LadyCrimson

Not sure where to put this. Half lighthearted, half serious mental-health awareness skit - and yes it's true, a cat (or any pet) can sometimes make that "dude" disappear for a little while.

Who said honey mustard? I didn't. That stuff is vile. So is dijon (Grey Poupon or any other brand, which my mother loved, ick). We just like simple yellow mustard, like French's or Heinz yellow or anything similar that restaurants may use. That's what I meant by purism tho - purism is either fairly local or personalized. I'm sure there are some folks who would not call majority of US pizza real pizza, or think that only this ingredient list is real gumbo, figgy pudding, or all kinds of other examples. I've had so many variations of "Chinese Chicken Salad" that tasted nothing alike (some that I loved, some that I hated), it's hilarious. But recipes for "this dish" tend not to be static everywhere forever. Different counties/states (re: the US) also can have very different traditions re: what constitutes a named-food. Then you have restaurants that make some new version of a dish (keeping the "name") that becomes popular for a while and occasionally maybe changes how some people/eateries label and think of that named food. People keep trying to improve or alter the foods to suit local tastes/demand (most "Chinese" food/dishes US folks are familiar with in restaurants isn't, really), social times, health-news/trends. Cooks changes things up all the time, whether at a personal home or a 5 Michelin star place. Keeping the name because it's still overall similar enough and/or for menu name recognition doesn't seem surprising.

I keep wondering, idly, how certain companies (not just recently but for decades, ofc) are avoiding monopoly and anti-trust concerns. I'd assume a whole lot of loopholes, and the "but there is still/can be free competition" mantras even when any minor competition is almost just lip service at some point. Not that I'm a lawyer ... fine line between (US) capitalism and monopolies I guess. Whatever. ...I should probably stop watching Netflix "hey this company sucks" business documentaries.

I think that's popular enough they'd at least go for a 2nd season, as long as Gaiman convinces them of whatever they want to hear. It all reminds me of when cableTV was supposed to do something re: altering TV landscapes/creativity/originality and less boundaries etc, then cable become a "joke" - now it's streaming's turn at bat. 20-40 years from now they'll find some other way to service media to the masses that will supposedly make the original and (after a while) reviled streaming concept a "joke". That's all.

Food purism is weird (me included) ... it's all about what you grew up with/first enjoyed, much of the time. That flavor you remember and covet. I don't even know what "Russian dressing" is. From Google it's pretty similar to Thousand Island so I could see why some might think it tastes similar/the same even if it has some minor spice differences (if we are talking a mayo-based version vs. Google mentioning a clear Russian dressing), but I don't think I've personally had it specifically/seen it mentioned in food menus. Reuben's where I ate were always what I described (that isn't me making the modifications, outside of the sourdough bread) and that's just what I've always known them to be. They've never been very "saucy" at all, usually fairly dry outside of the sauerkraut and cheese. I think there is also a "California reuben" which is often served/made with turkey or something else I think, but never had one of those either.

I've never liked most rye either. Occasionally there's some version (usually homemade) that's "tolerable" mixed with other bread flavors (braided bread), but that flavor is not my fave thing for sandwiches at all. So I always used toasted sourdough bread or ciabatta instead and just mayo/mustard or whatever else you like. It's what I've always done. Even at restaurants, I ask for sliced sourdough instead of rye. They always do it. I'm not sure what sauce they use on reubens here - it's never thousand island where I've been, which is good, because I dislike that too. Not saying nowhere here uses it, I just haven't personally encountered it, shrug. And a lot of the time it's pastrami - either chunky sliced or thinner, but good/fresh, not that crap packaged pastrami sort) instead of corned beef. Also, no coleslaw. Just a lot of that white cheese. It'll usually be rye, sauerkraut, pastrami (or corned beef), mustard/mayo or buttered/toasted bread/no mayo, the cheese, and ... that's about it. Pickle on the side. If ya get fancy you put bacon on it.

^ I don't care a lot about Dune but that article mentioned something about Netflix/other streaming service investor disgruntlement or something and led me into the wilds of the 'net to look up TV series budgets of the modern era. I feel like the "big ones" are getting out of control, similar to film budgets. 15-25 million per episode? Everything Everywhere All At Once was 25 million, for two hours, not just one. Yes yes I know big blockbusters are 300 million+ etc but ... point is, do TV shows really need to have that gazillion dollar shine? ...if Netflix has 220million subs, at maybe an average of $10-12 (not everyone is top tier), isn't that around 2.5 billion a month? If it's consistent monthly numbers. How much are their contract/employee/CEO and marketing expenses? Taxes? Sure one can say "they can afford it" but without direct ad revenue to pad things out, and (persistent) subs likely to keep falling over time - yeah ... I can understand why they tend to cancel expensive shows often. I think streaming services are going to go through a lot of changes in the next few/several years re: sub fees, ad-tiers, type and number of programming offered at any given time (HBO-Max as an example), budget risks taken. At the moment many seem to think it's a boon for certain IP's getting chances that movie studios no longer do, but I bet that won't last too much longer. Edit: in the sense streaming TV will become just as vanilla and risk-averse as filmdom vs. being a place for maybe "more creative freedom".

Shouldn't play 7 Days today but hubby's not here (went down south) again and I made a new map I want to muck around in. Velcro strips to the rescue! ...and I wonder why I'm falling apart, ignoring "stuff" sometimes. Pffft. ...on the bright side, the elliptical is working out great. Knees/hips/lower back are feeling a lot less weak/stiff. Doesn't seem to build/strengthen thigh muscles as much/fast as bicycling - but I'll take it. I only have it on moderate resistance, tho. Unlike youth-bicycling where I was always "lower gears? there are other gears?" HAHA. The "delicate" girls made fun of my huge bike-thighs when I wore shorts, back then. ---side note: HAHA has only one more letter than LOL. Or if one was lazy you'd just use HA or HAH. See, us old timers used capital letter stuff too! ... they just weren't always an acronym. Sometimes I'm on the net and have no idea what the kids are abbreviating, new ones seem to appear at the rate of a dozen every week.

7 Days to Die - FINALLY. I found a post on the official forum that someone made, that gives a method/xml to edit, to increase bedroll "deadzone" radius. Where it actually shows up in the game options as the selectable settings. eg, it sticks and I don't need to type in that debug/console command all the time. Seems to work on land claim blocks too. So for the bedroll I now have one larger but "reasonable" size (at least covers the giant POI's they have now), a much bigger size (a city block or two) and one ridiculous size (half or all the map basically) to pick from. Only issue is that bedroll blocks all random spawns - not just POI/sleeper respawn - so meat/hunting animals too I think. So if it goes map edge to map edge, you'll see zero animals/deer/wolves etc. - maybe. Oh well, I can just farm/eat veggie stew. Hahaha. Also, makes the apoc. world feel even that much more empty and haunting to not even see chickens/rabbits ...Land claim blocks would still be better if you only want to block POI/dungeon sleeper respawning (so u have to kill/clear at least once vs. z's off entirely) vs. blocking general z spawning. Maybe just make a LCB cover the whole world and leave bedroll radius smaller...hmm...testing is in order. EDIT: Nevermind. It does work with LCB's but it's still limited. Go over 800ish and the block turns red/you can't place it anymore (error). 250-550 seems to be the max limit definition where you may actually notice a border size increase. Still a lot better than the default max of 50, tho - maybe cover a whole smaller city/town. Still...bedroll and veggie stew it is then! EDITEDIT: Oh, forgot about traders. So it's not that you can't make a single LCB cover the map, it's that if the border lines will overlap a Trader territory, you can't place it. So that's the limiting factor - the bedroll border edge doesn't trigger trader in same way since it doesn't claim, I guess.

My hands/thumbs etc. have been doing pretty good for a while. eg, I can wash dishes and the like no problem. They're still stiff/weak but the "trigger" thumbs issue went away, at least if I'm careful and seriously minimize any repetitive or gripping hand tasks. But too many hours per day of KB/mouse gaming(especially vs. controller) starts to mess that up again. Which is what I did all week (gaming). So I have to take a break, from everything, again, I guess. So here is my emotional state re: trying to stay hands-inactive again, for today, and probably the next several days, in cat pics, because that's what I do.

I see a park gazebo with a bright central light ... I think "already has half a perimeter wall built, and that light is useful." (You can place lots of dev-only lights/blocks/things in the world if you want, like neon signs, but I have no idea how, if even possible, to make them "active" vs. staying dark/inanimate) (edit- there's a few player-electric traps and lights these days but it's limited, too many steps and I don't bother with it most of the time) Five or so hours later ... could do more, but bored again and it's only a "side/storage base", time to move on. Also, as I wander, I have this need to clean up all litter in the game, whacking every piece of paper, trash bag, broken car, broken glass, over-turned chair, and rock/metal rubble away. Can't have a messy, garbage infested looking world! I guess it's akin to having to open every loot container even tho you know it's just going to be maybe the millionth iron pipe and feathers that you don't need...

A song for when you're young(ish) and full of important self-righteousness, after just having a fight with your spouse, steam still pouring out of your ears, and are driving around in your car on backroads at midnight.

It's so hard to get a picture of a "base" in one shot, without mega-FoV distortion. It's also funny how I don't like "platformers" yet I will build ground bases where jumping all over the place is required. Go figure. This one is is me refurbishing a tiny 1-story guard house. The streetlight was already there, makes a good front area spotlight. I blocked around it so it wouldn't shine into the base itself cause that was annoying graphically. >.> And it makes a good "bridge". This shows "structure stability". Green is good, red is bad. Although you're always going to get reddish on blocks extending outwards and it doesn't mean it's always fragile in terms of walking on it. Stability just means how many blocks can you extend/add on without a collapse disaster for lack of support. Also shows that the pic above is just the topside. The main base stuff is underground in this one. ....where one goes to relax with a good book after a hard day of mining and looting. That's only one of the "bases" I've built on a single map. Yup, a great time waster indeed.

Hubby: "I had one of your soft boiled eggs for lunch." (I made a batch of a dozen last night) Me: "Was it ok?" Hubby: "Not sure how you do it but you're one of the most consistent with getting them just right/perfect I've ever known." Me: "Oh..(me thinking it's a fairly basic thing) ...cool." ...I always use a stopwatch (I still have/use an old windup one, not digital), and accounting for the temp. drop when you add the eggs to water and all that. 3.5-4 minutes, tops. Do not walk away from the pot, the line is thin/unforgiving. People say use a slotted spoon to add the eggs but I use "scissor" tongs instead since you still have to roll the egg off the spoon and I don't do well with that I guess. Tongs for me = no cracked eggs at all. And yes, I dislike hard boiled yolks a lot. The texture makes me think of overdone, next-day leftover beef liver or something and the flavor completely changes.

--The thing about WallE and Up is that their start/early sequences are so marvelous that it's all downhill from there. I enjoyed both overall but it's a case where they both end up skating on goodwill from the first 10-20 minutes, or whatever it was. I've said it before but for me the best Disney animated film is still Beauty and the Beast. The original one, not that live action one (which was ok in small parts but overall, meh).

I remember Price Club/Costco had these heavy/dense "NY style" cheesecakes that weighed maybe 4 pounds (maybe they still do, dunno). Toss it in the freezer and have a slice a couple times a day for a while. *drool* I tell ya, if I ever get tired of life/get some terminal disease, since I already have T2D, I won't need a "Dr. Kevorkian", I'm just gonna sugar-carb orgy myself to a coma/death.

I got about 6 episodes into that K-dramedy about ramen industry corp/office employee hijinks and backstabbing (Kkondae Intern) and I still like it but per usual the next day (and the next and the next) I wake up and just never turn "TV" back on to keep going. >.>

IIRC, using a thief, you could sneak quite far into the throne room and lay a whole lot of traps before triggering Mr Baddie. Then you'd get him to chase you through them (or maybe one used summons to get his first attention, I forget, again). Depending on traps and luck, either the traps would kill him or would at least get his hit points down really low. Trying to charge him with melee chrs. would often ... not work well. Methods like that I wouldn't call cheating, but it is cheese. Edit: re: the arrows - I remember stacking two party members inventory half-full with nothing but stacks of arrows and some sling ammo before long missions/dungeons. I think Khalid was the only melee/shield guy I had. Or was it his wife. One of them could use a bow, one couldn't I think. Man, so many years ago.

A Rickroll reboot for 2022?* Yes, please. *Yeah it's a commercial but it's well done/funny/nostalgic and I love that Rick Astley was willing.

My memory of BG1 is ... trillions of ice (? - they were blueish) arrows, slings, magic missile, magic missile, magic missile, and way too much pausing to make everyone move, move, move. I needed nothing else. Although I probably had Xan use acid arrow or sleep sometimes, I forget.

I dunno if that's general advice or aimed at me, but I already played it, when it was the only Borderlands in existence. For 1000's of hours. I still have the disc version on old Win7 PC, the one where you can't install it anymore if you uninstall it because the DRM server it would want is defunct now or something. I tried the remaster but I couldn't stand that they took away the text inventory list and some other things. Did you play BL1 after playing BL2? I could see not liking it much that way., since BL1 is much more bare bones/basic in most ways. I had no issue with the FoV but back then I rarely played any FPS that didn't have a narrow FoV/no options to compare it to anyway/was fine for me. I have no idea what "arena mode" is in BL2, unless you mean that Torque DLC, which I think we did once, maybe doing that fight in the big pit area a few times. Not really my thing. Also, I really dislike Torque as a chr. (he's horrendous in Tiny Tina too) Pfft.

My favorite by a hair is still BL1, but that's largely because I liked Mordecai too much - BL2 certainly tops in chr/villain etc. Plus the 1st is the only one where snipers really felt significant (BL2 they were still very useful, just not quite as OP'd). Every sequel has made snipers more and more irrelevant (because of the way the AI works and enemies spawn out of thin air close to you) to the point I never even carry one around at all anymore, where I used to consider one a must-have in the 4-slot loadout. At any rate, if BL2 is your favorite, as I've already said, Tiny Tina is vastly better than BL3, even tho it retains some of the too-much-chr-yapping issue of BL3, but in the end isn't quite equal to 1 or 2, simply because it has very low replay or even "grinding" value. As to arena ... if you mean something where you're stuck in a room having to fight waves of enemies, in a way most of the Overworld "random encounters" or missions are like that, as well as the so-called end-game (and the small DLC mission/maps), which is just repeatedly doing that sort of thing a set number of times (small area, defeat enemies/survive, another small instanced area, defeat enemies, repeat several times).

---Dear Netflix, please stop making/pushing those horrible low rent romance movies. ---Dear Netflix audience, please stop watching those horrible low-rent romance movies and making them the "Top 10 watched" all the time. ---I never liked Top Gun. Altho again, I don't hate it. Just has nothing for me and I have not even a little interest in seeing the ... sequel, is it? Risky Business also did nothing for me. I was someone who didn't particularly like Tom Cruise as an actor/his roles until the early 2000's. Rain Man was the closest and that was because of Hoffman, not Cruise.

I always have at least a little hope for a Burton project, especially when neither "pale mad face" Johnny Depp nor Helena Bonham Carter are in it.

Yes, we all know how that is.