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I've been taking the train to work regularly, and I can't believe I didn't start doing it earlier. With our recent home purchase and move, my 45 minute drive to work became more like an hour, so I knew I needed an alternative. The great thing is I leave for the train about the same time I'd need to leave in my car, and I only get home about 30 minutes later. I jump on my bike in the morning at about 6:15 AM and ride 2 miles to the train station. It's downhill and so I can cover it super fast. Train rolls out at 6:29. Then it gets to my stop around 7:14 AM (It covers about 40 miles and there are only 4 stops on the way.) I then jump on my bike and ride about 9 miles to work. It's a bit slow going with the traffic lights, but I still get it done in about 35-40 minutes and make it before my 8 AM first period of the day. In the afternoon I have a fair amount of extra time to get to the train before it heads home, so it's not nearly as rushed. The train itself is pretty nice and even has a bathroom. It's never crowded where I get on (apparently it gets busier as they get closer to San Francisco. I'm surprised more people don't do this, as the car traffic is terrible where I live. That being said, there have been some delays and stopped trains. It sounds like everything runs smoothly 90% of the time, which is good, but not great. I can see why being late once every two weeks could be an issues for people. That being said, yay for trains and bikes and boo to cars.

During this visit to OBS got play a bit of a Mystary project ... so good. I think all will indeed be pleased! Also got to be reminded what 20 years with the community and OBS has seen artistically! Finally, Extra Life is this coming week ... super excited to be part of one of the sessions. Will post about that too!

Reading the daily vehicle inspection sheets that we fill out is like something out of funny youtube "customer states" videos. "Battery is bad, tractor is hard to start" (After a weekend) Next shift when I perform my inspection "Cabin light was left on" "Rear trailer hitch refuses to work properly" Me; "Cut-off valve for rear hitch controls opened all the way, rear hitch has been smashed repeatedly and now needs replacing." "Cigarette lighter socket doesn't work" "Disconnected cabin heater from cigarette lighter socket and changed the burnt out fuse"

Mystary… mystary is good

And now an update about the 9th Extra Life Stream 9th Annual Extra Life Marathon Stream - Obsidian Forum Community

It was the other way around for me. I was taken aback by the Trickster being really mean at first but grew kinda fond to its evil ways with time, whereas Azata's lolrandom My Little Pony ways made me enough to drop the playthrough in Act V. Out of others, Angel seems to be "The One True Way" (though I haven't finished it yet), Demon is laughable edgelord who uses phrase "Assert dominance" seriously and is angry all the time like a hormonal teenager, Legend is good for flipping Areelu off, Aeon has a powerful ending but everything that leads to it is meh, Swarm...hm...I actually had a lot of fun eating everything although it does not compare to that DLC of Dragon Age where you're a darkspawn killing your main game's party, and Lich...Lich is love.

Supreme Court attempts to address ethics concerns with new code of conduct but leaves many questions unanswered Though I prefer the Fox News headline, Supreme Court adopts modified ethics code after pressure from Hill Dems.

Back from vacations Cleared two more bosses in the third floor of the Ex Dungeon. Boy-oh-boy, the difficulty spiked up after the second floor. I got nearly wiped out few times by the thrash mobs, but I am slowly leveling up and getting more powerful. The first boss (Bloodthirsty Fiend) was crazy hard, and I was fighting him for more than half an hour, and used up almost all of the Fresh Sages I had to control my healers most of the time, to overheal his damage to my party. The next boss (Transmogrified Alma) was a pushover and all I needed to do, was to fill up my "limit" gauge and use the ultimate move with Emerson on 200%... I got my first Moonstone as well, and now I am thinking what kind of weapon should I synthesize with it. Probably weapon for Emerson, as I have found out, that he is sometimes very useful in fights against the bosses to control, and he can deal that way enormous damage, if he can stay alive. And I have a chance to get the best weapon for MC from the next boss. We'll see

That's true but they were also some of my very first RPGs along with the original Fallout games, I mean, BG2 and ToB anyway. I still haven't completed BG1. That said, Icewind Dale 2 was my favorite of the IE games when it came to mechanics. I'm not big into TTPRGs (because I had no friends that were into it and probably no tables that were into it either) but I liked the games that were based on D&D 3.5 the most and why I really enjoy OwlCat's Pathfinder games.... and even with those my game is heavily modded with tons of additional options. I also recognize that my affinity for "spreadsheet games," as my wife likes to call them, makes my preferences less mainstream and accessible. Unfortunately, I like what I like so I'm left with slim pickings.

This holy detonation DLC final boss for wasteland 3, reminds me why i always play on normal... like 99% of the time I'm fine with harder difficulties... but then a boss like this comes around... good God is it painful.

It is possible to keep them alive, though I do not remember how I did it exactly, beyond just leaving the follower at the areas' entrances/hidden. (Checked the screenshots, the NPC was alive at the end. A small spoiler for one of the endings).

Pizza! That is all.

Well, not really, that is what you did today/yesterday

I'd have thought Alan Wake 2 would have been bigger. I guess being stuck on Epic cut out the legs. I guess this is more fuel for the eternal PoE sales debates. I think more important to me than how Deadfire did is that Sawyer wants to do a hogwild PoE3. Microsoft, let him cook. This man will make a game where you need to have a PhD in math to understand half of it and an expert knowledge of the occult to understand the other half. It will be glorious.

At OBS ending the first day of this annual visit. Got to see some of the new digs (aka renos) and hearing about some of those geeky things that make OBS such an amazing set of storytellers ... In the meantime, a few collages of some of the wall art for your geeky goodness ...

speaking o' ease o' storage, am having a vulgar quantity o' pots, pans, knives, kitchen gadgets and utensils. so instead o' getting rid o' the stuff we hardly ever use, we bought a couple o' these: we figured if julia child organized her kitchen with a peg board, it wouldn't be gauche for us to do likewise. am reasonably certain we failed to maintain kitchen class and dignity by adding the boards, but we did have enough additional room for a carbon steel pan we were ogling. we shouldn't need a collapsible microwave cover to save space, but we do. we will observe the peg boards are convenient particular now that our knee is shot and we got trouble squatting, kneeling and the like. HA! Good Fun!

It's always a marvel to watch films where the filmmakers have actual ideas and put in the effort to flesh out and develop its characters, who are so much more than just your average copy-and-paste cardboard cutout impressions like so many others make, so that they can tell those ideas in a manner that is real and impactful. Even the father character, who by all rights I should hate...I don't, because there are reasons, both explicit and implied, that kind of help explain why he is the way he is, and you have Chie being constantly let down and frustrated and embarrassed by him, but still trying to care for him, trying to help him along in the little ways that she can because she is both clever and loving in her own ways, and so you have what would almost always be just a cheap and annoying character pretty much anywhere else take on depth and even a kind of sympathetic quality. I sometimes forget that it is possible for filmmakers to accomplish this kind of thing (even with animated films over 40 years old set in a time, place, and culture so different from my own!) - probably thanks to the endless deluge of films that don't really try because they expend their run-time on things that are apparently much more important than the foundation that is organically telling your story through your characters, right up until I experience a film like this again. Takahata was somehow consistently able to accomplish this feat, particularly in the films that he wrote or helped write himself...and I can't help but notice that the one film of his that I didn't much like, he has no writing credit for. Of course, I am hugely biased in that I prefer my plots, characters, and themes to be written in a very particular manner...but man, when I look at how Takahata told his stories compared to something like Utena, it feels like a child must have been at the helm of the latter for it to have been the way that it was.

I'm trying to get into it again but it's just not crunchy enough to keep me engaged.

Frank Borman