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The game is still frustrating...
So you're saying I should play that if I'm having Elden Ring withdrawal waiting for the DLC.
Edit: You'd be naked too if you started out a maidenless wretch (Elden Ring players will get that reference).
I've never really understood the appeal of Soulslike games.
The game is still frustrating...So you're saying I should play that if I'm having Elden Ring withdrawal waiting for the DLC.
Edit: You'd be naked too if you started out a maidenless wretch (Elden Ring players will get that reference).
I am not an Elden Ring player, at least not until a lot of saving and an auspicious sale at the right moment, but as far as I know, wretch is one of the starting class choices that leaves you with barebones stats and gear.
The game is still frustrating...So you're saying I should play that if I'm having Elden Ring withdrawal waiting for the DLC.
I am pretty sure it is nowhere near the quality of Elden Rings or Lies Of P, but yes, it is a Souls-like games, except instead of parrying and slashing, your main weapons are long gun and a sidearm. You still roll-dodge, burning stamina, and can slash with equipped melee weapon. There are even valid mostly-melee builds... Allegedly. The dual bosses I defeated today were outside of reach of melee weapon, hovering in the air a few steps beyond the edges of the bridge.
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I've never really understood the appeal of Soulslike games.
Stockholm Syndrome.
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I've never really understood the appeal of Soulslike games.
To be honest, neither have I.
But Elden Ring isn't really a soulslike game. It's an open world game by the creators of Dark Souls.
I actually tried playing Dark Souls 3 after completing Elden Ring and I gave up because it didn't have a jump button.
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The plot progresses... slowly.
GothBard now has a series of interviews this week at New Company. Both Shiro and I are under the impression that this is the standard formality for a direct hire: "Interview with your potential new teammates and make sure none of them hate you." GothBard does extremely well in such interviews, and shouldn't have a problem.
GothBard's convinced that she's been tossed into a pool with dozens of other candidates, where she always meets the, "We really like you, but we've found someone <with more experience/with more technical skills/who's cheaper>, so thanks but no thanks" bar.
We'll know in a week. And at least things have started progressing instead of the whole, "Finance is holding up your hire until April" shenanigans.
Ah, and don't expect a rich, open world with Remnant. It creates a randomized series of zones that you go through, with randomly or not so randomly placed items, events, and dungeons, that you might need to pass through, defeat the boss and come on the other side to progress the game.
I also found that you need to use "Adventure" option at checkpoint crystals far too often to get reasonable weapons and armor and materials to upgrade either... Except you need to read about how when to upgrade your gear because the game idiotically scales with your gear upgrades easily messing your gameplay if you upgrade weapons and armor too fast.
Ah, and don't expect a rich, open world with Remnant. It creates a randomized series of zones that you go through, with randomly or not so randomly placed items, events, and dungeons, that you might need to pass through, defeat the boss and come on the other side to progress the game.
I also found that you need to use "Adventure" option at checkpoint crystals far too often to get reasonable weapons and armor and materials to upgrade either... Except you need to read about
howwhen to upgrade your gear because the game idiotically scales with your gear upgrades easily messing your gameplay if you upgrade weapons and armor too fast.
Yes, I've heard of it before, I have a few friends that have been coincidentally talking about it favorably recently and they just put it on game pass a few months ago.
Elden Ring is only as hard as you make it.
Everyone talks about how hard Margit is so when I played it I explored EVERYWHERE I could before I faced him and I only died once, and that was because I backed up off a cliff.
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Speaking of Doctor Who...
LM, you and the kids should watch The Androids of Tara (S16E13-16). You might find that the main villain looks a bit familiar.
It saddened me to read of yet another companion (Mary Tamm) who left the series because her character had been reduced to nothing more than a damsel in distress trope. Considering the quality of the writers they had available to them for the Fourth Doctor (Terry Nation and Douglas Adams were there during that time period), watching every female companion reduced to, "She's dumb. She gets kidnapped. The Doctor has to rescue her," is damned depressing. You'd think SOME writer would be able to think of SOMETHING different to do with a female companion... especially considering that in my recollection neither Zoe nor Polly (companions of the Second Doctor) ended up as helpless damsels in distress, so the writers had already shown that they could do something different if they bothered to try. (I don't count when everyone got captured -- if Polly, Ben, and the Doctor were all strapped to a death machine, that's fine. But if it's only ever the female companion who gets captured and strapped to the death machine and everyone else is fine, I get irritated.)
I ended up getting Dying Light 2 enhanced edition.
First person open world zombie apocalypse with kicking and rooftops sounds like a great time.
For whatever I guess I prefer first person rampaging or open worlds when it's warmer out and 3rd person open world ocd free ranging in the winter.
Dying Light 1 was a fine game. The DLC was worse, because it took place outside of the city, missing the base game's excellent parkour system.
The second game is another thing on my list of games to get some day.
Sometimes being reliable carries a price.
Since I naturally wake up early, I always check in with the other family members. This morning I totally forgot about Impus Major's early morning... on a day his instructor explicitly emailed everyone telling them not to be late. So he's going to be 75 minutes late to a class he wasn't supposed to miss.
I was astonished he doesn't set an alarm. He responded, "You've reliably woken me up every single day for the last 3 years! Why would I need an alarm?"
Because, my son, sometimes I mess up. *SIGH*
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He has Nobody to blame for being late...
Ugh. I am trying to get a supposedly nice Beam Rifle, but the event keeps refusing to spawn as I reroll adventure after adventure.
Ah, well, at least I am getting experience, scrap, and upgrade materials. I even got one skill that I haven't had earlier, I think.
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Starting again for the year on Thursday!
Best leap year ever!!
Ugh. I am trying to get a supposedly nice Beam Rifle, but the event keeps refusing to spawn as I reroll adventure after adventure.
Ah, well, at least I am getting experience, scrap, and upgrade materials. I even got one skill that I haven't had earlier, I think.
I still haven't got it.
I am pretty sure that with each re-roll, the chances that I will be deeply disappointed in that rifle grow.
Why do I even bother? Well, I want to finish it before I uninstall it in the pursuit of enough HD space to finally start Baldur's Gate 3...
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Just how comfortable is NobodysHome with his job security?
(1) "Problem" co-worker sends another lesson for review.
(2) NobodysHome acknowledges the significant improvement but still has half a page of suggested fixes.
(3) Not wanting to discourage problem co-worker, NobodysHome pings new manager to find out how to proceed.
(4) New manager admits that she wrote that lesson.
(5) NobodysHome hits Send.
Yes. I have no fear.
Reminds me of last year when the new guy said "I think I'm almost on your level, as far as skills!" And I spent the rest of the year showing him how far away he was exactly.
Did you collect his tears to use in a new water feature?
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Did you collect his tears to use in a new water feature?
No, I only install water features at trade shows, I prefer to use the other vendor's tears after they see our display compared to theirs for that. Fresh tears and whatnot.
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I found out we're starting 3 weeks before every other company.
Huh. A dead pigeon on my windowsill.
No, it is not cats. It's (for Americans) second floor, so another bird is a likely culprit. I occasionally hear some kind of (probably) owls at night, and there might be other birds of prey around as well.
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Huh. A dead pigeon on my windowsill.
No, it is not cats. It's (for Americans) second floor, so another bird is a likely culprit. I occasionally hear some kind of (probably) owls at night, and there might be other birds of prey around as well.
While most U.S. measurements are anachronistic abominations that should have been abolished a century ago, I do strongly prefer counting a building's stories starting at 1 instead of 0.
Otherwise you have nonsense: Since my house has only a single floor, it would be a 0-story building. I've honestly never had that conversation with a European, so I'm wondering how it would go. "How many stories does my house have?" "1". "So which floor are we on now?" "0."
Yes, computer programmers like to start counting at 0. "Normal" people like to start counting at 1, so that's how I like to count my floors.
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Sometimes you have to live the stereotypes to appreciate them.
GothBard and I went out to a late Valentine's Day dinner last night. To our left was a couple a bit older than us (we learned through conversation that the wife was 66) and the husband's parents (so easily in their 80s and maybe 90s).
As we sat down what were they talking about? "Kids these days." It was hilariously stereotypical.
Am I the only person over 50 who feels that the next generation (those in their early 20s now) are going to be an overall improvement in the world?
Huh. A dead pigeon on my windowsill.
No, it is not cats. It's (for Americans) second floor, so another bird is a likely culprit. I occasionally hear some kind of (probably) owls at night, and there might be other birds of prey around as well.
While most U.S. measurements are anachronistic abominations that should have been abolished a century ago, I do strongly prefer counting a building's stories starting at 1 instead of 0.
Otherwise you have nonsense: Since my house has only a single floor, it would be a 0-story building. I've honestly never had that conversation with a European, so I'm wondering how it would go. "How many stories does my house have?" "1". "So which floor are we on now?" "0."
Yes, computer programmers like to start counting at 0. "Normal" people like to start counting at 1, so that's how I like to count my floors.
I don't know about the other languages, but in Polish, the word that is translated into British English as "ground floor" (parter, the word apparently was borrowed from French par-terre, 'by-ground') is a completely different word than the one used for floors above the ground (piętro, pl. piętra, that is supposedly derived from word for layered constructions on which things were spread).
There is also a completely different word referring to a floor as a flat surface of a room (podłoga, derived from verb for laying something underneath).
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Yes, computer programmers like to start counting at 0. "Normal" people like to start counting at 1, so that's how I like to count my floors.
"Normal" people can't handle numbers, even without going into an actual mathematical operations, probability, scale, or magnitudes, so I don't know if it is a good argument...
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As we sat down what were they talking about? "Kids these days." It was hilariously stereotypical.
Am I the only person over 50 who feels that the next generation (those in their early 20s now) are going to be an overall improvement in the world?
Your opinion doesn't count. You are clearly biased because you actually talk to kids.
Call me a horrible human being, but this amuses me no end.
Since my house has only a single floor, it would be a 0-story building. I've honestly never had that conversation with a European, so I'm wondering how it would go. "How many stories does my house have?" "1". "So which floor are we on now?" "0."I don't know about the other languages, but in Polish, the word that is translated into British English as "ground floor" (parter, the word apparently was borrowed from French par-terre, 'by-ground') is a completely different word than the one used for floors above the ground (piętro, pl. piętra, that is supposedly derived from word for layered constructions on which things were spread).
There is also a completely different word referring to a floor as a flat surface of a room (podłoga, derived from verb for laying something underneath).
I'll still argue that if you have a building that clearly has 3 "levels", it's more intuitive to label the levels 1, 2, and 3 instead of G, 1, and 2.
I'll still argue that if you have a building that clearly has 3 "levels", it's more intuitive to label the levels 1, 2, and 3 instead of G, 1, and 2.Since my house has only a single floor, it would be a 0-story building. I've honestly never had that conversation with a European, so I'm wondering how it would go. "How many stories does my house have?" "1". "So which floor are we on now?" "0."I don't know about the other languages, but in Polish, the word that is translated into British English as "ground floor" (parter, the word apparently was borrowed from French par-terre, 'by-ground') is a completely different word than the one used for floors above the ground (piętro, pl. piętra, that is supposedly derived from word for layered constructions on which things were spread).
There is also a completely different word referring to a floor as a flat surface of a room (podłoga, derived from verb for laying something underneath).
I don't know, I'd be more willing to live on the G floor then the first floor.
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Anyway, it just occurred to me that it says a lot about Deathless Murderkitty that NobodysHome reaction to mentioning a half-eaten pigeon on windowsill was complaint about floor numbering scheme abroad...
For a long time, I lived in an apartment building that had 12 numbered floors (1-12), a ground floor (ground) and two-basement floors ('upper basement' and 'lower basement')
Floors G, UB, and LB opened to the outdoors without going up or down any steps.*
Balcony doors on floors 1-12 (the only floors with living spaces) opened between 20 and 140 feet above "ground level".
*steep slope of land parcel
Are you in the U.S.? Because that is a very Canadian/European system. Maybe it had a Canadian architect...
EDIT: I'm waiting for Freehold to chime in. It's possible us Californians are the weird ones out.
Anyway, it just occurred to me that says a lot about Deathless Murderkitty that NobodysHome reaction to mentioning a half-eaten pigeon on windowsill was complaint about floor numbering scheme abroad...
It's been 32 years since I lived in a house without at least one murderkitty, and maybe 40 since I lived in a house without cats at all.
So yeah, dead pigeon? I wouldn't even bat an eye. I'd just sigh and clean it up.
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It's also a bemusing day because today GothBard's meeting with HR at her current company. Why? Needless to say the HR rep wouldn't say, but considering the rep has been meeting with everyone on her team it seems likely that HR has gotten word they're likely to get a mass exodus before the mass firing at the end of March and they're trying to stave that off somehow.
Which in my mind is pretty hilarious:
Boss: You all have to learn this new tool and provide me with a fully functional demo including design, art, and implementation within 60 days or you're fired!
Workers:
HR: Why are we hearing all these rumors of most of this division leaving the company? We'd better talk to a few of them and find out what's up!
I've heard all the stories of HR not being the employee's friend, and only being interested in making sure the company doesn't get sued, but all the HR reps I've worked with have honestly cared (or at least seemed to) about doing right for the employee. As usual, the department's purpose is nefarious, but the individuals are mostly decent people. So I really feel sorry for this poor woman. She's going to get an earful from every single person she talks to. I can't imagine it will be pleasant, and SHE didn't make the ludicrous demand.
EDIT: OK. That's hilarious. I was 100% wrong. Apparently one of GothBard's co-workers filed a complaint about something that happened at one of their division meetings. But due to privacy constraints, the HR person couldn't identify the worker and couldn't say what happened, so it was one big, "Hey! Do you remember something even more abusive than usual happening at a meeting that happened two weeks ago?"
GothBard was stumped, and hence no help at all.
EDIT 2: I should clarify that every meeting is the boss basically watching each person's presentation, then yelling at them that they're idiots and incompetent and he should fire them, then telling them to start over and do better. So the notion that one meeting was somehow different and even worse is hard to imagine...
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Call me a horrible human being, but this amuses me no end.
You're a horrible human being.
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Call me a horrible human being, but this amuses me no end.
This is basically my childhood of being taken to cheap knock off amusement parks.
Honestly, the little bastards just need to suck it up, cry for awhile, label it a growth experience and move on.
Full disclosure, I did not get very far into the article.
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It's official, I've worked at Alt's longer than anywhere else. 6 years now!
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Call me a horrible human being, but this amuses me no end.
Possibly handing over Scottish Pounds to an organisation called 'House of Illuminati' isn't the greatest idea...
Also, it being Glasgow, I'm mildly surprised that no-one got headbutted, at the very least.
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Call me a horrible human being, but this amuses me no end.Possibly handing over Scottish Pounds to an organisation called 'House of Illuminati' isn't the greatest idea...
Also, it being Glasgow, I'm mildly surprised that no-one got headbutted, at the very least.
Did I mention that on our tour of Scotland the "most Scottish thing ever" according to the kids was Impus Minor looking out his window and seeing a Scotsman punch a seagull.
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A seagull was eyeing up my fish and chips while I was waiting to board the Harry Potter train. If it had gone for my fish, folks would have seen a tourist punch a seagull.
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"Punching the seagull"...kids these days...with their euphemisms...for...stuff.
Well, seagulling IS a thing...
Call me a horrible human being, but this amuses me no end.You're a horrible human being.
There may be more to this than initially thought. Seems to be quite the scam.
Having a night to sleep on it, I think GothBard's HR meeting amused me so much because it really resonated with my own HR training: Apparently things at Global Megacorporation are so bad in some departments that our annual harassment training included an entire section on, "Being a jerk isn't harassment." Then they managed to find an actor who had obviously lived with this kind of co-worker for years, because he absolutely stole the show as an angry, abusive, cannot-be-disciplined-by-HR-because-it's-not-harassment ass of a co-worker.
It is truly brilliant when an actor chooses to own a villain and make it their own. Alan Rickman in Die Hard. Clancy Brown in Highlander. The Jerk Co-Worker in Global Megacorporation's harassment training.
I'm actually looking forward to this year's training to see whether he can top himself, but after that training hearing someone complain that GothBard's boss is an abusive so-and-so hit my funny bone. "Well, YES, he is an abusive so-and-so. But being an abusive so-and-so isn't harassment. And I should know. I've seen the training..."
EDIT: I know, I know. Even Global Megacorporation's training put in, "But although it's not harassment, many companies have policies against such behavior." But I still loved the undisciplined lout.
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There's a chance we'll hit a psychological milestone today. Ever since we used all the money we had to buy our house in 2002, we've been in debt. So the total balance in Quicken has always been red. As of this morning I received my paycheck and our Federal tax refund came in and we're sitting tantalizingly close to $0 (our debt is down to four figures).
Between inflation coming in at expected levels and slightly boosting the stock market and GothBard's direct deposit possibly coming in today instead of tomorrow, we could hit $0 today.
On the one hand, it's an utterly meaningless number. The vast majority of that liquid cash is either in retirement funds or the kids' college funds, so some of it isn't even ours, it's the kids'.
On the other, seeing a $0 after 21 years of being in debt would be a huge psychological relief.
(And yeah, tomorrow doesn't work because our mortgage payment hits and it's significantly larger than GothBard's paycheck, plus I don't expect the stock market to rally all that much from an, "Everything is as expected," report.)
