LadyCrimson

1998 Legacy 2.5L GT (wagon). I'm not the one who talked to all the mechanics since I know jack. It could be the mechanic meant "bore" in the sense of what I'm seeing in YouTube videos for the HeliCoil kits I just searched for, where they're all using drills at some point for some reason (not to get a broken plug out). Assuming, of course, that I've looked up the right thing, like in this video (he has the block removed for ease of access) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIL-cQLYiow Those kits look like they run anywhere from $20-$50 maybe. I doubt hubby would want to attempt it - he's never worked on a Subaru engine (not enough hand-room, in his large-hands opinion) and he's reached the point where he rarely does engine stuff himself anyway. So I'd guess either the $2700 is a rip off price or maybe it's a quote for removing the entire block to do it vs. doing it while it's still in the car to make keeping "bits" out easier. But where I live, it wouldn't surprise me if at minimum it'd be $600-$1000 regardless, because that's just the way it is here 95% of the time. I'd tell you how much the dealership charged for a tuneup/oil-change etc - that did NOT apparently include changing the spark plugs because they go by mileage and they saw my odometer and didn't change them even tho we told them to - but you'd probably faint. Which is why hubby tried to find someone else to change the spark plugs.

While back hubby found some mechanic to change the sparkplugs in my car, since the dealership is uber-pricey and always too busy. My car started making a rough engine noise after a while. Finally had the dealer at least look at it. Turns out the spark plug ... holders? ... are sorta stripped (that mechanic did it wrong ...) so the plugs aren't staying in place properly. Hubby found one of the wires almost completely off not long ago cause air is pushing/pressuring them off. Anyway, dealer wanted $8k-$10k to fix since they want to replace whole block. Expected, no thanks, car's not worth that much. So hubby found someone else who claims he can bore it out, put in brass inserts that will work. Guy says he's done it before. $3k estimate for that option. My car is very low mileage (40,000ish) but over 21 years old. I'm not sure what I want to do, now. Low mileage and (was) a nothing special but reliable thing, yes but ... is it worth the $3k and do we trust another mechanic, haha? I swear most mechanics don't know how to service Subaru's engine design, here. Maybe I should just get a new-ish car. Not sure I'd like that either tho, don't like most new car designs. Bah. I don't like decisions.

I heard of Wolcen Lords of Mayhem recently, which is going full release on Steam tomorrow. Searching, I see a couple mentioned it here in the past ... over three years ago. It looks like a nice blend of Diablo/Grim Dawn/PoE (with a similar styled but more manageable, smaller passive tree). I was considering buying it now when it's cheaper ($30) (goes up in price on release to maybe $45 I think). But there are some concerns, like length and how long (if ever) for future planned content/polishing, buggy state, etc. Does anyone who has it already have an opinion re: whether one should wait some months and a possible even cheaper sale to buy it, instead?

After I built a new rig I want shiny packaging sometimes. Because it looks great on the 4k TV and is super immersive in a visceral way, and I like having that experience. Problem is, 98% of games that have such shiny packaging aren't games I want to actually play, or don't have an art style/setting I like. Thus I either fire up FFXV for the millionth time or I'm playing an older game I could've played on my ancient previous rig and I wonder why I ...

Hadn't played Path of Exile for maybe a couple years. Sheer boredom had me d/l and install it. Lost a few chr. names for being away so long (not the chrs, just the names) so pfft, I deleted them and some other mid-levels. Made a new chr. so I could figure out any changes to the tree and gems etc. before I use the "forced" reallocation of points on a few past high lvl characters. Still addicted to the Scion class, it's flexibility means it's basically the only class I play, outside of a single Witch as a stronger summon build. Don't care about the end-game stuff much (the maps and whatnot) but it's fun to run through the Acts . The first difficulty is so easy now it's almost sad. I found myself oddly missing Diablo 3's current ability to skip difficulties at whim. But otherwise ... since it's been so long, PoE might entertain me for a few weeks again...my current rig maxes settings at rock solid 140fps at 1440, smooth as butter. Haven't tried it in 4k. EDIT: I just tried it. Oddly it's seemingly still gets 120fps in 4k. First game that's done that.

Dear Path of Exile: stop making cute pets that serve no game function but I idiotically must have them anyway, k thx. (that's been over seven years, not all at once....)

Every game ever is over-rated.

It looks cool, is all.

Is that an upcoming Loki series? Dang it, why is there always this *one* show I want to see on a sub-service but I don't want to sub until there's at least three or five shows. Especially when they're very short seasons. Oh well. Watched Eps. 4 and 5 of The Outsider/HBO. It sort of feels like this should have been an eight episode series instead of ten. I'm still liking it overall but the pacing is so stretched out at times. Despite that, so far it keeps my attention enough that I haven't felt like resorting to any ffwd'ing, but with it being half over, I might start doing so, if it doesn't pick up from glacial to at least snail pace.

Outside of his most obvious famous roles, is it wrong that my fondest memory of him is from Tough Guys? Him and Lancaster - I loved that movie when it came out, cheese and all. And dang he was already old when he made that 34 years ago! RIP ... legendary in everything.

Godzilla 2 via HBO - ... nope, not even for the dumb action. Pikachu movie also via HBO - ... well the yellow guy was cute but, nope. Parasite is available for rent off of Amazon-Prime now. Since it's subtitled I don't have to wait for hubby either. Midnight rental here I come.

Ah, that is more problematic. :D

You could not go. Assuming you really don't want to go. But then I'm someone who chose to have very little to do with almost all of my family more then two decades ago - we're not hostile/they're not bad people or anything, but there were ... reasons ... - so perhaps I'm not the best example.

Surfing through TV last in the wee hours last night, I realized that the 1st episode of Picard is "free to watch" via Fire TV/Amazon, without needing to push the "try CBSNow 1 week/month/dunno for 'free' " button. So I tried to watch it. It put me to sleep before it was half over ... so I guess I'll have to try again later. I was not liking anything about the episode outside of the fact it's always nice to see Stewart. Mostly, I was just bored by it. Also, no offense to Stewart but the sound people need to realize his vocal chords are aged and put the boom mike closer. Or do a better job of sound mixing in the editing. I kept turning the volume up and up because it's so gravelly/hoarse or whatever I couldn't understand him half the time. Either that or it's me and my age. Also saw HBO has a new series called Avenue 5, starring Hugh Laurie. Sort of a "Lost (Cruise ship) in Space." Two episodes watched (there's four currently available). As a comedy it's very uneven. Has that very dry type of humor where chrs. take themselves seriously while yet being almost slapstick, that's supposed to make you laugh. Large cast. Some of them I liked, some of them you just want to toss out a window. I laughed almost never although I did smile several times and there was one Hugh Laurie line/bit referencing his American accent that did make me guffaw. Anyway, comedies are hard, it could find its footing more later. Hugh is a priceless treasure regardless.

Oh no, I have discovered the new (to me) "paintbrush" tool. But I need a bigger wall to write on! Time to build a Great Wall of Scribble that stretches across half the map. Because I can. ...its main purpose is for decoration tho. You can paint different colors/textures that aren't available as building-blocks (the "bookshelves" are paint) onto blocks to hide the ugly (or cure boredom). Sick of concrete or steel grey everywhere because it's the best defensive material? The magic of the wipe-on, wipe-off, then wipe-back-on Magic-Paintbrush has you covered. Forgot to paint the floor...

Nostalgic or frightening? Undecided.

I remember when people at concerts used to just dance/rock out when a song started. Now apparently they all hold up phones to record it. That's not a negative thing, btw. If I was at a concert I'm sure I'd do the same thing, hehe. It's just funny to watch Gorth's video where at the start you can see like half the audience raise their phones. Used to be mostly arms. Then lighters. Then phone screens instead of lighters. Soon we'll have cameras implanted in our eyeballs and then what will places do if they don't want recording devices inside? Ha. At any rate, it's nice to see Billy Idol's still rockin' and enjoying himself.

Mostly 7 Days to Die. I haven't played it for more than an hour or few for almost two years I think, and it's changed so much since then it's been fun to goof off in it again. I tweak the heck out of it to suit my personal tastes since I'm no longer all that into adrenaline-rush tower-defense gamey-ness. So at first I altered skill points gained per level gave myself enough points to max out everything almost instantly, on one save, to see what all the perk/skill changes were like/what I'd want to focus on. Then started a new save and have been sneaking around on relatively easy settings, to figure out where and how I want to build a base. Turtle-ing underground in a giant dug out cavern is no longer all that effective (not a bad thing) because zombies now dig downwards and have magic sensing AI. Besides, what with all the new electricity, turret and trap defenses I have ideas for a huge cliffside fortress. Problem is finding the right spot for what I have in mind and the dozens of hours it'd probably take to build one (without using Creative, anyway).

...wanted her op'd air-dancing sword so I had to farm her a few times.

Water and tea. Apparently one gets very hungry and thirsty in survival games. Must be from carrying 200,000 pounds of stuff in your backpack.

I'm not sure how interested I am myself, but if you like "Diablo-styled" arpg's, Torchlight Frontiers, the planned online/mmo focused is now instead Torchlight 3, the not really mmo/offline available. https://www.gamespot.com/articles/torchlight-frontiers-is-now-torchlight-3-coming-to/1100-6473080/

I finally tried 7 Days to Die's current Alpha (18.3). Visually it keeps improving. Won't win any modern-graphic awards, but for an 100% all voxel game, the lighting, fog/rain/snow, textures, object, etc. are huge improvement vs. when I started in A10. More importantly, I think the gameplay has finally improved. Overall more stressful/harder than before, but with tons of options (including mods) you can still make it as easy/casual or as crazy-hard as you want. Me, I still mostly treat it as a survivor/exploration sim vs. tower-zombie-defense. Those distant mountains? (that you can reach, climb/explore and flatten to the ground if you want, they're not just scenery) - They used to still show voxel stacking patterns, like below. That all said, the random world generator takes forever to render/compile a fresh map seed. Loading the save later is fine, but the original in-game creation time can be 15-25 minutes. It's nuts. Spawning new maps/games just to test things is now a chore. Ah well. Nothing's perfect. Another couple years and they might be in Beta. HA.

Code 8, rental. I read it started as a short, kickstarted to 2 million movie. It's a kind of weird combo of district9 pathos, xmen mutant concept, couple other things. The "superpower" aspect is pretty low key, no mega superhero stuff. It's fairly derivative and takes itself a bit too seriously (a bit of wry humor here and there would've helped) but first half was decent. Second half kind of fell apart/felt rushed/holes. So first half, a B. Second half, C.

I'm not sure I could go Linux system with gaming. For other things maybe. This evening: I'm hungry for take-out. Call Chinese food place. Busy, on hold 5 minutes. Hangs up spontaneously. Try again. Same. Forget it. Call BBQ. Get voice mail is full auto message (on vacation or perm-closed who knows). Call pizza place. Ordered. Finally. Now I want a movie to watch.... is Parasite the film rentable yet? No. Terminator Dark Fate? No. Sigh....

Oh, well don't I now feel stupid. Or "old-brained", if you get my drift.