My brother complained his MP3 player wasn’t loud enough.

So I designed a battery-powered amplifier based on a design online. That worked, so I designed a bunch of other things, helped found an organization to learn to design more things, and teach other people to design and make things. Ended up speaking at a couple of conferences. Then I immigrated to Vietnam so I could start a tech company where more things are made, so I could design and make even more things.

Lost every dime, until I figured out how to run a business, made it all back by designing and making yet more things. Created some jobs! Met someone doing related volunteer engineering work and am now married. We are designing a house, but will probably hire someone to make it for us.

I’ve never owned an MP3 player and don’t listen to music.

I couldn’t find my headphones that resulted in me barely missing my train that arrived shortly before a person started shooting at people at the train station I was planning to go to.

My addiction to World of Warcraft and obsession over getting a certain mount may have lead to the death of an elderly man.

Way back in the ancient times, I was super addicted to WoW and really wanted this super rare mount. I would stay up super late trying to farm for it with no luck and eventually started setting an alarm for when it was supposed to spawn and waking up every hour or something all night to log in and try and get it. After a few days of this, I was fried and couldn’t function at all.

At the time I worked at a soft serve ice cream place and had to be there early to open the store which was inside a mall food court. My main opening job was to clean out the soft serve machines and get them ready for the day. Well, these machines are under a fair bit of pressure and your supposed to drain off all the left over soft serve and depressurize the machine before you open it up to clean it.

I didn’t depressurize it.

In my sleep deprived, deep-fried state, I walked through the mall food court filled with the early morning elderly mall walkers making their rounds. Got to work and immediately started unscrewing the face plate of the soft serve machine to start cleaning it. It sounded like a bomb went off. I was covered head to toe, literally every square inch of the front of my body was covered in ice cream mix and when I scraped the ice cream out of my eyes and looked around to survey the damage, I was horrified. There was chocolate ice cream splattered from one corner of the food court to the other, floor to ceiling. Everyone in the food court had at least a little ice cream on them, most more than a little. But then, A man who had to be in his upper 80s collapsed, grasping at his chest. The sound of the explosion and the shock of freezing ice cream sprayed all over him gave him a heart attack.

The paramedics were loading him up on a stretcher when my boss told me to go home and change. To my surprise, I wasn’t fired but when I came back later that morning, no one could give me an update on the man. I never found out if he made it or not, but my gut tells me he probably didn’t. He was a regular mall walker and I would see him quite often before that day, but never did after that.

I never did end up getting that mount. I can’t even remember what it was anymore which makes the whole story even worse imo. I quit WoW shortly after that incident and never really played another MMO after. I think about that man anytime I get the urge to stay up late and grind another game or finish another episode or whatever it is.

I’m sorry mall walker man.