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We are, as always, ready to defend our lands to the last FinnScanian.

Well, that's what was talked about already before. This whole ukraine nazi thing is just hogwash of course. This is all about access to resources, which is also why russia will do everything it can to keep crimea and surrounding areas. Unless a miracle happens and ukraine can push russia out of these areas (unlikely for now), this will keep going for a long, long time.

They are preparing to invade Sweden and liberate Scania, Halland and Blekinge in a special military operation...

literal first five seconds explains what is wrong with the english language. newspaper headline: ye olde time spelling bee in town again "ye" looks like it would be pronounced yee, yes? no. weird isn't the exception. for every spelling rule there is enough exceptions as to make having a rule comical. grammar is only slight less problematic as odd punctuation rules confuse even those who teach english and tenses ain't straight forward neither. explain lie v. lay in simple terms. then explain again when somebody picks up faulkner's as i lay dying and is justifiably perplexed. there is future tense and future perfect tense, but also contractions for future perfect which is used reflexive by native speakers but may be baffling to those less familiar with conversational english. kinda a mess. HA! Good Fun!

Agreed, I just dont want to throw any more money into the toilet. If GrapeOcean comes up with a good system and people like it then I may give it a whirl. Otherwise Ill probably wait for some far-flung future date when @ShadySands is giving it away.

I haven't made a whole lot of progress with my new Elex 2 save though I did find some really useful mods. Including, Skip Opening Logos: https://www.nexusmods.com/elex2/mods/21 (Removes the THQ Nordic and Piranha Bytes logos on startup.) Brighter Flashlight: https://www.nexusmods.com/elex2/mods/40 (Makes the flashlight actually worth something while also making the nights seem darker because of the contrast.) New Hell Difficulty: https://www.nexusmods.com/elex2/mods/58 (This does a bunch of things. Some I consider more cheesy than good, such as increasing stamina drain of swings in combat and decreasing player character DPS, but it also fixes enemy AI aggressiveness so that they no longer look at you confused for a few minutes when you come barreling out of a bush into a camp of ratboars.) Create Ammunition Fix: https://www.nexusmods.com/elex2/mods/38 (Increases the amount of ammunition you craft per set to something more reasonable given the resources needed.) Upgradeable Potions: https://www.nexusmods.com/elex2/mods/37 (Makes it possible to upgrade your potions 2 LOWER = 1 HIGHER. Making it worth holding onto your lower tier potions to upgrade rather than sell mid game.) Brave Party Members: https://www.nexusmods.com/elex2/mods/64 (Increases follower AI aggressiveness.) and the one that holds a special place in my heart: Disable Level Scaling: https://www.nexusmods.com/elex2/mods/62 (Elex 2 has limited scaling for the alien enemy types and some humanoids. This removes scaling (for any enemies you've yet to encounter if uploading this in the middle of a save) and makes their levels fixed. Warning: the late game enemies are set to level 70. Which is well higher than the soft level cap of 36-37. This mod encourages and rewards you for playing longer. It's definitely not speedrun friendly.)

Can't really say much of that, I'm not reading german news a lot. Of course there are people who yell "stop russian gas/oil now!" etc. but they don't seem to realize what will happen if we'd just cut off the pipelines now (personally I think this would be catastrophic and might give a rise to pro-putin and the usual right wingers again). It's probably all too early to tell anyways, because most people aren't feeling the economic shift yet. Maybe things will look a lot different in 3 or 4 months. The way I see it, most people are on the side of ukraine. Interestingly, suddenly everyone feels like european brothers. Not really sure what exactly caused this, though, because I could swear anti-eu sentiment was quite strong before ("why do we have to pay for those poor, mismanaged countries?!" etc stuff like that). tl;dr -- I have no idea. But right now I think the worst is yet to come.

Finland is very aware and well-prepared given its size and, therefore, limited means. Norway and Denmark are NATO countries. The odd one out is Sweden which used to be, shall we say, naive or at least complacent. Probably because it was able to bypass fighting in WWII and instead make huge amounts of money selling iron to the nazis, so it has to real recent history unlike Finland (Winter War, Continuation War), Denmark (Germans) or Norway (Germans, Quisling). As for the "experienced" part you mention, I can't comment, I don't know enough about this.

Why the English language and spelling is such a bastard...

Oh, yes, you should also enjoy these two: Indeed, I've watched my fair share of weird stuff, and I enjoyed a good deal of it, all in all. I just get the impression that you've watched more of them. Discovery isn't strange, it's just really, really stupid. It sure is strange that it exists, I'll give you that. Reboot on the other hand is one of the best shows I've ever watched, and well worth the effort of tracking it down. I've heard tales of a decent DVD transfer. I haven't checked it out, but that's probably a whole lot better than that NTSC resolution transfer that was the sole source for a long while. The first season is mostly standalone comedy bits with a younger target audience in mind, but no less funny - assuming one likes IT nerd humor and pop culture fun* - and it becomes more story and character driven in its second season, and even more so after the show "left" ABC (the end of the second season makes fun of this when a part of Mainframe, the "ABCs" start attacking the residents - Bob yells "The ABCs, they're turning on us!" ). I have no idea if I can suggest Princess Tutu or not. At its core, it's a magical girl show about a duck who transforms into a human who then transforms into a super-heroine whose superpower is being so good at ballet that she just dances every problem away - or in other words, what's usually the action part of magical girl shows is replaced by ballet dance battles. The overall storyline is about (spoilered mostly for @Bartimaeus' sake) A fairy tale of princes, princesses, ballet and antropomorphic animals that sometimes are anteaters who lack the grace for ballet. Why? I have no idea. Anyway, ReBoot had a reboot too, or rather, a sequel show that's so bad it broke reality and made me love every second. It's the worst thing ever made, probably. It's about a hacker in dark hoodie whose hacking powers are so powerful that he can create Dark Code, and then he steals a computer that can connect to the internet without wi-fi and begins to wreak havoc on the world... the name of the hacker? The Sourcerer. Posted a bit about it before, way back when it aired, in the TV thread at the time. *I guess people are tired of hearing it, but the moment when Fax Modem is sitting together with Bob the Guardian and Data Nully, telling them his conspiracy theories about the Guardians and how there are no users and they're just made up by the anti virus thugs to supress the residents of the computer world is one of the best laughs I've ever had. Bob turns to Data Nully and in complete exasperation says: "Is your partner completely random?"

I quoted HoonDing, not you.

Well I'm only 11 hours into it, but thus far I've been enjoying myself. There's enough tactical variety in the encounters to make it a challenge, and it has the same warped humor as Wasteland 2. Apart from the variety of items, the biggest difference I've seen is the increased rate of skill improvement.

Seems there are serious negotiation between Serbia and France about buying 12 Rafals.

Bounties so far have been the easiest way to make money.

Supēsu Kobura/Space Cobra Episode XVIII "Desugēmu! 0078 Ji" aka "Death Game! At 00:78 O'Clock" The game between The Team 1 players and Cobra's Team Z begins (with a literal recap of the end of the last episode) Fun episode; expected that the game would at least be two episodes long.

The spell work like that, two lines (like cipher's Mind Lance) that proc an explosion when hurting a wall or something else that is solid surface. Explosions are "new but same" spells, I say that because I tested it for Least Unstable Coil topic. So unlike Stag's Horn that cause damages and penalty to the first target in the spell's path, Twin Stones can hit everyone in the double path and potentially can ending in a little explosion. Damages are lowest than Stag's Horn and the spell is slowest too, and both are not foe-only, so Twin Stones can be hard to manage in a mixed melee situation in my experience.

Hahhaha. No. I'm currently booked up for some time on TV shows.

Don't tempt me into nerfing hemoraging abuses. It least I won't balance other abilities to compete it The answer is simple : Don't pick elec Wildstrike. So you can cast your Elec spells while bearing your Elec/Storm panoply, and Spiritshift to use Moonwell + Water/Ice Wildstrike or Rusted Armor + Corrode/Decay Wildstrike, or whatever. Ah and Water/Ice Wildstrike is +4PL to Maelstrom due to double KW (from CP). That's quite close for avoiding +55% Recovery. Then play with a Cipher buddy so you could cast more than most of your spells. No idea what AA stands for here. Boar is indeed great. That doesn't discard Fury being the only ranged Spirishift with fairly good damages (most likely more than boar, instant but splitted). By the way Elec is a far better damage type than pierce.

Well, my experience with fury is that the +2PL elec from wildstrike is overshadowed by +2PL from ezzali armor in link with +3PL for storm from LDV (even worse now with the nice found around Effort hemoraging enchant procing AS and gauntlet proc for every spell crits, it make Effort a clear winner for damage boost...) The 0 recovery is real nice true, but even with heavy armor i can cast most of my spells during a fight. (Post PL9 its worst : one maelstrom can end the fight very quickly, even on POTD). I very rarely use AA with a fury, maybe in early game but it end quickly... For me the best form is the boar with the DOT and regen or the bear for tanking. Even for multiclassing, blight is not that great (others weapons have more interesting build in jump).

I thought they tried doing that with their political puppet, but because the election scam didn't work... here we are now.

Bruce commented on it and the discussion branched a bit there, heh. So no boogeymen with their narrative, really.

Saw a wire service report that said not only are the Russians looking to make sure that in Mariupol (and I suspect other areas) their atrocities will not be revealed like in Bucha by burning bodies, they're also looking to stage a massive false flag op to divert world attention away from the Bucha Massacre because that massacre is actually resonating with people all over the world. People are beginning to refer to Putin as the Butcher of Bucha.

Meanwhile, the blight pulled its mobile crematoriums into Mariupol: https://meduza.io/news/2022/04/06/gorsovet-mariupolya-zayavil-chto-v-gorode-nachali-rabotat-rossiyskie-mobilnye-krematorii I'm sure it has nothing to do with trying to cover war crimes after Bucha. Which did not happen, and if it did, it was also staged, also Ukrainians did it, also they were all Nazis and deserved it. Here's hoping the blight is as competent in covering its crimes as it is at everything else.

The government is already talking about some sort of "9€/month for 3 month" train ticket, which tells me that something really crappy is probably going to happen. Usually our government tries to avoid spending money on us. I think the next year will be interesting.

I worded it poorly, I meant he was a black version of Spider-Man. On the second point, now I kinda wanna see black Superman land in 1940 or something...

I loved the scene where Raylan drops a bullet on a guy on the ground and tells him that "next time the bullet will be faster."

I'm not opposed to it. A lot of it depends on the character and the story. Some characters origins are so vague, they could be anyone. Wildcat was a prize fighter who donned a costume and fought crime with his fists using his boxing skills and street smarts. Not much in that most stripped down version of the origin that implies a race. Batman might be tougher (mostly because the fact that he's rich due to generations of inherited wealth that goes back to the founding of Gotham 140 years ago or so might (or might not) be difficult to make work) but not impossible to make a straight flip. I'm more annoyed, for example, that they change Ms. Marvel's powers for the TV show (in the comics her powers are specifically designed to be odd, ungainly and unattractive because (a) the creators noted that most superhero teen girls got cute, sparkly powers and (b) the powers were because she was an Inhuman, so it tied to her genetics and thus became part of an allegory for body acceptance amid teenage girls for the character in her opening story arcs) than I am at changing the races of Black Adam, Hawkman and Cyclone in the Black Adam film. I agree with CC. Pardon me, however, while I indulge in a minor bit of comic pedantry- Miles Morales isn't a black Peter Parker, he's Peter Parker's successor from an Alternative Universe. Mattie Franklin is the third Spider-Woman (after Jessica Drew and Julia Carpenter) but was also a Spider-Man (pretending to be Spider-Man when Peter was gone) Anansi is a Spider-God and the main Spider-Totem that empowers spider-people Beta Ray Bill has a horse head. Frog Thor is Throg. In Marvel's comics, whosever is deemed worthy can lift Mjolnir and gain the Power of Thor and usually is called Thor (until Thor takes Mjolnir back; the other characters are typically spun off as a different character). Character's who've done that include Thor Odinson (of course), Jane Foster, Beta Ray Bill, Puddlegulp/Simon Walterson/Throg, Steve Rogers, Eric Masterson/Thunderstrike, and Squirrel Girl. DC has a weird development schedule for their properties, but has been working with more diverse casts in some of their re-occuring work outside of Bats/Supes in film and TV (the Shazam/Black Adam films, the Suicide Squad films/Peacemaker TV, Doom Patrol/Titans tv, Arrowverse TV). Does anyone care that Deadshot was a different race? Nothing in his origin or character ever really implied one. Not really? He's an alien - why should he only look like a white guy? It might make for a vastly different story for Superman if you're trying to establish Clark Kent in a period setting (since the 40s were a vastly different place depending on race in the US), but for a modern story...? There's a teen (early 20s?) clone of Superman/Lex Luthor and a biological son with Lois (who through alternate universe stuff is now also a teen).

The thing was I was thinking of watching it with my dad who grew up in the setting. While he likes modern westerns (which I gather, Justified is in many respects), having it shot in locations he'd possibly recognize would have made it a must watch...we'll probably get around to it still.

About the Blights : well, Fury does get extra range. Not a big bonus, but still nice little perk when you're trying to summon behind the ennemy line. Other than that, about the only thing that can boost Summon is bonus PL. I won't give Fury bonus PL to all Elements spells, but there could be a new bonus to give PL to Blight spells specifically (using a new Keyword). But I think the extra range is enough for a subclass that is not intended as a summoner specialist. Also Fury naturally tries to stack items that give bonus to elemental Keyword, so you'll usually have better synergies by picking Blights as summons (since as stated above, I would add corresponding KW). About Weather the Storm : my idea was more to change it so it fits Fury playstyle more than giving Fury a specific bonus to it. Fury does get the spell for free, and gets most of Storm spells for free, so it synergizes quite well with the subclass. The issue I'm trying to address is that there is no Tier 7 spells that currently fits Fury playstyle. There could be an argument to give Weather the Storm +3 PL to all Elements spells instead of Wind and Storm, so that it fits perfectly Fury playstyle. (+3 PL is meant to be above Potion of Ascension, but not too much above). EDIT : a positive effect of setting it to all Elements spells is that the bonus AR to teams synergizes well with better elemental spells, so you can use elemental AoE where your party member stands with relatively low damages. Storms (especially Avenging, Relentless, Returning) on the other side tend to be more party friendly. I could consider reducing duration a bit (20s) to balance things.

I know you didn't ask me BUT I actually don't follow comics much, (love the movies though) but I get the impression that for some superheroes, mantles are frequently passed from one character to another. For example, by far the most common Batman has Bruce Wayne as his alter ego (or vice versa, however that works) but others have also donned the cowl, most notably Richard (really, that one's censored?) Grayson. AntMan has been the alter ego of Hank Pym, Scott Lang and Eric O'Grady. Funny you should mention Spider-Man, because as well as Peter Parker, there is a black version of him; his name is Miles Morales. Other Spider-Men (Spider-Mans? Spiders-Man?) appear to include Ben Reilly, (a Parker clone) Mattie Franklin, (she apparently became Spider-woman once Peter Parker came back from retirement) and some alien or something (a member of the Vodu pantheon whatever that means) called Anansi who was supposedly the first ever Spider-Man. People got mad when there was talk of Jane taking over from Thor, but I guess they were ignoring that the title of the God of Thunder had previously been held by a bunch of different other characters, including a frog looking dude called Beta Ray Bill. One of my favourite examples because I like both characters and the TV show bearing the name: both Clint Barton and Kate Bishop are known as Hawkeye. The comics seem to have a long history of weird alternate versions of heroes, baton passing etc, and heck, I think it's neat.

They do, but very rarely. It is an "OZ centric" group. Doesn't mean they wont cover the war in Ukraine some day, but I wouldn't hold my breath. E.g. they didn't cover things like Afghanistan etc.

Finland almost added 50% to territory in beginning of Continuation War. But mainly Finnish forces stopped to Finnish borders before 1939. One of main reason why Finland didn't continue to Leningrad and didn't destroy railways that supplied sieged Leningrad was that UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand declared war to Finland and USA started to supply USSR and threatened to declare war to Finland if Finland doesn't stop it attack against USSR. Which lead to Finland to move defend its territory.

It's this horrible translated from Danish to English stuff (not machine translated, but it sounds "stilted"), but just a list of current and recent engagements. Includes peace keeping missions in various parts of Africa and the training of Ukrainian troops since 2016... https://www.forsvaret.dk/en/roles-and-responsibilities/International-operations/ As said, the numbers wont overwhelm anyone, but the experience gathered can be shared. Edit: Missing from the list is the Airforce being part of enforcing of the no fly zone over Libya... that one was always a bit weird, because it was never announced nor referenced afterwards. The public only knows because some journalists wondered where all those F-16's suddenly went and they were later spotted on Italian airbases flying sorties to the south...

Even a tiny country like Denmark has an experienced group of officers as the country has been constantly at war effectively since Yugoslavia fell apart (early 90's), fighting in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan (2014). Getting scores of body bags with young Danes sent home didn't really rattle the popular opinion either (since the casualties happened to professional soldiers, not enlisted men). I think these days they are mostly active with peace keeping in Kosovo and The Middle East as well as fighting pirates along various East African coasts (which would be navy units). Small, but with 30+ years of active combat experience in "real" war situations.

if we're talking about buffs for weather the storm and blights, any consideration to something that actually works with the Fury's bonuses? Having them keyworded as Elements is kind of a real waste (for the increased range part i could squint and see the need to buff a far away party member or put a summon right next to someone, but i'm squinting pretty hard). i don't know what would exactly be on-brand, though. something similar could be said with the summons being keyworded as elements, but i have even less idea what to do there

Fantastic news! Vinegar Syndrome is putting out a new 4K blu-ray of Miami Connection: https://vinegarsyndrome.com/collections/frontpage/products/miami-connection As you know, I'm a big fan of terrible movies and this is one of my favorite terrible movies of all time. It's a masterpiece of hilarious ineptitude. I've long wanted to own a copy of this to have forever, but the old Draft House Films blu-ray has long been out of print. I'm glad I didn't take a chance and buy a used copy of the old blu-ray. It's in good hands with the fine folks at Vinegar Syndrome. I'm happy to give them my money (I ordered New York Ninja and Pizza Girls while I was at it). They genuinely care about the movies they print, they won't sell you some crappy VHS rip.

one obvious negative for justified is exemplified by the chadwick boseman episode. cringey is an understatement. is also a season five episode where a bad guy, boyd crowder, needs go to detroit. *groan* the show has questionable success integrating minority characters w/o making them caricatures. justified is best when it sticks to hillbillies and rednecks. HA! Good Fun! ps david foley were in the detroit episode. portrayed, as far as we could tell, a mid-level boss in the canadian mafia. serious. foley had a couple lines which near any actor coulda' delivered after which he were never seen or referenced again on the show. weird cameo.

I watched the Ergo Proxy trailer on youtube and read a few lines about it. Sounds interesting enough for me to make it my next viewing project

I haven't watched JUSTIFIED yet. Started to watch it because of the setting (my dad grew up in Harlan County), but then found out it wasn't actually shot there so the appeal of watching it with my dad was sort of lost. Still heard nothing but good things so I'm sure I'll watch it eventually when I finish the usual trash that I watch.

Eh, Russia would 'lose' a normal war very quickly and always would. The Soviets might not have won a non nuclear war, and the Russians have less than half the power the soviet bloc had, with a fair bit of that lost half swapping sides outright. It's not even a debate. It just wouldn't be a 'normal' war. It's particularly funny when you get people talking about the 'lessons' to be learnt from the current war then proceeding to completely ignore them by saying that anyone and his dog could invade Russia- because, presumably, Russians aren't as patriotic as Ukrainians? Not as willing to sacrifice? Really just pining for some tough love from their western superiors? I mean, it's not like there's a recent example of a country being invaded with the aim of chopping it up where things went very badly when the people living there objected. It's not like there have been multiple examples in the past 20 years of things going very badly when someone isn't even trying to annex bits of a country. I guess it's different when they're Russians though, they just lack the spine and fortitude of the invading westerner with their superior values- is it genetic, is it cultural, who knows, but it's just self evident and the mere knowledge of westerness gives me a chub thinking of all the people I'm superior too- and will no doubt welcome the invaders with flowers and cheers. Or maybe not, but that would just be because they've been misinformed or are stupid, hate us for our freedoms; and irrelevant because what are they going to do against the serried and glorious undefeated legions of Senatus PopulesQue Americam. And no, to paraphrase the great philosopher Otto from 'A Fish Called Wanda', "They were all draws, and we weren't trying anyway". Really, it was just a stupid idea. It could (almost certainly would) have been executed flawlessly and failed. The entire invasion force was marginal for taking a city of 3.2mn people. The only way it makes some military sense is if they thought the Belarusians were going to invade alongside them since at least that guards their flank

I don't think observing that what a lot of people think of as Batman would not be in the public domain because its from later, still protected stories as 'problematic', ie making doing it difficult to do, but something that'd just make it less attractive to do. Perhaps this seems like splitting hairs? People will do it, I don't think it's going to have the major interest you do.

Depends on how motivated the Russians are in this scenario.

Yup. We can now add Bucha to the annals of the Russian army's most glorious "battles." A month?! You are being incredibly generous. Right now, if Russia's nukes were somehow taken away from them, Russia would cease to exist as a state because every single one of their neighbors would be able to carve out for themselves as much of Russian territory as they want. Heck the Finnish army could easily double their country's size!

It would depend on the circumstances. Ukraine is fighting on the defensive and is well-motivated.

Ok, so about Druids, I think creating new abilities might not be the simplest way to go. 1) I think Weather the Storm is a rather meh ability for Tier 7. Not that much because it is situational but because it compare not favorably with Woodskin and Form of the Delemgan, which comes with about as much Armor bonuses (and Pierce Armor is much more useful), and Form of th Delemgan also add additional bonuses. Even if it can have its use, Weather the Storm feels sad in comparison. That's why I'm planning to add a new bonus : a self only +3 PL to Wind and Storm spell for the duration. This bonus is non stacking with other Active bonuses (such as the one from Acute or Potion of Ascension). Even if this bonus is great to charge up, it must be emphasized that it is not ideal for action economy since Weather the Storm has a long casting time. Also Druid would finally become better than scroll users at using their own spells The idea is to protect your crew so they can stand in the Storm you're preparing. I also think it is nice to use Storm and Wind KW which only benefit from items otherwise. 2) Conjure Blight line of spells is a bit of an issue. Random summons are annoying IMHO. Summoning a Flame Blight in front of a Fire Naga pack is always unfortunate. That's why a radical decision (in a separate deletable file) would be to change all three Conjure Blights to a set type of Blight : - Conjure Minor Storm Blight (KW Storm and Electricity, no other Electricity spell on Tier 2) - Conjure Flame Blight (KW Fire, no other Fire spell on Tier 4) - Conjure Greater Ice Blight (KW Frost, no other Frost spell on Tier 6, can be cast vs Fire foes immune to Sunlance) I avoided Earth Blight because a predictable Slashing Immunity could be a bit OP. Blights have their own abilities, but are often obscure to use especially when you don't know what to expect, so I think it will do good to Druid summoning capabilities.

According to local military specialists, of whom I am not one, the attempted attack on Kyiv was so hopelessly poor in both its planning and execution that it would have got a resounding F in any proper military academy, had someone suggested that in a strategy test. Not quite idiocy but close to it, anyway.

Interesting new base builder game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1284190/The_Planet_Crafter/

ooo, i'm guessing the turn-based rounding is extremely favorable for the stun invocation, since it'll always get rounded up to a single round even on a graze, whereas in rtwp it's a pretty short duration (same thing with the paralyze invocation) relatively speaking. my recommendation would mostly be to get fighter talents that complement your chanter -> tactical barrage for extra intellect and +1 PL for your invocations, conqueror stance for +10 acc for your invocations. also given how brisk recitation works, if you pick up the various resistance chants (seven men hit the deck, one dozen, fampyr's gaze), you can make a song that alternates between two of them and they'll both apply in a single round, which makes you really hardy against enemy debuffs, which seems pretty unique to how TB mode implements it.

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"...

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.