Nachimir

The future of Gamin' Grub:

Every time I see this thread title, I parse it as someone looking for advice on circumventing federal labor laws.

Yes! I spend a lot of time climbing hills or hurtling down them on the mountain bike, but even cycle commuting feels badass and free. Being able to go to a place quickly, or even between cities, entirely under my own power feels like total freedom. I feel the same about running, doing it outdoors is excellent; I run in winter, snow, rain, etc.

I enjoyed this description in particular

That makes a lot of sense. I don't often do weights, I probably can't afford a personal trainer, and I think it's the treadmill thing about gyms that gets me the most.

(What synth said). I know a lot of good people, but there are only three men I've met who are genuinely kind, compassionate, unselfish, empathetic and sociable to the degrees I'd like to be. None of them are famous, and they're sometimes very visibly imperfect. They're each strong leaders in their own way, but without any macho bullshit; their focus is usually on serving people. Not in a following orders kind of way, but by intuiting the needs of those around them and arranging things for the good of everyone. Those are the people I genuinely look up to and try to emulate. One is a bike journalist. Regardless of weather, mechanical failures or exhaustion, he always remains stoic, understatedly upbeat, and instantly ready to help others. For him, the ride is about people spending time together, not personal bests. He considers it unethical for a journalist to sell freebies, so whenever he has too much stuff, he shares it out among whoever he knows and thinks might need it. One is an IT consultant. He lives a comfortable existence, has a modest home, and travels quite a lot. I'm friends with his children, who both work at the Edinburgh Fringe every August. On going to visit them one year, both of my friends were going to be working when I arrived. I said "It's okay, I'll just hang out in a bar and read until you're done", and on the bus from the airport I got a text saying "My dad says nonsense and he'll meet you at the bus stop". He was waiting for me as I arrived, took me back to the house to drop my luggage off, made sure I didn't need anything to eat, then took me on a two hour walking tour of Edinburgh, finishing up with meeting his kids just as they finished work. A few mornings later I got up to find he'd done my laundry and made everyone breakfast. This wasn't special treatment, he's like this with almost everyone. He's rarely stressed and always seems to have time to treat the people around him well. One is a game developer, who kind of reinvented himself after working in AAA for a very long time. I don't know him well, but he's universally well regarded, and talented at forming fairly large groups of people into a body of people who feel good and are doing a thing together. I've seen him make really marginalised people feel good and included, and he seems to genuinely understand what it's like to be an outsider. He's good at ironing those kind of kinks and divisions out of groups. Everyone who has worked or hung out with him expresses amazement at how lovely he is. All three act in these ways without seeming to expect much back, and without dialling it up to the point where it's creepy or intense or trying too hard. I don't fully understand how they do that, and that's a worthwhile puzzle to have. Public figures are just media-filtered personas, inherently feeding fantasy and parasocial relationships, which is why they're often a letdown. Even the ones who are genuinely good/heroic/brilliant people are so exhaustingly, continuously confronted with so many hundreds of other people that meeting them will tend to be disappointing. They don't really get to relax or live a normal life in public. I think very few of us can cope with that sort of existence while remaining sane or gracious.

That's exactly how I felt after a ten year gap with no bike. I also feel the same about gyms (like, using your body is a thing you have to pay to do in a special place?), but I've been spoiled with really cheap, good instructor led physical training outside that context.

That's why I was trying not to laugh. I feel marginally less terrible about it because they elected to run 140 miles.

I dunno. Xbox doesn't seem like Palmer's thing, but then neither did selling to Facebook. Microsoft only have a 1.6% stake in Facebook.

Not sure if I've posted this before, but the guy in black is brill. Basil Fawlty in leathers:

Was trying not to laugh, completely lost it at 1:27.

LCN.com are very good, though do charge for privacy. I like them because they're really transparent and obvious about auto-renewal being on or off, and their settings pages for stuff are pretty well laid out. Unreccommedation: Avoid webfusion or 123-reg like a science-fictional plague (webfusion own 123-reg). They're shady as fuck, and seem to commit fraud with paypal to auto-renew things after you turn it off for domains you no longer want. Also, they only have a really limited window during which they allow you to turn auto-renew off, and it has a habit of mysteriously turning itself back on. I cancelled their ability to bill my paypal account, turned auto-renew off, then saw a payment go out several weeks later for a domain I didn't want. Somehow they had re-enabled the paypal subscription and taken money, and many other people online report the same (there was even a case where apparently they failed to get access, then managed it with the paypal account of a business partner that had never been billed in relation to that 123 account before). I opened a case with paypal, they refunded the money very quickly, and 123-reg locked down my account with them, saying there was a "reactiviation fee" that exactly matched the amount they'd tried to steal. Luckily, I had no other domains with them. There seeem to be a lot of poor fucks who end up with really important domains being held to ransom by 123-reg, because of one or two others they no longer wanted.

I backed it after it'd reached the goal, and didn't realise my pledge put it over a particular landmark amount. They sent me a nice message almost instantly saying something like "Hey David, we love you (mostly platonically). Thanks so much for pushing us over [amount etc.]" I was impressed, and am still super looking forward to it. Everything they've put out, even right from the beginning, has had such a consistent tone and vision to it.

Yikes. I hope you're okay and still holding up tegan.

I hope it goes like my 25th: Suffer existential dread the day before. Wake up on morning of birthday, realise "Oh, it's just another day". Never worry about the number again.

tegan: Zardoz. Zardoz. Spoilers for that episode of GoT: http://twitter.com/ViralNinja/status/474216018416377856

Also, in summary: Where is toblix?

Yeah, I feel that way too. Also, if people really, really want it, there are instructions online: http://www.brothers-brick.com/2014/02/21/build-your-won-ghostbusters-hq-firehouse-with-instructions-from-brent-waller/

The only reference I could find to that sort of behaviour was in a wikipedia article, claiming jackdaws sometimes turn on sick and injured among their own. For such clever birds, that's pretty dark :| Lacabra: Eww! I'm not particularly fussy about cleanliness as long as things are sanitary, but I've lived with similar housemates and it seems to go one of three ways: You spend a bunch of time cleaning the stuff that bothers you and come to resent your filthy housemates. You spend a bunch of time reminding/nagging/hectoring your filthy housemates to clean up their filth, and come to resent them. You gradually replace the filthy housemates until you have a more cleanly/less filthy majority. In a house with a roughly 50/50 split where none of those things happened, we found a rota actually worked really well. Part of that was because even the cleanest of us got busy and forgot, which was then visible to everyone and stopped people from being too self-righteous. It built a sense of "we all do some cleaning, and we all get distracted sometimes". Good luck, I hope you aren't subjected to continual grossness.

Oh! I didn't realise it was just going to be ECTO-1 and the minifigs, I thought it was going to be the whole building too. … this is both good and bad Jesus it's like they working through Lego of everything I was forbidden to watch as a child. Expecting The A Team and Rentaghost next.

(quoted because page change) Your unconscious form is taken to the centre of the Dew Bunker then sacrificed to the spreading, snaggle toothed flesh monster that reigns there. The End.