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I went to the dump this morning. There’s no trash pick up where I live so I have to bring my trash to them. Anyway someone left a very beaten up but solid wood kitchen dining table and two chairs. So after I dumped my trash I put them in the back of the truck. They’re in my barn now getting ready to have whatever varnish is on them stripped off, sand down and see if we can fix them up and refinish them. anyway It occurred to me I have officially hit rock bottom. You know you’re there when you’re actually bringing stuff back from the dump rather than to it LOL

Some mornings, when Im working from home but my wife is going into work, Ill do a little jig for her in the garage as shes backing down the driveway. Todays routine was the floss...and it did not go well. Hysterical giggling could be heard as she motored away.

For that pop culture fun... How many of the easter eggs do you spot?

"You have claimed a portal!" "One of your minions cannot reach the treasure room." <---imp stuck in a wall "A trap has been manufactured." "A new spell has been researched." "Your library is too small." "Your creatures are fighting among themselves!" "The enemy has broken through your walls!" "The enemy is destroying your rooms!" "Your creatures are under attack!" "Ahh! Ayee! Wheeeee! Whoahhh! Wahhhh! Eeeeee!" <----sound of you and AI dropping lots of minions on a tile "Your creatures are attacking the enemy!" "Your creatures are falling in battle." "Your minions are winning a battle." "Food is scarce; enlarge your hatchery." <---too many bile demons "A new room has been researched." "Beware, the Lord of the Land approaches!" "Your dungeon heart is being attacked!" "Your minions are winning a battle." "You have conquered this land!" "It is payday." ....still the most funzies game ever.

The Red Hat is a great weapon and is well worth using for any ranger or ranged cipher. You'll likely max your focus after the second shot. You might also consider purchasing the Essence Interruptor, which is a great hunting bow you can use right from the start of the game. It's a lot of fun since your frequent crits will often trigger experimental souls, transforming enemies into random monsters. You might also consider Frostseeker as well, which you can also get early, right after you arrive on Neketaka. While it's base damage is low, it fires multiple arrows, each of which can trigger a AOE attack when you crit. It's a perfect weapon for a seer, since you'll have sky high ACC and will also get driving flight eventually as well. Other weapons that trigger AOE damage, like the Watershaper's Focus, are also worth considering.

I always liked Georgia's war with North Carolina, personally for weird border changes.

Is there a way to delete someone else's post?

Episode 193: Episode 194: Okay, episode 194 done.

I continue my attempts at digital drawing with relative success. Corel Painter Essential 4, the only software that recognizes my tablet (and does not assume it to be just an additional mouse) and has reasonable size of its specific file format. The character is Kainé from NieR: Gestalt.

Shouldn't be. Reuse is the second priority and before Recycle !

O'Neil would be Stargate and Cash would be Tango and Cash. There's a couple more references to Kurt Russell movies that I think are after this screenshot in Todd's profile . I don't know if the gun is specifically a reference to Aliens, but the USCM is. Tannhauser Gate is also a reference to Blade Runner (its one of the things that Roy Batty references as he dies - "Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate."). Pretty sure Nibian Moons and Antares Maelstrom are references to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but maybe Antares is a double reference. Khan on his pursuit of Kirk: "I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up."

Plissken - escape from LA, Maccready - not sure from where but I know the name (might be the Thing) . Shoulders of Orion - Blade Runner, Antares - Orion II game. 3008 USCM Smartgun sounds like gun from Aliens?. O'Neil might be Star gate reference?

Yes, Ami usually doesn't play video games. She even says she's never played a fighting game before, which makes this doubly worse. The writers clearly had no idea what they were writing about. Competitive fighting game playing is also really different from the casual fun you'd have in an arcade. Really, really different. While it of course depends on the game, it's often the two players just trying to hit each other with safe moves that can't be hard countered (mostly it is make a mistake and lose). If the game has combos that can be broken, then you won't see combos in high level play. Of course, knowing that in '96 is something else entirely, and then... there's the excuse that Ami, having never played the Sailor V arcade game, won that first try all the way back in the first season, a story beat taken directly from the manga where the arcade game gives out Ami's transformation pen and their communicators and the Sailor V in the game is somtimes actually Minako and talks to the girls through the game before they meet because the Sailor V game was made to be Sailor Guardian training, so best not to talk about that. Ami lacks the experience necessary to win, even if she was the most talented player ever. Makoto also played the arcade game, but little else, Rei I think has a console at home but is never really shown playing (Usagi plays once and ignores what she should be doing, like usual) and Minako might like to play, but win? Eh. Too bad that Firefox ate your first post, but watching Minako twice wasn't that bad, huh? Also really nice callback to how easy it is to get lost in a TV station (that was from waaaaay back when Mamoru's part time job was working at one). Loved the exchange between the girls on the rooftop. Even if the rest of the episode had been terrible, I would have liked it just for that. The audio quality during the singing, hum, I have no idea how well (or even if) Cherami Leigh can sing, so maybe that happened in editing and is the result of making the best of it? I don't know. By the way, you've passed the point of no return. This was the last monster of the week, and even actually the last time Sailor Moon said her piece. No more "in the name of the moon" from here on out.

The names Plissken, O'Neil and MacCready jump out at me, but that's it. I'm not good with number references tho, if any of those are anything. I still love that movie. Can't say why, outside of Kurt being in it. I mean I don't think it's 10/10 uber classic, but as one would say in the days of non-streaming TV - if it's on/I surf to it, I'd stop to watch it.

that episode is one of my favorite S2 episodes, between all of the gems looking like an absolute trainwreck, Pearl having her wonderful """dream'"", Pearl being an absolute creeper staring straight into Steven's face while sitting literally like an inch away while he's sleeping (seriously, what the hell pearl), Lapis' waterfall horror face

The **** I do. Uncle Grandpa can ride his tiger into the sunset and never come back. I watched 13 episodes of SU today....which is equivalent to a 2hr movie because they're so short. I liked where they went and it does storymode much better than Sailor Moon. The best moment of the series so far was Pearl's nightmare projection, which had me burst out laughing.

So with Titanfall2 being on sale, and me hearing over and over that campaign is really good I decided to pick it up. And yeah, it's awesome. I never liked CoD, Battlefield and such, but I am having a blast with this one. Funny how much movement and not having to aim down sights adds. I also dipped into multiplayer and, to my shock, I am having a great time. I love the balance between on foot soldiers and titans. Still in learning stages, but enjoying myself nonetheless.

Oh and to be more on the original topic: I think in the US, women definitely are more likely to seek out mental health counseling of some kind, possibly asking a doctor for a psychologist recommendation, where said psychologist may then tell them they seem to have a mental health issue. But just going for an annual health checkup, psychology checking does not typically factor into that. They just do physical stuff, they don't bring out the ink blots. When people feel blue, if they can afford it, they find a psychologist or counselor on their own, either to talk or to try to get drugs. If for no other reason then to try to keep it under wraps more. I'm not sure how it works these days, but some level of mental health is often covered in medical plans. Not sure how much on average. I'd guess some medical would cover initial/emergency mental health care and some visits with a psychologist but not really extended treatment. I'm probably out of date on that end tho, I haven't bothered to check up on such in years.

@ArtistFormerlyKnownasKP @majestic Aha, I had a fragment of a memory of the whole "Ami is inexplicably good at video games" thing already happening (hence the question mark when I said she'd never played video games before), but I couldn't figure out from which episode it was from if it had actually happened. But there's a world of difference between being better than Usagi at something and joining an actual competition while having never played nor practiced before...it was just, yeah, it was bad. If you're trying out something entirely new that requires quick reflexes, then it doesn't matter if you have the quickest reflexes in the history of humanity - you're gonna get whooped by someone who already has the muscle memory. Whatever, though - there have only been two poor episodes this entire season, which after SuperS is fantastic. All three other seasons that aren't SuperS also had either 1 or 2 poor episodes that didn't work too well, so that's right about in line. I guess I'm gonna see pretty soon here if these last story episodes truly are terrible or not...

Taking a knee, raising a fist to be punished at Tokyo Games-IOC | Reuters Best News of the last 16 months

Immunity to disengagement attacks: Engagement is not affected. The immunity just converts 100% of all disengagement attacks to misses. That's on Nomad's Brigandine. Same with Giphon Prudensco. Entonia Signet Ring works as usual. Stuff like Grog (pet), Threatening Presence (Barb) and such grants immunity to engagement. Entonia Signet gives no bonus because there's no engagement. In fact Nomad's Brigandine works really well with this setup because you can just break engagement, trigger disengagment attacks and all of them will be misses - which means Offensive Parry will trigger every time. Perfect to speed things up and lauch a bunch of Offensive Parries against slow hitting enemies who engaged you. You only need to step away a little bit.

Completed Hardland. It was mostly an enjoyable experience, though I've got stuck a couple of times (got unstuck by looking up info on the forums). I managed to reach 3 endings (out of 13) and they seemed not too terrible.

Uh oh, let's hope this doesn't lead to a curse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_the_Billy_Goat

One of the things I noticed with Dr. Oz - Ken Jennings and Mark Richards, when they had the 'banter time' would tend to talk about Alex Trebek. Katie Couric talked about the charity fundraising. Dr. Oz talked about...himself. Not always directly, like one time he wanted to complement the contestants for their skill and intelligence and his statement was something like "I continue to be amazed about how the contestants keep exceeding my expectations" making the complement less about the contestant skill and more about him. Maybe its just my perception, but it just didn't sit right to me. It may also be, to be fair, an artifact of his show, which I think is very much built around his opinion so it may have become his default to have off-the-cuff remarks to position things around his opinion, expertise or view of the topic at hand. Aaron Rogers had a very slow delivery, which threw me when he started, but I ended up liking him pretty well. There are a few guest hosts I'm interested in seeing how they do, but I'm excited for LeVar Burton to have a chance to host. Really glad to see that happen.

That, and my complete lack of skill while executing the move.

I have decided to play Morrowind, I played it once in 2008 so hopefully I have forgotten most of the narrative as it unfolds I have 254 Mods loaded with the Nexus Vortex Mod Manager and already I have used a graphic Mod to set resolution at 3440 x 1440 so I predict its going to be fun filled gaming ride

ps am gonna admit many in the media did not help with their coverage o' trump lies and misstatements of fact. admission: am not certain what were the right way to cover trump lies. every new lie revealed created a numbing effect. for past Presidents, lies were frontpage fodder. journalists had a duty to report trump lies, 'cause such had always been news and when media covered for Presidents in the past, media were soundly and appropriate criticized for doing so. but from day 2 o' the trump Presidency, lies were constant, and followed a combative double-down progression which somehow made each subsequent lie less meaningful. many in the media took a glee-filled approach to describing the newest lie dujour for trump. would be hypocritical to blame lefty opinion personalities for doing same as the right leaners, but am not denying the fact many media personalities provided support to the conservative narrative o' idiotic tds bs. tds were the rejoinder every time trump said something legit deranged, and then trump would improbable double-down. am still not certain how the media shoulda' covered trump lies. cold and dispassionate were never gonna happen in 2016. fox news were kicking the competition's collective arse by being in sync with rush limbaugh while still being able to claim they were providing news and facts. rags like breitbart were gaining in popularity, and even fringe blogs original appealing to business folks were going full hardcore conspiracy with no attempt to disguise their pro-putin/pro-tehran agendas. with facebook magnifying the problem o' people getting news stories they wanted to hear rather than exposed to balanced reporting, we spiraled back into the bad old days o' yellow journalism but with the news coming 1000x faster and responsive. education is the obvious solution, but education is difficult and takes a long time to show results. am willing to admit the mainstream media handled trump lies and ignorance poorly. am also willing to admit we can't think o' effective and practical ways to have responded to a Faith driven Presidency. HA! Good Fun!

But Bruce, aren't you asking some very leading and loaded questions??? The simplistic answer is yes. But you can't really debate it out of context. Ask, how did it get to this in the first place? Plus, any conversation about the subject is going to be full of whatif's (what if Russia had joined Nato, what if Ukraine hadn't invaded Crimea, what if the EU had agree to open trade etc.) or whataboutisms (but the US does it big time, the Chinese does and the Israelis are probably the most active in cyber espionage and sabotage these days). I prefer the whatif "What if Putin hadn't picked up the pieces of the collapse of the Soviet Union?". Try to imagine a failed state like Libya or Somalia with the worlds largest nuclear arsenal and ICBM's... people may not like Putin and distrust his nationalist motives, but for all his faults, he is "rational", unlike say the Iranian leadership (or the late US leadership). Did the world get the lesser of multiple evils and should adapt and learn to live with it?

you got it reversed. trump were let off the hook. his impact on his base, and republicans in general, while implausible, unreasonable and at times genuine unbelievable, were nevertheless real. Most Republicans Don't Trust Fauci or CDC's COVID Advice—but Nearly 70% Believe Trump: Poll trump were aware o' the Faith o' his parishioners. trump knew disinfectant poisonings increased after his observations just as he knew many people demanded hydroxy therapies even when reputable doctors said there were no reason to believe such a treatment could be effective. trump were more responsible then you suggest. just consider the antivax folks in this country. has been two groups driving antivax for decades: minorities; granola moms. is understandable a few minority groups has a hard time forgetting the us military using minority soldiers as guinea pigs. even so, as we pointed out in the covid thread, recent polls show minorities is getting vaccinated at rates similar to population at large. am pleasant surprised. the current holdouts for the vaccine is republican males. huh? pre trump it were hippie moms who were responsible for those stoopid measles outbreaks in +90% white counties and school districts in so cal and oregon. trump singlehanded complete flipped the identity o' the antivax movement in a matter o' months after years o' enduring stoopid. more responsible. HA! Good Fun!

don't need to add more stars. in 2021 and beyond, claim new stars has been added is better. sure, somebody is gonna be a smartypants and count 50 stars and show scientific there is only 50 stars, 'cause let's be honest, is tough to make 50 actual be 53 even with quantum silliness. so what? prove is still only 50 is just "alternative facts." ... russia hoax, perfect call, stolen election, manafort and stone were treated unfair and the doj intervened independent o' trump, sharpiegate, etc. half the country has been convincing themselves o' equal improbable alternative facts for better than four years. so go ahead and pretend you is picard if you want, but in 2021, there is as many stars as there needs be, regardless o' whether the stars is representing votes in georgia or map decorations. HA! Good Fun!

@BruceVCDid you know that Gorbachev wanted to join Nato when they were negotiating German unification, but Baker, the US secretary of state just laughed at him. Putin was keen to join in 2000, but Bill Clinton's response was very similar. It's not like they didn't try to work closer with western security interests in the past, but were flat out rejected. Hence the "if they don't like us and don't want us in their club, they might as well fear us" thing when realizing that Nato always was and always still was a thing aimed at Russia specifically.

Don't need to, we're years ahead. Honestly, we'd consider a Free Trade Agreement with Narnia if we could find someone to negotiate one with.

RIP

is actual surprising common. one o' the more dramatic examples, but hardly unique, is georgia. look online for boundaries of georgia from colonial, to articles o' confederation to 1783, to... hmm 1826 is when georgia kinda final looked like it does today, but as recent as 2008ish there were a push to change borders with tennessee, and the core issue were water. HA! Good Fun! ps virginia may win the prize for most dramatic border changes post statehood. ceded land to fed and other states and all kinda extreme alterations which make sense only if you is a serious historian.

Actually the one state in the entire country that has the absolute right to subdivide was Texas. If I remember correctly that was actually part of their admittance to the union. I can’t see them hammering down the door to do that kind of a thing but maybe someone would think it’s advantageous somewhere down the road.

And we'll get to do the whole thing again next year in six months time when the next lot of exercises leads to another round of 'imminent invasion!!!111one!!!' headlines. Guess it's appropriate that Pavlov was Russian. Ironically the almost completely unreported meeting with Lukashenko from Belarus might well turn out to be of far more long term significance, now that he's permanently alienated from the west and has nothing to play off against Russia progress on the much delayed Union State seems a lot more likely.

Making vegetable gumbo in the crockpot. Will be served later with coffee and cornbread. I love corn bread.

Thank God. Let’s hope it never changes.

am not certain how that display fools anybody and gets passed on to the next generation o' critters. HA! Good Fun!

I also loved this game... even though it made no sense to me. Also there was a ninja turtles game that was top down(until you entered the sewers) that I played so much as a kid... replayed it as an adult, beat the first level, then realized I never got that far as a kid.... though to be fair even as a group of 5 adults we only got to the third level once

LeVar Burton lands guest host gig on 'Jeopardy!' after more than 246,000 fans sign online petition a story which brought a genuine smile to our grumpy mug. HA! Good Fun!

Rewatched Sailor Moon episode 192.

That's a lot of porn, man.

I keep hearing talk how there's likely to be a hard drive shortage in the near future. Don't know if it's going to happen for sure, but happened to see some 14 TBs for $200 each and bought 4 rather than risking it and regretting it. It's just as well - I was at the limits of my ~16 TB anyways, and I like to keep my data in at least a basic mirror.

I was feeling like playing Deadfire again. But since I won't use one of my PoE1 characters, I decided to replay the first game and do the whole journey for my new character, a Templar of Woedica.