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I'll admit that my interest in it is solely due to looking at "this day in history" and realizing it wasn't just the same day but the exact year.
Happy birthday, you young whippersnapper!
And now I'm curious...
Muhammed Ali was convicted for refusing the draft...
Other than that, it looks like a pretty boring day, except it looks like I share a birthday with Nicole Kidman.
I happen to like her, so there's that.
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Wait...
Is Scint some kind of anti-Aphrodite, arisen from the dark foam of oil-corrupted seas?
Great.
Now I've got an idea for WTA.
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Wait...
Is Scint some kind of anti-Aphrodite, arisen from the dark foam of oil-corrupted seas?
I plead the Fifth.
Great.
Now I've got an idea for WTA.
Women's Tennis Association?
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Sometimes, life is a sitcom.
A little over a week ago, a good samaritan told Impus Minor that one of the tail lights on the Celica was burned out. Thus began our saga.
Day 0: Ordered new bulbs from Amazon.
Day 2: Bulbs arrived. Watched YouTube video of how to replace bulbs. Guy disassembled entire back trunk panel. Tried for a few minutes, then realized the guy was an idiot and all I needed was a hollow nut driver. Ordered same from Amazon in both metric and imperial measures.
Day 4: Drivers arrived. Imperial drivers were fine. Metric drivers weren't hollow, contrary to what was on Amazon's site, making them useless. Filed Amazon exchange request.
Day 6: Amazon exchange arrived. New drivers were hollow, but imperial (again), contrary to what was on Amazon's site. Decided to ditch Amazon. Filed Amazon return request.
Day 7: Ordered metric hollow nut drivers from Ace hardware.
Day 8: After visiting Shiro, GothBard brought home a 10mm hollow nut driver that Shiro had in his garage, because of course he did.
Day 9: Used hollow nut drivers to replace bulbs (it turns out 2 weren't working). No effect. Checked fuses. No effect. With 2 bulbs going out at once, I suspected a wiring issue I wasn't about to try to track down. The metric hollow nut drivers from Ace arrived after I'd already done all the work.
Day 10: Dropped the Celica at the shop to let THEM try to figure it out. After my description, the technician didn't look happy. "We'll try to do it in under an hour, but is it OK if we keep the car until tomorrow?"
So yeah, a simple, "You should replace your bulb, sir," has turned into a nearly-2-week saga...
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And I swear. We've switched over from abstract images to photo art for our slides, so I have access to a stock library of tens of thousands of supposedly "corporate" photos.
And all I can think is how aliens would view all these images.
"These humans had amazingly advanced technology. They could fly around the globe. They could walk on the moon. But they couldn't design a dress shirt that their females could button up more than halfway..."
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And I swear. We've switched over from abstract images to photo art for our slides, so I have access to a stock library of tens of thousands of supposedly "corporate" photos.
And all I can think is how aliens would view all these images.
"These humans had amazingly advanced technology. They could fly around the globe. They could walk on the moon. But they couldn't design a dress shirt that their females could button up more than halfway..."
Male Aliens. pause pause pause..... "OhhhhHHHHhhhhh"
Kiddo: It's your birthday, Ms. Scint?! How old are you?
Me: Look up the Exxon-Valdez spill.
Kiddo: Wow! There's no WAY you're that old!
Happy birthday, and what a truly unforgettable gift to have been given.
Apart from bluegrass musician Lester Flatts dying, nothing much happened on my birthday. 'Bright Eyes' by Art Garfunkel was no. 1 in the hit parade, as nobody has called it since around 1962, and it's all been downhill from there.
Great.
Now I've got an idea for WTA.
Wet Tyrrhenian Argosy.
Oars in this house, there's some oars in this house, etc.
Kiddo: It's your birthday, Ms. Scint?! How old are you?
Me: Look up the Exxon-Valdez spill.
Kiddo: Wow! There's no WAY you're that old!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MS SCINT
I had to do a project on the Valdez oil spill. It awakened me to the damage we were doing to the environment.
I did a project on it in high school.
I was born on the day that Ford pardoned Nixon.
I like to say that this is why I'm so cynical, but it's just a convenient excuse.
Anyway, Happy Birthday, Scint!
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Women's Tennis Association?Great.
Now I've got an idea for WTA.
I would love to see Scint taking on her rivals on the tennis court, but no. Werewolf The Apocalypse.
Sometimes, life is a sitcom.
A little over a week ago, a good samaritan told Impus Minor that one of the tail lights on the Celica was burned out. Thus began our saga.
Day 0: Ordered new bulbs from Amazon.
Day 2: Bulbs arrived. Watched YouTube video of how to replace bulbs. Guy disassembled entire back trunk panel. Tried for a few minutes, then realized the guy was an idiot and all I needed was a hollow nut driver. Ordered same from Amazon in both metric and imperial measures.
Day 4: Drivers arrived. Imperial drivers were fine. Metric drivers weren't hollow, contrary to what was on Amazon's site, making them useless. Filed Amazon exchange request.
Day 6: Amazon exchange arrived. New drivers were hollow, but imperial (again), contrary to what was on Amazon's site. Decided to ditch Amazon. Filed Amazon return request.
Day 7: Ordered metric hollow nut drivers from Ace hardware.
Day 8: After visiting Shiro, GothBard brought home a 10mm hollow nut driver that Shiro had in his garage, because of course he did.
Day 9: Used hollow nut drivers to replace bulbs (it turns out 2 weren't working). No effect. Checked fuses. No effect. With 2 bulbs going out at once, I suspected a wiring issue I wasn't about to try to track down. The metric hollow nut drivers from Ace arrived after I'd already done all the work.
Day 10: Dropped the Celica at the shop to let THEM try to figure it out. After my description, the technician didn't look happy. "We'll try to do it in under an hour, but is it OK if we keep the car until tomorrow?"So yeah, a simple, "You should replace your bulb, sir," has turned into a nearly-2-week saga...
Can't you just...go to pep boys?
...Celica saga...
I strongly suspect this isn't the case, but I only mention it because I knew a guy in college who did this: Did you make sure the light switch was fully on when checking the bulbs? Not in "daytime running lights" or "parking lights", but "on" on? Like I said, I knew a guy in college who was freaking out because neither of his tail lights were working despite changing the bulbs and checking the fuses, and when he took it to the dealership, they said "Yeah, you just didn't turn the switch all the way. That'll be $50."
Nice idea, but it's the brake lights. "You didn't hit the brakes," isn't something I'm likely to encounter.
Can't you just...go to pep boys?
Real estate prices being what they are, the nearest Pep Boys is a half-hour drive away, and even then I suspect changing a light bulb would be at least a $50 job. So I got the bulbs myself ($4.71), ordered the tools ($23.78), and thus would have saved money overall if it had been a "normal" situation. (And yes, I checked around and the only place I could have gotten the proper tool in-store would have been Home Depot, and I won't buy from them. Ever.)
And now I'm happy enough to have dropped it off at the shop because it's something more significant than a simple burned-out bulb, so paying someone for 2 hours of labor to trace all the wiring, clean it, and fix it is well worth the amount of time and effort it would take me in comparison.
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Unless you really need to torque it, metric and standard are usually close enough for state work. Bubble gum in the next size up will usually work even without it hardening.
Of course, there are a lot of stripped bolts, a few bolts with dried bubblegum for the ends, and one bolt driver impersonating excalibur around the house still so...
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Unless you really need to torque it, metric and standard are usually close enough for state work. Bubble gum in the next size up will usually work even without it hardening.
Of course, there are a lot of stripped bolts, a few bolts with dried bubblegum for the ends, and one bolt driver impersonating excalibur around the house still so...
It's a 10mm. Land of the, "We slip between the imperials with great stealth." And they were on hard. I hesitate to think of what such firm bubblegum would do to my teeth...
It's a 10mm. Land of the, "We slip between the imperials with great stealth." And they were on hard. I hesitate to think of what such firm bubblegum would do to my teeth...Unless you really need to torque it, metric and standard are usually close enough for state work. Bubble gum in the next size up will usually work even without it hardening.
Of course, there are a lot of stripped bolts, a few bolts with dried bubblegum for the ends, and one bolt driver impersonating excalibur around the house still so...
Visegrips and a hammer?
Visegrips and a hammer?It's a 10mm. Land of the, "We slip between the imperials with great stealth." And they were on hard. I hesitate to think of what such firm bubblegum would do to my teeth...Unless you really need to torque it, metric and standard are usually close enough for state work. Bubble gum in the next size up will usually work even without it hardening.
Of course, there are a lot of stripped bolts, a few bolts with dried bubblegum for the ends, and one bolt driver impersonating excalibur around the house still so...
It's classic mid-1990's car construction: Unless you want to remove the entire trunk paneling (all done with easy-to-break plastic clips, of course), there are three quarter-size access holes. The nuts are 3" deep in each hole. Except there's a long thin spike at the end of each bolt so a regular driver won't work (hence the need for a hollow driver).
All very well designed to prevent people from jury-rigging an alternative to the tool.
But a single 10 mm hollow driver runs about $8, as compared to paying someone else at least $50 to change a light bulb, so it's not an impossible challenge.
It was just a PITA one.
We got our classic late March blizzard, this one about a foot of snow when I started but it's pretty warm and sunny so it's been cut in half since then.
We went to the 2nd hand market today, and I dearly love a good 2nd hand market, or junk shop. We found:
1) Several bungee cords
2) Two tankards, one a full pint, one a half pint
3) Four candlesticks
4) A buckle
5) A set of Black Sabbath signature plectrums
6) A four-barrelled nerf gun
7) A bracelet
None of which cost more than £2 each, though I did have to both confiscate Sonic's nerf gun until we got back to the car and unload it before returning it to him, otherwise he would have shot himself in the face with it (I know this for a fact, as the first thing he did when he'd got in was to pull the cocking lever all the way back and then look right down the barrel)
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Since many of you were kind enough to respond to my AITA post, I figured a careful follow-up would be in order. The short version is, Dancing Wind called it: We received an apology that included a multi-page attachment of grievances against us.
So, yeah. I am sorry that I caused this player that much distress, but I won't be gaming with them again.
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Really, the real problem is that you are too well adjusted adult human being to be a roleplayer an adult human being, and you have too high expectations from other reolplayers adult human beings regarding their behavior...
Really, the real problem is that you are too well adjusted adult human being to bea roleplayeran adult human being, and you have too high expectations from otherreolplayersadult human beings regarding their behavior...
So, the person made some valid points and some invalid points, as is to be expected. I think they really did start off trying to give an honest summary of their viewpoint, but they got carried away and turned it into an essay.
Which isn't what you want to do when you're writing an apology for getting carried away...
Really, the real problem is that you are too well adjusted adult human being to bea roleplayeran adult human being, and you have too high expectations from otherreolplayersadult human beings regarding their behavior...So, the person made some valid points and some invalid points, as is to be expected. I think they really did start off trying to give an honest summary of their viewpoint, but they got carried away and turned it into an essay.
Which isn't what you want to do when you're writing an apology for getting carried away...
Learn from the more sensibly stated points to the best of your ability.
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Learn from the more sensibly stated points to the best of your ability.Really, the real problem is that you are too well adjusted adult human being to bea roleplayeran adult human being, and you have too high expectations from otherreolplayersadult human beings regarding their behavior...So, the person made some valid points and some invalid points, as is to be expected. I think they really did start off trying to give an honest summary of their viewpoint, but they got carried away and turned it into an essay.
Which isn't what you want to do when you're writing an apology for getting carried away...
Yeah, as I said, some of the points are valid, and some are easy to work with and some are hard:
(1) GothBard, Shiro, and I are very clique-y and make other players feel excluded.
This is a hard one because it's a play style rather than an intent. The three of us like to play good-aligned, helpful, "We'll give away our gold and gear to help a needy NPC" types. So our PCs always get along well because their goals are well-aligned. When someone plays a similarly-aligned PC (Impus Minor in Shattered Star, for example), they fit right in. When they don't (Lara Croft Guy loves to play amoral neutral PCs), there's intraparty friction and as a result the player can feel excluded.
So it's a very difficult, "This is the way we like to play," thing where one of the reasons we've been able to game well together for 10+ years now is that we like the same style, and people coming in with a different style can definitely feel that our PCs are "standoffish" to their PCs. It's not the first time we've heard this complaint, but it's hard to deal with because it's either making someone play in a style they're not comfortable with, or understanding that it's the PCs who aren't meshing, not the players. Both are hard.
It's funny because I'm seeing the same thing from the outside in our homebrew: GothBard and Impus Minor are definitely playing to the "Good" stereotype. Talky is trying to play a gritty, hates-the-world tiefling. And so he started feeling excluded. So he had his tiefling change his behavior to more align with the party, and now he's having more fun.
So it's one of those, "Someone's gotta bend" situations we're aware of, but it's hard to remedy.
(2) We're openly derisive of poor play.
100% guilty. "I hit the least injured one," is painful to hear, and amazingly common. And I don't have enough of a poker face to hide my frustration. Something that I definitely need to work on.
Anyway, yes. I'm listening, and I'm trying to learn, but some of the lessons are easy and some are hard.
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Honestly, what every table needs is an Impus Minor: If I step out of line as GM, he patiently waits 'til after the session, then lets me have it in private over whatever it is I did.
It's awesome.
And I think therein lies a fundamental crux of the issue: When the campaign started, the GM appointed a "player advocate" who would bring issues to the GM's or players' attention. Life became complex for the player advocate, so they had to drop out of the campaign for a while and then came back in a much-diminished role. So the affected player had the choices of going to the GM, going to the life-overwhelmed player advocate, or directly confronting us, and chose to do none of the above. Which is very common and never healthy, and ended up with the resulting explosion.
I'm sorry it ended up the way it did, and I freely plead guilty to some of the charges, but it's hard to adjust your behavior after the campaign is already dead.
Except, as Freehold said, for future campaigns.
Hgrumpf.
I need some new source(s) of revenue.
Anyone hiring a (not terribly experienced) game dev?
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Fantasy NPC: Monks Of Saint Ivor's Monastery
The most colorful of them, at least.
Meh. My source of living income will dry sooner than I expected. It took my anxiety a few more hours to kick in, when I was calculating next month expenses.
That's something that I have been considering for a long time, but the local regulations are seriously unfriendly toward micro-business (which is also why I don't do Patron-only content, because that kind of reciprocal relation would turn my blog into a business venture) - and that doesn't event take into account my own poor organizational skills.
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FaWtL: Gee, NobodysHome! Why are you so uppity about people parking facing the wrong direction on your street? It's only 25' (8m) wide, so it's not like it makes much of a difference.
NobodysHome: Well, let me tell you about today's drive home...
I pulled onto my home street and started down it when I noted a beat-up old pickup parked the wrong way in front of our house, and they started pulling forward, directly into a head-on path with us. No problem. They were still well over 100' (33m) away. Except...
...they weren't looking where they were going. They were paying attention to their excited corgi in the back seat...
...who, seeing his impending doom, jumped out of the window of the moving pickup...
...whose driver turned around to stare at his fleeing corgi... while still moving forward in a headon path into us.
So yes. There was plenty of space so I stopped and waited for the driver to recover. Once the driver had turned off their engine and gotten out of their car (stopped in the middle of the road, of course), I went around them and parked in front of the house. GothBard went over to help with the wayward corgi. There was never any immediate danger, except to the corgi.
But this person drove roughly 60' the wrong way down the street without once ever looking in front of them.
It was a fine example of terrible driving, made even worse by the fact that they'd started their journey of incompetence facing the wrong way down the street.
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Finally completed my [lengthy string of expletives redacted] parent conference reports.
It would be helpful if I didn't feel the need to write each one like Dostoevsky. Parents don't need a lengthy treatise on good and evil and man's search for meaning and connection, human frailty and the divine. They just want to know if Johnny shares his crayons, knows his three r's, and says yes sir and yes ma'am when spoken to.
Sigh.
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I did it!! I beat Elden Ring!!!
Exactly one year after I started playing it!
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Spare me. Some of the Usual Suspects have discovered ChatGPT for essays.
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A belated happy birthday to Scint!
Nixon resigned a couple weeks after my birth. I'd like to say I share my birthday with Kathryn Hahn, but it appears she's a year older than me. Not that I'm saying Kathryn's old. Katie...I'm sorry...no...I didn't mean it like *that*...hun, come back to bed...ok, yes, the couch will do fine...again...
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My review of Elden Ring.
Best. Game. Ever.
Absolutely no criticism, I wouldn't change a thing!
Although it makes my copy of Skyrim worthless. Elden Ring is Skyrim now.
The thing is, in Skyrim, I can just wander about, having sword fights, reading books, drinking mead, and doing magic, without any particular need to Save The World if I don't feel like it. Few other (non-Elder Scrolls) games allow you to just do that, but if Elden Ring does, good-oh, and I shall check it out
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Spare me. Some of the Usual Suspects have discovered ChatGPT for essays.
I'm interested -- how hard is it to spot them?
Because in spite of everyone believing that ChatGPT is the next miracle solution to everything, its technical writing, er, leaves much to be desired.
It absolutely loves to state utter nonsense as absolute fact when you get into engineering.
I blame sci-fi.
The thing is, in Skyrim, I can just wander about, having sword fights, reading books, drinking mead, and doing magic, without any particular need to Save The World if I don't feel like it. Few other (non-Elder Scrolls) games allow you to just do that, but if Elden Ring does, good-oh, and I shall check it out
A bit less mead and more running around looking for giant rusty anchors in tombs and trying not to get murdered by giant shrimp or something worse, but there is quite a lot of secrets, fun spells, interesting people, and batshit crazy weapons and armor to be found.
My character build I call the Garden Gnome Wizard Assassin, and I started out as a big dumb knight in plate armor and a halberd (vagabond). So it was quite the journey!
Edit: a nice thing about it is they have summoning signs next to hard areas and boss arenas so you can bring in some friends or random people in to help if needed.
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It absolutely loves to state utter nonsense as absolute fact when you get into engineering.
To be fair, so do a lot of engineers.
It absolutely loves to state utter nonsense as absolute fact when you get into engineering.To be fair, so do a lot of engineers.
I have a feeling chatgtp is going to take this hobby to new heights/depths.
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Spare me. Some of the Usual Suspects have discovered ChatGPT for essays.I'm interested -- how hard is it to spot them?
Because in spite of everyone believing that ChatGPT is the next miracle solution to everything, its technical writing, er, leaves much to be desired.
It absolutely loves to state utter nonsense as absolute fact when you get into engineering.
I blame sci-fi.
One of our district admins sent us a link to a site that's designed to detect AI-generated writing, so pretty easy. Just the hassle of pasting the text into it first.
And I looked at the other kids' as a baseline - the two I wrote up? 80+% AI-generated. The highest anyone else hit was 20%, and this was from a kid with a solid writing style that I could see the bot cribbing from, plus I watched them actually use classtime to work on the paper.
And yeah, the AI-papers were...not good.
Fantasy NPC: Monks Of Saint Ivor's Monastery
The most colorful of them, at least.
Amazing. Absolutely amazing.