Thread: Getting Lucky

I think we all know someone who just seems extremely lucky. You know, that someone who always gets away with doing things they shouldn't or who gets a lot of random free things or who just always seem to be in the right place at the right time.

Recently I was listening to a friend tell me how he got a free 3DS (the cashier disabled the security tag but forgot to ring it up) and I was thinking to myself, man I never get that lucky, but then I remembered the time did get extremely lucky.

It was about two years ago when I was dating that ginger. We had just moved into an apartment for $400/month. During the first month of living there we noticed some mold in our bathroom. We thought it might be black mold because at the time I was feeling sort of sick. The management sent someone to look at it but they didn't seem concerned about it and didn't take any action to remove it. My boyfriend told the manager that we wouldn't pay rent until the issue was resolved. So yeah the 2nd month of living there passes by, no word from the management and by that time we decided it probably wasn't black mold since neither of us were feeling ill anymore. By the middle of the 3rd month (and no rent paid for 2 months) we realized that the management had forgotten we lived there. For the next three months we don't pay the rent. We spend our extra money on drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol.

Then one day we were coming home when we noticed someone was changing our locks. We stopped the man and told him we lived there. Well as soon as he leaves, we know the gig is up. Within 10 minutes a women I had never seen before stops by and asks us to come to her office. She's the new manager and had no idea anyone was living in that apartment. Apparently the ownership of the apartment complex had changed hands twice since we started living there and that apartment was listed as vacant. She tells us that she should call the cops on us for squatting but instead makes us an offer. Either we pay $2400 up front (5 months plus upcoming month) or leave within 48 hours. Well fuck, we were broke drug addicts, so we decided to leave. We ended up leaving a bunch of (shitty) furniture there because we had no where to move the stuff. It took me a while to realize how lucky we were that we weren't sued or arrested.

tl;dr - lived in an apartment for 5 months rent free because the management forgot about us

So what are some of your stories of being lucky?

The story of the first time I kissed my most recent girlfriend is a story about how I narrowly avoided being exactly the kind of douchey pushy guy that I hate and stumbled like an idiot into the happiest, longest relationship of my life so far.

To understand why this took immense amounts of luck, you need to understand two things:

1) At the time, I had known and had feelings for this girl for three years; and
2) She said "no".

Months before that night, she had gone through a really rough breakup, having been lied to and mistreated for two years by her last boyfriend, and we had recently-ish bonded over how much breakups suck balls. That night, a week before she was going away to live in L.A. for two months, we hung out at my place and chatted about this and that till 6am. I had, for some INEXPLICABLE reason, told myself that tonight I was going to go out on a limb and see if she was interested, because it's basically my last chance and there's nothing to lose. To this day, I can't follow the logic of my train of thought at the time. Anyway, when the time came, I asked -- well, I can't actually remember exactly what, but the gist was asking to kiss her, to which she blushed sheepishly and said "no...", but I was already hyped up on the adrenaline it took to ask in the first place, and went in for it.

Sure, she didn't seem to mind, so it wasn't like she stormed off in a (deserved) huff, but I was appalled and embarrassed, and figured that was basically that as far as relations between the two of us were concerned. That is, until I got a text from her saying how glad she was that I ignored her "no"... the next night, and the five subsequent nights before she left, we spent together. When she came back, we stayed together until she had to leave again a month ago to live in Tokyo. It was far and away the happiest and and most secure few months of my whole life.

Just curious, this is the Disney Princess right?

That's the one.

Originally Posted by gwahir

That's the one.

Did you get lucky?

Originally Posted by KT.

Did you get lucky?

well like every night for six months, yes.

Originally Posted by gwahir

well like every night for six months, yes.

Oh ok. For some reason when I read your story I was under the impression that you guys were together for a month.

Originally Posted by coqauvin

the one where she says 'no' to expressions of physical intimacy but he does it anyways?

unfortunately, i can think of many rom com movie situations where a guy could do that on purpose and have it be seen as not only okay, but an act to be celebrated.

Originally Posted by WellAdjusted

To me, your story is not lucky, gwahir.

I think it's more.. you getting out of the friendzone

Yeah I agree. Lucky would be if Gwahir randomly ran into her the day before she left, not meeting up, chatting for hours, and then eventually kissing. (Although I guess I can see how he perceives it as being lucky [you know, in that sappy sort of way])

I'd say any time you escape the friend zone*, the odds are against you, so it took some luck. The other part of it was that I got lucky that she approved of my kissing her even though she said otherwise.


*We knew each other for years, but not particularly closely, so probably not close enough to be in that friend zone. But still.

I got to meet president clinton in the white house when I was 9. Bout it for luck I suppose.

The way I was able to meet him is how it was lucky.

My grandfather was supposed to be awarded the Medal of Honor in 1945, but the records were lost until the 80s and in late 1997 we were told that he would be awarded the medal by the president himself and his family was invited(the me being lucky part). link

Yeap, there was a ceremony where we all got to take pictures with the president and first lady. They're somewhere in the house. It was on CNN. All I can remember was clinton had a baby soft hand when I shook it.

Originally Posted by Nick2.1

I got to meet president clinton in the white house when I was 9. Bout it for luck I suppose.

But did ya get "lucky?"

once, when i was 16, i used a javascript exploit to jew Microsoft out of tons of money and microsoft products (xbox 360, zunes, etc.), and instead of getting in trouble for criminal fraud and computer cracking or misconduct (or whatever the criminal charge is), I got hired as a bug tester. That was pretty lucky..

Originally Posted by ShitFace

LOL man you are so full of shit

Club Bing (previously Live Search Club) is a group of online word games launched by Microsoft in April 2007. Players who complete or partially complete a game earn "tickets" (up to 500 per day[1]) that may be exchanged for Microsoft products. The site has been credited with a significant increase in market share for the search engine Bing.[2]

iffff you can't figure it out from here, you don't understand javascript (or maybe just how companies work). don't be mad.

you use javascript to modify client-side information (e.g. number of tickets, how many games won, etc.) then use those tickets to buy microsoft goodies

ofc the increased traffic to livesearch bolstered microsoft's revenue so they weren't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

they patched it eventually, sure, but microsoft is pretty well known for leaving WELL-KNOWN gaping security holes until it literally bites them in the ass (Operation Aurora, anyone). It really wasn't that big of a deal, it was more or less me getting lucky in a couple of ways.

Now.. I REALLY got lucky the other day. Going home from school I found a windows 7 home premium full 32&64 bit STILL FACTORY SEALED. Just outta nowhere. That was pretty cool. Threw it on ebay

oh ok i guess it didn't happen because you said it didn't then.

oh ok

I'm no criminal mastermind. and i don't steal, that was a completely made up story. you're the dumb-dumb for taking it srs. in fact i don't do anything illegal at all except sometimes i drive a couple minutes faster than the speed limit but i mean seriously who doesn't do that? and last tuesday when i was shopping for groceries i put a twelve pack of coca-colas in the bottom of the shopping cart and forgot to pay for it! but it wasn't really my fault because i had the top part filled up too and couldn't see it; i legitimately totally forgot about it!!! although one time when i was five i stole a snickers bar from safeway and never gave it back. But i did feel bad about that.

Sorry, i went off on a tangent. Anyway. Technically i didn't even break the law with that, all i did was break Microsoft's EULA. And the day breaking a license agreement with a fucking software company is criminally prosecutable (sans breaking any actual laws whilst breaking the EULA) is the day i move to Switzerland.

Anyway, I never said I wrote the fucking program. I have only enough knowledge of javascript (which was the language used to actually exploit the security hole in flash (and only in IE)) to explain to you how it works. If you don't believe me, far be it from me to be the one to convince you. Not that it matters what you believe anyway, because whether you believe it or not, it still happened. There was actually a thread about it on LWS for several months and I remember multiple other people using similar exploits and getting their loot.