Zeusthecat

Somehow my wife and I happened upon tickets to a private screening of The Force Awakens on opening day. I am really excited and really hope this doesn't end up being as big of a disappointment as the last movie I watched on opening day: The Matrix Reloaded.

Those two words go together so beautifully. I think I might shed a tear.

Well maybe my impending upgrade from a 1.5 GB card to a 6 GB card with my new build will help smooth that out. It hasn't bothered me too much overall but some of those dips do get really atrocious, especially when I first load my rocket onto the pad.

Another random thing I forgot to bring up: are you guys able to run this at max graphics settings and still get good framerates? My PC is far beyond the recommended specs and yet I constantly see dips as low as 12 FPS in certain areas. It doesn't strike me as a very graphically intensive game so it's been a little surprising to see it run so poorly.

These forums have been pretty great and have been my only presence on the internet because the internet is usually a pretty damn annoying place. I signed up for the poop jokes and ended up staying for the constant barrage of insightful commentary. I like the balance between the serious and not so serious topics around Idle Banter and find that there is almost always a thread worth posting in that fits whatever mindset or mood I'm in. The mega threads in Idle Banter are great and I wouldn't change anything about this subforum. However, I agree with a lot of syntheticgerbil's complaints about the Video Gaming subforum. I really like going into deep dives about whatever game I'm playing and just generally love to discuss every little detail and what I do and don't like. I feel like that kind of discourse just really never gains enough traction there and I know I at least start to feel a little self conscious that I'm coming across as grandstanding when I do put up a 4 paragraph post about all of my dumb thoughts on a game and nobody responds. I don't know that there is an easy solution though since that is kind of just a side effect of having such a small community. The only games that are going to get more than a few people playing and discussing them are going to be the big releases and the rest of the games out there will maybe just see a few posts trickle in every now and then. That is definitely a bummer for me, especially because I tend to lag a few/20 years behind everyone else on whatever current game I'm playing. There are definitely a few interesting topics I keep up on there but I find myself just glossing over the subforum more and more lately.

I definitely agree that escorting 4 Kerbals to certain spots on the planet or the whole 'do this science thing below 17,000 meters at this spot on Kerbin' are the absolute worst (unless you are good at designing and flying planes, which I'm just not interested in at the moment). I did exactly one of those and have never touched those contracts again. Luckily I have had plenty of other interesting contracts since then and have been able to ignore those entirely.

Fair enough, I can understand that. From my perspective though, that cool launch that I really want to do is way cooler when I have to do a bunch of other stuff for 40 hours to even earn the right to launch whatever behemoth I am shooting for. Maybe I'm being a little sarcastic but there is sadly a lot of truth to that.

I haven't tried Science mode yet but I am having quite a bit of fun in standard career mode and have never had any issues with financing. Any time I've started to run a little low I would just grab a few contracts that I could knock out with a fairly simple rocket or do a round trip to an area of Mun or Minmus that I hadn't been and get a nice influx of cash. Also, visit the administration building and activate a strategy that sacrifices reputation for funds (I honestly still don't understand what reputation is even for but mine is green so whatever). I find working within these constraints interesting and I like these little mini diversionary goals you have to set to continue making progress towards whatever larger goal you might have in mind. This was pretty much my mentality with Minecraft too. I played that for several hundred hours and never touched creative mode, sticking purely to adventure mode. I like having some level of reasonable rules and restrictions working against me because it makes the eventual successes so much more rewarding. But then again... I haven't tried Science mode yet.

New Super Mario Bros Wii. I've had this one for awhile and finally got around to beating it with my daughter. It was pretty damn fun and a little bit ugly. I know a lot of people aren't too fond of the NSMB games but I've honestly had a good bit of fun with each of them and they have never disappointed. I also really like sliding down hills on my penguin belly so this game gets extra points for that.

I took last week off and had a few days with no wife and kids to really dig in to this game. I'm suddenly sitting at 84 hours played as of last night and this is now one of my favorite games of all time. No hyperbole here, this game just hits everything I want out of a video game so perfectly. Plus, it introduced me to Scott Manley, one of the most pleasant and intelligent YouTube personalities I have ever seen. His videos have been instrumental in figuring out a lot of the nuances of this game and are full of great insight. So far I have orbitted, landed, and returned from Mun and Minmus multiple times and just sent a new outpost to Duna last night. I can't wait to get home tonight and bring that sucker out of orbit and down to the surface. This will be my first landing on another planet with an atmosphere so this will be an interesting one!

I do kind of feel this way, yes. I've done the strikes to death and they have absolutely nothing else to offer. No reason to do patrol mode or bounties as I have all the reputation and various things associated with those. Nothing left to do on the Dreadnaught as I've gotten all the calcified fragments I need and have done Court of Oryx about a billion times. Nothing that I need legendary marks for any more. Very little reason to farm 310 exotics as I already have most of my weapon and armor slots at 310. All there is for me at this point is running the raid and running some PvP. I haven't really been in the mood for PvP lately so that just leaves the raid. And now that I've completed that a number of times and nearly have a full raid set there isn't much incentive left there either. I could level up some alts or focus on some other meta part of the game to eke out more content but I think I'd have more fun just playing other games(and have been!). For me, this game needs new content badly if I'm going to keep playing it. There is so much potential and even just seeing more year one content get a year 2 upgrade would be enough to keep me playing. Although, it has been pretty nice taking a break from this to play some other stuff.

This describes me perfectly except it was Christmas 10 years ago that my bathrobe obsession started. We need society to get back to the point where it was all bathrobes all the time like when Jesus was around.

Thanks for writing all of that up clyde. I've been pretty curious about the gear VR for awhile and will definitely be getting the oculus rift next year but have never had any opportunity to actually try any of it. So these types of testimonials are all I have to go off of until I buy one.

Well if you recall, I have major pants issues to begin with. I want them running through the wash as much as possible to grind out all the uncomfortable stiffness and itchiness because new pants pressed against my legs sends me into a panic. There is no better pants experience than putting on a pair of pants that have been through the wash at least 100 times. And I disagree on the wet fart thing. Farts are like cigarette smoke. They permeate everything and cling to materials. Source: my dirty laundry.

That is also 5 or 6 days of farts just continuously seeping into the very fabric of your pants. I would argue that I wouldn't want those extra years of life out of my fart riddled pants.

If I wear a pair of pants for one day (single use?) then yes, they go in the wash when they come off.

It isn't Kotaku breaking in to their studio and stealing this information. It is employees freely giving it away.

I'm all about socks with my sandals. Keeps my feet from getting all dirty and gross when I'm walking around outside. Plus I get to pretend I'm a Ninja Turtle if they are flip flops and I have to force that middle between the toe strap to make a wedge in my socks.

Do you think the better alternative is to wait until it is leaked anyways and then report on it? Stay entirely silent no matter what unless you've been given permission to report on it?

I have some socks that have super tight elastic around my lower calves and whenever I take them off it looks like I've had a tourniquet around my ankle all day. It has made me hate any sock that goes above my ankle. On another note I wish all pants had socks stitched into them at the bottom. Those two pieces of clothing don't need to be separate.

If an employee under NDA leaks a thing to you and you are a video game website that makes its money reporting on video game news, why would you not report on that? For one, it is a pretty guaranteed way to get a lot of clicks which will make you more money, and for two if an employee is trying to leak something, it is highly improbable that you not reporting on it will prevent it from getting out. Are these NDA'd employees really going to just say "Oh, Kotaku didn't want to publish the info I leaked? I guess I'll just keep it quiet then!". Seeing how they have reported on some of those leaks over the years, I think in the end they are doing more of a service in providing context around those leaks and treating it with some level of professionalism (i.e. acknowledging something is super early in development or maybe trying to postulate on why a thing maybe looks disappointing or whatever) instead of just ending up with a shitshow where the information gets out anyways and the rest of the non-journalist internet mob disseminates and vomits all over all of the information. Kotaku still has their share of shitty journalism but I think them reporting on these leaks ultimately works more in the favor of the people trying to keep it secret than against them.

I've tried to stop wearing socks or slippers too much when my feet are cold. I've noticed in years past that when it gets cold and I start spending larger portions of the day with warm fuzzies on my feet, the foot odor just starts to get out of control. It's so gross. I hate being barefoot and love my socks but I hate smelly feet even more.

I hope I don't articulate this too poorly but I guess the way I see it is that this is an issue that both parties are deeply involved with. I understand that black people are the ones that are negatively affected by it and are always going to have the best perspective on what exactly is wrong and how we should approach fixing things. But at the same time, people that are members of the oppressive party probably also have a valuable perspective on things that the oppressed might not understand as clearly. I mean, as a white guy, I've had the displeasure of having some very uncomfortable conversations with various family members and other ignorant people that have given valuable insight into how and why they think the way they do. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I don't see anything wrong with a bunch of white people organizing to send other white people the message that "Hey, we're being fucked up and we need to stop!". I think that can be a valuable supplement to all of the other protests that are happening. In this case though, I'll concede that there was indeed some nuance around the events I posted that makes it a little tonedeaf.

This feels a bit counterproductive Something just seems a bit off about the notion that if I want to protest in support of a thing, I would need to go find a person that is affected by that thing and ask for their permission first. I don't mean to generalize and I realize there is a lot of nuance around that but looking at the big picture with these issues, I don't think having these kinds of fights between people who ostensibly share the same goals has anything but an overall negative effect on any progress being made.

I'm hopeful that finally getting to the end of my backlog has taught me to never participate in any Steam sales ever again. But as that thought leaves my brain I realize I am building a new computer and I will need some new graphically intensive games to push everything to the limit. So in a sense I need to buy as many games as I can during the Steam sale to justify this new PC. Such a vicious cycle. I've learned nothing.