Yay VA ~sarcastic~

So, here I am, sitting here at home... seeing as I got let go (or as SeaWorld puts it, that I resigned my position)... getting more and more pissed that I can't land a job. I had gone for another review of my VA Disability, to try to correct their fuck up from before.

Long story short: Fought with VA for a year to get into the system. Get in finally. Fight for another half year roughly to get disability review and started to get paid (10% rated supposedly). After some time, had another review, and got rated to 30% (which at that rate, provides compensation for dependents). Later got another review and rated up to 40%. Went with that rating for quite some time, roughly 2 or 3 years? My back started getting worse (the disability), so I requested another review. This time, they didn't do a recent MRI or XRay, and when the "ruling" came down, they reduced me to 30%... this dropped off about $200 a month from my allotment.

Reviewing what they used for the ruling, they hadn't included about 70% of my problems that should be documented within my VA medical records (not sure, seeing as when I attempted to get a copy of my records myself, yielded nothing). So I attempted to write the letter that they said I could do... sent it off as requested (have a year to get it to them, and got it to them within 60 days). I got no corresponding info back from them and later they went ahead and applied that 30% rating. That happened back in February of this year. Seeing as supposedly the case was closed, I had to re-start the review process.

After some time, I managed to get the appointment finally to see someone, and this time, it wasn't even within the VA system, it was a third-party doc. I didn't get any MRI, nor XRays at all. Doc went through his paperwork, which honestly, didn't cover even half the problems I have, and even more, he had no access to my VA paperwork to be able to review my past, or present problems. He wouldn't even take down any info that I was attempting to give him to be able to add to the review. The review was short, and at one point he'd asked about XRays or MRI, to which I of course answered no. He didn't even say he'd request for either to be done for him to look at.

This brings us to today... wherein I get a review decision paperwork in the mail, not even 2 weeks after seeing that "doc". They want to reduce me to 20%!!! What the flying fuck? My condition is degrading, and they're reducing my rating?!?!?

The paperwork has a number to call, which leads to a long ass pre-show voice-box "choose your own adventure" crap box. After delving in the system for 20 minutes, I finally get to the part where I can choose to talk to a person within the department I'm after ... the system then states "We're sorry, we cannot complete your call at this time, please try again later" ... yay.... Delve around for another 10 minutes in different options trying to get a live person to no avail.... and it's only 3:30 EST!!! Get fed up enough to be sweating from the hatred of their system, their choices in my disability rating, and their inability to actually help those that need help. I then attempt to go to their website that is listed on this paperwork to find individuals that can assist. Browse around, put in Florida (as a whole) to get numbers and names of individuals that supposedly work with this kind of thing. Unfortunately, every number that was listed for Orlando (closest city that was listed) yielded either no answer, or a wrong number.

Pissed even more that their own website was not trolling me and keeping me from my goal of getting properly paid for my disability, I contacted the American Legion nearest to me. The place sounded packed (no, haven't ever been into an American Legion office, nor dealt with them previously, so no clue what they even truly do), but the person that answered got me the phone number of someone that should be able to help. I called this person, who stated they've been running into much of the same problems themselves, and then suggested a personal friend of his to contact, that is an attorney. After chit-chatting with this guy for a bit (older vet, so he's been dealing with the VA for a while now, and felt the need to talk about it in length... fresh "young" ears I suppose), I got to call the attorney's office, and now have an appointment for a free consult tomorrow morning at 10am.

Hopefully this guy will be able to help me... Lack of a job, and now the VA wanting to take even more of my residual income, and already being behind on mortgage payments ... it's not looking good for me over here. I don't have many friends personally... and the ones I do have are financially in the same boat as me ... no spare funds what-so-ever.

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Gaming front? Well, with the pain I've been in lately, and the distress over loosing the job I had ... and now even MORE distress over having to fight even more to get my disability straightened properly... I've not been doing much gaming. Sure here and there I'll pop in something for a short bit.. but for the most part... my time in front of the computer has been getting spent on looking for jobs... or browsing reddit ... The little gaming that I've done, is well, just that ... little. I've popped in games that I really enjoy, only to quit out of them the moment something goes sour after a trying period.

For example... One of my friends, has been able to gift me quite a few games as of late after his contract job he just finished got done. He got me FTL, a cool little game I'm sure everyone's heard about that is even interested in the gaming side of my blog (even though it's lately been rants about crap I've been putting up with outside of gaming). Took me a long time to even beat it the first time on Easy setting.... but it's replay-ability is great. He then had a spare key for Torchlight 1 ... and he said that if I liked it, he might get me Torchlight 2 ... I did enjoy the first one, and told him as such... so then he got me the second one! Extremely grateful, we both attempted to pop in and play the moment it was unlocked on steam ... Mainly so we could both pop in and multiplayer together. Unfortunately the servers were all wonky and got hit HARD by everyone trying to either sign up, sign in, or even just start a multiplayer game.

Eventually we did get in to MP with each other the next day. We played through for a while, and got pretty far. Had a blast, and over the next couple days, finally beat it. Went into the new game mode, and started rocking our way through that. Gradually we got to the end area again... I got to a point where I was wanting to do more and more... so I started doing the map room stuff, and got to level 100 (we were at NG+ at that time). I picked up some good sets of gear, full sets... for both of us (I as outlander, he as engineer). I stopped getting some stuff eventually at that point, and figured maybe I'd get more by going to the next "NG" rating. Unfortunately, being level 100, when I hit the NG+ person, it put me on NG+++ ... not NG++ ... when my friend eventually got back on to join me, I told 'em to go to the next NG to play again (can't play cross NG ratings together). He went to NG++ though, as he wasn't level 100 :( ... so now, he has to go through the game in NG++ solo, and in the process I'm sure he'll get level 100 and then be able to join me again.

Next up, he had pre-ordered for a hard-copy of XCOM: Enemy Unknown from somewhere (probably amazon, I didn't ask). Unfortunately, on steam, there was a preorder thing where if they got enough pre-orders, and you'd preordered, you would get a copy of Civ 5... he kind of wanted that ... and seeing as the cost of Civ5 was about the same or something like that ... he figured if it got to that preorder state, he'd just get me XCOM:EU, and keep the civ5 for himself LOL. Well, it did get to that point... so he got it for me. Although, he'd wait for the hard-copy and give me the activation code out of that rather than gifting me the game in steam...I watched him stream it for a while when he first got it unlocked on steam, and thought it was cool... later that evening (around 7pm OUR time) the package showed up at his place, and I was able to get it on steam, then of course had to download it.

Being that I'd never played any XCOM games, and normally sucked at the tactical squad shooter genre, I choose to start at the Easy difficulty. I started through the main objectives, doing the best I could. Did the tutorial stuff in tune, wasn't that hard, but I wanted to do some stuff (like queue for buildings to be made, craft more stuff that I had the resources for, etc) before the tutorial was done ... there wasn't any "cue" to say that the tutorial was finished really ... only the fact that I could finally do what I wanted. I got to a specific map, wherein I had to rescue some civilians, and these spider-like guys (crysalids?) that can turn people to zombies were present on the map. I didn't have much in my arsenal... not even nano-armor ... there were a couple civs up on the roof of this 3 story place, and I had no external access to them, nor could I see a way to them from the inside ... The crysalids though found a way and well... it didn't turn out too well. One of my guys bit the dust there due to a window/doorway bug, wherein even though my medic came to the spot right next to where the guy took the hit and was unconscious and slowly dying... I couldn't stabilize him. The next few turns I attempted moving on top of, 2 spaces away, and even inside the building to be able to do it. Unfortunately nothing worked, and seeing as he took a hit from the crysalid ... he zombied up and had to be dealt with sadly.

I got kind of pissed at that, but continued through the map, eventually getting my crew inside to try to save some others, and get to some guys that refused to come outside. I eventually got to this doorway that was two squares wide ... no doors, just a doorway between two rooms (the room I was in was like a kitchen maybe? I dunno). I had my guys posted up on either side of the doorway... a crysalid came up and posted up on the opposite wall... figured what the heck, I'll stun capture the guy, as he was the last target on the map. I shot him with two of my guys, got him down to 1 health. The person RIGHT NEXT to him (one square away, just the wall separating the two... so in move rate, 2 steps away and I'd be next to him, or 3 steps and I'd be on top of his corpse if he were dead). I attempted to use the stun gun (that only that soldier had anyway) ... and it wouldn't work ... said no valid targets ... yet I could shoot him if I wanted to. I ended up having to move those two blocks INTO the same room that the crysalid was in to be able to stun him. All that buggyness pissed me off to no end ... I wanted to re-load or re-start so that I could focus more on upgrades and stuff before the main storyline.

After passing that mission, the world was in a state of panic (before going on that mission, everything was 1 or 2 bars of concern or whatever it is... and afterwards, only loosing that ONE person on the map... everything was at least 3-4 bars) ... completely stupid in my opinion for one lost person ... granted ... I will admit ... out of the 12 civilians on the map, due to the buggy rooms, and the fact that I didn't have much movement or ability to even get to about 5 of the people ... I only saved 5 total on the map when the map finished ... so yea ... lost 7 civilians to either crysalids or other aliens ... probably pretty distressing ... but to have the WHOLE WORLD in fear over 7 people? ...

Oh, other illogical things I'd noted... Set up a defense network, get ships built, go to distribute these "early responders" that are used to intercept the UFO's ... it takes 3 days ... 3 days to transfer a ship from the USA to Europe? Are they driving these interceptors through some under-ocean tunnel behind a VW bug? And the troop ship you use to fly between missions? yea... it must be super-sonic in flight capabilities ... as it can fly half-way around the world in little under 10 "minutes" ... Why can't we put that propulsion on the interceptors? I haven't gotten to the point of being able to re-fit weaponry on the interceptors ... but watching my friend's stream of him playing ... it takes them 2-3 days to re-fit the weapons on these things too? ... current technology allows for weapon load-outs on combat aircraft to be done within minutes... at most, maybe an hour if it's having to re-mount a different gun... but they'd prefer to take another craft that already has that weapon on-board. Despite that though ... still ... anything more than an hour seems completely silly for re-fitting of weaponry.

Over all though, it's a cool little game ... just can't stand the bugs with doorways/windows, or be assed with dealing with the stress that I'm under currently that makes everything more exaggerated when shit doesn't go the way I plan.