Hurlshort

Yep.

Well would you look at that, the one game I figured was never going to happen actually has a video up... It's been 8 years or so, and it looks terrible, but the intro made me smile a bit.

Every school district in my county is starting out in distance learning, so that is a relief from that perspective for me, my wife, and my kids. We have no real capacity to test, and the plans change almost daily. Stage 2 involves only having half the students attending school in person each day. That sounds nice, but it isn't actually cutting my class sizes in half, so that kind of defeats the purpose. I don't know, I report back to work on August 10th and I assume I will be teaching digitally as of the 13th, but it's going to be a bit of a mess. I've got to create a weird schedule where I teach online classes to 170 students and keep my 2 kids plus a neighbor's kid on task for a regular school day. It will be an adventure. Oh and we are adopting a new textbook curriculum, but that is low on my list of worries. My parents, sister, and her two young kids live in Georgia, so things could be much worse. Some states are set up for some serious issues.

Phoenix Point has come a long way since release and was pretty awesome when I played it recently, so I would recommend it.

It's humorous how often he tweets ridiculous things, but as he said, his voting base doesn't care about any of that stuff. They will stay loyal even if he shoots someone on main street in broad daylight, or whatever it was he claimed. Apparently he is going to try and use executive power to ban tik tok, which is something you would expect China to do to a foreign company, and not typically the other way around. Seems stupid.

LC, you might dig some of these new smart exercise machines. Everybody raves about the Peloton, and Zwift is basically an MMO for stationary bikes and treadmills. It's all a bit pricey to start, but might be worth looking into.

Relax, it was just poking fun at Volo with the train comment. I don't think it is as easy to separate violence and poverty as you are making it sound. Central American immigration is being driven by both. They may not be traditional war-torn areas like Syria or the DRC, but I'm not sure why that makes them any less desperate. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/06/18/trump-administration-threatened-cut-foreign-aid-if-central-american-countries-dont-stem-migration/

I dropped the Game Pass awhile ago. I'd still rather play things on Steam. Heck, I'll probably buy Outer Worlds once it comes out there, even though I played through it already. Hopefully Avowed will come out on both at the same time.

Grounded - I decided to pick it up because I love Obsidian. I played for about an hour and it was delightful. It is still early access, but the basics of exploration, crafting, and building are all there and it is a treat. I have put a ton of hours into Conan Exiles over the last year, and this has that same sense of exploration, only it is a way less violent and dark setting. Instead it is a fun trip into the backyard. It seems to be very playable as a single player game, so that removed my biggest concern. There does seem to be a decent story line to follow. It seems like it is going to be well worth my $30.

Immigration law is a mess and changes with every administration. The idea that people fleeing abject poverty and violence need to be better at understanding immigrarion law is ridiculous. Also where are you dropping them off, exactly? Maybe you can load them into trains as you send them off, Volo. That doesn't sound anything like nazism. I would rather us just be good people and take in everybody. Open borders, decent programs to help transition. It isn't even as selfless or naive as it sounds, as most economist agree that immigration as a whole is a long term plus. Surprisingly, this is a libertarian policy, and easily the one I agree with the most.

Yep. First real rally the Giants have had in a long while. Last year they had a nice hot streak, but it was almost all built on getting a small lead and holding it. Overcoming a 4-run deficit with a team that barely hits is a big deal. Yaz might just be for real.

Everquest 2 does have some classic servers where they are slowly introducing the expansions. They actually started doing that before WoW. LotRO has one of those servers too, but I haven't tried it. The grind is fun for the first 20 levels or so, but then it gets super grindy. I finally finished my first playthrough of Deadfire. I went TB, and played the same priest I had in PoE1. I went it alone on the last battle, but I think I will play it again and side with the Principi, led by Aldeys or whatever her name is.

This is going to be great when it comes out in 2035.

The Shire is just such a relaxing area to explore. It also breaks the 'kill 10 bears' mold extremely well. I mean, you have to deliver mail while avoiding noisy hobbits, taste test pies, and go on a pub crawl.

Both LotrO and DDO are run by Standing Stone Games, which is basically a small group of Turbine employees that broke away and bought the rights to the games from WB/Turbine. I guess they couldn't get the rights to the Asheron's Call games. They've continued to release content and support the games. It's a shame that they don't have the resources to tackle a new project, as I tend to view them as the best of the old school MMORPG guard. I don't know how successful they are, but they do well enough to keep the lights on.

I teach all about this to 7th graders. China was nearly a century ahead of Europe when it came to ship building and navigation. Modern compasses, water-tight compartments, garden ships, etc. None of Zheng He's 7 voyages were particularly successful from a financial perspective though. They were not economical for the time. Caravels and later European designs were fast and could pay for themselves 10 times over with a successful expedition.

Woke up early for a track workout with friends, then got some miles in on the bike. Now I get to spend a lazy afternoon with a beer and baseball on the tv in my garage.

Oh, there is a terrible amount of fund mismanagement in education, to be sure. I did not mean to imply that it isn't funded. It just isn't ending up in the classrooms with the teachers. One example is the $25 million LAUSD was paying to the LAPD. California also lags when it comes to per pupil spending.

Regis Philbin is no longer live.

Hey, it was put out by an ice cream company, what do you expect?

It does explain some things. Years ago I didn't really understand the whole anti-police mentality. From my perspective, they were just people doing a job that paid modestly for serving the community and putting them in harms way. Outside of their uniforms, they weren't really any better or worse than any other neighbor, run buddy, or dance dad that I normally encountered. In fact, growing up I always thought it would be a great job. Much like with teaching, it had that unpredictable nature that I thrive in, and I felt the opportunity to have a positive impact was rich. Not to sound too sappy, but I love being in the classroom. It is a very rewarding job. My opinion on law enforcement has shifted dramatically over the last couple of years. I actually have a co-worker who is a good friend who was a cop for 1 year. He is an excellent teacher, just amazing with the kids and good at connecting with them. I never understood why he didn't thrive as a cop. He is empathetic, patient, and quick witted. I would think those would be ideal traits. But he didn't even like to talk about his year of law enforcement, so I never pried. Then I took part in a community outreach program that our local PD was holding. It was 12 weeks of classes held by officers talking about their protocols and training. At the end, you could apply to be a volunteer with the police department to help with community outreach. That was interesting to me on week 1, but by week 12 I was aghast. I think I've told this part of the story a few times before, but the training they were undergoing made no sense to me. It was way more heavily focused on pseudo-military responses to situations than serving the community. De-escalation was barely a thing. Counseling, education, and outreach were all insignificant compared to aggressive tactics and military grade tech. Most of our cops live in the community and are pretty friendly, but they are trained in a way that I simply cannot condone. It suddenly made sense why my teaching buddy cut and ran after a year on the job. So after that I had a pretty good shift in my way of thinking about the police. 1. I definitely was looking at it from a place of privilege. I was seeing the police as my out of uniform buddies, but the reality is in uniform they are trained to pull a gun on me at the slightest provocation. They have the right to do some terrible things to me with very little cause. That is terrifying. 2. They are extremely well-funded. Much better than education. They have the latest and the greatest in technology. They have tanks, special forces military gear, and better utility belts than Batman. So when people say defund the police, I'm on board. They could run waaaaay leaner. Here is a nice graphic than Ben & Jerry's created.

I know about a dozen cops, and I rarely even remember they are police when we are hanging out. They are just normal people. Except for the former marine turned Sheriff. He's a bit intense.

I'm not sure if arming protesters is going to de-escalate the situation.

AC games go on sale once a month, it feels like.