majestic

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season two, episode two. We do have an idiom that literally translates to "even a blind chicken sometimes finds some grain", the meaning of which should be clear and which applies rather aptly to this episode, because this was the best Star Trek episode of nuTrek by a very fair margin. Never had to pause, never facepalmed and never felt like venting. If I had to name something negative, it was that the episode was derivative. The complaint that the episode plot has been done before is rather minor considering that it made good use of all the characters and their backgrounds, and was thankfully almost completely free of the jovial teenage crew dialogue that I despise so much about this series. It even took current social issues and highlighted them without being obnoxious about them, and even though they prominently feature the Federation, it does so while staying well within the Star Trek canon. Dare I say it, this was not just a good episode of Strange New Worlds, nay, it was a good Star Trek episode. Good sci-fi. Color me orange and call me sunkist, never thought I would ever say that about anything called Star Trek after 2009. Guess all it took was writing a writer who worked on Once Upon A Time, of all things. Now make her write all the other episodes too.

That usually ends up being a death sentence for me - he generally only spawns whenever I run nightmare dungeons and enemies are 15+ levels higher. Never saw him in a regular dungeon. Sigh.

Hey, my Gedonia character is at maximum level, kills even the most frightening enemies in seconds and has still yet to complete the main quest in the second zone.

Speaking of Diablo 4, while Blizzard introduced a debuff on overlevelled players in PVP areas, it does not work properly. The logical conclusion: high level players ganking lowbies on lower difficulties. For anyone who does not know, PVP in D4 consists of playing in a PVP area, collecting Seeds of Hatred that are purified into Red Dust (the PVP currency) in an event that is broadcast through the zone and marked on the map. Just spent an hour protecting others from gankers. The only problem is that years of playing ARPGs conditioned players to click on anything with a red health bar, so there was some unfortunate collateral damage. I doubt it is ever not going to be funny to see Bully McAssface explode, spilling all their ill gotten seeds on the ground.

I have one just for you:

Well, since posting the cover fun was such a hit that it got mentioned, here's another one: 90ies original: Aughties cover: Meme:

I was awash with joy when I found out today that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season two began airing last week, and I am currently enjoying episode one. Episode two is going to drop tomorrow, I think. I remain hopeful that everything will keep being as great as the first ten minutes of the first episode. I am positively ecstatic. So much that I had to pause after the cold opening to post about it. Helpful summary of the first ten minutes: As I am unable to properly express my feelings, I will just let Beethoven speak for me:

Got my car back, all nice and shiny. Well, sort of shiny, lots of pollen in the air.

It was the first time Takeo and Toshio drive through the fields (if I recall correctly). It was pure magic, and the moment the film really clicked for me. Edit: Of course, the ending manages to be even better.

Music evolution in three videos. 80ies original: 2020ies cover: Internet Meme:

D4 has a hilarious bug when trying to co-op nightmare dungeons. Players in the same party do not get into the same instances, and one ends up losing the sigil, or if by any luck you end up in the same instance after leaving and going back in, it does not work properly and the glyph experience cannot be assigned. Great, like the one and only thing that justifies the always-on multiplayer mode of the game does not work properly. I was pretty pleased with the server performance so far, not counting the recent lagging and outages, but this is ridiculous.

They're like 450€ here. 600+ not long too ago. Sure, € price includes VAT, but still...

Well, one thing's for sure, they're not going to be the apex of efficiency or computing power. They're most likely going to be better value than the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 4070, but good value? Eh. What did you pay for the 6750 XT?

Looks like I'll be going out to eat on Saturday or Sunday and have a steak tartare in honor of this thread.

I get it, y'all like your steaks well done.

How are you all done with the campaign already? It takes ages to clear each area, find everything, and move on.

With the recent upgrades: Corsair 4000D Airflow black Intel Core i7-13700K ASUS ROG STRIX B660-A 32 GB DDR5-6800 CL34* Corsair Vengeance ZOTAC GAMING Trinity RTX 4070 Ti 2 TB M.2 Samsung 980 PRO be quiet! Silent Loop 2 280mm Thermal Grizzly Intel 12th/13h gen CPU frame 4x be quiet Pure Wings 2 *Actually DDR5-7200 CL34, but not stable at 7200 MT/s

Except for the dream sequences with the little kid that died, the ridiculous deus ex machina way to solve the plot and the entire ending fiasco. I really don't get the hate for Kai Leng. Wait, no, I do, because he's a terribly written character, but it seems so minor compared to the real problems of the game that show up five minutes after the introduction is over. That's like ordering your steak bloody rare with a side of corn and fries, and you get it well done with a side of corn and potato wedges and then you go on complaining to everyone that the steak place mixed up your potato side dishes. Sure that's annoying, but it's not worse than a well done steak. Sheesh.

Nothing like Sunday, close to 3am, running into a Windows bug where booting Windows Server 2019 takes an hour instead of the usual two minutes. GETTING WINDOWS READY DON'T TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER Why thank you Microsoft. It's not really critical that this system is up and running soon. Not at all. Well, luckily it is the weekend and on Sunday I could actually just let the batch jobs run on the user server if push comes to shove, but I'd rather not shove a push somewhere at all. *sigh*

Well, what do you know, the current used car market has its advantages, while the repairs will run around 7 to 8k, it's still below what I could sell it for. Supply shortage and supply chain interruptions are still a thing too though, so it'll take a bit until all the replacement parts come in. Win some, lose some, I guess.

I was toying with the idea of getting a Z790 AERO. So, what now? Asus and MSI have crap service. Going ASRock of all things?

No, not yet. Getting the car trashed around public holidays is not the best time to get the insurance companies working on it. Everyone's out of office and all that. Although it is getting ridiculous. Guess I should call them to see what's what.

A while ago, at NVIDIA headquarter: Random person in meeting: "Hey, people made fun weird keynote presentations recently, perhaps we should..." Jensen: "Hold by beer!" What the hell.