Leaderboard

We just got home and he's taking a nap. Thanks to everyone for your support!

Wait for the furry remake Ratbow Six.

He's still at the hospital for at least another night but doing good. His roid rages are terrible though. This was his second stint in an ICU as he spent the better part of a week in the NICU when he was born. Seeing an IV in the head of your tiny newborn son was a tough first day of being a parent.

You seem very well informed good sir. 🧐

As Pluto heads towards aphelion the atmosphere is starting to freeze New Horizons was a HUGE accomplishment.

Managed to make my Russian friend's mother crack up trying to speak Russian to her. Key part was saying I practice the tongue with her daughter

Yeah, umm... I'm into some weird ****, so I shouldn't judge, but I'm going to give wikifur a hard pass.

well you can never go wrong with:

All the best for your son Shady. Not a spoiler (obviously):

Putting the ass in Jurassic ?

"To oldly go..."

Now if they let you roll to determine how much you have to pay, that'd be good.

... am s'posing the short clip also applies to the fruits o' clever girl's efforts. two birds. HA! Good Fun! ps am recalling an acquaintance who moved to buffalo from sacramento 'cause o' a promotion. he was an avid skier, so he knew what driving in snow were like and the accommodations one need make for cold weather conditions. am embarrassed to admit we indulged a bit o' schadenfreude during his first (and only) winter along the shores o' lake erie.

Reminds me, that there was a hilarious sequence in one of the films I watched over the weekend, ****neys vs Zombies. This is the first part of it- Warning: swearing, zombies:

No, my home, in fact all my properties I own outright. 90% of my $ are in real estate. When we sold our business back in 2014 I had a 1/7th share of the sale and paid off my mortgage and invested 90% of the rest in various real estate properties. The nice thing about real estate is you generally don't lose money on it. It's hard to make a lot of money in the short term but in the long term it is the way to go IMO. Most of what I have is large acre tracts that are leased to different agri-businesses around West TN. But I had a townhouse I renovated and rented for a few years and then sold, some vacant lots I'm selling now. I bought some timber land at an auction a few years back and sold it earlier this year. The big properties are all leased for 3 years and I can't sell them while in contract. Most are in their 2nd year now. But if the lessee wants to renew I'm going to do that. The long term plan for those properties is future expansion of nearby municipalities and eventual rezoning from agricultural to industrial or (hopefully) residential. THAT is when they will pay off. It will only take one.

In honor of it being October someone sent me this: I laughed because it is absurd. Then found out it's real and that made it even funnier! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13862974/

It's hard to generalize living conditions in most states because, with some exceptions, they are large and diverse places. State tax is, of course, applied the same all over that state. Municipalities and counties might tack on a half percent or more but generally the tax burden for each state is uniform. How taxes are collected is also a factor. Some states tax income, others tax property, all tax sales to one extent or another. Your lifestyle preferences have a big impact on your tax burden. For most states (2/3 give or take) weather and geography is more or less the same. But this kind of fails on the bigger states. California is a good example. The Sacramento/Bay area, the LA/San Diego (everything south of Ventura & San Bernardino and west of Palm Springs), north of Sacramento, and everything in the high desert (Barstow, Mojave, Tahoe. Modoc, etc. are so radically different you'd think you were in a different country. Cost of living varies wildly in these places. Climate and weather varies quite a bit. Florida is another example. South Florida, Central Florida, and North Florida are VERY different economically and culturally. South Florida is VERY expensive just to maintain a middle class lifestyle. North Florida it's very easy to do that on the exact same money. It's hard to quantify one state having more crime than another because once you get out of the big metro areas crime rates plummet everywhere. Memphis is the closest big city to me but it's not that close. Where I live crime is practically non existent. Fifty miles south and it's the highest in the state and 18th highest in the USA. Real estate and housing prices also fluctuate wildly inside a state. That is something I know too well. In Tennessee lots with houses are much more expensive east of Nashville than they are west of Nashville. The reason is geography. West of Nashville is flat, spacious, redevelopment is constant and dynamic. East of Nashville is mountainous so fewer homes, more demand for existing homes, less construction of new homes drives up the value of what's there. Articles like that make for interesting reading but there are good retirement options in pretty much every state where you can live comfortably on a fixed income.

He is as surprised as I am! Huh, so you dropped it before Okarin's general behaviour makes you want him to end up bludgeoned to death. Not bad. I think that's... probably for the best.

By the way: Stunning Shots with a SC Stalker could be a cool passive I guess? Best used with fast weapon though like daggers or hatchets etc. If you cast Binding Roots on enemies and then use Vion-Ceth you can get a +30% dmg bonus. With max Religion (pretend you worship Galawain) you can also use Xoti's Sickle to great effect. It doesn't matter how you kill enemies (doesn't have to be with the sickle) to get the bonus dmg stacks. And it climbs up to +60%. So one hatchet +30% dmg, the other with up to +60% and good attack speed which might let you interrupt with Stunning Shots often. Also a bit more defense. Sounds good? Lover's Embrace + Pukestabber is even faster than hatchets and more accurate. If you hit a target from stealth you can apply True Love's Kiss which unlocks Predator's Sense. Dual Battle Axe with Bleeding Cuts is pretty great with Whirling Strikes (makes the most out of the Bond in terms of damage). Bleeding Cuts unlock Predator's Sense. A dual wielder can also receive Reaping Knives from a fellow cipher and be good with them. And of course the omnipresent Morning Star is good because the AC's "Takedown Combo" targets fortitude. Takedown Combo works best with a two handed weapon - if you want to profit from it yourself (you don't have to though). Saru Sichr's poison DoT unlocks Predator's Sense, too. Stalker with Ngati's Tusk sounds nice as well (Hunter of Hunters with max Survival is really, really good).

Agents of Goldsteins;gate, episode 1. The English voice actor for Kaji reminded me of Okarin...strike that, reverse it. So I thought maybe I'd be able to listen to it, but then I heard anime girl's voice and had traumatic Madoka Magica PTSD flashbacks and was like "nah". So I switched to the Japanese and was punched directly in the brain with a bunch of gross and uncomfortable-sounding Japanese mouth sounds on top of the dub and direction just sounding kind of strange and I was like "nah". So I switched to the English and I kind of realized that the resemblance of Okarin to Kaji was farther away than I initially thought and I don't really like the direction for the English either...and then the Madoka knockoff started squealing about a metal oompa loompa or something and I wanted to die. So I switched to the Japanese and got hit with Okarin making a bunch more awful and uncomfortable mouth sounds and I wanted to die. So I switched to the English and was pleasantly surprised to see the English dub removed all of the terrible and unnecessary mouth sounds, and the guy, Okarin, no joke, called the red-haired girl an "illustrious agent" and I had traumatic PTSD flashbacks to Mari from Rebuild of Evangelion. So I stayed on the English because while that was indeed somewhat traumatic, it wasn't really the dub's fault especially considering it came out before...wait, no, it came out *after* Rebuild 2.0, so I guess it is kind of the dub's fault. So I switched to the Japanese because I wanted to hear this Makise girl's voice in the Japanese dub and was immediately greeted with *her* having her own uncomfortable mouth sounds. So I switched to the English because at this point because I am not going to listen to a show with main characters that won't stop making those detestable sounds with their face holes, and that's that, no matter how bad the English is. But then the Madoka knockoff appeared again and... Okarin's phone turned to static, . I don't...think that's really possible, . This terrible conversation between him and anime girl is...thank goodness, finally over. To think, it only took killing Makise(?) to finally end it...I mean, it was only like a 30 second conversation, but it's really bad-sounding dialogue in the English dub. OH NO, SHE'S BACK! Okay, wait, there was a time shift...OH NO, SHE'S BACK! It is at this juncture that we reach the intro music, which for some reason happens halfway into the episode, and I have to consider whether I have the constitution for another half of this...and I think the answer is no, no I don't. Usually switching to Japanese is my fallback for a bad English dub that's ruining all the dialogue and scenes, but that's not an option here what with the Japanese VAs deciding to stick their microphones inside of their mouths while they're trying to voice act and all. It's funny - because I mostly watch older Japanese shows where the VAs don't have every breath recorded by their microphones, I honestly kind of forgot that this could be a problem with a number of newer animes, but now that I'm subjected to a newer show where it's a problem, I'm remembering that this is a particular issue I've had a few times before all over again. Eleven minutes for a 2011 anime show - it was a good run, folks. We'll get 'em next time!

skalds in general are bugged, but court poet is a particular noteworthy outlier as the charisma and int buff isn't being recognized as either a song or rage power, so it can't be augmented in usual ways and doesn't count for skald ability to confer rage powers. for particular parties, the int and charisma buff is nevertheless mighty effective and might be worth the functional lack o' skald compatibility. have mentioned previous in this thread how in spite o' being utter nonsensical from a rpg pov, giving seelah 8 levels o' court poet is an option we has considered and experimented with during the beta... gets her an effective +2 bonus to mark o' justice, guarded stance, uncanny dodge, haste, heroism, good hope, displacement and mirror image, all the charisma and int boosting goodness for ember and/or nenio, etc... HA! Good Fun!

They should be morale bonuses and most items are enhancement so it would surprise me if they didn't.

We don't really know how the FB system works of course, but it's certainly implied that they run all the verification off a master server rather than locally. The average FB employee getting locked out of their office ain't a big deal, but it seems to be intrinsically dumb for critical infrastructure, especially for access to hardware that controls the local network (and hence IoT). That makes the whole thing vulnerable to both malign action and hardware faults, and makes it hard to fix when they happen. You can only presume that they'd have some sort of master override for emergencies but really, for critical infrastructure there should be a separate ringfenced system. That would certainly be cheaper than the value of the stock losses from having your system crash for a few hours. Seems to be a bit of a paradigm that connectivity is good for the sake of it, and it isn't for everything. (Attitude wise it kind of reminds me of Fukushima having their back up emergency diesel generators in a basement below sea level and hence prone to flooding. That might be convenient for daily operation, but the whole idea is to design around managing the extraordinary, not the ordinary)

good luck. after days in a hospital and following dozens of tests, it's good to remember medicine is as much an art as science. the doctors are no doubt doing their best but sometimes there are no easy answers. your child is getting the best care they can manage, but you are allowed to be frustrated and disappointed if your doctors do not have a definitive answer, or worse, when they provide what seem to be conflicting answers. i have faced such a situation with my own med problems and i assume what you face is a thousand times less pleasant as your child is the one in need of care. so again, good luck.

Someone smacks Okabe silly at some point. I mean, Daru prides himself on being a "perverted gentleman" so I'm not sure what else you'd expect him to do. It seems to be pretty easy. I just did.

Looks like they need a new internet box.

Sorry Shady. We were in the NICU for about a week with our son, and it is a terrible sort of holding pattern on life. But it is amazing what they are able to do in hospitals today, and it sounds like he is on the right trajectory.

-10 deflection.

It's fairly clear that somebody set up them the... uhm, initial date.

Relying on the Internet of Things for critical infrastructure? literal lol. Honestly, I'd have actively gone out of my way to avoid buying pointlessly Connected devices even before every second company started getting the ransomware treatment*. To quote the great philosopher Scott Steiner: "no sympy" Good for consultants though; they go/et to advise everyone to stick everything on the internet for $$$, then they get to advise everyone to take everything off the internet also for $$$. *obligatory reminder, mostly done using hacked CIA tools exploiting mandated backdoors...

I know that we have had alot of problems here with respiratory cyncytial virus. Anyway, I'm hoping he gets a speedy recovery!

i did a beastmaster build and it was so effective, i actually got bored of it and re-rolled, so take that what you may i would actually suggest furyshaper, but only because i'm a berserker skeptic because of the malus. i had a furyshaper/stalker and it was real effective. barbarians are special because they get much more returns out of perception/accuracy than other classes. Because carnage only triggers on a hit (and then has to roll itself again), you actually have n^2 returns from accuracy at first, rather than the typical sub-linear returns... and unlike other scenarios where accuracy drops off in effectiveness once you have enough, barbarians can get a passive that lets them interrupt on crits, which in my opinion keeps the practical effectiveness of sky-high accuracy quite high. so the huge accuracy from a ranger won't go to waste. bonus AR and deflection can help you withstand the -15 -10 def penalty of frenzy (bonus AR goes great with Thick Skin barbarian passive), and eventually (if you want) you can upgrade Hunter's Claw to give you defensive bonuses (which I did).

Sorry to hear, what are the next steps?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/10/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-and-oculus-are-down-heres-what-we-know/ Some FB network engineers having a very bad day.

SC Stalker is fine by me. Whirling Strikes is very good but also expensive. Having a Cipher in the party would make an SC Stalker way better because of the source of Brilliant. I personally must use Stalker's Patience as my main weapon when using a Stalker - obviously. I played a Stalker/Monk (don't remember the subclass, probably Helwalker) because I wanted to combine the recovery skip of Stalker's Patience with Swift Flurry/Heartbeat Drumming. Crit chain and high ACC lead to lots of recovery skips. With the late Instruments of Pain I could also make good use of Enduring Dance which stacks with the Ranger's passive ACC buffs (and Hunter's Claw etc.). Also the wounding of the weapon is very nice. It was fun. Didn't play an SC Stalker in a real playthrough but only did test sessions with it (mainly fiddling around with Whirling Strikes) so I can't say how much fun it is before reaching he high levels. But I learned to not underestimate how impactful and nice it can be to be able to reach higher Power Level abilities a lot sooner.