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I attended my first Passover Seder today (a rather irreligious one, with a very strong political element to it). It took place via Zoom, so naturally, we had one bloke with mic trouble that made him sound like a Chipmunk, and stray ads about Bitcoin being played because someone forgot to pause Youtube and mute themselves. I enjoyed it.
I have also decided that Zoom Seder is my new Glam Rock pseudonym.
EDIT: one advantage of Zoom is, if you position the camera right, no-one knows you're wearing nothing but a yarmulke.
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Auuuuw, fly to the dandy astronaut on motorcyle wings!
Black-tie lover of the neon leather colossus, ha! Ha! Ha!
{Then, a topless man with a silver pompadour wearing enormous boots honks away on a saxophone, his face painted with vivid Cabalistic symbols, while behind him, an androgynous individual in a feathered jumpsuit flails away at a synthesiser the size of a small car}
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If it was Zhoom Seidr, then it would be death folk metal name.
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Gotta love Impus Major's optimism. He's off to an overnight trip to Santa Cruz to visit one of his friends. He brought his wet suit "in case we decide to do something in the water".
Swimming in the ocean in Northern California is remarkably deadly: We've got a cold-water current running along the coast that drags people far away from where they've started AND gives them hypothermia. Impus Major is a relatively weak swimmer. I've told him that he's never to swim in the Northern California ocean.
But he brought a wetsuit.
Because?
Ah, who knows?
At least I know none of his friends are dumb enough to try swimming down there, so he'll be fine.
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I started playing Elden Ring and only died 3 times fighting the tutorial dungeon boss. Then I get outside and right off the bat there's this huge a*&+@*+ on a horse in gold armor, so I think "well I'll just hide in these bushes and wait until he clops by again and sneak attack him!". That's when I was murdered by the tree.
Also if you accidentally press triangle next to a message people leave around the map but you're not close enough to trigger the message you'll stand there impotently pumping your fist in the air. Which is fine, except when you accidentally do it in a fight and you're standing there impotently pumping your fist while the enemy carves off various limbs with his combo he took two minutes winding up.
After that I'm walking through the woods and I find this glowing golden pile and the game asks "acquire materials?" So I say "don't mind if I do!" "Gold tinged excrement acquired" the game tells me. I've been looking for a sink ever since.
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Speaking of optimism, I believe I've posted my experience with MSI products here in the past:
- GothBard got an MSI gaming laptop in 2016 and the hinges were so tight (and, even more importantly, not adjustable) that by 2018 they'd ripped through the laptop cover. MSI wanted a $300 "diagnostic fee" just to look at the laptop, so I looked online, found out it was a common problem, and proceeded to learn how to use epoxy foam to fill in a plastic case. Worked remarkably well, but still...
- Impus Major got an MSI gaming laptop in 2018. By 2019 the fans were so out of alignment that the laptop wailed like a banshee every time he ran a game, and it would overheat unless he put it on a special stand where it was essentially suspended in midair to maximize air flow. Disabling the offending fans and letting the MSI sit on the special stand made it usable... as a desktop in the shape of a laptop, since it wasn't at all portable. Then the excess heat caused the bottom of the laptop to burst, so now it's a deformed, sad, parts-spilling-out-but-still-usable chunk of ugliness.
- Someone made the mistake of getting MSI headphones and I don't think they lasted a year.
In short, every MSI product we've ever owned has burst or broken within 2 years.
GothBard just got sent a new work laptop for the game she's working on. And yep, you guessed it. It's a brand new MSI gaming laptop.
We're taking bets on how long this one'll go before bursting.
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** spoiler omitted **
A fair follow-up. A different news outlet released a different set of excerpts which were FAR more political.
Which begs the question: If you had great examples of political content in your math textbooks, why post the non-political content?
And interestingly enough, they explained, with essentially the same reasoning I put in my spoiler.
I attended my first Passover Seder today (a rather irreligious one, with a very strong political element to it). It took place via Zoom, so naturally, we had one bloke with mic trouble that made him sound like a Chipmunk, and stray ads about Bitcoin being played because someone forgot to pause Youtube and mute themselves. I enjoyed it.
I have also decided that Zoom Seder is my new Glam Rock pseudonym.
EDIT: one advantage of Zoom is, if you position the camera right, no-one knows you're wearing nothing but a yarmulke.
MAZEL TOV!
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I always wonder about parents who buy monitoring equipment for their kids, from baby monitors to phone trackers to indoor security cameras: Don't they know that any internet-connected device can be hacked? (There was a wonderful article about a month ago saying that one of the most commonly-used indoor security cameras had a massive security flaw that the company wasn't going to patch because the cameras were too old to bother with.)
But yes, I'm a mother hen and I worry about my kids. Impus Major left nearly 3 hours ago and hasn't texted his arrival yet. But... I can check Google Maps for traffic. There are 4 crashes along the route. That's got to put a cramp in his trip. Going to the California Highway Patrol's web site, I can see descriptions of all the vehicles involved in the crashes. No red Priuses. I can even see non-collision incidents such as disabled vehicles. No red Priuses.
So in spite of the fact that he's over an hour late in checking in, I can verify that he's got a good reason to be late (bad traffic) and that he's not involved in any of the collisions, so he's safe.
And my mind is at ease.
WITHOUT strapping a camera to him.
EDIT: OMG. Once it was an hour beyond Google's estimated time I texted him. No answer. So I texted his friend, and yes, he's safe and sound and settled down and just an utter failure at communication. Which his friend found hilarious... because he hadn't been expecting the visit!!!
He heard from a mutual friend this morning that Impus Major was showing up and got ready, but I have to admit, failing to reassure your parents is annoying, but common. Failing to tell your friend you're coming 80 miles for an overnight is... wow...
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Speaking of optimism, I believe I've posted my experience with MSI products here in the past:
- GothBard got an MSI gaming laptop in 2016 and the hinges were so tight (and, even more importantly, not adjustable) that by 2018 they'd ripped through the laptop cover. MSI wanted a $300 "diagnostic fee" just to look at the laptop, so I looked online, found out it was a common problem, and proceeded to learn how to use epoxy foam to fill in a plastic case. Worked remarkably well, but still...
- Impus Major got an MSI gaming laptop in 2018. By 2019 the fans were so out of alignment that the laptop wailed like a banshee every time he ran a game, and it would overheat unless he put it on a special stand where it was essentially suspended in midair to maximize air flow. Disabling the offending fans and letting the MSI sit on the special stand made it usable... as a desktop in the shape of a laptop, since it wasn't at all portable. Then the excess heat caused the bottom of the laptop to burst, so now it's a deformed, sad, parts-spilling-out-but-still-usable chunk of ugliness.
- Someone made the mistake of getting MSI headphones and I don't think they lasted a year.
In short, every MSI product we've ever owned has burst or broken within 2 years.
GothBard just got sent a new work laptop for the game she's working on. And yep, you guessed it. It's a brand new MSI gaming laptop.
We're taking bets on how long this one'll go before bursting.
One of our clients recently (within the last year) did an end-run on us and bought their own laptops. MSI. About 20-25 of them, but that covers about 50% of their workforce, thereabouts. Over half of them have blown the hinges out, just like you're describing.
In other words, that's still a common issue for MSI.
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Not knowing how much things cost is supposedly the realm of the ultra-rich or politicians; George Bush Sr. infamously flubbed the, "How much does a gallon of milk cost?" question during his debate with Bill Clinton in 1992.
But considering that I send my kid to the grocery store to shop for us a couple of times a month, he gases up the cars, and he buys lunch on campus, Impus Major should have some kind of clue.
Yet Thursday before his Santa Cruz trip he admitted that he wasn't sure he'd be able to afford both days. Knowing full well he has over $1000 in his account.
He's a college kid sleeping on his friend's floor. If he breaks $100 for the weekend I'll be amazed.
When he said, "I don't know whether I'll be able to afford both days," I just looked him in the eyes and asked, "And what, exactly are you going to spend that kind of money on?"
He didn't know.
But at least it was the opposite of the kids planning their trip to Wisconsin. They were going to rent a car and drive to Wisconsin, staying in motels every night. I told them that $50 per person per day would be a ridiculously low minimum. When their 28-day trip turned into a $1400 saga almost none of them could afford, they bailed and postponed it by a year. But Impus Minor didn't believe me so we sat down and hammered out costs, and he realized that $50 a day with a rental car and hotels was nigh-impossibly low, so at least now they're planning on flying and Ubering when they go next summer...
EDIT: Just checked his Friday expenses. $6.52 for fast food. Yep. He's livin' large.
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Wisconsin?! I live in Wisconsin!!
Wisconsin?! I live in Wisconsin!!
Yep. If they ever end up there I'll let you know.
The difficulty is that Impus Minor and Talky McTalkTalk are the only two people in the 12-person group capable of planning. So trying to get the rest to commit to even an amount of time to stay there is proving impossible.
Add to that that many of them can't afford even the reduced $800 price tag Impus Minor managed to work out, and it looks bleak.
And while I know I grew up fairly privileged, I don't know any of my friends who didn't have jobs during college so they could have saved up for a summer trip. It may have to do with my whole tirade on debt a while back -- in the 1980s you were expected to have some kind of income by the time you were 16. I was a paperboy, then worked in the tutoring center, then did private tutoring. One of my friends sold knives door to door. Another one managed to get a gig as a bouncer at a bar even though he was too young to actually enter the bar. But everyone I knew had an odd job doing something. Of all the kids' friends, only one of them has a job, and he's the one who dropped out of college.
Things NobodysHome Doesn't Understand #34,862: Half-Maskers in a Post-Mandate World
Gran has written extensively about half-maskers (people who wear masks over their mouths, but not their noses), so other than pointing out my disdain for those who pretend utter stupidity in order to avoid doing something they don't want to do, I'll let it go.
However, we've reached a whole new level here in California. The mask mandates are gone. Last Friday we were surprised to go into a restaurant where almost no one on the staff was masked, nor were about half the diners. At Costco this morning, a small number of employees were going around unmasked.
Two things stood out at me:
(1) Every single customer was still wearing a mask, even though they are no longer required.
(2) Several customers were going around half-masked, with the mask over their mouths but not their noses.
I can see the counterargument: "Well, at least covering your mouth protects others when you cough, and if you're breathing through your mouth then the mask will still protect you."
Except the one cough I heard while shopping was from a fully-masked individual, and the half-masked ones I got close enough to tell certainly weren't mouth breathing.
So I'm baffled. After more than two years, they can't not have heard that half-masking is ineffectual. And if half-masking is more comfortable, then why mask at all?
I wasn't rude enough to pull one of them aside and ask, but I was truly perplexed: What good is a half-mask, and if you don't have to wear one at all, then why do so?
Wisconsin?! I live in Wisconsin!!Yep. If they ever end up there I'll let you know.
The difficulty is that Impus Minor and Talky McTalkTalk are the only two people in the 12-person group capable of planning. So trying to get the rest to commit to even an amount of time to stay there is proving impossible.
Add to that that many of them can't afford even the reduced $800 price tag Impus Minor managed to work out, and it looks bleak.
And while I know I grew up fairly privileged, I don't know any of my friends who didn't have jobs during college so they could have saved up for a summer trip. It may have to do with my whole tirade on debt a while back -- in the 1980s you were expected to have some kind of income by the time you were 16. I was a paperboy, then worked in the tutoring center, then did private tutoring. One of my friends sold knives door to door. Another one managed to get a gig as a bouncer at a bar even though he was too young to actually enter the bar. But everyone I knew had an odd job doing something. Of all the kids' friends, only one of them has a job, and he's the one who dropped out of college.
Honestly, the best way to save money traveling through the Midwest is to camp most of the time and get a hotel when it rains or if you get burned out setting up the tent. There are KOAs everywhere and most are pretty nice.
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The General and I figured out how to fix the Transformer movies.
Have them be a stoner road trip movies focusing on Sam's parents with all the transformer action scenes happening in the background with minimal context.
I'll be expecting the check from Micheal Bay any day now.
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I've found out that I've been playing the class in Elden Ring with the hardest learning curve (warrior).
The dying will commence shortly.
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Today I finished my last three chapters of homework for my Texas Naturalist program. The last class session is Tuesday night. Then I just have my portion of our final project to finish by the end of May, and 34 more volunteer hours to put in by Dec 31.
I've determined that no direction is safe in my current situation so I will restart and see where I went wrong.
As I do in pretty much every open world game. It's a thing.
I'm going to try confessor (paladin/inquisitor) class next.
I'm going to try confessor (paladin/inquisitor) class next.I hope you enjoy the game as much as she does.
Not yet. Though I'm still at the stage where everything kills me.
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For Elden Ring - My advice is to play around in Limgrave for a while, avoid the optional Tree Sentinel, and then once you feel like you're hitting a wall head down straight south, there is a whole area there that is about on par with the mid-lower level Limgrave enemies and it will help you get leveled and lean into your chosen build for a couple of hours and get you ready to head back northwest or northeast once you clear that area up.
There are a few things you'll find there that you almost certainly won't be able to deal with right away like other optional bosses but that's par for the course no matter where you go.
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1) One of the kids was begging his parents to let him go to bed, but they apparently don't trust him to be in the room alone, so they made him stay out here in the lobby until they were done drinking. He had fallen asleep in a chair, and the dad kicked the kid's feet to wake him up and called him names for "not being strong enough to stay awake for a little while".
It is taking everything in my power to not go on a murderous rant about people like this.
It turns out I just needed a finger maiden.
Take that as you want.
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I "win".
Today is Impus Major's 21st birthday.
It's classically a time of dread for parents: Their kid's stupid friends will drag them out and try to get them to drink to the point of blacking out. While 21st birthday fatalities aren't as high as the news would lead you to believe, it's still something to add to your grey hairs.
Yet Impus Major doesn't even have plans to go out tonight. He'll likely hang around the house while we're off gaming, we'll do a nice dinner of his choice, and then at GothBard's insistence he'll take one sip of champagne.
And I learned something on Friday that made me proud: His friends' friends do pressure him to drink and do drugs. And his response is, "My father was an alcoholic. My grandfather was an alcoholic. I'd rather not take the risk, thanks."
And they back right off.
A surprisingly effective tactic.
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It turns out having a finger maiden doesn't really prevent the dying.
I've just figured out how to summon my horsey though, and I've watched a video to help me not die as much.
Finished Ultraman season 2 and Tiger and Bunny season 2. It's hilarious that the latter is based in an alternate 80s with a take on 90s heroes, and the former is based off of 80s and 90s versions of Ultraman. Retro is super in, it seems.
The General and I figured out how to fix the Transformer movies.
Have them be a stoner road trip movies focusing on Sam's parents with all the transformer action scenes happening in the background with minimal context.
I'll be expecting the check from Micheal Bay any day now.
That's already what's happening.
That's already what's happening.The General and I figured out how to fix the Transformer movies.
Have them be a stoner road trip movies focusing on Sam's parents with all the transformer action scenes happening in the background with minimal context.
I'll be expecting the check from Micheal Bay any day now.
Too much Transformer gibberish and not enough of his parents to be honest.
If the ratio was flipped then you'd have a pretty good movie.
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I "win".
Today is Impus Major's 21st birthday.
It's classically a time of dread for parents: Their kid's stupid friends will drag them out and try to get them to drink to the point of blacking out. While 21st birthday fatalities aren't as high as the news would lead you to believe, it's still something to add to your grey hairs.
Yet Impus Major doesn't even have plans to go out tonight. He'll likely hang around the house while we're off gaming, we'll do a nice dinner of his choice, and then at GothBard's insistence he'll take one sip of champagne.
And I learned something on Friday that made me proud: His friends' friends do pressure him to drink and do drugs. And his response is, "My father was an alcoholic. My grandfather was an alcoholic. I'd rather not take the risk, thanks."
And they back right off.
A surprisingly effective tactic.
My mom and dad went nuts when I ordered a beer or something similar at 23. It was a frustrating moment. I moved out the following year, I think?
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My mom and dad went nuts when I ordered a beer or something similar at 23. It was a frustrating moment. I moved out the following year, I think?I "win".
Today is Impus Major's 21st birthday.
It's classically a time of dread for parents: Their kid's stupid friends will drag them out and try to get them to drink to the point of blacking out. While 21st birthday fatalities aren't as high as the news would lead you to believe, it's still something to add to your grey hairs.
Yet Impus Major doesn't even have plans to go out tonight. He'll likely hang around the house while we're off gaming, we'll do a nice dinner of his choice, and then at GothBard's insistence he'll take one sip of champagne.
And I learned something on Friday that made me proud: His friends' friends do pressure him to drink and do drugs. And his response is, "My father was an alcoholic. My grandfather was an alcoholic. I'd rather not take the risk, thanks."
And they back right off.
A surprisingly effective tactic.
Oh, I don't particularly care if he has *a* beer or *a* joint. Unfortunately, he has a couple of friends who are in the, "If you don't do it until you black out then you're not doing it right," camp, and I never want him to even visit that camp.
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Name-eating wolves.
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Name-eating wolves.
Awesome. Imagine an adventuring party that began by offering their old names to such beasts and went out into the world with new ones.
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I've been killed by a giant crab, twice. As is the way.
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Hello, John!
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Every year I pick a new song to hum to see if it drives anyone crazy.
My first year it was the Mission Impossible theme song.
My second year it was Another One Bites The Dust.
My third year was The Smurfs theme song.
This year it's Gilligan's Island theme song.
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I swear, my kids' video projects are hilarious.
A couple of years ago Impus Minor re-did the Cyberpunk 2077 promo (with Keanu Reeves) except with shots of Impus Minor on the roof in a Hawaiian shirt with a Nerf rifle instead of game clips. (He even got his very own takedown order from the game company.)
Apparently they're now doing a full-length "bachelor" rip-off complete with commercials.
Which, of course, they didn't tell me, so this morning at 6:30 am I heard Impus Minor in the bathroom grumbling, "Soap, soap, I love soap! Nice and clean! I love soap!"
I opened the door and declared, "What the h***?"
And of COURSE Impus Minor kept it in the audio for the commercial...
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I "win".
Today is Impus Major's 21st birthday.
It's classically a time of dread for parents: Their kid's stupid friends will drag them out and try to get them to drink to the point of blacking out. While 21st birthday fatalities aren't as high as the news would lead you to believe, it's still something to add to your grey hairs.
Yet Impus Major doesn't even have plans to go out tonight. He'll likely hang around the house while we're off gaming, we'll do a nice dinner of his choice, and then at GothBard's insistence he'll take one sip of champagne.
And I learned something on Friday that made me proud: His friends' friends do pressure him to drink and do drugs. And his response is, "My father was an alcoholic. My grandfather was an alcoholic. I'd rather not take the risk, thanks."
And they back right off.
A surprisingly effective tactic.
Good for Impus Major!
...man, I got so much crap from my friends for spending my 21st birthday by attending my night class, pulling a closing shift at the library, and then staying up til 2 to work on a paper. Party hard, that's me.
Wisconsin?! I live in Wisconsin!!
Where in Wisconsin? I know I've asked you this before, but I can't recall the answer.
...Good for Impus Major!
...man, I got so much crap from my friends for spending my 21st birthday by attending my night class, pulling a closing shift at the library, and then staying up til 2 to work on a paper. Party hard, that's me.
I think it's funny that it's due to my later alcoholism that I don't remember what I did for my 21st birthday. However, given my nature and what I was like at the time, a strong guess would be:
(1) Drove the Volvo to the Nut Tree with a bunch of friends.(2) Showed off that I could have wine, but ordered a soda instead. (I have always been anti-drunk driving to the point that I wouldn't have had even a single glass of wine and then driven on the freeway.)
(3) Drove home, watched a video, and went to bed.
Absolutely not sure, but it "sounds" right enough.
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I think it's funny that it's due to my later alcoholism that I don't remember what I did for my 21st birthday.
I don't want to worry you, but likely it has little to do with your alcoholism, and more to do with the number of years that passed since then...
We aren't getting any younger, you know.
Honestly, I don't remember what I did on my 21st birthday, but likely nothing important.
I think it's funny that it's due to my later alcoholism that I don't remember what I did for my 21st birthday.I don't want to worry you, but likely it has little to do with your alcoholism, and more to do with the number of years that passed since then...
We aren't getting any younger, you know.
Honestly, I don't remember what I did on my 21st birthday, but likely nothing important.
LOL. I know age affects my memory as well, but I definitely didn't start losing big chunks of my past until I was drinking 6-8 drinks a day.
The good news is that it's not that hard to recover your memories: Every Saturday and Sunday I'm sorting, labeling, and filing a month's worth of photos, then importing more from other sources from a random time. Going through dozens of old photos a week and asking, "What was I doing then? What were the kids like? How was I feeling?" is an amazing memory stimulant. I'm also digitizing our entire budget since 1988, so I'm going through old expenses, old photos, old events, and it's amazing what it's doing for my memory.
Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to the point of scanning in pre-1991 photos yet...
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Vanykrye'll like this one.
I was trying to describe my hardware requirements to GothBard. And I realized they're very simple:
"Can I drop it in a jar of jam?"
It's an amazingly good test: If you can drop it in the jam, rinse it off, let it dry, and still use it, then it's "good" hardware.