LadyCrimson

I was more into Shaun Cassidy. Hardy Boys forever! RIP to David, the older brother.

Ditto. No turkey for us, per usual. Too much food for 2 ppl and a cat (not that the cat would mind). I had wonton w/extra pork slices soup, kimchi/rice, and some ice cream for lunch, however.

Checked Netflix this evening which I haven't in a while, and there was all kinds of "recently added" I wanted to watch. Including the S. Korean film Prison, but that's another night. There was this 20 minute long animated short called Golden Time, however, where the picture still for it intrigued me. My style of animation. Directed by Takuya Inaba, 2014 I think (not really clear on that...). I'd never seen it before. "In the 1980s, a recently discarded television set from the 1960s refuses to accept its fate and tries to break out of the junkyard." It was wonderful. No dialogue at all. Sad and sweet.

There are some slight performance reasons for the Pro but it didn't sound like in action it would make a major difference for most users for that alone. But I suppose that depends how picky you are. Slight is a big understatement in terms of performance. I mean, that's not saying it's worth it to get for less than a 4k TV, but you make it sound like a pallid shade of what it actually is. Well, I'm not saying there's zero difference. Like I said, depends how picky you are. I don't own one, obviously, so it's all what I've heard/read from those that have both or review articles. --certain types of loading and processing will be faster, which makes a difference in something like timed-quest/leaderboard things (ppl in FFXV were pretty salty about that re: unfair advantages on leaderboards, even with no SSD, since they didn't have separate Pro/non-Pro ladders), or like you said, heavy action or MP gaming. But isn't something I'd notice with the type of gaming I generally do. Maybe occasionally in super busy combat moments I'd notice that difference. --certain graphics will look better, like maybe lower/middling settings vs. high settings? Lighting effects, some textures, that sort of thing? Fair enough. I tend to just buy what I need at the time and if needs change I buy something new. Not everyone's like that tho. Don't get me wrong, I was tempted to get the Pro last year, just couldn't justify it for me quite yet. :D And yeah, we were looking at the OLED tv's in the store the other day. Some of them look very nice, at least with the demo vids they play in the store. Although I have a feeling Comcast's cableTV broadcasts (that become more and more compressed around here from overselling their bandwidth) wouldn't look quite as spectacular. HaHa.

Since Cat Quest (PS4 version) is the only game I bought this year I guess for me it's ... Cat Quest? Meow. I mean I did play the FF-XV DLC's but I paid for those last year via season pass + they're not full games.

Loved FF-XV? More importantly, did you adore all those lovingly rendered food images? Wish you could cook those yourself? Well now you can, thanks to this game-fan recreating all of them and sharing how they were made. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u6BtakpOV3kLsR16TeedOHBNfl2uUSSg/view If you don't have a .pdf reader in your browser, this article has a bit: https://mothership.sg/2017/11/final-fantasy-xv-hong-kong-fan-recreated-all-100-recipes-from-the-game/ Now that's fandom. Also, I'm hungry.

^ I remember reading the book (and liking it a lot) when I was a kid, but that was maybe 35-40 years ago and I barely remember it now. It'll be interesting to watch it this way ... where I'm familiar with the concept but don't remember enough to have a lot of notions about what a filmed version "should" be.

I've seen: 12 years a Slave - good movie but I barely remember him in it. I know the role he plays but I mean he sorta disappeared from my memory after, vs. other performers. Centurion - I saw this one before I knew who he was. I enjoyed it as a weird action film and I recall I thought he was adequate for the role, but ofc not exactly an Oscar-nom type of role, heh The Counselor - Bored. Steve Jobs - My main thought was "Sure is a lot better than that horrid Ashton Kutcher film." He was decent in the role but I could feel him "trying" to be Jobs and I dunno, it just fell flat for me. Some of this however could be that I'm really not all that into the whole Job's mythology so... Assassins Creed movie - I turned it off after 20 minutes. Anyway, I'm in no way saying he's terrible in other roles. He just kind of becomes invisible/doesn't stand out enough for me to form a big, lastingimpression most of the time, for some reason.

There are some slight performance reasons for the Pro but it didn't sound like in action it would make a major difference for most users for that alone. But I suppose that depends how picky you are.

Me: "Tired of corded headphones, but everything for sale seems to be BluTooth now and my PC isn't." Hubby: "There's USB Bluetooth adapters." Me: "Oh really? Can you show/tell me what to buy?" Hubby: "I have a bunch from work+cheap headphones you can use to test with until you find ones you prefer." Next morning: Still plastic-box-wrapped USB thingie/headphones tossed on the kitchen table. I swear half the time it's like he's a magician pulling freebie doodads out of his hat.

Went to the pet store to buy a ginormous bag o' cat litter, came home with a new sound bar w/blutooth woofer for the TV. Because BestBuy is next door to the pet store. Our 6 year old soundbar had no woofer, the remote was barely working, and it often makes an annoying transformer-hum sound if the volume is too loud so it was time. I also looked at Samsung 8" tablets, the high-res ones look good image wise but $400-$500? I'll stick to the slight crack in the screen Galaxy5 freebie phone hubby tossed me as my home-wi-fi tablet. Sometimes it feels like the older I get, despite having more and more $$, the cheaper I get regarding "tech-toys." Except a desktop PC. I'll still go quite far out for one of those.

I take it those wanting the PS4 Pro have recently gotten 4k TV's or already had one? I considered getting one instead of the Slim (at the time, here, it was another $100 I think?) but since I have no 4k TV-tech it seemed pointless. In another year or three if I have 4k then, I'll get a new console. If I'm still using a console for anything but FF-XV and Cat Quest, anyway. The regular ol' PS4 has worked fine for me overall. I have been very tempted to toss a SSD in it (the Pro doesn't have SSD either, btw), with more storage space too (500GB isn't much when PS4 games are sooooooo space hoggish and the needing a ton of GB free just for some game installers to even work). Loading times that are 15-20 seconds instead of 45 seconds would be, well, a lot less hair-pulling. But eh.

On the topic of actors: I definitely like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Cillian Murphy, altho the latter tends to be in productions that I don't find all that entertaining to watch. I tried Peaky Blinders once a long time ago (it was on Netflix, not sure if it still is) and while it's good quality, just not my thing. I might try it again one day. I couldn't get into Ryan Gosling at all. I don't dislike him but he leaves me cold or just kinda bores me and at this point if he's a main lead I lose a lot of interest in a project. Fassbender is, imo, great in the Alien prequels and I liked him in Xmen but other roles have fallen flat. Not sure if it's the projects or if he just has a rather limited range of what he's good with and that fits him. J.K. Simmons is one of my fave older actors. He's amazing. There's a lot of (what to me is) new generation actors where I've become used to their faces and I like in specific movies, but most of the actors that would be on fave lists for me, at this stage, are Korean, both film and drama.

Not a bug expert and don't know about Fiji itself, but last I knew there were none in the Hawaiian islands - although I think they tried to introduce some once, no idea how that went. Maybe they don't tend to like areas that are year round tropical? Like the island in Korea that has a lot of them and most of the US areas will still have chilly winter temps. I dunno tho.

I'm about 25 hours into Comrades (FF-XV Multiplayer-DLC). If you don't have PS-Plus or just don't want to play with real people, can be played solo with AI team members. While there are goals and missions, this is a team-match up mission style, just sandwiched by a solo "town-base" environment. The first 10 hours is a lackluster impression combined with complete aggravation towards way too many loading screens to get into and out of the actual combat scenarios that you need to do/grind to gain currency to spend on opening up the map-node progression+to farm items and the like. Once you get used to resign yourself to the loading screen-spam and manage to upgrade weapons for higher level/harder combats, it becomes more fun. All rather simplistic/shallow and very grindy, and the advertised "story" aspect is also minimal, but since I liked the simple but engaging combat in FF-XV, having more of it is ok with me. They changed aspects/control of combat just enough to make it newish-to-learn. No potions/pots of any kind, either, for example. The AI players aren't bad/rarely die so completely doable using only them. Not something you're going to want to play hours and hours a day but working at it a bit each day is a nice pace for me. Anyway - if I gave FF-XV main game close to a 9/10, I'd give Comrades something like 6/10 just for more fun combat and the weapon upgrade system as motivation. It's not going to be everyone's bag, but if you can push past the loading screen waits, it's some fun. If they continue to add to it, it could get better, too. Gladio DLC was more like 3.5/10, for me, and Prompto DLC was maybe 5/10. Ignis DLC better be at least a 7/10. Heehee.

See the little imp in the gold pot? Apparently in FF-XV Comrades, it shows up randomly (and rarely) during the hunt missions, where it moves around the playing field among the enemies. A text message pops up at mission start and a few others times, plus a cackling laugh, to let you know. If you manage to see/chase/tag it (not always easy when also trying to stay alive), you get a reward. It's hilarious. First time I had no idea what was going on/what the text prompts meant.... Also, more of my chr. I keep changing her clothes, ditched the tank-look for a fancy t-shirt already.

Addendum: I often think, in some cultures/societies, sex appeal gets somewhat mixed up with masculinity/femininity. Being physically appealing (symmetrical beauty, signs of good health etc) as an early potential mate attractant and the long term social/personality behavior that most think makes a "good human being" or "long-term mate" (which same things can apply to either gender) are, imo, generally separate things, altho they do bounce off and around each other.

You know I think you're wrong here. I hear a lot of men discussing their computers, smart phones, tablets, apps, etc in much the same tones you or I might have discussed our cars in back in the '80s! I don't know what Gfted1 was referring to, but when I see a statement like that I don't think of computer-y tech. I think of things like very reliable birth control, medical care that prevents a lot of childbirth-deaths (and is better at preventing death in general), culture that doesn't feel/have a need to have 6+ children to help work the farm/hunt-gather/earn money, food preservation/distribution, relatively safe housing, things like washing machines that save physical labor time-spent so ppl can focus more on other things, and so on. In terms of "masculinity" - maybe because I'm a woman - everything I can think of, that is not just a consideration of actual biological/physical differences or outward fashion choices, would also apply (ideally) to women. eg, decisions and actions based more on rationality/objectivity vs. an utter lack of impulse/emotional restraint, independent/confident, responsible (both to others and in terms of contributing to "providing"), has follow-through, so on. Everything else (hunter/provider, strength/defense/courage, more defined gender roles etc) is more directly related to if/when societies didn't have those modern tech aspects. "Toxic" is when certain desirable traits become exaggerated/overcompensated (machismo) or no longer necessary within a current culture/society, as TrueN already went over.

I wanted a simple, action-rpg type game for the PS4 for when I just want to vegetate on the sofa/bed etc. I mean, even simpler than Diablo3, say, no brain required type but still quick mindless fun/somewhat addictive in short bursts. Took a while, but I found it. It's called Cat Quest. Cutesy. Main quest and side quests (simple ones), dungeons, spells/melee. Like all such, you may grind a little for levels so you can stay ahead of/clear the short dungeons without dying (if you die it resets) but it's not a huge amount of grind. It's on PC/Steam as well. http://store.steampowered.com/app/593280/Cat_Quest/

^^^ HAHAHA ... *deep breath* ... HAHAHA

The character editor in Comrades is simple-ish but isn't too bad. I didn't mess with it too much but easy to make this: The environment lighting really changes hair color. Eye glasses for sale in the store, a must buy! And a new casual shirt. The uniform was too restricting. You can make/use up to 8 Avatars. I'll have to make a K-pop star male dude next. Because, reasons. ...I did play the actual game a bit, too.

The gameplay videos since release of FFXV Comrades looks a lot better than the Beta vids. Story missions, map progression, etc. I mean it's still Monster Hunter/Group Hunt Mission or what have you, but at least it has a little more to it than just random combat groupings. NPC AI seems ok for those inclined to offline play (me). Plus they'll probably keep adding small things in that games as service way, over time. Maybe I'll actually play this for more than an hour.

I don't mind the idea and always like to see results of this sort, for some reason, but I'm not sure I even have 25 "all time favorite" games these days. Maybe 10-15.

Someone who has every non-WoT subforum always minimized and uses the "End" key to get to the bottom of the page. Edit:

----The 5th Element for me was a mixed bag. There were some parts I really liked, and other parts that were just "wtf, I can't even." I did NOT like the Rhod character at all, but I am very much not a Chris Tucker fan in anything. ----I loved Labyrinth when I first saw it (on video) when I was an older teen. It is a fairly strange film, however. I'm not sure what I'd think of it if I saw it for the first time as a middle-aged adult. ----Watched Guardians of the Galaxy 2 the other day. I'd agree with most critic reviews that it's entertaining/good but felt a bit forced in spots. "Trying too hard" or something. But still had plenty of hilarious/fun moments and the ending got to me a tiny bit. Mostly because I like Michael Rooker (I still think he was one of the best things of The Walking Dead).