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platypanthewriter · 3 years ago

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Guess Again

Day Four of Harringrove AUgust, Profession AU! Steve runs into a hot guy named Billy on his plane flight back to Indianapolis, and Billy lies about what he does for a living, then, laughing, admits he lied. The prize for this guessing game: an exchange of phone numbers.

Steve found his seat, in coach, because that was the only seat available on the overbooked flight into Indianapolis a week before Thanksgiving. He shoved his carry-on under the seat, and wedged himself in the limited leg room, opening his laptop to answer the emails that had been pinging his phone before the plane was ready to take off, and he—blessedly—had to go into airplane mode.

He barely even noticed the guy wedging himself in to sit by the window, and trying to get the damn table to stay up. Steve typed away as the busted table mechanism flapped onto the guy’s lap over and over. Finally, Steve grimaced, glancing over. “You can use my table,” he offered, registering only that the guy was tattooed, and kinda...hot. “I’ll put this away as soon as we taxi to the runway.”

“It’s fine,” the dude said, smacking the floppy table with a sigh. “Not like there’s a meal on this flight.”

“You can lean in and share my pretzels,” Steve told him, grinning over, and was met with big, long-lashed blue eyes, an annoying mustache, and curls that curved around an attractively firm jaw.

The guy nodded, and put the broken table away. “...kind of a workaholic?” he asked, probably because it was nearly ten o’clock at night, and Steve was glaring at his screen and typing emails like his survival depended on a high word count.

He snorted a laugh. “I left them all until now,” he said, grimacing. “They really don’t need my input, but if I replied earlier, they’d just ask me something else. Something they could google.” He narrowed his eyes at an email from a coworker who’d actually emailed to ask for exact details of what was allowed under the sexual harassment policy. Talk to HR, he sent back. Creep, he thought. He finished the last of the replies, hoping he wasn’t sending anything too weird in his distraction, and closed his laptop. “Um. Sorry. What do you do?”

“I sell life insurance,” the guy said immediately, with a toothy grin. “I’ll sell you so much insurance on this flight.”

“Uh,” Steve said, blinking at him. “Umm...oh.”

“That’s a lie,” was the dude’s followup, and Steve stared at him, starting to regret his offer to share a table, or catch the flight at all. “I don’t sell life insurance, I swear. I promise,” the guy said, laughing. “God, your face. I just...my job is...I started telling people I sell life insurance, so they wouldn’t talk to me.”

“I can just sit over here,” Steve offered, pretending to zip his lips.

“No, no, it’s, uh. Sorry I lied. Talk to me, it’s a long flight.”

“Why do you have to lie?” Steve had to ask, and the guy grimaced.

“My job’s kinda awkward,” he said, laughing.

“Are you a...porn star?” Steve asked, trying to figure out what kind of job would get the worst people to talk to you, and the dude cracked up.

“Jesus, no, but thanks for the ego boost,” he said, and Steve snorted a laugh.

“Um. What about…” Steve thought, opened his mouth, and then closed it. “Can I guess?” he asked, grinning, and the guy snickered.

“Sure. Give it your best shot. Just don’t tell me any horror stories.”

“Do you embalm bodies?” Steve tried, already holding back a tide of questions, like did you ever drop one and have to fix a broken nose.

“Nope!” said the guy, turning to lean more against the window, to face Steve. “How many tries do you want before I just tell you?”

“Oh, no, no, lemme guess,” Steve said, thinking as they came around asking for drink orders. “Horror stories...um. Are you a soldier?” he asked, wide-eyed, and the guy laughed again.

“No! No, nothing like that.” He leaned to see Steve’s ID as Steve pulled it out to order a beer, and Steve grinned.

“I’m Steve.”

“Billy,” said his mysteriously-employed seatmate, offering his hand, and Steve flipped it over investigatively.

“You don’t have those, like, love/hate knuckle tattoos,” he said, feeling like a detective. “So...maybe not a biker?”

“I’m not a biker,” Billy snickered. His hand was warm in Steve’s. “Is that even a job?”

“Oh! Oh!” Steve leaned forward, sure he had it this time, and Billy moved the armrest between them out of the way. “A writer?”

“What?!” Billy laughed, which probably meant Steve was wrong, but he argued his point.

“People tell you horror stories,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “So—so probably everybody tells you they have a great idea for your next novel—”

“No, uh. One clue,” Billy said, grimacing. “They’re true stories.”

“True stories,” Steve said, going to cross his arms in thought, and realizing Billy hadn’t taken his hand back. “Uh, what do I get if I guess right?” he asked, squeezing Billy’s hand, and Billy snorted a laugh, grinning like he couldn’t quite believe what was happening.

“I dunno, I feel like Rumpelstilzkin, you want like my firstborn or—”

“No, nope,” Steve made a face. “I got enough kids around, thanks. Oh—” he blinked, realizing how that sounded as Billy started to pull his hand back, and lean away, “—not, like, I’m not a dad, I don’t have a wife and kids or anything. I just have some little shitheads that come over all the time and eat all my popsicles and pizza.”

“Oh good,” Billy said dryly. “I’d feel terrible if holding my hand ruined your marriage.”

“No other knuckles can fulfill me, now,” Steve said soulfully, and then when Billy burst out laughing, Steve couldn’t hold a straight face.

“You know how fucking dirty that sounds, right,” Billy whispered, rubbing his face with the hand Steve wasn’t holding, and Steve snorted a laugh.

“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to get you to fist me on the plane,” he hissed back.

“Coward,” Billy shot back, and then they started giggling again, like they were ten.

“True horror stories,” Steve repeated, later, as they leaned together over the napkin on his tiny airplane table, where he was keeping track of the guesses he’d already made. “True horror stories. Are you a reporter?”

“God no,” Billy said, making a face. “Imagine this many tattoos in front of the news cameras? We’ve got a ways to go before they allow that.”

“Oh, true,” Steve nodded. “I mean, unless you worked for, like, a tabloid. Circling everyone’s stomach in pictures and writing ‘BABY BUMP?!’ on it.”

Billy jumped when Steve yelled ‘BABY BUMP’, and half the plane twitched and mumbled. “Fuck no!” he hissed, laughing. “Ssh!”

“Huh,” Steve said, studying the napkin. “Oh! Um,” he grimaced. “Police officer?”

“No,” Billy growled, and Steve nodded, writing that down and crossing it out, and sipping his third beer. “We never worked out what you got if you guessed,” Billy said, watching.

“Oh, yeah,” Steve agreed, nodding. “Uh, what about...dinner?”

“We’re gonna land at like six in the morning,” Billy pointed out, and Steve fingergunned him.

“Breakfast.”

Billy laughed. “I dunno if I’m willing to put out on our first plane trip together.”

“Lemme get you, like, bacon and eggs,” Steve said, leaning in and waggling his eyebrows, “—and my phone number.” He smirked as Billy cackled, leaning his head in the window.

“Yeah, okay. Gimme some breakfast sausage, Steve,” he said softly, the overhead reading light making his curls glow a little, like a halo.

“Now I haveta figure it out,” Steve said, frowning at his list, and Billy’s fingers twitched towards him. Steve grabbed his hand, lacing their fingers together, and accepted another beer from the flight attendant. “I wonder how many beers that is,” he said, prodding at the label with his thumbnail. “I think they’re like ten bucks a pop.”

“I bet the alcohol will really help you think,” Billy said dryly, and Steve made a face at him.

“Shut up, I got it. I got it this time,” he said, tipping his head back for a long, satisfying drink of beer, and wiping his mouth. Billy’s mouth hung a little open when he finished, and Steve licked his lips, grinning. “You—you’re a doctor. A—a doctor of butts. A butt-doctor.”

Billy started laughing so hard, silently, that Steve was starting to wonder whether he could breathe.

“I’m right, right?” Steve said, taking a triumphant swig, and Billy shook his head, wheezing for air.

“You mean a proctologist?!” he gasped.

“Yeah, and you understood fine,” Steve told him, annoyed.

“I’m not—I’m not a butt doctor,” Billy choked out, tears of laughter in his eyes. “I don’t have a doctorate in ass—”

“Your loss,” Steve muttered, glaring at the napkin with the list. “Man, my cousin is one, and he has some stories. Dude, that’s everything, that’s every damn job. Ever. Do zookeepers get told horror stories?! Oh!” He pointed the beer bottle at Billy. “Dentist!”

“No,” Billy giggled, his hair rising with static in the dry air of the plane, and sticking to the wall and window behind him. He looked ruffled and fond, and Steve squeezed his hand again, trying to think of what he’d missed, before the plane landed, and he’d spent the entire flight guessing jobs, and Billy hadn’t even given him a last name.

“Shit,” Steve said, then straightened again. “No, okay, this time,” he said, the beer making his words a little soft around the edges, “This time I really have it. You’re a Mickey Mouse person.”

“I’m a what now,” Billy said, still snickering.

“You know,” Steve said, his eyes narrowed. “You crawl up the ass of one of those suits and let kids think you’re a Disney princess.”

“No, Harrington,” Billy said, breathlessly, as he shook with laughter. “No, I do not. Do people tell mascots horror stories?! I don’t even want to know. Which princess? Just for scientific curiosity, Steve, which princess do I crawl up the ass of, in your brain?”

Steve tried to remember them all. “Not Jasmine,” he said with certainty. “Um. Wait, Peter Pan? Maybe?”

“Peter Pan’s not a princess,” Billy choked out, wiping his eyes as he tried to muffle his laughter.

“Hrm,” Steve said, accepting another beer and huffing a sigh, but Billy leaned in suddenly and just kissed him. His lips were warm and chapped, and Steve hummed happily against them. Their teeth bumped, a little, because Billy was giggling so hard, and Steve was grinning so wide his cheek muscles ached.

“I’m a drug and alcohol counselor,” Billy said with a grimace, and Steve glared at his beer, betrayed, "—so, um, horror stories. Yeah."

"I just have butt-doctor horror stories," Steve said quickly, trying to salvage the situation, and he shoved his beer behind him.

Billy laughed harder, shaking his head. "I’ll still take that number,” he whispered, kissing Steve again—and snickering, his cheeks flushed. “And breakfast?”

Here’s my other Harringrove stuff! Or check out the Harringrove AUgust collection on Ao3! Add something! =D

#Harringrove AUgust #Harringrove #Profession AU #Meet-cute #Fluff and banter

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segadores-y-soldados · 7 years ago

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Personal and Fic Updates

Hey everyone!

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these personal update messages. I’m trying to get my stuff in order but life continues to outpace me, it seems.

The quick and dirty: Fic Stuff:

Moira has been integrated into the overarching plot of “And Overwatch For All”

Because of this, I am currently rewriting major portions of Old Habits. Yesterday, I finished a major rewrite of chapter 10 (the “evil council is introduce” chapter). I have the majority of chapter 11′s rewrite done and hope to finish that today as well. With luck, I will start working on a rewrite of Chapter 13.

Shockingly, I’m keeping a lot of the “present day” plot elements the same (aka, all the stuff leading up to Recall). But several major “past events” have changed, including Reaper/Gabriel’s backstory.

More on this later. I will also be writing a separate post JUST for fic stuff, if you prefer to read only that.

Personal Stuff:

Extra expenses have started showing up in my life. Details are under the cut.

My job has not yet promoted me and a coworker the way they said they would in the timeframe they gave us (1 year). Because of this, I am starting the job hunt again.

I have created a Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/U7U063ZJ)

More under the cut

Alright, so here’s the longer version of what my last like...three months have been like, with both personal/work stuff and fandom stuff.

Personal life/Work:

I have said this in a few places, but I currently work as an entry-level archaeologist for a state department in California. Full disclosure: I and my fellow coworker are underpaid for our work, which is as variable as conducting documentation research through databases and organizing research on behalf of our higher-level archaeologist and historian supervisors to performing surveys and actual fieldwork digs in every type of weathers in California. As an example, two weeks ago (the week of Thanksgiving here in the U.S.), myself and one of my supervisors did an 8 hour fieldwork day which consisted of 3-4 hours of surveying through waist-high grass in pouring rain at 55 degrees F/12 degrees C. This upcoming week, I and (other underpaid) coworker will be doing two 12-hour days of construction monitoring. Our work consists of traveling all over the state, with driving that can take a full day to get to a work destination (these are charged to work, don’t worry - I don’t have to pay for that, thank god).

The reason I’m explaining this is because this is a huge reason why some days (or even some weeks) my activity on tumblr, twitter, and AO3 will take a straight nosedive. On Thursday of this past week, I spent 8-10 hours without checking my phone and came home to 4 missed calls, 8 “active chats” on messenger, 600 messages on discord, and basically a whole day of “social media-ing” missed out.

If you’re rolling your eyes over this, I get it, I really do - it sounds like all the stuff that older people complain millennials “overvalue,” but (for example) one of those phone calls was from my dentist’s office saying that they will not serve me because (after three months of them NOT checking) they realized that I don’t have the right dental insurance for them.

Fun.

I don’t make enough money to switch to higher, “better services” health and dental insurance, but since I work a job that requires physical labor, I’m scared to cut them from my life. Said coworker twisted his ankle earlier this year, and work only compensated him for 1 week of “missed” work, when in reality he was walking with a slight limp for 2-3 weeks. Because of our low-level, we are not given access to benefits that many other state workers get.

Moreover, our sub-department has been promising that the two of us would get promoted “within the year.” We reached a year working with them in mid-November, and that promise still hasn’t been reached.

So in terms of my personal life, I’m at a cross-roads: I will tell them that they need to promote us, even to the next “low-level position” because that will give us just a few more $/hour which will help A LOT when accumulated, or I’m going to tell them that I’ll have to search for something else.

On top of this, my parents have decided it’s time for me to “pay rent” to live at home with them - a discussion we, frankly, haven’t had on a serious level yet and one which blindsided me this morning. I am looking into my options but without a better job, they’re not good.

This also doesn’t cover whatever it will take to help me start the legal and medical processes of transitioning, which are, frankly, the main things I’ve been saving money for.

What does this mean:

I’m looking for places to cut costs, but the combination of current expenses + what my parents want from me will take 1/3 to 1/2 of my current monthly paycheck. I already spend next to nothing on personal stuff, so all my current expenses are “necessities” such as food, gas, and insurance. I’m looking to cut down on gas costs but it may be awhile before my daily schedule gets adjusted.

The alternate is taking a second job that will permit me to only work my free three days a week.

Doing this means I will have zero time to write or produce content.

For now, I’m not jumping out to do that. I’ve made a Ko-Fi account (https://ko-fi.com/U7U063ZJ) that I would greatly appreciate any spare money you’re willing to contribute. Something as simple as a few dollars can go to me covering the cost of my health insurance per month, while I figure out the bigger problems of searching for a job.

The reason why I started with this is because:

Fic Stuff/Writing Stuff:

I do the equivalent of 3-4 full days of “writing” for fandom stuff per week: on my days off, I can write anywhere from 8 to 14 hours a day. Using just Friday and yesterday as an example, I wrote 9k words, and with whatever I do today, I will likely push that to about 11-12k.

Yes, it is all voluntary, and I do not have to write at the pace that I do, nor the amount that I do. I do it because I enjoy it, and because, honestly, writing for Overwatch has given me some of the biggest joys and happiness I have felt in like, a decade. And that includes writing the long essays. My last big R76 post (http://segadores-y-soldados.tumblr.com/post/167321630835/everything-you-want-to-know-about-reaper-and) spans a whopping 67 pages and 7.5k words in Google Docs (that includes pictures and sources/credits/links/references).

Again, this isn’t to brag, but just to put my writing into perspective, I guess. This is the equivalent of doing a second part-time job, which was something I attempted last year but was unable to balance my current archaeology job + a part-time retail job + writing. I dropped the second one because, at the time, I finally had the luxury to choose a job in my profession and writing on the side. This is a luxury I was fortunate to enjoy for the first half of 2017, but it is steadily becoming undoable as my work increases my responsibilities without increasing my pay.

Fic Updates:

For those of your who have been waiting patiently for information on “And Overwatch for All” I do have some good news that I’m finally ready to share:

Moira has been integrated into the plot.

I got a number of comments here and on twitter that were really supportive of my current version of “AOFA” and I just want to say, thank you all so much. It means a lot to me that you guys have liked the version of Overwatch I’ve built up and that you found all the characters, including my silly OCs, to be engaging and well-written. It was soul-crushing to think I would have to lose some of them, but after some time and doing more research on Moira, I feel ready to talk more about her and how she’s going to factor into the updated plot.

To start off with:

None of the OCs will be cut, but some of their roles will change.

Lmao, this surprised me as well, but I’ve figured out a few different ways to make all of the OCs, especially the very obviously contrived “Death Agents,” stick around in the updated plot.

Only one OC (and you can probably guess who, if you’ve started “New Wars”) will change names: the character called “Reaper” in “New Wars Chapter 1″ (the “young Hanzo chapter”) will be called “Reaver.” This is due to his updated role in the plot. His background has changed only slightly.

If it wasn’t apparent, this “Reaper” was meant to act as a plot device to cause confusion over Gabriel/Reaper’s actions after the fall of Overwatch, but that has changed because:

I’m switching to Crisis-era and “undercover mercenary” Reaper.

If you’ve read some of my more recent posts on Moira, you’ll know that I’ve switched over to supporting the idea that “something went wrong with Gabriel Reyes during SEP/the Crisis.” This is due to the fact that you can find a folder labeled “Soldier ID: 24″ in Moira’s Oasis lab, that Michael Chu said that Reyes was interested in getting her help on “matters of genetics,” and that this appears to mesh the “Reaper has existed for decades” concept in Reaper’s hero profile.

Truth be told, I’ve actually been a supporter of this idea of “Gabriel has been Reaper behind the scenes for decades” plot point for a long, long time, almost as long as I’ve been posting Old Habits. “Reaper”/“Reaver” was semi-messy OC that attempted to bridge Reaper’s original hero profile with the “Old Soldiers” explanation that Gabriel/Reaper gave that “Jack and Overwatch ‘left [him] to suffer.’” However, I also knew when writing Old Habits that the “Mercy is evil” theory was ALSO not true, so I was kinda stuck:

“If Gabriel = Reaper for decades, why did he appear to blame Jack and Overwatch for his current condition?”

My original solution was to make “Reaper” a different character and have him operating the situation in the background (like a mystery story), but over time this solution got trickier and trickier to work with. With Moira, I have a chance to rework much of Old Habits/AOFA to better suit some of the details that have come out since drafting it.

This does mean, unfortunately, that all the “76+127″ content is going to become its own, standalone series.

To switch over to integrating “Soldier: 24,” the “76+127″ stories will have to become their own standalone series. Don’t worry - I’m not deleting anything. Old content from “Old Habits” will be moved to their own fics, so you can read the whole thing in chronological order.

A new version of my updated ideas on SEP has already started being drafted. Writing it out is just a matter of time at this point, haha.

The conspiracy/Talon council “mysteries” will become more transparent almost immediately.

With Moira, I finally get the chance to explore some of my ideas in “full format” instead of the kinda awkward “Sombra hacking a chat log” parts yall originally got. This DOES mean that written portions will suddenly be much, MUCH longer. For example:

Old Habits original chapter 10 (Sombra hacks an SSO chat log): 17 pages

Old Habits revised chapter 10 (Moira discusses the Route 66 battle with council members + Sombra hacks a chat log): closer to 34 pages

The explosion fight has been changed.

Because of the changes to Gabriel’s plot, the nature of the explosion fight between him and Jack has changed significantly. It does incorporate new information that Moira revealed.

If it wasn’t obvious, I’ve had a draft version of my ideas for the fight sitting in GDocs for about a year now, and I use that for all my flashback/memories, and also for when Reaper and Soldier: 76 are arguing in the present. There was a major plot point in the explosion fight that I was extremely uncomfortable with, but found it to be “solid angst material.” In retrospect, I dislike this plot point and have removed it for another plot point that sits better with me, and fits the overall story more comfortably (I think).

So yes, I DO have a new draft of the explosion fight - written completely from scratch, 100% different in tone and emotionality. Parts of this should begin to show in updates to Chapter 13, when Soldier: 76/Jack reflects on some of the fight.

The Goal:

The goal for AOFA right now is to update Old Habits in “two big batches” - update the first half (Chapters 1 - 15) within 1 - 2 weeks, and then update the second half (Chapters 16 - 31) shortly after. Optimistically, before January, but realistically, closer to late-January/early-February.

Thanks for sticking with me - both with this post, and with my life changes. Things are incredibly and often overwhelmingly busy for me, and I don’t really know where many of these things (both personal stuff and fic stuff) will end up. I really do appreciate any and all support, even if I’m not able to respond to comments. You guys make it worthwhile to keep writing, and I apologize for how distant I’ve been with this stuff.

#personal #my essays #my writing #an update #ko-fi #segadores y soldados #long post

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coffinsahetrickjw10insuranc-blog · 5 years ago

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cryptswahili · 6 years ago

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Living on Bitcoin Day 6: An Artist, a Dev and a Moon Boy Walk Into a Bar…

This is the fifth instalment of reporter Colin Harper's "Living on Bitcoin" experience in San Francisco. Find out what happened to him earlier on Day 1 , on Day 2 , on Day 3 , onDay 4 and on Day 5.

On day six I woke with a renewed sense of energy. My last two days in San Francisco were booked up with plenty to do, and yesterday’s purchase had reinvigorated the experiment’s sense of purpose.

That morning I wrote, paid Kashmir back for the breakfast (she got into her Coinbase account) and set out for two days of Bay Area shenanigans that would include meeting a local crypto artist, getting tipsy with bitcoin and sleeping (and sailing) in the East Bay on a boat that threatened to capsize.

Around 1:00 p.m. I caught an Uber into the Financial District to meet up with Dustin, a multi-talented developer who had responded to a Reddit thread I made leading up to my week here. He invited me sailing, but the weather was sketchy — it had been raining for the better part of my time in San Francisco and there were winds and storms in the forecast — so we decided to meet at Digital Garage, a coworking space on Market Street that accommodates many cryptocurrency projects.

I was loitering in the lobby when he passed me, and we registered who the other was immediately. Big, tall, bearded with long, blonde hair, a tremendous smile and goofy disposition, he crossed from the other end of the lobby to greet me.

He’s got the hair, the beard, the “No worries, dude” vibe. We’re going to get along great.

We did.

As we entered the working space, I was pleased to see a cryptograffiti original on prominent display, which added an air of authenticity to both his presence in the space and to the San Francisco crypto community for supporting a local, industry-specific artist.

Posting up at a table in the working space, we hit it off and began jumping from one crypto topic to the next. Turns out, he’s a lone-wolf dev who’s building a hardware wallet with bluetooth-enabled mobile controls — not unlike Ledger’s own Nano X, I suggested. He hadn’t heard of it before.

“Well, they might have the bluetooth, but I doubt it’s trustless and multi-sig,” he tells me, going on to say that he knows of no other trustless hardware wallet. Interest piqued, I surveyed his app and the hardware wallet prototype, which he’s also building himself.

“You’re just a one-man band, aren’t ya?” I remarked, impressed, after learning that he was building everything himself.

He’s a bit of a crypto OG, it seems. He’s been in the space since 2011 and hangs around the Bitcoin Core internet relay chat (IRC), where he says he’s been humbled on a few occasions. I asked for his veteran perspective to help explain why I couldn’t find any more stores in the area that accept bitcoin. He suggests that it’s intertwined in the same trend that has made Silicon Valley so banal to him.

“Bitcoin has really exacerbated the aspects of Silicon Valley I don’t like,” he admits. “It has an appreciation for altcoins or stablecoins, but not really for bitcoin, hard money. I think there’s this culture in San Francisco that just idolizes what investors like, what’s new. I heard someone say Silicon Valley is about new things — bitcoin isn’t new anymore.”

Everyone’s just looking for “the next big thing” or “the next Bitcoin.” They’re not going to find it, was more or less his view, and he believes that the focus shouldn’t be creating something new but improving what we already have.

“I’ve heard it said that the East Coast owns things while the West Coast makes things,” he theorized, “and if that stereotype were true I could see more people taking bitcoin.

“I think the challenge is that the majority of people don’t understand security stuff. The people who buy these don’t understand half of it. The challenge is teaching them,” he said, broaching the evergreen topic on the “how-tos” of adoption.

Our conversation was kinetic and animated as we touched on a wide range of crypto-related topics. I’m not surrounded by developers much in Nashville (especially not crypto/blockchain ones), so the opportunity to talk to one who knew the ins-and-outs (and knew them real well) left my curiosity welling with streams of new, if half-hatched, bitcoin applications and infrastructural ideas.

We talked crypto assets insurance (a concept which we both had previously hatched complementary business models for), his conceptualization that the network serves users and not miners (he believes that “hashing wars” are irrelevant, since, ultimately, the users will decide which chain they buy in to) and his surprising penchant for interacting with some of the space’s most prodigious and controversial celebrities without knowing who they are.

At one point, he had left his laptop at the Crypto Castle only to retrieve it, unmolested, from the same couch he left it on a month later, though he didn’t really know who Jeremy was. I brought up Brock Pierce and his benevolent-or-parasitic (depends on who you ask) ventures in Puerto Rico. When Dustin was still involved in the Valley’s tech party scene, he was acquainted with him before either even knew about bitcoin.

“Ohhh, that’s Brock Pierce. I know him — I just didn’t know his name. We used to party a lot 10 years ago. That’s hilarious.”

Everyone knows everyone in this industry, and the degrees of separation between connections is often slim. It’s like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon but with Bitcoin.

He would reaffirm this observation throughout our talks. For instance, he had applied for Coinbase back in 2013, a job he didn’t end up getting — though Armstrong’s consolation prize was pretty nice.

“He gave me a bitcoin,” he said, smiling and holding up his hands like he was holding something ethereal. “It was like 34 bucks then.”

The literal token of gratitude for being one of Coinbase’s first applicants.

That would have been sometime in 2013, maybe even right before Hill’s article. Funny, he was probably up for the position of Coinbase’s third employee.

I ordered some pad thai for lunch on Uber Eats, tried to manage some work but was ultimately distracted by my on-going, engaging conversations with Dustin. He’d agreed to go with me to the Bitcoin meetup at Stookey’s that night. To kill time until then, we decided we would give BitPay an office visit. I wanted to ask them about the decreasing presence of bitcoin-accepting merchants in the bay area, and see if the trend was national and global.

I called the office but only succeeded in leaving a voicemail, so we decided that running the errand on foot would give us our best shot. BitPay has two offices listed on Google. One was, no doubt, a mailing address but we had no way of figuring out which one.

The rain-soaked walk was made easier thanks to our umbrellas (Hans had graciously loaned me his, a feeble but functional black pocket umbrella). On our way, we took a detour so that I could try out a bitcoin ATM.

The experience wasn’t as gratifying as I had hoped, mainly because it didn’t feel like actually buying bitcoin — it was more like buying credit or a coupon for bitcoin, the opposite of what I had been doing all week: using bitcoin to buy credit and coupons in the form of gift cards.

The Coinme ATM was located in something of a mall a block over from the Moscone Center. I decided to use cash, but upon using the machine, any chance of anonymity was promptly thwarted.

First, it asks you to insert your ID, followed by a request to take a picture to verify that identity (that I would have to basically do know-your-customer (KYC) verifications twice to buy bitcoin with cash was anathema to me). After this it asked me for my phone number and email address, which I found ironically less intrusive after having to be photo identified. When all this was done, it printed a slip of paper with a username and password, along with a URL at which I could access the $10 worth of bitcoin I had bought.

Cool, I can’t even access it yet and don’t even hold the keys. Certainly different from when Hill used a makeshift, trustless prototype at Internet Archives in 2013 before the first crypto ATMs had been produced. Back then, it was just a computer and a cash box, which any employee could use to withdraw or deposit bitcoin for cash. Same concept, but more anonymous, easy and endearingly janky (you had to trust people not to steal cash from it, though).

The disheartening and borderline frustrating experience (it felt a bit cheap, a normal monetary transaction service masquerading as a crypto one) was aggravated when a Ramen vending machine 20 yards away teased cryptocurrency as a purchasing option, only to qualify the payment as “Coming soon!” at checkout.

We went on with our search for BitPay, but it was ultimately fruitless. At the first location, our call on the building’s outside directory went unanswered. At the second, we were told that BitPay no longer occupied space in the building, so we decided to pack it in.

Fighting the wind that had whipped up in our mile or so walk, we took refuge in an Chinese food joint that Dustin was fond of. We split a helping of kung pao chicken, which I repaid in bitcoin. Dustin had become an IRL intermediary through which I could enjoy those elusive dining-in-with-bitcoin experiences.

Dinner finished, we found our way to Stookey’s, an intimate, cooly lit bar that could comfortably seat maybe 30 people. We were fashionably late and took a seat at the rightmost end of the bar. I was unpleasantly unsurprised to discover that no one else had shown up for the meetup yet. For the first 30 minutes, we were the only ones, it seemed, a disappointing situation that was becoming par for the course in a week of almosts.

But it was also a win. I got to spend my bitcoin again, this time on a delicious pisco sour (a Peruvian, egg-white cocktail with a pisco base, bitters and limes) and enough beer and other cocktails to get a buzz on and cringe at the thought that the prices were not too far off from Nashville’s own.

Striking up a conversation with a wispy black-haired guy who “is kinda a tech geek,” Dustin asked him if he was there for the meetup. He said no, admitting that he was a bit skeptical of the whole thing. He rehashed an old misperception that I’ve heard from numerous naysayers, and the fact that I’m forgetting it now is either a testament to the cocktails’ potency or to the fact that most arguments against bitcoin (especially from the underinformed) have all been packaged into a nebulous hodgepodge of complaints that, in their ubiquity, have begun to resemble each other).

Dustin and I hit it off with one of the bartenders, who showed a greater-than-average understanding of crypto — so much so that he had educated opinions on forks, proof of work vs. proof of stake, and Ethereum’s Constantinople upgrade. He’s been invested for two-and-a-half years, though he had been tuned into the market and started conducting due diligence two years before that.

I asked if any of the crypto-focused co-owners were around so I could grill them. One of them, a close friend of his, was sojourning in Mexico, as one does when crypto rich. Our bartender was a more-than-adequate stand-in for my questions, seeing as he’d been at the bar for two years, so I asked him if he’d noticed a drop-off in Bitcoin meetup interest.

“They go up and down. We’re in between,” he said, conceding that they had been considering scaling the meetups down from weekly to quarterly.

He also shared his personal experience of the hassles that come with accepting bitcoin, particularly in times of network bloat. “Fees were getting ridiculous on BitPay,” he told me. “A $14 cocktail becomes a $24 cocktail and people don’t want to pay.”

“How many people pay in bitcoin, would you say?” I asked him.

“A few, mostly during the meetups obviously. Every now and then, someone will be a few drinks in, realize we take it and then want to pay that way.”

After about an hour, I turned to my left to observe a room whose patronage had thinned out in tandem with the vanishing contents of our glasses. With the room cleared, I could make out two dudes having an enlivened conversation two seats down from us: one, tall and thin-ish; the other, shorter and bulky, with blond hair.

“I think that’s Dan Held,” I told Dustin, referring to the blond character. True to form, Dustin didn’t seem to know who Dan was, showing the willful introversion of a man who is more preoccupied with the code of the industry over its personalities.

I went over and introduced myself, thanking Dan for an op-ed he had recently submitted to Bitcoin Magazine and telling him a bit about my experiment. I related it back to Kashmir Hill’s own, where he was featured in the final day of her 2014 excursion.

Dan invited me to get coffee the next day, but I said it would be tricky given my schedule. I would be busy in the morning and evening, and I had plans to meet up with cryptograffiti, a San Francisco-based crypto artist, in the afternoon.

He gave a half-cocked smile and nodded to the man he had been talking with.

“No way, seriously?” I said, shocked at the serendipity.

“Yeah, that’s me,” the tall man responded with a grin.

With introductions made, we talked a bit, and I learned (not to any surprise) that the artist was a maximalist of sorts.

“Bitcoin is my baby,” he said with the simultaneous seriousness and self-aware waggishness of a true believer.

Like Dustin, cryptograffiti was an OG. Always jumping at the chance to glean another point of view, I relayed the frustrations that had obstructed my week on bitcoin, and I asked why there were so few people at the meetup.

“People stopped going to meetups because the focus had changed. It was too financial. People started shutting you down if you knew what you were saying,” he said.

It’s all wrapped up in the paradigm shift the crypto community has experienced since 2013, he believes. Like Dustin, he thinks the altcoin boom exposed how mercurial community attention can be and diverted much of the excitement for bitcoin toward the industry’s new and shiny offspring.

“It’s cool to be contrarian. Everyone is looking for the next thing.”

Dustin joined the conversation, along with another meetup latecomer: a short, spiky-haired Ethereum “moon boy” with wide, distant eyes whom I had met at the conference and who claimed he had conceptualized a “decentralized, global supercomputer” in high school before Ethereum had even existed.

Sure thing, bud.

The meetup, while small, felt profound. It was small, but it was also quality and included a diverse sample of the industry’s many players. It was eclectic and intimate, much like the “Bitcoin at $100” meetup that Hill was a part of. Only ours was smaller, something I would not have anticipated when I started this.

But there was probably a greater diversity of professional specializations in the industry at this meetup: a one-man developer team who seemed to personify Bitcoin’s open-source nature, a Texas boy who had become one of the crypto space’s most recognized entrepreneurs, a San Francisco-based DJ-turned-artist whose crypto-themed artwork sells for five figures (yes, really), a Nashville-based journalist who didn’t know squat about Bitcoin until 2017 and was thrilled just to worm his way into this milieu, and the Ethereum moon boy who did brand relations for an Ethereum-built project.

Bitcoin and crypto had all given us the opportunity to pursue passions and careers within the industry.

Even if its use as an IRL payment has regressed, the impact of the network has been far reaching — the industry is more active than ever. This thought enlivened me.

Dustin had offered me a bed on his boat for the night, something I wasn’t about to pass up, especially with a few drinks in me. It was across the way in Berkeley, so we took the BART. I paid Dustin for a ticket and then a 15-minute drive from Oakland put us at the harbor.

The boat’s exterior gave the impression of a modest and relatively well-maintained sailboat. Below deck, the haphazard displacement of various sundries and provisions presented the habitat of a man who probably had the madness to create things few people could.

The night winding down, we decided to watch/play Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch on Netflix. The choose-your-own-adventure movie’s interactive nature gives a new dimension to Black Mirror’s typical rabbit-hole examination of technology and human frailty. We had both watched it before and wanted to see what different endings we could get.

Even if tenuous, the connection between the protagonist's struggle to create a choose-your-own-adventure game (it’s also glaringly meta, like a lot of Black Mirror’s concepts) in the seminal days of the video game industry and my own struggle to spend bitcoin became apparent.

What alternative endings, universes, paths had I not confronted, found or gone down in the course of my own adventure? Maybe I’d missed some opportunities where I could’ve used my bitcoin. Or maybe this was the most optimal path: I had met Held and cryptograffiti at a meetup and was about to sleep on a boat, owned by a developer whose myriad and disparate interests and lifestyle were like something out of a book.

What other endings are out there? I thought to myself, the boat gently rocking to the bay’s swaying tide.

It was an easy and comfortable sleep.

As Kashmir Hill did in her original journey, Colin is accepting BTC tips to help him along the way.

Tip jar: 3CnLhqitCjUN4HPYf6Qa2MmvCpSoBiFfBN

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

[Telegram Channel | Original Article ]

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ellahmacdermott · 6 years ago