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M@*&~##@*#++RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGR RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
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Nooooooooooooooo!!!!!
That's a tragedy!!
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Apparently, a psychedelic gnome isn't appropriate for a game with kids.
So back to the drawing board!
Ouch that sucks I'd call that time to play a new game.
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Borderlands 1 or Borderlands 2 save games?
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Borderlands 1.
Started a new game.
Still F~&*ING pissed.
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I have just lost a long part of the story I am writing for my S&S journal on the boards.
I have to learn to save more often.
So I guess you can count me as pissed too.
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Yeah, corrupted saves is the number two destroyer of enthusiasm for games for me.
I can't imagine if I had lost EVERYTHING from the game.
Damn, it's starting to piss me off now.
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I had to quit playing Vampire:Bloodlines when it was more interesting because I never got a patch that fixed the crashing of the game at a determinate point to work.
It was a few years ago but I'm still pissed for that.
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One of the not fun game moments was when I was playing Skyrim and I had a level 43(ish) pure mage build. I left for work and when I got back my house had been robbed. They took my X-Box 360 with that saved game. I was not happy.
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Apparently, a psychedelic gnome isn't appropriate for a game with kids.
So back to the drawing board!
You're playing with the wrong kids. :P
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One of the not fun game moments was when I was playing Skyrim and I had a level 43(ish) pure mage build. I left for work and when I got back my house had been robbed. They took my X-Box 360 with that saved game. I was not happy.
I'm guess you never recovered that X-Box? :(
I've never been robbed (knocks on wood), so I can only imagine how much that must have sucked. Sorry to hear that.
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The General is Easter shopping, which means I take the kids to the garden center.
If the kids had their way we would have.
Blueberries, Raspberries, Blackberries, a couple cherry trees, 3 Apple trees, two pear trees, and at least two plum trees.
And that's just what they had out today.
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Fruit trees are the tops. I've been contemplating an apple tree, if I can find space for it.
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Oh i know.
I worked this one job in Seattle where they had Cherry trees, Asian Pear trees, and grape vines hanging on the fence.
At lunch time i'd just walk around eating stuff directly off the tree or vine.
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Yes. Yes I am listening to Free Bird.
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Oh i know.
I worked this one job in Seattle where they had Cherry trees, Asian Pear trees, and grape vines hanging on the fence.
At lunch time i'd just walk around eating stuff directly off the tree or vine.
that is a rare, wonderful experience everyone should enjoy at least once in life.
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I had to quit playing Vampire:Bloodlines when it was more interesting because I never got a patch that fixed the crashing of the game at a determinate point to work.
It was a few years ago but I'm still pissed for that.
I cannot recommend enough that you reinstall and play again. The most recent patch is amazing, and the fan version of the game where you play antitribu is admittedly buggy for a couple of fights, but is otherwise VERY well done.
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One of the not fun game moments was when I was playing Skyrim and I had a level 43(ish) pure mage build. I left for work and when I got back my house had been robbed. They took my X-Box 360 with that saved game. I was not happy.I'm guess you never recovered that X-Box? :(
I've never been robbed (knocks on wood), so I can only imagine how much that must have sucked. Sorry to hear that.
Nope. Never recovered it. But that was just an annoyance. Coming home to find my little girl (13 year old dog) cowering under my desk and having my Dad's guns stolen was not fun. They had almost stolen my Dad's jewelry box, but they forgot it because they had wrapped it in a pillow case. It has my Grandmother's rings and jewelry and a watch that Khrushchev had given my Grandfather (no, I do not know the whole story, but it was a union thingie in Pittsburg).
If I ever do find the people that broke into my house those two times... I would not be nice. They would live, but not be happy about it and in pain for the rest of their lives.
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"If I had my way, the Easter Bunny wouldn't hop around giving everyone eggs. He'd be a farmer. I could see him being really happy farming" - Tiny T-Rex.
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One of the not fun game moments was when I was playing Skyrim and I had a level 43(ish) pure mage build. I left for work and when I got back my house had been robbed. They took my X-Box 360 with that saved game. I was not happy.I'm guess you never recovered that X-Box? :(
I've never been robbed (knocks on wood), so I can only imagine how much that must have sucked. Sorry to hear that.
Nope. Never recovered it. But that was just an annoyance. Coming home to find my little girl (13 year old dog) cowering under my desk and having my Dad's guns stolen was not fun. They had almost stolen my Dad's jewelry box, but they forgot it because they had wrapped it in a pillow case. It has my Grandmother's rings and jewelry and a watch that Khrushchev had given my Grandfather (no, I do not know the whole story, but it was a union thingie in Pittsburg).
If I ever do find the people that broke into my house those two times... I would not be nice. They would live, but not be happy about it and in pain for the rest of their lives.
Two times? Yikes! Yeah, they deserve to live with regret for breaking into peoples' houses.
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"If I had my way, the Easter Bunny wouldn't hop around giving everyone eggs. He'd be a farmer. I could see him being really happy farming" - Tiny T-Rex.
Then the Easter Duck could give out eggs, as is right and appropriate.
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I had to quit playing Vampire:Bloodlines when it was more interesting because I never got a patch that fixed the crashing of the game at a determinate point to work.
It was a few years ago but I'm still pissed for that.
Did you ever try the unoffical patch? Seemed to smooth over the issues for me, and added some content abandoned in development.
Also, just how different are European and Latin American Spanish? I get all my lessons in Latin American Spanish and that's what most Spanish speakers I know speak, so what changes when one goes to Spain?
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That's a good question. Ask Kileanna. She's from Spain. Hope this helps.I had to quit playing Vampire:Bloodlines when it was more interesting because I never got a patch that fixed the crashing of the game at a determinate point to work.
It was a few years ago but I'm still pissed for that.Did you ever try the unoffical patch? Seemed to smooth over the issues for me, and added some content abandoned in development.
Also, just how different are European and Latin American Spanish? I get all my lessons in Latin American Spanish and that's what most Spanish speakers I know speak, so what changes when one goes to Spain?
I tried all the patches. None worked, probably as my PC was also old and quirky.
I cannot explain the differences between Latin American Spanish and Spanish from Spain. They are subtle but many. Also there are a lot of versions of Latin American Spanish, the one from Mexico is very different from the one from Argentina.
I guess it's something like British English and American English. The accent and some words make it easy to native speakers to easily tell the difference between the two, but foreign people (like me) can barely tell the difference.
I can only say that most Spanish people are easily offended when someone mistakes Latin Spanish with Spanish from Spain. They have some ugly names for people speaking Latin Spanish. (Even if Latin American immigrants are welcome and mostly integrated, I can say that there is some subtle racism towards them, specially towards the ones from poor countries).
Not that I support it, but I can count myself as one who doesn't enjoy the poor Latin American dubbing. Latin Americans usually hate Spanish dubbing too, so...
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Nobody is a fan of goat cheese.
And yet goat owners insist on milking them anyway.
Or better yet, have Captain Yesterday do it, he doesn't wear glasses so he can get kicked in the face all damn day. :-)
At least that's what my brothers tried telling my parents. :-)
I want to put chèvre on everything!!
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"If I had my way, the Easter Bunny wouldn't hop around giving everyone eggs. He'd be a farmer. I could see him being really happy farming" - Tiny T-Rex.Then the Easter Duck could give out eggs, as is right and appropriate.
We need an Easter Platypus. Furry like a bunny, but actually lays eggs. And throw in a venomous bite for those not sufficiently in the spirit of the season.
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We used to live next to a plum orchard when I was a kid.
It was my best fort ever. :-)
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I know when speaking school Spanish/castilliano, I was teased mercilessly by my relatives in Panama- I sounded snooty To them. To me, their Spanish sounded incredibly poorly inflected. But we understood each other. The only Spanish I can say sounds truly awful to me even now is cubano. It sounds like someone is talking with rocks in their mouth. And yes there is a loooooooooot of racism in Spanish with respect to people from different countries. You don't want to know the fights that can break out if you accuse the wrong person of being negro or mestizo.
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We need an Easter Platypus. Furry like a bunny, but actually lays eggs. And throw in a venomous bite for those not sufficiently in the spirit of the season."If I had my way, the Easter Bunny wouldn't hop around giving everyone eggs. He'd be a farmer. I could see him being really happy farming" - Tiny T-Rex.Then the Easter Duck could give out eggs, as is right and appropriate.
Owwie!
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And so, my fifth year of volunteering for Tekko is done. Halfway to my ten-year plaque.
Congratulations!
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Racism in Spain (cannot tell in another hispanic countries) is a weird thing. There are fewer ghettos and closed communities than in other countries and most foreigners are easily accepted.
But it's not seen as impolite making some racist or disrespectful remarks in the face of a person of another race/nationality like it was a joke.
In general I think immigrants get better treatment than in other many countries but are insulted more often. Which is not cool.
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And so, my fifth year of volunteering for Tekko is done. Halfway to my ten-year plaque.Congratulations!
Congratulations indeed!
Can't believe I missed that!
Bad Captain Yesterday!
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Nobody is a fan of goat cheese.
No I'm not.
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NobodysHome's Life of a Chaperone, Part I: The Precursor
This weekend's trip to Southern California was truly a-mah-zing; one of the most memorable, incredible trips I have ever experienced. It was so visceral, so fundamental, that I was planning on typing it all up in a journal for myself so I could have it as a keepsake. I was already pondering sharing it on FaWtL when NobodysWife said, "Wow! You should write it all up like a campaign journal and post it on FaWtL!"
So, since it's going to be IMMENSELY long, I'll be spoilering each section as I type it up. But I figure many of you (I'm looking at YOU, TL) will enjoy reading it, and I was hoping to get it all done anyway, so over the next 1-2 weeks, we'll get through my incredible trip.
And Freehold, if you say "pics or it didn't happen" when I describe "Team 'Put a shirt on!'", then shame on you!
So anyway, here we go:
So Ms. S organizes trips to visit other schools around the state to share music: Our choirs get up and perform a few songs, their choirs get up and perform a few songs, each choir gets to experience the other's teacher, and the kids all get to socialize. I love chaperoning these trips, because let's be blunt: When you're pushing 50, hanging around with a bunch of 14-17-year-olds and listening to their enthusiasm, watching their energy, and feeling their optimism is just contagious. I come back from these trips so physically exhausted I can barely walk, but so spiritually uplifted I feel like whistling like an idiot for weeks (or even months) afterwards.
And the other chaperones. Man, the other chaperones. I am not the only one who puts in anything and everything to these trips. I honestly have no idea how Ms. S chooses the chaperones for our trips, but again, they are the most devoted, hard-working, incredible group of people I have ever had the pleasure of doing anything with. Ms. S may be a perpetual motion machine. I take pride that I still have enough endurance to work 18-hour days for 3-4 days straight. But the head of our team, A, is a ringleader extraordinaire. If we ever need to know what to do, she tells us. She helps Ms. S organize everything. She devotes untold hours to making EVERY choir event go smoothly. And then she travels with us on every trip. The two of them are pretty intimitating company. Add five more dediacated, hard-working parents (CT, CK, K, G, and J) and you've just got an incredible, incredible group. My recollection is that while this wasn't the first chaperoning trip for any of us, it was the first Disneyland trip for four of us (CT, CK, K, and J), and yet every single one of us was just a rock-solid ball of amazement. I've been chaperoning since 1986. And the intrepid band Ms. S put together outshines all other groups in all those years combined.
Yeah, I think a wee bit highly of them.
So, after praise comes condemnation, right? I think I've mentioned that one of the members of my gaming group (and I will not identify him even through initials, so for now I'll use Z) had to be hospitalized as a suicide prevention measure, and I was extremely proud when he cited my game as one of the reasons he didn't go through with it, and used one of his 3 allowed phone calls to talk with me. I really like the kid, and I didn't mind having him in my group at all. In spite of missing a lot of school because of his issues, he was coming on the trip, and I was going to be his chaperone. All good. All fine.
Then his mother, D, called me and explained that Z was having serious issues right before the trip, and she was very concerned that he would have a breakdown on the trip, and could she please travel along with us in case he needed her? I explained that she had to talk to Ms. S about that, and that there would be a meeting in a few days and she could approach Ms. S about it herself.
So she did, and she promised Ms. S and me that she would be available 24/7 in case of emergencies, she'd drive herself, she'd pay for everything herself, and she just wanted to be near Z in case anything happened. Seemed absolutely OK, and the stage is set...
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That's a good question. Ask Kileanna. She's from Spain. Hope this helps.I had to quit playing Vampire:Bloodlines when it was more interesting because I never got a patch that fixed the crashing of the game at a determinate point to work.
It was a few years ago but I'm still pissed for that.Did you ever try the unoffical patch? Seemed to smooth over the issues for me, and added some content abandoned in development.
Also, just how different are European and Latin American Spanish? I get all my lessons in Latin American Spanish and that's what most Spanish speakers I know speak, so what changes when one goes to Spain?
I tried all the patches. None worked, probably as my PC was also old and quirky.
I cannot explain the differences between Latin American Spanish and Spanish from Spain. They are subtle but many. Also there are a lot of versions of Latin American Spanish, the one from Mexico is very different from the one from Argentina.
I guess it's something like British English and American English. The accent and some words make it easy to native speakers to easily tell the difference between the two, but foreign people (like me) can barely tell the difference.I can only say that most Spanish people are easily offended when someone mistakes Latin Spanish with Spanish from Spain. They have some ugly names for people speaking Latin Spanish. (Even if Latin American immigrants are welcome and mostly integrated, I can say that there is some subtle racism towards them, specially towards the ones from poor countries).
Not that I support it, but I can count myself as one who doesn't enjoy the poor Latin American dubbing. Latin Americans usually hate Spanish dubbing too, so...
Interesting. It is close enough for easy communication, though? Like how Californians and Australians can understand each other about 98% of the time? I do suspect my Spanish is mostly Mexican, by sheer virtue of me being from California, but I'm not expert enough to say and we don't really get European Spanish media where I live. Can get my hands on all the Mexican films I want, though, which is good because Mexico actually has some pretty good stuff out there.
On a tangent, I really wish I'd been allowed to study a foreign language in school (My Mom wouldn't let me, because I'd obviously fail). It took until now, my mid-twenties, to really get into actually learning one (I can kind of read French and German, but that's not that useful in a world with Google Translate that's about as competant as I am), and Spanish has an unmistakable beauty to it. Plus, I'm trying to be a California public servant. It'd be really great if my Spanish were a lot more on point than it is now (hopefully I'll get there).
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I know when speaking school Spanish/castilliano, I was teased mercilessly by my relatives in Panama- I sounded snooty To them. To me, their Spanish sounded incredibly poorly inflected. But we understood each other. The only Spanish I can say sounds truly awful to me even now is cubano. It sounds like someone is talking with rocks in their mouth. And yes there is a loooooooooot of racism in Spanish with respect to people from different countries. You don't want to know the fights that can break out if you accuse the wrong person of being negro or mestizo.
I've read up on the Colonial Mexican caste system. Talk about obsessive. It's like they traced every g*@+~$n thing and the precise amount.
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NobodysHome’s Life of a Chaperone, Part II: Wednesday Night
So, how do you feed 106 teenagers and 9 adult chaperones if you’re not a wealthy school district? Donations from well-minded local organizations!
Shout-outs to Semifreddi’s, Costco, and especially Noah’s Bagels for donating hundreds of pastries and bagels to us. Seriously; Noah’s was so overwhelmingly generous (all their leftover bagels from 3 full days of sales) that we were able to cut our shopping trips significantly smaller. Shout-outs to Kim’s Deli for providing us with 120 sandwiches at 2:00 am in the morning! Yeah, we paid for them, but it’s a mom-and-pop shop, and I hesitate to ponder the work it took to lovingly put all those sammies together, much less have them ready for pickup at 2 in the frigging morning!
Wednesday, April 5:
My first task was to pick up the minivan: I was to be the “satellite driver” for the trip, running errands, picking up extra food, and, in emergencies, getting sick kids where they needed to go, whether it be the hotel room, the ER, or the airport. So I got off work early, biked down to Enterprise, and tried to pick up my van. Surprise, surprise, they won’t take debit/credit cards! It had to be a credit card! Unfortunately, I’d dropped my Disney card somewhere in the Costco parking lot the week before, and the replacement hadn’t arrived (and still hasn’t as of this writing. Grr…). What to do? I texted all the chaperones. Could anybody help? I texted Hi’s player. In the kind of demonstration of teamwork that epitomized this trip, Ms. S got in touch with her husband, who happened to be 3 blocks from me. Hi’s player was ready to drop what he was doing and come at a moment’s notice, and A was 3rd in line. With 3 backup players, it took all of 5 minutes for Ms. S’s husband to arrive, I got my van (with an empty tank, which I kind of like because it means I can return it empty and not waste time gassing up), gassed up, and took it home. The big shocker was that I threw $40 of gas into the van and didn’t fill the tank. Keep in mind that I drive a Prius (11.9 gallon tank) and a Celica (15.9 gallon tank), and even using premium gas in the Celica I almost never break $40. This was a sign of annoyances to come.
So it was a minor hiccup and a bit of out-of-pocket expense for me (I paid the rental company for collision insurance, because otherwise it would go on Ms. S’s husband’s insurance, and I hate driving on someone else’s insurance), but otherwise everything went smoothly.
Rough total time: 75 minutes
A bit over an hour later, CT showed up to help me with our first Costco run. We decided on two carts, and it was amusing/amazing watching her, because she shops at Costco just like I do. I have a list, move as quickly and directly and safely as possible to the next item, get it, and move on. I complained about the people who could manage to block an entire 10’ wide aisle somehow by walking 3 abreast and treating Costco like a Sunday stroll, and CT abashedly admitted that she sometimes did the same, but this time we had a list and she was determined to get it done quickly. We were an efficient machine, tracking down items and stacking both carts to overflowing. Of course, there was ONE item on the list we couldn’t find, so we lost a good 20 minutes waiting for a helpful staff member to track it down for us. (Against the back wall, of course.) CT blessedly mentioned pizza and I barely missed being the goat of the trip by calling in the 25-pizza order to the Garden Grove Costco just in the nick of time.
We paid up, got home, and, since this trip was all the non-perishables, I planned on leaving the items in the van overnight. CT went home, I went inside and texted Ms. S that the trip was a success. She texted back: She needed the items at school! Back in the van, went to the school, met with her, and she showed me the super-sekret way to pull the van right up to the choir room door (47 years of playing around that school and I hadn’t known about it!). My favorite part was watching tiny Ms. S moving 45-pound cases of water bottles from the van to the risers. I swear they weighed half as much as she does!
Rough total time: 2 hours
So straight home and straight to bed, as I was supposed to be up by 2:00 am to start the long drive down. I got to bed by 7:30 pm, but didn’t really start sleeping until 8. Fortunately, it was still the best night’s sleep I’d get until the end of the trip…
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You know, sometimes I wonder who the hell comes up with the phrases you translate for foreign language lessons. Like, El gato duerme sobre el mono. Sure, I can translate that for you, but why the hell is the cat sleeping on the monkey? How does that even work ergonomically? Why the hell is the monkey just tolerating this? Why do we even have a cat and a monkey in the same place? Why can't the cat just sleep on a normal chair, or on a person? It's not like we don't know the proper words for those things.
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You know, sometimes I wonder who the hell comes up with the phrases you translate for foreign language lessons. Like, El gato duerme sobre el mono. Sure, I can translate that for you, but why the hell is the cat sleeping on the monkey? How does that even work ergonomically? Why the hell is the monkey just tolerating this? Why do we even have a cat and a monkey in the same place? Why can't the cat just sleep on a normal chair, or on a person? It's not like we don't know the proper words for those things.
My hovercraft is full of eels.
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Oh, and in this particular case I think it was kind of funny that I paid for the rental company's exorbitant insurance, which I NEVER normally do: Some a$$**** in the hotel parking lot gave me a nice nasty door scrape. Since NobodysWife can attest that I am obsessive-compulsive about getting my vehicle exactly between the lines, we know this person was... a miserable so-and-so.
So I dutifully pointed out the scrape to the return person, she took one look and saw I'd paid for the insurance, and just said, "Yeah, forget about it."
Worth the price! :-P