LadyCrimson

"Dr Pimple Popper" wtf am I watching and why haven't I turned it off yet. She's a charming/fun persona tho.

Tried to log in/post the other day. Was getting the mega-long load time issue again (there were maybe only 250 'visitors) and weird posting errors. Left. Seems better today. So here I am. It's Costco day, or "spend way more than you should" day. My teeth etc. are still fine. Hubby's still depressed. I'm still hobby-unmotivated and feeling rather directionless - but not depressed. Thinking about buying some roller skates. Just regular ones, not those inline types. I used to love roller skating as a kid/teen. Maybe it'd be fun again, get me outside more etc.

Tiny Glade demo - I've had it wishlisted for a bit. ...it's cute, but in the end I'm not sure I'm into the artstyle. I feel like I'm building something that would go into a rich person's ceramic collector fantasy curio cabinet. Which is odd because I might like some of such in a curio cabinet, but on-screen/game it doesn't appeal to me. But it is cute, the mechanics work well enough/are cool (maybe a bit finicky/over precise), and if the style is your thing, looks promising a small/chill time waster. One of those games with essentially no point but use tools to create a small castle/town in a small area.

I clicked on the "Deadpool and Wolverine Popcorn Bucket" video. I feel unclean.* *it is rather funny tho

... I know the (hilarious) intro is a comedic video edit, but - did some quirky AI take over this guy's brain? Seriously, some of those quotes.

Since yesterday I finally felt I could eat some stuff besides chicken broth/boiled spinach (after day 3, I sometimes poached an egg in it) and plain greek yogurt. Little tougher when it's both sides of mouth vs. just one. At any rate, healing well at this point. Not being able to eat a lot of carbs sort of stomps out a lot of the "soft foods" concepts/drinks. I did not try jarred gerber-like baby foods. I remember using the meat baby foods to syringe-feed cats who were sick because they were smoother/easier to water down/syringe than regular canned cat food. Based on those experiences with such, I'd rather go hungry.

Manor Lords: there have been two experimental patch opt-ins. I tried the 2nd one. ---The market wonkiness has been improved, it works better now, with a little better control. Less headache. So that makes things easier. ---a King's tax has been implemented, something you have to pay, and it's based on number of citizens you have. Currently it's almost a nothing burger tho (on Normal), once familiar with game logistics. And you can turn it off if you wish. ---overall it's actually easier than before - for town-scaping. Less weird headaches. Crop farming is better, backyard gardens have been nerfed somewhat (mostly a time slow down). ---the patch changes will likely go live fairly soon I've reached the familiarity point where it only takes me a few game years and/or 1.5-2 irl hours to make any town stable and get what I want from it. The only reason to have a larger population, mechanics wise, is for pulling army numbers from and you can just make a single city for that. Everything else is just because "you feel like it." The "magic number" of bored/restart is now down to about 400, although I have gotten total map/regions population up to 1600 or so a couple times. The dev has said the next regional map he has in mind will have ... water? coast? ships/ship trade? not sure. It would be a change of pace tho. Current state: you can/could spend 20-100+ hours messing around with it, sandbox and beating the combat/Baron, but it's very much early-access lacking long-term content/motivation. My biggest curiosity is what the dev plans for the supremely not-finished tree node paths.

Oh, no, don't get me wrong. I think it's pretty similar here in the US too, re: education requirements. I just mean the ... retail? customer service? ... aspect of pharmacy/prescription pick-up for many hospitals or retail outlets (a pharmacy can be put into/offered in a Wal-Mart) has turned into a cattle-drive retail line system, which generally doesn't encourage people to hangout and try to get lots of info at those places specifically. I'd guess most people spend more time talking to doctors and online research then talking to pharmacists - who are more likely to be viewed as a sort of cashier (just someone you hand a prescription to/or give your name to and they fill it). Don't quote me tho - just what I think while standing/watching in lines.

I didn't ask. I'm sure they would have knowledge if you insist on asking questions but in my life most pharmacists act mostly like store cashiers. Stand in line like you're at the dept. of motor vehicles, pick up your bag/pay, shuffle out so someone else can do the same. It's not really conducive to info gathering if you know what I mean. Looking up antibiotics, I think in the past it was the Tetracycline broad spectrum family that I was usually given, and the one the dentist kept pushing/asking about was Amoxicillin, which is penicillin based. I guess that's why he kept asking how bad my penicillin allergy was. I honestly don't think I seriously needed an antibiotic to begin with, for this case, it's more that precaution/preventive concept.

Told dentist I'm supposedly allergic to penicillin but don't really know how severe (it was on my adoption forms, mom always took it seriously, I've been trained to say it). He kept pushing an antibiotic with a name that started with A, asking if I was ok with that. I kept saying I have no idea. I guess he prescribed one called Clindamycin. I can't recall what doctors in the past used to frequently give me, but it wasn't that one. Took 4 doses. Felt a little weird after a while, as if I was abdomen-back tension-stressed. Ate some broth with tiny bits of pork/spinach (so I don't have to chew). Felt worse and worse. Six hours later I threw it all up. The notes for the antibiotic mention nausea and vomiting as possible "side effects". Yeah, I think I won't take any more. First time an antibiotic made me toss my cookies. >.> At least I've had almost no after-extracion swelling/pain. I was expecting worse. Only needed one of the codeine-Tylenol pills, haven't taken any more.

So maybe a year ago one of my upper back molars broke in half/off. But since I'm silly/stupid and almost never do the dentist thing, and there was no pain (I assume it "died" at some point, so it cracked), I didn't do anything about it. Then a lower back molar started to shift rotation and wiggle a bit. Then this week the gum above the broken upper molar finally had an infection. So today I had both removed. Dentistry has improved a lot in 17 years. No pain, fast. Those 3d images of your teeth they can do etc are pretty neat too. Other than those two teeth, everything else looked pretty good, weirdly enough. They have no idea why the one started wiggling. Per usual I'm complimented on having a mouth that never seems to produce tartar even after decades. After healing months I may get some implants. I explain all that because like many before me, as I lie half asleep in a chair as my jaw is tugged and pulled around, I kept asking myself: WHY do dentists/cleaners always yap at you and ask chatty questions while they have tools/fingers in your mouth - it's not like you can answer.

The next goose/goat game? ...I don't think I'd have interest in it myself (never tried goose/goat game either), but the trailer made me giggle.

Hubby's been pretty depressed off and on. Goes up and down, he's trying to stay positive etc. But took a few long weekends, kinda mopes around the house or sits silent in my room on weekends, watching me PC for hours since he doesn't feel like doing anything else. >.> His sister will be moving back to the Bay Area soon - they plan to stay a while, then sell that house and retire in far south California. I really think we should go with them. It's sad tho, when 50% of why hubby doesn't want to retire is because ... his work's health insurance. Ours is currently so good (cost wise - pretty much zero for everything) that it feels like it'd be a mistake to not have it available as long as possible. Gotta look at things again, maybe there's ways around it.

While I'd agree (and that trailers give this feeling too often these days), one can also go too far into another direction. Like this one. It tells me so little I searched for a brief plot synopsis because I couldn't tell even the tiniest thing about what it would be about - not even what genre/s it might fall into. I guess it got me curious enough to look up the movie tho, so it worked in that sense.

HBO/Max - Tokyo Vice: white guy wants to be a news (print) reporter in 90's Japan. Gets involved in seedy underworld plots and stuff. I love Ken Watanabe, I'll try it. Episode 1: Ken is on-screen for about 10 seconds. The rest is largely setup/chr. building for the youthful main character. I found it well shot/done but kinda slow/boring. Main chr. initially not super likable/a tad annoying but earnest. It's just that most of the supporting/side chrs. come off as more interesting. >.> Episode 2: Ken is on-screen a little longer but not by much. >.> Still kinda boring, but the Yakuza turf war stuff may get more interesting. I don't mean in action way, it's not that kind of series. I think. I think Ken is supposed to become more important in the series/with the main chr, so going to watch more and hopefully Eps. 3 will be the one.

Yes.

Manor Lords - I don't profess to actually understand detailed mechanic workings, it's all too obscure/inconsistent/glitchy perhaps, but you do stuff enough times and you figure out what works. Hence, I have reached the point where I can restart, get to 600+ population, and then get bored. At least in terms of sandbox. On the one hand, I appreciate I can grow at my own pace. On the other hand, when there is no reason to keep growing (especially since the multiple-region stuff isn't it) outside of "town painting" a region, no risk or buildup left to do (I can literally walk away for hours and it runs itself with no problems) apparently for this game, 600 or so is the magic "I'm done" number. I've barely tried the combat. It sounds way too buggy with perhaps too dramatic a difference between too easy and irritatingly rushed.

Good to hear from you, @Guard Dog, and that things are going loverly.

Manor Lords: you thought Caesar 3's market ladies were bad? ----the market system isn't tuned properly, or is too confusing for many to understand, or it goes haywire/glitchy the more you grow. Markets do not have a physical distance radius (but it looks like it does, causing confusion).You could build a market on one side of the map and a village on the other side, doesn't matter. It's this process of villager-built market stalls - firewood, clothing and food stalls - vs. house checks on the stalls/market, vs. teleporting goods to houses. Each house "checks" the market in order from closest to farthest. Have enough goods in those stalls for every house check, within enough of each type of stalls, all houses get covered. Good in theory. Problem is it gets borked as your town grows and supply/AI calculations re: stalls/goods fluctuates (stalls start to be "empty" far too often). I think I have this bug where every time I build even 6-10 more houses, the market "coverage" and stall functions drops badly and stays there. I can build more market space areas (so more ppl build more stalls), rearrange things, manually delete individual market stalls hoping different ppl will build different stalls, build more granaries nearby to encourage supply chains etc, nothing works. Spent days trying to figure out how to stabilize the system. Finally I found it - delete market/s entire and rebuild - once they fill up again, coverage magically goes back to 100%. Until I build more houses. Which works (for me) every single time I want to expand a lot, so I now have 600+ population with 100% access, but this indicates AI glitching. Hopefully will be fixed.

I know this is the 'net and we could all simply "disappear" at any time, for whatever reasons etc. - I probably wouldn't have thought about it without that "forum software sucks" post. Just made me wonder, is all. I've been gone for months at time more than once myself ... I just eventually keep coming back. Re: Guard Dog - he's also crossed my mind now and again and I do remember the health issue posts. Hope he's doing fine/beat those/happy.

I have observed that since Keyrock's forum-software post, he has not been around. Did we lose him? Was that a farewell post? That would make me sad.. Although in truth I often wonder why I still keep coming here myself. Life twists and turns ... but some habits are hard to break.

Manor Lords: Ok, from a city-building/no combat perspective, you cannot expand your first town/area across-regions. The way it works is if you claim another map region, it becomes like a new-start town. Plop down a starter tent w/5 families there, and go thru the entire process of building up population/town buildings again. Although you can make it less advanced/large, of course, if you just want some outpost-like resources. But if you want to use/gain resources from that region, you don't just give it to yourself freely - you must build tradeposts and barter goods with that region - send firewood for wheat for example. Ppl/carts have to travel back and forth. The exchange rate is not 1-1 either, dunno the maths, different for different resources. Which works, is more "realistic" too (other regions are like your surfdoms?), but it is a cumbersome exchange system (as is, it could change). So that is a little deflating. Some of the regions are large enough to be fun to fill just "your" area as a playthru, some are much smaller. I suppose you could have a goal of getting every region stable (where you don't really have to manage it much anymore, which is totally doable) and just keep doing it in all regions, where the management would be the barter system to give some regions resources they lack - kind of like 8 maps in one save, ha. It totally makes sense in terms of the light RTS/combat/defeat AI to claim regions, aspect, tho. In that case you wouldn't be focused on building so much as claiming regions before the AI gets them all/you. I think many of those wishlisters are going to be disappointed that it's not either "Total War Killer" and not Banished/Ostriv. It's more like a combo of Banished and Stronghold. Maybe. I still like it tho. And I love restarting. We'll see what updates bring someday. Edit: it's Stronghold feeling in town-sandbox, I don't mean SH's combat or castle defense.

Help me! I can't stop restarting a new map! It's almost as bad a chr. creation windows in rpgs!