Zeusthecat

Yeah, I wasn't totally sold on it at first. It probably took about 9 or 10 episodes before I started to really enjoy it. Thankfully, there are a good number of episodes with more serious or abstract concepts that are handled really well and I think do a good job of balancing out the goofy, dumb episodes. Plus the soundtrack was just absolutely fantastic. I'm a sucker for shows and movies with good musical scores and it is an integral part of the experience for me.

Oh hey, Super Mario Bros 3! The first 5 worlds or so are pretty much baked into my being at this point as I've played them countless times from adolescence through adulthood. I've been playing this on and off with my daughter for a while now (the Super Mario All-Stars version on SNES) and we just hit world 5. I currently have 39 lives and hope to get that a bit higher by the time we hit world 7. But I'm also letting my daughter take all of the bonus areas so I've got jack shit for items and all of my extra lives have just come from standard 1-ups and getting the three stars matched every three levels. I haven't used a warp whistle in at least a decade though. I got too tired of the same old worlds so most of the enjoyment of the game for me comes from going through worlds 3-7. I only got motivated enough to actually push through the entire game maybe once or twice before though so I typically end up losing interest after doing the first few levels of world 8. Them damn ships just start going too fast and I stop having fun.

Okay, well I guess when I finish with Cowboy Bebop I know what my next two are going to be. Also, I watched the first episode of Tokyo Ghoul. Seems like a pretty cool concept. I'll get back to that after I attend to these other more important matters.

Finished Space Dandy. Really loved it. Might be one of my favorite shows ever. There were so many episodes that were just so good I can't decide which one was my favorite. Although it might have possibly been "A World Without Sadness, Baby". That soundtrack too. A couple months ago I purchased the recent Blu Ray release of Cowboy Bebop since I've never seen it and everyone says it's the best thing ever made. Seven episodes in and it's pretty awesome so far. But it hasn't reached Dandy levels of awesome... yet. I kind of wish I would have watched Cowboy Bebop first since I'm already noticing some things that were referenced in Space Dandy and it might have furthered my appreciation of that show. Oh well. I've never paid any attention to who makes what when it comes to anime. I kind of just go with whatever I see you guys recommending. But now Shinichirō Watanabe is on my radar and I think I need to watch whatever else he's done because his style is fantastic.

Just wanted to drop in and mention that I'm about 20 episodes into Space Dandy and absolutely loving it. What a fantastic, fun and random ass show.

It's not perfect at the beginning but it's a hell of a lot more grounded in reality than the second half where there are talking dogs and a magical dude who stopped aging at 60. Plus, didn't someone actually try this with a small house once as an experiment? Yes, yes they did

1. I'm very thorough with this type of stuff. Usually I will roam an area multiple times and scan every boundary to make sure I don't miss anything. 2. I died and had to restart A LOT. Like many many many times. There were some encounters I spent over 2 hours on because I just cornered myself with a really bad build apparently. 3. The game crashed to desktop a lot, especially in the DLC. So lots of lost progress there. 4. Some time spent idling while I was away from the game. The 138 number is what Steam shows so I imagine my actual game saves are a decent amount shorter.

Thank you for saying what I was thinking! For Up to be one of only 3 animated movies to make that category utterly baffles me. The whole second half of the movie makes no sense and is full of talking dogs flying miniature planes and a really old dude inexplicably zip-lining between aircraft. He had to use that chair thing to get down the stairs in his house at the beginning and yet he had the strength to do death defying aerial stunts. I just hate when movies start out with a somewhat realistic premise, build it for a little while, and then throw talking dogs and stupid shit like that into it. Also, how is his childhood idol somehow younger and more nimble looking than he is? That dude had to have been 30 years older than him at least which would have made him what, 110?

Not that I recall. I know at one point earlier in the mission the guards didn't want me to go down there but once I knocked her out and was carrying her, I remember just being able to stroll down there right past some maids and guards without anyone saying a thing. I distinctly remember worrying about how I was going to sneak past everyone with an unconscious woman strewn over my shoulder and then finding that nobody seemed to care or notice. Maybe they just assumed she was passed out drunk?

So my backlog hasn't moved an inch in the last couple months thanks to the monstrosity that is Dragon Age Origins and all of its DLC. I'm at about 138 hours and have knocked out the main game, the Awakening DLC, and 2 1/2 other DLCs. I'm working on Leliana's Song right now and have one more to go before I can finally call it a day. I love the game but Jesus Christ this is just a bit too much. The gameplay and combat is just not quite good enough to keep me fully engaged and interested for this long. On the bright side though, I should be able to knock out like 10 more games in the same amount of time it will have taken me to finish DA:O. Glad I got this one out of the way early because it will be smooth sailing from here. Edit: And this game crashed to desktop a ridiculous number of times. That has been very very frustrating.

I actually had a friend over last weekend for the first time in a long time. We loaded up the Mega Man Collection on GameCube and decided to give Mega Man 2 a whirl since it is such a revered classic. Neither of us had played it before but we were able to at least get to the boss on each of the stages we played relatively easily. In that regard, the game was a blast and we enjoyed going through the levels and getting a bit further each time until we finally got to the end. And then the bosses murdered us repeatedly and we kept getting game overs and eventually just booted up Smash Bros Melee. I know there is a certain order you can complete them in to make it easier but the game reminded me how much I prefer every other part of a video game much more than any boss battles it might have. There are definitely exceptions to this but generally, the only boss battles I really like are ones that are easier than the rest of the game.

Ah cool thanks. I looked it up a bit and I think my confusion came from the fact that when I was taught about Ellen White having her hallucinations about people going to New Jerusalem on a giant staircase after the second coming, it was layered on top of the stuff mentioned in Revelations. So the conclusion that I remember being taught in adventist schools growing up was that only 144,000 people would make it to the top of that staircase and make it into heaven while the rest would remain on earth and burn for thousands of years. And of course, those 144,000 were entirely comprised of seventh day adventists because that was the "correct" religion. Those were pretty shitty odds either way and I spent most of my childhood figuring I wouldn't make it into that exclusive group because everyone around me seemed impossibly more pious than I was. Nothing like being depressed through large portions of childhood all because of a big game of pretend with impossible rules. It's hard to keep this stuff straight too because I never know if what I was being taught was what the religion officially believed or if it was just the interpretation of whatever batshit teacher I had at the time or whatever crazy pastor was running whatever church we were attending. That shit was all over the place and even in the adventist community, there were multiple fringe groups and "crazy" churches. Like churches where they considered it a sin to beat a drum in the church because music with drums was offensive. Also, random funny thing. I was taught growing up that during the second coming, Jesus would come down and save us but that there would also be fake Jesuses everywhere that were really satan in disguise tricking people to follow him. However, all of the fake Jesuses would stand on the ground while the real Jesus would levitate because he would be too pure to touch the ground of the sinful earth. So as long as you made sure to follow floating Jesus during the second coming, you were one step closer to getting to that big staircase that you would have to walk up to make it to heaven. I am not exaggerating here either, these are literally all things I was told by various religious folk as I grew up in seventh day adventist towns.

I think I know what you're talking about, but only in the context of what I was taught growing up as a seventh day adventist. Is that a reference to Ellen White or a different thing? I'm always curious to know if the stuff I was taught growing up was unique to seventh day adventism or if it shared a lot of elements with other faiths that followed supposed modern prophets.

I am super annoyed with Office 2013 for some reason. The company I work for finally went from 2010 to 2013 last year and at this point it just seems like they are making completely unnecessary changes that just force you to re-learn where things are located. I still use 2003 at home and I honestly can't think of anything from the 2007 versions onward that isn't present in some fashion in the 2003 version (although I'm sure there are some that I just never use). And what was up with changing the extension for Word documents from .doc to .docx several years back? Was that just their way of trying to kill backwards compatibility and force people to upgrade? To be honest though, at this point I am at least sold on the ribbon interface. From a UI design standpoint, it is definitely a superior way to communicate where things are, making it easier for people who are new to a program to find what they need. We implemented a Telerik WPF ribbon interface for our program and our clients have seen it as a vast improvement over our old interface as there is less hunting and pecking to find things. So I've come around on that at least. Aside from that layout re-organization though, the rest of the changes I've seen implemented in Office just seem minimal and unnecessary.

I haven't managed to catch one of these yet but I followed you so hopefully I catch the notification while you're still streaming next time.

So about two weeks ago they went in and removed my 5mm kidney stone. They had to put me to sleep and shove a camera up there, then blast it to pieces with a laser and extract the pieces. They had to leave the Stent in my ureter to make sure it heals properly and it is the worst fucking thing ever. It has been constant pain since then from my kidney all the way down to where the ureter connects to the bladder. I can't overstate how fucking miserable it is. On Monday I get to go in and have them yank it out through my you know what and it is a little bigger than an IV tube. At least I got a souvenir picture of the stone before they pulverized it.

Yeah, no problems here either. My PS4 has been very solid and I haven't really heard anything anywhere of any kind of widespread issues.

Tegan, I have a sneaking suspicion that you went back to silhouette avatar because you took my complaint about people keeping their original avatars to the extreme. If that's the case, you won whatever weird game this turned into and you are the cleverest. I hadn't anticipated that and now my complaint just seems stupid.

So I'm really digging this whole streaming thing. I've been doing it for a couple months now and have somehow managed to garner a few random followers who just happened to watch my stream and like it enough to follow my channel. One person even wrote totally decent and polite things in the chat and was totally pleasant! Does anyone here who has more experience streaming have any advice for a relative newbie like me on how best to conduct myself and just generally things to keep in mind that might make the stream more interesting to watch? Being better at video games is obviously one but I really have no idea if I'm doing annoying things or being overly repetitive or things like that. So if any of you manage to catch one or just have general advice to give, I would love some constructive criticism. Also, is there any way to display any kind of schedule on your channel or any way to communicate when streams would typically occur? Those email notifications are nice but it seems like typically, people wouldn't just have their email open and be able to immediately jump on. I don't exactly have much of a presence on the internet so I'm fairly limited in my options for communicating these things. Thanks in advance for anyone who has any advice to give.

The last day of this thread feels like an episode of Family Matters.

Not bad. Now we will all do forum battle to see who is the greatest of the Urkels.

Twig, is that an upside down crying penis? If so, I approve.

Did I do thaaat?

Actually, please don't change that.

I can't, in good conscience, ask you to change your avatar back now. I mean, you got a custom avatar from tegan. Actual effort and thought was put into it. You will just have to be laser reindeer from now on and I accept it and love it. But the rest of you, just grabbing random screenshots and changing your avatars on a whim.