Hurlshort

Man, loading up the original Jagged Alliance was a total trip down memory lane. I recruited Grunty, Fidel, Ice and Speck and loved their one liners. That game hasn't aged well though. It was fun to play a map or two, but it is pretty rough compared to JA2. It was still fun to load it up though!

Yep, I realized I haven't actually had any combat in Encased either, and I am about 10 hours in. It is an option, but it offers a lot of ways to not fight.

That isn't irony, Alanis Morrissette. Irony would be if she bought the dress in Oregon to avoid sales tax, or she wrote off the cost of the ticket on her taxes. Wearing a tax the rich dress to a rich event is either an insult to the other guests or it is properly delivered message, depending on your perspective.

Norm was a genius. Nobody else could pull this off on The View:

She definitely deserves recognition, but the dig at Gore for his slideshow hasn't aged well, given the environmental crisis we are in. There probably needed to be more attention given to that.

Encased is a very good RPG and a fascinating world to explore. It is probably the best rpg I have played this year.

Damn, I had no idea he was battling cancer.

Wonderful, so basically the front runner in the recall election is going to challenge the election if he loses in court, and then expects people to go to the ammo box if that fails. Classy.

The really troublesome part is there is no real Republican leadership in this state. Schwarzenegger had an actual team, agenda, and had been building his reputation in the party and the state for awhile when he came in through the recall election last time. It still ended up being a big waste of money and a circus. But this time it is a complete mess. I don't know if there is a minimum percentage of the vote a candidate needs, but it could be a very small percentage of the state gets to choose the governor. The crazy thing is next year is an election year. So dumb.

I filled out my California recall election ballot. I voted no on the recall, which is a pretty easy choice. I am pretty comfortable voting Newsome out of office at the end of his term if someone can put together a decent campaign against him, but this recall circus is a waste of time and money. There were 46 random crazies on the ballot. What a joke. I think the front runner is a guy with a grizzly bear.

Yesterday my wife and I raced in the Santa Cruz 70.3 Ironman. I had done this race 3 years ago when I was still pretty new to triathlon, so I was interested to see how it would go. This was also my wife's first big triathlon. She had done a couple short ones, but the pandemic cancelled the races she was going to do to prepare for this one. So after 2 years of not racing, we were both excited and nervous to toe the starting line. The swim was fantastic. Water temperature was 61 degrees, which is great for the ocean. It was a bit foggy, so you could really only see as far as the next buoy, but it is just around the Santa Cruz Pier, so there isn't any way to get lost. It was a washing machine the whole way, I was surrounded by other swimmer. But I felt good and swam pretty aggressively. I ended up shaving 2 minutes off my previous swim time for the 1.2 mile distance. This was the a part my wife was worried about. She is not a fan of ocean swimming. But she side stroked the whole time and got it done. I was so excited when I saw her later on the ride and knew she made it through the swim. The 56-mile bike was pretty tough. I got a triathlon bike this year, which is great for these races. But this is a hilly route up the coast on Highway 1 and the wind was not very favorable. I was a bit disappointed in my time, but it was still a couple minutes faster than before. Then the run was hard. I ended up 5 minutes slower than the previous race, with a half marathon of 2:04. I had been dealing with some injuries from running, so I hadn't trained as much as I wanted. The injuries didn't bother me, but I didn't have the legs for a better pace. I still finished 4 minutes faster than my first time, coming in at 5 hours and 51 minutes. It felt great to get it done. I threw up immediately afterwards, but was recovered enough to go cheer my wife on over her last half mile. She finished in 7 hours and 48 minutes. Here is me trying to get my shoes on after the swim for the 1/2 mile run to transition. Despite the extra 2 hours, my wife was way fresher at the end than I was.

So I read this story on Facebook: And I mean, it's a nice story. The comments are gushy and say God Bless and all that. But I'm pretty sure that guy drove a ghost around for a couple hours. Like, I've read enough of these stories. He is going to find her sweater in the back of his car, and go back to the rest home, and find out she died 20 years ago.

Oh no. What a travesty.

Man, I remember not having a good enough computer to really play the Matrix Online. That would have been a nice MMO to at least get into for a bit.

Huh. I was hooked on the story and didn't see the twist coming at all. It probably helped that it came out at a time when I wasn't really plugged into the internet. It was also back in the day when I could sit down and play a game for an entire weekend. Plus it was a more engaging Star Wars story than the prequels. I went my entire childhood without any real SW content other than the toys and the original movies, and then we get these mediocre movies. Then we suddenly get this fairly cutting edge RPG set in the universe. It was pretty awesome at the time.

Sweet, they have Vasquez in the cast.

Wait, Jupiter Ascending was wonderful? Oh...I see what you did there.

I do make a lot of bad decisions. This weekend I have a triathlon in shark infested waters, so be prepared.

Oh, I've died a bunch too. Very adventure gamey scenarios. Sure, I'll test out your coffin. Or sure I'll take that muscle car out for a spin. Or sure I'll hide in the elevator during launch.

Pro-life groups actively seek to shut down organizations like Planned Parenthood. Pro-choice groups actively seek to support them. Seems like a pretty big distinction.

Huh. Was not expecting the whole walk around a compound and explore or the cards. I am not a fan of cards either. But it does look pretty good.

I picked up Encased as well. It seems to have some pretty great options for characters. I spent about an hour creating mine before I had to go to bed.

I just have a hard time with this whole concept of dictating the terms of what a women can do to her body. That should be between her and her medical professional. Ideally, everyone would use birth control. Ideally, if that fails or is not used, people will use plan B. But unplanned pregnancies rarely come out of ideal situations. It is also good to point out that abortion rates have declined quite a bit since the late 70's. We don't actually need to make abortion illegal to stop it from happening. We have had success by offering services to support women with reproductive health instead of trying to criminalize it.

Yep. You could also just not hire people that harrass women or discriminate. That is also an option. Professionalism is hard, I guess.

My God, you've done it. You've solved the whole problem. Huzzah.