
NobodysHome |

Mako-chan...B-Ko-chan...no...
Sadness. GothBard and I loved the original Sailor Moon series.

NobodysHome |

I swear, spammers have made things *so* bad you never know whether you're dealing with spear phishing or a legitimate request.
Got a call from a health care provider right near Impus Major's campus. I missed the call, but immediately became concerned. I texted Impus Major and didn't get a response for 10 minutes, so I called the provider.
Turns out they're a behavioral health staffing provider. It may be a spam call... *except* Impus Major has been providing behavioral health support to neurodivergent teens for several years now, so it could be a legitimate unsolicited job interview offer.
And we'll never know, because Impus Major isn't interested in a job right now, and his version of, "No," doesn't just burn bridges, it nukes them.

NobodysHome |

Speaking of swearing, I like my new neighbors perfectly well, but holy cow am I happy they're not my tenants. Hubby and his friend are doing a new "unlicensed home improvement project" every month or two. The first project was a charger for his Tesla. While I've been through the city's idiotic permitting process so I no longer object to competent do-it-yourself work, his second project was to reinstall a new charger because the first one kept overheating and eventually melted. (Thank goodness it was over concrete.)
They're back at it with lots of drilling and swearing, and all I can wonder is,
(1) Will this project be the one that burns the house down?, and
(2) are they patching anything or when it rains are they going to get all kinds of water inside the walls, which is just wonderful for older houses?

NobodysHome |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Final vent of the day: Can the manufacturing industry PLEASE get their act together and come up with some way to measure things that works for people outside the field?
Lumber: A 2"x4" is the measurement before planing, so when you buy a 2"x4" it's actually 1.5"x3.5". So what you get is smaller than what you ordered.
Boxes: If you order a 14"x6"x11" box, that's the interior dimensions of the box, so the exterior dimensions will be closer to 14.375"x6.375"x11.375", or, in the case of the two dozen boxes I just ordered, 14"x6.5"x11.5". So they're bigger than what you ordered.
Says the man with two dozen boxes that don't fit where he needs them to.

Drejk |

Freehold DM wrote:Mako-chan...B-Ko-chan...no...Sadness. GothBard and I loved the original Sailor Moon series.
I think that Sailor Jupiter was my second favorite (after Sailor Mercury).

Limeylongears |

As a cook, it is baffling and confusing to me how hard it is to get some simple ideas across to non-cooks.
Mustard.
Any condiment primarily flavored by the seeds of the mustard plant is called "mustard", and adjectives are added to describe what kind of mustard to use. If you're supposed to add 1/2 cup of yellow mustard to a sauce and instead you add 1/2 cup of hot sweet mustard, that sauce isn't going to taste anything like you expect.
So I've been making the Fake Russian's ex-wife's corned beef glaze. (And yes, LM, I put it over home-brined corned beef.) And it's been appalling. I need spicy brown mustard.
Kid Trip #1: Brings back stone ground dijon mustard. "It was the brownest mustard they had."
I explain mustards to the kids.
Kid Trip #2: Brings back hot sweet mustard, yellow mustard, regular dijon mustard, and hot dijon mustard and says that's all they had so I had to deal with it.
I told him next time not to buy anything.
So this time I found that we *STILL* don't have any spicy brown mustard so, like a crappy ex-boyfriend, I went back to the corner store hoping that they had changed.
Nope. They had an entire bookcase-sized section dedicated to ketchup, mustard, relish, and horseradish. And no spicy brown mustard.
As Impus Major put it, "How can a place have a deli and not carry spicy brown mustard?"
Can you get mustard powder (or mustard seeds) and make it up yourself?

NobodysHome |

NobodysHome wrote:Mustard.Can you get mustard powder (or mustard seeds) and make it up yourself?
Apparently so, but I'm not finding a recipe that uses powder instead of seeds, nor one that grinds the seeds. I'm making a sauce, not a spread, so crunchy whole seeds are out of the question. Also, soaking the seeds in vinegar for a day seems a lot more labor-intensive than driving to Andronico's.

NobodysHome |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

OMG. Gen X teens vs. Gen Z teens. Our entire time at the gaming table was spent trying to come up with the cleverest, most cutting, most brutal insults we could for each other. You were judged entirely on your ability to put down the others at the table.
So I give Talky some minor grief because I've become comfortable enough around him to abuse him.
We've got an 8-person Magic draft in my dining room, and Talky asked, "Can Gamer Girl run a Dread game here tomorrow? And she needs a place to stay."
"Yes, but there'll be a hard 10:30 pm cutoff. And of course she can stay here. We like her. That's why you never get to stay here."
The other kids in the room were appalled. Apparently even such mild cruelty "isn't done".
I'll have to try more...

Vanykrye |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |

Sunday:
Client tells me at 8pm all of their servers have rebooted for Windows Updates. At 11:40pm the operations center informs me one of the client's servers is not, in fact, up. I look at it and see the thing is still in the process of rebooting. Reboot it again, wait two hours, see it's still not rebooted fully and inform the client of the situation. I decided to let it go just in case it finishes after 5 hours or something since the server was never locked up or anything.
Monday:
8am. Nope. It's still just sitting there at the Windows logo and spinning its little circle at me. Server wouldn't even boot into recovery mode or safe mode. Worked straight through until 4am Tuesday to restore functionality. Ultimately ended up rebuilding the virtual machine since that was going to be faster than doing a restore.
Tuesday:
Around 10am the client says everything is good. I rejoice and take the rest of the day off.
Today:
At 9am I'm informed that the server is missing functionality and asked if I could get the old server back up and running.
You mean the one that doesn't boot? The one whose data disks would not even mount to the new virtual machine? The one I spent 20 straight hours rebuilding to get your business running again?
No.
"You'll find it's a very small universe when I'm angry with you." --Doctor Who

NobodysHome |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

Well, I'm pretty sure Troublesome Player doesn't lurk on FaWtL, nor do I believe that Shiro spoke to him, so on his own he managed to realize that the party was dysfunctional as-is, and he chose of his own volition to swap out for a knowledge-based arcane caster who can read any language. Exactly what we need.
I don't care what his reasons were. I'm just happy our party is somewhat functional again.

NobodysHome |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Speaking of Gen X vs. Gen Z, I realized this morning that I'd forgotten to ask Talky whether or not anyone in this family would be involved in tonight's Dread game.
For me, you don't invite a group of your friends over to someone else's house for a night of gaming if that person isn't involved. For Talky, it might well have been a desperate, "Well, we can't find anywhere else to play," moment. We'll see once the kids wake up. And if none of us are involved in the game, I'm going to give Talky a gentle-but-firm, "Never again."

NobodysHome |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

OK. Feel better. When I asked Impus Major about it, his response was, "No, I'm involved. This is just a terribly-planned game."
But Gamer Girl is a fantastic guest; not only does she clean up her sleeping area and fold all the laundry, but she's Peruvian and learned to cook a multitude of traditional dishes from her grandmother, so she LOVES coming over and cooking for us.
And none of us complain at all.

Freehold DM |

Sunday:
Client tells me at 8pm all of their servers have rebooted for Windows Updates. At 11:40pm the operations center informs me one of the client's servers is not, in fact, up. I look at it and see the thing is still in the process of rebooting. Reboot it again, wait two hours, see it's still not rebooted fully and inform the client of the situation. I decided to let it go just in case it finishes after 5 hours or something since the server was never locked up or anything.Monday:
8am. Nope. It's still just sitting there at the Windows logo and spinning its little circle at me. Server wouldn't even boot into recovery mode or safe mode. Worked straight through until 4am Tuesday to restore functionality. Ultimately ended up rebuilding the virtual machine since that was going to be faster than doing a restore.Tuesday:
Around 10am the client says everything is good. I rejoice and take the rest of the day off.Today:
At 9am I'm informed that the server is missing functionality and asked if I could get the old server back up and running.You mean the one that doesn't boot? The one whose data disks would not even mount to the new virtual machine? The one I spent 20 straight hours rebuilding to get your business running again?
No.
"You'll find it's a very small universe when I'm angry with you." --Doctor Who
calls that number for Vany twice

NobodysHome |

OK, much less sympathetic with Troublesome Player, but as Shiro put it, "He's a power gamer whose extreme rule-bending is made up for by his bad tactics, so I let him do what he wants."
He was apparently unhappy that his barbarian was being out-damaged by pretty much everyone in the party, so he looked for the cheesiest build he could find, and he located one in the much-hated Sword Coast expansion: A race that doesn't sleep, gets darkvision (a rarity in 5e), can teleport as a bonus action 3x/day and that gets damage resistance after each teleport, and in an undead-themed campaign, a race that cannot be targeted by undead at all unless they make a DC 16 Will save (for one round; even if the undead fails it can attack on its second round).
Such races are one of the reasons GMs demand "core rules only". It's so far out of line with any other race it's ridiculous. All you need to do is add flying and fire resistance and you'd get a race no one could resist playing.

NobodysHome |

What race is this?
I maintain the other company cradled serpents to their bosom in counting MTG players the way they did/have since 3.0.
A shadar-kai warlock.
Darkvision
Fey Ancestry: Advantage on saves vs. charms.
Keen Senses: Proficiency in Perception.
Necrotic Resistance: Resistance to necrotic damage.
Trance: You don’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put you to sleep. You can finish a long rest in 4 hours if you spend those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which you retain consciousness. Whenever you finish this trance, you can gain two proficiencies that you don’t have, each one with a weapon or a tool of your choice selected from the Player’s Handbook. You mystically acquire these proficiencies by drawing them from shared elven memory, and you retain them until you finish your next long rest.
That's already ridiculously better than any "regularly-played race". Even comparing it to tieflings with their fire resistance and darkvision shadar-kai still get advantage vs. charms, no need to sleep, teleportation, and free skill proficiencies every day.
But then the patron is non-core as well:
Additionally, undead have difficulty harming you. If an undead targets you directly with an attack or a harmful spell, that creature must make a Wisdom saving throw against your spell save DC (an undead needn't make the save when it includes you in an area effect, such as the explosion of Fireball). On a failed save, the creature must choose a new target or forfeit targeting someone instead of you, potentially wasting the attack or spell. On a successful save, the creature is immune to this effect for 24 hours. An undead is also immune to this effect for 24 hours if you target it with an attack or a harmful spell.
Defy Death: Starting at 6th level, you can give yourself vitality when you cheat death or when you help someone else cheat it. You can regain hit points equal to 1d8 + your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 hit point) when you succeed on a death saving throw or when you stabilize a creature with Spare the Dying.
Undying Nature: Beginning at 10th level, you can hold your breath indefinitely, and you don't require food, water, or sleep, although you still require rest to reduce exhaustion and still benefit from finishing short and long rests.
Indestructible Life
When you reach 14th level, you partake of some of the true secrets of the Undying. On your turn, you can use a bonus action to regain hit points equal to 1d8 + your warlock level. Additionally, if you put a severed body part of yours back in place when you use this feature, the part reattaches.
Once you use this feature, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.
Comparing it to any of the "normal" patrons shows the staggering power disparity. Yes, Celestial is stupid-powerful, but as a healer. Fiendish is pretty nasty, but "undead can never attack me" is ludicrous in an undead-themed campaign.

NobodysHome |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

There's some definitely design space for allowing people to make THEIR characters mechanically and not just pick one out of a book.
But yes, doing that without letting people munchkin the hell out of the power curve is incredibly tricky.
I've seen fantastic examples of exactly that:
"Choose one from: teleportation, flight, resistance vs. a particular damage type, <list of other high-end powers>.""Choose two from: Darkvision, not needing to sleep, resistance to charm, <list of other mid-range powers>."
"Choose four from: Skill proficiencies, languages, <list of other low-end powers>."
It takes a while to figure out which power goes in which tier, or where a new power should go, but then you get extensive customization without one race being ludicrously above-and-beyond all others.

BigNorseWolf |

I'm all for hyper-optimizing, as long as there's a solid character/RP concept backing it up and you're not playing like a jerk.
For a group, it's less about your optmization levels and more about your relative optimization levels. It's like driving. If EVERY car is going 100 you're fine. If every car is doing 45 you're fine. It's only when 1 car is doing 45 and another is doing 100 that you have real problems.

NobodysHome |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

David M Mallon wrote:I'm all for hyper-optimizing, as long as there's a solid character/RP concept backing it up and you're not playing like a jerk.For a group, it's less about your optmization levels and more about your relative optimization levels. It's like driving. If EVERY car is going 100 you're fine. If every car is doing 45 you're fine. It's only when 1 car is doing 45 and another is doing 100 that you have real problems.
Agreed with both of you. This one is definitely, "I've tried two characters so far and I haven't left you all in the dust, so I bought all the splat books, took a bunch of stuff that's not even available to you, and now on paper I'm better than the rest of you combined."
But exactly like Shiro says, his tactics are abysmal. Cooperating with another PC in any way isn't in his mindset. So he's bringing in a character who's equivalent to maybe a 3-4 level difference on us. And as Shiro points out, it won't make any difference and he'll probably be the next to die because it's not "won't play well with others", it's "won't play with others". I said it above, but it's worth repeating. A lot. He plays as a single-player character who happens to be in a multi-player game.

BigNorseWolf |

Pathfinder 2.5 fixed that.
2e imho comes down very hard on the pick a character rather than build one side of things. There are ostensibly many choices to make but many are either cosmetic, or can only make you worse than baseline (having a fighter with a non maxed strength for example) with effectively no upsides.

NobodysHome |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

There's just something about this family...
So, Shiro and GothBard rejoined me in FFXIV and we found a "sister guild" full of really nice people who help us get through raids and 8-person instances.
And one of them has taken to coming to our guild hall when they're having real-life emotional issues, joining our party, and talking about everything that's going on with us so we can provide sympathy, support, validation, and the occasional advice.
Even in MMOs, people who are having emotional issues are drawn to us.
Go figure.

Freehold DM |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

Freehold DM wrote:What race is this?
I maintain the other company cradled serpents to their bosom in counting MTG players the way they did/have since 3.0.
A shadar-kai warlock.
** spoiler omitted **
That's already ridiculously better than any "regularly-played race". Even comparing it to tieflings with their fire resistance and darkvision shadar-kai still get advantage vs. charms, no need to sleep, teleportation, and free skill proficiencies every day.But then the patron is non-core as well:
** spoiler omitted **...
AHHHHH
Say no more. Shadar-Kai are automatic "find another group" Race for many wandering players.

NobodysHome |

NobodysHome wrote:Freehold DM wrote:What race is this?
I maintain the other company cradled serpents to their bosom in counting MTG players the way they did/have since 3.0.
A shadar-kai warlock.
** spoiler omitted **
That's already ridiculously better than any "regularly-played race". Even comparing it to tieflings with their fire resistance and darkvision shadar-kai still get advantage vs. charms, no need to sleep, teleportation, and free skill proficiencies every day.But then the patron is non-core as well:
** spoiler omitted **...AHHHHH
Say no more. Shadar-Kai are automatic "find another group" Race for many wandering players.
Well, as I've said, the advantage we have is that he's an incredibly ineffective player, and a very mellow guy. So he Googles and searches and optimizes and tries to create the "ultimate build" for wherever we happen to be in the story, then he doesn't outshine anyone, gets frustrated, and brings in a new character. So it's not so much that his power gaming eclipses all of us, it's that his constantly-rotating uber builds disrupt party coherency and it's honestly pretty frustrating to hear, "Oh, yeah, I'm resistant to two damage types, have Darkvision, can teleport out of danger, and get universal damage resistance whenever I do."
It is... envy-enducing, to say the least.
But I'm happy with my fairy cleric. She can't do much, but Borrowed Knowledge gives us the skills we need to make it through each day...

Qunnessaa |

I suspect I may have just caught a bug from one of the absurdly few students in the tiny class I'm teaching this term, just at the start of it. I guess I'm going to bundle up this weekend with cold meds and a stack of work and hope for the best in shaking it off. Oh, and see if I can unearth a COVID test, just in case.
I am not a happy faerie right now. >:(

NobodysHome |

I suspect I may have just caught a bug from one of the absurdly few students in the tiny class I'm teaching this term, just at the start of it. I guess I'm going to bundle up this weekend with cold meds and a stack of work and hope for the best in shaking it off. Oh, and see if I can unearth a COVID test, just in case.
I am not a happy faerie right now. >:(
And don't you always get sick either on weekends or on your vacation time?
I blame stress: When you're stressing over work, your immune system is frantically going nuts doing nothing useful, but if you shoot a machine gun in a 360° circle you'll hit some invaders. You relax, your immune system calms down, and suddenly you're sick.

NobodysHome |

How bad is Impus Major at scheduling?
He has a regular job from 8:30-10:30 am and D&D game from 5:00-9:00 pm on Saturdays. Yesterday he agreed to hang out with some friends home from college from 2:00-5:00 pm. But then some OTHER friends home from college invited him to brunch until 2:00 pm. THEN they asked whether they could come to the house and play board games until 5:00 pm.
So yeah, not *only* did he accept social invites for every minute of the day from the moment he got off work onwards, but he even forget what he was doing and overlapped groups.
So yep, there's a group in my house gaming in my living room while both kids and GothBard are elsewhere.
I have noise canceling headphones. They're welcome. But really, Impus Major?

lisamarlene |
5 people marked this as a favorite. |

We may finally be getting our dog, possibly within the next week.
After Francisco, most excellent of all canines, died when Teensy Valeros was a few months old, we were unable to even consider another dog.
And our housemate/landlord had a pack of collies that we helped take care of.
And then we moved, and could barely afford food for ourselves for a couple of years, let alone a pet.
And then we moved in with Miz Daisy.
But, as Whingey Wizzard works from home, and misses having a dog as much as I do (he still keeps Francisco's collar on a sad gargoyle statue above his desk), he's decided that it's happening, and has been talking to a number of rescues and shelters today and showing me photos and descriptions.
TL:DR - fuzzball potentially imminent!

Qunnessaa |

I suspect I may have just caught a bug from one of the absurdly few students in the tiny class I'm teaching this term, just at the start of it. I guess I'm going to bundle up this weekend with cold meds and a stack of work and hope for the best in shaking it off. Oh, and see if I can unearth a COVID test, just in case.
I am not a happy faerie right now. >:(
So, after a long day moping around feeling sorry for myself, I have just tested positive for COVID, after all. I am not particularly surprised, because my symptoms aren't the regular flu, and wow, losing most of one's sense of taste is not fun. Brings home the myth of Erysichthon and the feast of ashes spell, though.
My students will probably appreciate Zoom classes in which they can put their feet up, so.

Drejk |

I might have dodged a plague bullet on Friday - waking up with a slightly sore throat and then feeling off (the thermometer as usual showed that my body skin temperature is below 36), but it might have been merely my body's reaction to weather change that presaged two days of intense rains instead of fighting off an illness.

captain yesterday |

Qunnessaa wrote:I suspect I may have just caught a bug from one of the absurdly few students in the tiny class I'm teaching this term, just at the start of it. I guess I'm going to bundle up this weekend with cold meds and a stack of work and hope for the best in shaking it off. Oh, and see if I can unearth a COVID test, just in case.
I am not a happy faerie right now. >:(
So, after a long day moping around feeling sorry for myself, I have just tested positive for COVID, after all. I am not particularly surprised, because my symptoms aren't the regular flu, and wow, losing most of one's sense of taste is not fun. Brings home the myth of Erysichthon and the feast of ashes spell, though.
My students will probably appreciate Zoom classes in which they can put their feet up, so.
You get used to it after awhile. I was "fortunate" enough to lose my sense of taste 8 months before COVID hit (the one time where a construction accident was a blessing in disguise).
I just tell everyone everything tastes like chicken now.

NobodysHome |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

Ok. I'm amused.
Apparently Impus Major's employer really thought his last name was "Dang".
People are so accepting of weird names around here. (Impus Major is in class with Triangle this semester. Yes. Some poor young man's parents named him Triangle.) A couple of semesters ago he was in class with Shirley Yu. (And yes, much to everyone's surprise she was a serious young woman.)

BigNorseWolf |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |

So I'm taking out the trash and taking a dog (not mine) with me. Not a proper walk but they can at least go on the lawn
"your laundry is done flip it, i need you to cut down those plants , put air in the bike tires" She sees me walk to the end of the drive way where someone else needs me to put something bulky in the back of the car(I still have the dog). Then goes inside
I walk in to flip the laundry (because why touch clean clothes covered in tire and poison ivy) after being out of sight for 30 seconds
" Did you cut down the plants and fill the bike tires?" ...while walking the dog taking out the garbage putting something in the car and flipping the laundry.
I do not understand the level of stupid it would take to not understand that one peon cannot occupy three places at the same time or the petty need for control to passively aggressively say "work faster" to someone with known and glaringly obvious mobility issues because a half hour job and a 1 hour job weren't done in 30 seconds.
I think I'm done with humans.
"Why are gamers such loners?
"Have you met normal people?

NobodysHome |

So I'm taking out the trash and taking a dog (not mine) with me. Not a proper walk but they can at least go on the lawn
"your laundry is done flip it, i need you to cut down those plants , put air in the bike tires" She sees me walk to the end of the drive way where someone else needs me to put something bulky in the back of the car(I still have the dog). Then goes inside
I walk in to flip the laundry (because why touch clean clothes covered in tire and poison ivy) after being out of sight for 30 seconds
" Did you cut down the plants and fill the bike tires?" ...while walking the dog taking out the garbage putting something in the car and flipping the laundry.
I do not understand the level of stupid it would take to not understand that one peon cannot occupy three places at the same time or the petty need for control to passively aggressively say "work faster" to someone with known and glaringly obvious mobility issues because a half hour job and a 1 hour job weren't done in 30 seconds.
I think I'm done with humans.
"Why are gamers such loners?
"Have you met normal people?
Um... did that person have any reason/right to be demanding such things of you? Are they paying you? A relative? Did you agree to do it earlier?
I would've ignored such a person completely and then intentionally not done any of those things, even if I'd been planning to before she spoke.
I'm ornery.

Freehold DM |

Qunnessaa wrote:I suspect I may have just caught a bug from one of the absurdly few students in the tiny class I'm teaching this term, just at the start of it. I guess I'm going to bundle up this weekend with cold meds and a stack of work and hope for the best in shaking it off. Oh, and see if I can unearth a COVID test, just in case.
I am not a happy faerie right now. >:(
So, after a long day moping around feeling sorry for myself, I have just tested positive for COVID, after all. I am not particularly surprised, because my symptoms aren't the regular flu, and wow, losing most of one's sense of taste is not fun. Brings home the myth of Erysichthon and the feast of ashes spell, though.
My students will probably appreciate Zoom classes in which they can put their feet up, so.
Oh no! Please heal up! I am so sorry to hear!

Freehold DM |

So I'm taking out the trash and taking a dog (not mine) with me. Not a proper walk but they can at least go on the lawn
"your laundry is done flip it, i need you to cut down those plants , put air in the bike tires" She sees me walk to the end of the drive way where someone else needs me to put something bulky in the back of the car(I still have the dog). Then goes inside
I walk in to flip the laundry (because why touch clean clothes covered in tire and poison ivy) after being out of sight for 30 seconds
" Did you cut down the plants and fill the bike tires?" ...while walking the dog taking out the garbage putting something in the car and flipping the laundry.
I do not understand the level of stupid it would take to not understand that one peon cannot occupy three places at the same time or the petty need for control to passively aggressively say "work faster" to someone with known and glaringly obvious mobility issues because a half hour job and a 1 hour job weren't done in 30 seconds.
I think I'm done with humans.
"Why are gamers such loners?
"Have you met normal people?
man. What a jerk.