Bartimaeus

Left my computer on overnight. Woke to find my primary monitor frozen at black - not off, but just black - while the second monitor was acting as though it wasn't even plugged in. Restarted my computer to find that my system drive, the SSD, is very much dead. Regardless of where or what I plug it into, nothing recognizes it. My system image I use to restore from wouldn't work on this old SATA 2 80GB...because the drive I did the image from was 120GB, and apparently if the drive you're restoring to is smaller than the drive you're restoring from, it won't work - regardless of whether or not the restore only takes up 20GB or so, anyways. Been a fun day.

Bleck. Like TrueNeutral, I really did not like Hotel Transylvania. Big Hero 6. It was decent. I liked it about as much as I liked Maleficent - Wreck-it-Ralph and all the others definitely ranked higher. I didn't much like any particular character, which really hurt the movie for me, and I most definitely did not like San Frantokyo.

What a ridiculous song. I thought I posted this at some point in the past, but I can't find any evidence of doing so. (edit) Just in case I have, though...

Yeah, I thought it was pretty neat. I wonder if they ever plan on doing something with that.

Did you go the good guy route or the bad guy? I thought the devs did a great job with the evil options. In some ways, it was actually better crafted than the good guy options, although that's hard to judge since they were all so good. I always play the good guy, of course, but the *truly* evil ending in particular was absolutely stunning and grim. ...I don't know what the bad guy route you're talking about is. Perhaps I should replay...

Wreck-It-Ralph. I liked it more than Maleficent, for sure - but I think I liked it a little less than Tangled, which I liked less than Frozen. Overall, though, I'm pretty impressed by what Disney's been doing lately. I've never much liked 3D animation, and I think I'm beginning to understand why. Pixar, for the last fifteen years or so, has been pretty much the face of 3D animation. Dreamworks has a hit like Shrek here and there, but it's been almost entirely Pixar outside of that. Disney's movies since their last 2D animation (Atlantis - and discounting Princess and the Frog) were Lilo & Stitch, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, Bolt...I've literally only seen Lilo & Stitch out of these, and some parts of Treasure Planet. And then...I look at Pixar's main movies/series. And then it hits me...I haven't much liked any 3D animated movies because I don't like Pixar's art styles. I've also always felt like 3D animation had lost some of the charm that 2D animation had for reasons unrelated to the art-style...and again, that's because of Pixar: their story settings. They're almost all modern and/or completely fantastical (Monsters, Cars, Toy Story...). Their over-blobification of humans, their over-usage of inanimate objects like toys and cars...talking fish and rats... I like more classical settings, like Sleeping Beauty's or even Frozen's. I like human characters...but I like for them to actually at least somewhat resemble humans - I still don't think Disney's way of doing it is perfect, but Tangled's and Frozen's have been infinitely better in my eyes than anything Pixar has done in that regard. My favorite Pixar movie is WALL-E...and I guess it's not really a surprise why anymore. Semi-realistic projection of Earth in the future, robots taking the spotlight instead of humans so I don't have to look at Pixar's ugly human faces the entire movie, fairly minimal (for an animated movie) dialogue... Yep, for once, I look forward to the future of 3D animation...so long as Disney continues to ride high, possibly at Pixar's expense.

Packers re-sign Cobb against my expectations. A big thank you to everyone involved,

I can't much stand that one due to the heavy vocoding. Gosh, I hate ripping CDs with EAC. It's so...boring.

Heard it on some compilation album called Chain D.L.K. Compilation CD #1. Not usually a fan of German lyrics, but wumpscut can be an exception.

I've never played the game, so I wouldn't have any idea. I hoped it'd help, but I guess not. Sorry!

I did a quick search for you:

Packers probably losing Randall Cobb and Tramon Williams, and cut AJ Hawk as well. Sigh...

It stays that way even when you are signed in, since Google loves to shove garbage you're not subscribed down your throat rather than the content you're actually subscribed to. I despise YouTube for a reason.

It doesn't have Alyx sucking up to you for every single thing you do, for one thing... That's the thing that really made HL1 better than HL2 to me.

She might've done less than stellar things, but c'mon, I hardly think they were enough to make her sub-human (besides maybe to Volourn, ) - changing one's tune a little can absolutely change others'.

I forget sometimes how good the LotR trilogy soundtracks are...

Maleficent. Mostly non-spoilers: It was, uh, decent, I guess. I'm really not a fan of Angelina Jolie, and was fully expecting her to drag down the movie for me...but it says something about a movie when she's my favorite character and actor in said movie. I felt like Aurora was horribly miscast and perhaps miswritten - she dragged down the movie more than anything else - and that while some of the story revisions were fine (most everything pre-Aurora), things started to fall apart a bit towards the end. I didn't much care for the complete dork of a prince, either - I understand he wasn't supposed to be the hero like he was in the original due to the whole Maleficent factor, but c'mon, it was a little extreme. Still, I didn't hate it, and that counts for something. Story Spoilers: I might try Wreck-it-Ralph next...but truth be told, I really don't care for modern or sci-fi settings in these kinds of movies - with the one exception of WALL-E - so I'm unsure if I'll like it. Still...the Disney train rolls on.

That seems...overly generous. I'll take it if it hasn't been claimed already, but I'm not sure if I can let you pay the shipping costs, too, so PM me so we can figure something out,

Ooh, if it weren't Australia, I would totally take it. ...But it'd probably get lost or destroyed with the cheaper services or something.

Tangled. Pretty good! Thanks to whoever recommended it (TrueNeutral, I think?). Weirdly, I thought it was more consistent in quality than Frozen (there were never really any parts that I really did not care for, unlike Frozen, where there were several), but somehow Frozen still seemed like the superior movie overall. Frozen having stronger music may have played a part in that (with the exception of "Fixer Upper", which I didn't like for several reasons), and a more interesting plot probably didn't hurt, either.

Small suggestion: turn up your mic volume some. I turned up my volume to 100% (it's normally around 30-40%), and it's still a little below my acceptable "normal" volume range. (The video volume is set to 100%, too.) I can hear you and make out words, but it's really hard to follow at this volume. Although...I realize now after saying that, that the game itself is about the same volume level as your voice (a little louder, but not much). What're you using to record?