Random non sequitur posts catch-all thread

Voice of Ra's Al Ghul on B:TAS.

I looked out my window earlier and there was a goddamn Zeppelin flying by. It's gone by three more times. I can't really tell how far away or how high it is so I assume it's just somebody's model/drone. Kind of disorienting to briefly wonder if you are in some kind of Wolfenstein-esque alternate universe.

Mixolyde wrote:

That's an awful loss. I would make a joke about reaching his END OF LINE, but he deserves better.

I've seen that joke like four times today. I appreciate you.

Pruning and organizing old files and backups is something I should have done 4 computers ago.

A few years back my nas screwed up because I think the power went out during a firmware update. Wasn't able to recover anything, also my nas got bricked. Anyway a few months ago I decided to check all my old hard drives and consolidate all the files and toss out the useless or bad drives. To my surprise I found a backup of my nas files that I completely forgot about. So always back your stuff up. All that time I spent downloading porn, games, and comics could have gone to waste. Just kidding it was pictures of puppies, kittens, and totally legal stuff from totally legal.com.

I was watching the "Javier Bardem Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters" GQ video this evening, and I realized, I've only ever had nightmares about two movie villains.

The T-1000 and Anton Chigurh. Which probably says something because they have a lot in common, I think.

I was queuing up at the chemists. When it was the turn of the woman ahead of me she stepped up to the counter and said, “Prescription for Random Merch.” Pretty sure I miss heard her name but it struck me as a great name for a non too serious D&D character.

Updated the fstab on my Raspberry Pi installation, but forgot to add 'nofail' to the list of options, and the thing just did not want to reboot properly. I tried to get the SD card out and see if I could read and update the file from my Ubuntu VM, but for some reason the VM just did not respond to my keyboard (but the mouse, which is plugged into the keyboard, worked fine for some reason), and the VM on my laptop did not see the SD card at all. I ended up creating a bootable Ubuntu USB thumbdrive, boot my laptop with it, and then I was able to add the option and fix it.

And somehow that was fun? I think my brain is broken.

Solving puzzles is fun, as long as you're knowledgeable enough to have the pieces. I get it!

I just discovered that I still have saved games from my first playthrough of Oblivion.

misplacedbravado wrote:

I just discovered that I still have saved games from my first playthrough of Oblivion.

I just looked and found that I have backup saved games from my playthroughs of Civilization (dated Oct 1992). It was in the same folder with my Oblivion saves!

I also have discs with my Ultima III playthroughs but I don't think my C64 FDD works anymore.

I had my first day of teaching at uni. I'm an anxious guy, pretty quiet. It was a big deal for me, and something I wasn't really ready to take on.

But I did it! 2 classes (one online via Zoom and another in person). Zoom was actually pretty easy, no group of people staring at me. Second one was a little more scary, but I surprised myself - once I got into it, I wasn't particularly nervous and just adopted the role of teacher pretty well. It was an odd experience. The second class somehow ran much shorter than the intended 1.5 hours, but I told the students they could leave, or stay and chat with me about any of the content I'd discussed. Quite a few were eager to talk, so that's good.

The content hasn't been prepared very well and I only had one afternoon to prepare, so I didn't feel like I did an amazing job, but I also feel like I did really well considering all of the above!

So anyway, I bought myself a treat (Live a Live) while I wallow away into a vegetative state. Such a huge emotional crash after those two classes. I feel...strange. Tired, proud, a little anxious I should have been better? Happy I actually did something out of my comfort zone. A lot of emotions.

I'm not salty about going bald, at all. Been going on years, whatever, I'm middle aged.

But I'm salty AF that my daughter and wife (and cats) aren't also going bald, because the number of clumps of hair that I pick up off the floor daily suggests that this is Castle Alopecia, ancestral home of the Baldertons, who are notable scourges of the hirsute and shaggy.

Jonman wrote:

I'm not salty about going bald, at all. Been going on years, whatever, I'm middle aged.

But I'm salty AF that my daughter and wife (and cats) aren't also going bald, because the number of clumps of hair that I pick up off the floor daily suggests that this is Castle Alopecia, ancestral home of the Baldertons, who are notable scourges of the hirsute and shaggy.

Get my wife's castle's name out your f*cking mouth.

Hrdina wrote:
misplacedbravado wrote:

I just discovered that I still have saved games from my first playthrough of Oblivion.

I just looked and found that I have backup saved games from my playthroughs of Civilization (dated Oct 1992). It was in the same folder with my Oblivion saves!

I also have discs with my Ultima III playthroughs but I don't think my C64 FDD works anymore. :D

I have X-Wing and TIE Fighter saves from 1994. Backed them up on floppies... then CDs... as I moved from PC to PC. And then when hard drive died in 2002 or so, I still had the CD thankfully.

From the last 72 hours of news, it sounds like if there's anything you've been waiting to binge on HBO Max, watch it ASAP.

Touchscreens on laptops have been surprisingly useful, unless there's a stray hair or dust particle or something stuck on the screen.

Prederick wrote:

From the last 72 hours of news, it sounds like if there's anything you've been waiting to binge on HBO Max, watch it ASAP.

I think all this is a little overblown. It's likely the six movies are of a quality that wouldn’t put up big viewership numbers. It’s also possible that Batgirl was so bad they didn’t want a Morbius on their hands.

I don’t doubt there’s cost-cutting going on but it remains to be seen what form that will take. Maybe they'll add Discovery+ content without increasing the subscription cost (for now). I don’t know how they'll otherwise combine the services without pissing off a lot of people.

What's strange to me is removing any content from a streaming service, especially something that doesn't garner large audiences. What's the real cost of hosting something that doesn't get viewed often? Space on a hard drive in a server rack somewhere? Maybe they're itemizing exactly how much streaming each piece of content costs, but that seems extreme. Unless they're using a third party to run their streaming platform which charges the same amount per like, minute of watch time or something.

Even if they did, you'd think that would level the playing field for all pieces of content. If it's $0.02 per minute of watch time or something for everything that the third party hosts & serves, it doesn't matter what it is.

I don't know. I've just sat here for a few minutes running through the different reasons a less-frequently-viewed piece of content might actually cost them enough to justify removal, and none of it comes out to anything that makes sense.

I get why not releasing something that's absolutely terrible might be a bad idea for a large franchise, but the rest of those seem like your typical one-off, "direct to VHS" kind of movies that have existed forever and are obviously profitable somehow.

I mean, if it hits some degree of public broadcast, then we're all just gonna torrent it either way, if it's the only means available...

My guess it's mostly about licensing? Movies or shows that are under contract for say 3 years, part of an expiring bundle, or changing ownership in the background, stuff like that.

dejanzie wrote:

My guess it's mostly about licensing? Movies or shows that are under contract for say 3 years, part of an expiring bundle, or changing ownership in the background, stuff like that.

That’s what I’ve read. They can pay off the license early (presumably for less?) so the rights will transfer back to the owner who can re-license elsewhere.

dejanzie wrote:

My guess it's mostly about licensing? Movies or shows that are under contract for say 3 years, part of an expiring bundle, or changing ownership in the background, stuff like that.

It's always licensing. Always. This is why I can never fully trust streaming services. If I love and wanna rewatch and thing I'll buy the blu-ray.

Veloxi wrote:

It's always licensing. Always. This is why I can never fully trust streaming services. If I love and wanna rewatch and thing I'll buy the blu-ray.

Same. I constantly have to remind myself that these services can make every promise on earth, but if I buy a movie on Amazon and for whatever reason, they lose the licensing, ker-poof, I ain't got access to that movie anymore.

Prederick wrote:
Veloxi wrote:

It's always licensing. Always. This is why I can never fully trust streaming services. If I love and wanna rewatch and thing I'll buy the blu-ray.

Same. I constantly have to remind myself that these services can make every promise on earth, but if I buy a movie on Amazon and for whatever reason, they lose the licensing, ker-poof, I ain't got access to that movie anymore.

You're conflating content being licenced to a streaming platform, and you purchasing the licence to content for yourself.

The former has a time-limited licence, the latter doesn't.

The only way you lose access to a movie you purchased on Amazon is Amazon going out of business.

In a sudden, brilliant flash of insight, I had the epiphany that Edgar Allen Poe must have had a leaky faucet - and thence, "The Tell-Tale Heart". Just imagine - he's sitting alone in his room, struggling with writer's block, and from the other room: drip... drip... drip... I mean the picture paints itself.

Sadly, one web search on the history of indoor plumbing later, the hypothesis is on shaky ground. But I reckon I'm going to start spreading it around anyway. Other people create urban legends; why can't I?

It's kind of nuts to me that "King of Pain" was released in 1983, because it just does not sound like a song from the early 80's. Late 80's, sure, but not early.

Saw the new Top Gun finally.

That is the most movie-movie I've ever seen. No one in Hollywood understands making movie-movies like Tom Cruise.

My grandfather on my dad's side died when I was pretty young, around 7 years old, if I recall correctly. I remember bits and pieces of him, interactions and the like that have stuck in my memory, but not much about his relationship with the family at large.

But about a decade ago, my dad joined a group in the Catholic Church called the Secular Franciscans. At the end of the induction ceremony, he was shaking hands with people leaving church and someone made some kind of comment about how his parents would be proud. My dad's response was "Well, my mom would be," or something like that - definitely something either explicitly or implicitly saying his dad would NOT be happy.

I thought it was curious and never asked about it, but recently, I was taking my car to a dealership to have a recall taken care of, and he gave me a ride home. We were driving through a part of town notorious for speed traps, and told me about one time when his dad got pulled over for speeding. The cop recognized my dad as an altar boy, said as much, and let them off with a warning. After the cop let them go, my grandmother said, "See what the church can do for you and your son?"

This is two tidbits of evidence now that my grandfather was either not Catholic, or potentially a full-on atheist. I am super curious if he was. I was always under the impression that he was also Catholic. His funeral certainly was, but the funeral was put on by his widow. These incidents lead me to believe that he wasn't. Just makes me wonder if I'm not the first atheist in the family.

If a game is going to have hit chance it needs to show me the dice or risk me getting mad. No idea why a 1 on d20 feels better that missing a 99% chance shot but I am willing to put up with far more crap rolls if I can see the dice.