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Race Report! It was about 50 degrees out in the morning as I set up my transition area and got ready to swim, so not too cold. I went to bathroom, put on my wetsuit, walked to the beach, and immediately had to go to the bathroom. Ah well, it was going to have to wait. I know some people can pee on the swim, but I have never mastered that skill. We lined up in pens based on our expected swim time and slowly filed towards the starting line. It is a staggered start, with 5 athletes going every 5 seconds. The surf was pretty big, with 4-5 feet waves coming in sets of 3. I ran in somewhat cautiously and started duck diving. I was really focused on my breathing at the start. It can be extremely hard to catch your breathe on the swim. I used some breast stroking to get out past the waves, but after about 100 yards I was able to settle into freestyle. It was a bit hard to sight the buoys. It was choppy, it was overcast, there was a ton of swimmers everywhere, and one side of my goggles kept filling with water. But I made it out to the first big turn buoy and kept a decent line after that as we made our way towards the harbor. I swam it in just over 36 minutes. I was struggling with the cold by the end, and I had a few heavy kickers in front of me, but my time was good enough to crack the top 3rd of the 300+ people in my age group. Once I got out of the water I hit the bathroom and started to try to get ready for the bike. I have a bit of an issue with transitioning after a cold swim. My body doesn't cooperate. So I took 15 minutes getting my wetsuit off, putting on wool socks and my vest, and basically just shivering. But hey, I'm not a professional, so I'd rather get on the bike comfortably. The bike takes us through Camp Pendleton for most of the race. It is a pretty unique place to ride. There were marines everywhere, tank crossings, and lots of helicopters. It was also a very bumpy course with some sharp turns and 3 decent climbs. I probably could have used my road bike. I had a good speed going, keeping it around 20 mph average. I lost my water bottle and half my nutrition about 3 miles in. I was in good company, there were water bottles and nutrition all over the ground. I came around one turn and saw about 6 cyclists getting bandaged up, so I was trying to keep the rubber side down. There were a lot of flats being repaired as well. I enjoyed the climbs, but I love climbing up hills. I kept my pace where I wanted for about 45 miles, but started to struggle over the last 10 miles of the course. Overall I had a 19.1 mph pace, which was good, but it dropped me into the middle of my age group rankings. I managed to get water from the aid stations and ate a bit, but I knew I didn't do well enough on nutrition. I started the run and it was still pretty cool out. It was probably perfect conditions for most, but I think I do better in the heat. I felt decent as the run started, but my legs were pretty worn out from the ride. My plan was to push from the start and slowly pull back as needed. I started out at a 7:45 mile, then 8:15, 8:30, 8:45, and 9:00. By mile 6 I was settling into a 9:15 pace and I kept that for a few more miles. Mile 10 and 11 were hard and I had to walk for a bit, but I got back to 9:00 for the final mile of the half marathon. I ended up with a 2:02 total time on it. I was hoping to go sub 2 hours, but my legs were beat and I was also pretty nauseous. Nutrition is always my bane. Some friends were near the finish and let my know I had 3 minutes left to keep my time under 6 hours, so that motivated me to run the last stretch hard. I ended up with a 5:58 time, which is smack dab in the middle of my age group. I didn't throw up afterwards, so that was good. My kids actually found me at the finish too, so that was awesome. I spent the race a bit worried about my wife and how she was doing. The swim was not easy and she doesn't love the ocean. But she got through the swim using backstroke, and got on the bike for the full 56 miles. When she got in to run, they told her she missed the time cut off. She was devastated. The run is her best part. She still had almost 3 hours to finish the run, but they took her timing chip and told her she was done. It was tough, I didn't know quite how to comfort her. She was going through all of the stages of grief. The next morning she decided to go for a run. I tried to go with her but I was a mess. She ended up running the full 13.1 miles the morning after the race, and I had the kids meet her with my medal at the end. So super props to her for finishing the full distance despite the race directors. Honestly I'm a bit turned off by the whole Ironman way of running things. They are a big brand, but I think they focus more on the bottom line than the athlete experience. I guess they have to in order to have these huge events, but I think I'll stick to smaller local races for a bit. There were 2800 people racing yesterday and over 400 did not finish or were disqualified. Considering the training and investment people put in for these events, that seems like a shame. They should have encouraged her to run until they had to shut down the run course. Anyways, it was a good challenge. We've got a small local race coming up in May that is much shorter, so I've already got a reason to keep on training. Edit: Oh, her run time was 2:30 for the half marathon, so she had the time to finish. This is her working through the anger stage.

Hooray, Murray's back. Well or so I hope at least, Gilbert's always been a bit of a whiner about needing a "true" MI3

Well, don't really have to imagine Nazis on social media...

I saw a Twitter thread that basically outlined that Russia's war crimes are not a result of 'a few loose cannons' or whatever, but are a deliberate act by a country that was very much hoping to genocide Ukrainians and put all the people in mass graves. Anyway, Russia kinda sucks in general ey.

"Hardware Vendor #3" Jensen hates AMD so much he won't even name them.

The irony is that Curse is IMHO the best Monkey Island. Anyway, I wholeheartedly welcome MI6.

Well look at it this way, in two years or so you won't have to imagine.

Finland in NATO may get fast-tracked (as I predicted may happen): https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/finnish-president-says-nato-referendum-no-longer-necessary/ https://www.airforcemag.com/finland-reassesses-nato-entry-in-wake-of-russia-ukraine-conflict/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/why-putin-faces-more-nato-arctic-after-ukraine-invasion-2022-04-04/

Well this made me do a double take.

Home language I learned in babby and toddler years as most people probably do. My grandpa's Russian, so basic foundation's from there, then Russian lessons started from second year of primary school + socializing with fellow kids + media exposure + reading a lot + job stuff + Internet so here I am. English lessons started in middle school but were pretty rudimentary and I didn't have a break-through until my early twenties, when I started discovering books I really wanted to read, but there were no available translations. Then Internet and making foreign friends through it, job stuff, books, films. I can also passably read and understand Polish and Belarussian, but can't speak them at all.

Works for me. Funny how many times "nazi" is being mentioned. If you drink everytime they write the word "nazi" or a derivative of it, you'll die of alcohol poison once you're at the end of the article.

In my country, we start studying a second language on third grade and a third language on seventh, at the latest (often fifth). Many if not most study three foreign languages by the time they're on 8th grade. So, people tend to speak multiple languages. I speak five, to varying degrees of fluency, and on top of that I know something about four other languages but could not read a New York Times type quality newspaper in any of them, so there's no real fluency there. English is not my first language. We're up here in the North of Europe.

New Blood is... mostly very good. Suppose I should post the Strange New Worlds Trailer, despite it being blocked in NZ (lol)

America has a third party. They won't matter until they change their election system. Get ranked preference voting and suddenly it won't be a complete waste of time to vote for someone other than the two designated candidates.

Jerk chicken drumsticks attempt #2: This time I added a bit of brown sugar and doubled the amout of habaneros (store didn't have scotch bonnet). Success! The heat level is perfect and the taste is quite yummy. I'm real close to having it perfected. I'll try increasing the ginger content next time.

Yeah, untrained fists as monk fists but at Penetration 0, that's what I plan. I'm mefiant about haymaker modal. Slapping people should work only vs clothes (and even then, not much) Thanks @Testlum I have spotted what was wrong in my implementation. Missed an occurence of fists that happened to be the one behind monk fists. I should not have tried programming it while keeping my one year old

My brother and I came back to check out the new content after being gone for several updates, and we immediately noticed there's now TWO wolf spiders living under the tree (and our magnificent treehouse base). Though tougher to kill than we remember, we axed both of them on the same day and continued trying out new features. Imagine our surprise when, at the dawn of the next day, two wolf spiders were again snoring menacingly under our fortress. Unless I'm wildly misremembering, it used to take around three days for a wolf spider to respawn after being killed. The current daily respawn rate is troublesome for two key reasons: zone control and immersion. If wolf spiders only take a day to respawn, building a base anywhere near a spawn point is a huge risk. Having a wolf spider permanently prowling around your under-construction base is going to result in frequent an frightening deaths, no matter how many times you squash them. That leads into the second point of immersion; when you conquer an apex predator, you should gain control of the area for a reasonable time. One of the foundations of survival games is imposing order on nature but if the nastiest enemies only stay dead till the next day it ruins that sense of taming the wilderness. Plus, regularly scheduled daily respawns of pretty much anything reduce the sense of playing in living world. I know creature respawn rate balance is probably low on the priority while new features still need to be created, but at least for the wolf spiders, please tone them down so its reasonable to build in the vicinity of their spawn point. Thanks!

Well, there goes my idea of getting some sleep before midnight for a change. Time to watch. edit:

I admit, I had a much less action packed day. Some back and forth on work, some assorted paperwork. British Airways got in contact with me over the "You know those tickets you had booked right before pandemic hit, so we gave you vouchers to use on an equivalent flight once normal travel resumed? Well now that costs of flight are going up, we're going to save more money by giving you a direct refund rather than letting you cash those vouchers in this year." Still pondering on the 3D Printer repair. Puttered around on designs for Mando armour still. Possibly sliding a touch more like this: But it isn't completely sparking my creative juices for a "this is the one"...

That's actual ****ing violin! It's not that hard is it, Hitman3. It doesn't sound like complete **** when you use the actual instrument.

Say what you will about the rest of it, but the character arc across multiple forms of media across the years was really well handled.

Yeah this is the fundamental difference here: anecdotal versus systematic crimes. In any war situation some individual soldiers will end up doing bad or criminal things. But that is a far cry from a situation where the government of a state involved in a war, as a matter of its official military policy and doctrine, deliberately and systematically commits horrific war crimes and atrocities. This is what Russia is doing in Ukraine. And it is documented fact.

Yeah, feels a lot less sensationalist right away.

BLASTS God, I hate it when the media is using words like that in their headlines.

I just noticed this emote was a cat - I previously thought it was The Scream with horns. Thank you, Shouji Kawamori, for creating and then leaving the project, and thank you, Akane Kazuki, for shoujo-fying it - very cool. If there could be, like, other shonen series that do that, I would be a whole lot more receptive to the idea of shonen, that's for sure. One negative thing I've heard about the show is that it was originally intended to be like ten episodes longer, so it may get suddenly wrapped up or abruptly end. Still won't take away from it being very good show for most of its run, though. It's a little difficult to believe there isn't at least a little Evangelion influence, though... It did, and ultimately, it wasn't that important, just...felt weird next to all of the pretty grounded storytelling and world-building the series has done outside of that moment. It is pretty ridiculous. I think episode 2 is still the only episode where I didn't want to immediately watch the next one, which is...uh, how watching episodes 3-8 all at once happened, . Difficult not to be okay with the cheap option when it results in a better show, .

Obama to return to White House to celebrate health care reform Ummm.... as long as he's there... any chance we could keep him? Don't get me wrong, I had zero use for Obama as President. But he was not the disorganized s--t show the Biden Admin has been.

Remember that one video, which we were not linking here? As @Zoraptor said, it can be told, that it was not faked, because the injuries were real. Judging the information arriving from Bucha hour by hour, it looks like he might be right, that the video was real. Still faked though, and I am willing to bet, that the guys shooting the people on the ground to were Russian soldiers and not Ukrainians. Today there was found a cellar in Bucha with corpses kneeing, with hands tied behind theirs back, and all of them were first shot in the knees and later to the back of the head. Allegedly the occupiers in Bucha shot down every civilian who had served in the army since 2014, as well as everyone who had a Ukrainian trident tattooed. They had the personal information of some people. and a testimony of a doctor from Zaporizhia: A group of young girls were admitted to the hospital, the oldest being 10 years old. All had rectal and vaginal injuries. I feel sick...

Looks like babushkas of Izyum successfully launched their planned "Special Culinary Operation".

This was already proven false by satellite images made as soon as March 10th... Provided by Maxar

Yup. Fluent in it.

Anyone up for a little piece of official russia state propaganda this nice Monday morning, in case if anyone doubts about Bucha being an outlier rather than part of a plan? And if reads like something out of the third reich, it's not your Google Translate's fault. It's just as chilling in russian. https://ria.ru/20220403/ukraina-1781469605.html

Why dont you buy a copy for me, I promise to play it and you know you can trust me

Fun times with Assassin/Shattered Pillar

Elerond posted the same link and their are other sources that confirm the same appalling behavior from elements within the Russian army

Holy crap, no kidding. The moment I saw the skies, I was like "welp, this is hopeless"...and then they also had ground forces as well. Freid doesn't look like a very large kingdom...if this doesn't end either diplomatically (i.e. surrender) or a complete slaughter, it won't make any sense. That said...I'm going to now watch episode 13. Well, I see you also saw the obvious Evangelion/Shinji comparisons that I did, . I feel like we reached the happy medium for his character a handful of episodes ago, yet we may still be falling...

Death Stranding Director's Cut So far it's the same game I played back in the day on PS4 when it first came out. None of the new stuff has been particularly noteworthy. But it's still kind of a great game. Sadly all the tension is sucked out of it being on a second play. Just grenade the BTs into next year and the Mules are quite vulnerable to being punched in the face. But even where the tension fails, the atmosphere excels. And it's great to just see a city appear as you crest over a hill and the music comes on. More open world games really need to do that.

Good luck with that, you're going to need it. Spoilers for episode 13 and 14: There was also one pretty big uhm, what the hell moment: Funny coincidences, but probably not more than that, given when the manga began to come out and the release time of both animes.

After Groznyi and Aleppo, this is hardly a surprise. However, it is heartbreaking. As the saying goes, barbarism begins at home. Child abuse in Russia is routine -- the numbers, if you consult the studies on this topic, are chilling. Given the nature of Russia, its institutions are also exceptionally cruel and conducive towards abuse. An awful lot of "hazing" and extremely serious physical abuse in the armed forces; the 200th Brigade is especially notorious for being internally violent and low on morale. (My understanding is that the brigade has now been largely obliterated in Ukraine, but not sure about this.) All of this takes a very real human toll on the whole society: health and happiness levels plus trust in others plus life expectancy are all remarkably low. Russia is not a happy place. So, not surprising that there is an awful lot of excessive cruelty and, shall we say, lack of what would be regarded as "proper" behiaviour, to the extent that such exists during wartime.

Like so?

Congratulations

No, because your whole party could benefit from it. You mean changing the display to something more clear, right ? Yes, it seems reasonable. 10 raw damages per tick every 3s instead of 32 damages over 10s then.

All I can say is they have thus far been very aggressive in fixing bugs and issues with the game since release, and they have said a roadmap for feature updates is coming soon.

It arrived and is working. The default XMP overclock profile locks all all cores to 4Ghz and is working with no crashes for the hour I had it applied, but on prime95 some cores almost hit 100 degrees Celsius. If I find the willpower to go through some guides I'll see if I can get an overclock with sub 1.2 voltage (the xmp had it at 1.24v), because by default it's base 3Ghz, with turbo to 4Ghz on one core while the rest max out at 3.5Ghz and the memory is 2133mhz instead of the intended 2666mhz for the kit I have. Wonder if there is a second hand kit with some faster speeds on ebay... On a separate note it seems that if you are sending something in/from Pakistan via mail you need to attach a copy of your ID. Wonder if they had issues with bombs in the mail so they started requiring it.

I like how everyone has bought, but not played this game yet. I keep saying I'm going to give it a try but then play anything else but it

I decided on a whim, what if I keep avoiding Furrante? It seems this wasn't expected behavior, and I can see why, considering how he homes in on you at first opportunity. Anyway... I killed Benweth without the quest, but the quest completed, and it said Furrante had given it to me, even though I'd never met him. Out on the world map, his ship is still stalking mine and if I let him catch me, he asks me to kill Ben. I reported to him in Dunnage just now, but his boat is still haunting mine. So anyway, grats Fireballs, you confused the game, woohoo. Yeah no, I didn't make this post only because of that. It's because Maia actually reacts to something Serafen says about Benweth in that first meeting with Furrante. And we all know we have to get to Neketaka to get Maia, so even though you're not supposed to be able to avoid that immediate post-Maje meeting with Furrante, there's at least one interaction that assumes you do so. I intend to let Furrante chase me across the Deadfire and eventually bring him to Ukaizo with me. Update: Furrante has now been hanged, but that's not stopping him. Maybe if I let him catch up, he'll ask me to reload and reconsider my decision? P.S. How I keep avoiding him:

Nanowar of Steel being Nanowar of Steel... those wacky Italians