LadyCrimson

Even within California you have towns/cities where they are sorta cursing the "Bay Area ppl" coming up and buying stuff in their town. >.> Can't say I blame them really ... although at the same time I understand because most ppl really can't afford to stay in the Bay Area for long either. Or at least to buy there while working there. Hence 2 hr commute and/or remote. A lot of companies - that aren't Fortune 500 or whatever types - have a hard time paying wages that attract people enough who *live in area* to boot. It'd be a lot easier to just sell the Bay Area house to be honest but also tbh it's the house you don't want to sell until you're absolutely ready to, because in the long term it's worth so much more, and weathers economic ups and downs so much more (the 2009 crash barely touched it at the time) that it'd be foolish to sell it if we don't "have to" yet. We also have the factor that we still aren't 100% sure if hubby's remote work is going to be something he wants to live with long term. There's a lot of factors re: that and it could be in a year or two he won't be able to stand it and want to move back - or maybe that would be the house/area we'd rather "die" in - meaning we don't want to sell it, because once sold, there is no way in heck we'd be able to really "buy back" into the area again. Pffft.

^ Every person we know who has rentals or tried rental properties has a "horror" story of trying to evict a tenant, which took months and/or maybe court time. Some of them then sold their property/s and quit being landlords because of it. It's what rather scared me off re: trying to be a landlord of even one small property. Technically we could long-term afford to not rent the Bay Area house and just eat the annual taxes/insur. of our new house (which aren't tooo bad since the purchase price was relatively "low"), but it would be a bit of a crimp, and certainly having the rent in elderly years would be very nice to bank on. It's still a tempting thought to leave it empty tho. Maybe we could just rent it a week or month at a time to hubby's workmates who need an occasional flop-house when they're in the area (many of them work remotely), vs. long term contract renters. So, in terms of sympathy ... you can have mine. Rental property can be a boon and most of the time one might have good luck with tenants overall, but it's not without potential drawbacks. I am not looking forward to it and if we can crunch numbers to avoid it that doesn't throw us wildly off track, we probably will, frankly. Or at least, leave it empty for a few years at first at least.

Sometimes I think there should be a Star Trek thread. Noticed Netflix had a k-drama/musical (short series, 6 eps. I think) called The Sound of Magic, with Ji Chang-wook in a role. He hasn't been in a show I've truly liked yet, since he finished his army duty, but still an insta-click if I see his name. I didn't realize it was a musical initially but didn't take long to figure that out. There were maybe a couple songs per episode? Sometimes three? Sadly for me they were all of the slow, schmaltzy, sorta ballad type, which isn't my thing. They were sung well tho. Ji Chang-wook's chr. reminded me a tad of the movie Benny and Joon and not just because of the outfit. The female lead was the kdrama cliched "super poor downtrodden student" sort. It was overall ok, with good performances, falling into that "inspirational/live your life" type of tale, but not something you'd likely watch repeatedly. Edit: oh, also, while a musical, it's a little on the darker theme side for (really young) kids. I don't think they've marketed it to children ala Disney.

Tried to watch Snyder's 4hr grey, 4:3 cut of Justice League. After an hour or so I was so bored I turned it off. Cinematography and framing was nice I suppose but too arty for superhero for me I guess. I have not seen the theatrical release. Hubby and I then watched The Batman. The sound mixing (at least through HBO Max's PS4 app) was kind of audible but I had to turn it really loud and even then I ended up turning on subtitles to make sure I didn't miss or misunderstand dialogue. There was one mega car chase scene where the big bass soundtrack became totally lost in all the explosions, tire screeching etc and I wondered why even have a background soundtrack. At any rate, The Batman was a bit more entertaining. I give it props for not making up the villains in the usual way and the "mood cinematics" and most of the actors did decent, but I felt like The Riddler chr. was too akin to the movie Seven in execution. Also, I felt like the pacing was off (should've been 2 hours 15 min. at most) for the content and I kept getting up and walking away to fiddle in the kitchen, coming back feeling like I missed nothing. We may all know the basics of "Batman" history already but there was so little characterization of anyone that I didn't care a lot about what was happening, to anyone. Which to me is a problem with most modern big blockbuster. They're all visuals and mood and not much else.

Anyone have recommendations? I mean, sure, you look on Amazon and they all sorta look the same in a way, it's a basic thing right, but are they? I don't care about RGB lights as long as I can turn them off/disconnect wiring easily if I want. To go along with that, I don't like ones that are all glass/viewable. Big and roomy/airflow with fans included, and I sure would like a case that feels like it's made out of relatively study pieces vs. sheets of super thin metal that twist/warp if you sneeze in their direction, causing case vibration issues before long, if you get what I mean (especially the sliding removable side covers). Size and weight (and price) doesn't matter too much to me as long as it's not ridiculously over the top for a desktop. My current case is about 22" high, 21.5" deep and 9" wide and while overall it was decent I was unhappy with its warp-y side panels and crap HDD holders... Still has to have at least a few HDD slots but I don't need tons of those. Oh and definitely front USB ports.

Y'know how there are those 90yr olds who can tell you in great, minute detail about their daily lives on the farm when they were 8? ...I wont be one of them. Oh, and to be clear, am not saying disliked Vegas. Just dont remember much/not really our style. No big city/metro is. There are lots of our trips I dont recall many details of. They kind of blur together for me because hubby is type who cant sit still in one place/liked to keep moving, so it was always lets keep going, whats over there. so we would seevisit multiple parks, towns, long mt. roads every time.

Age 48 (about 5:05) Age 68 (about 4:35) Keep rocking forever, Pat.

I've been to Vegas once. All I remember is the (early) 3D theater IMAX we saw (these heavy duty headpiece/glasses you had to wear), this cheap hotel we were in (we weren't "well off" then) and that hubby fell sick with a bad flu while there. Maybe we went to some show but I can't remember. I think we liked the outlying desert areas more than the city itself. Not surprising with who we are. I do like slot machines tho. Well, the ones before they turned digital and all of that, anyway. And the nickel, maybe quarter ones at max, so you didn't lose a fortune in 5 minutes. I'll stick to slots in something like Borderlands, it's cheaper.

I gave in and finally made an account/resubbed to HBO/Max after they stopped letting me do it through Prime. >.> Which means I finally get to watch that whole Noblesse anime series someone made. I'm about half way through and what I read on the 'net is correct - it's not very good. It has moments that aren't too bad but overall it matches neither the manga or that much shorter animated start/short episode (test episode? no clue) that came long before this "full" series. Frankenstein is still tops tho. Also: is Bungo Stray Dogs - assuming one likes it at all initially ofc - worth trying to cram-watch it, before HBO removes it a few weeks from now? I mean it looks sorta like something I might like but time and attention span constraints....

Death Stranding Game Logic: -Rain/Timefall, even the smallest drop, ages your skin/self! Stay unprotected in it for even a short time and you'll look like a 100 year old mummy! ---but apparently wearing a poncho type hood without a mask (or maybe just some sunglasses on) etc. protects your face 100% enough even in the wind or driving a motorbike at high speed. -Rain/Timefall damages cargo containers and gear with megaspeed deterioration. ---but apparently they can make clothing material/shoes etc that is not only "waterproof" but "Timefall effect proof" - it doesn't deteriorate. So why not make cargo containers or rucksacks out of that stuff? Wrap the cargo in your pants? Hm?

Fed the squirrels. Fed myself. (Edit: cauliflower, broccoli, mushroom, onions, sausage/hamburger crumbled mix, chicken stock/sour cream sauce/cheese) Boredom breeds vanity selfies. Although less vanity and more "should I cut my hair off again and F it's so grey now". Some people pay a lot of money for thin highlight streaking. When you age, you get it for free! Edit: and yes, while you can barely tell, that's another cat nightshirt.

There's a desktop mode? *looks...hmm..."Javascript exception rule"...hmm..."loads a lot slower/laggy..."* I guess that works (I just use Chrome on mobile). Is there a way to prevent Android from then sticking a "play this file" shortcut/bar on the power-on/clock phone initial screen if you leave that page open when you turn the phone off? I have phone in Power-Saving/limited mode (only way to get more than 10-15 hours of standby...), not sure why it's saving/tossing that up.

Searched "Musical" in Netflix, saw something called Julie and the Phantoms. Typical teenage song and dance short series but with a ghost-y flair so eh why not. I FFWD'd through some non-music dialogues/scenes but overall by halfway through I was enjoying it a fair bit, especially the music numbers. Talented relative unknown cast that worked well together, the sort who you're initially a little iffy about but they really grow on you. Guess that teenager of mine is still in there somewhere... unfortunately the series leaves a lot of unanswered questions - what is the unfinished business, what would that 4th band member who's old now do (not to mention a mega "villain ghost" cliffhanger type last few seconds) but Netflix isn't making a 2nd season. Oh well, that's the US for ya (not just Netflix). I liked it a lot better than any of the High School Musical's, at least. Probably a little more akin to something like the 1st season of Glee except focused only on one student and the 3 ghost band member chrs.

Apologies, doubt anyone here would be interested, just posting so I can bypass YouTube's "you can't loop/repeat on your mobile/phone".

Death Stranding - using a couple cheats so I can say screw it and just get some road sections built before doing much in the main quests. Those first sections crossing rivers make life a lot easier even if you stay on foot - the rest are only sorta needed for some late mega-truck-load cargo orders if you bother with them. It's interesting how extra empty the world is before doing all those main story quests, since more and more "lost cargo" and other materials dots the landscape as you make friends with each delivery post and get them on the tech grid. Before that forward areas remains empty wasteland with nothing to pick up outside of the MULE camps. I also noticed those floating exploding balloon bag BT's in the air above a couple fringe edge map spots where they didn't exist before on console. Dunno if they were always there since early PC release or what, but I found that interesting. I just gotta get to Mama, where I can start building ziplines. Because to me, ziplines is where it's at. Edit: designing their routes/placing them is half the fun of the game.

Even in a sorta post-apocalypse where most stay underground, there are rubber duckies in random surface ponds, because of course there are.

Majestic's spider would not bother me at all, even in the house. The one Gorth posted would not bother me at all and I would find it quite interesting ... but from over there. If I saw one in the house it'd be broom swept into a giant glass jar and tossed outside with a stern warning to never come back inside. >.>

We rented/saw Moonfall. We had a lot of fun snorting, catcalling, and poking fun at Moonfall. The space scenes looked great on 4k/OLED. The actors tried their best. It didn't have cheesy otp Will Smith like lines (took itself a little too seriously in its own universe vs. say, ID4). There was mayhem, but yet not enough mayhem. There was no Apple computer, but there was plenty of looney stuff and "science". M-O-O-N! That spells moon! I would not recommend Moonfall, unless like us, you occasionally just like watching bad movies while kicking back on a warm Sunday evening.

After 5-starring a few "cities", I reached the spot in Death Stranding where as soon as I run outside it's the first boss fight. Which is a good spot to copy the save directory elsewhere as a "if I ever restart, saves me some hours, save." But...while a few new missions are always nice I guess, about the only thing I was seriously interested in re: Director's Cut is the ability to use zip lines with the luggage sleds. That would have saved a lot of trips back and forth. OTOH, there was something peaceful about traveling across miles dragging those hover sleds behind me. ...but not like that's the biggest motivation, so now watch, I won't want to play it any further for weeks. >.> ...oh wait, look, a cheat mod that removes weight limit (height limit still in effect tho, my funny bone was disappointed not to be able to have a stack 300 feet high on Sam's back...) and enemy detection status (MULES just stand there jittering in place like they've had 10 gallons of coffee/don't fight back, BT's and heavier rain graphics don't show up at all). Maybe I will keep (re)playing after all! ...maybe. There was also a super-speed run cheat but that one caused Sam to fall through the ground into empty void-space a couple times so I crossed that one off the usable list. >.>

^ I'm not an IT but I can say it was very freeing to tell my parents/family to essentially stuff it years ago. This is me, I do not need "fixing", accept it or fluff off. Humanity is just a bunch of ranting 3 year olds who want candy.

Death Stranding - I hate the Wind Farm - at least the first time you do it. It's not terrible later. Now I have to decide if I'm going to fart around in the starter area for a long time to get ahead on Order sequences or push ahead to the more open, main game world area. I'll be looking to do/get all 500 (or whatever it is now) LoL deliveries again. It'd be better to push ahead and get some of that gear that helps out and go back, but then again it's not as challenging that way.

I played for about an hour and a half (40% of that time was cutscenes or inventory/order menus or admiring scenery). I saved the game manually twice, but this is how many it creates in total: There is "AutoSave", "Checkpoint Save" and "Manual Save" - you have a certain number allowed of each type/and in total, and then it cycles through again, meaning earlier saves are written over etc. Every single time you access a terminal (which you will do a lot) or any other thing it autosaves. meaning that cycle-over point is rapidly reached. You cannot delete saves from within the game nor turn auto-saving off. On console I could go into "save game management" system setting and delete individual ones from there. On the PC I have to dig through a mixed web of multiple-named save folders in the AppData folder trying to figure out by timestamp which saves I want delete. Utterly horrendous. Edit: I remember console players complaining about how many MB they rapidly ate up.

Yeah, that was a great little manual, full of details and stats. I still have it in a box somewhere. I do see more digital games with digital manuals, but it's not the same at all. Especially if one doesn't have multiple monitors to be able to view them without disrupting the game being onscreen. Plus a lot of them are just a few pages and not in-depth. I think even the small Dungeon Keeper 1 booklet was more in-depth than most "manuals" today. And then there's the occasional game like Death Stranding that goes a tad overboard with in-game "help/tips/game lore" menus. Not just because of length but because of organization. Seriously, I never read all that crap.

After seeing some of RLM'd video on the film Moonfall, I felt a sudden urge to see it, because I'm in the mood for an utterly mindless, ridiculous, zero logic disaster movie that you can laugh at. Sadly, last I looked it was buy only still, not rent. Wasn't there some Star Trek episode with a quote about the more complex the mind, the greater the need for simplicity of play? Judging from my entertainment desires as of late, I must have the most complex mind in the world then.

Made more soup. Ate more orange dark chocolate. Sat on the rickety rocking/slider porch bench (came with the house...) watching the squirrels. Gamed. Slept. Hubby: "Do you want to go back to the other house this weekend again to get more stuff?" Me: "If we don't miss any of that stuff that's still there, do we really need it?" ...I guess even with a few larger pieces left, I feel fully "moved" and don't want to budge anymore. ...hubby still has tons of "stuff" tho. All that garage/handyman type odds and ends. I think he has a Home Depot's worth of a spare odds/ends woodpile he brought up last time. Pfft.