majestic

Time to vent. We've spent the past nine months at work upgrading our ERP system and our customizations to the next major release. For compliance and quality assurance reasons (or whatever the reasons behind certifications are, screw that crap, seriously) - had to migrate to newer server operating systems and the old version wasn't officially supported running on the newer OS version. I'm not generally a violent person, but the people responsible for this major release need to be put out of their misery for their own benefit and those of everyone else's life they might ruin by working on some other project. And by put out of their misery I mean locked up at Guantanamo and waterboarded every day until they hang themselves with rope made by their own hairs. Here are some of the fun things that happened. I'm not entirely sure anyone that isn't Malcador is going to appreciate the sheer insanity, so feel free to skip ahead, I'll just leave them in a spoiler tag:

No, don't feed the spell casting hedgehogs!

Master of Orion 3 after patches was a decent 4X game. Turn based combat is boring and for complete boons who can't hack it. Baldur's Gate had good combat. Even before mods.

Huh, well, I'll take that Kickstarter as a slightly cheaper pre-order this time. No need to back super-special-wowzer editions any more. Heh.

Time for more food porn! Or possibly some mild irritation. Pasulj/Grah is a great base to use leftovers and fairly easy to make: And... well, roasted blood sausage with potatoes and sauerkraut:

Don't bother. As of episode two it went full Kurtzman. That was... terrible. In every way. This Romulan plotline makes the first season of Discovery appear sane by comparison.

I feel like I've posted this before, but what the hell... Also, some Masterplan! \m/

No, that's fine. I actively wanted to hate the show - who knows, I still might get to, we haven't seen the Romulan Samurai guy yet - and was convinced I would hate it after the initialy fight sequence with Matrix!Girl and her Foreheadalienoftheweek lover. Just somehow I didn't. This feels so much like Rise of Skywalker. Except that one was awesome for all the suck, and this one's at least somewhat interesting in all the scenes that probably aren't from Kurtzman even if they are completely misplaced because the Federation is the worst possibly plot device to reflect upon current political issues.

There's probably an app for that. Of all the wonders of the internet that one's my favorite. Ordering and paying online, limiting my interaction with people to accepting the delivery and tipping the wage slave delivery guy. Same with online banking. Except for the tipping. Tipping bankers. Tsk. What a concept. 😄 If that post doesn't make sense then that's because I just spent the past 24 hours fixing problems with data migration scripts that were made by the monkeys that run around calling themselves IT professionals, developers or software engineers. Morons, the lot of them. Probably "majored" in "CompSci" at the Advanced Computer Engineering Ape University of Monkeyland at some point.

Seconded. That was much better than expected. The premise for the show is still silly, but I've griped about that in the past and it is what Star Trek writers have to work with thanks to Jar Jar's, Orci's and Kurtzman's inane idea of how space works.

Started the second season of Sex Education. I liked the first one for the most part, except for the very end when it crossed from interesting into teenage sex comedy with awkward drama territory, i.e. it became something I generally detest. Well, the opening episode of season 2 didn't help. Talk about a nosedive.

I know that's a fairly unpopular opinion amongst greens but nuclear power is a decent way to reduce the carbon footprint of power generation.

Finally caught the last episode of the first season of The Mandalorian.

Funny how I always assumed the narrative issues of the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie were due to a somewhat cropped adaptation. The novel is a door stopper after all. Turns out they weren't. Eh. That was a chore to read through.

This is one of the times I disagree with them. I think they're enjoying a turd based on the fact that the other turds set in the same universe are so much smellier. I'm also surprised neither of them had an issue with Baby Yoda being super force potent diminishing Luke's interaction with him (honestly Yoda, what the hell, you're born with force control beyond anyone else, why bother the poor farm boy?) when they complained about Palpatine's being alive in Rise of Skywalker takes away from Vader's sacrifice.

Oh, by the way, in case someone doesn't know, RLM has not only one, but two episodes of Best of the Worst dedicated to the Star Wars Holiday Special:

Stir, whip, stir, whip, whip, whip, stir!

So it actually is masturbating, then?

Merry Christmas guys, I'll probably be off until early January (as in Orthodox Christmas).

The best part is their gloss-over explanation for actually having a final big space (sort of) battle. I'm kind of hoping that Rise of Skywalker will eventually show up on a Best of the Worst episode. 🤣

I looked through a list of games released this year and realized I played very few of them, and of those only two for any meaningful stretch of time: Sunless Skies: Joined its predecessor insofar as that I still haven't finished a playthrough by achieving my chosen goal, which of course was The Truth - how could anyone possibly pick otherwise? Alas, it seems as if the Truth is still out there. Sekiro: Was fairly straightforward for a From Software game. As such it's less... burdened by an insane fanbase glorifying the narratives failures of the other Souls games as fantastic storytelling. Superb gameplay, fun glitches, great vertical movement. Decent choice for Game of the Year. Special mention goes to Anthem which I played for a bit with my Origin Access subscription. It was fun for a while, actually, but barely more than a proof of concept. What a waste.

Color me orange and call me Sunkist... this week's The Mandalorian was actually decent. Who knew using a few semi-developed characters and having them interact would prove to be more interesting entertainment than a bunch of enemies of the week. It's a pity it took the show 7 episodes to get to this point. Still don't care for the implication that baby Yoda's species has some innate super control over their force prowess. It diminishes Luke's interactions with Yoda.

I'm not sure what your problems are here, guys. I just realized how wrong I was. Rian Johnson is a cinematic genius. The point of The Last Jedi was, quite frankly, exactly what Kylo Ren said to Rey: The Empire, your parents, the Resistance, the Sith, the Jedi - let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you are meant to be. It's just that I thought for a while Kylo was talking to Rey, but no. Rey wasn't even an author insert like Mary Sues usually are. No, Rey was there for us as audience. Since TLJ killed the past for me - i.e. freed me of any attatchments I had to Star Wars as an entertainment intellectual property, I could just thoroughly enjoy Rise of Skywalker and bask in its utter and complete brilliance, except for a bit at the very end where which I thought didn't work as well as everything else. This was quite frankly truly impressive and it wouldn't have been possible without The Last Jedi. It's not easy, but I'm not afraid to admit that I was wrong. That was money well spent. Oh, and yeah. I'm only somewhat facetious here. The disconnect TLJ caused truly made me appreciate this one in the same way I enjoyed watching 6 Underground. It's so bad it's good. Especially the end where, quite frankly, nothing makes sense. Nothing about the entire ending makes any sense. It's glorious.