Inuyasha often said he was evil and played the tough guy so he would be left alone, but he was usually compassionate and had a soft side.

I was a manager, and another guy was a more senior manager in another division. We both did IT. For some reason he didn’t like me and/or was trying to get our services moved to him, so he went to our director every week for over a year to tell him made-up stories about me.

He eventually left after a lot of people realized he was a highly manipulative, but I still hear things that he told people as part of an explanation about why I was passed up “for this” or why I wasn’t right “for that.” It cost me a lot of raises, especially in cases where things were gossiped to other people and the source was lost. Now I’m only a manager in title, but my management responsibilities were taken away.

Unfortunately, I’m caught in a ticking trap – another 1.5 years and I retire with a full pension for the rest of my life. Losing that by leaving isn’t worth it (assuming I live long enough afterwards).

I had this too, but mine went further. Eventually became burning, terrible pain down my arm – worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I spent six weeks on steroids, oxycodone, and gabapentin until I could finally get steroid injections directly into my spine.

Be careful, and get checked out for cervical spinal stenosis. You might be able to do some proactive stuff at this point.

Now my neck always hurts, I can’t feel my fingertips (especially on the right hand), and my right forearm sometimes feels like it’s on fire.

Battlefield Earth was my favorite book as a young teenager. Ignoring everything else about the author (which I didn’t know at the time), I thought the book was brilliant (especially the first half). It touched my imagination in a way no other book had before, and I must have read it about a dozen times.

I seem to recall the book cover saying that a major motion picture was coming out soon, but I guess time is relative. For me it was about eighteen years (which was more than half my life at the time) before the movie actually came out, and that seemed like an eternity.

I wish I could say it was worth the wait. The movie was horrible – it had bad acting, a bad script, and couldn’t carry the book in only two hours.

It currently has a 3% tomatometer score at Rotten Tomatoes and a 2.5/10 at IMDB. The movie also won Worst Picture of the Decade at the 2010 Razzie Awards.