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Well, looks like, all this time, VPL actually stood for Vice Presidents? LOTS!
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Never even heard of it.Much like in reality, once guns become available, it doesn't make much sense to use any other weapons. They just take over.Ever played GreedFall?
Picture the head of a French video game company telling their very small staff "hey, you know Dragon Age: Inquisition? Make that, but with tricorne hats and guns. Oh, and you only have like a year to do it, and a budget of about five dollars." And then they actually pulled it off, more or less.
One of the downsides, which is what I was getting at, is that it's not balanced at all. The firearms, which are supposed to be old-timey muskets, can fire about once every half second, and ammunition is pretty plentiful. Basically, if you're not playing the Technical profile, you're playing wrong.
Never even heard of it.Much like in reality, once guns become available, it doesn't make much sense to use any other weapons. They just take over.Ever played GreedFall?Picture the head of a French video game company telling their very small staff "hey, you know Dragon Age: Inquisition? Make that, but with tricorne hats and guns. Oh, and you only have like a year to do it, and a budget of about five dollars." And then they actually pulled it off, more or less.
One of the downsides, which is what I was getting at, is that it's not balanced at all. The firearms, which are supposed to be old-timey muskets, can fire about once every half second, and ammunition is pretty plentiful. Basically, if you're not playing the Technical profile, you're playing wrong.
It was free last year on playstation plus, haven't played it yet, on account of Elden Ring. I also need to play God of War Ragnarok, Horizon Forbidden West, and I guess the Harry Potter game, though the intro and character creator is incredibly mediocre so might be a while before I try that one.
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I joined a band called "The Palindromes". Our first single is called "If I had a hifi".
Oddly enough, there's a band called IfIHadAHiFi. The band members' stage names (Mr. Alarm, Dr. Awkward, Rev. Ever, and Yale Delay) are all palindromes.
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How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman?
None.
Second-best quote from an Impus Major assignment ever:
"The potato blight virus was useful because it killed Irishmen."
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So my school has been open for about fifty-ish years, but we've never pursued accreditation until now.
I've been on the faculty accreditation committee all year, which has been a laugh riot and no extra work at all, and now the accreditation inspection team is finally visiting Sunday through Wednesday for our review.
Not nervous.
Haven't been going in to work evenings this week to do extra, not going in tomorrow morning as well.
Haven't had to make an emergency rush request for my college transcripts because my boss realized (after five years) that they didn't have a copy of my diploma in my employment file.
And, hey, it's payday, so now I get to buy groceries.
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Does he not like the Irish?How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman?
None.
Second-best quote from an Impus Major assignment ever:
"The potato blight virus was useful because it killed Irishmen."
It was an absolutely classic, "The teacher didn't pay attention to what they were assigning," moment.
To teach the kids about biology, every kid was assigned a biological organism, ranging from blue whales to viruses. Then they were given a template of questions to fill out: "What is it? What does it eat? How does it reproduce?"
Two of the questions were:
"How is this organism useful?" and
"How is this organism harmful?"
It wasn't an either-or, so Impus Major cheerfully answered both.
Now imagine being a smart-*** 6th grader who needs to answer the prompt, "How is the potato blight virus useful to mankind?"
There aren't a lot of good answers there.
(And yes, at the very start of the assignment it said, "You must answer all of the questions to receive full credit," so skipping the question wasn't an option.)
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Yeah, sure, someone could say, "It was useful because it taught humanity the chutzpah of basing such a significant portion of their dietary needs on a single crop," but I think Impus Major's response was more apropos of the ridiculousness of the question.
Well, this should be an interesting meeting...
...SVP just called an emergency All Hands for Monday.
I see two possibilities:
(1) He heard the horrified feedback to his "Return to Work" mandate and he wants to apologize and clarify.
(2) He heard the horrified feedback to his "Return to Work" mandate and he wants to double down.
I've been working under this guy for 4 years now, and he has always come across as a kind, caring, conscientious executive; I think I've mentioned before that I may not agree with his decisions, but I know darned well I can ping him directly, let him know what I think, and I won't get fired over it. So, open-minded, wants everyone to succeed, etc. I liked him.
Then came his totally uncharacteristic tirade about return to work. ALL of us were stunned at his vehemence, his hostility, and the simmering anger under his facade.
Honestly, I'm expecting the apology. Which is astonishing to expect from an executive at a Global Megacorporation, but as I've said, this guy has impressed me for 4 years, and the meeting was totally out of character for him.
But we'll see on Monday...
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For the first time in my memory, an area school has decided to have an early dismissal because of a 15% chance of a tornado somewhere in the area. They are citing "for the children's safety".
I'm sorry, but no.
Schools around here are made of concrete, brick, and steel. There is no way in hell those structures are less sound than the average home.
You are releasing the kids so that you are magically absolved of any liability from injuries due to storm damage.
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Yeah, sure, someone could say, "It was useful because it taught humanity the chutzpah of basing such a significant portion of their dietary needs on a single crop," but I think Impus Major's response was more apropos of the ridiculousness of the question.
In the defense of humanity, potato is a wonderful-wonderful crop. While it has less energy density than grains (so you need to eat more of them to get the same amount of calories), they have more vitamins and minerals so a potato-based diet is easier to supplement than grain-based one.
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For the first time in my memory, an area school has decided to have an early dismissal because of a 15% chance of a tornado somewhere in the area. They are citing "for the children's safety".
I'm sorry, but no.
Schools around here are made of concrete, brick, and steel. There is no way in hell those structures are less sound than the average home.
You are releasing the kids so that you are magically absolved of any liability from injuries due to storm damage.
My favorite example of this is the "earthquake boondoggle": Buildings are declared "earthquake unsafe" and local communities receive state funds to replace them.
So our post-WWII school, which was designated a nuclear shelter in the 1980s, was declared "earthquake unsafe" and scheduled for teardown. There was so much rebar in the walls that wrecking balls just bounced off; demolition went a month over schedule because workers with acetylene torches had to manually cut the rebar to allow chunks of wall to be removed.
The notion that this building was in any way, shape, or form "earthquake unsafe" was proven to be a giant boondoggle. Yet the city still got their money to rebuild it.
And in a final, "Thumbing their nose at any concept of decency," move, the newly-built school's main entrance was recessed, with hundreds of feet of sloped glass directly above where students enter. Talk about earthquake unsafe.
Here's a picture. Also known as, "Where you DON'T want to be in an earthquake."
Well, this should be an interesting meeting...
...SVP just called an emergency All Hands for Monday.I see two possibilities:
(1) He heard the horrified feedback to his "Return to Work" mandate and he wants to apologize and clarify.(2) He heard the horrified feedback to his "Return to Work" mandate and he wants to double down.
I've been working under this guy for 4 years now, and he has always come across as a kind, caring, conscientious executive; I think I've mentioned before that I may not agree with his decisions, but I know darned well I can ping him directly, let him know what I think, and I won't get fired over it. So, open-minded, wants everyone to succeed, etc. I liked him.
Then came his totally uncharacteristic tirade about return to work. ALL of us were stunned at his vehemence, his hostility, and the simmering anger under his facade.
Uneducated guess: the tirade was brought by (possibly) serious screw up caused by someone slaking without supervision, angering the SVP and biasing him against work from home.
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It's coming from a large-scale movement across major corporations to justify the existence of their vast real estate holdings.
Speaking of the "Reply All" apocalypse:
A PM received the All Hands invitation and did a Reply All, "I'm getting blood work today. Can we reschedule this?"
So,
(1) She got the day of the meeting wrong.
(2) She Replied All.
(3) She asked her SVP to reschedule his All Hands for her convenience.
Oops.
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For the first time in my memory, an area school has decided to have an early dismissal because of a 15% chance of a tornado somewhere in the area. They are citing "for the children's safety".
I'm sorry, but no.
Schools around here are made of concrete, brick, and steel. There is no way in hell those structures are less sound than the average home.
You are releasing the kids so that you are magically absolved of any liability from injuries due to storm damage.
My favorite example of this is the "earthquake boondoggle": Buildings are declared "earthquake unsafe" and local communities receive state funds to replace them.
So our post-WWII school, which was designated a nuclear shelter in the 1980s, was declared "earthquake unsafe" and scheduled for teardown. There was so much rebar in the walls that wrecking balls just bounced off; demolition went a month over schedule because workers with acetylene torches had to manually cut the rebar to allow chunks of wall to be removed.
The notion that this building was in any way, shape, or form "earthquake unsafe" was proven to be a giant boondoggle. Yet the city still got their money to rebuild it.
And in a final, "Thumbing their nose at any concept of decency," move, the newly-built school's main entrance was recessed, with hundreds of feet of sloped glass directly above where students enter. Talk about earthquake unsafe.
Here's a picture. Also known as, "Where you DON'T want to be in an earthquake."
i can hear the tinkling notes of 'raindrops keep fallin' on my head' with each shattered shard . . . .
but don't worry -- New Madrid's overdue, and everything east of the Mississippi is gonna fall into the Atlantic.
Is it weird to seriously contemplate making a Khajit character in a TES game that looks like one of your cats?
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Speaking of the "Reply All" apocalypse:
A PM received the All Hands invitation and did a Reply All, "I'm getting blood work today. Can we reschedule this?"
So,
(1) She got the day of the meeting wrong.
(2) She Replied All.
(3) She asked her SVP to reschedule his All Hands for her convenience.Oops.
Is her name Karen?
Yes, I'm old. Yes, I complain about making things easier for modern kids.
But hoo, boy. Watching the results of removing the parallel parking requirement from the California DMV driver's test can be quite impressive.
This afternoon's spectacle? A shiny new BMW convertible pulled up alongside the Celica, about 6' (2m) away. To parallel park in front of our neighbor's house, in spite of the fact that there were no cars for at least 3 houses down.
I assume that the driver wanted to practice their parallel parking. But I also knew I was in for a treat.
The driver did not disappoint. They backed up incredibly slowly the length of two houses (75', or around 24m), creeping towards the curb as they went. They made it to within about 3' (1m) of the curb. It took them around 45 seconds.
Then an agonizing crawl all the way back up to the Celica, getting another foot closer to the curb.
Then another 30-40' back.
Then back up to the Celica.
Then finally backing up to be right in front of the neighbor's house.
At the end of the 3-minute, 200'+ ordeal, they actually did a really nice parking job. I felt like going out and applauding them, but they might have been embarrassed.
How about Weird Al's "Bob"?I joined a band called "The Palindromes". Our first single is called "If I had a hifi".Oddly enough, there's a band called IfIHadAHiFi. The band members' stage names (Mr. Alarm, Dr. Awkward, Rev. Ever, and Yale Delay) are all palindromes.
I, man, am regal, a German am I.
And then, of course, there's this...
Is it weird to seriously contemplate making a Khajit character in a TES game that looks like one of your cats?
No.
Never even heard of it.Much like in reality, once guns become available, it doesn't make much sense to use any other weapons. They just take over.Ever played GreedFall?Picture the head of a French video game company telling their very small staff "hey, you know Dragon Age: Inquisition? Make that, but with tricorne hats and guns. Oh, and you only have like a year to do it, and a budget of about five dollars." And then they actually pulled it off, more or less.
One of the downsides, which is what I was getting at, is that it's not balanced at all. The firearms, which are supposed to be old-timey muskets, can fire about once every half second, and ammunition is pretty plentiful. Basically, if you're not playing the Technical profile, you're playing wrong.
I shudder to imagine, not least because I imagine it would get trivial and tedious even more quickly.
I played the magical profile – because I’m a mage girl at heart, and who doesn’t like a capstone which is basically a no-save Mass hold monster and then pinballing around with magically charged melee attacks to tidy up? – but even with putting something like 90% of my advancement points to magic, pistols were still disgustingly handy for plinking away through the armour of some of the bigger monsters while waiting on cooldown timers.
I have some fairly strong feelings about some of GreedFall’s missteps overall, but I also really enjoyed it, not least because at its best its visuals rather reminded me of home.
I need to get back to Greedfall one day.
For the first time in my memory, an area school has decided to have an early dismissal because of a 15% chance of a tornado somewhere in the area. They are citing "for the children's safety".
I'm sorry, but no.
Schools around here are made of concrete, brick, and steel. There is no way in hell those structures are less sound than the average home.
You are releasing the kids so that you are magically absolved of any liability from injuries due to storm damage.
I heard a theater roof collapsed.
Every year I pick a new song to hum or whistle while I work, last year was Gilligan's Island, the year before The Smurfs theme song.
This year I'm going with Inspector Gadget.
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Every year I pick a new song to hum or whistle while I work, last year was Gilligan's Island, the year before The Smurfs theme song.
This year I'm going with Inspector Gadget.
you work alone right? Thats not a habit I'd pick up otherwise especially with digging equipment nearby....
Cyberpunk Red is definitely something you have to read and look through for awhile before you run it, there's a lot there. I like it though, definitely looks like fun.
I've finally figured out what drives me bonkers about Cyberpunk RED, and it's that while Cyberpunk 2020 is Neuromancer, Cyberpunk RED is Snow Crash. And I think people go into it expecting Neuromancer.
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you work alone right? Thats not a habit I'd pick up otherwise especially with digging equipment nearby....Every year I pick a new song to hum or whistle while I work, last year was Gilligan's Island, the year before The Smurfs theme song.
This year I'm going with Inspector Gadget.
There are reasons why I work alone, it's not necessarily voluntary.
I have finished Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (I have finished The New Order just a few days ago, but the forum crashed when I posted about that).
Both games are very good but frustrating at times. The flow of encounters is quite uneven - some fights are walk in the park and some are terrible pain in the backside.
The story has its fine moments at times, and the music is excellent. I wonder if the name of asylum BJ is held after prologue of the New Order is a deliberate call-out or a coincidence ("Maławieś" = "Smallville").
The Old Blood felt more linear and somehow closer to classic Wolfenstein games than The New Order.
I 'd like to have more perks and some greater versatility in weapons, in both games, but The Old Blood in particular. Also, I would like to have grenades that are not useless pebbles, dammit! Currently, their only function is to make enemies run around avoiding the explosion... Lets say that I only managed to get the perk that requires killing three enemies with a single grenade in sixth chapter (out of eight), and only because of a scripted encounter that places a number of <spoiler> thickly packed in narrow space.
I still have two more Wolfenstein games to play: The New Colossus and Youngbloods. We'll see how do they compare.
I heard a theater roof collapsed.For the first time in my memory, an area school has decided to have an early dismissal because of a 15% chance of a tornado somewhere in the area. They are citing "for the children's safety".
I'm sorry, but no.
Schools around here are made of concrete, brick, and steel. There is no way in hell those structures are less sound than the average home.
You are releasing the kids so that you are magically absolved of any liability from injuries due to storm damage.
Last I saw authorities weren't sure if that incident was actually storm related.
Yes, there were tornados. No, I'm not forgetting that people died from these storms. What I'm saying is that this really wasn't any different than any other Midwestern spring storm.
The news reports Aiymi and I found were very certain that it was a scary and frightening event. I was told it was a "once a century kind of storm". I'm sorry for those that lost loved ones and property, but it just wasn't.
What we couldn't find in the reports was any mention of the classification of the tornados. Until very recently, we'd always been able to find out if it was an EF1 or an EF3 that ripped through. This one? Have not found it.
Edit: Just looked again. One of the tornados that hit near Salem IL was an EF1.
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Fantasy Monster: Infernal Consort
A match for the villain made in Hell.
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Everyone was expecting a TPK in last night's PF2 game, or at least a significant number of character deaths, but despite all that build-up, everyone survived. The GM was very disappointed.
Today we start Star Trek Adventures with the Monday group.
I already play STA with the Thursday group (the same GM, different players, aside of me).
Now I will be Federation Orion chief engineer with moderately flexible morals and approach to regulations.
One of my players said something at the last game that makes me wonder if they were serious or not. We were wrapping up a fight, and they said "It's a good thing that we're going to rest after this". The thing is, they really shouldn't rest yet. They woke up, talked to some people, followed the clues to a store, cased the store as best they could (which wasn't very good), and then had the fight. If they go rest, the guy they are looking for, who they know uses the store as his hideout, will probably flee, summon reinforcements, or both. Possibly send some assassins to try and kill the PCs while they are resting. So now I need to try and encourage them to keep going, even though I know that 1 of them for sure will complain that he's "useless" because he doesn't have all his powers. We've all told him repeatedly that he needs to be more conservative, but he just loves to spam all of his powers immediately.
He's also the one who complains the most about how DnD/PF has a "10 minute adventuring day" because that's how long it takes for people to run out a spells/powers. At least, when it isn't him that's tapped.
Yeah, as a GM it's baffling and as a player it's frustrating when one player at the table burns everything they've got every single fight (I'm looking at you, 5e warlocks) and then wants the universe to be put on hold so they can recover their spells before the next fight.
And inevitably it's those sorts of players who get really bent out of shape when you as the GM insist that the bad guys and NPCs continue doing what they were doing, not stopping to wait for hours so the PCs can recover...
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Yeah, as a GM it's baffling and as a player it's frustrating when one player at the table burns everything they've got every single fight (I'm looking at you, 5e warlocks) and then wants the universe to be put on hold so they can recover their spells before the next fight.
Actually, the 5th edition warlock is the one who is excused for that, because the whole warlock's 5th edition designed revolves around giving him enough tools for one, max two encounters and taking one-hour rest afterwards.
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Yeah, as a GM it's baffling and as a player it's frustrating when one player at the table burns everything they've got every single fight (I'm looking at you, 5e warlocks) and then wants the universe to be put on hold so they can recover their spells before the next fight.Actually, the 5th edition warlock is the one who is excused for that, because the whole warlock's 5th edition designed revolves around giving him enough tools for one, max two encounters and taking one-hour rest afterwards.
I'll politely disagree. The warlock's cantrips are devastating -- At 5th or 6th level our warlock was getting two attacks at 1d10+5+1d6 every round, doing more damage than anyone else in the party. The two short rest higher-level casts should have been reserved for more difficult fights. As a cleric with only long-rest recovery, I lived on my pathetic "Take 2d8 if you can't make a DC 13 Dex save" cantrip.
Instead we'd be sneaking into a hobgoblin fortress, we'd fight the first group of 4-6 guards, and the warlock would say, "OK, I'm spent. We need to rest for an hour."
The number of times he asked to rest while we were sneaking in to a large fortress or cave complex at night in the hopes of catching the denizens unawares because he'd spent his higher-level spells in the first fight, no matter how trivial, was aggravating.