Hurlshort

I've always got a strange relationship with crafting in MMO's. I love it early, but it usually becomes a grind, and then any time I try to return to a character after time away I have no idea what is going on with all the ingredients. This is standard in almost every MMO I've played. At least they seemed to have sped up the curve in LotRO for the time being, so I'm not burning out yet.

I am not that old majestic, I wasn't teaching in the 70's.

LotRO is still going well. My son and I are tackling quests together, he as a hunter and me as a warden. We are up to level 17 and it was amazing to take him through the Old Forest to meet Tom Bombadil. I also have a dwarf stout axe Guardian that is level 27 to play solo. I am excited to get to Moria. That is my favorite area of any game I think I have ever played. We also bought a couple of houses in an elven neighborhood. My daughter played a bit too, but she seems less excited about it.

I stumbled upon a documentary about Galaxy Quest called Never Surrender. Will Wheaton refers to Galaxy Quest as the best Star Trek movie ever made, and I completely agree.

Fascinating development on the whole Roe vs. Wade stuff. I'll be watching the movie, for sure: https://www.revrobschenck.com/blog/2020/5/18/a-movie-that-bares-the-soul-behind-roe-v-wade-along-with-my-own-

Crystal Light lemonade powder mix is better than freshly squeezed lemonade.

Lloyd Alexander was my jam growing up. I'd say we are due for a revisit to Prydain. I still use the name Taran for basically all my fantasy RPG characters.

Eh, we had our fair share of feckless leaders in the first half of the 20th Century. Also, League of Nations.

Yes, poor drug companies. How will they ever turn a profit in this environment?

There also seems to be an unreasonable loyalty towards Trump in many parts. Maybe the President doesn't need to throw out the names of medicines at all? He's not a doctor.

I am in California and I'm not sure where the power mad examples are. For the most part, cities and counties are making their own decisions with guidance from the State. In fact the whole kerfuffle with Elon Musk over Tesla was that the county and city were dragging their feet behind what the state was doing. The governor eased restrictions on May 4th, but not all counties followed suit. Santa Clara County just went into phase 2 today, which is where I live. Honestly it's been fairly smooth. Our grocery stores are well stocked and people have been out on the trails enjoying nature. Small businesses are doing takeout all over town. Is there a couple yahoos yelling about freedom on street corners because they are supposed to wear masks in stores and can't get a haircut? Sure. edit: Of course, we knew all along there are only two outcomes here. You don't do enough and a bunch of people die, or you flatten the curve and people whine about losing their rights. There is no middle ground. Anyways, we aren't exactly out of the woods yet.

I've been slowly working my way through the Lord of the Rings trilogy with my son. We watch about an hour a night, which is about what his attention span can handle. We are 4 nights in and it should take about 9 nights total. It's always hard to judge how engaged kids his age are, but I think he's enjoying it. I mean, I do keep pausing it and quizzing him on the lore (I might be missing the classroom a bit.) I'm enjoying the heck out of it. I think it works really well in short chunks like this. It was been a number of years since I watched them, and they've held up well. I've been humming the heck out of the theme song for the last few days. I'm a bit torn on whether it is worth showing The Hobbit Trilogy. They didn't have the same magic. edit: I'd rather he read the book, but he is only 9, and I'd say he has a couple more years before he can sink his teeth into Tolkien. I tried to find the Andy Serkis reading of The Hobbit he did recently, but it looks like you needed to catch it live.

This is still the best version:

So someone I know on Facebook posted this crazy theory. They are a school counselor. Granted they are are a school counselor in Florida, but still...

Hmm...there should be a water bottle holder that looks like a holster. That might help curtail this stuff. I could also have a tire pump that looks like a shotgun hanging off my bike. This might be an untapped market.

With less traffic and more runners and cyclists on the road lately, it's been a bit more dangerous on the roads. This is an interesting look at the psychology of the driver: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130212-why-you-really-hate-cyclists

So car crash deaths have risen during the pandemic, despite car crashes and traffic in general decreasing. Why? Because people are stupid and see open roads as an excuse to drive like a moron. I am so ready for automated cars. My running partner and I were run off the road on Thursday. It was some old guy in a little sports car. We were running on a little country back road with very little shoulder or sidewalk. We were running with the traffic because the shoulder is a bit wider on that side, but we were still out in the lane a bit. He had plenty of room to pass though, and there were no cars coming in the opposite direction, so he could easily move over and share the lane. Instead he honked right before he came up on us and nearly clipped my partner. Then he actually stopped at the stop sign about 30 yards ahead and waited for us to catch up! He just glared at us, it was super weird. I don't know what his deal was. I'm not sure what he was trying to prove. Cars will always beat runners and cyclists, it's not a competition. Relax and try to remember you are driving around a massive and dangerous potential weapon. We were able to restrain ourselves from kicking his door in. I assume he thought we were a couple punk kids, and not two grown men in their 40's. Strange days, I've had this happen on my bike a number of times, but rare when running. On the bright side, it gave me some motivation to climb the steep grade were were headed towards.

Aquaman - had a campy kind of charm to it thanks to Jason Mamoa and Willem Dafoe (oh, and Dolph Lundgren!) Amber Heard is very unlikable. She should only be used as a villain. But overall it was a pretty decent flick. Kind of felt like they were trying to tap the Thor Ragnarok vibe. It doesn't, still felt like an imitation, but it is better than most of the DC stuff. Edit: oh, and Murlocs!

I am a bit surprised to hear a farmer's market is closing. Our local one has been open the whole time, as it is considered essential. It has also been busier than usual, since more people need fresh stuff to cook at home, and the grocery stores have been hit or miss on some goods. Since they are all local vendors, they aren't relying on trucks to deliver stuff. The only real difference is they put down tape lines letting you know which direction to go, how to space out, and everyone is wearing masks. I was under the impressions local food sources were doing pretty well during this: https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/03/17/817166724/one-type-of-business-that-s-thriving-during-coronavirus-locally-owned-grocery-stores edit: Just realized that story was from all the way back in March. How times have changed in two months!

I Dream of Jeannie? But really, most of these movies are definitely nostalgia cash grabs, but I fail to see the problem with that. These shows are all typically long gone at the point we get a movie. Sometimes its just a nice way to reunite a cast, like Veronica Mars and Firefly. Every once in awhile it ends being something special like The Fugitive and Mission Impossible. What about re-booted TV shows? Westworld is pretty fantastic. I hear Hawaii 5-0 is good. Edit: Also I love parody remakes. Baywatch and 21 Jump Street were hilarious tributes that also poked fun at the source material.

They have something called Monster Play, where you can be a Warg, Orc, and some other baddies. I haven't played much with it, I think it is more of a PvP type option. https://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Monster_Play_Character It's really more geared towards following in the footsteps of the Fellowship and cleaning up all their messes.

I doubt they go to the Post Apoc. well. The Outer Worlds is already a bit of a similar setting, and since it did well, I doubt they create a brand new IP that is in the same vein. The only way I see that happening is if Microsoft gives them an established Post Apoc. IP to go with. I could see them taking the PoE setting and going with a FPS style RPG in that world. Since PoE 2 didn't sell well, that is probably the only way they continue to grow that IP. But honestly I assume they will get an IP from Microsoft and turn it into an RPG. It will probably play like The Outer Worlds, but be a bit bigger and brighter given the extra resources they have now.

I recently bought a new computer and gave my son my old one, which opened up an entire world of new games for him. Basically he can now play anything in my massive Steam library, whereas his previous hand me down PC was pretty limited. He is almost 10, and it's been fun watching him discover all these PC games that I've played over the years. His first two that he got into were Baman: Arkham Asylum and Assassin's Creed 2. He doesn't have a controller yet (possible birthday gift) so I've been impressed by his ability to work the keyboard on these game sthat play better with a controller. I was worried AssCreed might be too violent, but I figure it also give me a chance to lecture him about the Duomo di Santa Maria Del Fiore and Da Vinci. The other game he wanted to play was Lord of the Rings Online. I've played this off and on for 13 years. I hadn't been back in awhile, so it didn't take much to convince me we should team up and play together. I let him use my old account with all the perks and content and started from scratch. I even set us up on Discord, since the computers are not in the same room. I was surprised how hooked I am again. They added two new races. One is a High Elf, basically a really old elf that fought in the big battle against Sauron back in the day, but has been in a coma since the 2nd age. Bleh, not an elf fan. The Stout Axe Dwarves are the other new race, and they are fantastic. You start out as a slave in Mordor, and escape around the same time Gollum does. It's a great way to work you into the whole Fellowship story. So far I'm really enjoying just exploring the beginner areas. They look graphically much better than they did over a decade ago when I first played, and the attention to story details in this game has always been its strong suit.

Yep, very soloable. I've played it off and on for over a decade and rarely group with anyone.

Weird. Tried to fix it.