windows 7 kept running great for years on my old reliable MAME arcade long after Windows 11 came out.

My sarcasm filter is broken...are you sarcastic or serious? I nearly had a stroke when I read that statement.

Hard work only earned me a pink slip at two different jobs and minimal reward at another. I regret leaving that one job that rewarded hard work for what I thought was a better opportunity at another employer.

I've been in the workforce since the late 90's. I can tell you that wages certainly don't keep up with productivity or inflation, nor do they keep up with the skills that workers learn in college and/or on-the-job experience. I can tell you now that when I apply for jobs, I get told 1) "we can't afford to pay you for your decades of experience" or 2) "you are disqualified because you don't have a bachelors degree" or 3) "we can start you at $15/hour".

I don't have a bachelors degree for that entry level, junior graphic design position but I have 26 years of experience. Sometimes the experience is worth more and somehow disqualifies me, sometimes the degree which was just 6 more months in school means more.

I can tell you now that my last graphic design job had a greedy boomer for a boss (the owner). I would've made the same money mowing her lawns, my only advantage was air conditioning and a seat at a desk. Conversely, I'm starting a job this week outside of my profession that doesn't really require training or skill, making the same wage.

I have mobile phones, a computer, and high speed internet with wifi and some streaming services in my house (the equivalent cost of cable back in my youth). Just about everything else is the equivalent of what I grew up with in the 80's-90's. Most of my electronic equipment is a few years old so I don't replace my gear very often. No super fancy appliances other than a flat cooktop. My car is probably more fuel efficient then back then, but it's currently 15 years old. I don't live that much better than I did growing up. My rent at my current home is higher than my mortgage was before I had to sell the house a few years back.

Make that make sense.

Really brave Anonymous Cowards here with their idiotic ramblings about menstrual cups in every response to "rsilvergun". I don't know the history. Maybe he/she/they are a Troll and there's a reason for the repeated trolling in response? Maybe they are an asshole and there is a somehwhat justified need for harassing this user every time they say something?

Like I said, I am ignorant to the situation and the history or maybe I'm just missing the joke. I've read some of his posts and there have been a few where I go "whatever, dude" because I don't agree and just don't respond. A lot of the others seem reasonable thoughts for a human being to have, even if I don't always agree. Sometimes we are on the same page with some ideas or opinions. That happens even with people that I don't like. I'm sure I agree with a lot of people online who in the real world might behave like monsters. That's an unsettling thought.

Is it a political thing? Is "rsilvergun" far too "woke" and conservative types have had enough because Slashdot has become a conservative cesspool in recent years? Are they trans so that somehow equals bad? Is this user a creep in real life that hurts or takes advantage of people? Are they just wildly different on this website compared to reality?

Maybe I don't want to know the reasoning behinds this childish behavior, This is the kind of shit that some teenagers would do on IRC and chat groups back in the day. But I guess the anonymity means even grown ups get to behave like this?

There is some truth to this statement but it's also a really shitty statement that doesn't fit perfectly into the intricate thing that we call life.

It is a choice living paycheck to paycheck instead of going into the unknown and doing WORSE or even giving up things you love in order to be more financially stable. I know that because I lived that. It may not be a great choice in the long-term but it is sometimes a more palatable choice than leaving and finding nothing better at the expense of loved ones. As someone who has been in this position for his entire adult life and only now getting to a slightly more comfortable economic position, it's not always easy. Sometimes you have to make hard choices to improve your station and quite often that doesn't work for everyone in your family.

I could abandon my wife, kids, pets, and other factors in my life in order to strip most of my financial responsibilities. I could move away from these people that I love to find a higher paying job in another state (with also a potentially higher cost of living so potentially a net-zero improvement). Plus it's not often that a factory worker struggling to get by becomes a successful investment banker just by making a choice to "do better" That takes considerable time and effort as well as a generous amount of luck. So in most situations in life, deciding something doesn't make it so.

I spent a decade on the search for that greener grass and came up short because I could not make the hard choices because these choices affected my entire family. I could not ask my wife to abandon her growing (and now somewhat lucrative) business, abandon all our extended families with whom we are really close, and just go somewhere else. I know that there are some people that can do that and these brave souls are exceptional people to give up so much in order to find something greater. I admire people with the conviction to make those kinds of choices. If I had asked my wife to uproot our family for the sake of more pay, I would likely have lost these people who help make me who I am today.

It can be easy for some people to change their rat race to a new path that leads to better economic fortunes. Other times, life complicates the ease of that. I would not lose my family and those people who help complete my life for the sake of economic comfort. Money brings a lot of ease but it's not worth losing the things that make life worth living.

I acknowledge the profound truth of your statement but it is certainly not an absolute constant of fact in the real world. I apologize (to the Anonymous Coward) for the harsh judgement but it comes across a statement of someone who doesn't empathize with other humans very well. No one likes being a loser but some people really revel in being unsympathetic assholes who can't see beyond themselves.

"Comprehensive employer-subsidized health plan" is a joke in the United States if you are "working class".

I am a graphic designer with over 26 years of experience, talented and skilled at most facets of my profession across a vast categories of products, materials, and applications. Am I the best? No. Design and art is subjective. Even I can judge some of my work as "meh" or just not good while I more often than not output satisfactory or exceptional end products (I have a proven track record). I work on just about anything you can print, all manner of web graphics, design for garments and promotional items (plus I can actually make them), web design, video production, UX, sublimation, vinyl cutting, 3D modeling and printing, and laser cutting & engraving. I know prepress front to back (analog and digital) and I know manufacturing processes on how to correctly produce basically any quality printed material. I have run digital presses from designing the product from scratch, approval from customer, prepress for production, and then final output. I went to college to get my worthless Associates Degree in my field of study but put in most of my formative time and effort earning that piece of paper in practice, practice, practice on my own learning and becoming the best at what I did. I started several years before college and learned the most of my skills outside of the classroom. I should have gone for a Bachelors Degree so I could earn "starting wages for an entry-level position" and actually could get a new job.

You get out in the real world and basically everyone wants design work for free or as cheap as they can get it. It has no value. To be fair, that's what we all want: the best at the lowest cost. It's fair to want that but it's a little different though when you're a human being trying to house yourself, trying to to live within your means, and eventually have a family. There are jobs out there that you earn a good living wage in this field (I have applied for them) but most employers want to pay you $15-$20 an hour which is quickly going to become the new nationwide minimum wage. Having been stuck in this wage range for the duration of my career, I can assure you it's not much to live on. It requires roommates or a spouse just so you can get by reasonably comfortably unless you live a spartan existence with extremely little extravagance.

Sorry for the long exposition, but I wanted to illustrate that I'm not an uneducated, unskilled worker (no offense meant to anyone). Everyone should be earning a good wage and have affordable healthcare regardless of vocation or training. I should be earning a good wage and should have good benefits because I put in the time and effort to get where I am. I did what American society raised me to do and it has failed so many of us.

Now to the "comprehensive employer subsidized health plan". Let me provide two real-world examples that are not painted from a wide brush of cynicism, but instead detailed with reality.

My first full-time job as a graphic designer was a good wage to start out (almost double which was quite a step up from my previous minimum wage). The company started out with pretty fair raises as a result of performance based reviews on top of yearly cost of living increases. Those cost of living increases didn't keep up with inflation (because it hasn't since the 70's or 80's) but at the time I was earning a low wage for a single man with Diabetes just out of college. I could pay my bills with the good fortune of sometimes having a few hundred dollars left over by the end of a month unless something catastrophic came up. I actually had a very small amount of savings for the first time as an adult living on my own. I limited my non-necessities, but had a few I could afford. Our insurance at the time (21 years ago) was basically $60 every two weeks, yearly deductibles were $400, and they covered a large percentage of my prescription insulin costs (the cost of having Type 1 Diabetes is like having a child). Doctor visits were a bit pricey but with the lower deductible I could reach that by the middle of the year and by then all my medical costs were covered. I didn't worry about paying for my diabetic care for the first time since I reached adulthood.

To sum it up, $120 a month from my paycheck with a $400 deductible. $1,440 subtracted yearly from my gross $27,040 yearly pay.

My wages increased during my 14 years there by a grand total of almost $6 dollars. The raises stopped coming and any cost of living increases were certainly not noticed. The company paid their executives well and bled money on projects that went nowhere so the rank and file felt it in their paychecks. They also played with our medical benefits every few years (obviously to try and save money as medical is one of those big expenses for employers and employees). By the time I was laid off in a reduction of employees, my obligation to my health insurance had increased to over $800 monthly with a $1600 deductible each year for only myself. I was lucky to hit the deductible and a lot of my medical expenses suddenly became "out-of-pocket". The out of pocket cost of my insulin had tripled to $150 a month so I started rationing my medication, which is something I shouldn't have to do to survive. I NEED insulin to survive because my body cannot metabolize simple glucose correctly without it. All so I could take care of my family, pay the mortgage and our other bills like a civilized person.

Let's just round the later cost of my insurance to $800 monthly out of my paycheck, yearly deductible of $1600. It was $9,600 subtracted yearly out of my $37,440 gross yearly pay. Quite an increase that was not covered in my paycheck. Plus this is my gross salary and not the realistic, after social security, federal, state, and local taxes salary. Quickly all the costs add up. My Net pay was absolute trash just due to my health insurance costs.

That huge cost was without my sons (one biological and two stepsons) or my wife on my health insurance. To add my family, it would have been $2400 a month out of a $3,120 monthly gross salary. That would have left me with $8,640 as a yearly gross salary. That is criminally insane. All of my kids were eventually on state-run Medicaid because we couldn't afford to add them to my insurance.

As the only beneficiary on the insurance, I eventually went from bringing home a lowly $36K a year gross salary to almost $28K after insurance. Now subtract social security and all those taxes. That's a laughable living wage for an adult with a family and a mortgage. It was the equivalent of what I earned when I started 14 years earlier. Factor that in with the (at the time) current cost of living, I was even FURTHER behind economically speaking than when I started. Then I got laid off and earned even less on unemployment. That's fun!

I will remind you that I am a well-trained, highly-skilled technical worker with a degree and currently almost three decades of experience. I'm not a high school kid with their first job but a father with a family. I also have a costly disability that I try not to let control my life more than necessary. I know graphic design is not a highly-valued career like a doctor or engineer, but this is a profoundly insane way to eek out an existence in "the greatest country on Earth".

Wages do not keep up with inflation, employers don't want to pay for the value that their employees bring, and insurance/health care costs are absolutely insane in the United States. Almost everyone on else on planet Earth agrees. If you are living well because you have a better employer with great pay and benefits that include a more affordable "comprehensive employer-subsidized health plan", I salute you for making better choices in life than me and I am truly and sincerely happy for you (if not a little jealous!). I mean that with no sarcasm. I wish you well. I find the cynical opinion about "comprehensive employer-subsidized health plans" to be very accurate based on my cynical but true experience.

From where I have been and what I have seen, "comprehensive employer-subsidized health plan" does not mean the same for most Americans. Something has to be done or the rich and our "betters" might end up on the menu.

That's the one thing that a lot of people forget. Any adaptation of print media gets diluted and modified a bit to go to screen in order to keep the attention of the audience. Some parts of the books (or comics) are boring as hell, but they are elements of the overall story. You can appreciate these boring parts that help tell a good story, but they might still be a bit of a slog to read. Imagine seeing that on screen? Some people don't think about that.

I read all of Marvel's big crossovers from probably the late 80's until around the 2010's (I'm catching up now). Some were exceptional while some were "meh" and seemed like a cash grab and nothing more. So many of the crossovers were full of a lot of extra stuff secondary to the main story that would not be entertaining on screen to "regular" people but were very entertaining to read to a comic book nerd like me. Even though I liked this extra stuff, it may not be that engaging on screen. Nerds might like all these little nuggets of lore in the side stories but regular people probably would find it boring. Sometimes they have characters you don't know or care about so you have to learn a bit about them to really get the story.

Civil War is a prime example of the comic book version being great (but REALLY LONG with a ton of tie-ins) and the movie being pretty great too, but in a different way. The comic book version was mostly entertaining but it contained a lot of stuff that reached out to parts of the Marvel Universe that would take too much time to explain on screen to a non comic book reader. And who is to say the regular viewer would even understand? I've had years to see the building blocks of these stories and they have been expanded over time so I understand them. Civil War in the comics was started when the New Warriors were blown up at an elementary school while they were pursuing a super villain named Nitro, all of this for a reality show. That made the Superhuman Registration Act a thing so all people with super powers had to register their secret identities to the government or they would be breaking the law. Most people don't know who the New Warriors are but the reality show angle would have been interesting on screen. The Negative Zone prison built by Reed Richards for heroes that didn't Register? That would first require the Fantastic Four to be a part of the MCU, not to mention what the Negative Zone is or god forbid, who Annihulus is. Don't get me started on Ragnarok (the Thor synthetic clone that Reed Richards made because all the Asgardians had perished during Ragnarok some time before Civil War).

And Age of Ultron? In the comics, Ultron won and took over the Earth until the heroes found a way to reverse everything. The comic book version had a sub plot with Wolverine using a Time Machine created by Dr. Doom to go back in time to kill Hank Pym (the comic book creator of Ultron) in the past before he made Ultron. I believe that Sue Storm (the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four) was trying to stop Wolverine. Not to mention the Marvel Comics version of Nick Fury is an older white guy who fought in World War II. Don't get me started on the Savage Land.

It's all Looney Tunes bullshit that most people wouldn't care about and would not watch in a movie. Reading that crazy shit in a comic book? That works.

They took the elements of these stories and crafted live action versions which had success but people can have their own opinions if the movies and shows are good or not. They boiled the plots down to their basic details and built a new story based on the pieces of the MCU that they had in place. It made sense to have Tony Stark create Ultron in the MCU based on the stories they have told. And the changes to Age of Ultron was a story easier to tell to general audiences with consequences of that story led to Civil War (the Sokovia Accords instead of the Superhuman Registration Act).

Am I disappointed that I don't see true adaptations of these stories on screen. Sure but a lot of these direct adaptations are not very good. I would also rather have a tv show with good effects and 14-16 episodes a season to tell these stories over a greater period of time instead of a 2-3 hour movie. I really like the MCU but I completely understand why people don't, and that's fine. It's not for everyone. I won't try to change anyone's opinion about the MCU because "who cares".