Duckman

Found Weav's thread with the perma-invite in the Blood Bowl thread here so I am in now.

Not sure if there is a better place for this topic so I guess here... Is the Discord link above validating that my e-mail here and in Discord are the same? And if they are not, what do I do? I am trying to join but once I get into Discord I seem to be unable to join and I am looking at a ghosted server where I cannot see any of the channels.

My guess would be a short. What you have described is something you can see if you over-tax power on the motherboard. An older mobo supporting a higher end videocard on a slot that can just barely handle the power draw can and will eventually start shorting across the pins. This results in a clean reboot when it shorts. More strain on the card results in more power draw and kicks the short causing a reboot. Without identifying where the short really is this one can be hard to fix. That's just one of many options, of course... It's just the one that always bites me when I have upgraded a graphics card on a machine.

Just finished Tenet (for probably the first time of many). I'm not normally much of a fan of Pattinson but all the leads in this did very well (in particular Branagh). I thoroughly enjoyed Inception although I did after multiple viewings have problems with the "layers within layers" concept at some points. Like Inception, Tenet is thoughtful sci-fi and on the first watch I enjoyed it thoroughly. It's possible that later I may pick up something that I see as a flaw but after the initial watch it hangs together well and does some very interesting things both cinematically (much like Inception did allowing Ariadne to play within the dream) and in terms of writing and plotting. In the end, definitely a film worth multiple viewings.

<shrug> The movie was fan service. And I don't mean you, Munk. I mean the little girls who watched Wonder Woman in '75. The same ones who thought that the easter egg in the credits was the best easter egg "evaaaah". Far be it from me to criticize that when I enjoy the Marvel fan service scenes for boys. I agree with some of your critiques. I felt like they threw away both Wiig's character and Pascal's character. I considered the Trump reference you made but decided that if there was anything there it was thin and in the eye of the beholder, not the kind of parallel that a good writer would draw. My problem was more fundamental... The whole monkey's paw mechanic which was so shoddy and poorly thought out... What it takes and how many wishes it can grant... And as you say, the third act is based on the "you said 'touches', no backsies" idea that is akin to listening to a flat earther and then declaring that there are no mountains because then the earth would not be flat. At the same time I get why they included Pine... First, Pine and Gadot have chemistry and the guy they subbed him in for has all the chemistry of a noble gas (while being a recognizable actor for all the women who watch Hallmark movies, remember who I said was the target audience?). Second, it is a visual tie to the wish, the fantasy that has to be present to implicate Wonder Woman in the evil plot. As escapism, it was passable but not nearly as good as the first. It lacks the action punch for an action movie. It lacks the nostalgia hooks for a nostalgia movie. In short, it is what DC always does... Trying to follow in the footsteps of Marvel but failing to understand how to actually pursue or even focus on a specific goal. Like everything DC has done in the last two centuries, it was worth watching once for completeness if that is your thing but was otherwise pretty forgettable unfortunately. I'd give it a solid 2/5. 2.5/5 on a good day. Rotten Tomatoes gives it slightly better than 3/5.

It was released as a mini-series on TV. Starred David Tennant and Michael Sheen. May have been a letdown since it didn't follow the original book closely but I really enjoyed it.

If you know how to force the right phone number onto telemarketer calls, please share. The point of having a phone is wasted if I have to have a white list to avoid that oh-so-important message to Carol about anti-cancer drugs. (And if I ever fid out who Carol is who entered my phone number on some useless form I won't be able to visit Raindog ever again.)

Not to mention that the boy walked away from more than one crash that left people amazed that he was still alive. An amazing man and from what I have read also a good man.

Let's not go there, Ish. I'm less than 2 weeks from being 29 years past Lastday. Hippo, Birdy, 2 Ewes, Blustorm.

I myself will carry you to the gates of Valhalla. You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome.

I didn't realize that he was younger than Roger Moore until we were looking to compare them this weekend... There were a couple of his titles that didn't stand out for me but so many of them were things that I grew up with and that stuck with me.

I was looking for Shadownrun but they made such a has of 6th edition that my gaming group walked away from it. I like the setting but at this point I am waiting for Topps to take the license away and give it to someone who cares about it more than their bathroom (see history of embezzlement at Catalyst). The lore for Cyberpunk is different but parts of it are really fun (mostly the corporate stuff). Their idea of cyberspace is ancient (written in 1990 so it was all around phone exchanges and spoofing) but it sounds like that is being updated with an almost complete overhaul. I'm not sure how I like the degree of lethality in the system but I am looking forward to something that should at least be well edited and internally self-consistent.

Many probably know that Cyberpunk 2077 is coming and CD Projekt Red has announced it is gold and they will be meeting their November release date. What you may not know is that R Talsorian games is releasing Cyberpunk Red at the same time which updates their rules from the Cyberpunk 2020 edition (published back in 1990). There has been a starter kit for CP Red for a year or so and they had expected to release the core rulebook earlier this year but like all things it slid... It has also "gone gold" in the sense that it is at the printer now and they expect to deliver hard-copy in about 4 weeks as well.

To be honest, what I want is a virtual table that allows me to move without a grid so that I can play Warhammer or similar games in a totally virtual environment. Virtual Tabletop is making strides in that direction but last time I tried it I found that A) lack of support from most major game companies and B) lack of support for good design of tools made a wargame tedious (although that has been a while). Ideally showing movement (e.g. straight forward with wheeling or turn in place for square bases, range of motion for skirmishers with blocking terrain correctly considered, etc) and then allowing things like movement-enhancing spells to alter the range of a unit for one turn.... Handling combat as an option (throw virtual dice or allow for changes to the unit due to manual dice and combat resolution)... Doesn't seem all that demanding to me.

Happy birthday, Bill Murray?

To determine terminal velocity you would need to know the density of what you are falling through, hence terminal velocity in air is much higher than terminal velocity in water (exactly the same math). Your terminal velocity in the high atmosphere is correspondingly larger than your terminal velocity in low atmosphere and yes, you can still make a sonic boom. https://blog.wolfram.com/2012/10/24/falling-faster-than-the-speed-of-sound/ The friction causing him him to heat to glowing red-hot is wrong but for other reasons. The red nimbus around, for example, the space shuttle is, in fact, super-heated *air* in a plasma, not the shuttle itself. The shuttle skin itself reaches about 1650 C according to NASA and that is barely enough for the shuttle itself to get above infrared radiation (See Planck blackbody curves.)

I wish I could make pozole these days... I have some really promising recipes for pozole rojo but I really should not be doing the hominy that comes along with...

I think we're all going to say essentially the same thing but we're going to couch it in different terms depending on how we view number systems. I tend to think in logarithmic terms. It's just a factor of my background. Others may think in terms of "doubling" which is a form of logarithms but is specifically base 2 instead of base 10 or base e. What I find more interesting is a comparison of the systems where it applies and a systems where it does not. Computer systems tend *not* to follow Benford's law. We set up systems which are not "naturally occurring". From the wikipedia entry: Those are some of the more boring examples, but the wiki article does highlight some interesting cases like Pricing and accounts with fixed minimum or maximum values (e.g. $100 minimum balance, $250,000 FDIC insurance, etc.) or non-random distributions. Of particular interest is the list of things that we think of as non-random which still follow Benford.

I have never done it personally but I have had drinks with it and I can second the statement that it makes the right whiskey drinks fantastic.

For those interested in oven finishing steaks, check out this thread and, in particular, the 4th post (boar_d_laze). I learned more about cooking steaks *correctly* from this one post than from 20 years of practice prior to reading it. https://cheftalk.com/threads/finishing-a-steak-in-oven.41684/

Yeah, mean and Gordon Ramsey are both morons. Personally I like the pan sear, oven finish method (alternatively I also like mine rare enough that I am done when I finish my sear unless it is really a thick cut).

ftfy Both failure to deliver and destruction of are federal crimes. If you can demonstrate that it was intentionally targeted and not systematic you can get the carrier fired. All you would need to do to show proof is show some mail in the box and other left out with the same postmark.

I'm not worried about the trading itself... I am concerned about good source material for 4, 5 or 8 layers deep backstabbbing between traders. The actual system is DarkSun under 4th Ed D&D but I am looking for some deeper motivations for some of the trading houses they will be working with.

I am ok as a GM but I have a weakness where it comes to political scheming. I can make schemes which are one or two layers deep but when trying to go deeper I have problems... This is especially true in the more subtle interplay of money and trading instead of straight political power or influence. Does anyone have good source material (whole systems or just modules) that develops good schemes for trading and trade houses? I went looking for some Dune resources to see if I could get good descriptions of plots between those houses (although I am looking for more depth than was represented in the infighting between Atreides and Harkonnen. Other systems are an options as well, I am not wedded to Dune's houses or anything. If you have any good suggestions for such interactions I would pointers.

Gotta say, reading that with tired eyes in the morning can only leave me imagining what a cheesecake Pringle would be like.