LadyCrimson

Yeah, I can understand criticism from that viewpoint of where eps 3 seems like too much filler. While I'm familiar with the big plot beats/spoilers of the game, I do not have any details/lore or exact game moments in my head/memorized nor any large attachment to specific chr. beats. I wonder if this might be one of the more ideal places to watch the show from, heh. I did find ep3 a bit of a surprise as that relationship segment went on and on, but it was so well done I simply enjoyed it. Plus I understood the different tonal direction they wanted to take vs. the game, re: how the bottom line of how one chr. reaches a motivational place from influence of a minor chr. To me it kind of reminded me of how, in STTNG, after the exciting Picard/Borg episodes, there was that lull episode of Picard at his brother's farm. That could be seen as "filler" too but it was important re: Picard's character. It's not an exact parallel, I know, since the Picard on farm was still focused on ... well, Picard ... but it felt similar in concept. Edit: The one thing re: game vs. show that I've noticed is that Ellie feels a lot more - brash/bold, almost to the negative "stupid horror chr. actions" archetype - at times. They changed that dynamic a bit. It's made me not like Ellie as much, at least initially.

It was of decent quality, so I can understand some praise, but I was expecting more action from descriptions. I'm not someone who generally likes political or mobster/gang melodrama intrigue series if that's the top focus. Sometimes it's ok for a movie length but often not even then. I'm not sure why, I can like plenty of melodrama or drama or dialogue heavy films but ... I just find those settings/plots boring or something.

Grocery/household - it all amounts to maybe $700-$800 a month for us right now. That's food and non-food grocery together, mind, but still, two people, pffft. I'm used to less food per day already, maybe I'll go to the one meal a day. Edit: I think eggs are $7-$10 at the moment, depends. CostCo every couple months or so helps with some of the non-food to stock up on but they're dangerous to some of us in the sense that you always seem to find yourself walking out of there spending way more than necessary, even if you manage to avoid silly fluff items. Because it speaks to the lazy don't-want-to-come-back soul inside of you, so of course you need 4 giant packs of tons of paper towels right now, or 8 of those giant spice bottles, it's not like they go bad right?? Giant cheese packages, you like that brand right hon, gotta get couple of those! And oh! That's a new packaged food, very low carb, I have to try that at least once! >.> Yeah, don't go there often unless you have the self-discipline of a monk.

Watched a few episodes of Warrior via HBOMax. I guess it was a Cinemax series (inspired by something Bruce Lee wanted to do?) that was cancelled when they decided to halt original content or something, but it's become popular enough that HBO is going to make a 3rd season. My main motivation to try it was: martial arts (late 1800's/US period), and the actor who was playing the Father in Bullet Train had made a bit of an impression so I was curious. Anyway ... the first few minutes was a nice opening, making me hope for some fun hijinks. Then it would alternate between boring chr. drama, mildly interesting or amusing chr. drama, lotsa nekkid women, mobster/faction politics and conflict, 20 seconds of fun hijinks action, rinse and repeat etc. My issue was I kept waiting for the fun action hijinks but it was few and far between. Also, there were way way too many different characters introduced in those 3 episodes, sometimes just for one or two short scenes. There's a lead chr. but so far it's really more of an ensemble. Maybe it all comes together eventually but so far it's more Chinese gang/mobster/drama conflict (which I find dull) then the kung-fu-ey hijinks I was hoping for.

Well, since two episodes were stacked up and I had nothing better to do last night, I watched eps. 2 and 3 of Last of Us. Production quality held up. Acting (mostly) held up. Story held up - well, y'know, for a parasitic fungus post-apoc theme. I personally thought eps 3 was a very nice piece of story-telling, if a tad predictable - but very well done. I like the balance of chr, slower moments, action, emotion, small bits of humor. Anyway, I don't think I'd gush over it like some, but the time just flies by and I never have an urge to turn it off or even FFWD, which at least for me, these days, is something.

Physical ailments/issues make one feel so much older, not just physically but mentally. I should do more than 30 min. elliptical and arm exercises and occasional walks, but eh, it's hard enough to get my arse to keep even that up. These days, I see a chair, I (and my creaky joints) like to sits. The one thing I keep wanting to do is work on leg muscle mass again tho. After losing much muscle re: hospital, I have near chicken legs (well, for me, vs. what I had) and the elliptical, while toning/strengthening, has so far not done much of anything re: mass. Which means I should ... wait, what was that? "CHAIR!"

Annnd 20 minutes after I post that, it changes. The non-animated and darker version of the banner is much more tolerable on the eyes at least, and looks good design-wise. I'll leave this one alone for now. Thanks.

It's still annoying on my 10.5 tablet at horizontal viewing. The typical phone vertical mobile view is much less obtrusive feeling I agree. Maybe I should turn the 55" TV vertically? The dynamic desktop scaling of banner vs. forum-width also causes it to grow larger/taller when in actual thread view, vs. the "Home" view which has the right side-bar menus, especially if it's not full-screen, at least on the 1440 and tablet. That all said, it's probably more the animation factor that bugs me the most. It's an overall nice design actually (and the t-shirts look nice ) , but almost-blinking animation is very distracting. If it was static I might tolerate it.

Yeah, that's where I got the bugcheck critical error from. But it doesn't give much info, just that's the name/reason for the crash. Google says it could be caused by any of a host of things, software drivers/dlls, hardware, etc. Not terribly helpful. >.> I don't even know if the game and the firefox tab crashes and the reboots are related or just coincidence. 7 Days is pretty hard on hardware specs voxel, alpha, unoptimized - so maybe it just triggers an issue that's cropped up rather than being a cause of the issue. And whatever it is it doesn't happen every day. Currently testing Precison's/GPU "power target" setting. I don't know what that does technically, seems to do with max wattage target, all I know is lowering it reduces gpu-load temps but doesn't seem to alter FPS/general performance in any way noticeable to me. I had it at 90percent - so gpu temps were 68-72 at a middling/quiet fan rpm. I lowered it to 80, so gpu temps run more like 60-64.

In the last couple months, with no hardware, O/S, driver or software changes except maybe some small game installs: --occasional Firefox tab crashes --occasional PC spontaneous reboot, so far when idle for long periods, eg overnight and wake up to rebooted PC (I have WinUpdates totally disabled, it's not that) --7 Days to Die sometimes CTD, sometimes BSOD, random times, not always, same game version as Jan-2022 where I had no issues --Win10 critical error re: bugcheck --a certain .dll mentioned in 7 Days to Die crash dump seemingly related re: EAC but I never even ran/nstalled/use the EAC since I play SP/offline --when I turn on 7 Days the PC makes a slight whining noise in the start menu, can't tell where it's coming from, the few other games I tried do not do this ---all temps (disk, cpu, gpu) and ram use are fine while game is running So far I have: removed all fps/system monitoring software except Precision, forums mentioned such a few times re: bugcheck, removed Discord, reinstalled the game, blah blah. If none of that seems to help I'm going to have to start troubleshooting hardware. Like, maybe ram or PSU or something else is going faulty. I suppose a total reinstall of Win10 would be after that, but I don't wanna. Pfft. I hate trouble-shooting and sometimes this is why I end up building a new PC.

I like that one as well, although to this day I couldn't really say why. It was entertaining in some fashion I guess. The other not-In-Bruges roles I liked Colin in somewhat was Minority Report and The Way Back (2010), which I watched because of Ed Harris. In neither did I think Colin's acting was all that great, but I liked the characters for whatever reasons. Also, one of my favorite/most fun Gabriel's was Kevin Durand in that action-horror movie Legion (2010) - yes it was all action-ridiculous, what with the black armor and the slice and dice wings, but it made me giggle-cheer so I give it bonus points. Paul Bettany made a fun fallen Michael, too.

Since we both loved That 70's Show, hubby and I gave That 90's Show a chance. Growing up with laugh tracks and sitcoms, such doesn't bother me even now (although I understand why it does bother some/many these days), and I adored seeing the chr's of Red and Kitty again. I guess they are going to be in the whole series, while the other chrs from 70's Show are largely cameos. Anyway, I think the feeling of the original show was mostly captured, the jokes were at least lightly amusing for the most part, and it's going to largely hinge on whether you like the new set of teen-age characters that hang out in the basement, among other things. But it almost, perhaps, follows 70's Show too closely. Each kid is a lot like the original kids in archetype. eg, outside of Red and Kitty, hubby and I weren't very interested and turned it off after a couple episodes. It's not terrible, but it doesn't feel fresh/revitalized/different in any way, and we lost interest. If you really miss that type of sitcom tho, it might scratch an itch.

Yes the display of (the ad banner) is way too large, even at 1440 or 4k resolution it visually feels way too tall, relative to the amount you can see under it without scrolling down (I would guess it would seem even more height-filling at 1080, didn't check tho). I would suggest reducing the height by half. ...that said, I too have now blocked it. But not everyone wants to use/do that sort of thing.

I noticed a lot of new dead space on wikipedia recently, which I dislike immensely, since I also do not typically have webpages in "full screen" on the 1440 monitor, and often have browser at 120% size to boot. I remember when they decided to have those pop-up preview boxes appear when you mouse-hover over links or something, which I also hated and found an addon that removed that feature. Maybe someone will make an add-on to remove the dead space "feature". >.>

Not that I've watched football in years, but at least the Cowboy's have quite a ways to go to match some of baseball's longest World Series (or post-season?) dry spells. They'll get it back at some point. Also, @Bartimaeus I see what you did there. ... is it weird that I almost miss that ghost-in-the-machine looking title blob, now? Heh.

I haven't watched The Banshees... yet, despite my stated intention to do so. I think some of the reason is that my track record with most media these days makes me "afraid" to be disappointed with it, so maybe I'm waiting for any emotional over-expectations of mine to die down a bit. >.> My main reason for interest in the first place is mostly Brendan Gleeson. I've seen him in lots of things, all the way back to Braveheart, to 28 Days, small roles, larger roles, and I love him every time. I did love (mostly) In Bruges, as well as The Guard. Colin Farrell can be good, but most of the films he's been in, I haven't liked overmuch - that said he certainly paired well with Gleeson in Bruges so hoping for similar chemistry to strike twice, in The Banshees.

I tried watching Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre, Netflix. Horror, anthology, might be good. Some episodes have two brief stories, some are single-story. I watched some episodes on the TV, some on my tablet. Note: it wasn't until later, with a Google, that I found out it's based on some famous manga/artist works, unseen by me. --1st episode - "Strange (something) Siblings" - wtf is going on. Also, this is boring. --2nd episode - Something about a tunnel first, then kids + ice cream truck: bit more interesting in a weird way, at least --3rd episode - "Hanging Balloon" - better, I liked most of it, the idea is intriguing at least, the ending felt weak. --more episodes - bored again, ok, kinda interesting, bored again, etc. ...I reached "Tomie-Photo", which was eh. As an anthology it's a real hit and miss for me, with only a few episodes capturing more of my attention. I probably won't watch the few left. ...from reviews it sounds like it totally fails at capturing the feeling of the original artist's drawings and at least from the few images I saw in articles I'd agree. From my know-nothing perspective, the animation is ok/generic but it's simply not very creepy/disturbing, at least if one is used to the genre. Stories also often end abruptly in a way that feels too cut-off, even relative to a short story/no answers or big conclusion type format. Which is simply unsatisfying.

^ I didn't even know (or forgot) there was a Magnum P.I. reboot. I remember watching the one in the 80's for maybe a season's worth. Didn't take long before the main reason I was watching was because of Jonathan Hillerman. He cracked me up. RIP

@Bartimaeus you tricksy trickster, making me think there was maybe something wrong with my PC. Then again...it's also rather

I force Arial/other, plus a blanket 20 font size vs. letting webpages "use their own fonts". So on the desktop I can't tell when people use smaller fonts in posts etc, only on the phone/tablet. Main reason is at 1440, tiny or hard to read fonts drive me batty with my now both near and far sighted eyeballs and this way I don't have to ctrl+ magnify the whole page too much. It does occasionally make some boxed text elements a little offset at times but not often.

Oh, ok. Well, if someone else sees it, I guess it's not a flaky O/S then. Phew. Actually I didn't even notice the title word, I was too busy staring at the blob-stuff, wondering if it was some secret alien text or something.

Didn't want to post it in the Forum Issues because it's likely something on my end, but is anyone else getting a weird image over the NFL thread? It's only over that thread title, static, it doesn't move up and down if I scroll down the page/s. Tried cookie and cache clearing etc, still there. Wasn't there yesterday. It also shows up in the url line if I mouse-hover over the thread link. ...maybe it's just time to reinstall the O/S. Meh.

Ordered some groceries via Amazon Fresh. Went to look at my "Orders" listing info. At the top of the list was a stand-out note re: "An item you ordered has been recalled! Throw it away/stop using it." Wut? Do I need to cancel/re-do my order?... ...turns out it was a jar peanut butter I ordered one or two years ago that fell under the product numbers for a voluntary recall of Jiff's from May of 2022. Er...ok? Already long eaten. Neither Jiff nor Amazon get any service gold stars.

...most of the time with single-arc narrative series that go on for multiple seasons, I stop after the first season, maybe 2.5 seasons at most. I find they just do not hold up most of the time, or devolve into 80% padded filler and constant over the top cliffhangers - which can work in shorter movies but for 5+ seasons I rapidly stop caring. Breaking Bad is one of the few exceptions, for me (although I grew pretty weary of Jessie's chr eventually). ...I still vastly prefer a one-main-arc per season format, whether it's a multiple season show or once and done. Maybe because I grew up when mini-series on networks were frequent/king for a while. Long enough to explore a plot more thoroughly than a 2hr movie, but not long enough to wear out its welcome or for writers to run out of ideas on how to keep extending it.

I don't think I have enough of a handle on your exact tastes to even guess if you'd like it or not. I wouldn't call the film a must-watch, even tho I enjoyed it a lot. I think it's one of Ralph Fiennes finer performances of late and the dark comedy was on point, for me. But it did have small lulls and the middle section was probably the most effective. Edit: The lead actress Anya Taylor-Joy was fantastic too. And to say, I did like the ending/resolution, but not as much impact as it was aiming for. eg I wanted a little more than it gave, I think.