LadyCrimson

Bought two Stephen King short-story collections I haven't read before. "If It Bleeds" and "You Like it Darker." I bought one of them because I was wondering if reading The Life of Chuck would make me understand the concept and want to see the movie. It did not. So far they're both more hit and miss for me than his early short-collections. Still decent to read one or two of the stories per sit-down tho - but a reminder why I largely stopped reading King. Loved his 70's/80's stuff, but most of his post-early 90's stuff hasn't been as entertaining. Either that or not edited severely enough or something.

7 Days to Die has released 3.0-experimental build for us to look at. There are 50ish more POI's, probably other changes. The "big" thing however is the game now has about 100 "sandbox" settings/options for players to fiddle with. Maybe half the small things I'd .xml-edit myself are part of those options, meaning less .xml-editing for me. Like, can turn the "heat" feature completely off, or make it so only "normal" level zombies spawn, none of the overtuned sci-fi zombies. While I love having lots of options, 100 of them unfortunately leads me to analysis paralysis. What do I change? Is that the right setting for what I want done? Is 125% ok, or should it be 150%, or 75%. And ofc, bugs. At least you can save presets so once you find a few combos you like, you can just load the preset. I've barely even play-tested it tho, because the amount of change setting, test, change setting, test is overwhelming. It almost makes me just want to leave it "default" and just do the .xml edits I'm already familiar with. Haha. EDIT: when 3.0 goes stable tho, I may save a copy of it. It may be the last version I care to deal with.

Send Help - a Sam Raimi "dark comedy thriller?" Should be right up my alley. --first quarter or third was decent enough, setting stuff up. --the rest fell flat for me. It's not that it's not slickly made (maybe a little too slick), with some of Raimi's camera funworks - and the two leads did more than decent acting, but I couldn't stand EITHER character at all. They were both horrible people (not even "love to hate" types) and maybe that was supposed to be darkly comical but largely I was simply annoyed. The annoyance grew and grew and by 3/4 mark I was over it and I would've killed both them myself if I was on their island. The ending didn't satisfy either. --the cgi boar looked terrible, but that might have been OTP on purpose to be "funny?" I miss Raimi's practical work. Oh well. I was oddly reminded a couple times of the 1989 movie War of the Roses - not in plot/setting but the chr dynamics/antipathy. Except WotRoses was more dark-amusing. ====== Project Hail Mary apparently went to MGM+ first, which I happen to sub to - so I get to rewatch it, in whole or in part, as often as I want for a while. Yay. it's such a feel good movie.

The Eternaut - Netflix ---I tried to like this one. I hear a 2nd season is in the works, which is good because the 1st ends abruptly and apparently covers only half the original decades old story (unread by me). Anyway - too slow burn, too monotone in a way, and the dialogue most of the time didn't keep interest so I became impatient. The end reveals were kind of hilarious but not in a good way. That said, it seems to have generally fair to positive reviews, so as usual, could just be my brain. I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) - about what you'd expect. Was just curious. La Brea - Netflix - first couple episodes are decent enough, kinda fun, but it has 3 seasons and I wonder if it'll hold up or turn into another endless mystery situation. I'll probably watch more.

Yes, gimmie. What's the plot? I don't care. Gimmie.

I watched some of that new Fable long preview video, that focused mostly on npc dialogue/town activities or something. Never played a Fable. Mostly I noticed the graphic art style and some animations reminded me a tad of Hogwart's for some reason. I saw some comments that expressed similar. Maybe it was the clothes and NPC faces.

Went to see Project Hail Mary in a theater in San Fran. Then drove back. Had dinner some random diner on the way back. Quite a drive for a movie, but got me out and I feel a tad better. Hubby's currently unable/unwilling to do anything like that still (back) so I'm going to have to learn to do some activities alone. Which sucks imo. When is that surgeon going to call us.

I am in a mood. Worst case of restless/anxiety (no reason)/"boredom" in a long time. Stimming (hands/fingers, feet/legs) like a mofo all day. It's like Project Hail Mary's Rocky doing jazz hands 24/7. 😎 I need to get out of here, maybe.

I was going to ask how old she's supposed to be, because she looks 14. I don't think it's a baby-face per se, just very young. Except with a mature booty I guess. Just another anime/pixie or similar influenced type I suppose. Edit: just to note, I've known some very petite (very skinny bones) females with such face shapes, but they still looked their age because skin textures. Edit: yes I realize baby-face can mean young looking, but I mean she doesn't look infantile, and I tend to think of baby-face has still having fat in their cheeks. That chr is almost plastic-surgery heart shape.

//Never played original Alien Isolation, sure is rated highly //Maybe I should check it out, it's cheap //*thinks about System Shock 2, Amnesia* Nah, it's not like watching a film - the game stress would probably give me a heart attack. 😍

Still cleaning garbage off of island beaches. There's a bug or something on the 2nd island where every time you reload the save, it respawns a lot of trash - vs. staying gone like on 1st island. You could ignore this and just keep going/doing the minor objectives. My brain won't let me so I have 300k I don't need. But I did complete both islands. Thinking about starting completely over. It's akin to spending a few hours just whacking rocks to mine rocks - except here it's spending a few hours holding down the button on your trash-vacuum to sort/sell, and occasionally doing some task. One has to be in the right mood for such repetitive grind, but apparently I am. Can't wait for the 3rd island to be released. Games like this could use a random map generator too, for endless trash keeping. And no, it's not a great game. Serious review I might give it a 4/10. But I'm the trashcan woman. This beach is clean!

Crimson Desert announced they'll be doing more fiddling - including a little bit re: main story, somehow - through Sept. Meaning I've lost a lot of motivation because of the continued early-access feel. Maybe I'll look at it again in December. :P Saw some mindless sim for $10, Restore Your Island, (there's more than one island/map) and your job is to pick up alllll the garbage/litter. That's it. There's a dog you can rescue to keep you company. Very simple/fast - pick up thousands of pieces of garbage, sell garbage, buy upgrades like stamina, more trash cans, run speed, maybe rescue animals and find a bit of treasure, etc. One time I pet the dog and it gave me a gold bar. Good puppy. Supposedly they'll add a cat as the pet option (ofc I'd prefer a cat, haha), more islands, soon. Would I recommend it - nah. But my sleepy brain kinda likes it. At 1st I thought one had to "buy" stamina refill all the time, but then realized all I had to do was spam sleep in a bed for free. Beach clean up duty, good times. 😁

//google// Ah. I guess by the time I'm 70 I'll be desperately trying to take apart and fix 15+ year parts etc to keep them going. For only gaming (say a few/multiple years from now), I'm still wondering if Steam machine would be good enough for me at this point - I don't even care if it costs $1600, still cheaper than $7-$10k. I have a feeling they won't think it's successful enough ("too expensive") and we'll never see a Steam Machine 2, tho. I mean, they upped the price of next steamdeck recently I think, and ppl having fits over that already.

^ I meant, I don't like putting logins over wifi. Not saying I've never ever (mostly with a few game fora, a few times), but I don't like it. And if we get to the point where everything re: the net wants face-ID, fingerprints, retina scanning or whatever, I'm out. You'll never "hear" from me again.

Besides what Gifted said, in recent times I usually look at the Fling trainer site for simple stuff like that. I used to use some others like wemod but they all started to require register/login etc. Fling (so far) seems to be the place for direct d/l of each individual game trainer, vs. a service app with access to all those trainers in one app. At least, for the moment. EDIT: I mostly use them for temp infinite health/stamina but one-hit kills is pretty standard too. So far the ones I've tried work with no 'net cable to PC, no login etc.

Project Hail Mary - -I wanted to read it because I wanted to maybe know more re: Rocky (as an alien) and the astrophage and such. I was satisfied in that regard. :D -I didn't realize it was 1st person narrative. This makes perfect sense - eg not a complaint of quality or something - but it makes it harder for my "words into visual" brain because I'm always aware that "I" am not the book character and it takes me out a little in fiction novels. Not sure why, really, just is, for me. -The writing style is a little too staccato. Constant shorter sentence structure. I feel like I'm reading "Spot runs up the hill." "Spot sits down and enjoys the view." "Spot runs down the hill." That is ofc an over-exaggeration - but it's another factor that pulls me out of books a little. It's an issue I have with many authors, actually. That said, it is a good novel. Outside of main beats, quite different from the movie ofc - there is humor, but it's not as pronounced as example, and not as vicariously/emotionally affecting perhaps. Generally speaking a good/fast read. Well, fast for me - I started it around 10:30pm and finished around 4am, then went to sleep. :D So taking away my own reading idiosyncrasies, I'd definitely recommend. Oh - re: Rocky/species - even while watching the film, I was vaguely reminded of the non-humanoid lifeforms in Alan Dean Foster's Sentenced to Prism. Not saying the same, absolutely not - but I wonder if PHM's author ever read it. :D I think my main attraction re: the story was Rocky - not just for the cute/funny/emotion but in terms of hypothesizing other possible evolution/structure vs. squishy bipedal human-like. Probably often my fave aspect of many sci-fi novels.

I'm still occasionally getting the logged in/logged out syndrome. Not often/every time. Like today. Repeatedly hitting back/forward and reloading pages is fine/works after a bit. I've had it in both WoT and the Computer Console section. Doesn't bother me a lot personally since I no longer "live" on the fora (haha) - just mentioning it.

I remembered (one reason) why I haven't gone for the digital book buying yet. Needing an app to view it on tablet. eg, more logins. Grumpy old fart who doesn't want to register/login/javascript on tablet/wi-fi etc. I think you can read it through webbrowser via normal Amazon login, but that kinda defeats the purpose of it being portable. Not reading a novel on monitor/TV sitting in my desk chair. Paper it is. Wanted to buy/read Project Hail Mary. EDIT: purchased. Says it should be here later tonight. I'll believe it when I see it, but -- all righty. :D

I'm sure it will - at least to a point. I'm very dubious that will actually = nvidia/pc-gaming hardware market suddenly not being continuously garbage. At least not within the next 15+ years.

Crimson Desert - ok, they're up to 1.08. Based on patch notes, it's getting pretty close to where there's enough QoL and other tiny changes I wouldn't mind having/seeing - in a new playthru. I still want my initial playthru to stay as is but I'm just so slow with it. Not only because game is big, but because I don't play tons of hours per day etc. I don't plan on doing "everything" in 1st playthru (so a 2nd would still have tons of things I've never done/seen yet) but even so, I'm a snail I guess. Hoping to push myself to at least finish the MQ in a week or two, then maybe patch 1.10 is where the chapt. 3 save comes in and that's the one I'll play "forever". :D Also, I did end up buying/installing Space Haven. I haven't launched it yet tho. So I now have a backlog of --- one. Haven't even turned on CD for a few days, just one of those weeks.

Watched Project Hail Mary. It does drag a bit in the middle section, they could've cut 15 minutes here/there from whole film, but Rocky is adorable and there was a lot more humor than I was expecting, which was great. The scenes soundtrack/sound design was great. Somewhere in the middle I was thinking "the humor and main chr. sure reminds me of The Martian, in some ways." Later when I googled, yeah, book, same author, plus same screenwrite adapter. No wonder. :D Not as good as The Martian - especially re: the science-babble - but still good.

This (and other general trend news etc) just confirms for me that whatever super overpriced system I may build in a couple years, is likely going to be the last one I ever build, given my age and grumpiness re: online/AI/"apps", service/subs/own nothing, and all of that. And no I don't think AMD is really any better, company wise, and the Intel Arc hopes seems slim to none by now. It's all going to garbage re: gaming, which is the only reason I ever built major desktops anyway. I mean for general desktop use I personally could still get away with my ancient Win7 desktop PC that sits in a closet. Also - Jensen is an out of touch rich boi tool at this point, who should just stop speaking.

I'm sure no one cares - and there's probably tons of YT videos on the topic - but just reporting that after 6 years (more or less) my LG OLED TV still has zero burn-in or even temp. ghosting issues. Caveat being I use it in an always heavily darkened room so I don't have to compensate for brightly lit spaces. Still wouldn't use one for a constant 24-news/stock ticker or 1 program open 24 hrs for weeks/months, screen, but risk re: general desktop/browser use and daily hours of gaming seems super low. Just put taskbar to out of sight unless hovered over, use a single-color background or screen saver if you want, stuff like that. Dunno why I bring it up - the thought came to my mind and here I am typing it. I'm just like that. :D

Never felt like I would get into Rimworld, but for some reason Space Haven looks appealing. Maybe because it's in space and you're building a spaceship/space encounters/trading etc and that suits me more. The learning curve is probably high tho, which as is often the case these days, I'm no mood for right now - I want it because it's on initial sale but it would break the "don't buy unless you're going to play" rule. It is cheap tho - I could buy it, play it for 15 minutes, then exit/wait six months (they'll probably patch it more anyway). Then I wouldn't be breaking the rule, right. It's apparently been in early access for a long time, but I only noticed it now, with its out-of-ea launch. Anyone here tried it already?

Byrne at 74 - still amazing. And ok, Colbert dancing in the outfit was cute.