Best posts made by Testament

Also a child of Vietnam vet, and I can tell you that there are distinct why my dad doesn't talk about what happened over there. While I personally find that time in history from an investigative stand point, one that I think Ken Burns documentary did an amazing job breaking everything that caused and the fallout of the war, by no means do I believe it needs to be played out in a mush setting.

I fully believe and encourage people to read into Vietnam from an educational standpoint, as I do believe it's something important that literally every person can take something away from. And not always positive, more of a reminder.

But it should not be played out. There are far too many sticky, complicated subject matter and if you disentangle that from the war itself, not only is it not representing the actual thing, but reenactment of itself I would wonder is insulting to the people, on every side, who suffered the horrors of the real thing.

Speaking personally, if I told my dad that I'm playing on a game that depicted Vietnam, he'd likely be very disappointed. It's not something that should ever be played as a game. But stand as a lesson to history.

Then again, I have two relatives on the wall at the Vietnam Memorial, and I can't help but think that emulating anything coming close to it is distasteful.

So I'm not going to repeat what @Auspice says on Bon Appetite and Binging with Babish. They're excellent and they're in my feed. ETA, oh and I also love Lockpicking Lawyer and Alec Steele.

So I'll list some that I enjoy.

Food
How to Drink - humorous take on drinks and drink recipes. Once and a while he'll do a historic take, which I enjoy
Educated Barfly - for the same reason as above but more informational
Bon Appetite
Binging with Babish

Gaming
YongYea - I truly believe when it comes to any impartial gaming news and reviews, YongYea is the gold standard for anything going on in the gaming industry. It's my personal CNN of gaming news.
Jim Sterling - I view him as the Andy Roony of the games industry. His editorials on the excessive greed and over indulgence in the games industry is fascinating. From the take-downs of microtransactions and live services, to pretty scathing exposes on major game companies, I enjoy his content.
ICARUSLIV3S - A gaming channel solely devoted to Doom mods. As in the Doom from 1992. Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake, Wolfenstein, Hexen, and stuff in between. He's one of the very few youtubers who does reviews of Doom .wads.
ReviewTech USA - Basically, an gaming news site for old gamers like myself (35+ range. Sometimes Rich will actually review something. Other times it's about nipples and cucumbers)

Other
Donut Media - Pretty much a channel about car history, car modding, and high performance. I watch mostly for wish fulfillment. And it's funny.
Dr Sandra Lee - Doctor Pimple Popper. Because I find that shit way too satisfying to watch.
Toe Bro - See above, but in relation to toes and feet medical issues that I also find super fascinating to watch.
Steve1989MREInfo - Watch a brave man eat old MRE from as old as the Civil fucking War. Also super interesting and insightful. Nice.

Entered the raffle for some Yeezy Boosts, because they tend to be pretty hard to cop and I hate paying resell price. I don't usually expect to win the raffle, but today is a good day apparently because I won out on the raffle. While I try to not give Kanye money because I think Kanye is legit crazy, I do like the shoes. Thankfully, I try to keep the amount of pairs I do buy to a very low number. Or well, low considering the amount of Nikes and Pumas that I have own.

It's no secret that I've been on the front lines of Covid ever since it arrived. The laboratory I work used to be focused on specifically one test. An inhouse test created for early detection of various cancers. It's basically a fancy way of saying we do a lot PCR(polymerase chain reaction). Which is another fancy way of saying 'we take a little bit of DNA and replicate however many thousands of times until we have enough genetic material to do a quantitative test, one that'll look for specific markers in your DNA and whether or not other markers have(or have not)been activated. Which can lead to cancer. Or if cancer is already active, certain markers will have been either activated or repressed. I could go further into this, but it's not all that important. I hate saying that my company made out like bandits, but that'd be a lie. Holy shit, company stocks are high.

Basically, at the jump, my company started to offer Covid testing based on the same principles with some tweaking to some of test phases that go in how QNS tests find a result that would be considered accurate. That's science that above my paygrade, and the people in R&D aren't always forthcoming with how they do what they do. Needless to say there was tinkering that was going on to detect viral loads in a person's body.

This has made me go through periods of morbid acceptance to how I operated in my job to blind optimism to thinking that I was really making a difference to sheer bitter nihilism that people are idiots as I continued to watch case numbers rise, and the utter cognitive dissonance as I'd hear people say that the virus isn't real, or not that bad, or some other mental safety net meant to keep their precious worldview in line with their altered reality.

I realize it's made me angrier than I'd like to be, angrier than I already am, and if I wasn't already really resentful, I'm likely there now. So my ability to cope, surrounded by it as I am, hasn't been a lot. This has made me snap at people on MUs more often than I like to admit if for no other reason than I felt helpless. It is for that reason, that I came to resolution as to how this had been affecting me, negatively. These were never opinions I voiced, not openly, but the thought was there. Looking at tests results, seeing the number of positives increase, seeing co-workers have to leave work for two weeks because they were exposed, and then some not still not come back yet. There are times where I sit and wonder if I'm really doing any good at all.

And then I wonder how much of me will be left when I get to the other side. Self-depreciating humor tends to be my go-to.

I lost my cat, my best friend to seizures. I had to do what I could for my significant other go through emotional breakdowns from being trapped in one room. No, I don't think many people have had good years. I think I'm glad that I'm still here, typing this.

I am coping, if that is a word for it. YouTube and played through old games that I had never had the time for have helped. Though I have rediscovered my talent for cooking as of late, which has been nice. And picking back up my various skills at mixology and seeing if I can create new cocktails simply because I could. As for RP? My RP circle is literally 5 people. I'm content to keep it that way until I feel like expanding that.

I'm okay. I tell my therapist that.

Started going back to the gym, making a serious attempt at. I'm coming to realization that, at my age, if I do not do something now for my own health, I will probably be dead by 50. That's not really an exaggeration considering the conversations I've been having with my doctor relating to my cholesterol(ie, still within the normal range, but has been hanging around the high normal range and trending). It's been a concern to her, so after what I'd call a wake up call, and watching enough youtube on exercise, what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Changed my eating habits, which has probably been the worst part than actually going to said gym.

But, my company has a full gym that's free to me to use, so I should've been doing this last year.

So, yeah. It's good that I'm doing this, but I also know there is going to be a lot of suffering.

I'm down three pounds from I started working out two weeks ago.

Yay for small victories.

So anyone that knows me knows that I have far too many pairs of sneakers. There was recently a restock of the Jordan 5 'Toro Bravo' colorway that I just so happened to walk in at FinishLine recently. I usually take pictures of my new shoes for the 'gram by using the cat tree.

Hence, new shoes, but a Bubba for scale. He's such a majestic bastard.

I've been working 14 hour days since Wednesday. I'm also working as much overtime as is physically and mentally possible for me.

For the next three weeks. I'm allowing myself Mondays off as is required by labor laws(one day a week).

Why might you ask? Because saving up for a wedding sucks. And because Covid numbers have skyrocketed since school started back up and most schools don't know how to fucking file paperwork needed to properly create an order to allow their students samples to be tested at all. Which is a commentary in the education system.

I'm angry, tired, and so very very frustrated. At both the situation and the fact that I force myself to drag myself off my perfectly comfortable bed and dive into it when I have no sane reason to do other than that weekend and OT pay.

Two more weeks to go.

I should add if you do watch The Expanse, make sure you watch it on Amazon Prime. To get the unedited Chrisjen swearing every other word without making the censors work overtime.

Also

from a dark corner whispers

....bring back Jade Empire.

Barely getting the chance to RP, partly due to lack of drive, and partly due to time constraints. You have problems setting up a time to meet and get a scene in, and when you eventually do get that chance to RP with this new person who seems really interesting and may actually light a fire under your ass to try and get involved more.

That scene was worth the waiting.

I lost my desktop last year and I've been saving money away from work to get a new set up. I finally built it a month back but it lacked a monitor, had been using an old flatscreen as one, which made text really hard to read.

I've now finished my setup by getting a slick LG Ultrawide monitor that'll be 1 of 2 monitors I plan on getting for my dual screen setup. 2650x1080 is crazy looking and takes some getting used to.

Also, I didn't know that Logitech makes some damn good speakers

I'm really happy with the computer and the fact that it's taken me so long to save for it makes me extra happy. And it's mine.

And just because I want to offer specs on what I bought for the computer people in the house.

Motherboard: MSI B350 Tomahawk
CPU: Ryzen 5 1600
GPU: GTX 1060
RAM: Corsair 2x8GBs
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master 210 Hyper Evo
HD: WD Black 1TB
SSD: Panasonic 250GB
Panasonic 150GB
Case: Thermaltake
Kyboard/Mouse: Corsiar
Monitor: LG Ultrawide

Original.

Theme.

Sci Fi.

That's all I want/need. Barring that, a game based in The Expanse theme.

Saw the trailer for The Outer Worlds. Obsidian? Making a game that's (not)Fallout crossed with Mass Effect crossed with a western feel?

Sign me the fuck up.

For the record, I'm only just getting over being sick today. As in, my throat doesn't hate me and my tonsils aren't swollen to the size of grapefruits that I don't want to talk. I had forgotten what it was like to swallow water without pain, it's bee so long.

On the other hand, my date from last Monday has been sick-free since Friday because she lacks tonsils, so maybe it was easier for her to get over. I got to suffer.

Still. Worth it. I'm going to hope the second date will not be nearly as tragic.

Cassandra, as usual, is done with everyone's shit.

@sincerely Ugh, I can't argue it too hard because DS9 had 'In the Pale Moonlight' which is just...ugh, SO GOOD.