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Hey guys. I got home last night. It’s been a very interesting two weeks or so let me tell you. I started driving north with no particular destination in mind. I followed I-55 north as far as Bloomington IN. I didn’t feel like dealing with Chicago so followed I-39 until Wausau. Then kept going until I ended in up in a little town called Bayfield WI. I got a room in a crappy motel that cost way more than it should have and spent two days there doing nothing. And I do mean NOTHING. I spent the better part of two days sitting on the pier and looking at the lake. I’d never seen Lake Superior before so I can cross that one off my list. After the second day I decided to go home. I turned on my phone and texted my cousin and her husband and told them I was in WI and offered to take them out to dinner. I had not seen either of them in 10 years or more. They live in a little town in the western part of the state. Totally out of the way but what the hell. The next night I met them for dinner and had a great time catching up. They offered to let me stay in their guest house for a few days if I wanted so I accepted. I forgot how much fun they are. Anyway, he is a retired Minnesota state trooper, she is a retired teacher, and they have a business boarding and training horses. Plus a few of their own. Helping them take care of their horses and boarders was thoroughly enjoyable. This led to the best part of the trip… I met someone. They have an equine vet that visits and I got to talking to her and we just clicked. Her name is Gail. She’s a year older than me, divorced with an adult daughter. I asked her out. It went really well. I asked her out again for two days later. That one went well too. Her biggest interests are animals, books, and simplicity in life. That is definitely me. My cousin is all excited about this. She put her “match maker” hat on and you can guess what was doing there. I ended up spending a week with them and had three dates with Gail. It was great. Finally, the time came to go home. Gail and I decided to keep in touch and just see where things go. I live 10 hours and three states away and that won’t change in the near future. Anyway, when I turned my phone back on in Bayfield I got a VM from Stephanie. She finally saw my e-mail I guess. She asked me to please call her. Since I started the exchange I felt obligated and did so while driving to Sparta. We spoke for about 15 minutes and it was awkward but friendly. She asked if we could speak face to face because there was so much she wanted to talk to me about. I agreed and told her I’d meet her for coffee when I got back. I met her this morning. She is working as a supervising RN on the 3rd shift at a big hospital in Memphis. A very nice plum for her. I met her for coffee after work. It’s the first time I’ve seen her or spoken to her since mediation. It was… awkward. She started off right away wanting to apologize again for how things ended. I stopped her and told her it was all in the past. I had forgiven her and she should forgive herself. The remarkable thing is I had. Just then when I saw her I received whatever closure I needed I guess. We spoke for over an hour about Sunny, how we were doing, and happier times. I didn’t get the sense that she is interested in any kind of reconciliation. I tried to subtly imply that was not going to happen. She asked if we could keep in touch and just talk sometimes. I said I’d like that. Maybe some wounds can heal. I put a lot of my stuff in storage before I left. I really had no idea where I was going or how long I’d be gone. Or even if I was coming back at all to be honest. So I’m spending the day putting my house back together. I’m in a much better place now than two weeks ago. It’s hard to believe Sunny’s passing triggered a full on mid-life crisis but I guess that is what it is. Probably not out of the woods but I do feel better. Gail asked me to send her pics of my house and I’m doing it now. I printed and framed a picture of Sunny and put it on the wall next to pics of Bella, Tommy, & Desiree. It’s of her playing in the creek. A happy smile, a happy dog, and a happy memory. The world is going to keep turning… all we can do is go along for the ride. This got really long and rambly again. Sorry about that.

This is definitely aping Betrayal at Krondor. Can it be anywhere near as good?

You need to sink the ship of Fyrgist at the Black Isles. Forget boarding it early. It's quite high level but you can do it as soon as you have two master cannoneers (four stars). With a bit of luck there will be a special event (below deck members injured, flooding, fire etc.) that will force the enemy to reassign crew instead of firing at you. If you can repeat that ofen enough you can take out the ship very early on. Or use Berath Blessings to get the master sailors and the upgraded hull & sails right away. It's also possible to just take the "money" blessings and then put good stuff and crew on your ship first. Master cannoneers (who do special events that block the enemy's offensive actions) and good (not too slow) cannons and a decent hull as backup make it rel. easy to sink way overleveled ships - which in turn brings very expensive loot which you otherwise wouldn't get so soon. This can be sold. That's a very good investment of the starting money imo. With master cannoneers and decent cannons you can get Kapana Taga quite early. I usually manage to get it around lvl 6 when I use Berath Blessings (for money & sailors). Sometimes it doesn't work out and I have to reload. So getting it early is nothing for an Ironman run imo.

At that point use the snail shell to make snips. That way you can cut part of a can for weapons. Also I would recommend a war horn for the shells. You blow it to scare smaller enemies, stun comparables and maybe attract apex (wolf spiders until wasp centepedes or frogs are added) enemies as they take it as a challenge to their territory

You can flip that particular wall with [F] on you keyboard or (y) on the controller

Some talk about K-On! Now that I'm done with it, let's talk a bit about K-On!. As far as slice of life comedies with no other focus points go, this one was pretty good. It was fairly effective in being funny and had likeable characters with some good interactions. Out of the five, Ritsu, Yui and Mio were easily the best. Mugi and Azusa were more like support characters whose focus episodes tended to fall a little flat, or at least weren't nearly as funny. That's partially the writing, partially the comedic focus and partially by design. If I were to compare to Sailor Moon, which also had five girls plus supporting cast, and fighting bad guys instead of playing in a school club band, the characters in Sailor Moon were all better, at least outside of Sailor Moon SuperS. The question, of course... is that even a fair comparison? There are, counting OVAs and specials, 41 episodes of K-On! in total, plus a movie. Sailor Moon's original first season had 46 episodes. The question is, then, how do the characters compare to first season Sailor Moon? I think even then, with the exception of Minako who is late to the party and doesn't do much in the 13 episodes she's in, other than having a really somber focus episode about her past in England with unrequited love as a major theme, Sailor Moon... ends up being on a less inequal footing, but still very much ahead. I'n the middle of the second season of K-On!, I wondered if having a storyline to follow, a sort of connecting thread between episodes, wouldn't have been a good idea. The best episodes of K-On! aren't just funny, they're also have the girls deal with something else. Like the episode where Yui finds out just how much she takes for granted and comes up with lyrics for her sister. They're still sort of silly (Yui thanks the club room for always putting up with them), but not just that. There aren't enough of those. The episode where they're playing their final school festival show is a great episode, but it's also preceeded by a stage play episode where Ritsu and Mio are forced to work through some of their issues and the girls spending the night at school to get some last minute practice in because they've been slacking off the entire time. It's a culmination of some build up, and it works wonderfully. So where was I going with this? Some questions: Can you really compete with Sailor Moon based on 41 episodes compared to the ~140 to 150 of really good episodes in Sailor Moon? As much as we complained about the storyline of Sailor Moon as its weakest link outside the filler arcs, is having a red line to follow not a good thing or character growth? I'm sure it could be done without it, but it would be much harder without an external party involved in providing challenges for the girls to overcome. Can you ever get your characters to a level like in Sailor Moon if they never face any outside adversity together, or if that simply is never much of the focus? Should I even compare these two? Isn't that unfair to either of them? In conclusion: K-On! was great, but it could have been better with some regular character drama added. The movie adds a fake band fight over the creative direction that they've been taking that the girls are staging just to scare Azusa. It's funny. It also left me wondering if some conflict wouldn't have been a decent idea. Either internal or external. Maybe the difference is that Sailor Moon just happened to be a superhero team magical girl anime where there was a good deal of comedy, whereas K-On! was a slice of life comedy anime that happened to have some episodes with a different focus in between. Hell, I really don't know. What I do know is that K-On! was pretty good. Which is good enough, really.

You could give him an item that gives immunity to flanked. There are two weapons and one armor that can do this: - Squid's Grasp (Rapier) - Kapana Taga (Club) - Gipon Prudensco (Padded Armor)

Man I'm glad I'm waiting at least six months before giving this a go.

Finished a "regular" playthrough of Encased. It's a very good old skool RPG. I mean let's just call it what it is, it's Fallout 1/2. The weakest part of the game is the combat; it's not terrible, it's just fairly basic and not particularly exciting. The combat is functional, that's the best way I can put it. The good news is that there's as little or as much combat as you want there to be; there are alternate ways, often multiple, to solve or bypass every problem. I'm definitely going to play the game again and do either the low IQ or the ghost run. I may do both at some point.

Alternative Silmarillion Titles...

Sounds like it should be. But just fyi, we mods are not Obsidian employees, so I know what you know. I was just hoping to point you in a direction.

If only I had read the manga before watching the show - the show would've looked utterly brilliant in every way in comparison. Or wait, if I had read all of the manga first, that would've required that I liked the manga and how it handled everything, and therefore I would've thought the show did everything wrong. Alternatively, if I had stuck with the manga while not liking it, then I probably would've never tried the show to begin with! What a catch-22, . But yes, some retroactive appreciation... It's tough to balance between character comedy and character drama*, isn't it? So often, shows go too hard one way without enough of the other...and that's assuming they do either well from the get-go. Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Steven Universe...these are the ones that did it right for me by and large. Steven Universe and Sailor Moon have their warts, of course, but they got the key balance that made them work and forgive whatever flaws they had. That's why they're special! (...To me.) Romance isn't the end of the world...um, if it's done right and not completely annoyingly or stupidly or fanservice-ingly... Yeah, I guess that's the problem, isn't it? Not just the attention, but also the time. They let that entire thing wax and wane and fester and heal over five entire seasons. That was some serious planning that not a lot of shows can afford to take a chance on...and well, what happened with Lars and Lapis is literally exactly why. Sigh. I mean, not that I ever loved Lars to begin with, but I had literally just finally truly fallen in love with Lapis with her appearance on the moon after having struggled a bit with her the entire show and then the entire thing just...cosmically farts out of existence. SIGH.

Sounds like you can probably drop the demi then. Too bad there's already a god of drinking and having a great time.

I dunno how the power levels and titles go but that's what the game called it.

I got there on my own, it was a no spoilers run even though I'd played all the way through chapter 4 in the beta. I did save and reload a lot to see different outcomes of stuff that wasn't in the beta so there was a little trial an error but I didn't know that was a possible outcome until I got it. I'm kind of a completionist in games though not an achievement hunter. Skipping Nenio's quest hurt me almost as bad as trying to do it.

"Two wrongs don't make a right" was the actual quote from one student, and most seemed to agree with her.

How does that, in any way, excuse the killing of civilians...children no less...

Glad youre feeling a little better. Now go get yourself two rescue pups from the same litter.

Give it 11 episodes. Trust me.

Has a Lada ever abandoned you in the middle of your road trip? No, but I have abandoned mine several times.

@Ouroboros226 You might check here.

It was the story, more than anything, that set Betrayal at Krondor apart way back in the day. The game mechanics were serviceable (for the time, they're downright archaic by today's standards) but nothing special. Getting sucked into a web of political espionage was such a welcome departure from the chosen one must find the MacGuffin to stop the great evil stories that dominated the scene back then and still do to a lesser extent. Still, I'm glad someone is paying homage to BaK. I feel like it gets unfairly overlooked in the annals *checks off vocab word* of great old RPGs.

Just as reference, Dorudugan literally has something like 10,000 health on PotD. hauane o whe can literally have effectively infinite health if you’re not adequately prepared. i get there’s a certain satisfaction of going in blind and winning, but many players collectively have spared you the headache by figuring out the mega bosses and sharing info about it. You do you, but I don’t think it’s weakness to do your due diligence, in the same vein as planning your character in advance: All my characters/parties since the mega bosses are explicitly planned so they have viable options against all the mega bosses; it’s just a part of my character planning. (As a result, my need to ensure certain debuffs land consistently has over time made perception a king stat, in counter to typical stat advice.)

Well, of course. One could argue that it was pretty good, considering the source material. But is that really a merit, to be not as bad as it could have been? Look at Sailor Moon Crystal and tell me honestly that it isn't. The more I see or read of the original Sailor Moon storyline, the more I like the adaptation. I mentioned Minako for a reason, but what I mean is, when I look at the 200 episodes of Sailor Moon as a whole, much of the character stuff that I really liked and want to see again with different characters or in a different context (i.e. a different show) was the culmination of two full seasons worth of groundwork. Not that there weren't any great moments in the Sailor Moon or R, quite on the contrary. Ami, Rei and Makoto and Usagi still beat the K-On! girls in the same amount of epsiodes. In terms of characters and interactions, that is, not in terms of being funny. K-On! was really effective as comedy, most of the time, and that's high praise coming from Mr. Comedy Hater here... I'm not necessarily talking about the endgame episodes here. There are always episodes in the middle that were more story focused but pushed the characters forward in some ways. Like Nephrite dying while protecting Naru, the Specter Sisters redemption episodes or - even if the episode as a whole wasn't that great - Usagi and Haruka being chained together and learning to appreciate each other a bit more. It's the small things, and every now and then K-On! did that too, just not... enough. Yeah, why am I so picky about this? I liked K-On!. There's something else. K-On! has an almost boy-less setup. It's an all girls school, apparently, and outside of Ritsu's brother and a few grown ups, the girls never interact with boys. There's no same sex romance either, outside of some really minute hints that Mugi might be interested in girls. I don't really need romance in my anime (thanks for staying away so much Mamo-chan!), but Makoto wouldn't have been nearly as effective - and funny - without her bad luck in love. Actually, none of her growth in R and S would have come about if not for the throwaway line about her getting dumped by her senpai in the manga. Heh. A whole character growing out of a failed romantic interest, compared to a setting where no such thing was even attempted. Pearl is simply the best, so that's just natural. I tend to agree, but the comparison within itself is a little unfair, I guess. Pearl got all the attention she needed, while others (and I can't believe I'm saying this) like Lars or the much better Lapis were shafted by Cartoon Network, just like the rushed conclusion of the main storyline. I guess I'll just rewatch Sailor Moon. Or a personalized best of, perhaps. 200 episodes is a bit much of any sort of regular rewatching. Well, wrong, there are only 161 episodes of Sailor Moon. Too bad all the copies and tapes of the rumored fourth season were lost, now we'll never know...

That writer of that article has clear agenda. As vaccination prioritization was that oldest and those who belong risks groups were first to be vaccinated and those who have lowest risk from the disease get vaccination in last. So people who had received two dozes of vaccination in June 14 had higher risk to die to covid than most of those who were unvaccinated. Death rate among this group before vaccination was in England from 1.9% to 24%, from which it is dropped to 0.6%. Death rate among non-risk groups were from 0.0001% to 0.066%. So among risk groups death rate has dropped massively and death rate of unvaccinated people is higher than what death rate was during worst times of pandemic among non-risk groups.

https://gfycat.com/serpentinefatbangeltiger

you naughty but ma- [insert barrage of sanity destroying nonsense] I'm going to give it at least five episodes. It is very weird so far.

that is a great idea that obsidian should add to grounded.

Refreshing resources are huge advantage against megabosses. Monks, Chanters, Tacticians, Bloodmages, Ciphers - that's usually the best picks. Cipher has Disintegration, too - which makes a certain megaboss fight a lot easier. You can get to refreshing resources even with those classes that usually have fixed resources. You'd need a source of Brilliant then (Cipher's Ancestor's Memory, Shroud of the Phantasm, Least Unstable Coil etc) and stuff like Salvation of Time and/or Wall of Draining. Some of those classes also can refresh resources easily with some tricks - for example a SC Berserker can kill his Chanter buddies summons "accidentally" and will gain Rage from Blood Surge - or a SC Paladin can get Zeal when a summon dies (no matter who kills it). You can easily combine both. Other classes might be able to refund resources often enough - like a dual wielding SC Rogue with enough Guile so that Gambit has a 100% hit-to-crit conversion (do not graze though...). But generally speaking the classes I mentioned first have a clear advantage. If you are not against some cheesy tactics you can use the Strand of Favor trick to extend all buffs on you eternally (including Brilliant) which levels this general imbalance.

One of the advantages of moving to Cpt, because it hasnt been financial, is easy access to walks and nature reserves within 20 minutes of where I live. These nature reserves are ubiquitous and all around the base of Table Mountain Today we went to a walk in Constantia reserve, some pictures below. This include a house owned by some fortunate person who lives on the border of the reserve and a photo of the sea from a viewpoint

No really bugged, but implemened a bit weirdly so that visual cone AoE indicator can be misleading. It shows you the cone where it would be if you really hit the enemy in that particular angle you aimed for. But once the "real" attack and the AoE proc happens the cone will be aligned in a way that its center line would be a straigt line from your char's center point to the target center point. And this might place the cone AoE a bit differently than the indicator showed when you were choosing the target (clicking slightly left or right to the center point of the initial target to make the indicator "hit" the other enemies behind it). Unlike other cone attacks such as invocations, the cone of the WotEP is not bound to the ground but to the enemy you pick. And once you picked that enemy as target the game will use the center of that enemy's circle as anchor point, not where you clicked. But the visual cone indicator used the point where you clicked. It's not a great implementation of course - but I guess nobody really noticed before (and long after) release. Some cone-shaped cipher powers that have to have an enemy as initial target have the same "problem". But often there the cone indicator gets "centered" once you picked your target iirc. WotEP's cone indicator doesn't do this unfortunately. Clear Out/Clear the Path would have the same problem as well - but they have no indicator VFX in the first place so you won't get deceived. I made a quick drawing to explain it a bit better: The best solution to not "trick yourself" with the cone indicator is to pick your target right in the middle of its circle (see red X in the bottom pic). Moving a bit left and right just to bring the indicator to touch other enemies (see red X in the upper pic) won't work. Instead, if you need the cone to move a little bit to the left and right, just move your character accordingly. This might be a problem with disengagement attacks - another reason why I recommend Nomad's Brigandine (immunity to disengagement attacks) when you use WotEP - not only when you enchant it with Offensive Parry (but mostly).

Omg one thing I noticed about romances was how similar Lann's was to Casavir's from NWN2. The difference is the latter was written by someone who hated this type of content with the sole purpose of making it as unpleasant as possible, and Lann's is 100% legit. He literally says at one point "Let me protect you", "stay behind me during combat". First of all, what the hell? Second of all, buddy, you're an ARCHER. Calm down. At some point you get to talk about kids and if you choose the "grr kids bad" dialogue option, the game will keep triggering this exact same conversation until you say something else. Lol. Pretty basic overall but some parts were mighty weird.

Ranndar, I'm playing in a party, as this is my first time playing a SC priest. I might try solo later, perhaps as a Priest of Skaen. But I'm also considering a solo run as a Thaumaturge, for the nice interaction Boeroer mentions. You can also use the Grimoire Imprint exploit to steal the Skaen lvl 2 spell "Escape" from the Celebrants in Fort deadlight. It's nice to have infinite casts of that "spell."

Yes, the advantage is mostly about flexibility (when using the spiritual weapons). Still: if you don't plan to use a lot of Full Attacks there's no real drawback either. I personally would have liked two or even three variants of spiritual weapons per Priest subclass - in line with PoE's weapon options for Priests (Magran: Arquebus/Sword, Berath: Mace/Great Sword, Eothas: Flail/Morning Star, Wael: Quarterstaff/Rod and so on). Would have been easy to implement. But that's not the case so...

none since civil war? serious? am not surprised by your ignorance. immediate thought o' general william sharp who when he reluctant surrendered to the japenese, he refused to identify the identities o' his filipino soldiers to his captors. the general suffered torture until 1945 'cause o' his integrity and died short after final being rescued. hardly a solitary example from ww2. is also a fair number o' examples o' post civil war american generals and admirals who were punished for speaking truth to power, which isn't too surprising 'cause is a notoriously american thing to do. doing the right thing is often the hard choice because it exposes the righteous man/woman to legit punishment. have mentioned previous, but is a poor kept secret o' the criminal defense bar that a noteworthy % o' "anonymous tips" which lead to capture/prosecution o' criminals is lawyers calling the police to provide info regarding their clients or the associates o' said clients. ethics violation. if is info gained via privilege and is 'bout past crime, then is verboten for an attorney to divulge info. more rare than the anonymous call to authorities is the lawyer who public shares info with the Court or cops. so imagine a situation where 'cause o' police error, a criminal is about to have murder charges dropped. it happens. exclusionary rule here in the US is a bit o' an outlier as we not only punish cops for failure, but we allow the guilty to avoid justice when cops, prosecutors or judges make mistakes. so, knowing her client is about to be set free 'cause o' some kinda fruit of the poisonous tree fail, a lawyer tells the court 'bout the additional three adolescents his client killed and dumped in a new jersey landfill, victims which the cops is unaware. is arguable the lawyer in our example did the moral thing by communicating with the authorities. even so, the lawyer should lose her license to practice law. what milley did were unethical and consequences is appropriate. assuming the allegations regarding milley in the book is true, am reassured by the knowledge the general chose to protect the nation even if it meant sacrificing his career to do so, but such a recognition does not mean milley should go unpunished. september 28 testimony will be... interesting. HA! Good Fun!

Yesterday my wife and I raced in the Santa Cruz 70.3 Ironman. I had done this race 3 years ago when I was still pretty new to triathlon, so I was interested to see how it would go. This was also my wife's first big triathlon. She had done a couple short ones, but the pandemic cancelled the races she was going to do to prepare for this one. So after 2 years of not racing, we were both excited and nervous to toe the starting line. The swim was fantastic. Water temperature was 61 degrees, which is great for the ocean. It was a bit foggy, so you could really only see as far as the next buoy, but it is just around the Santa Cruz Pier, so there isn't any way to get lost. It was a washing machine the whole way, I was surrounded by other swimmer. But I felt good and swam pretty aggressively. I ended up shaving 2 minutes off my previous swim time for the 1.2 mile distance. This was the a part my wife was worried about. She is not a fan of ocean swimming. But she side stroked the whole time and got it done. I was so excited when I saw her later on the ride and knew she made it through the swim. The 56-mile bike was pretty tough. I got a triathlon bike this year, which is great for these races. But this is a hilly route up the coast on Highway 1 and the wind was not very favorable. I was a bit disappointed in my time, but it was still a couple minutes faster than before. Then the run was hard. I ended up 5 minutes slower than the previous race, with a half marathon of 2:04. I had been dealing with some injuries from running, so I hadn't trained as much as I wanted. The injuries didn't bother me, but I didn't have the legs for a better pace. I still finished 4 minutes faster than my first time, coming in at 5 hours and 51 minutes. It felt great to get it done. I threw up immediately afterwards, but was recovered enough to go cheer my wife on over her last half mile. She finished in 7 hours and 48 minutes. Here is me trying to get my shoes on after the swim for the 1/2 mile run to transition. Despite the extra 2 hours, my wife was way fresher at the end than I was.

A bit of military history. A toss up between the funny thread, the weird/random/etc thread or the military thread. A fun watch in any case... The voyage of the Russian Baltic Fleet (Second Pacific Squadron) in the Russo-Japanese war is a tale of ridiculous blunder after blunder, a disaster from start to finish. The last ditch effort for Russian naval superiority in the Russo-Japanese war required a voyage never before taken by a coal-powered fleet. To help matters, the fleet was crewed by conscripted peasants who had little to no experience or education when it came to naval operation. Over the 18,000 mile journey, the fleet attacked civilian vessels from multiple global powers, shot at their own ships, killed fellow sailors with negligence of safety standards, destroyed city's communication grids, and so much more. This event will go down in history as one of Russia's most embarrassing military performances, but on the bright side, at least it gives you one fantastic hard-to-believe story to tell at your next dinner party!