efaardvark

Owning a house isn't a cure-all expense-wise. Entropy is a thing. Maintenance and repairs will need to be done by someone. Money for repairs, taxes, and all the other etc. will be coming out of the pockets of the one who lives in the house, one way or another. And just to get this on the table.. news flash, landlords have expenses too. As a renter you may not be paying the property taxes or a mortgage directly but I can almost guarantee that the landlord is paying most of your rent check to the tax man and the bank, just as you would be if you owned the property yourself. Sure they take a cut for themselves, but it isn't like they're getting it all for themselves, or even most of it. If the renter doesn't pay the rent, the bank will foreclose on the landlord for not paying the mortgage just as quickly as they would for any other homeowner. This will almost certainly result in the renter having to find another place to live as well. TANSTAAFL. Owning does give you a discount on the monthly payment(s) by cutting out the landlord as a middleman but it often isn't nearly as much as a naive renter imagines. For me what owning mainly does is give you a bit more direct control over the situation. Repairs and maintenance do still need to get done, but they get done on your schedule and to your satisfaction, not some distant landlord's. If you want to make changes - even major ones - you don't have to ask permission of a third party, you just decide things for yourself. That sort of thing. Also, if you're the type who likes to do-it-yourself then that process can be a source of satisfaction and reward in itself. And of course save quite a bit of money, assuming you have the time, money, and ability to do it right. (But even then you have to consider what the value of your time is. I've given up many a weekend or holiday to maintenance and repairs when I'd rather have been goofing off playing games or reading a book. That's definitely a cost, though not accounted for in the monthly dollars-and-cents reckoning.) Full disclosure... I own and pay for an older house that is constantly in need of repairs.

Well here we are again. I still have a soft spot for the first one however.

Went exploring in minecraft and found one of the new cherry-blossom biomes in minecraft. Unfortunately it was pitifully small, with only a couple dozen pink blossoms on the ground and no trees. All I wanted was a single sapling. I even brought my diamond hoe with Fortune on it. I also found some ocean ruins and some suspicious gravel therein. A few minutes of brushing (and dodging tridents from annoying Drowned) got me a little bit over a dozen pottery sherds. Only 4 different types however, "Mourner", "Explorer", "Blade", and "Plenty". Up to 4 can be used to craft a "decorated pot", which gets you a "careful restoration" advancement. The wiki says there are 20 different types of pottery sherds. Collect them all!

“Accept that you are a work in progress, both a revision and a draft: you are better and more complete than earlier versions of yourself, but you also have work to do. Be open to change. Allow yourself to be revised.” ― Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change

Same here. I don't mind the skin if it is an integral part of the story. Same with gore, sex, or anything else you can name. That "gratuitous" word is important, and if the sex, gore, or whatever is the only thing a story has going for it then that's a boring/bad story. Salt and pepper are great as spices, but nobody would enjoy eating a plate full of just those.

Heike Monogatari looks interesting. Just started it but so far, so good.

Sometimes shaders are pretty cool. (Moonrise on the farm.) Sometimes they're quite annoying. (Note the zombie and 3 creepers.)

Captured some aerial "drone" footage of my base in minecraft.

Welcome!

How many Super Saiyans does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one, but it takes 30 episodes. (And probably winds up killing Krillin )

That has got to be the tallest crimson fungus that I've ever seen. And not a single shroomlight on it!

Tubular Bells.. Hard to believe this came out 50 years ago. (and no, is it NOT the "exorcist theme". Not unless you only listen to like the first 3 minutes.)

I did check that out but I didn’t get my free time early enough for this years event. Maybe next time around.

For anyone using the Iris mods for minecraft (i.e Sodium, the popular OptiFine replacement) there's a situation that you might want to take note of. Apparently curseforge has finally broken so completely that Iris, devs for the popular Sodium shaders mod for MC, has stopped publishing new versions to curseforge. The last version on curseforge is Iris/sodium 1.6.1 for mc 1.19.4. Starting with Sodium v 1.6.4 (for mc version 1.20+) this and future versions of Sodium will be published on modrinth. That in itself isn't a big deal but according to announcements on Iris's discord server apparently Curseforge initially decided to punish the Iris folks by deleting their account, citing wording in Iris's curseforce page that directed downloaders to modrinth for more current versions. Not only that but curseforge then allowed 3rd parties to create a "new" mod named Sodium and publish it to curseforge. This was obviously a very dangerous situation as especially with the new version of minecraft there's going to be a whole bunch of people hitting curseforge to dl the latest version of Sodium and not getting the mod they expect. (This all also applies to other Iris-related mods like lithium btw.) As I type this the situation seems to have been resolved, but I encountered it and thought it disturbing enough to want to warn people of the potential danger of downloading and installing a mod from a source they didn't expect. I didn't (and don't) want to get into the gory details here but if you're interested in the background drama/discussion you can take a look at this 'tubie/report on the situation. Also this tweet from the Iris twitter account. There's also the discussion on the Iris discord server that I mentioned earlier, the invite link to which is on the irisshaders.dev page. If in doubt, the main Iris page is https://irisshaders.dev/. Start from there and it should direct you to the proper dl site for the Iris mod(s). hth...

Burl Ives cover of Ghost Riders In The Sky.

Looks like MSFT's Realms still isn't updated to 1.20 this weekend so I'm taking a break from zombies and ancient cities and instead chillin' in the VAB (Vehicle Assembly Building) in KSP. To date I've been using mostly expendable vehicles. I try to build them as cheaply as possible and settle as many contracts per launch as possible but obviously reusable, general-purpose ones would be better, saving money and providing higher profits. To do a good job on reusable vehicles however I need higher-tech parts. But to get the parts I need an upgrade to my R&D lab because I'm pretty much at the limits of the tech that I can get from my lab at its current level. To get the R&D lab upgrade I need money. Money comes from completing contracts, but if I have to build a whole new ship every couple contracts I'm not saving much money. To save more money I need to build more reusable vehicles. Which means I need better tech. Wait.. I think I've been here before. It doesn't help that over time a given type of contract will come offered with lower $$$ payouts. That means that you have to either build cheaper rockets to complete them or else go for the more difficult, higher paying contracts. (Which generally require more expensive, higher-tech vehicles.) So I'm in the VAB getting creative with the lower-tech parts that I already have available to me. No big breakthroughs so far in terms of full reusability but I may be able to increase overall efficiency/profitability in terms of contracts settled per vehicle launched. At least on paper. I haven't flight-tested anything yet and usually the development process includes a few explosions before a new design gets dialed in. But explosions are part of the fun.

Welcome!

First day of summer here brought a beautiful, sunny day to SoCal. Nice change from the weeks of "May grey" and "June gloom" that we've been having for the last month or two. I'm sure that from here it will just get hotter however. By September I'll be complaining about heat and dry and wishing we had some of the gloom back. Not looking forward to the inevitable brushfires that SoCal is infamous for either, once things start drying out a bit.

And yet another pin. This one for Curiosity’s 10-year anniversary. Over 3800 sols and counting.

Spent a few minutes after work here to tackle that iron ore vein that I found the other day. Just kind of curious how much was actually there since I never really counted out what was in the first ore vein that I found. (I'm still working that first one btw. This one seemed smaller.) Anyway, in terms of raw ore blocks (silk touched) the results for this one were: ~7 stacks of iron ore blocks 14 blocks redstone 7 blocks lapis 15 blocks diamonds 20 blocks gold After hitting the blocks with a Fortune III pickaxe that turned into: ~15 stacks of iron 2 stacks redstone 2 stacks lapis 30 diamonds 48 gold Not a bad haul. Didn't take too long either. I tend to get bored fairly quickly with grinding for resources but this only took the better part of an hour to mine out the whole area with a silk-touch/efficiency III/netherite pickaxe. I've got a set up for feeding up to a full chest-worth of raw blocks (and lava buckets from another hopper/chest) into/out of a blast furnace so after that it was just a matter of dumping it all in and waiting a few minutes for the smelting process to run its course. I spent the time playing with skulk blocks that I'd obtained from the ancient city this weekend. Looks like the sensors output a redstone signal that could be used for all sorts of mischief.

Welcome!

That I've EVER watched? I don't remember all of it. For a lot of it it is probably better that way. (Rom isn't my genre anyway.) That said, what Animedragon said, plus these that I do remember... Ore Monogatari Ao Haru Ride Ookami Shoujo to Kuro Ouji Itazura na Kiss Kimi ni Todoke Ookami to Koushinryou Lovely★Complex Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun Zutto Mae kara Suki deshita Kimi no Na wa Toradora! Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso Suki tte Ii na yo Akagami no Shirayuki-hime

This is true.

So first the good news.. I found an ancient city! Now the bad news.. there's a zombie generator somewhere inside it. Word to the wise: you DO NOT want baby zombies coming after you while you're sneaking around in an ancient city!