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hiding under your bed

Hey guys, I need to vent, and I need advice. Sorry this is gonna be a bit long, but I'd really appreciate it if you stick with me here and let me know your thoughts.
I'm sure some of you have already heard my crap in my other threads or in PMs, so I'll try to make the first bit of this leading up to the Greyhound incident as short as I can.
Actually, I'll spoiler most of it so you can skip it if you want.

› Show Spoiler

Fast forward a few months to November. I've had a difficult time making ends meet, but I've managed. I'm taking a full load of classes and volunteering at a locally-owned bookstore. They can't pay me because they're barely making enough money to keep their doors open, but through them I've managed to get a few jobs here and there repairing people's computers/cellphones/game consoles and teaching older people how to use the internet. Now my friend Evan comes in. I've known him for a few years. He's a big fan of Nintendo stuff, he's dabbled in modding a bit, he loves the custom systems I've put together in the past, and he's always been incredibly supportive.
He sent me a message on Facebook a couple weeks before Winter break and asked if I'd be interested in visiting him in VA for about two weeks over break and heavily concentrating on modding and selling as many systems as we could, and to work out a possible business plan to the point that I may not have to worry about finding a different job. I've talked to local gamestore owners in the past and kicked around the idea of having them sell my stuff in their stores, but nothing ever came of it. Evan was serious about this, though.
He generously offered to buy me a bus ticket, and in addition to the combined DMGs, Pockets, and NESes we already had, he bought a few more systems and new tools (My old soldering iron wasn't exactly in top shape, hahah). We ended up talking with two game stores local to the Warrenton VA area, and we also talked with a guy who owns a few Game Haven stores. We showed them our work and pitched them our ideas, they loved it, and we agreed to put together some custom systems for each of them, which they'd buy from us and sell in their stores. The Game Haven guy even gave us a couple NESes for free and asked if we could do something TMNT-themed with them. We came back to him with two ideas and mockups and he offered us upwards of $350 for each of them. For the rest of the time I was in VA, we focused on cranking out a bunch of simpler DMG mods (greyboys with backlight/prosound/new buttons and screen cover) that we could sell until we'd gotten together all of the parts we needed for the TMNT NESes and other more-complicated mods we had planned.
By the end of my time in VA, we'd sold quite a bit of stuff, and gathered just about everything we needed for the more complicated stuff we'd been planning. We agreed that I'd take most of the stuff with me back to Tennessee and keep working.
I got on the bus with my messenger bag, containing my laptop, cellphone, and 3DS. My duffel bag was loaded into the bottom of the bus. It contained all of my clothes, my good pair of shoes, Christmas presents for my family, toiletries, a bunch of Wii U stuff, two NESes, a DS lite, a GBA, two SPs, three modded DMGs I was going to be shipping out the next day, two modded DMGs and one modded pocket I was going to be delivering in person the next day, 8 or so more DMGs worth of parts and all of my tools.
I arrived in Nashville TN and waited patiently for my bag to be taken out of the bus, but it never was.
Everyone else got their luggage, but mine wasn't there.
As far as I could tell nobody else took it, and I'd kept an eye out at previous stops along the way to make sure nobody would take it, accidentally or otherwise. It was just gone.
My girlfriend arrived in her car to pick me up and take me to Murfreesboro, and she let me know that her mom and stepdad, who I'd previously let borrow my car before I left for VA (entirely different story, but we've always gotten along well, they've needed to borrow it before and I totally trust them with it), were having issues with my car. They didn't want me to know and were planning on getting it sorted out before I came back, but it took longer than they expected.
So there I was, a couple days before Christmas, with basically nothing but the contents of my messenger bag, and the clothes on my back. My girlfriend was leaving to spend Christmas with relatives, and was stuck in Murfreesboro with her mom and stepdad until I could get my car fixed or find another way to get back to my apartment in Cookeville. I stayed in Murfreesboro until just before the semester started, never found the issue with my car (the mechanic it was finally taken to suggested that I have him replace a bunch of stuff that I've already dealt with before and know for a fact wasn't the issue, and asked for $600+ for it. I only paid $800 for it to begin with. I said no) I got a ride back to Cookeville with my girlfriend and I've been struggling to have anything done by Greyhound's customer service to find my bag, and struggling to pay my bills.
I complained about Greyhound on Twitter, and they followed me the next day, but didn't respond. I called them out on it, and then they asked me to DM them and give them the details of what's been going on. I did and a couple days later they had a man from corporate in Dallas TX call me and let me know he was going to "do his best" to find my bag. I suggested checking security cameras at our stops, since we know the exact times and locations of each stop, and my bag was fairly easy enough to spot from the rest of them. He let me know he had (I doubt it), and that he saw the bag get loaded in but that was the last he saw of it. He supposedly sent out a message to all of the stations we'd stopped at and didn't get a response from half of them. I ended up personally calling each of them, along with each of the stops of a different bus that we'd come into contact with, and I even contacted gamestores and pawn shops around each of the areas we'd stopped at, in case my bag had been stolen and someone tried to resell it. So far nobody's found anything. The Greyhound corporate guy said he'd keep in touch with me to let me know anything new he'd found out, but he never called me back so I've been keeping in touch, calling once a week or so to check in (and it took him a good month or so just to get in touch with the stations we'd stopped at, which I'd already done within two days of my bag going missing), but I'm losing hope and running out of ideas.
I'm considering possibly taking Greyhound to small claims court, but I haven't done this before and I'm not 100% sure where to start. But there was over $3000 worth of stuff in that bag, a lot of which is going to be tough for me to get back, even if I wasn't incredibly poor right now. ASM PCB-mount prosound jacks, a few rare-ish games, an awesome assortment of socks from Target that they no longer sell (no, I'm not joking. They made awesome socks and I had a ton. It got to the point that I was known in some circles as "the guy with the badass socks") custom-painted one of a kind systems including the repro pink heart DMG I did a while back. I'm actually pretty worried that sometime down the road someone will try to resell the heart DMG and pass it off as the real thing.. I'm hoping if any of the customs show up online I'll be able to catch them, though.
Oh, and inside a pocket of one of the cases I was keeping my tools in, there were a ton of old handwritten letters from my girlfriend. sad
I've managed to get a couple of commission orders recently, but not nearly enough to feed myself and pay my rent. Between these and trying to find a better job I've been selling the bit of games I still have around left to sell, and come Thursday, as much as I hate it, there's a guy coming to buy my digital piano from me so I'll be able to pay my rent for the upcoming month.
I had more to say but I don't remember what it was now. I've got a cold and feel like crap right now so I'm gonna go to sleep in a few minutes. Maybe I'll edit this later.
Do you guys have any suggestions as to how to deal with Greyhound or how to go about finding a better job and/or coming up with more cash faster?

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Wow, I just read through your whole post and wanted to let you know that I'm sorry about your whole situation, and really sucks that you had to go through so much. I can't imagine having such bad luck all the time.

Unfortunately I don't know much about GreyHound or gettng your stuff/money from them, but for a job you can try searching Cragislist. People often post different gigs or jobs there that could be pretty easy. You can also post that you're looking for work there.

You seem fairly tech-savvy, you can try contacting certain recruiters, such as Robert-Half, and they will try to find a job for you. Sometimes they are only contract, or contract to hire, but at least it will be some money.

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Jesus man, this is always a big fear for me when riding Greyhound/Megabus - so sorry. I assume you had your back insured when you checked it in at the Greyhound ticket booth?

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Chicago, IL

thats a real bummer...sorry to hear that. I hate to say it but you probably won't get your stuff back. I've had almost the same thing happen with USPS, they are completely devoid of any accountability for doing a crappy job. they mis-delivered a very expensive thing which just vanished into thin air..

As for how to make money, all I can share is what I did: Learn to program. It's a horrible, frustrating experience, the best way to learn is with a gun to your head when you have no choice. But, if someone said, "I want you to spend 6 months on a really irritating and complicated thing that you might hate at first and won't make sense some times, but after that i'll give you $70,000 (possibly way more) a year for life and pretty much let you make your own schedule", you'd do it right? not only that, but you can make your own games, mod stuff on a whole other level and have a skill that pretty much will always be useful.



Honestly, I went to college for 2 year and got nothing out of it, after that, I locked myself in my dad's house for 6 months with a PHP book and a SQL book and a decent laptop. I built projects as if my life depended on it. My first actual programming job was a stressful nightmare, I thought I was gonna fail every day, but now, 10 years later, that 1.5 years of struggle is still paying off big time. More and more places are hiring developers to work from home, I am never to worried on any job - even if i screw up big time - because there are literally like 10 other jobs I could start tomorrow if I just call a headhunter.


one other thing i'll say, try to make things good with your family, having just lost a family member who i just made nice with about a year prior to his death, i can say i'd be filled with regrets if i had not made peace when i had the chance.

Last edited by BeatScribe (Feb 24, 2015 8:47 pm)

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hiding under your bed

Thanks for the replies, guys. And sorry for the slow response. Shitty last-minute Winter weather knocked out power for a while and then for the last few days I've just kind of been in bed depressed because something arguably worse than all of the above happened on Monday.

an0va wrote:

Jesus man, this is always a big fear for me when riding Greyhound/Megabus - so sorry. I assume you had your back insured when you checked it in at the Greyhound ticket booth?

I took Megabus on the way up to VA and everything was perfect. Then I took Greyhound on the way back, and everything was awful. The depot wasn't even open when the bus came, so everybody just kinda loaded on without having to go through too much. I and a few other people were concerned because we didn't have whatever bag ticket things Greyhound uses (idk, this was my first time using Greyhound), to which the guy taking everyone's luggage replied "Ah, I'll have to get these tagged for you guys... it should be fine."
At our next stop a couple hours later everyone/everything was loaded off of the bus while we waited for a different bus. I got my bag off, and I watched it as it was loaded onto the new bus, but that was the last time I saw it. Nobody ever got a tag for their bags.


BeatScribe wrote:

Learn to program.

I've actually been trying to learn some myself since college isn't doing much for me at the moment. It's tough, but I'm working on it.

BeatScribe wrote:

try to make things good with your family

Still not going to delve into the details on the how/why of this one but up until recently I was like 90% my parents wouldn't care if I just disappeared and never talked to them again, and I kinda feel the same towards them. A couple days ago though my dad and I got in touch with each other and we might be meeting up for lunch sometime soon. I... really just don't want to at all, but I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic.


kuzimoto wrote:

You seem fairly tech-savvy, you can try contacting certain recruiters, such as Robert-Half, and they will try to find a job for you. Sometimes they are only contract, or contract to hire, but at least it will be some money.

Already been doing this, it's just been difficult to get setup with any job worthwhile or with enough pay or hours when I have a class schedule to work around. hmm


annnnnnnnd while I'm at it I might as well vent about what happened Monday.
Spoiler'd for serious livejournal-ish shit.

› Show Spoiler

tl;dr My girlfriend broke up with me and doesn't want to speak to me again and I will never get over her no matter how many times everyone else keeps telling me to move on and start dating other people. It's just not happening.

BUT, in other news, I'm going to look at a vehicle or two I found on Craigslist tomorrow afternoon that fit my budget and actually look pretty decent.
So I guess this is finally a step in the right direction.

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Just a quick thing that I want to say: Everyone feels that they're never going to get over someone after a breakup - especially if it was a really great and/or longterm deal - but statistically speaking the vast majority do. That said, there's nothing that you can really "do" to make that happen, aside from just being open minded and introspective when you start to feel yourself moving on.

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ohgodno, Indiana

music>ladies
always works out that way

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hiding under your bed
jefftheworld wrote:

Just a quick thing that I want to say: Everyone feels that they're never going to get over someone after a breakup - especially if it was a really great and/or longterm deal - but statistically speaking the vast majority do. That said, there's nothing that you can really "do" to make that happen, aside from just being open minded and introspective when you start to feel yourself moving on.

I'm trying to stay open-minded and I know it's only been a week but I dunno, I have like, a different way of thinking about certain things than most?
Like I legit rarely ever go back on anything I say even if it's gonna screw me over later on. I've been criticized for it in the past but I just can't help it. And ya' know, silly little promises couples make to each other.. "I'll always love you" etc. etc. but like, I'm not keeping my word on the things I've said along those lines just for the sake of keeping my word, but because I honestly love her that much. I don't think I've ever been so sure about anything else before and I've been pretty damn sure about a lot of things.

...hahah, I can already tell I'm gonna look back at this later today once I'm actually awake and think "holy crap, why did I word this the way I did? What was I even trying to say?"

b4by f4c3 wrote:

music>ladies
always works out that way

Dude, I've actually just started playing around with LSDJ and M01D for the first time in months and it actually kinda feels great.
I think I might go try to play an open mic for the first time in forever this Wednesday.

It's probably the current lack of sleep making me feel like this but I actually feel pretty optimistic right now about everything.
I think one of the vehicles I'm gonna go look at later today is going to be perfect for me.

Last edited by PianoGameboy (Mar 10, 2015 12:03 pm)

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Chicago, IL

Glad to hear your feeling optimistic. It sounds like you been through a lot. Best thing you can do is take away for your future...look at what you contributed to things with your relationship... did all this bad stuff happening poison all your interaction with her with negativity?  work on yourself. learn something new, work out, change things up, it's not gonna get better over night but your only options are focus all this into something, or sit around and get worse.

weird thing that has helped me with major/unexpected/depressing changes...new music..not just making it. look into new styles. find something new to inspire you. i suggest post rock if you're not into that, it seems to be overall uplifting and contemplative.

Last edited by BeatScribe (Mar 10, 2015 1:05 pm)

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Oh yeah, write some music. It'll be guaranteed to be your best stuff. That's just how it works.

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Salt Lake City, UT, USA
jefftheworld wrote:

Oh yeah, write some music. It'll be guaranteed to be your best stuff. That's just how it works.

+1, my best stuff comes right after a break up or catastrophic moment.