efaardvark

The only giant fish I remember offhand was in Angel Beats, but that one doesn't fit with the rest of your description.. https://www.google.com/search?q=angel+beats+giant+fish&prmd=ivn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&biw=320&bih=460

Blizzard has apparently (re)released the original, 1996 version of Diablo. Via GOG of all places. For anyone not familiar with GOG (Good Old Games), they're a place to (legally) purchase unrestricted games. None of the games on GOG have DRM or require "activation" or online connection to a mothership or any of that sort of nonsense to play. You buy it, you download it, and you play it. "You bought it, you own it" is their motto. Anyone who's familiar with Blizzard, on the other hand, knows they don't do non-DRM. (Diablo is, currently, the only Blizzard title on GOG.) Ok, so 1996 was a while ago. This is no doubt a last-gasp attempt to get some money from the title. Still, to me it seems quite odd to see a Blizzard title on GOG.. https://www.gog.com/game/diablo (also https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/original-diablo-is-now-on-sale-for-10-drm-free-but-not-on-blizzards-app/ )

Years ago I watched a number of episodes of Asura Cryin' but never finished it, so I thought I'd go back and do so.

Right now rain and a thunderstorm are keeping me from getting any sleep. Guess I'll try watching some anime.

The art seems to be alive and well with newer games as well. My favorite line, "Some of those holes must be the guys that went before us." That's so Kerbal!

Some days it is hard to include /everyone/, but that's a nice default.

Well, it takes a certain amount of time to watch either way. In that sense it is kind of the case of 6 of one vs a half dozen of the other. If you have time, you have time. If you don't then you don't. What I've found though is that I often wind up effectively watch a lot of episodes twice, once when it comes out, then once again before next week's episode as a refresh. So what I (usually) do instead is wait for the season to be over, then pick a good time to binge the whole thing at once. I've got a Crunchy queue a mile long that I can always pick from if I have an afternoon/evening free. That's more my style. Arranging my viewing schedule around the episode release dates seems to just complicate my life. Also, this way I don't have to deal with cliffhangers. There are dangers doing it this way too however. When bingeing it is very easy to "just one more episode" until the sun comes up for instance. (I have the same problem with books.) There have been lapses of course. I waited, but then "accidentally" watched all the episodes to date of TenSura, and I just could not resist watching every episode of The Magician's Bride as it came out. But usually I find the most effective use of time is to wait at least until the season is over, then binge.

I think one of the biggest time-savers that I've managed so far was to NOT watch TV! I dropped my old-school TV habit well over a decade ago, well before "cable cutting" was a thing. I used to waste so much time in front of the TV just channel-surfing. I'd get home from that long commute and spend /another/ couple hours/day in front of the TV. Including the 20 or so minutes/hour of commercials! OMG.. I cringe now just thinking of it. I still watch video of course, but now I pretty much only stream stuff, only when it is compatible with my schedule, and I don't watch anything with commercials in it. Anime I'll binge from Crunchy or one of the other streaming sites. At this point even most of my DVD library I've ripped and put on my Plex server. Not watching TV gave me a huge chunk of time to spend on other things. I agree that commutes are a killer. For a while in my very early career I had about a 50 mile commute. One way! That's at least 90 minutes on the road every day on the freeways around here. If there was an accident or something it could easily be double that. The job itself was ok, but I quit because of the commute. That was just too much wasted time. Wasted time driving of course, but also wasted time working the extra hours to pay for the gas and car maintenance. My next job was about 2/3rd of the distance, but it was also shift work, 4 days on, 4 days off, and 12 hour shifts. Still not ideal, but that worked out much better because I was only commuting the shorter distance half my days instead of 5/7ths, and often not during the crazy-traffic "rush" hour. The 12 hour shifts were tougher because if you're working 12 then you only have 12 to eat, sh-t, shower, shave, etc. before you have to be back on the job. There was NO time to do anything else. On the other hand, the 4 days off were wonderful. Usually I had to spend the first day off taking care of everything that happened during the previous 4 work days, but that still basically gives you a 3-day weekend every "week"/cycle. If you have to commute a long way then that's probably the least-painful way to deal with it. (Assuming it is an option.) These days I'm back on a regular 8 hour, 5 day schedule, but my commute is only about 6 miles and I'm spending a LOT less time on the road. I spend less time commuting per week than I used to spend on the road per DAY. Just in terms of commute time that's given me back over 6 hours per week - nearly an hour every day - that I can do other things with. It also has other benefits. I can literally be walking into my office at work 20 minutes after waking up. (Not my usual mode, but it has happened. There'll always be that middle-of-the-night panic call that just can't be dealt with by logging in from home.) I can also do things like run home for/during my lunch break. I do actually prefer working at work however. Less distractions for one thing, and I find it easier to keep in touch/tune, both with my co-workers and with the "office vibe".

So I realized something. My recovery pod. You know, the one I didn't test? Yeah, about that.. I, um, kinda... forgottheparachutes. I was also worried that it would tumble on reentry, but at least that's fixable by piloting. (BTW, did I mention it has no pilot, just a robot/drone core? Yeah.) Forgetting the parachutes however, well, you can't fix stupid! So I built a new recovery pod and am sending it up to bring the tourists back, this time with Valentina as a proper pilot and a with a delivery of fuel to replace what the lander used. Val seems happy about it, though maybe it is just because she knows that Jeb is on the station too. (Personally, I think Jeb and Val have a thing going.)

It is never pleasant to have family die. Still, 100 is a nice run. If I make it to 100 I'll count that a win. My grandmother on my mom's side made it to 93, in spite of not taking very good care of herself. My mom is nearly 80 and still goes to the gym several times a week. I'm hoping I got some of those genes! I wish I had video of great/grand/parents & other family members. I am jealous. That would be awesome! I'd even (try to) learn another language just to be able to understand it, if necessary. I do have pictures but often the people in them are dressed and posed for a special occasion, especially the REAL old ones, so you don't really see their normal selves. Video can be much better at conveying what people are actually like.

Yeah, you have my sympathies. Adulting sucks. It's always getting in the way of my reading, anime, and gaming.

I loaded my lander with tourists and took them along for the ride while I gathered science from both Minmus and the Mün. The lander has enough delta-V to orbit both moons, or to orbit and land/take off on one, but it can't land on both moons in one trip without refueling. The tourists didn't need to land so I thought I'd get the orbit science from both moons on one circuit and schedule trips for the surface science later. Then I brought the lander back to dock with the science station to refuel, drop off the tourists, and deliver the science data to the scientists in the station's lab. The lander can't land on Kerbin (earth) either so there's a recovery pod docked at the opposite end of the station from the lander. It is supposed to bring the tourists back down to the surface safely, but it er, *mumble*hasn't been tested yet*mumble*. Hope it works!

I've thought about Scotland as well. The people a couple generations back on my dad's side, supposedly Grants and MacLarens, come from the Scottish Highlands. The MacLarens are from Creag an Tuirc in Balquhidder and the Grants from Stratherrick near Inverness. I'm not big on traveling, but it'd be cool to someday visit those places at least. Amazing scenery, as you say, and Stratherrik is very close to Loch Ness so trying to get a peek at Nessie while I'm there could be fun too.

/me wonders why anyone would name the rest if their muffin /me needs coffee, badly

Or d) Rimuru's been up to something off-screen with Shion and Shuna and those are his(?) kids. I mean, if it were cytokinesis they'd basically be clones.. iow, the same color, and I'd expect them to be roughly the same size. Instead they're smaller, and different colors. Not that he couldn't change size and/or color if he wanted as well but... pretty suspicious if you ask me. Maybe he's chill with the girls in the bath because hey, been there, done that.

They don't really have a genre for me, at least not one that's currently en-vogue. I know I'd personally rather be a couple hundred years in the future.. Fox Cluster or bust. I like parts of some genres though.. Full-cyber. Ubiquitous "built-in" wireless. Functional telepathy and (machine mediated) telekinetics. Personal nanite clouds. Full-dive Aincrad for entertainment like we do WoW or Skyrim. Routine space travel, including space colonies. Nuke-powered everything. No warp drive though, or even FTL communication. Not a dystopia. Not a total utopia either though. Realistic. Maybe one colony is totalitarian - sucks to be them - but another is pure democracy.. everything put to instantaneous vote via communal "telepathy", with machines doing all the menial work. And the other few hundred colonies are everything in between. Pick your poison. Definitely not "magic" either. Physics rules, still and always, even if the "indistinguishable from" clause of Clarke's 3rd law might apply in certain instances. Magic as a term is too hand-wavy anyway. What does it mean, exactly? Authors invoke magic when they're too lazy to do the job right. First thing I'd do with magic would be to turn it into a proper scientific discipline. I'd say GitS-style cyberpunk probably comes closest, but interdisciplinary in scope. GitS is too focused on the cyber part and ignores a lot of other areas of human endeavor. If we had full-cyber technology alone I guarantee you we'd also have space colonies very soon thereafter for instance, not to mention deep-sea cities. Even that is just scratching the surface. Which animes or genres are ultrahard-science futurism, without crossing the line into mysticism and magic? GitS meets Planetes, then let their children off the leash for a hundred years or so. That's my genre.

BTW - speaking of that bath scene - what's up with all those other, much smaller slimes in there with them that seem to be clustering around Rimuru?

Well of course not. He's a slime! Is he even a "he" anymore? I mean, he can be a she if he wants, right? If she wants. Er, it? Besides, anyone that can change shape at will like that has .. other options anyway. I do notice that he still spends a lot of time nestled under Shuna's and Shion's boobs though.

TFW you get a message that the developers have scheduled a meeting with you so that you can explain to them how the system works. I'm in operations. Shouldn't they be explaining to me how this stuff works?? Well, at least they can't say I'm doing it wrong.

They should at least link their video comments section(s). The way they have it now, a post on a particular episode is not accessible/visible to people posting in/on other episodes, and posts to any episode aren't linked to the forum discussion for that show. That much at least I'd think should be a no-brainer.

My own experience was that it just wasn't interesting. Where people were talking at all they were posting isolated comments, or talking past each other. A certain (small) percentage of posters are just troublemakers that aren't dealt with properly and spoil it for everyone. Some of it was mechanical too. I didn't get along with the editing interface. Bugs that never got fixed. Finding stuff and tracking it can be difficult. Their forum search engine is non-functional. Even just finding your own comments for a followup or something can be hard, never mind that comment you're sure you saw someone whose handle you can't quite remember post somewhere a month or so ago. PMs have been blocked or broken for weeks now with no acknowledgement or ETR from site management. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with some UI tweaks and maybe a bit of enlightened moderation, but that sort of thing has never been crunchy's strong suit. Crunchy's a profit-driven rather than enthusiast-driven enterprise too, so of course there's corporate & legal layers of BS as well as cost vs profit. All IMHO, YMMV, etc... I agree.

Sounds like LA. People around here have no idea how physics works.