Keyrock

Weigh stations are there to make sure that commercial vehicles are obeying the states' weight restrictions, namely bridge laws. Commercial vehicle inspections, often referred to as "roadside inspections" can occur anywhere (hence "roadside"), but are often conducted at weigh stations where everyone involved is safely away from highway traffic. A level 2 inspection is a simple walkaround where the officer quickly inspects your tires, brakes, lights, and keeps an eye out for obvious issues. Also your paperwork is checked. A level 3 inspection is much more thorough. It involves everything in a level 2 plus opening the engine compartment, going under the truck and trailer, and is much more time consuming.

Two Wednesdays ago, while driving back from a delivery in Union, SC, I got stopped for an inspection at the weigh station near King's Mountain, NC. No problem, the level 2 inspection was clean and that means money in my pocket as my company pays me $25 for a clean level 2 inspection and $50 for a clean level 3 inspection. It's not cash, it's a gift card to Walmart, but that's just as good as cash in my case, as I have a Walmart 5 minutes from where I live that I frequent. Today I was driving back from a trailer move to Spartanburg, SC and I got stopped for an inspection at the same weigh station. In fact, it was the same officer that inspected me last time. I told him "you inspected me less than 2 weeks ago, but I'm happy as a clam to get inspected again." His reply was "your face does look familiar." Anyway, he inspected me again and it was another clean level 2. When I got back to the terminal I collected another gift card from my terminal manager. We were shooting the $#!+ and as I was getting ready to leave I told him that with any luck I'd be back for a 3rd gift card on Thursday. He though for a second then said "that's right, you're going to Union and right past that same weigh station on the way back." Fingers crossed.

Something I have always appreciated about Piranha Bytes' games is unlimited inventory space. Those fine folks in Germany figured out that no one enjoys playing inventory Tetris, it's tedious busy work that breaks the flow of the game and sucks the fun out of it. IMHO the complete, comprehensive, and unabridged list of game genres where inventory management adds to the game is as follows: * Survival games Coincidentally, that is the exact same complete, comprehensive, and unabridged list of game genres where crafting adds to the game, but that's neither here nor there.

Saints Row 2 - Dragon Ball Saints Row 4 - Dragon Ball Z Saints Row (2022) - Dragon Ball GT

They were going to make sequels but their faces got tired... *crickets* I'll show myself out.

Ninja Prophecy of Death (2011) from Pennsylvanian schlock auteur Len Kabasinski. A secret sect of ninjas, a mob family, and a kidnapped girl. Dear Lord, where do I start? This movie has some of the most egregious shaky cam I have ever seen. Somehow worse than the shaky cam is the absolutely abysmal sound mixing. For the most part, the music and sound effects levels remain relatively steady throughout, with a few exceptions. The voice levels, on the other hand, are all over the place. The voice level will sometimes change WILDLY multiple times in the span of 15 or 20 seconds. There are times that the voices are so quiet that you'd have to turn up the volume to such a degree to have any chance of hearing the dialogue that the sound effects would blow your eardrums out. On the bright side, if you ever wanted to see butt naked ninjas doing katas, have I got the movie for you. "The Genius" Lanny Poffo fights a gang of ninjas. Also, I got a kick out of seeing Len wearing a variety of gaudy shirts. Lastly, there are some laughable digital effects, especially one explosion near the end that had me doing a spit take. Do not watch this movie if you are brand new to the world of terrible movies or at a beginner level. I recommend only intermediate or higher level terrible movie connoisseurs should watch this. I really hope the sound mixing is better in Hellcats Revenge.

I went to the shooting range this morning and I can now declare my $30.25 trigger job a success. First, and most importantly, there were no misfires or double fires. Zev Technologies is a reputable company, but I was still nervous right after installing aftermarket parts into my firearm. My accuracy wasn't the greatest, but I expected that, given that I had just gotten used to the stock trigger pull on the Glock 40 and now I have a different trigger pull I need to get accustomed to. It definitely felt better, that's for sure. Somebody in Austria must really like a heavy and mushy trigger because Glock keeps making them like that, I'm not a fan. I would by no means classify the new trigger pull as a "hair trigger" but it's significantly lighter and a little less mushy. I have no empirical data whatsoever to back this up, but the new trigger pull felt about 20 - 25% lighter than stock. In the long run, once I squeeze off another 100 or 200 rounds, I think this will improve my accuracy; at worst it will be a net-zero.

Soul Hackers 2 - I'm only dipping my toe in the water right now, mainly trying to figure out whether I'd rather play with English or Japanese voices. The free DLC that adds very hard difficulty isn't out yet, I'll be restarting and diving in for real when that comes out. The little bit I have played so far has been on hard difficulty, which has not been the least bit hard. Take that with a grain of salt as it's early game and I'm a MegaTen grognard, by no means representative of someone new to the series. I wonder how many people know that this is a game in the Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner series? (the 5th game?) Or that it's a MegaTen game at all? I think Atlus is trying to make this its own distinct brand, similar to how Persona dropped the "Shin Megami Tensei" from its title, which is for the best since it really is quite distinct from the mainline series that spawned it. Where will Soul Hackers fit in if it's to become its own brand? The mainline Shin Megami Tensei represents the big picture, focusing less on individual human characters and more on the grand battle between order and chaos plot. The demons often times wind up outshining human characters in terms of personality (SMT IV is a bit of an exception). Also, SMT is super hardcore in terms of gameplay. It offers a frankly ludicrous (borderline overwhelming) amount of control and customization over your team of demons. SMT is also well known for being very punishing, even on normal difficulty. On hard you need to exploit the press turn system to its limits or get stomped. Persona is focused on the individual human characters and their hopes, fears, and bonds. While I would by no means call Persona a casual game series, it is nowhere near as punishing nor as deep a game mechanically, instead offering slick gameplay with no spreadsheet needed. Presentation has always been Persona's strong point, the games absolutely ooze style and personality. Where will Soul Hackers 2 fit in? From the little bit I've experienced it seems like they are going for a middle ground, leaning closer to Persona. Ringo already has way more personality than either the Demi-Fiend from SMT 3 or the Nahobino from SMT 5 (I purposely skipped SMT 4 because the Samurai crew from that game is delightful). Only time will tell if the difficulty ramps up (and if very hard difficulty will challenge me) and how deep the demon customization system is.

Victorian Era robot waifu is almost here.

This is a mercy kill, it was excruciatingly boring. I literally fell asleep during ep 3 and never went back.

10 years in development, that's still less than Beyond Good & Evil 2, and BG&E2 has AT LEAST 10 more years to spend in the oven.

If there is character customization I'm playing as Bak Mei aka Pai Mei aka White Brows.

I decided to address the one thing I don't like about my Glock (I love everything else, including the square chunky design), the trigger pull. No surprise, Glocks are notorious for their trigger pulls. Originally, I was just going to do the 25¢ trigger job, but I figured, since I'll be taking the gun fully apart anyway, why not replace the trigger connector? While shopping for a 3.5 lbs Zev Pro connector I noticed that a spring kit that included said connector was not much more expensive. Long story short, the 25¢ trigger job turned into a $30.25 trigger job, replacing the trigger connector (lighter), trigger spring (heavier), firing pin spring (lighter), and firing spring safety spring (lighter). I still polished everything as in a 25¢ trigger job. This should definitely lighten the trigger pull a bit, hopefully it also makes it less mushy. I'll find out Saturday.

I'm completely on board with giving players a completely useless item as a pre-order bonus. In other news, here's some gameplay from the upcoming AEW game: Graphics are definitely not on par with the latest WWE game, but I doubt anyone expected them to be.

Update: DVDs of Ninja Prophecy of Death and Hellcats Revenge are on their way to my door. Expect reviews in the near future (I will need strong beer). After that I can decide whether I want to go deeper into Len Kabasinski's rather extensive catalogue.

Can you play a Harkonnen? More specifically, can you play as Sting wearing a glorious codpiece? If I can play as Codpiece Sting I'm in.

Steampunk soulslike? It will be on Game Pass, so I might give it a go.

I think I'm soon going to go on a Len Kabasinski deep dive soon. GOD HELP ME. I'm still not fully recovered from my Neil Breen deep dive, but I must do this. For country. For science. For mankind.

He'll always be Alex DeLarge to me.

I'm back to Chernobylite. I started it nearly a year ago but stopped because it was really unstable and crashed a lot. I figured I'd give it some time to get patched up. Now it's unstable and crashes slightly less often. The game autosaves fairly often, so it's not the end of the world, but it's honestly sad how unstable this game still is. Seemingly, the main villain is the Black Stalker. It's this mysterious boogeyman (well, not so mysterious any more now that I know who it is) that can show up in any area. Once the Black Stalker enters the area you have 2 choices: 1) Run and survive until they leave (the game gives you a timer, so you know how long you need to survive). 2) Fight them off. Early on, I would always pick option 1 when the Black Stalker showed up. Since then, I have figured out the rules. The Black Stalker shows up after an amount of time, this amount decreases each successive day. You know when they are about to arrive because of the chernobylite storms. If you complete your mission quickly enough then you can avoid running into them, though that gets harder (eventually nigh impossible) as the days go by. There is a device you can build in each area that gives you more time, but that's actually counterproductive to my current strategy. I figured out that the Black Stalker can only show up one time a day. Once they leave or are driven off you have all the time in the world to explore, scavenge for resources, choke out NAR soldiers (or kill them if you prefer). As a bonus, the storm clears up once the Black Stalker leaves, making it much easier to see where you are going. Now I want the Black Stalker to show up as soon as possible. As soon as the storm starts I know I have about 2 minutes. I use those 2 minutes to find a good secluded place so that NAR soldiers don't get alerted by gunshots, then I place myself with my back to a wall, break out my fully upgraded AK, and wait for the Black Stalker. Once the portal opens up and they step through I just unload on them. I'll usually take a bit of damage, but I'm well armored now and have tons of medicine.

Smashed burger. Nothing new to report, I just thought the burger was quite photogenic.

Ran is an adaptation of King Lear.

If you watch A Fistful of Dollars (and even if you don't) you should absolutely watch Yojimbo. It's easily my favorite Toshiro Mifune performance ever, and that's really saying something. The movie (and its Italian ripoff homage) is absolutely dripping with delicious cynicism. The Criterion Collection blu-ray I own is Japanese with English subtitles, as it should be. I really need to read Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest some day so I can judge for myself whether Yojimbo is an adaptation of it, as is debated (but never confirmed).

I think it's the weakest of the 3, though still a highly enjoyable movie.