Leaderboard

This weekend I completed the Tour de Cure and rode 100 miles around Napa Valley. It was a beautiful day, although the sun didn't come out until mile 50 or so. We raised $25k, so another good year of fundraising. edi edit: Finished in 5:30, which was just a tad slower than last year. I'll take it. I got a bit nauseous around mile 75 and slowed it down, but it passed and I felt ok at the end.

I may have a ship collecting addiction. I keep seeing ones that make me go "oh, I like visual." Dangit, it's not like I can seriously use/alternate more than maybe a couple. Going to have to confine myself to just screenshots of all of them soon. Trying to find a freighter I like. No luck so far. But it's cool they let you walk around on top of one. For a second I thought I was going to be able to tread the whole length of it, but no - the "you are about to die" health drop started at some point. I also like how you can jump/stand on all the player-vehicles, unlike some games where if you try you just bounce off. "Star Wars" theme. Yeah, I hear there's one that looks even more like a Destroyer. I want the Star Trek one, where do I get that.

This song just hasn't got old, I have to say. You may be interested to know that there's a wonderful tradition in Finland, started by just one man in the mid-to-late 1990s. No matter which band is playing and what kind of music is played, as long as the venue is small enough (i.e. club or smallish concert hall), you're almost guaranteed to hear someone shout "Play Paranoid!" at some point of the show. It's a joke that everybody's on, and it continues to be funny.

No Man's Sky: I wanted to keep buying/trying (a lot of) different ships, for funsies but also function - cost doing that is high. Even my grinding self was finding it overly taxing re: grind 30-40 million, buy/try one or three, grind, etc. I noticed a difficulty setting that makes buying ships "Discounted." I was expecting ship prices to be lower for less grind, but also that the scrap/sell value would be scaled to the same ratio (a small to moderate loss). But the sell value actually remains the same so you buy at half price but scrap for full price = 100% profit. So I stood in a few space stations waiting for ships, bought only the "A" class ones (because they give you inventory augments when scrapped), scrapped, bought, scrapped. I now have 600million units, a lot of Nanites from selling the scrap-modules, and an Exotic ship with 70 storage and 43 Tech slots. Oh sure, you don't have to take advantage of this but I wonder if the profit ratio re: that setting is intentional or a long oversight. It would've been enough help just for the buy price to be halved. That said, I finally got to try a bunch of ships. The variation of visual styles between the several "class type" is high. If you want a Fighter, Hauler, Explorer, Shuttle, Solar, Exotic etc in a certain style/color scheme, you're gonna have to stand in space stations for a long time hoping for RNG. I know there's some "special" ones to get too but in general. EDIT: this is a game where once you've gotten far enough to have "learned a lot", it kinda makes you want to start over.

I'll see your "Average Betty" and raise you "Flying Fridges", the ship so ugly I absolutely had to make her my default:

Eight hardliner Republicans who felt betrayed (or whatever) by him working with Democrats to not shut down the government voted with a unified Democrat vote to remove him (note: the vote was initiated by Republican Matt Gaetz). Democrats seemed to be willing to save him in exchange for some concessions to avoid more of this clown circus show in the future, but he was in between a rock and a hard place: working with them probably would've made more of his caucus turn against him, and the very little power he was already wielding with them would've become even thinner. He seemed to believe he would survive the vote leading up to it. First time in U.S. history the Speaker of the House has been ousted: now we'll get to see even more of the clown circus show, and what follows will probably be even worse.

McCarthy has been ousted as speaker of the house.

To make things a double whammy, this just enforces to the Russian people that they are fighting Nazis.

Extremely obvious case of Russia Derangement Syndrome there from Mr Giles. To say that 1st/ 14th was not specifically accused of war crimes at Nuremberg is extremely misleading at best and can probably best be described as utter sophistry- ie overt misinformation. All SS units were collectively found guilty of war crimes, there was no need to find them specifically guilty. The author obviously knows that due to the wording, and further because of the mention that foreigners got drafted into SS units. Draftees were specifically excluded from the 'intrinsic' nature of the SS war crimes, hence he can argue that Hunka, as a draftee, was innocent whereas if he volunteered for the SS he was not. He was by his own admission a volunteer, not a draftee. Of course, one suspects Mr Giles would not extend the same... generous interpretation on a draftees immunity from collective war crimes to even genuine Russian draftees, in the current conflict. Indeed, I'd put every cent I have in the bank against a bent penny that he wouldn't. The most stupid thing about it was not giving Russia ammunition for misinformation because unfortunately they don't need misinformation for this, the truth is more than enough. No, the most stupid thing was it happening while Ukraine and Poland were already having a very public spat. Because, of course, the two countries that have found 1st/ 14th to have committed war crimes are Poland and Ukraine (funnily enough, not mentioned by the author) and this was always going to be an extremely obvious wedge issue. Writing a "I'm not trying to justify the Nazis but..." type article just prolongs things too.

Went to Costco and picked up 3 bottles of Lagavulin. I got one of each year; 8, 11, and 16. Suddenly remembering when I was in Jamaica and randomly met an older Scottish gentleman who was also on an island hopping campaign and we joined forces and cleaned out the resort bar.

A bit of nostalgia from my childhood (which was late 60's to late 70's)

"Why me?"... not sure how I get into these situations. The granddaughter of one of my dads friends is on a trip to Australia (amongst other countries) and she realized her budget was no good, living abroad is (surprise!) more expensive than when at home, benefiting from your own place, your own network etc. She asked me (because my dads friend gave her my phone no.) if I knew of any work (part time, whatever) she could do to make funds last a bit longer, but told her it's not a good idea. Before you get on the plane to the last country to visit, immigration will put you on a plane back to Denmark right away if you get caught. Offering the next best solution, she can stay at my place for a while, get food and a roof over her head for a couple of weeks at no cost. Yeah, going to get stuck for a while with a girl that is barely more than a third of my age

Meet Chicken McNugget.

Suburban Sasquatch (2004) A magical Sasquatch terrorizes a suburban community in Pennsylvania. It's hard to put into words what a pile of garbage this movie is. Everything is wrong. The very first scene is done in day for night. In fact, a significant portion of this movie is day for night, so much so that when a scene, roughly 2/3 of the way through, was shot in actual night I was genuinely astonished. This film features sub-high school play level acting, dialogue barely north of Breen levels, laughable CGI, a subplot that ends abruptly with no resolution, Halloween store props, mismatched police uniforms where they couldn't be bothered (afford?) belts, a hilariously awful bigfoot costume, and the greatest 3 second growl sound effect that you will hear hundreds of times. Also, the outro theme is *chef kiss* magnifique! This film needs to be studied and analyzed by scientists, philosophers, and mystics alike in a quest to figure out how something can fail so spectacularly in so many ways simultaneously. It's a crowning achievement of ineptitude.

I dont know anything about WH40K, but Attenborough's smooth narration sucked me in for the entire video. The end screen showed 7 more by him but I had to get out of there before I lost an evening.

Oh, this is probably something I should support. Ok I looked into it, the crash happens because BPM Buffs adds a statuseffect named Perishing_Strike_SE_ApplyOnEvent without overriding the old SE also named that, and I hadn't accounted for duplicate names (which I should've). Both of these issues were quick to fix, in other words a new release is up now 2023-10-02 Fix CTD when using auto-completion in the expression editor when there are more than two GDOs sharing the same name. Support capitalized keywords in expression editor (AND, OR, NOT, THEN, IF, TRUE, FALSE).

Went with a proper 40K name for now: Equipment that only works for the not too smart is very 40K

Solar desalination device produces drinking water at high rate (interestingengineering.com)

made not osso bucco. nowadays we avoid veal, so we made with oxtails... osso coda? also, we didn't use polenta and instead went with a yukon gold mashed potato side for which we used a potato ricer to get extra smooth. roasted broccolini were the handwave inclusion o' something leafy and green allowing us to pretend the meal were at least somewhat healthy. best part o' the meal were the fact our dinner guest were an acquaintance with whom we felt comfortable enough to suck on our oxtail bones. edit: for lunch we made pasta pomodoro. we used fresh cherry and roma tomatoes from a local farm. am mentioning our lunch 'cause o' how we now ordinary cook pasta such as spaghetti or linguine, which is to use minimal water and to cook in a twelve inch skillet. a twelve inch skillet is the perfect diameter for spaghetti and it takes far less time to cook pasta in the skillet as you are using considerable less water. chances are when am having brought the pasta to just shy o' al dente, we have only a smidge more pasta water than needed to finish off our sauce. am using a non-stick pan for our pasta when am making tomato sauces 'cause it is non reactive. for today's lunch, when the pasta were near done, we add the sauce, fresh basil and microplaned parmesan to the off-heat skillet. residual heat from the sauce and the pan finished cooking the pasta and the starchy pasta water and cheese thickened up the sauce. HA! Good Fun! ps chances are most folks reading is already aware, but counter-intuitive, a bit of starchy pasta water will thicken a tomato sauce.

Or I could go with Rouge Raider the Rogue Trader, as that rhymes. And as Pumuckl (and in turn any German child) can tell you: was sich reimt ist gut

I caved. I will be selling grimdark rouge across the stars.

Took a lunch break from doing leather dying. Discovered my glove had a pinprick hole in it, and my thumb is now dyed oxblood red. However, besides that, I now have an articulated torso plate set mostly done. And the back half... Keeping it all fairly simple as I learn and refine some of the basic techniques. Tomorrow will likely be figuring out making and attaching buckles and straps to connect and wear it...

Apologies for a very belated reply, but may I suggest that you drop the "wow" and then say the rest of it in your best Gandalf voice.

Ahh, yes "Tapping the Admiral", a slightly apocryphal, yet strangely appealing, aspect to Nelson being a pickle was that the sailors would find ways of getting at the rum in the burial cask. The body must have been none to fresh when they eventually arrived.

Finally got to use "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further" when updating a database table. Sadly, only one dev got it.