Posts made by surreality

@Ghost I noticed that, with a side order of, "I wonder how the concept designers feel about that choice now... "

I don't think it's viable for a number of reasons. Others have been mentioned, these have not that I've seen.

1. If you're using published material or an existing IP game setting, players already know considerably more about the world and what is in it than their character is ever going to know. This is especially true of games like WoD and others with 'secret societies'. You're typically not even supposed to know vampires exist as a mortal character, let alone who is or is not one, but you do as a player, for example. We already trust players with this information before we even let them into chargen and we expect them to know these things well enough to play the game properly. This is non-trivial and should not be overlooked.

2. People have limited time for their happy fun time games, more so than when this hobby was younger -- so were most of the people in it. Being able to find like minds and characters with similar interests (even if those interests include having a conflict between the characters) via open information to get the things done that people will enjoy, and not waste their limited time bouncing off walls and being confused as a player is considerably more important than it was in the 90s. The average player's priorities have changed. This is also non-trivial, and not to be overlooked.

There have been hints all along, for me. They went through a number of them in the 'previously, on... ' segment, but ultimately?

***=Blorp***

Welp, the costume trend mentioned last week remains on point, I see.

@Sparks That is the reason I have been desperately seeking a way to hook up that old 30inch monitor, like I have room for my desk on it or something. (Bwahaha I so don't but I'll make it fit!!!) I took damned good care of it for a reason, and yet, apparently there is some adapter or another that simply does not exist. (It has stumped everyone who has been asked.) I could hook it up to the 2010, and have the connectors for that, but this poor damned thing is on its last legs and I suspect putting that strain on it would cause it to set itself on fire at this point.

The iMac Pro glare is not bad. I dunno if it's the angle, if they finally managed a decent coating, or what, but it... actually isn't bad, despite not being matte. It's better than the 2010 in that regard, that much is certain.

@Ganymede The husband sent me a dubiously legit streaming link to it, so... I do not actually know. <cough> If someone does, tell me, too!

ETA: And apparently my husband is a twit, because it's on Disney Go, which... we can access normally. Oh, that sweet summer child...

@Sparks That is very, very good to know. I've been able to get away without needing anything for ages since everything I was doing was purely digital, but... print. And all the changes that come from 'have not really bothered to do anything print for over a decade'.

The last time I printed anything was pre-2010, and back then I had a tower and one of those crazy 30inch apple monitors I managed to pick up when they started to slash the prices on them. WAY different from a retina display when it comes to matching anything.

There's also not... terribly intuitive tools available to handle it on the iMac. Even the 'extended setup' for their color profile tool is, uh. Wanting. My color vision is pretty dang good, but the color balancing portion is the furthest thing from easy or intuitive ever. Also, hell with a trackball and the tiny space and tiny increments I'd be shoving it around!

At least I feel better hearing that it isn't just me, and things are getting absurdly overly glitzbombed to some extent.

I have never been impressed by the recent Guardians of the Galaxy animated stuff. Until their last four episodes, apparently shown over the past two weeks.

Hello, tropetopia.

Hello, more shit that feels like my husband and or friends of ours wrote it one night on bar napkins and blacked out on the experience.

Hello, shin-kicking the fourth wall harder than Deadpool.

If you are a fan of animation in its various forms -- from old 8-bit video games to classic Disney films to claymation -- or have a weakness for the 'changing channels' trope, this is sincerely worth the hour and a half.

If your kids watch this show, watch those with them if you can. They will find it confusing and/or marginally entertaining, but you will probably laugh your ass off. My eyes are still red from the laugh-tears.

The only other rare bits of the show I've seen have not remotely impressed me, and it's not anything I watch normally. Having randomly caught this, though... this was worth pointing out and sharing with y'all.

Coming to the increasingly annoying realization that I have finally reached that point in my life in which I can't get away without getting a decent screen-printer-scanner-etc. calibration dohickey and software. Which aren't necessarily super duper expensive, but sure as shit aren't cheap.

I swear they overcomplicate this shit just to sell more products some days. (And now, in honor of Mother's Day, I sound just like my mother. Oh gods... )

It is admittedly a thing. Though it's a different thing for someone fundamentally selfish, someone who is a workaholic, someone who is fundamentally lazy, etc. It can go a lot of ways.

Still, having worked from home for at least a decade and a half now... very much a thing. You'll run into different problems with someone who is 'complete this task'-oriented vs. someone who is 'I'll get to it in my own damned time!'-oriented and... the list kinda scrolls on and on, but once you live with that for a long enough while, you either develop reliable means of working with people with schedules determined by someone else to plan around their available time, or you become a flaky jackass.

The amount of flaky jackass going on there is just not remotely OK.

OMFG printer, I don't need multiple places to feed you from unless one of those supports a roll. I can't even afford that shit and you don't print 'roll big', so don't even play. I don't think you do roll. Stahppit.

And who did you think you were foolin' with that USB cable. That thing isn't even as long as my t-rex arm. It would not even reach all the way across the back of the printer itself to reach the other side, come on now.

If this is what we're going through with the printer, I dare not imagine what will happen with the scanner. OH WELL NOT LIKE WE HAVE ROOM FOR IT NOW THOUGH I GUESS. <mutter-mutter> taking up half a goddamned desk are you serious <mutter-mutter>

I remember when 'new tech day' was not a comedy of (t)errors, I really do.

@Auspice You're doing a good thing, and that really is the best thing to keep in mind.

It sounds like he can't see past his own nose, and I'm sorry you have to put up with that crap.

sdfjhqeofhbkajsdhbfkajshdbjhsbdjgrarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr how is this printer so much bigger than the old one?!

@Kumakun I have no idea about how this would work in any way, but it sounds like a very interesting concept. Anything that aids in accessibility is always going to be a bonus.

@Macha All the <3. I wish I could help. It's an awful feeling, but please know you're not alone and there are folks who give a damn.

OK, so... they changed brands, and it's not as good as the former brand, but...

...the local farmer's market is open as of today, and that means 3lb bukkits of fresh mozarella cheese come home on the regular.

Awwwwwwwwwwwyiss.

(Seriously, tho, it's time to track down the original brand and send the husband on an excursion to get it semi-regularly.)

@WildBaboons said in Game of Thrones:

@Arkandel i would be pleasantly surprised but I think you're giving the writers way too much credit

...I think that'd be giving the budget too much credit more than anything else!

@tek

@Taika Definitely will. I am very ignorant on this front, but I'm looking to educate myself. Everyone's help here has been very much appreciated.

Generally, I wish this guy would just recognize: 'I have shut off as many means of you contacting me as possible to the extent that you need to keep making new accounts all over the place regularly to try to get around them, stop trying to engage me in any way'.

I do not want to hear from this guy. I do not want anything to do with him at all. A few years back, I tried to be empathetic regarding his bullshit behavior, and he stopped for a while. He is not stopping this time, and I have told him I'm not here to be his therapist. I do not exist to provide him emotional support or to be his punching bag. He is not in any way entitled to my attention, and no matter what it is he wants to say, I don't want to hear it.

He has used up every drop of empathy I could possibly ever have for him and I have forgiven and forgotten and door-matted like I'm going for a medal much of the time. I am so done with this guy. I knew him in the 90s and the only contact we've had since is this abusive bullshit nonsense, and he is incapable of just going away, especially when he knows someone wants him gone.

To Said Dude:

I want you out of my life completely, in every form.
I do not care what you have to say.
I do not care what you want.
I do not care how you feel any more.
I don't care that you apparently cannot seem to help yourself, and that this behavior stems from some form of mental illness and emotional distress.
I want nothing to do with it or you and nothing is ever going to change that at this point.

If you showed up to hand me a suitcase full of twenty million dollars before turning around and walking away, I would not let you in the door.

If we were the last two people on this earth, you would have to talk to yourself.

If the only thing standing between me and falling off a skyscraper was you, I would prefer to splat on the sidewalk.

Go.
Away.

ETA: Report with law enforcement sent.

@Wretched Holy crap, I feel you on the clutter pile/depression nest right now. My work room... needs... possibly an enema at this point, but we just got a new scanner and printer and there's so little space in here even when it is totally organized that this is a whole weekend effort to wrangle through the piles o'stuff.

I have OCD, but I'm a sorter. So there are times it can be stupidly soothing. (A friend of mine had this dialed up to 23, and she would drop by and sort my bin of leftover beads while we watched movies or something when she was super stressed when she lived in the area.)

I can deal with a little mess. A lot of the work I do involves 'creative mess-making'. (Patina, painting, dyework... all of these are 'creative mess-making'.)

Even if it was flawlessly organized, and by gods I will get there some day <shakes a fist at the sky>, this room... it is the ADD Artist's Lair. I was fool enough to think I could display some of the shell and polished rocks collection in here because looking at it gives me the happies, but it's gonna have to move.

I made a good call on the shelves to make a 'hutch' on top of this desk -- it's old enough that the hutch you could buy for it was no longer available, but I love this desk, the other desk in the room is the same kind, it fits perfectly in a very awkward space... OK, screw it, tangent among people who understand tangents, DAMMIT. I fell in love with this furniture set a fuckload of years back. There's a 70inch L of it in the other room, too, but it can't be moved out of there. We had to get another one for in here. It's this one and bluntly, it's fucking gorgeous even as it falls apart after a decade of abuse in this room. We got the matching... non-L desk? That lines up with it along the longer wall to extend the desktop. This was ostensibly for photos for the jewelry, but to be blunt about it, the kit doesn't fit on it, so we're still flailing over some solution for that. All the photo gear gets stored in it, however, and that's still a win.

Main desk? When it's clean in here and there's room I'll get a picture. (Y'all will LAUGH and laughs are often needed these days, right?) It is some seriously kitbash shit at this point. Prefab laminate desks don't tend to survive for 10 years very well, and... this one took some poundings. (Sometimes, literally, with jewelry hammers.)

When we needed to replace the old computer last year as a graphics machine so I could ostensibly get back to 3D (meh), we cleared everything off the desk, knowing How We Buy Computers meant a spectacular expense was coming and that I'd also need to keep the old one running as long as possible for all the entertainment stuff. (Entertainment stuff of any kind is NOT allowed to live on a computer you're going to NEED to be able to write off on your taxes. I'm typing this on the 2010 iMac right now, in fact. It never got a name that stuck; it has one now: Boomerang.)

So, uh. Two iMacs, one desk. OK, cool, this desk can handle that; it handled a tower with two monitors in the other room, this should work like a charm. Does. Ish. But once it was cleaned off, this desk was a disaster. Surface was fucked. Sagged in the middle of the L and we were about to drop expensive electronics on it. I would now need a keyboard tray... diagonal across the notch, which isn't a thing for these desks. It needed hutch space, badly.

Y'all will understand this one: the brain clicked over to 'problem solving mode' without me even realizing it.

This hit around 10pm. By 8am, I was calling my poor long-suffering mother to ask if we could run errands once she got home from church. She asked 'what errands', and... I'm trying hard to not laugh, y'all, because it was all so serious and straightforward and I truly wish I could have seen her face, I really do.

"We need to go to Home Depot to get vinyl tile (specified which, price, and aisle location), and joist supports (same), and one shelf board in honey maple (same), and whatever clip LED lights they have cheap. Then, head down to the Container Store for 5 shelf supports (and again), and 10 shelving boards (and again). Bloodbath (Bed, Bath, and Beyond) for (specific sort of container, with prices and quantities and sizes). We're going to need to swing by BestBuy for the cross-computer keyboard (AND AGAIN ON THE SPECIFICS), and the related mouse is incoming from amazon now. Do you want to stop at the diner somewhere in there for lunch?"

Pretty sure there wasn't even a breath in there until it came to the question about the diner.

I had, of course, spent the whole night being an adult (read: googling how to do things) and researching all manner of options to resurface the desk, figure out a keyboard tray, support it from below where it was sagging, build a hutch, and organize the coffee corner of it in a frenzy of tabs.

Naturally, though... it never even occurred to me to explain why I needed these things to my mother. Or to my husband when he was asked to help drag them all in from the car. And saying 'keyboard tray, hutches, resurface the desk' realllllllllllllly doesn't quite explain why there's a pile of home improvement clutter now filling the foyer.

My husband is not diagnosed with AD(H)D, but damn if he likely doesn't have it. He is the world puttering champion, and if y'all think I ramble? You have no idea. NONE. Truly. I marvel at his prowess.

There is a difference in the way it manifests with both of us, though. I attempt to streamline things wherever possible. He overcomplicates them by default. This meant that getting my husband's help was a precarious dance of...

• Instruct him which heavy things need to be moved where.
• Get out of his way while he's overcomplicatedly fussing and puttering over things while doing something productive in another part of the room.
• Wait until he's asleep to do the things he has stated an intent to turn from a 2-3 hour project into a 2-3 day project.

This resulted in my husband waking up three consecutive days in a row and staring slack-jawed at the progress I'd made, buck nekkid in the doorway, like he just might be standing buck nekkid in the doorway to someone else's house.

Again, expressions I wish I had pictures of, and yet, the reason why I don't is readily apparent in this case, I'm sure.

Technically speaking, primarily the jewelry-making supplies and the computer stuff lives in here. But. (A but bigger than my butt.) That covers... a lot. (Terrifying truth: my grandmother used this room for her craft storage. It took us months to clean it out when she passed. I have maybe 1/4 of what she had in here. My mother and I would celebrate finding previously unknown furniture beneath/behind all the boxes as we'd clear with ice cream.)

• Jewelry? I have been making jewelry to sell since I was in the single digits, age-wise. Almost 40 years. Anyone who beads things knows how much shit you can accumulate in a few months, and how much stuff you need. Now extrapolate that out to almost 40 years, and being savvy as fuck to occasional bulk-buys you qualify for as a business. Yeah. We're probably lucky this room hasn't just collapsed into the garage below. Wire? Chain? Paper? Glues? Tools? Anodizer? WAY too may shells to make into things? Etc. etc. etc.

• The 'this is just to make things with and isn't to dye' yarn fills the crawlspace closet to keep it all completely out of the way. The actual Dyening Room is downstairs, once the dining room, but no more. And yes, we call it 'The Dyening Room'. Right now, though? The Dyening Room is full of rock polishing stuff on one side that gets a bit more use.

• Computer stuff... that desk. But there's a lot that's got to shuffle around this weekend. Let's hope my husband sleeps a lot.