Posts made by Derp

***If you haven't read the books yet***

***NSFW content***

@arkandel said in Critters!:

Roo, my youngest cat, the one who ran from everything and spent most of his days in one closet or other, died today.

He was just four years old. Quite healthy overall. Two days ago he seemed just a bit distressed, yesterday he was just sitting there staring up at me so I got concerned and took him to the vet.

Despite treatment and being on fluids his liver was doing quite badly and his vitals were still spiking the wrong way. The vet found blood in his urine and believed it was an aggressive cancer. He recommended euthanasia since Roo was in distress, which is what we did.

And just like that my four-year old cat is gone. When my oldest dog, Daphne, had to be put to sleep earlier in the year it was at least expected - she was quite up there in years. But Roo was so young.

Sigh.

We had a German Shepherd at my grandma's house. Found a sore on his paw one day, so we took him to the vet. NBD. Vet said it was cancer. Removed half the paw.

A week later his nose started bleeding, and he was gone in a few minutes.

Fuck cancer.

I'm sorry for your loss. Those are never easy, especially when unexpected.

@arkandel said in Good TV:

@wizz I haven't watched it yet but as a more general question.

Did it feel like they are trying (possibly too hard) to create 'the next Game of Thrones'? That's kind of my main concern about the series, that its producers would try to make it into something it's not to recapture the magic of a different blockbuster series.

Not really, no.

They've modernized some of the things in the books, and brought a few of them in line with what we would assume about teenagers in the contemporary era, rather than when it was written, as well as how people just relate to each other in general. But I didn't get any kind of Game of Thrones vibe from it. Except for one big major change right in the beginning, it felt fairly consistent with the source material, and didn't try to riff off of anything else, from what I saw.

@faraday said in The Work Thread:

@macha said in The Work Thread:

@faraday I already pointed out to my boss, I have three choices. Let them keep abusing me like this, find a new job, or sue the hell out of them.

I know YOU have, but sometimes it takes hearing it from an external person with more cred. (Not saying that’s right or anything, just how it is.). It can be an intermediate and less costly step than a lawsuit. They also may be able to advise you on how to prepare for a lawsuit should you choose to go that way.

As an alternative: You can hire a firm to send a demand letter. That tends to be both kind of scary and relatively cheap.

@too-old-for-this said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@ganymede Gets better, though. Insurance companies are now being pickier about what houses they'll insure! My mom's house was built in 1982. The roof was last replaced about 11 years ago, but has been inspected and found to still be structurally sound. However, insurance companies in Florida are now claiming they won't insure houses that are more than 20 years old... or that have roofs more than 10 years old.

So now she's having to scramble to get new insurance in place, only to find out that there's maybe 3 companies left that will still insure her house. She's not a flood zone, and there hasn't been anything more than a Category 1 hurricane that's hit her area in the last 20 years... but they now claim that it's too high of an insurance risk and they won't cover it. So she's having to pay an increased insurance cost from a less reputable company so that she can have insurance on her house so that she can have the roof replaced... so that she can have lower insurance with a 'reputable' company.. that refuses to insure her house because it's 'too old'.

The entire premise of insurance is a thing that, I strongly feel, our generation is going to eventually just nope out of.

@greenflashlight said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

I suspect the answer is "no ethical consumption" and all that, but I can't shake this sudden fear that representation isn't visibility, but rather commodification.

It's really not either of those things. It isn't really visibility because the types of representation that you see tend to be stereotypical or trope-y. See: Jack a la Will and Grace. You aren't seeing the reality of the thing, just this stereo-archetype of the thing in question.

But neither is it commodification. It does not, in and of itself, have an inherent value. You can't trade it for other things. If it wasn't there, they would slot in something completely different and it would have the exact same effect. Will and Grace could have been substituted with Futurama and you would still get viewership and ad buys and whatnot.

If anything, what it does is ultimately beneficial -- it gets you so used to seeing the most grandiose and overblown version of a thing, flattening out this idea in your mind until it is a familiar part of the landscape, that less-extreme (aka 'actually normal') versions of this thing don't even cause a momentary glitch anymore. You just accept that this is a thing, even if that comes at the cost of 'he is not as loud and out there as Jack'.

And I'm sure that some idealists out there are already frothing at the idea of how degrading that is, or whatever. But do you know what's even more degrading? Still being resented. Still being persecuted. Still being marginalized and 'other'-ed.

Whatever it takes to get out from under the weight of that scrutiny and get people to start accepting you. We don't get to fetishize some idealized critical path it has to take. You just have to get there. Somehow.

That's what this kind of thing does. And I, for one, continue to support it.

@roz said in The Work Thread:

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

I need people to learn how to use the 'accept but don't send response' option for their Microsoft calendar invites.

As MTSS coordinator I set up all the calendar invites for our middle of year meetings and came back to my computer to 100+ emails of people accepting the meeting.

You can actually turn off the option to request responses.

I cannot tell you how much I agree with @silverfox and also kind of you right now.

@mietze said in The Desired Experience:

Honestly, I like finding a RP group of people who are nice to me oocly in game and who like my rp and stories and who have interesting characters that I like learning more about.

This.

I want to find a group that I click with. I want to tell stories with that group when I have the time. I want other people in that group to tell stories when they have the time. Sometimes, I want to be in those stories.

I want to find a game where I am not forced to engage with things I don't want to engage with. Where staff is cool with my boundaries and my level of commitment, or usually lack thereof.

I want to just -- find my little friend island and enjoy my time in the sun or whatever, reach out and explore when I want to, and then go back and retreat to my little safe space, and let other people do their own thing. Preferably out of reach of me unless we agree otherwise.

@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:

ETA: I may be confused and you're meaning apps for plain, simple tailors and you know there's nothin' more to them, because you read the apps. Rather than being a player and coming across a tailor PC.

That is what I mean, yes.

In your case, he isn't a tailor. he's like -- a sleeper agent with a cover as a tailor, and has already mapped out the critical path necessary to get him out of the dressing room and into the dungeon on his own initiative.

I mean the people who will just app in a tailor, nothing more, and then get mad that they aren't Central to Everything, or the ones that app in something so far out in the fringes that even though they took the initiative to create something ostensibly deeper than 'plain simple tailor', working them into the storyline would be kind of maddeningly difficult.

For the latter, think like -- the guy that apps the feudal era samurai that only speaks japanese and can't understand modern technology onto DS9 and then gets mad when they aren't on every away mission.

There is a certain amount of 'dude, seriously?' that comes along with certain concepts, the too-plain or the not-nearly-close-enough.

If someone else has already mapped out a reasonable path forward that doesn't require the entire game to shift to accommodate them, then yeah. They're in the clear.

@il-volpe

Ok. Sure.

But the difference is, there's no Writer's Room on a MUSH plotting out every single thread for every single character. The tailor is the most interesting character because he was custom-designed to be that way. Bashir feels so shoehorned because he was shoehorned, and other than that only had the fact that he was hot and smart going for him. A mile wide, and an inch deep.

There is not even the remote equivalent of a thing like that on a MU. There is no central authority planning out every single thing that a character will do, say, and experience in combination with all these other characters.

So making a character like a tailor and expecting, as if by magic, someone to figure out a way to get him from the dressing room to the dungeon depths is not only a little unrealistic given the logistical difficulties on a MU, but even actually a little entitled. It assumes that someone else is going to do all the mental gymnastics necessary to flip the story around in such a way, including every other character in it, to not only make it possible for the tailor to participate in the dungeon-delving, but to also give them a time to shine -- somehow. No matter how ill-suited they are otherwise to dungeon-delving.

That isn't fair to the gamerunner. That isn't fair to the other players that have made characters that can flow into their specific parts with minimal resistance or disruption. It is your responsibility, as a player, to at least attempt to create a character that isn't going to make an inordinate amount of work for anyone else. Or to find someone willing to do that work for you. Nobody should simply expect it of anyone else just because you're there.

A MU isn't nearly the same as a season or nine of a television show. They have very different distributions of resources, and very different creative control methods. You cannot expect them to be remotely similar, or be able to employ the same mind-boggling logistics that it takes entire teams of people months to storyboard for in a relatively static environment.

@tnp said in Recipes and Shit:

I Don't Want To Cook For The Rest of the Week

10 chicken thighs
3-4 chicken bouillon cubes
2 cans cream of mushroom soup

• Put in slow cooker on high for 8 hours
• Remove thigh bones and stir vigorously to shred the chicken

Add 1 box (16 oz) of your pasta/noodles of choice

• Cook another 2 hours on high

Pour in 1-2 cans of canned vegetables such as peas and carrots and mix well.

Serves many over multiple days.

Variation: replace soup with your favorite BBQ sauce. Replace veggies with beans.

So it's like -- the inside of a pot pie?

I'm very game for this.

@gamerngeek said in Recipes and Shit:

Putting in not a recipe, but a request /for/ them. Looking for some new dish ideas that would work for someone who cannot eat pork, or shellfish. I've got some options, but it would always be nice to add some more options to the repertoire.

DERP'S "FUCK PUTTING ON PANTS TODAY"-LEVELS-LAZY WHITE CHICKEN CHILI

• 2lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into manageable chunks
• 4 cans cannellini beans, undrained
• 1 10oz can diced tomatoes of your choice, drained -- I use Rotel fire roasted with green chilis.
• 2 tablespoons chicken base (or a few bouillon cubes, whatever -- I don't recommend chicken broth / stock or it will come out very water, you want the bean liquid, but to each their own)
• 2-3 tablespoons seasoning mix (see below) --- 2 will be a little mild, 3 will be a little spicy. Consider like -- 2 tablespoons and a teaspoon maybe.

DERP'S LAZY WHITE CHICKEN CHILI SEASONING HE FOUND ON THE INTERNET SOMEWHERE

Just mix all this together in a big batch. It keeps for ages.

1 Tablespoon Sugar
1 Tablespoon Onion Powder
2 Tablespoons Garlic Powder
1 Tablespoon Cayenne (optional but -- why wouldn't you?)
2 Tablespoons Cumin
1 Tablespoon Oregano
1 Tablespoon Cilantro (optional, but I have found that dried cilantro does not taste like soap)
1 Tablespoon Corn Starch (doesn't really do anything for the soup but keeps this nice and powdery)

Makes a little under a cup of mix, total.

Throw all of that into a crock pot. Turn it on low. Cook until your house smells delicious, 3-4 hours.

No, you don't have to cook or blanche or whatever the chicken ahead of time. Just dump it in raw. Hell, I used to do this with 4-5 frozen chicken breasts, and then I would just shred them when they got tender enough, but now I half-thaw the chicken and just use my big kitchen knife to cut it into perfect little chunks.

Dump it in, walk away, come back when it smells good. You really can't go wrong.

Alternatively, you can use a chicken chili seasoning packet of your choice but I've always found those things to be pretty freaking boring.

@macha

There are a bunch of them!

https://aresmush.com/tutorials

@arkandel said in Forum wonk:

This thread has been derailed more than the average thread gets derailed.

But getting the thread railed just feeds into the ideas that derailed it in the first place.

It's a no win scenario.

@macha

I used to work in call centers. You do not put people on the phones who are not trained on the phones unless you are in an absolutely desperate situation. Like, cannot-possibly-meet-contractual-obligations-without-asses-in-the-seats levels of dire straits. Or if you're paid by volume, business-getting-ready-to-shut-its-doors levels of panic.

I don't get why your managers are making these decisions, but it sounds like if you're already in this position, no matter what, something bad is coming.

@faraday

A bit off (or -- I dunno, on?) topic, but -- you sure do seem to know a lot about the ins and outs of film production. Have you worked in the industry? Because that sounds fascinating.

@boneghazi said in RL Sads:

A little obsessed with getting another right now. He ells me he wants a "really expensive bird" one, buuut I'm kinda terrified that's going to be a "really expensive bird funeral".

Is he perhaps equating 'expensive' with 'resilient'? Because that would make sense. Things that cost more don't break as easy and last a lot longer.

@ganymede said in The Work Thread:

@derp said in The Work Thread:

I take it this is something you can't get court costs on as a part of the judgment?

You are familiar with the American Rule?

I practice in the area of real property law.

Right. I keep forgetting that my area is the one full of exceptions.

@ganymede

I take it this is something you can't get court costs on as a part of the judgment?

@arkandel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I need sides that I can fit within the window meat is getting cooked

Chicken breast + bagged stir fry. Cook the chicken just long enough to get a good sear on each side, and then dump in a bag of frozen stir fry mix. That'll take about seven minutes to cook. Add some sauces or whatever in the last minute. I typically use a squeeze bottle with about two thirds hoisin, and then the rest soy sauce with enough room for a couple of tablespoons of sriracha.

Dump into bowl. Eat.