LadyCrimson

I remember buying that ages ago, mostly because screenshots and descriptions reminded me a tad of Might and Magic's. I recall emerging from some tutorial area, walking forward into some forest for a bit and being trounced by some mobster mobs. Then for some reason I never went back to it. I meant to, but...hm. Another disc I should pull out.

I love Benedict Cumberbatch and I still largely snoozed through Dr. Strange. I mean it was fitfully amusing here and there but... I'm not tired of superheroes. I'm tired of "Marvelverse." Haven't seen most of the more recent ones, gave infinity War a chance, meh. I'm also tired of all-CGI-fest and almost no dialogue (outside of one-liners and a couple dramatic short "speeches" or whatever). They're starting to remind me of Transformers in the sense all sound and fury and not much else. And no, purple-face going on about for some seconds with a sad-face doesn't make me think he's deep. ID4 probably had more actual dialogue and that's saying something. I was watching some of those low-budget, disaster mini-series/movies with a couple semi-famous ppl in them, from the early 2000's (back when SyFy and others made a ton of those) and as bad as some of them are, I actually found a few of them more interesting than most current big-budget actions of today because ... dialogue. Then again, I'm just a grouse these days so.

I don't have a lot of RL stuff to do(just a boring job from 8 to 16 o clock) but even I lack the motivation to play games like I did some 10 years ago when I was 25. Part of it also has to do with the fact that I have played and finished about 300+ games on various platforms and after such a long time, you do get the feeling of 'I have seen/played this before'. Still, there are games that I am curious about, I am just not sure if I will ever get to play them. This is so me. Indie, big budget, doesn't matter. I think in my case - especially since I have a pretty obsessive nature - my desire to commit to devoting a long period (even tho I have time) to master new rules/mechanics or make constant micro-decisions (that item, this item? this perk, that perk?), has dwindled, and the "seen that, been there" doesn't help. Even if it's a game I'd like to check out/play, more and more I'm likely to instead just go back to an already familiar game (or a very simplistic/short game) where I won't care if I wake up the next morning/next week suddenly not wanting to game at all for weeks or months (meaning if I returned to the game then, I'd likely feel like I have to start all over....).

I'm tired of buying compressed air cans (for initial further-distance bursts) and then squeezing rubber air-bulbs until my hands ache (for closeup/detailed air dusting). Time to try one of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00VAYIWSM/ ...it's cheap enough. If its air movement capability sucks, no big loss. Edit: oh, and you know how most people on gaming forums have "game backlogs?" I've never had one of those. But these days I do have "streaming video" backlogs. I must have 100+ things in my Netflix watchlist, 60 in Amazon's, more on other sites. Why do I keep adding when I know I'll never bother watching them...at least it costs me zero to add to them.

A long time ago I tried watching How to Train Your Dragon: Riders of Berk, a TV series. I couldn't get into it at all - to me didn't feel much like the films - altho I probably only watched 3 or 4 episodes so it may have become better later. Apparently after CartoonNetwork gave up broadcasting it (2 seasons/40 total episodes, kids are 15ish), Netflix took it over (6 seasons/13 each/complete, kids are 18ish) and it was renamed Race to the Edge. So I decided to give it a go again, but starting from season 3. It's much better (imo), feeling more like the films except it focuses on the kids and their Dragon Rider organization set against those that would hunt/profit/kill dragons (it's set before the 2nd movie). There's a central baddie, Hiccup's dad and a few other adults show up now and then, etc. Animation is good. Less attention to background details but the chrs. and dragons are animated quite well. Marathoned season 3 and 4. The rather otp comedy sequences (those twins...) goes on a little too long at times perhaps but it's punctuated with moments of more serious themes like the films do. I occasionally ffwd in 10 second increments but not too much. Thumbs up overall. And ... there's plenty of Hiccup/Toothless moments.

My mom liked to sew. So I grew up learning all that stuff, dragged to sewing shops, buying patterns, all of that. Sewed my own costumes for Halloween a few years, knew all these little "tricks," would do my own pants hemming, made cat sleeping pillows, the like. I've never owned my own sewing machine however (I mostly hand-sewed things after I moved out of parents) and my life has had little need for sewing so I haven't bothered to maintain. But I can still sew a button, correct poor seams from cheap clothing and mend tears better than my husband.

Is your old rig actually about to break or do you just feel like you want a new one now? There's always a reason to wait on hardware etc. to the point where if you keep waiting, you may find you never buy, haha. Take it from someone who's been considering building a new rig for maybe 4 years and still hasn't done it. I definitely know the feeling of being out of the loop (not to mention "too old for this ****" and no idea what direction to turn. The last time I/hubby priced out a new rig (Win10 one, intended for more 4k gaming but not in a super-picky way) a few months ago I was in the realm of $3000 and that didn't include new monitors. I was going for the intel 9600 I think it was, and an RTX 2080ti, w/32 RAM, 1TB SSD and a couple internal storage HDD's, a case, etc. I'm very (probably irrationally, but there it is) stuck on intel and nvidia tho. By the time I think about it again in 3-6 months, there'll probably be a new cpu or something. Pfffft.

Me: "Hm, haven't tried Path of Exile for a while, maybe I'll check it out today." **Run client** **Checking Resources 'client bar'** ...15 minutes later... **Allocating Space 'client bar'** ...10 minutes later, that bar isn't even 1/3 full... "I'll check their website while I'm waiting." **There now seems to be a "Cloudflare" captcha intro page that isn't working for me and won't let me into their actual website to check news or anything.** **Client still Allocating Space** Me: F this noise. **goes back to Diablo1**

I've been the same way for a while now. It's not that I think their shows are low quality, they just have not captured my personal interest enough for me to get past a few episodes. I really only super-loved the first season of Rome - 1st season of GoT was all right too, stopped watching not long after. Showtime shows, the same. Which is why I didn't mind giving up cableTV sub.

Everything I've read about it was around a year or so old and indicated you couldn't separate the new gameplay features from the HD. Could've changed tho, ofc. This has made me curious however so I found this mod: https://github.com/qndel/Infernity (zipfile download link is in the description stuff below the file name table) It has a HD resolution picker, run in town (and in dungeon if you want, when not in combat), 4 tabs of inventory, other stuff. Some options you can (supposedly) turn on/off via a config file it includes. No gameplay changes except for a new/hard difficulty that has items with a 3rd stat and maybe other things (saves from being in that mode are then not non-mod/lower difficulty compatible), which I'm not clear if it adds it or replaces the original Hell difficulty. So far I've found two caveats (on Win7-64/my rig anyway) - when I exit, the game closes but the infernity.exe you use to run the game (it's put into the Diablo install directory) doesn't close and I have to Task Manager/End Process to make it do so. Also, if you want HD but don't want wide "widescreen" the mod settings don't stick and I have to change them again. Not sure, felt wonky. If you want widescreen tho it seems to work ok? But everything gets really tiny tho, chr, enemies, etc, not sure I like that. I have to fiddle/play with it more. (clickable thumbnails)

Never heard of that before. Looked it up. The HD part I'd like but eh, I don't like total rework mods myself, although it looks good, just not to my taste. I saw posts from 2016 that said it worked fine, no clue tho. I remember playing Hellfire (still have that disc too) but it had zero of the original games appeal - eg I just like the base original game. Except Hellfire's fast walking in town was nice. Although, I've noticed on my current rig that the walking in town doesn't feel all that slow anymore vs. on the ancient pc's. Heh. I force it via gpu to play in 4:3-ish at around 1400x1050 resolution (doesn't change my actual desktop res that way and game fills the screen vertically) so it's not widescreen stretched out (which isn't that awesome w/original disc) when I play. Looks ok that way.

doubleposting, I know, I'm evil : After much hunting through several boxes and "disc holding folders" I found my D1 disc (such is why I'll never build a PC without at least a cheap CD player in it). Fired it up - what's with all the wonky colors. Oh yeah, on Windows7/later you had to use a plain color (like black) desktop + have the windows Resolution setting window open/active while you play, to make that go away. What a strange fix. At any rate ... it now looks perfect and I'm about to enter the dungeon to the strains of that awesome original music. Glancing through those discs, there's a bunch of other old ones I should play again, too.

Interesting. I'd checked on Mon. or Tues via PS4 and Amazon's FireTV unit. Black Panther was no longer in my Watchlist and search for Avengers didn't show it. I fired up Netflix via PC browser and they're there. Interesting. (edit - I'd read articles that such were disappearing soon at any rate, I guess it's happening faster on non-pc methods?)

After deciding I was done with D3/console, I learned Jan. was when they did some D1-old Tristram event. Looked it up and had to run it. It's a set of dungeon levels made to kind of resemble the first game - desaturated colors, pixely, D1 dungeon quests and items as novelty low level drops (Ring of Truth, Veil of Steel, Arkaine's Valor armor, staff of Apocalypse etc). It was quite amusing when you've never done it before. Best thing about it was the Butcher cosmetic pet you get for completing it with a new character, and the fact they made your chr. walk in that stiff-shouldered/leg way of D1 - although they didn't force you to walk at a snail's pace, alas. It basically made me want to play the story-quest version of D1 again (I usually played the MP version of D1, that didn't have the quests). I have it installed somewhere, I think I'll fire it up today. Edit: first I have to find my D1 disc...discs, how quaint)

"TV" related maybe - guess I missed my chance to see Avengers via Netflix with their Disney relationship over. And The Black Panther, although I had little interest in that one. I could rent it via Amazon but eh. And...I will agree that 80's music makes for great soundtracks! Some 70's music, too.

@Hurlshot - I would generally go for option 1 as well. But if that just feels like an absolute no option to the others, then... ...to me it would depend on several things: how much does your mother in law drive outside of driving the kids around, will she feel too "trapped" without it (could she drive the truck, for example?), how old is she (is she getting closer and closer to where she may not be able to drive safely - my mom had her license probably 2 years too long, she scared me at times, hah), are you sure the truck won't become a "money pit" where it seems like it just needs a few major repairs but every year it needs some more, vs. trying to pay the loan off as fast as possible to save interest, etc. Tough decision tho, no matter which, especially if money is super tight.

For freebies, last I knew, Audacity, noise reduction feature. It likely won't be perfect (too much can make the other sounds wonky) but it may reduce it enough for you to tolerate it. I haven't fiddled with that stuff very much tho, so I'm not an expert. The general concept is to extract the audio from the video as a .wav, you have to find a short example of just the noise (a segment without any of the actual game noises in it) so Audacity has a reference point to run an auto filter. Or you can just try to manually choose some settings. When you're done, put the audiotrack back/replace the original track via a video editor. There's probably tutorials on YouTube or other, somewhere. Through my "pc speakers" your video isn't that bad - eg the game noises can be easily heard at a lower volume setting where the white noise feedback sound isn't really that audible. But I'd guess headphones is where it's very noticeable even at low volumes.

You know your laziness meter has reached a peak when you realize you've put the X key where the C key should be and vice versa, and you can't be bothered to pop them off again to "fix" it. I know what keys they're supposed to be, what's it matter, right? It's a chilly, partly cloudy but still rather lovely day. Put on a sweatshirt, took a walk, did a little yardwork. Hubby's tomato plants are still going, which is surprising, I thought they'd be dead by now. We keep thinking about removing half the lawn and installing more rows of gardening spots and maybe a small greenhouse. Tomatoes, cabbages, peppers, beans, who knows what else. I picture myself sitting in the greenhouse in winter while it's raining, drinking hot chocolate.

So, Biomutant is supposed to come out some point this year, right? From the looks of it, I need this game. Hurry up.

Yeah, I'm not hating on it either. I do think, vs. the original release, they've made D3 more casual fun in certain ways and I can see the broader appeal in that sense. But it's like after the many original release complaints they went so far in the opposite direction it's become overly generic with some MMO-ishness on top, heh. I did like having a mini-cow for a cosmetic pet, tho. That was pretty funny. I also was in a Greater Rift that had a "Ghost of Cow King" encounter and every enemy was a cow. Nowhere near as charming/funny as D2's cow level and all the "moomoo,moomoommoo" but a nice callback.

One day I may reinstall TW3 and try and get farther than an hour past the intro. I was still occasionally having "casual fun" with light/short sessions of Diablo3 on console, farming those Greater Rifts to see if I can find any slightly better gear (I'm not using any uber-build-guide builds, doing my own thing). Until the 2nd ring of a 2-ring Set dropped. I put it on and the Set bonus increased my (and my necro pets) damage about 1000%. Critical hit numbers are hundreds of millions. For two pieces of gear vs. the more typical 3-5 for a Set. So now I'm blowing through Torment10-13 like butter, where Legendaries drop 2-5 every single map level and you just destroy them for materials. I sense total imbalance. Not that 2018 Diablo3 is balanced to begin with but whatever. Anyway, no (gameplay) reason to item hunt much more really (collector-wise already have most of what I cared about), so bored of that. Old Diablo games lasted me years hunting for elusive unique rng items. 2018-D3 is like ... a month? bwhaha. What to do now, what to do....

I had no patience to go over the many "paths" except where forced to when I picked a dead-end one I guess, but the underlying story was ok. I liked the dark humor of the chr. commenting how he wasn't in control etc. As a novelty it's kind of cool I suppose, but not sure I'd want films to become live-action virtual novels very often.

Korean styled bulgogi over rice. Yup, I will always love my marinated beef dishes. ...went to CostCo and they had a package of smaller size premade naan bread. I utterly love that stuff/brand toasted with a little butter. Froze half, the other half one piece at a time in the morning all last week along with a bosc pear (also Costco bought). Yum.

My condolences as well, Hurlshot. And I don't think that your plan for his ashes sounds silly at all. It sounds inspired and appropriate.

I swear, the last couple years it's been like this (every month): ComcastTV: "You didn't pay enough last month, you owe us more money this month." Me: "Fine." **tosses them a bunch of money** ComcastTV: "You were short last month, you owe us more money/you're late." Me: "--cusswords--" **tosses them more money** Finally: Us: "Cable box broke, we never use it anyway, finally time to cancel." ComcastTV: "Are you sure, we'll miss you." Us: "Yes." ComcastTV: (week later by mail) "You paid us too much money, we owe you $273, check's in the mail." :disguise: