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I took a trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. I do this at least once a year.

Spent most of the day in the garage and changed my front wheel hubs to try and fix my ABS-light problem. The brakepads on the right wheel were riding the disc, so I was prepared to change pads and discs. I didn't end up changing the discs because besides some rust they were fine, and it really hurt to change the pads, because even though I've driven some 100 000km on them, they were barely worn. I also installed a Malpassi progressive 1:1.7 fuel pressure regulator so I can up my turbo pressure some more.

Past 10,000 dead Palestinians today. Interesting fact: 4104 of those are children, killed by humane precision western backed weapons per the Rules Based Order fired by the most moral army in the world. This amounts to almost exactly 40% of the casualty figure, and is ~the proportion of children in the Gaza strip vs the whole population. ie, it's exactly the proportion you'd expect statistically if Israel were firing off weapons blindly, or deliberately targeting the general population. Weird, eh? 31 Israeli children died out of 1400 to the indiscriminate/ deliberate terrorists of Hamas. That's ~2% of the 1400 Israeli deaths, the overall proportion of children in Israel is 28%. So the indiscriminate/ deliberate attacks managed to kill 1/12 the number of children you'd expect as a proportion for indiscriminate/ deliberate attacks. Weird eh? Israel has managed to kill 135x more children than Hamas did in absolute terms; and using the most generous measure (ie normalising for demographics and relative casualties between the two groups) more than 10x as many in relative terms. That's super duper weird, eh? Can't wait for all the baffled looks from western politicians next time they burble on about someone they don't like committing war crimes and wonder why the rest of the world won't fall into line behind them.

Proved myself a master of SQL optimization by realizing joining on a table of 1 billion rows isn't smart in SQL Server. Always a good sign when my SSMS crashes running a select count(1) on a table.

I dont think that was the message from the video, the bear sex scene is an optional 3 minute Romance outcome which he mentions but that was more about the marketing and global response it created This video for me summarized nicely why BG3 was a success and it includes the following Larian has an established history of making successful CRPG Early access feedback was a huge part of this game and how it was designed and changed CRPG are popular and we seeing a resurgence of interest Larian had the revenue and some private sector funding to adhere to the vision Larian as a company has the right leadership and management I only really disagreed with one thing, why does he keep referring to Disco Elysium as a CRPG? Its more an adventure game surly ?

I definitely consider it an RPG - you create a character, with stats and skills, and all interactions are character driven. Most importantly it revolves around roleplaying - who your memory wiped detective is is a central part of the game. It is light on systems, and doesn't have combat, but what makes RPG an RPG - it has it in spades.

One of us, one of us, one of us...

Sure, but my post was general and separate from and not tied to that video in any way.

No I completed every side quest I could in FO1 and I used companions for battles. There aren't lots of side quests but at least 2-4 in most towns. I also used the Fixed Mod which may have added quests?

I'm only as good as the last thing I checked Stack Overflow was 😛 That could work, going to a colossal pain in the ass to do that, probably batches.

In terms of gameplay I think that Disco Elysium is fine. It's a good move for a game this narrative focused to make the talking and all that the gameplay instead of slapping on some mediocre at best combat between chapters of text, like both of the Torment games, but the downside is that if you aren't hooked by the detective work or aren't very interested in the world you're going to check out. "You can now read the recipe for the Emperor's favourite soup." Finally.

Now it all makes sense.

In preparation for an upcoming medical exam (routine check) I just had to drink half a liter of a solution containing a total of 3 grams of salt (for those of you who cannot into proper measurements, that is a little less than a pint of liquid containg roughly 0.1 oz salt). Needless to say that was utterly disgusting, even with the added mango aroma and included sweetener. Second dose coming up in a couple of hours with even more salt. Yuck.

I played it but I got bored and didnt finish it. I stopped playing when I go to part with people having a party in the tent

Not quite - there are high-level checks (and one of the difficulty options makes them even higher). Also, it is so nice when the team is actually a team and the party members help each other (unlike Larian's game where everyone for themselves).

Playing Wasteland 3 and classic fallout a little. For wasteland I played closer to launch, before the DLC. Decided to play steeltown. bit of a mixed feeling. On the plus side, you get to make lots of decisions on how to deal with the issue. I'm not sure how different it would be with different choices. Seems you can avoid a lot of fights if you choose to cooperate/have appropriate skills. The downside would be the combat. It's fine, but it's so repetitive. All the disruption weapons make the battles very tedious. Low damage but if you get disrupted enough that character can't act for a turn. Every robot deploys endless robo dogs. My assault rifle guy still uses an early game weapon because i just never get assault rifle weapons. Also I much prefer having a main character. Creating a crew makes it less immersive imo. Who am I even? At a certain point you pass every skill check due to sharing skills. For fallout classic, I think its just too dated for me. I have visited every location and I'm level 5. NPCs don't acknowledge other NPCs being dead. Quests like saving tandi seem very anti climactic. I didn't play RPGs back then, so I think it's just hard to go back and play them. Maybe I'm just a hater

AI making AI? How perverse.

I think that BG3's relative simplicity is built into it by the 5e ruleset. If there was a AAA Pathfinder (not Owlcat, because they said they can't balance a game where you can't jack up the numbers by 10+) or PoE 3 (because Sawyer loves his maths) then those would be a lot more complex by design. Imo some of the hard-core aspects of BG3 were the least fun, like weight limits and food. You could play around them without issue but they just added tedium to the game. I want to focus on fighting enemies, not the UI. I love it.

Lovely! On our wedding night, in a lake side resort, a wee mouse got stuck in the garbage can and woke us on our first night. I quietly let it go and hope the owls did not see it suddenly running free

I'm visiting OBS this week - which is most wonderful :). So, Saturday included a run along the beach in Newport. This is always an interesting journey to see the diversity of the sand denizens. From sparkly sequins to electric boarders to those who shine in non-conformity ... kind of reminds me of The Outer Worlds each visit

Interesting. I might give it a shot. I've considered getting one of those "really old fart" not-smart/no-screen/giant numbers mobile phones and the cheapest mobile plan to go with it possible and use that as a registering number, tossing the phone in a box in the garage. But eh. Sidenote: I remember how much I loved it when I bought one of those super long curly landline phone handset cords. 12 feet or more, I think it was. I could walk around my whole room while on the phone for hours with my friends, instead of being stuck by the wall/on a chair. it was amazing!

The summary of this analysis to me is: bear sex = awesome game (which is rather pathetic)

Given how unattached I am to my cell phone, landline is more convenient as I'll leave the phone in a room upstairs and miss calls if they do occur. Land lines used to have the advantage of working through local blackouts but that's gone since we've moved to VOIP.

An interesting analysis of Zaluzhniy’s interview.

No, it's not the phone. No one asks for just a phone number anymore, that's probably worth nothing now. It's the mobile phone. If you recall, I didn't even have one until 2-3 years ago. The one I have is barely touched, it gets nothing but spam (mostly from Kaiser, man they are spammy), and because of that, unless I know hubby may want to call, the volume is always off so I wouldn't hear it anyway. I've gone this long without relying on/giving out a "mobile phone" to anyone re: "shopping"/goods and I'm sticking with that until I die. 😛 Also, they aren't a bank or a hospital. There is zero need for them to require a phone number to deliver some canned goods and soup stock, and that pathetic excuse they gave as the reason is, well, pathetic. I checked regular Amazon Prime, and at least for the moment, there is still no such requirement for "mobile phone" if I try to order something from there. Probably won't be long tho.

Local area code plus 8675309 and if they need a name then give them Jenny. That's what I do.

We finished cleaning out our old house yesterday and gave the keys back to the landlord. There was an awkward moment where he asked us if we were going to clean the fridge. I told him he needs to have a cleaning crew come in. He acted put out. I just ignored it, but I was trying hard not to roll my eyes. We lived there for 5 years, we aren't going to scrub it down for you. He needs to paint it and clean it. We paid his mortgage and took good care of the property, but we are moving on. I'm excited not to have to worry about a landlord anymore. Now it's time to unpack the new place.

Iron Oath is releasing version 1.0. It sounds like a good Battle Brothers type game, so I'm picking it up. It's quite a good price. https://www.gog.com/game/the_iron_oath

Power went out and Jehovah's Witnesses came to our door. Not saying they're related but also can't rule it out. Not my death cult of choice anyways.

I dunno, I think being a white collar worker is a lot scarier to kids than a devil. Well or it should be.

I'll just come out and say that collective punishment, killing civilians/non-combatants, cutting off access food and (clean)water to civilians/non-combatants, cutting off power and internet to civilians/non-combatants, and specifically targeting journalists are horrific things that can't be justified. Call me crazy, but when I see over 3000 children dead in three weeks I can't help but think that's ****ed and needs to stop. When I see certain world leaders at best voicing some mealy mouthed concerns while still supporting (both politically and materially) killing 1000 kids a week I can't help but think the rules based international order applies different rules to different people.

The Talos Principle 2 is ****ing awesome, it just continues to impress. I'm fairly far into the game now. Big ol' goose egg in golden gate puzzles, but that's because I haven't managed to open any golden gates yet. I've played enough of the game to say that unless something goes horribly horribly wrong in the second half of the game, this is a STRONG GotY contender. It's been 16 hours and 23 minutes of awesome and zero hours and zero minutes of less than awesome. It's a puzzle game, so it's not going to appeal to everybody, but as a gateway puzzle game it might work fairly well because the puzzles are really well done and the game is so fantastic looking folks could appreciate it just as a walking simulator. Seriously, they took all the graphics and they crammed them all in here. Well, Croteam did cut some corners, there's no deformation, meaning that when you walk through water you don't make waves and when walking on sand or in snow you don't leave footprints. It's just snow painted solid ground; really really nicely painted, but painted nonetheless. I'm not going to complain about it when the game looks this good (the UE5 games are finally here), but I had to point it out to be fair. There are so many different environments and they're all so big and ridiculously detailed. I mean, they reused trees and some small rock outcroppings and stuff like that, but all these environments are meticulously arranged. The puzzles are equally meticulously designed. I haven't found one I could cheese yet. In the first game, I'm pretty sure I did at least 2 or 3 puzzles not how they were intended to be solved, out of well over 100 puzzles that's not bad; zero so far in TTP2. I've encountered a few puzzles with decent challenge, a few that stumped me for 15 or 20 minutes, one that I slept on and solved the next day (I felt like an idiot because it was so obvious), and there's one Sphinx puzzle I haven't figured out yet. There are various types of puzzles. There are regular puzzles, these are walled off and self-contained. You are provided a set of tools with which to get to the podium at the end. The tools stay within the puzzle's arena, nothing goes in or out, only you can pass through the gate, nothing you are carrying. There are what I call delta puzzles because they have a delta/triangle symbol (I'm sure they have a name, I just never moused over the symbol, I guess?), these are just like regular puzzles, but they are not numbered and signs don't point to them, you need to find them with no guidance. Then there are 3 types of star puzzles: Prometheus, Pandora, and Sphinx. These can be anywhere, they are not walled off in their own rooms, they're just somewhere on the map. Prometheus puzzles are less puzzles and more scavenger hunts. You find his spark and you follow it back to him. It's really just finding the spark, following it is fairly trivial. Pandora puzzles are a receptacle you need to power somehow. Sphinx puzzles, fittingly, are the most riddle like. On the Sphinx monument will be a clue of some sort. It could be numbers, letters, a drawing. You need to figure out what the clue means then use said clue to find something. No clue what golden gate puzzles are like, on account of not having opened a golden gate yet. I can't imagine the amount of work that went into this. How big of a studio is Croteam?

Came to work and did the pre startup check on the tractor. Noticed the wheel nuts on the front right side were all loose, and there was a decent amount of oil coming from the area. Turns out the wheel hub and rims are borked, and there is lubricant all over the brakes. On a more positive note, my ABS warning light has not stayed on after prestart checkup. 👍

The outcomes of the quests and the availability of the options depend on the MC's stats (and RNG, but may RNG checks in dialogues be optional) and there is a small party. There is 1 mandatory combat encounter, but a combat system is not an essential quality of CRPGs. On the other hand, the MC does have a very specific background and a certain scene at the end might come off as completely random, depending on the player. Then again, the same can be said about Planescape: Torment. I don't think that you have played Disco Elysium?

Son was super excited to show up to preschool in his ninja turtle outfit but the teachers were making all the kids take off their costumes. I would have been okay with it if they had said no costumes but they didn't and their objection to them was that some of the teachers are kooky religious types and it offends them. I forgot how wacko some of the people there are. It's the only highly rated bilingual preschool in town or else I'd pull him out and put him in a different preschool. The owner assures us that they don't teach their beliefs to the children but she's got weird opinions on vaccines so not sure I trust her.