A quick google says that starting Oct 1, Medicare will only cover telehealth for people in rural office or medical facility. There are a few exceptions. Here is a link for the Medicare website: https://www.medicare.gov/coverage/telehealth
I don't care to speculate on why the media isn't covering it *cough*fear of retaliation, including loss of FCC license *cough cough*.
TERRIBLE news!
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Speaking of naked truth, we ended todays Legend Of Five Rings, with Peeping Tomoe kneeling in front of her (naked) daimyo holding a sword, his wife (equally naked) with a lamp in hand, and both somehow sweaty...
There, the handmaid peeked on the daimyo and his wife being, er, busy (they were married 15 years ago, and they are still trying for a heir, unsuccessfully), while Tomoe peeked on both her and the couple (and because Tomoe is a little pesky ninja-wannabe, it was established at that moment it wasn't her first time peeping on people in such circumstances). Then she followed the handmaid vanishing deeper in passage so far unknown to her, managing to avoid alerting the couple but was spotted by surprisingly vigilant handmaid - which revealed to be possessed or controlled by the daimyo's father's wife (he was born of concubine and isn't her son).
With some encouragement from the rest of players she decided to confront the handmaid and stabbed her - the handmaid used the bracelet that made her invisible - Tomoe rushed and grabbed her despite invisibility at the cost of making ruckus that alerted the daimyo and his wife who rushed into the secret passage and found both...
Neither bothered to put any clothes on, a samurai with a sword in hand has everything he might need after all...
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Reminds me of our Session 1 in the current game (apologies if I've posted this before). I'm playing a formless blob (think Odo from Deep Space 9) who's fascinated by the "formies" and has infiltrated them and is studying them. Of course he's most fascinated by the things they do that his people don't: Endoskeletons and sex. Since walking into an in-progress surgery gets you in trouble, he spends his time at the local love temple, where he's only classified as, "That kinky guy who only watches and never participates."
So the other players show up on a boat, he gets assigned to be their guide and translator, and GothBard's character's first statement is, "Why don't you show us your favorite place?"
Hence he is now known in the campaign as "The Pervert" and the female PCs shun him.
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Funny thing is that usually, the characters of Tomoe's player's sister (who this time plays a more straight-laced fierce samurai-berserker, no seriously, her school is called Matsu Berserkers) are the naughty ones. On the other hand, Matsu-san had little chance to perv, yet.
Speaking of naked truth, we ended todays Legend Of Five Rings, with Peeping Tomoe kneeling in front of her (naked) daimyo holding a sword, his wife (equally naked) with a lamp in hand, and both somehow sweaty...
** spoiler omitted **
....damn.
My life for Daigotsu-sama!!!!!
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Reminds me of our Session 1 in the current game (apologies if I've posted this before). I'm playing a formless blob (think Odo from Deep Space 9) who's fascinated by the "formies" and has infiltrated them and is studying them. Of course he's most fascinated by the things they do that his people don't: Endoskeletons and sex. Since walking into an in-progress surgery gets you in trouble, he spends his time at the local love temple, where he's only classified as, "That kinky guy who only watches and never participates."
So the other players show up on a boat, he gets assigned to be their guide and translator, and GothBard's character's first statement is, "Why don't you show us your favorite place?"
Hence he is now known in the campaign as "The Pervert" and the female PCs shun him.
Unfair.
Speaking of naked truth, we ended todays Legend Of Five Rings, with Peeping Tomoe kneeling in front of her (naked) daimyo holding a sword, his wife (equally naked) with a lamp in hand, and both somehow sweaty...
** spoiler omitted **
....damn.
My life for Daigotsu-sama!!!!!
*sigh* It's a bit of shame that the Criminal Scenes Investigation: The Second City series fell apart, it was fun when the party after returning from their investigation discovered Daigotsu Kanpeki visiting the magistrate whom they served as yoriki, talking like they were old friends...
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Funny thing is that usually, the characters of Tomoe's player's sister (who this time plays a more straight-laced fierce samurai-berserker, no seriously, her school is called Matsu Berserkers) are the naughty ones. On the other hand, Matsu-san had little chance to perv, yet.
During the previous adventure, when they were tracking rabble-rousing monks in their domain, Jin, party shugenja, and Tomoe went at night to visit a shrine they found and had repaired on the first session, leading to some raised eyebrows from the jisamurai who hosted them at the village, and the son of governor who accompanied them because of reasons (there was a guest player who might join for longer once he clears his Thursdays - our normal day for this party), regarding their questionable "pilgrimage" at night. Son of governor even joked he fully understands and he went on such pilgrimages himself. Somehow no one expected them to spent the night praying...
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Apparently Morrigan's new weight class is, "Could beat up a chihuahua." I had no idea this was a weight class, and do not know whether to be proud or ashamed of this achievement.
Possible scams I don't understand: GothBard got a package in the mail. Opening it, it's an ugly-a$$ pair of gloves she never ordered. The return address is a private residence in Georgia.
I'm wondering whether this is one of those, "If someone is kind-hearted enough to try to return the item we sent them that they didn't order, then they're suckers and we'll scam them," things. Ah, a "brushing scam".
Well, the USPS's advice is "do nothing", so easy-peasy. I'm just kind of surprised that they must've spent $1-$2 to send us this crap, and they think one positive review is worth that much money. Ah, well, I'm skeptical. I don't trust reviews anyway, so I'm not their target audience.
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I know it's a La Niña year (cooler-than-average sea surface temperatures in the Pacific), but I'm still pretty stunned by just how mild this summer has been. Our "no sun, highs in the 50s July" had highs in the mid 60s and was quite pleasant. Now we're in our end-of-September/early-October heat wave, and our three day temperature range is 79-90-73; not exactly the soul-crushing, multiple days near 100 with no AC and no insulation that we're used to.
It's still early in our regular heat wave season (I still remember the year my brother came down for Thanksgiving and it was 80°F), but so far even on a 90°F day I can't complain because I know it'll be cool by tonight.
In other news, sticking a thumbtack in it here in case anyone remembers to ask me about it next March: We're getting ants. This is usually a precursor to a wet winter. My brother asked, "How can that possibly be true? How can they know?"
And we discussed evolution, and living underground, and the mysteries of the ant hive mind, and wondered why no one has ever researched ant weather predictions.
But in my house, the ants are predicting a wetter-than-usual winter. If I remember/am reminded 6 months from now, I'll let you know whether they were right.
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As opposed to woodchuck based weather systems, which are wrong a statistically significant number of times...
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Evildoers beware (+/- 3%) - it's Statistically Significant Woodchuck!
I could read your mind, but I don’t want to.
Temps here are steady in the 20s (mid-70s to mid 80s F) during the day and high teens (60s F) at night. It's supposed to start getting cooler around the beginning of October, with temps stopping breaking over 20 a week in.
Yay autumn at last! It'll finally be cool enough for me to pick skating back up.
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It's hard writing about specific corporate stupidity when you need to preserve corporate anonymity, but this is such a classic, boneheaded, "AI can to everything" approach it deserves honorable mention.
Step 1: Remove documentation: "No one wants to read docs any more. Just have users ask an AI chatbot and if the AI can't answer route the question to a human. So we can stop producing documentation for our product."
Problem 1: AI needs a source of truth for its information. If you remove all the documentation where's it going to get that? Typically, from the discussion forums or service requests. But you can't use service requests because customer privacy. So now your answers are only as good as the worst poster in your forums. Oops. Now you need humans overseeing and checking all the AI's answers. This is saving your company labor how, exactly?
Step 2: Have AI take over course development: "AI can generate beautiful graphics! Let's have it develop the courses for us!"
Problem 2: Even worse than problem 1. Not only do you need a source of truth, but you need a flow (what to teach in what order) and a gatekeeper (what information is important enough to keep in the course and what is esoteric enough that it doesn't need to be there? Our rule of thumb is we cover 80% of application functionality to keep the coures at a reasonable length).
So our company's pushing hard to convert our entire division to AI-generated content without understanding the underlying foundation of HOW AI generates that content.
Ah, the difference in age and medical care. At 3 months old Lenore had a limp one morning. Panic! Distress! To the emergency vet for x-rays, ultrasounds, splinting!
At 18 years Nefret has blood in her stool. "Oh, it's probably a gut infection. We'll run a sample by the vet later today and see whether she needs to go in."
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First Nephew is getting into Warhammer 40k. Hope my brother's feeling rich...
*sigh* It's a bit of shame that the Criminal Scenes Investigation: The Second City series fell apart, it was fun when the party after returning from their investigation discovered Daigotsu Kanpeki visiting the magistrate whom they served as yoriki, talking like they were old friends...Speaking of naked truth, we ended todays Legend Of Five Rings, with Peeping Tomoe kneeling in front of her (naked) daimyo holding a sword, his wife (equally naked) with a lamp in hand, and both somehow sweaty...
** spoiler omitted **
....damn.
My life for Daigotsu-sama!!!!!
Kanpeki-sama has friends, I am sure.
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NobodysHome's entertainment goal for tonight: Play FFXIV throughout the game session without anyone noticing.
I mean, it'll be more fun to harp on it after this session, since apparently tonight's a "wrap-up session" to close out the first story arc, wherein:
(1) GothBard's spellblade bodyguard never drew her blade nor actually defended the person she was guarding. (He spent the entire arc unconscious and unmolested.)
(2) Shiro's spellcasting bard never cast a spell nor performed.
(3) NobodysHome's shapeshifting spy never shifted shape nor spied on anything other than other people's underwear drawers.
(4) Other than our healer, we never actually accomplished anything. There was an attempted murder, but thanks to our healer he eventually got better and walked off. There was a trial, but even though we were the only witnesses we weren't invited to testify and it happened offscreen. (Apparently once the guy woke up and showed up at the trial it ended.) There was an assassin, but we never caught him and they brought in an NPC to track him down, so we were relieved of that duty.
So... no idea what we're doing tonight. So I'm on FFXIV.
This whole campaign could have been an email?I mean, it'll be more fun to harp on it after this session, since apparently tonight's a "wrap-up session" to close out the first story arc, wherein:
(1) GothBard's spellblade bodyguard never drew her blade nor actually defended the person she was guarding. (He spent the entire arc unconscious and unmolested.)
(2) Shiro's spellcasting bard never cast a spell nor performed.
(3) NobodysHome's shapeshifting spy never shifted shape nor spied on anything other than other people's underwear drawers.
(4) Other than our healer, we never actually accomplished anything. There was an attempted murder, but thanks to our healer he eventually got better and walked off. There was a trial, but even though we were the only witnesses we weren't invited to testify and it happened offscreen. (Apparently once the guy woke up and showed up at the trial it ended.) There was an assassin, but we never caught him and they brought in an NPC to track him down, so we were relieved of that duty.
So... no idea what we're doing tonight. So I'm on FFXIV.
Think so...
I ACTUALLY ROLLED ON A SKILL!!!!
An absolute failure of a roll, of course, getting 2, 3, 7, 2 1 on 5d10 where I needed a 4 for a success, so one success canceled by the natural 1, so I failed at one of my best skills.
But at least here in session 6 (apparently I miscounted) I finally rolled on a skill I have.
(I'll admit, it was a translation skill, which was my cover, not my actual job, but nevertheless a skill I paid points for.)
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OK. Credit where credit's due. This was a damn fun session. I'm pretty sure Shiro talked to him -- there was some quiet retconning to get us more involved in the plot, then making us resolve it instead of the NPCs.
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Then all of a sudden our boss said, "This evidence is very damning. You need to track down that assassin," and the all-powerful NPC gave us a 5-use compass that would point us towards the assassin. Some fun roleplay trying to use the compass, look at a map to figure out his most likely location, and then going there ensued.
So yep, pretty much, "Whoops. No, this session isn't over. I've changed my mind and I'm going to let you guys actually do all the work instead of having my NPCs do everything for you." What a concept!
The best moment was when we got to the small group of cabins where we suspected he was hiding and the GM expected us to knock on each cabin door and announce ourselves because these were diplomatic cabins, then he could let the assassin run away (and most likely introduce his fixed chase algorithm). Being a socially-clueless blob I just opened the door to each one, surprising both my party and the assassin, and the GM went ahead and rolled with it instead of trying to force the events to fit his narrative.
Being a coward, I put all my points into dodging so the assassin just barely missed me. In the ensuing fight he badly wounded our fighter, leading me to believe he'd dealt her a mortal wound because I don't understand biped anatomy and his legs were suddenly entangled by ropes and ropes of sticky, adhesive blob. I'm small, but I secrete an adhesive, am a constrictor by nature, and rolled really really well on my, "Stop the assassin from killing my friend," attcak. Once his legs were a complete mess of sticky, angry goo the fighter and bard had no trouble beating him stupid.
We took his stuff, turned him in to the authorities, the all-powerful NPC explained what all his gear did, and we're on a well-deserved break until they break him and give us more of the story to pursue. FAR more satisfying than the first 5 sessions.
EDIT: I think my favorite GM line of the evening was, "So he's at really low health and stamina, and at this point his options are to flee, surrender, or fight to the death... and running isn't an option...
And now the heartbreak that never get any easier: Teaching kittens that no, I can't control the rain, so no, they can't go outside today.
Yesterday was a few little sprinkles and the hellions were abjectly indignant; given the option between being in the rain, being in the catio, or being inside, their choice was a resounding, "No!"
Today we got enough rain to soak the ground. Maybe it'll clear up and they can go out, but I think it's going to be a day of, "Put on the harness, open the door, let them sniff the ground. Let them step out and get wet. Watch them look at me indignantly. Take them back inside."
Sometimes critters just make poor life decisions. A salamander, trying to escape something, came into the house. It couldn't have known, and I don't know that salamanders have the same, "I scent cats! I'm not going anywhere near that place!" sense that rodents do, but he's now in that great big salamander pond in the sky.
Yep. "Old cat" care: "The analysis of the stool sample found no parasites nor other reason for the blood, so let's give her a week and see whether she gets better on her own."
Short for, "No idea what's going on but she's old and sometimes her body'll just to weird stuff. Let's see what happens."
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Sometimes critters just make poor life decisions.
At the wolf center, the wolf enclosure would occasionally have a turkey fly into it. What they were thinking I have NO idea, but the only reason we knew it was happening was there would be a perfectly circular blast crater of turkey feathers down, feathers, big feathers like a fireball template...
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I ACTUALLY ROLLED ON A SKILL!!!!
An absolute failure of a roll, of course, getting 2, 3, 7, 2 1 on 5d10 where I needed a 4 for a success, so one success canceled by the natural 1, so I failed at one of my best skills.
To be fair, the dice absolutely hosed you. I can't do stats that complicated anymore and i can't find a die roll analyzer for WW but that looks like a 1-3 percent result at best...
I had a Black dog white wolf mixed game and EVERY time the hunter threw a 10d10 grenade they'd get at MOST one success. One of the ok the campaign is whats on your bucket list things to do was to drive to mexico and have a..erm. pointed conversion with their grenade supplier.
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Sometimes critters just make poor life decisions.At the wolf center, the wolf enclosure would occasionally have a turkey fly into it. What they were thinking I have NO idea, but the only reason we knew it was happening was there would be a perfectly circular blast crater of turkey feathers down, feathers, big feathers like a fireball template...
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Wow. I have just witnessed the stupidest f**king use of AI to date: "Customer" feedback.
"It's hard to get customers to talk to you, so I modeled this AI to be a customer. Now you can get all the feedback you want, whenever you want it."
So apparently products will now be modeled to please AI bots, not human beings.
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I ACTUALLY ROLLED ON A SKILL!!!!
An absolute failure of a roll, of course, getting 2, 3, 7, 2 1 on 5d10 where I needed a 4 for a success, so one success canceled by the natural 1, so I failed at one of my best skills.
To be fair, the dice absolutely hosed you. I can't do stats that complicated anymore and i can't find a die roll analyzer for WW but that looks like a 1-3 percent result at best...
I had a Black dog white wolf mixed game and EVERY time the hunter threw a 10d10 grenade they'd get at MOST one success. One of the ok the campaign is whats on your bucket list things to do was to drive to mexico and have a..erm. pointed conversion with their grenade supplier.
My Brujah in the latest campaign was a tank...
Primarily because I lost (almost) all the combat tests and had to take the enemy damage head-on. Which was sad, because my Potence 5 meant I could really whoop asses when I actually hit.
Getting Fortitude early on was a good idea...
I am not saying that I want Nioh 3 for my birthday... But it releases close enough.
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I blame Nioh (2nd game) for my descent into souls-like.
Gateway drugs are real!
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I found a knife sharpener at the Lidl when I went for (unnecessary - I just wanted something to munch on while working) groceries...
Sadly, I could not buy it, because apparently it was a leftover from when it was actually sold months ago (I missed it then) and now it is not in the offer.
Now I am considering buying electric "contact grill" to sear meat and vegetables...
It seems that it can be also used as a toster...
I found a knife sharpener at the Lidl when I went for (unnecessary - I just wanted something to munch on while working) groceries...
Sadly, I could not buy it, because apparently it was a leftover from when it was actually sold months ago (I missed it then) and now it is not in the offer.
A stack of cheap fine and finer metal wet dry sandpaper will get a surprisingly good edge on a knife.
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I've literally never seen anything like this in my 40+ years of cat ownership.
(1) Kittens have a fun night (no idea what they were doing, but Morrigan jumped onto the bed meowing at us and head butting me at 12:15 am, so it was something), then sleep all day in the studio.
(2) Nice post-rain day, so house is open all day. House fills with flies.
(3) GothBard moves kittens into house at 4 pm and closes them in.
"Flypocalypse" is inadequate....
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A stack of cheap fine and finer metal wet dry sandpaper will get a surprisingly good edge on a knife.I found a knife sharpener at the Lidl when I went for (unnecessary - I just wanted something to munch on while working) groceries...
Sadly, I could not buy it, because apparently it was a leftover from when it was actually sold months ago (I missed it then) and now it is not in the offer.
I am too lazy and too clumsy. I want convenience.
I have a whetstone. I know how to use a whetstone. Used one for years when I was young. I use my ceramic sharpener every time.
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Wow. I have just witnessed the stupidest f**king use of AI to date: "Customer" feedback.
"It's hard to get customers to talk to you, so I modeled this AI to be a customer. Now you can get all the feedback you want, whenever you want it."So apparently products will now be modeled to please AI bots, not human beings.
We live in the dumbest timeline.