Random non sequitur posts catch-all thread

I sometimes wonder what's the point of having a 30 minutes status meeting every day when a 30 second email would do the trick.

In normal life I agree. In current day people are craving that human contact.

What is getting me is how often my boss is saying "everything is ok" in different ways. I know this is meant to be reassuring as in your not going to lose your job. But the more it is said the more nervous I get. My brain is weird.

Spoiler:

Look into my brain.

bobbywatson wrote:

I sometimes wonder what's the point of having a 30 minutes status meeting every day when a 30 second email would do the trick.

30 minutes is too long for a daily status. If you’re taking longer than 15 minutes, you’re missing the mark.

Stealthpizza wrote:

In normal life I agree. In current day people are craving that human contact.

What is getting me is how often my boss is saying "everything is ok" in different ways. I know this is meant to be reassuring as in your not going to lose your job. But the more it is said the more nervous I get. My brain is weird.

Spoiler:

Look into my brain.

If everything were actually fine, you wouldn't need to tell me that things were fine, it would be self evident.

It's natural to try to reassure people in times of stress. That's a good thing. Especially when it's by deed as much as by word. Try not to stress too much.

Just came across one of the worst "could of" I've seen.

"[...] it could of tide"

I had to read it a few times, it's "it could've tied [into sth.]". Everyone makes mistakes when writing, but come on.

I could of tied of despair when I read that.

That’s when you respond, “I don’t see what laundry detergent has to do with this.”

Prederick wrote:

"You're a video game NPC. When your HP hits 0, what's your loot drop?"

A completely useless book of in-world lore, and a beer.

A ghost of a rogue who can't climb.

I know the critical consensus says that Homework is Daft Punk's best work, but I listened to Discovery again tonight, and perhaps because that's when I truly discovered them, but it's still my favorite album of theirs.

And also, Interstella 5555 is still a wonderful companion piece.

I realized yesterday that the best way for me be able to give attention to a podcast is to go for a walk. That way, I can focus on what is being said.

It also happens that I need the physical activity. Looking at myself in the mirror without a shirt was not a pleasant experience.

Prederick wrote:

I know the critical consensus says that Homework is Daft Punk's best work, but I listened to Discovery again tonight, and perhaps because that's when I truly discovered them, but it's still my favorite album of theirs.

And also, Interstella 5555 is still a wonderful companion piece.

YES!!!!! I agree 500% and now I need to have my kids watch it.

bobbywatson wrote:

I realized yesterday that the best way for me be able to give attention to a podcast is to go for a walk. That way, I can focus on what is being said.

I got a handle-bar mounted speaker for this purpose. I can do trail-rides on my bike, while listening pod-casts. Works well, and still lets me be alert for traffic and other folks.

I recommend getting headphones where you can put a single earbud in, like airpods with an earclip attachment or any headphone set if you are ok with a cord. That way you still have one ear free for traffic, that is what I do. I hate the people that ride around blaring speakers.

I mostly listen to podcasts in the car. I pretty much never listen to music when driving unless my wife is with me because she is not a podcast person.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I recommend getting headphones where you can put a single earbud in, like airpods with an earclip attachment or any headphone set if you are ok with a cord. That way you still have one ear free for traffic, that is what I do. I hate the people that ride around blaring speakers.

I mostly listen to podcasts in the car. I pretty much never listen to music when driving unless my wife is with me because she is not a podcast person.

I have a set of Jabra earbuds which have "hear-through" mode. They bring in the outside sound along with whatever I'm listening to.

I don't much care for Insomniac's Spider-Man game. After an initial rush of excitement over the thrill of swinging around the city, I bounced off the game pretty hard at launch. But damn, it's really hitting the spot right now.

I suspect I'll have a similar experience with Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I've plugged some 85 hours into the game already (JESUS CHRIST) but I'm only like 35% of the way through the main plot and stopped a few weeks ago when it began to feel a bit repetetive. I figure I'll come back soon, give it another shot and enjoy myself again. Because I do want to beat it. I just dislike games that bring the level floor along with you like that.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I recommend getting headphones where you can put a single earbud in, like airpods with an earclip attachment or any headphone set if you are ok with a cord. That way you still have one ear free for traffic, that is what I do. I hate the people that ride around blaring speakers.

Riding a bike with anything in your ears is illegal where I am, so it's a speaker or nothing. Given that it's a podcast and not music, and at a volume where I can just hear it normally when it's directed right at me, I feel comfortable that I'm not disturbing others on my isolated trail rides. Once I get back to the USA, I'll switch back using a single headphone or something with hear-through (although that gets problematic in windy conditions).

Coldstream wrote:
LeapingGnome wrote:

I recommend getting headphones where you can put a single earbud in, like airpods with an earclip attachment or any headphone set if you are ok with a cord. That way you still have one ear free for traffic, that is what I do. I hate the people that ride around blaring speakers.

Riding a bike with anything in your ears is illegal where I am, so it's a speaker or nothing. Given that it's a podcast and not music, and at a volume where I can just hear it normally when it's directed right at me, I feel comfortable that I'm not disturbing others on my isolated trail rides. Once I get back to the USA, I'll switch back using a single headphone or something with hear-through (although that gets problematic in windy conditions).

I use aftershokz when I run. They use bone conduction so nothing is in your ear. It lets me hear things coming better when I run.

Prederick wrote:

I suspect I'll have a similar experience with Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I've plugged some 85 hours into the game already (JESUS CHRIST) but I'm only like 35% of the way through the main plot and stopped a few weeks ago when it began to feel a bit repetetive. I figure I'll come back soon, give it another shot and enjoy myself again. Because I do want to beat it. I just dislike games that bring the level floor along with you like that.

Can't you turn off level scaling for quests? It's been awhile since I played that game, but I seem to recall that being an option.

If you are overleveled, you can adjust the level scaling in the options to be a little more forgiving. You can set it up to 4 levels below you (which is pretty much one-hit-kill everything - except elites might take two hits). Of course, the area where you are doing activities has to be at least 4 levels below you. It won't downscale areas higher level than you. The areas have fixed minimum levels, and the main quest follows a path of areas with ever-increasing levels.

As long as you're doing enough activities you shouldn't have a problem staying ahead of the main quest levels, and there are a lot of different activities that can give experience. What you can't do is just power through the main quest and ignore everything else (which has been a common complaint among the Assassin's Creed complainers).

To be honest, in Odyssey it doesn't even make sense to only do main quests, because hunting cultists is a primary activity that is tied in with several main quests. I'm pretty sure that just hunting cultists and following the main quest is enough to stay ahead of the curve. Some cultists require you to clear largeish areas. More kills and cleared areas both equal more XP. Some cultists aren't even revealed until you complete certain side quests. Some cultists only show up in a particular conquest battle, which in turn requires you to do the prerequisites for the associated conquest battle. All that stuff gives XP.

...............I had no idea that was in the options! Like..... NONE. My issue wasn't that I wasn't level up fast enough, i'm already over Level 50, I was just annoyed that, like, grunts from the island I started on had all suddenly become as difficult as badguys I'd encountered in areas where the level floor was well over 40 or something.

I'll have to look for that tonight, I literally had no idea that was a thing I could do.

Yeah, they tried to make it interesting to revisit old areas by preventing you from ever out leveling things, but sometimes all you really want to do in old areas is just mow everything down and get collectables. I'm glad they let you turn it off, at least.

Hmmm... so besides that leveling your character is a major video game trope, why would they even implement a leveling system just to then create another system that negates it? There’s probably a good reason, but in some way it really seems like they’re working against themselves.

Because different people like to play different ways. Leveling old content vs keeping it at the original level has been a primary RPG religious war for some time.

The AC Odyssey compromise doesn’t exactly negate the leveling, but it gives the player the option of having old areas be easy vs always being challenged. And the other benefit of leveling is that you have more abilities at your disposal as well as higher level gear that has a variety of bonuses low level gear lacks.

It also just occurred to me that creating a level scaling system is probably a lot less time consuming than manually balancing the games difficulty from start to finish. The resources that get freed up from a system like that can go towards improving the overall game experience.

Finally got the bike trainer I ordered last week. At the time I thought of ordering a special tire to go with it, but figured I should try it with my regular tire first to see how bad it is.

And holy sh*t, is it noisy!

Sounds like it's going to be a while before I can actually use it, as I definitely need that tire! Hopefully I can figure out how to install it.

I spent a solid 20 minutes laughing this afternoon thinking of how much different the sculpture would look if it were just Michaelangelo's "Dave."

Dave’s not here, man.

RawkGWJ wrote:

Dave’s not here, man.

No, man, I'm Dave, man.