Instead, our "cold vulnerable" family members (Impus Major and GothBard) are running little portable 750W heaters for a few hours a day.
My greatly inflated electricity usage is a bit over 10 kWh per day at the moment, when in the past I stayed within 3-6 kWh...
Greatly inflated indeed...
I expect the vast majority of city dwellers, especially BIG city dwellers, agree. My point is that with true broadband everywhere it won't take all that many city types to change their venue before it gentrifies the better options in the countryside.
Zoning laws can help but there are ways around those. Ways that people with means find it too easy to accomplish all too often.
OTOH there are no doubt some very small towns that might split the difference and absorb some of absorb some of the coming shock.
Yeah; it'll be interesting when we retire. GothBard really wants to retire to Edinburgh. I have two simple rules:
(1) Don't bid over asking on the new house.(2) Sell the old house at asking to a family, not a corporation.
While #2 is completely within my control, I suspect #1 will make the house search nearly impossible.
But I personally don't want to be responsible for continuing the stupid. Just because you can afford it doesn't justify doing it.
So much for trying to set anything aside, between the electricity and the heating bill at the end of the year.
Instead, our "cold vulnerable" family members (Impus Major and GothBard) are running little portable 750W heaters for a few hours a day.
My greatly inflated electricity usage is a bit over 10 kWh per day at the moment, when in the past I stayed within 3-6 kWh...
We're a family of 4 in a house, and we run about 12 kWh/day in summer, up to 17 kWh/day in winter.
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I realized if I treat visiting family like work and bring all the things I use to get through work (coffee, headphones, mini speaker, and a snack) then I'll make it through.
Now if only I can get paid for it.
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Well, a Thanksgiving miracle has occurred.
Not only am I ahead of schedule with the cooking, I'm even showered and dressed with my hair and makeup done. (Company coming.)
Evidently the Apocalypse is nigh.
As with every year, one thing for which I am profoundly grateful is all of you FaWtLites. I honestly don't know what I would do without the support, friendship, and good humor of this community.
Y'all are pretty great.
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Well, a Thanksgiving miracle has occurred.
Not only am I ahead of schedule with the cooking, I'm even showered and dressed with my hair and makeup done. (Company coming.)
Evidently the Apocalypse is nigh.As with every year, one thing for which I am profoundly grateful is all of you FaWtLites. I honestly don't know what I would do without the support, friendship, and good humor of this community.
Y'all are pretty great.
There's a very fine line between humor and senility...
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My "major" Thanksgiving break projects are now done: The washer and dryer are unstacked and side-by-side again (after the bathroom remodel that ended in April), I filled up the back of the studio shed with crap that I won't touch for at least a year so that I could move crap from the overstuffed front closet to the front of the studio shed.
And it really is a depressing cycle of waste: Conventions, stores, concerts, schools, etc., constantly hand you "freebies" such as reusable bags, cheap phone chargers or earbuds, or what-have-you. And because you're polite and the stuff is "free", you take it. And, being raised by Depression-era parents, you cannot possibly EVER throw out anything that could be of use to anyone; your job is to find a charity that will take it, because throwing it away makes you morally bankrupt.
And charities are exhausted with getting this free crap all the time, so they won't take it any more. So, just as an example, I had no fewer than 46 reusable bags and a dozen cheap earbuds in that closet. Filling all 46 bags would likely overstuff both cars. So why do I have so many bags and earbuds?!?!?!?
Because:
(a) They're free and no one ever says, "No," and
(b) we are made to feel guilty for throwing anything out.
My father was a jerk by almost any measure. But the older I get, the more I understand why his policy was to throw out anything not of immediate and obvious use.
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OK. I'll admit it: Reinstalling the kitchen fire extinguisher the day before I'm scheduled to cook Thanksgiving dinner does not instill faith from my family members.
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Granted, my father was a fire-fighter for decades.
If anything, having a fire extinguisher in the kitchen adds to peace of mind.
There's a score of things that could go wrong in older kitchens, and even more with the advance of technology.
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There's a very fine line between humor and senility...Well, a Thanksgiving miracle has occurred.
Not only am I ahead of schedule with the cooking, I'm even showered and dressed with my hair and makeup done. (Company coming.)
Evidently the Apocalypse is nigh.As with every year, one thing for which I am profoundly grateful is all of you FaWtLites. I honestly don't know what I would do without the support, friendship, and good humor of this community.
Y'all are pretty great.
Lets cross it valiantly!
OK. I'll admit it: Reinstalling the kitchen fire extinguisher the day before I'm scheduled to cook Thanksgiving dinner does not instill faith from my family members.
Weird them out by bringing to kitchen a medikit and a few neutralize poison potions.
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For all of you hyponcondriacs out there check out the "This Podcast Will Kill You" podcast.
Also happy belated Thanksgiving.
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"How do you tell if a mushroom is poisonous or not?"
"Well, the easiest way is this: If it is in a grocery store, it's not poisonous."
This is a repeat, but it still fits.
All mushrooms are edible. Some are only edible once.
Wow... Prions are nasty!
Maybe so, Sharoth, but electric hybrid vehicles are the Future of personal transportation, nonetheless.
Maybe so, Sharoth, but electric hybrid vehicles are the Future of personal transportation, nonetheless.
I vote to go back to the steam(punk) age.
Sarah J Maas's Throne of Glass series is on sale for $6 today. I have enjoyed the series.
That is all eight books for $6. I hope that someone else enjoys the series like I have.
Also, the audiobooks are pretty good too.
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Happy belated by a bit Thanksgiving to all! In a good mood this AM as I just put my order in for Hero Quest! GIMME GIMME!!
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The good thing is that having guests yesterday (only WW's crazy uncle Uncle Skipper (yes, that's his real name, or has been since toddlerhood, and he's 78) and Miz Daisy's retired preacher friend Norma) is that we finally got the dining room free of boxes and stacks of random crap, and WW finally got all the various collections of audio components sorted and tested and decided what is usable, what is fixable, and what is ewaste. It only took 3.5 months.
The foyer and living room are still a nightmare, however. If you've ever seen photos of the Antechamber and Annex in the tomb of Tutankhamun, that will give you some idea. There are some niceish antiques, there are some creepy and horrid antiques, and there is a lot of hoarded crap in rotting cardboard boxes and milk crates, and it's all stacked halfway to the ceiling. WW says that the only thing that will get those rooms clear is to plan to have another gathering at Christmas.
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Random Musings of the Morning: GM Background "Hooks": We were sitting around the Thanksgiving table yesterday afternoon and the question of background "hooks" came up. Both our current GM and one of our other GMs insisted that in order to run a proper homebrew, every player had to write up a background for their character that included a "mysterious past" that the GM could write in and build a story around: Maybe an estranged relative. Maybe a mysterious package they've never opened. Maybe an event that they remember differently from everyone around them. But they as GMs want to have an opening to rewrite the players' pasts in order to provide story hooks.
And oh how I loathe it.
And I finally figured out why.
When I start off playing a character, they're a blank slate. Sure, I've written up a background for them, but that's just to give me some guidance as to how to play them. As the campaign progresses, they develop personalities, character quirks, and become practically "real" to me. Then along comes the GM and says, "And oh, by the way. In your past you did XXX and now it's come back to haunt you because YYY."
And it's always in direct contradiction to how my character has developed, and who they are, and I sputter and say, "No! That's not my character at all! They'd never do such a thing!"
"Well, turns out you did! Guess you don't know yourself as well as you thought you did!"
I really despise it. But apparently it's really popular with GMs and some players. And my feeling is, "Let the players who enjoy having their backgrounds twisted be the ones to provide those background hooks. Don't force it on players who don't enjoy it!"
Ah, well, so far it's been a good campaign because I keep refusing to play along with, "Your character would do xxx." We'll see how it goes.
EDIT: And the first character trait he gave someone was MUCH better done. Mid-game he said, "Oh, and I have a background that will give you a wand of Fireball, but there are strings attached. Does anyone want it?" and one of the players volunteered for it and learned they'd been framed for murdering everyone in their home village. He liked it a lot, and because he'd been framed it didn't impact who he was, just what he'd done. Every time I have a GM try to do such a thing to me, it's pretty much along the lines of, "Oh, when you were younger you were a much worse person so you stabbed this kid in the eye for no reason and now he's back for revenge." Which isn't fun if you think you're playing a good-aligned character.
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I am so with you on this, NH.
I get that some folks love elaborate backgrounds, mysterious past, and so on, and get that some GMs love to expand on it and use it for their own stories... But demanding them? Nope.
I do occasionally create characters that have some deeper past - but usually, I want to see and explore the characters future, not past. Additionally, I often get to know the character in practice in play, developing and shaping him over the game. That's why also dislike when the game demands me to set their goals beforehand, how the hell I can know the fresh characters goals already before getting to know the character?
Which reminds me that I need to pick up new short and long-term goals for my Soulbond character... They are worth extra xp so better to have them.
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The General led me to a rule: backstory in twenty words or less. It's cool if you want to come up with an elaborate background (for a first level character!) but I don't want to hear about it beforehand, they'll just have to dump it in game (kids are exempt from this because they can drone on for hours if they're super excited and it's best to just let them go on while I do the laundry or what have you).
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I have finished Assassin's Creed: Origins...
The game is very good and a big step forward compared to the previous Assassin game I have played (Unity, taking place during French Revolution), becoming an actual open-world rpg, instead of stealth game with only superficial crpg elements (Unity's skills were a poor joke, and gear progression was a mess).
The ending was a sort of let down, switching from the protagonist to another key character forcing you to fight the final combat without the gear and skills fine tuned over the course of the game. There was also some drama that felt forced too...
I have already started the next AC some time ago, and I can say that the next one (Odyssey) is generally even better, though the skill tree in Origins was more interesting than in Odyssey.
Both games suffer from the classical case of Ubisoft open world games, though - with terribly uneven quests, clearly a lot of them added just to pack the game, having clunky dialogues, and some non-sequitur progression (particularly people skipping from being strangers to being trustworthy friends between sentences, or suddenly referring to things that they haven't told the other character yet, as if they were known to both*).
*it made more sense in Assassin's Creed, where individual quests were implied, though very poorly shown (if at all), to be taking place over actual time skips, and happening over multiple days.
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I am so with you on this, NH.
I get that some folks love elaborate backgrounds, mysterious past, and so on, and get that some GMs love to expand on it and use it for their own stories... But demanding them? Nope.
I do occasionally create characters that have some deeper past - but usually, I want to see and explore the characters future, not past. Additionally, I often get to know the character in practice in play, developing and shaping him over the game. That's why also dislike when the game demands me to set their goals beforehand, how the hell I can know the fresh characters goals already before getting to know the character?
Which reminds me that I need to pick up new short and long-term goals for my Soulbond character... They are worth extra xp so better to have them.
Yeah, before we even started the first session the GM asked me, "So, what are your long-term plans for xxx?"
To which I responded, "Long-term plans? I haven't even met her; I'm not planning the wedding just yet."I need to get to know my characters in-game before I can figure out what they're hoping to do, and that changes as the campaign unfolds. Like real people.
My favorite "OMG background" was poor Talky McTalkTalk doing a Greek tragedy-based Dread game, because he gave us a long questionnaire to fill out beforehand. And it was horrible:
Question 3: "Describe your relationship with your brother. Go into detail about growing up together, what you enjoyed doing together and what you hated about him."
20 minutes later I had a rich, detailed background story about my brother whom I'd had to leave behind on my quest, but whom I still missed.
Question 4: "Describe why you betrayed and murdered your brother."
What? Aaaargh!
It took me around 4 hours to finish that stupid questionnaire because I kept having to rewrite previous answers because I was apparently performing atrocities on my family.
But I did know that it was based on Greek mythology. I should have known better than to actually like my family.
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The General led me to a rule: backstory in twenty words or less. It's cool if you want to come up with an elaborate background (for a first level character!) but I don't want to hear about it beforehand, they'll just have to dump it in game (kids are exempt from this because they can drone on for hours if they're super excited and it's best to just let them go on while I do the laundry or what have you).
I don't mind a good rich background. Heck; Raesh's in RotRL was what? 10 pages long? But it should be the player, not the GM, who has final say.
If I'm running a game, my job is to provide you with a world. Your job is to provide me with someone who will realistically interact with that world. If your character concept conflicts with my world*, we sit down together, resolve the differences, and start the campaign. If you want to put in a background hook that you'd like me to try to integrate, I'll see whether I can oblige you, but no hooks are necessary.
After what? 3-4 months of battling him I finally gave up and canceled the campaign. (One of those campaigns where kicking one problem player ends the campaign, but all the other players agreed it was better to try something else.)
EDIT: And to address the eternal, "Why didn't you just kick him?" questions, he and LM were a package deal. Kicking one meant kicking both, and we were the only gaming group in town for her. We love LM. We stomached WW on her behalf.
As the times progress I am more and more in favor of announcing a pre-campaign character prerequisites where the GM declares he is doing a specific campaign theme and requests the players to make characters that fit the theme and simply rejects characters that don't fit.
This is less important in your typical D&D/Pathfinder game, but it shows a lot when playing other games. Still, even with new D&D/Pathfinder games, I simply demand that players make the party together so they all fit and can work together. Period.
Next Thursday we are playing Achtung! Cthulhu. A pulp, adventurous take on fighting mythos threats during the WWII using 2d20 engine (not to be confused with a much more deadly and unforgiving World War Cthulhu that runs on the classical Call Of Cthulhu engine). The game will take place in 1940 in UK. We are supposed to make characters that fit the place, time, and theme.
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10:38 am on Black Friday and only 8 unsolicited email advertisements so far. I'm impressed.
(Every time a company emails me I unsubscribe from their lists, but having only 8 "breakthroughs" so far is pretty impressively small, in my small mind.)
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We're calling the day after Thanksgiving as Clothes Optional Friday, in that if you want to wear pajamas all day, go for it!
The General and I however are going shopping.
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I'm torn.
I want to stick with my time-honored tradition of refusing to leave the house or buy anything whatsoever on Black Friday on principle, but Shiro offered to take Impus Major to Guitar Center and help him pick out his very first guitar.
Considering he spent all of lockdown teaching himself on one of Shiro's acoustic guitars, it's high time he had his own guitar; he's gotten to the point of, "Pretty good for an amateur."
I'd really like to be there when he chooses his first guitar of his own.
But it would mean going out on Black Friday, going to a mall, and going into a Guitar Center. All things I would much rather avoid this black day.
EDIT: Didn't take long. They're off. I'm home and taking a nap. As old men should on sunny afternoons.
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I approve of the Youth of Today buying guitars.
We had another animal visitor to the office today, in the shape of a large, smelly (it had gone swimming in the canal) Golden Retriever belonging to the accounts lady. It spent the day lying on the floor, chewing on a very green stuffed toy frog, drooling, and giving me side-eye whenever I went to make a cup of tea, which I thought was a bit much.
We also had a snow warning today. Might not come to anything, but it is jolly cold, even for November.
Had to work today, but it was quiet as a door mouse. So opted to sip apple brandy and continue to re-read Volo's Guide to Cormyr. I have a feeling a Forgotten Realms game may be in the future for my group. Perhaps as agents of the Crown.
Sondheim has died.
Alas even giants must fall, but his contributions shall endure.
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Sondheim has died.
Damn it! Why do people keep doing that!
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Sondheim has died.Alas even giants must fall, but his contributions shall endure.
That's a pretty casual attitude... And where were you.. whenever it happened?! Curse the New York Times and their pay wall!!
The General led me to a rule: backstory in twenty words or less. It's cool if you want to come up with an elaborate background (for a first level character!) but I don't want to hear about it beforehand, they'll just have to dump it in game (kids are exempt from this because they can drone on for hours if they're super excited and it's best to just let them go on while I do the laundry or what have you).I don't mind a good rich background. Heck; Raesh's in RotRL was what? 10 pages long? But it should be the player, not the GM, who has final say.
If I'm running a game, my job is to provide you with a world. Your job is to provide me with someone who will realistically interact with that world. If your character concept conflicts with my world*, we sit down together, resolve the differences, and start the campaign. If you want to put in a background hook that you'd like me to try to integrate, I'll see whether I can oblige you, but no hooks are necessary.
** spoiler omitted **
EDIT: And to address the eternal, "Why didn't you just kick him?" questions, he and LM were a package deal. Kicking one meant kicking both, and we were the only gaming group in town for her. We love LM. We stomached WW on her behalf.
I'd say okay then make his relations with both as such pariahs as so he'd be better off not related to them.
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Last one to post one day and first to post the next day.
Shame on you all!
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On the one hand, I work in the industry, so I understand the idea: When someone gets a new credit card, you start the anti-fraud AI with a blank slate, and you want to be excessively cautious until it's been trained to recognize unusual activity on an account.
On the other hand, if you go too far, you risk losing all your new customers.
With our transition away from Amazon and Disney, GothBard got herself a new credit card with rewards she'll actually use. On Black Friday, she tried to use it to buy our typical annual stuff: European heavy metal gear for Impus Major, soaps for ourselves and as gifts (I approve because everyone (with whom I want to socialize) uses soap), and so forth. And of course, the card's AI quickly flagged the multiple transactions in a single hour as "potentially fraudulent", blocked them, and locked the card.
Customer service was even less helpful. "Oh, you just need to call us every single time a transaction is blocked and we'll unlock it for you."
Gothbard is displeased, to put it mildly.
"What the heck good is a new card if I'm not allowed to use it?"
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Last one to post one day and first to post the next day.
Shame on you all!
Shiro came over yesterday afternoon and helped Impus Major pick out a guitar. Once they all got back to the house, the Impii ran off and it was YouTube-Sushi-Cowboy Bebop-bedtime. No time to post.
And yes, I'll commit heresy here, but I'm enjoying the live action Cowboy Bebop more than the original because they rewrote it to make the episodes run together more smoothly, provide an overall plot, etc. The old version was ground-breaking in its time, but having watched it for the first time in what? 2018? It's really pretty disjointed and confusing.
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Why I Love Cats Reason #∞: Impus Major came home with a brand new guitar and had to run off to a social event. He put the guitar on the foyer table. In under 3 minutes, the little fluffernutter was curled up on the (formerly) black case, purring up a storm, and she didn't leave until she'd thoroughly coated the entire case in white cat hair about 6 hours later.
EDIT: It's even better than I imagined: She also threw up on the case, but Impus Major had cleaned it up by the time I got up this morning.
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I'm at a loss for what to do with myself this morning. WW is working on Saturdays right now, making crepes in a booth at the Farmers Market, Hermione doesn't have rehearsal today because it's a holiday weekend, the kids are playing in Val's room, and I railroaded them into deep-cleaning their rooms yesterday, so I don't really *have* to do anything.
So I've showered and had a coffee, but that's as far as I've got.
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I'm at a loss for what to do with myself this morning. WW is working on Saturdays right now, making crepes in a booth at the Farmers Market, Hermione doesn't have rehearsal today because it's a holiday weekend, the kids are playing in Val's room, and I railroaded them into deep-cleaning their rooms yesterday, so I don't really *have* to do anything.
So I've showered and had a coffee, but that's as far as I've got.
Remember that it is OK to do nothing every now and again. Believe it or not, the brain needs that once in a while.