@Ganymede We can talk option things. Once you have some system stuffs sorted, and have an idea of how you want stuff to look, can start some tinkering-fu. (I admittedly know nothing about Mass Effect so I'll stumble around on yon interwebs a bit to look at what kind of graphics and what general look might be apt, since I gather there are some faction symbols and whatnots that would be scattered around the place and so on. 
)
@Ganymede I am super happy to hear this. If I am in a headspace-place to help you out with wiki things (if you want me to, obviously) when it's time for that stuff, I would be happy to help out.
@Auspice's description here is very good, and it is often overlooked. People think sad. Sad is alive, sad is responsive, sad is, in its own way, passionate and all the rest.
Empty is different, and when I think of the 'sad' that manifests in depression, it's more like grief, or mourning, that will not and cannot progress through the stages toward recovery or acceptance. Depression 'sad' is like being frozen in the depression stage -- or worse, reaching acceptance, but not as healing, but as the hollow feeling of 'nothing can get better, it is all futile'.
@Gingerlily said in Good TV:
I did not know you loved Reign also. Will you watch with me if @Coin doesn't get on it and catch up? I like live fashion analysis, it's important to my enjoyment of the show.
I do not know if you mean that in the love it or hate it way, but if you want something deeply funny (either way, honestly), you owe it to yourself to peek at this if you haven't already: http://www.genevievevalentine.com/2013/10/fall-tv-costume-hilarity-reign/
I quote: So! On the left, we have Anna Popplewell in a ballgown from the 1840s, On the right, we have a dress that wants to start a fight with me, because if we’re just going to pretend no historical things ever, don’t you dare show me a front-lacing waist cincher on the outside of a dress. You and I know better, dress; don’t pander to me.
As a former costumer, I sometimes revisit that specific page simply because it brings me such potent fits of the giggles.
You owe it to yourself to scroll down to the bottom ballroom photo analysis, because... you just do.
...and that situation that has been plaguing me and screwing me up finally hit true critical mass.
It's time to run away to a dark hole for a while and reflect on this.
Crappy phone photos are crappy, I know this. 
This is the reason my hands hurt over the weekend:
...there are two of those, three of another kind in the same beads that's shorter, and another one that's twice as long as that one with a supplementary piece that clips it into different drapes. OW.
This is the reason I have crampy crab hands today:
...and this is the project leash. On my screen, at least, at full size, my hand is exactly that size, as in I can put my (scrawny short girl man hand) right over it and it fits, but I'm not sure if the forum will resize it or not. The piece in the pic with the project leash is the one with beads on it above, for an idea of scale. Yeah, ow ow ow ow ow. Both of those are 'since around midnight', so at least they're not taking quite as long as I worried they might?
...this was the summer project (well, this and about 50 more similar to it) but I've tried to explain it to people and explaining it just confuses everyone. All the chain there, save for the shiny copper bits, we treated with a bunch of patinas. The shell is an actual shell I ended up dremeling the upper hinges off of, painting with a high metal content paint, and then also slathering in patina chemicals for something along the lines of an 'aged bronze' effect.
Yeah, it's a double post, but it's a different subject.
So, two years ago, I had a plan for a specific set of tools and materials I wanted to get for projects for that year. I had busted my fool ass making enough stock to cover all of the above with sales at a show, the overstock of which was to be bought wholesale by the person I'd sold stuff to a number of times before, so I could do it. It's something I'd wanted to do for a decade then.
But then her bookkeeper fucked things up. She didn't enter the stuff as wholesale, but as consignment. That meant I didn't make $XXXX, I lost about $500, because they discounted things well over 50% and then sent me half, and we'd already spent $XXXX in expectation of getting the cash we always reliably got over the course of a 2+ year business relationship. Uhm, ouch. (There was more or less nothing that could be done. We looked into all the things. We just had to eat it. That's how 2015 became 'the year I came within $200 of going bankrupt' and damn it was a scramble to make up that gap.)
Finally -- finally, after two years of scrambling and playing catchup -- yesterday, we were able to place the order for the first (and much, much bigger chunk) of supply, the material part.
Tools get ordered today.
If anyone's rooting for me to die in a tragic crafting accident, this is probably the highest risk, so y'all should be celebrating this one, too: yay, I finally am ordering the anodizing setup.
We ordered something like 5+lbs of titanium and niobium in rings and wire yesterday. We will simply not discuss the price tag on that, OK?
This is one of those long term dream goals, no matter how weird and relatively small compared to something like getting a first house or even getting a new car, but it means I can get going on some planned product work that I've wanted to be able to do for over a decade, and that is pretty fucking awesome.
It'll be ages before any of it actually shows up, and some part of me is probably not going to believe this has actually finally happened until the boxes start landing on the doorstep. But... OMG!!!!!!
@Misadventure I wish I had the head camera for the Tesla sneeze incident, I really do. She sneezed, startled herself, backed up until she crashed hard into the headboard of the bed, and thus scared herself even more, which caused a sudden launch across and then out of the room and we didn't see her for the rest of the day.
We realized last night that the Eddie Izzard skit about Cowardice and Sandwiches could easily have lent those names to our cats. Too easily.
@Coin That is the bestest kind of kitty.
Tesla does that. Tesla, the cat we were told: this cat should be considered strictly decorative, she really hates people. Yup. Total hatemonger, that Tesla. (She is admittedly terrified of anyone and anything other than me and Bri, including her own sneezes.)
@Coin May Ulthar get umpteensquillion upvotes for cuteness.
@Auspice I have mystery shakes no one has yet been able to explain, since they come and go with no predictability whatsoever. The time I asked about it, the phrase 'around $25k in testing' was uttered, and two decades later, nope, still not looking into that. Sometimes it'll be months between instances, other times it hits for hours
I actually made a 'project leash' to deal with this earlier today, so I could clip stuff to it because I keep dropping things the past few days.
WTF is it with art and crafts that screws us up as much as it makes us feel better? Seriously. This needs to not be a thing.
I have some very odd reactions to opioids, on the whole. There's the thing with the dilaudid, and then there's a long-standing weirdo reaction even to codeine. It doesn't knock me out at all -- I get hyper, seem to need zero sleep, and get hyper passionate about everything. Something is never good, it is THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER; something is never bad, it is THE END OF THE MOTHERFUCKING WORLD LIFE IS OVER.
...which is still much better than my reaction to it as a kid, which was 'don't sleep for three days, seemingly develop super strength for a four year old, and become hyper-aggressive'. My folks still talk about that one. (These days, it would be all over youtube by now, some hapless four year old with an ear infection literally flipping the huge solid wood dining room table and all that.)
Only (non-synthetic) morphine seemingly just makes me drowsy before anything weird can happen. It baffles the crap out of the docs, and has definitely made the post-hospital oxycodone something of a challenge, and also something I stepped down on long before I needed to, just in case. (To the tune of much ow ow ow, but... there is so much crap on the table in my dining room, people, you have no idea... )
Ignore me, clicked zee wrong link.
Ahem. I will use this space to cheer noisily along with @lordbelh re: Black Sails, though!
@Ganymede I can't drink for another week or two. Trust me, I considered it, but while I can live without my gall bladder, I don't want to taunt happy fun liver right now since it's learning to play catchup for the absentee. But damn, I still considered it.
@Thenomain Some day, man. Some day, vodka.
I really, really wanted to believe it was getting better, and that what I'd been told was, well, true. But it wasn't, it isn't, and ultimately, I'm the fucking dumbass because it isn't the first lie. There seemed to be genuine regret over the first lie, and... yeah. Optimism... is not my friend right now.
@Auspice I hope so. I don't think so, though. But I do hope so.
...that moment the person you were working on trusting again, since they were the only person you really trusted, proves you simply fucking can't trust them further than you can throw... well, anything over 5lbs at the moment, in the shittiest, most self-esteem crushing manner possible.
I am going back to hating people.
@Catsmeow In my dream world, it would only activate in cases of dire peril or dire fuzzy creature cuteness. Can that be a thing?
@Catsmeow They do spend more or less all day watching FOX news.
@Misadventure He did build me my own unique special snowflake custom organ. I should probably not hope for any literal evisceration, lest it turn into something in the realms of the Human Centipede, just in this case, anything that would normally come out of #1's mouth would be quite appropriately emerging from his arse.
this Bruce Campbell song.