Windows 2000 was a good operating system by any measure. It was rock solid, capable, well-supported, could scale from desktop to large enterprise deployments and everything in between, reasonably secure compared to their previous operating systems, etc. I never did like Microsoft operating systems, but Windows 2000 was actually good. It was a breath of fresh air at the time. We had NT 4, which was stable and reliable, but was limited by a lack of DirectX and became cumbersome in large deployments. Then we had Windows 95/98/ME, which was the garbage that crashed all the time.

My parents actually did take me to that movie, but I was an infant so I don’t remember. Apparently, it was my first movie. I guess they thought Aliens would be ok after my dad took me to see Rambo: First Blood Part II. Movie ratings didn’t even reach the level of loose guidelines during my childhood. Lol

Aliens.

That movie scared the shit out of me. It’s been more than 35 years and I still don’t like that movie.

I think it’s probably more a situation where they are not a good fit for each other anymore. The D&D license has value and Hasbro rightly wants to capitalize on that. Larian is a hot commodity right now and they don’t need to borrow the credibility that comes with a big license like D&D. There’s also a timing issue. BG4 is unnecessary when BG3 will continue to sell for years to come. Larian will put out at least a couple more games before BG4 makes sense.

Larian is in a position where they can make whatever game they want and it will sell like hotcakes. Why the hell would they want to pay enormous royalties again when they can bring the writing in house? Sure, Hasbro could reduce their fee, but they can’t reduce it to the point where it’s worthwhile for both them and Larian.

If I’m running Larian, there’s no way I’m making another D&D game. The lore is great, but the rule set sucks. There are better systems in the tabletop space and there’s no reason to even be limited to that after you’ve already made the decision to not make D&D. Wizards isn’t exactly a paragon of reliability and stability either so there’s risk there. Not to mention, it was Larian who helped pull Hasbro’s asses out of the fire. They were facing massive backlash from their core customers until a kick ass movie and BG3 made everyone forget about it.

In short, Larian is riding high and Hasbro is not. There’s a lot more money for Larian doing something else and probably good money for Hasbro licensing to another developer.

Why? I think there’s a decent chance they don’t survive this - at least their commercial airplanes. I won’t fly on a Boeing any time soon, if ever. It will take years to get back to a safety culture and there are tons of shit planes manufactured in the past several years that will be in service for decades.

If I was a pilot, I wouldn’t want to fly one either. They just had another incident where a pilot says the gauges went blank and he lost control. If a pilot union starts pushing back, it’s game over.

Would you fly on one of their planes?

100%. That has been exactly my experience. There’s no question it’s a good car, but they always manage to set higher expectations than what they are capable of delivering. You can’t help but feel disappointed even though you have a great EV. It’s really soured me on the whole brand. I would never buy another one.

It’s horrible. My laptop with hybrid graphics works ok except for a brief flicker every time it wakes from sleep. It’s not a big deal. My desktop with dedicated nvidia is a hot mess - constant flickering. Steam is borderline non-functional and there are all kinds of graphical glitches on the desktop. I’m stuck with X11 on that machine.

Then what’s it for? Looking pretty?

Framework if you want to repair it yourself and Lenovo if you don’t. Lenovo makes a good machine and has very reasonably priced on-site support options.

There are all kinds of people who are Christian. Their worldviews and interpretations are as varied as anyone else. Most of the ones I know aren’t the type to go cherry picking passages to use as an excuse to mistreat others. Many quietly lead their lives as an example of Christian faith. It’s often acknowledged among Christians that no one - Christian or otherwise- is perfect and no one but God can judge others.

There are others who didn’t get that memo. They take it all very literally. It’s like they completely missed the point of the four gospels in which one of the themes is Jesus at odds with the Pharisees who are so stuck on the Old Testament that they forget love and compassion. It’s not that the New Testament contradicts the Old Testament so much as it’s teaching that going through the motions and following the rules exactly as written is not the same as living with God and showing humanity towards others.

In my experience, this latter group is often comprised of people who grew up being taught strict adherence to the Bible, with a particular focus on the Old Testament, and born again types whose rigid compliance keeps them on the straight and narrow.

Not all Christians are Republicans or conservative. You really have all types, from the ones you’re talking about to some pretty liberal, polar opposite ones. Some identify with conservative politics because of their Christian views and others are avowed liberals for the same reason.

Most of the Christians I know are good people, and their happiness and just how they live their lives is something you want for yourself. They lead by example. I’ve been around the other ones too and I’m not particularly fond of hanging out with them. Ironically, those were the ones whose outward attitudes and behavior in private were completely contradictory. Basically, they were the kinds of people you probably don’t want to be around regardless of religion.

That’s how I got mine. It’s the best way to buy good office furniture. I’ve heard good things about Steelcase.

I bought a used Herman Miller about 12 years ago for around $700. Worth every penny. It still feels the same as the day I got it. I would have spent more on cheaper chairs over the same period of time.

538 is bullshit. They are wrong as often as they are right. People don’t prefer Trump to Biden or anybody else for that matter. There’s just not a lot of enthusiasm for Biden.

Biden is old and boring. Otherwise, he and his administration have been competent. He has a lot of shit on his plate between the division in our country, war with Russia, and now Israel getting into shit at the worst time possible. Iran is also simmering over there and we have the usual shit from North Korea. Throw in relations with China and this administration has as many challenges as any in recent memory.

The upside is we have a great Secretary of State and the rest of the cabinet has been pretty solid overall. And don’t forget, the administration and the Fed managed to stave off a recession in the midst of all of this, which is a pretty difficult balancing act when dealing with all these external problems requires significant government spending. The Biden administration is doing a much better job than people realize.

In contrast, Trump fucks up everything he touches. Half these problems have his fingerprints all over them to begin with. A reasonable person knows he is not a good executive, even-tempered or capable of engaging with real leaders. This is a guy who turned a $5M judgement against him into $83M because he can’t control himself. He is stupid and reckless. Do you trust him to sit across from a guy like Xi Jinping? I sure as hell don’t. One of leads 1.6 billion people with an iron fist and the other is a clown masquerading as a mafioso.

For Trump to win, he would have to get a lot more votes than he did during the last election in which he was more or less trounced. I just don’t see that happening. Who didn’t vote for him last time and is looking at him now and thinking he’s the guy? He is the worst presidential candidate in the history of our country by a long shot.

Already working on getting permanent residency in another country that doesn’t share a border with the U.S. Not specifically because of loser Trump but we will be more likely to use it if that fucker finds his way back to office.

Honestly, I would be shocked if he ever wins another election or somehow manages to come out on top. He lost by a lot of votes last time. Since then, we watched him on TV while he incited an insurrection, his subsequent behavior suggests he may want to start a civil war, a jury determined he is a rapist, and enough other shit to write a book series.

His post-presidency career is selling NFT’s, shoes, begging for handouts from his idiot followers, criminal defendant, and whatever other scam he thinks of when he wakes up. He’s a petty hustler who inherited money. He’s a loser.

More importantly, he is a criminal. He can’t help himself. He is going to cheat in the election because he cheats at everything. He cheats on his wife, cheats on his taxes, cheats in golf, cheated in an election. He is going to cheat and he will be caught red handed. It’s not unreasonable to wonder if he might get himself arrested for what he does in this election.

He’s already facing four criminal trials. He’s not beating 91 felony charges, especially when most of them are from the feds. They don’t lose cases and they don’t bring high profile cases unless they have the defendant dead to rights.

He is toast and he knows it, which is why he’s so desperate to delay the trials and win the presidency. He is arguably a domestic terrorist. He is arguably a national security threat. The three letter agencies are probably on him like flies on shit. If they’re not, they fucking should be. I don’t believe he will ever be permitted to set foot in the White House again, and that’s assuming he wins in the first place, which he won’t, or cheats his way to victory, which also won’t happen. He’s done.

People with private jets often charter them out when they’re not using them. The best place for an airplane is in the air. Only bad things happen when you let it sit around on the ground all the time. It’s not much different than commercial planes that spend most of their time in the air.

Sure, a private jet will have more emissions than an Airbus, but it’s a marginal increase. It’s not like rich people with their planes are producing a million times more pollution that wouldn’t exist if they didn’t have a private jet. They’re still going to fly, at least for longer trips.

It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole with this line of reasoning. Who else is using less efficient aircraft or taking unnecessary flights? Are all those police helicopter flights necessary? What about people flying to go party on an island somewhere versus some more noble purpose? Or airlines with a half empty flight? Meanwhile, it’s the oil companies producing the vast majority of carbon emissions while we squabble over travel itineraries and choice of aircraft.

Starfield. I want to like it - and there are some things I really do like about it - but it’s just not a very good game. The menus and inventory management is atrocious, which is unforgivable when you have to spend so much time on those screens. The enemies are bullet sponges. It’s not fun dumping a magazine into a guy, reloading and doing it again while the guy just walks right into it like you’re spraying him with a garden hose. I’m ok with there not being a map on remote planets, but it makes no sense that there wouldn’t be one in a city. It’s the kind of stuff you’d overlook if it was an indie early access game, but it doesn’t fly when it’s a $70 game from a major studio. I can’t imagine what they were doing all those years the game was in development because it’s not reflected in the product.

The electric company. AI’s reading articles written by other AI’s. Everyone trying to figure out how to squeeze more revenue out of it. But everyone’s paying the electric bill for all these servers and the electric company doesn’t have to give a shit about any of it.

Where is the evidence of nepotism? The person I replied to mentioned the Stanford degree and immediately jumped to the conclusion that it all comes down to nepotism. Frankly, it sounds like jealousy and taking cheap shots at someone who is doing well. I don’t understand it. Why knock someone else down? She’s successful so good for her. My own success will only come from me. What someone else did or did not achieve or how they did it is irrelevant to what I achieve.

How is getting an MBA from Stanford nepotism? She probably worked her ass off not only to earn the degree but to be accepted to the university in the first place. Without knowing anything about her, I’m going to assume she’s a total rockstar until there’s a good reason to believe otherwise.

I don’t know. Probably. The world’s a big place with a lot of people.

There’s a guy who sits out in front of my cafe every day. You wouldn’t think he was homeless if you saw him, but I see him out there all day every day. He goes to the gym a few doors down for showers and to the laundromat around the corner to wash his clothes. He doesn’t look like he’s on drugs or anything. He’s in his 50’s, his hair is always combed, he’s always clean, appears lucid, etc. He looks like a regular guy you would see at an office job.

The weird thing about him is he does absolutely nothing. No book, no phone, nothing. He just sits there and stares into the parking lot for hours. I don’t know how he does it. We used to say good morning to him and, after he never responded, we kinda just stopped paying him any attention.

Most of the homeless people around here are drugged out zombies. They literally look like they just came off the set of The Walking Dead. This guy in front of my place is the one I notice all the time because of how normal he looks.