Orthos's page

** spoiler omitted **

The internet may have gotten us into this mess in at least some part, probably a large part, but it also is providing an open view of the absolute idiocy of everything that's going on, as well as giving us all a clearer understanding of the stupidity and malice of many of the people around us that, in person, used to be concealed behind a veneer of civility.

Margola Xenth, Warrior of Light wrote:

Freehold DM wrote:

Waterhammer wrote:

Take your sword to the grocery store. If you can toss the pineapple into the air and slash it in two, before it hits the ground; the pineapple is ripe.

Ah.

While others were studying produce, you were studying the blade.

Hilarious side note- autocorrect originally changed had this as "While Orthos was studying produce, you were studying the blade."

Now I want a picture of Orthos just looking at a tomato or something, concentrating intently.

Mission Accomplished

Is it bad that not only do I know you're in Ul'dah, but I'm pretty sure i know which aetheryte?

I mean, it's the market obviously, where else would one find veggies just sitting out to be pondered? ;D

So, the honest question: Is FaWtL better with or without me? I feel like I get people upset, then I want to argue with them (yes, Orthos, I nearly killed myself holding in a response to your post, but that is not FaWtL's purpose nor place), and I feel like I detract from the overall vibe of the place.

I absolutely want you to stick around. I'm basically exactly the same myself, to the point where I have to step away from various threads on a regular basis to avoid getting into long drawn-out arguments all the time.

Sure, we disagree about things. That's life. The things we disagree about aren't things like whether people should have rights based on their skin color, sexuality, identity, or nationality. So everything else can be water under the bridge.

Even when I don't agree with you, I tend to find your posts some mixture of amusing, intriguing, and enlightening. I think we as a community here in FAWTL would be less for your absence.

I'll be the first to argue and disagree if I feel like you've put your foot in your mouth, but I wouldn't ever wish you to leave over it.

If there's anyone in Kansas or near enough, or if you know someone in that area, and they happen to be looking for or interested in adopting a dog, please share this link with them. Our baby girl needs a home.

If there's anyone in Kansas or near enough, or if you know someone in that area, and they happen to be looking for or interested in adopting a dog, please share this link with them. Our baby girl needs a home.

Orthos wrote:

Scintillae wrote:

Orthos wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

I am... bemused.

I'm old enough and cynical enough to laugh at/scorn Tik Tok "life hacks" as only a Gen Xer can. "Really? You call that a 'hack'? Did you parents give you a trophy when you learned to tie your own shoes? Or can you do that yet?"

In seriousness: No, their parents didn't, because their parents probably never taught them that. They're young adults and late teens learning all this stuff on their own from the collective work of their peers and/or from doing research on the internet, and sharing what they discover back into that collective work.

We shouldn't be mocking and jeering them. We should be pointing at them and saying "They're doing what their parents should have done years ago - educating and improving themselves and learning new things - and choosing to share it with others rather than keep it to themselves."

GenX, and some of the older Millennials, are the ones failing to teach them these things in the first place - the TikTok self-educated "hack" trends are happening because someone in those older brackets failed to pass that education along somewhere earlier in their lives, and they had to learn it for themselves somehow.

The number of times my dad has made fun of me for not knowing how to do something he never taught me...

SAME.

I got beaten once because I asked him what cleaning product I could use on a task he'd assigned me. He told me to try elbow grease. I'd never heard that idiom before (I think I was seven or eight), so I pulled every product out of the cupboard one by one trying to find it.

Yep, sounds like a lot of the situations I was in as a kid.

Ask a sincere question the adult thinks is stupid but never actually explained before.
Adult gives a sarcastic or rhetorical answer.
Kid, not knowing better, takes it seriously.
Adult gets angry the kid took it seriously - or, more often, says the kid is "being a brat" or "being a smartass" in families that are okay with cursing - and punishes the kid.

With exemplars like this, is it any wonder I decided early in my life I didn't want kids? Even before understanding I was ace or the entire Everything of modern American society, economy, and culture.

Orthos wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

I am... bemused.

I'm old enough and cynical enough to laugh at/scorn Tik Tok "life hacks" as only a Gen Xer can. "Really? You call that a 'hack'? Did you parents give you a trophy when you learned to tie your own shoes? Or can you do that yet?"

In seriousness: No, their parents didn't, because their parents probably never taught them that. They're young adults and late teens learning all this stuff on their own from the collective work of their peers and/or from doing research on the internet, and sharing what they discover back into that collective work.

We shouldn't be mocking and jeering them. We should be pointing at them and saying "They're doing what their parents should have done years ago - educating and improving themselves and learning new things - and choosing to share it with others rather than keep it to themselves."

GenX, and some of the older Millennials, are the ones failing to teach them these things in the first place - the TikTok self-educated "hack" trends are happening because someone in those older brackets failed to pass that education along somewhere earlier in their lives, and they had to learn it for themselves somehow.

The number of times my dad has made fun of me for not knowing how to do something he never taught me...

SAME.

So it's been a while since I posted here so I should probably do an update.

Scint and I got married back in February (on Valentine's Day no less, that was a complete accident), she accepted a job offer in March, and we are moving to Chengdu in China in the summer.

So the past several weeks have been one roller coaster after another of the various things we need to do before moving away. Last two weeks were getting a handyman to repair the damaged walls downstairs, including repainting and installing new drywall and all that fun stuff. Next is removing and replacing all the carpets down there.

On top of that we're in talks to sell the house, looking for a new home or foster care surrender for Sophie (she's not a breed allowed in China, and probably wouldn't survive the flight even if she was, due to the way boxers' and pits' respiration is structured and her being large enough she would have to ride in the unpressurized cargo hold), needing to get new phones (Androids don't work as well over there as iPhones apparently and we're both on separate plans so we'll be getting new iPhones on new plans), setting up VPNs (because China), making arrangements to mail/ship what stuff we can't pack and bring on the plane with us, having to schedule and then make the trip to Chicago to get our visas from the Chinese Embassy, and a host of other things I've no doubt forgotten or haven't gotten to yet.

The next month is going to be busy as hell.

I am... bemused.

I'm old enough and cynical enough to laugh at/scorn Tik Tok "life hacks" as only a Gen Xer can. "Really? You call that a 'hack'? Did you parents give you a trophy when you learned to tie your own shoes? Or can you do that yet?"

In seriousness: No, their parents didn't, because their parents probably never taught them that. They're young adults and late teens learning all this stuff on their own from the collective work of their peers and/or from doing research on the internet, and sharing what they discover back into that collective work.

We shouldn't be mocking and jeering them. We should be pointing at them and saying "They're doing what their parents should have done years ago - educating and improving themselves and learning new things - and choosing to share it with others rather than keep it to themselves."

GenX, and some of the older Millennials, are the ones failing to teach them these things in the first place - the TikTok self-educated "hack" trends are happening because someone in those older brackets failed to pass that education along somewhere earlier in their lives, and they had to learn it for themselves somehow.

Yep. This checks out.

Pain

You create from pain. It's the deep, overwhelming agony that builds up over a lifetime of suffering. Sometimes you can't tell where your scars ends and you begin. You pour out your pains into your art because you can't bear to hurt this much and have nothing to show for it. Your suffering will be pointless if you can't make something of it, so you make it into art. This is how you reclaim everything you'd otherwise regret, by making those painful experiences into something of worth. Art is a battle to conquer your suffering, to make your agony into something you can take pride in. Every piece is a hard fought victory over something that would have only eaten away at you otherwise. It's proof of your desire to live and heal, to be more than just your wounds.

... welp. I... can't argue with that.

So I took one of those silly internet quizzes; this one claiming to provide a single word for the emotion or motivation at the heart of the quiz-taker's creative drive. I clicked through the multiple-choice questions, scoffing the whole while, like Hannibal Lecter handed the psychological testing ("Agent Starling, you think you can dissect me with this blunt little tool...?")

The result:

Discontent

You create from discontent. Most of your life has been spent being uncomfortable in your own skin. This body is just another house that's never felt like home. You don't know how to be at ease in this world or this life. Art is a way of running away, of forgetting yourself and escaping to a more comfortable place. To cope with an unhospitable reality, you create more welcoming worlds to consume your work and your waking hours. But the foundation of your art has always been your discontent with the real world and your life within it. Lurking behind the inviting scenery you dream of is the desperate desire to be anywhere but here. It is a world constructed as a respite from this one. Such vivid fantasies are the dream of one who considers reality a prison.

...

Well played, internet. Well. Played.

Well now you have to share it.

Drejk wrote:

I don't want to steal NobodysHome shtick and be the cranky old man complaining on things getting worse, but why do the designers insist on making things worse and less functional?

In older Windows you could easily check time at other places by clicking clock, and selecting different time zone. For the last few iterations that functionality is gone. You need to use a browser to check or dig deep in the setting functions...

I am convinced the modern generation of UI designers doesn't actually work with computers.

"Scroll bars are ugly! Let's auto-hide them so they don't mess up the feel of the page!"

"That page full of critical data is too crowded! Let's make the cells bigger and add a bunch of white space so the page doesn't look so cluttered!"

"Only really technical people ever use this, so let's hide it all so the only way to discover it is using a Google search."

"People don't need to save any more and they can just use the browser's Back functionality, so let's remove all those buttons from the page!"

Working in a data-intensive field with such <unmentionable> people designing your UI is... painful...

So, to be blunt, you're mostly correct. They don't work with computers.

They work with SMARTPHONES.

SO MUCH of the current change in branding, iconography, and functionality has been centered around making everything best function with smartphones, in particular iPhones. It's why every logo is hypersimplistic and hyperminimalistic now - it needs to still be recognizable when compressed down into a 30x30-pixels sprite on your phone.

The side effect of this is that designing primarily for phones makes everything wonky and awkward on desktops, but that's considered a secondary priority if it's one at all.

I hope it works out well for you. I fear I've already crossed that point of no return myself a few years ago, outside of some nasty letters.

I haven't had fried okra in forever. That may need to go on my bucket list before we leave the US.

IIRC they were originally bred as hunting dogs - I want to say specifically birdhunting?

To Google!

Glad to hear you're doing better.

Speaking of which, payday is tomorrow! And we're likely gonna be in the city anyway on a grocery run....

Better make it count soon, Joann's is closing pretty much everywhere as the company shuts down.

Scint and I spent way too much there this last week, and are planning to go back after our next paychecks. >.>

Yay!

I might have to borrow that for one of the campaigns I'm writing, plants and fungi are a big part of the bad guys' themes.

If y'all will indulge me in a moment of mamabragging, after five weeks of waiting on tenterhooks after her audition, we finally found out tonight that Hermione got into Booker T Washington High School for the Performing Arts!

The audition process took four hours and was intense... they had to do movement improv, mask work, design a set, write a monologue, perform a prepared monologue, do a cold-reading, and then a formal interview.

Her plan is to audition for the musical theater track at the end of her freshman year, which will allow her to take voice and dance electives along with all the theater core classes.

I am sooooo excited for her.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

For what it's worth, I was only properly introduced to Tom Lehrer this past week. I knew of "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and "We will All Go Together when We Go" but couldn't have told you who sang them, and I hadn't heard any of his other work until the past few days.

I reiterate, holy hells. Glad you made it out.

Keep in touch through your recovery man, as best you can. We care about you here.

I try not to use Facebook anymore, but I became Friends™ with DungeonmasterCal two weeks ago. (And thank you so much Facebook for sending me an email every frickin' day urging me to go see what memes Cal is sharing.) I noticed Cal hadn't posted his usual "It's Friday, what's going on?!" post in the So What's the Plan, Stan thread, so I held my nose and checked out his Facebook page. (I'm holding my nose because it's Facebook, not because it's Cal's page.)

It turns out that Cal went to the ER yesterday. I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but I think his head is being looked at because he fell. He has a couple other things going on that the doctors are treating. It seems like he'll be released soon, but he's offline for now until he gets out.

Just wanted to let people know. Swift recovery, Cal!

Holy hells. Here's to getting well soon Cal.

The issue is that causing chaos is at least in part the intent of the current admin.

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

I hate to bring in bad news here, but I've had confirmation that some federal employees are confiscating passports if you go in for name change stuff. Pass it on and be careful.

...well.

Thats incredibly illegal.

Sadly, it's not, or at least it's "technically" not. It's part of Trump's EO banning official government documentation that doesn't match AGAB. Any documents that don't meet his new specifications are to be confiscated.

Echoing Scint's feelings here. Slept like s&@@ last night as a result, so called out from work today and slept in until almost 11, then have spent the rest of the day with the puppy. Ran some errands, took her to a local dog-friendly restaurant for lunch, got her new tags on the last day they're free, and took a long walk around the local park.

Yeah I meant to post about that a day or so ago, but had a mini-breakdown instead~ yaaaaaay.

I'm figuring I'm going to need tooth implants sooner or later. I've lost all but one of my bottom molars and that last one is half-gone to a large cavity. Still have most of the upper ones but several of those have had root canals. Wisdom teeth were all removed too so no replacements incoming from those.

I've been in favor of an "amicable divorce" as a solution to the increasingly-hostile disagreements between states in the US for some time.

Give a few years (and maybe some financial aid) for families to relocate to the states that jive with their personal positions, then go our separate ways.

But that's admittedly unrealistic for a whole host of reasons and especially ignores the fact that it's a certain particular set of states that provide all the funds and a certain other particular set of states that receive all of it.

My life right now feels like an endless litany of, "Okay, now I can check that big stressor off my list; what's next?"

Gods if I don't know that feeling. Sympathies.

We're down to just YT+ and Nebula. I keep leaning back and forth about also grabbing CuriosityStream.

On the one hand, as I've posted before, I'm no fan of companies "double dipping" for profit: "We're going to charge you a monthly fee, and we're going to show you ads."

Nope. It's what killed cable for me, and it'll kill streaming as well. Just charge me what you consider a reasonable amount to provide ad-free content, be upfront about it, and we're good. (See my previous post on NetFlix vs. Disney+).

On the other, I'm eternally amused by customers becoming enraged when they refuse to participate in providing any kind of revenue to the company, then watching as the company refuses to provide service to them. The lack of Linux drivers for Nvidea cards is an (in)famous example -- a pseudo-history: Nvidia's approach was, "Well, if you'll pay us a nominal fee like $10 to use our cards, we'll develop drivers for you," and the Linux base was, "Linux is and always has been free! Up yours!", then they got outraged when Nvidia wouldn't develop drivers for them for free.

Anyhoo, YouTube. YouTube primarily pays for itself with ads. Yeah, yeah, they track you and sell your data like nobody's business, but ads are a significant portion of their revenue. And they follow the NobodysHome's Approved Business Model™ of, "You can either get YouTube for free and be stuck with ads, or pay $9.99 a month to skip the ads."

So, they just implemented a rather hilarious ploy to block revenue-skippers (people who use ad blockers to skip the required ads): They put in hourlong ads and labeled the "skip" button as an ad. So if you're not using an ad blocker, after 15 seconds you can just skip the rest. If you're using an ad blocker, you're hosed.

I have no love of Google, but I do find it a rather elegant solution to an actual, honest problem unrelated to stealing people's information.

EDIT: And yes, GothBard and I both noticed starting somewhere around December when ads were suddenly an hour long, and we were thinking, "Who the heck would sit through an hourlong ad!?!?!?"
Apparently now we know...

Honestly YouTube+ has been one of the most worthwhile investments for me. A good 90% of my time spent watching stuff is on YouTube - not just videos but listening to music and podcasts.

Sorry for the radio silence, spent most of this week in a depressive funk due to [Redacted for Real Life reasons] and have not been in the right headspace for writing.

Expect an update later today or early tomorrow.

D'awwwww!

FYI my discord bignorsewolf got hacked.

The person with a degree in trees is not developing a video game they some feedback on

Please tell the folks on the discords to ignore and banhammer the imposter.

They put two factor authentication on the account so I can't reset it and get it back.

Forwarded to the FAWTLy discord as well.

Definitely a TIL thing. It never would've crossed my mind to check if the things were expired.

Was dying smoke detectors for us. X_X Nothing quite like being woken up after midnight three times because every detector in the house decided to lose its mind over and over.

Apparently they're only meant to last about 10 years and these have been here for 20. Given Scint only bought the place five years ago, this isn't on us.

All but two of our smoke detectors here decided to go on the fritz the same week. We tried replacing the batteries, checking the mounts for disconnects, cleaning and dusting in case something was tripping the sensors, everything we and Google could think of. Nothing worked.

Ended up calling the local fire dept to get advice, and ended up with four people - three local FD and a cop - in my living room, all giving the same advice: these things are 20 years old and only meant to last 10, they're actively dying and need to be replaced.

So spent the morning running around taking them down, throwing the old batteries away and saving the new ones, and tossing the things in the car so I don't have to spend all day listening to them cry.

This isn't on us, we've only had this house about five years, they would've been five years past expiration already by then, the last people living here - or the realtor who sold it to Scint, if that's not the same person - should've replaced these things before she even moved in.

Post came later than I expected, apologies - spent all morning dealing with IRL technical issues, all our smoke detectors here decided to go on the fritz the same week, and will need to be replaced, so was running around taking them down, throwing the old batteries away and saving the new ones, and tossing the things in the car so I don't have to spend all day listening to them cry.

Freehold DM wrote:

NobodysHome wrote:

...I have hated overloaded UIs that eat processor power like candy ever since Windows Aero reared its ugly head. "Can't run me? Time for you to get a new computer!"...

What?

Oh surely you're not THAT young! Windows 7 came out with the new "Aero UI". Nobody except gamers with high-powered computers could run Windows 7. Everyone asked, "How do you turn off Aero?" Microsoft responded, "If it doesn't run well on your computer, you should get a new computer instead."

So there was a solid 2-3 month window where the process of installing Windows 7 was, "Install Windows 7. Disable Aero. Enjoy a useful computer (for Windows)."

Windows 7 was a solid release (you may laugh now, Vanykrye). Windows Aero was a catastrophe.

I managed to miss it by being on a Vista machine that lasted until Win8 came out. Bypassed Win7 completely so never even heard of Aero.

Plus, love him or hate him, during his first term he did show the ability to (mostly) listen to people who knew better than him when they warned him against some of his more drastic economic actions.

We did groceries this weekend as well, and have our delivery meal service for two meals a week. At least for a little while we're covered.

Granted that means by the time we do run low, the prices will have already cranked up... but what're you gonna do....

Good news! While insurance wouldn't cover the patches, a local discount/coupon card provided by Walgreens cut the price by over half, so I was still able to get them for a reasonable price. Combined with whatever we do next week with PP, I'm good to go for another month if not more.

It'll also be a couple days after the inauguration, so we'll get to talk about whatever that ends up meaning.

Lunar is one of those games I missed out on due to not having the right console growing up, and that I've never gotten around to playing through other means. It'll likely be a quick purchase.

Spotify is good for older stuff (as is Youtube - maybe better), but Bandcamp is where I look for new music.

I wish I paid better attention to Bandcamp than I do. I've found so much good stuff there, downloaded it, occasionally still listen to the MP3s, but have forgotten to ever go back and look for more/newer.

Orthos wrote:

Yep! Once they're ready, we'll begin.

Could you get a Gameplay post up even if it's a dot, to get this campaign in my Campaign tab?

Sure, I'll go ahead and write up the first post tomorrow and post it up.

And yay, another appointment scheduled for the 22nd to straighten this out.

Yep! Once they're ready, we'll begin.

"Good" news - I've been informed that once my PP consultant sends the insurance company a heads-up of "no, it's okay, I authorized this" they should be more cooperative. I sent her a message earlier today but it was after work hours so I imagine she won't see it until morning at earliest.