LadyCrimson

There's this guy on YT - Todd in the Shadows -with a lot of "one hit wonder" song breakdown/analysis videos. Guess he's been around a while/fairly popular, but I only noticed him the other week (when the almighty YT algorithm finally decided I might be interested, I suppose). Watched quite a few, hits the nostalgia vibes most of the time. Saw this one re: Barbie Girl, which made me wonder about the silly lip-synch vid that probably introduced me to that darn song. It's still on YT, too. 19 years. Sheesh. The days when ppl just randomly uploaded stupid stuff for giggles and it wasn't all "subscribe, hit that bell, sponsor" and MrBeast-like thumbnails. I kinda miss those days. Kinda.

The Pitt, ssn2 - think it's been 6-7 episodes now. The "quality" is still up there, but it feels a bit less compelling. Couple new chrs aren't gellin' with me overmuch either. They're not bad, but neither are they interesting/bringing anything much to the table. It's good, but feels too familiar already, I guess. But there's still time for some mega crisis re: characterizations and trauma of medical dramas. Heh.

^ Tainted Grail has that wonderful first half, and then it's an "ok" 2nd half. Very front loaded. Not that it becomes bad or something. But that first impression isn't ever quite matched. They've patched that 3rd act and I suppose it became a tad better but eh. But yeah, I had lots of fun with it. Anyway - I finally tamed a pet cat in Enshrouded. The cat is cute I suppose - if you pet it you get a small tiny health buff and it often runs to you and meows - but it sure eats a lot. I "locked" it in my bases main chr. bedroom (I've heard pets can get rather lost in this game), where the cat gets the zoomies and seems to run along wall edges/behind furniture, just like a real cat. Sadly, it does not jump on top of bookshelves, which is not like a real cat. Not sure I'll keep it out or stick it in storage. Am not taming the dog.

Long wonderful career. My personal faves were Lonesome Dove, Falling Down, and Open Range, but he's had lots of wonderful roles. I guess that leaves Dustin Hoffman (Gene Hackman, Duvall, Hoffman).

Well, when I posted that post, it wasn't happening in the Pics of your games thread/s. But today when I logged in, it is. shrug I thought it couldn't have been 2+ years since I posted in that food thread, but apparently so - I know I stopped looking/posting in there at some point, but has it been that long, sheesh Ok, noticed different thing - there's no more auto-smilie insertion, but now there's auto turn other things into something else. If I surround a word with asterisks, it gets auto-italicized, even if you put a space between asterisks and word. And if I try to do my typical three minus signs at start of a line after hitting Enter, it auto-turns into a full-width horizontal bar. Meaning I can't use my habit of three dashes as a bullet/"tabbed" points. Oh darn. ;) Makes me wonder if there are other things like that tho - maybe instead of BBcode there are other typing/symbols one can use to make the forum do something similar. Hm. If you hit Enter, then type an asterisk, it seems to indent and bullet point the line? Then if you hit Enter again it auto does it again. Heh. the

^ I miss the BBCode, I remember when it went away. This is not an "issue" but I'm curious why I am seeing a micro icon of my user avatar doubled up over some topic titles, stacked under the "topic created by" avatar icon to the left. First I thought it was a "you made the last post in this thread" but that isn't consistent. Then I thought "you recently viewed this thread" but that doesn't feel consistent either. Then I thought "you made a post in here, even if it was six months ago", but that didn't work either, since it doesn't always appear on topic titles I know I've responded to at least once.

This Expedition is confined on a single planet vs. the usual get in ship and planet-hopping. Basically, you're a trash collector, using/upgrading the land vehicle almost no one uses with truckbeds, bulldozers. Doesn't sound very interesting. The gravity gun MT add might be fun if you could pick up and toss fauna with it - because I'm weird like that - but I suspect it'll be limited to only "trash" piece collection. Feels like yet another Light No Fire testbed - but this one is making me wonder what LNF expects the huge co-op town communities to be doing. Community garbage collection to keep the town clean and safe from flying mount dragon poop? Which leads me into - are all the flying mounts in games = mega-sized seagull/pigeons?

This trailer did a great job - with making me want to pull out my hardbound Sherlock Holmes stories to read again. Edited: Amazon apparently doesn't like embedding.

I sometimes feel like I may never start a game again. eg, trying new games. --- Still messing around in Enshrouded a bit. Did I ever mention there is no currency? eg, no buying/selling/trading. Kinda refreshing, that. NMS finally had an emoji tweet - wonder what the next Expedition will bring in terms of items or possibly new feature. Or nothing. Could be a good time to return to that one for a bit tho. Still dreaming of/wishing for the perfect sandbox.

Since as usual I don't feel like committing to a new game just yet, I keep fiddling with the games I already own. Besides NMS/7 Days, I keep stockpiling resources in Enshrouded, so that one chr. can be the resource-server for other characters. Mostly because I also can't make myself commit to choosing base location spots with other chrs (not to mention even twink-half-replaying the game to do so). I do the same thing in 7 Days. "That's a nice spot, maybe here." "This spot seems even better, maybe here." "Oh wait, that spot over there might be perfect." Repeat 500 times. At least in 7 Days (and to some extent, NMS), you can have 400 bases all over the map if you want, so you can just abandon old locations. Stupid 10 base limit in Enshrouded. But hey, at least I'll have 100k+ of all building blocks in case I ever make up my mind.

Days are getting a little longer, tad warmer, more sun. Meaning I can spend more time on the porch staring into space, vs. in the house, staring into space. The yard is nicer to look at than a wall. Still no call from the docs/hospital re: hubby surgery. They did say it might take a while to get the appointment. I'm guessing mid-late Spring. pfft. :p

😅 Yeah it's a stressful setting. I remember when my sister was doing her internship stuff in Boston area. She came home to visit once and looked like she'd lost 20 pounds (she's 5' 10" and wasn't overweight to start with). That was also when her attitude shifted dramatically for a while, towards the negative. My mother worried about her a lot.

My Steam "favorites" list currently/for a while has seven games that are in blue text, stating "update required/paused." To which I say - not right now/not ready, and then go Offline again when I'm done doing whatever I went "online" for. Tainted Grail: I liked the original release quite well, but the DLC didn't appeal - I bought it because it was a King Arthur-legend type game, not an undersea/cthulhu (or whatever) legends game. Oh I'm sure the Arthur lore is in there somewhere. But you know what I mean. But I keep it installed in case I ever want to replay the older/non-patched vanilla version I have backed up. I'm still waiting for a Stray 2. :P

Enshrouded: reached a spot where one can periodically farm lvl 50 gear. Good spot for a base altar. Chr has done all the main, non-side/animal husbandry stuff and I'm now just running all over re-collecting oodles (and oodles) of resources, crafting items/blocks etc, for a 2nd "semi-creative/builder" chr/world. Main chr. will be the grinder and other chrs can just build anywhere, with maxed altar upgrades and the like from the get go. I also discovered one doesn't have to fish in any particular biome. What you can max catch seems bait type dependent. eg, can catch high lvl fish with frog bait, anywhere, any biome. So I found this waterfall near Lower Meadows (semi-starter area) that fell into a literal puddle not big enough to fish in. I pickaxed a large hole under it, and it filled with water. Build a pier over it and placed glowing blocks so I could see at night etc. Fished for an hour. Suddenly realized my created pond's water level was still rising and flooding my pier/base. Had to put in a couple drains at the water level I wanted. So that's what those are for. :P

^^ What is with some "default" program layout designers these days. What is that monstrosity for - touch screens? I guess you're supposed to be able to put some image over every forum sub-category? Ugh.

Chosen "forced" font at size 22 and minimum font size at 20 (custom FF setting) works for me. ;p It's what I've been using for a long time, ever since higher res. monitors and many sites/forums still using stuff like 12-14px font sizes.... What's going to take some getting used to is not having the user avatar/info sidebar. The post columns look strange, lol. EDIT: forum no longer seems to turn the any smilies text into icons, if you make a text smilie it pops up a list you can choose from, or not. Which is actually fine to me. These days I'd rather be able to use an actual :D instead of an icon, if I want.

Ok, I've now seen the modern version of The Running Man. It was ok, as such things go. Not a very good film, really, but at least it did feel more like it actually used the book as inspiration. The main chr/actor tho - I was assuming the uber angry/max bad temper posture/walk/expression was intentional, and it didn't work. It was like a bad SNL angry-man satire. The pacing/editing killed it, like many things these days. I mean, I felt more attachment to everything going on (and chrs) in ye old Lethal Weapon series. These days it's just set piece after set piece sewn together with nylon threads. Edit: actually, a lot of stuff these days feels akin to doing a TikTok scroll pattern. "Set piece", finger-scroll, "Set piece", finger scroll. Makes sense I suppose. 2nd Edit: I saw Matt Damon/Ben Affleck's interview re: Netflix asking them to put a huge action sequence in the 1st 5 minutes to keep phone-users attention at the start, and they made it sound like that's a totally new thing/ruining movies. Matrix? Bond, sometimes? It's more how it's done - plus whether the film makes that 1st attention grabber worth the rest of the time, to the end.

It's Costco day. Which is where one spends a silly amount of money, to supposedly save money. At least we've never left CostCo with a giant inflatable boat or $5k patio set. Wouldn't fit in the car, anyway.

Ok, got Altar upgraded to 9. For some reason I thought there was one more past that, but that option is now greyed out like there's nothing left. Hm. So there is now either: ---actually try to finish most/all of the, uh, 50-70+ "quests" I've been ignoring, as well as some optional dungeons, the last few NPC's, as well as fill out any of the rest of the map (maybe 15% left). But game isn't really item-hunt worthy and revisiting/marching through areas multiple times to reach quest marker locations is already growing old. ---ignore all that and finally just resource grind to build giant bases and/or an entire "village", probably with a 2nd twinked chr (that wouldn't have all altars taken up as map markers....). Do I care about that. Undecided, really. Building is fun but never been one to make giant fancy stuff. Probably because I'm not good at it and/or it takes more time vs. longevity of my motivation. ---find another game --binge watch some TV --binge-sleep the rest of the winter. 🤔

^ If they at least made it so it wasn't percentage based and easy settings let us old/slow farts react before being dead, that might help. Or the meteor attack didn't cover half the donut, or its laser beam wasn't six miles wide and follows you around. The design of the fight arena tho is always going to problematic. You can easily "slide/teleport/glide" avoidance yourself off the edge. Seriously, it's a super skinny donut with a mile wide center hole as well as the outer edge drop off. Did I mention the boss can fly? And has adds? And yeah, I think nov. 2026 is their current projection (delayed a couple months), although per usual re: EA, I always have my doubts. Although I don't get the feeling it'll be 10+ years, haha. There are a couple other "indie" games I've had my eye on but I like (mostly) completing games before I move on, first, otherwise I never finish anything. I was also looking at StarRupture but it seems a bit too Satisfactory/factory type building for my tastes.

I would have liked that movie more if the entire film had had that ludicrous over the top feel. But to me it felt out of place vs. the rest of the movie. If you want to be a horrific satire/comedy, pick that and stick with it. Is Evil Dead 2 a great cinematic film. No, not even close. But (back when) I laughed my butt off from beginning to end. Long live Bruce Campbell.

@Hurlshort -- have fun with the Enshrouded Altar upgrade 8 boss. After taking a mental break from that game for a bit I went back and filled out some more areas, got more stuff/npc's - I have 17 NPC's, and even if some aren't crafting stations, holy that feels excessive. Anyway, there's a long long task (as usual, I get lost a lot) before Altar8-boss. You need lvl8 to be able to have frost-death protection (no death-timer) even while in your base in the actual snow. Could you live without that, sure, but hey, it's progression. So that boss. Yeah, nope. Even on easiest everything, I died in like 15 seconds during 6 tries. I might've done a sliver of damage to its health bar. The spike is unreal vs. everything else in the game. Its main two attacks seem to do percentage damage so doesn't matter your health, clvl or settings, your health dies in seconds. The area you have to fight = must be master with glider, double-jump/glide, slide/constant avoidance timing, speed/reaction etc or die in meteor puddles or slip/misstep/fall and/or be lasered or pushed to fall death. Sure, it's a skill issue and I suppose a few will like the challenge, but imo very unfair - again, vs. all the rest of the game. Out of place, all of a sudden. I could've maybe dealt with the dodging of near-insta-death attacks themselves (been there done that in other games) but the fight area for me was impossible with no room for "hey I suck, ok", navigation (imagine a very very skinny donut shaped piece of land). After reading online comments about this perhaps over-tuned boss, I gave up (I'll never have that type of "skill" and don't care to bother), and used a (kinda buggy) cheat-engine table to insta-kill it 5 times (so I can have spare heads for other chrs), removed cheat-engine-table, then continued on my sandbox-y way. Altar upgrade 9 is easy peasy in comparison, have head already, almost there. Just to say, you can easily not bother with this boss/last few upgrades, and still build tons of sim-y castles and towns/do most everything else. I have a feeling a lot of people haven't even reached this point in the game, because they're too busy building obsessive deco-towns. Or this is where they quit. Or they went to a "resource" server and just grabbed a head from a chest that someone else farmed (that's a thing in this game, if you don't mind Online).

Just to say, I recall spending too much time making that cat avatar work - partly because tiny size ruined the visibility of eye-squinting expression, plus the circle cut off the ears etc. I gave the cat more and more "eyeliner" and filled in the pupils darker and darker until it kinda worked. 😛 Not a fan of circle avatars either.

HBO - The Pitt, season 2. First two episodes that are available were pretty good. It's another shift, 10 months later (from the 1st season0. Not much to say so far, outside of that they seem to have maintained the quality. So looking forward to the rest.