LadyCrimson

Neighbors around here start their bang-bang (just noise) fireworks three weeks in advance. Hear it every night. I guess they're practicing.

---far as I can tell, there's no photomode. Meaning no kewl closer-ups (without cropping I mean) and most of the time for combats I'm better off recording uber quality 4k videos and grabbing frames. ---without cheating I would've died 10000000000 times just in the intro stuff and deleted the game, HAHA ---I want to get to "visual wow" areas I've seen in videos so I may turn on the one-hit-kill cheat. ---all the jumping and cliff hugging slows me down/is annoying. Where is my fly cheat. ---patience is not my virtue these days

Besides Sekiro, I also bought Deep Rock Galactic on sale. Mostly I wanted to see if it might be something hubby and I would want to try. I'd say hubby would be "no" and.. I think the gameplay concepts I might be ok with myself, but there's something wrong with the point of view for me. It's set underground, in cavern environments (you're a dwarf, mining and fighting monsters and short-questing or something) and in 1st person. I've spent tons of hours in 7 Days mining/"living" underground, but despite the simple/"cartoonish" visuals of Deep Rock, and putting FoV as wide as possible, it's really claustrophobic and I'm not enjoying moving/looking around within the game at all. My eyes really dislike it, not sure why. I'm torn between refunding it or giving it more of a chance.

Hmm.....it was on sale. I think I can get an infinite health cheat for it, so maybe I can finally just bounce through to admire scenery and take screenshots of things futilely trying to beat on a chr. Maybe.

This is pretty much the type of thing I do constantly these days. Doesn't matter how good the game is, if it has a lot of grind I'm going to be looking up cheat engine tables or something. I rarely fire up a game lately anyway - I definitely don't want to play 5-6 hours a day, every day, to get to the "fun stuff/options" anymore. Borderlands 3 just raised the level cap again (72). I knew they would, not sure why anyone is surprised. Which is why I didn't bother grinding the last time they did. I bet they'll raise it again in 4-5 months, to 80. I'll wait, so I only have to grind once. Or if I can find one that works, I'll just use a trainer to level up guns. Edit: sometimes I wish games like this had a toggle option to halt XP entirely, so you could play without leveling up/making your gear obsolete, until you felt like dealing with such.

Another case where I would have never heard of this song/band if I hadn't watched a movie. I love it.

^ That Ford image reminds me of a video I watched this morning re: food industry (restaurants from fancy to fast food) having trouble getting people back to work for them. One place mentioned that in desperation, after getting zero applicants, they raised their starting wage by double - and suddenly had tons of people applying/wanting the job.

How great working from home is/can be depends on the work itself. Not everything works well (or at least "better") from a work/learning/management and business point of view (vs. personal convenience re: commute/time etc). So ... just depends. What the pandemic has done tho is made more people realize/decide they like working from home over any other consideration, thus want a job where such does work really well. Hubby's company (a lot of engineer/land survey work, with gov. contracts) spent money on setting up "everyone" to work from home and said they were going to allow that even after the pandemic. Months later, they are now saying they've noticed a large drop in productivity (I do not know their definition of such) and are starting to push people back into the office. It's entirely possible they will allow people to work from home half the week and iin-office the other half, that type of thing. Like in-office M-W, or Tu-Thu. Or do shifts of some kind so half are at home, half in the office etc. No one knows for sure yet. Hubby loves working from home and with his specific tasks, he will get more done, quicker, when alone at home (or even at the office - he'd often come home then go back at night when everyone else had gone home to "actually get work done", hah) but even he acknowledges that he does not get the same kind of employee/co-worker input, co-ordination/communication and learning/teaching moments that way. So with his specific position (the IT guy who keeps it all background running) and his company, a middle ground can and likely will be reached. Companies need time to figure out what works best for them and employees. But again ... depends on your job. I think the vast majority of workers are going to find there are not enough of the type of jobs around where all that actually want to do so can work from home all the time. Unless you create your own job/entrepreneur, of course. Edit: productivity can also be affected because let's face it, there are a lot of people that without a structured environment, do not manage their time well - add on potential distractions of home/spouse/family etc and (can) get a fairly inefficient worker.

Trailer doesn't look too shabby and I like Pace. But ... I know Foundation is considered more sci-fi iconic (never did read all that series, I found it kinda boring), but gosh darnit, when are they going to make something out of the Robot novels? Yes there was that old BBC thing but I didn't see it and it doesn't exist anymore. I would really like to see Elijah Baley, R. Daneel Olivaw and R. Giskard Reventlov brought to modern cinema "life" too. Daneel is the only reason I tried to read Foundation, eventually skipping over to just skim the later books that he was in. C'mon Hollywood (or someone....), gimmie Elijah and Daneel at least, please!

I feel as if that is almost a "challenge." The art style is very nice. Also, that first round of pictures you posted ... I was sitting kind of far away from the screen with tired eyes and at first I thought that white dress was a cat painting/statue or similar.

Riders of Justice - rented via Amazon ---Liam's latest may have disappointed me but Mads Mikkelsen did not! I watched subtitled, there is a dubbed version for rent. Trailer and description are going to make it sound like a Taken-style revenge action movie, but it's much more chr. based than a US film. Barely any action (by US standards...) and what there is is short and to the point (vs. Hollywood's stylized/drawn out style), which I rather liked. Is also darkly humorous in spots. It's not a masterpiece, but enjoyable and I liked it. Another Round - rented via Amazon (only 99 cents!) ---this was in my list for a while. Finally got around to it. Apparently it won a bunch of awards. I think it deserved them. What a great little drama film. Relatable, sad, funny, uplifting. That's all I feel like saying about it, there are plenty of reviews/descriptions around. ---apparently Leo DiCaprio is already slated for the US redo of it. Leo's no Mads, but I can sort of see him in the role, actually, but ... sigh. Whatever. My opinion, at least see the original first, if you haven't already.

As I've said before, as long as I have access to some kind of AC to take the brunt of high temps out of my indoor caves, I'm all right. If AC is not possible, but there was at least electricity for a freezer, I would make myself a pair of oversized, heavy overalls with a lot of large velcro pockets and stick those gel freezer packs in them (legs, back, chest/stomach area etc) rotating them in and out all day. I suppose I'd look funny, but at least I wouldn't feel like I was cooking in an oven.

The Ice Road on Netflix ...I love you Liam Neeson, and I've at least mostly enjoyed a lot of your later-life movies (Cold Pursuit was decent, for example). This one is pretty bad tho. Liam still gives that Liam stoic performance, but urgh. It's Ice Road Truckers + mining diaster politics, with some action thrown in. ...but it *was* one of those Netflix films where the visual quality was great. Still looked pretty sharp/nice from only 3 feet away!

Was bored. Went to Best Buy. Picked up a few small thingies. But on the way out I noticed the Samsung Fold phone/tablet. I thought it a was a small tablet - when I realized it folded I went "THIS IS SO SILLY YET SO COOL I WANT." Then I saw the price tag ($1800). Never mind. But man is that a cool tech phone/tablet in one, toy. If it was half the price I'd buy it.

To be clear, I wasn't talking specifically about bouts of problem insomnia. I just meant in general. Unless I'm having a fit of depression, I usually don't get remotely sleepy for at least 20-24 hours, good luck trying to go to sleep every 15-16. Daily exercise, even doing it in the morning vs. evening, makes it worse - pre-40's (when I was much more physically active) I was awake until dawn all the time, not one bit tired, and ofc. doing anything too brain-engaging late night makes it worse too (like gaming, or reading, or net-surfing...). I just figured it's because exercise gives you generally more health/energy then not. But then I see it listed as a way to help with insomnia, and thus ... I know why exercise is supposed to be good for depression, maybe it's kinda like that for most people, some kind of chemical regulation help? ...the one area exercise does help me at times is the back, because poor posture (back/hip/other alignment problems) can carry over into sleep posture. But that's quality of sleep vs. being able to initially sleep/feeling sleepy. ...anyway, for myself, if I need/have to sleep and I can't, I just stay in bed. I may get up briefly now and then, but then go right back to lying in bed. Hopefully I bore myself to sleep that way. Doing any activity - even listening to white noise - just keeps my brain stimulated and I'll be up until dark again the next day - this when I'm 'normal', not insomnia bouts.

Am I the only one where (a normal level of, not olympic level training) exercise actually wakes me up? And I mean, mentally wide awake for hours and hours, not just while doing it? I also have trouble staying asleep long enough, more and more, as I age. So it's like a double whammy sometimes.

That's a decent description of general insomnia. For me it's usually certain mental factors that may trigger it - not (current/recent) stress, more like PTSD. You say it doesn't seem related to any life event, but it still could be - just one that happened so early in life (under four years old, say) that you can't remember/don't associate it. It took me years/way into my adulthood to realize/consider many of my issues (including sleep) may have come from being abandoned/adopted (when I was around 2). eg, unconscious fear of going to sleep and then waking up and everything will have changed/disappear. Lack of control or something. Sucky thing is knowing that could be a major factor doesn't really help me control it, since the PTSD event happened so early it's almost ingrained. My life can be perfectly stable/going well and it still happens for some reason. Or something obivous may trigger it (like moving to a new house...) Anyway, not saying yours is like that (there are also, ofc, physical reasons for insomnia), but one never knows what early life event might still be having an affect on you as an adult.

I think a lot of people, even with systems built a couple years ago, may not be "ready" for Win11. At least from reading around on forums. There are supposedly steps that some can do to workaround requirements (whether it will still work on full version vs. that leaked version, who knows) but ... Some people just need to tweak their BIOS settings I guess because some of those things aren't turned on by default ... that might be my case too. I haven't checked and don't care. For myself it'll be like Win7-Win10 ... if I feel like getting Win11 three or fiveyears from now, I'll just build a new rig dedicated to it. To be honest tho, while I still love hardware porn (haha) in terms of actually using PC's - I'm starting to wonder how much I really care about desktop building in the future. I care less and less about gaming/keeping up with gaming, or doing anything with PC's in general, outside of internet browsing/multimedia, and a console, TV, or tablet can do that. >.> Yeah ... I don't like that either, even if I wouldn't use most things that (right now) would absolutely require logging into it (I haven't touched MS-Store or any "app" even once). But it's a hint that at some point they're going to want you to be logged into MS account 24/7.

Nothing that interesting, but ... when you have to watch your total carbs, you've already eaten a couple (small/thin) slices of bread for the day, and you're really wanting something to munch on. Thus ... turkey bacon (sadly no salami in the house), tomato, onion, pickle, romaine lettuce rollups. Or something like that. Summer and I want to nibble vs. cook "meals." Deli sandwiches on sourdough bread, potato salad, cherries/summer fruit, carbs carbs carbs. Dangit. At least pickles/onions/tomatoes/lettuce are a great combo. Honestly recently I could probably just eat a yellow onion like an apple. *munch munch munch*

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-11-specifications (Link also has the list of "feature-specific requirements" and deprecation/removals. ...I'm wondering if this is going to feel "steep" to a lot of business. eg, will they switch. Of course, lots of business don't switch windows versions until much later anyway (like many home consumers...) so I suppose MS has already taken that type of thing into account.

I know he's trying to relate to game addiction, but even if you remove that aspect, this is still me to a T. Especially the part where everyone told me as a kid how I was so smart/special and now I feel so stupid. Or something. So now I just say "I'm lazy."

Speaking of water ... California is again drought ridden. Although we personally haven't noticed any local resident specific use changes, we might before too long (some already have ofc). https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/23/weather/california-drought-satellite-images/index.html Water in a key Northern California reservoir -- Lake Oroville -- is expected to fall so low this summer that its hydroelectric power plant will likely be forced to shut down for the first time since it opened in 1967. ...it takes about 2000-3000 gallons for ... a pair of jeans. Supposedly around 30-35 gallons of water to produce all the ingredients to make a cup of coffee. Not that there isn't hope - industries are starting to make changes. Agriculture is still the big one tho, especially re: less developed countries. ...cut the population in half, that might help. Or stop trying to make utopia's in the deserts.

We are/were the types who would go into mountains taking extra gas in cans just in case, because we've run out of gas a few times in the middle of some gravel road and will never let that happen again. >.> Now, admittedly we are unlikely to do that these days and even less likely after another 10-15 years, so perhaps at that point if I'm still even driving (hah) I'd consider one then. Also, there's also stuff like this: https://www.newsweek.com/california-facing-power-crisis-frets-over-electric-car-charging-routines-1602755 eg, yes we need to lower pollution but there's going to be consequences and issues with any option. I'm still far more concerned with water usage. And I don't mean taking a shower, but industry. Look up how much water is used for most of industry (including clothes/textiles and tech) and then think about the throw-away/upgrade every year type culture marketers are encouraging. It's horrifying.

Yeah that's why I'm not interested in such unless it's to be a 3rd car. I mean I know they're (currently) meant for around town/commuting, but I need a car that can also be trip-driven across the US or through long windy mountains if I wanted, not just metro. I think electric is getting closer but still... By the time charging stations are as total widespread as gas stations are/were, I'll probably be like the old man in Cocoon trying to read DMV letters to keep their license.