Real Life and What's Happening...

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Busy times.

Friday was a holiday party for work, followed by my usual Friday night hangout with my D&D DM & her boyfriend, and our bartenders Joe and Katy (yes, Katy with a "y"). Saturday I went to a friend's film festival during the day long enough to watch three films, then came home and was busy with my Savage Worlds session from around 5:30 pm to 1:00 am. The actual session wasn't that long, but I had to help a new player make a character first, plus time for setup, cleanup, etc. Worked Sunday. Usual Monday night D&D, from about 7:00 pm to 1:00 am. After work today, I'm going to best friend's to watch a movie or two. Friday night, another friend is throwing a holiday party. Saturday, going with yet another friend to see the new Star Wars movie. A friend of his rented out an entire theater out in the suburbs somewhere, so that should be cool. And somewhere in all that, I need to find time to clean house before my mom comes to town on Sunday.
 
Next Wednesday, my wife and I are taking some local friends to visit the UK, 2 and a half week whirlwind tour featuring England and Scotland. I'll be glad to be out of the Florida heat and get to wear cold weather clothes!
Pity about the timing. Had I been in town we could have arranged drinks or something.
 
Cool, where do you have planned? London and Edinburgh I assume.
Haha those two are definitely on the roster, my wife is American but has visited both but our murican friends haven't seen either. York (gotta visit my home shire, see the fam from nearby) and Brighton also have quick visits.

I've visited London many times as most of my Uni mates either live in and/or work in the city. Edinburgh however is a beautiful city that I've only visited the once, with my wife and in-laws. Very excited to go back and branch out. Hoping to take a day visit to Inverness while we're up there.

Honestly visiting Ireland was on the books originally but Brexit uncertainty threw a spanner in the works. Shame, as I would have loved to see it.

Pity about the timing. Had I been in town we could have arranged drinks or something.
Sorry to miss ya! I hope you're enjoying your Indonesia trip regardless!

Katy (yes, Katy with a "y").
Funny you say that, my sister is called Katy but the 'y' is due to my dad not knowing exactly how to spell the name it after she was born. My mum never let him forgot that he didn't spell it the way she intended!
 
First Christmas season since my ex-GF & I parted ways. It's kind of sad to not have someone special to share Christmas with, but my ex had a lot of Christmas-related issues, and everything I would try to make Christmas good for her only made it worse. So it's a bit of a relief to not have to deal with that.
 
First Christmas season since my ex-GF & I parted ways. It's kind of sad to not have someone special to share Christmas with, but my ex had a lot of Christmas-related issues, and everything I would try to make Christmas good for her only made it worse. So it's a bit of a relief to not have to deal with that.

I know how it is, hang in there. See if you can spend it with someone. Maybe a friend or coworker?
 
Just about 2 weeks left before I am done with a certain part of my job duties that gave me a lot of angst. I am seriously considering taping a sock to my door.

family life has improved dramatically since wife started taking some medication for some stuff. Much more tame around the house. She is torn about quitting her job. more that she’s having a hard time telling them that’s enough. It’s ironic because she’s the CLEAR choice (by several of her coworkers statements, including her one-over boss) to be the next leader, but the current boss is such a pain in the ass she might not make it. She would be really good.

son is getting a switch for Christmas, while is getting a new computer that can play Diablo 3. i got myself a raspberry pi to octoprint and some rainbow filament. We will be heading up to my cousin‘s house for that day. Otherwise I’m taking most of 2 weeks off to write gaming stuff, write vision statements, write proposals, hike up the local terrain, print stuff, listen to music, play Video games, and otherwise enjoy my time.
 
Off on holiday to Russia for 2 weeks, as I've never had a Russian New Year. So, will be away for Christmas and New Year. It's a bit chilly, when I get to Ufa it's forecast at -20C and will get to -22C when I get to our flat. Glad I packed an extra pair of gloves.
 
Busy times.

Friday was a holiday party for work, followed by my usual Friday night hangout with my D&D DM & her boyfriend, and our bartenders Joe and Katy (yes, Katy with a "y"). Saturday I went to a friend's film festival during the day long enough to watch three films, then came home and was busy with my Savage Worlds session from around 5:30 pm to 1:00 am. The actual session wasn't that long, but I had to help a new player make a character first, plus time for setup, cleanup, etc. Worked Sunday. Usual Monday night D&D, from about 7:00 pm to 1:00 am. After work today, I'm going to best friend's to watch a movie or two. Friday night, another friend is throwing a holiday party. Saturday, going with yet another friend to see the new Star Wars movie. A friend of his rented out an entire theater out in the suburbs somewhere, so that should be cool. And somewhere in all that, I need to find time to clean house before my mom comes to town on Sunday.
At least it will be warmer than Moscow. I tend to avoid Russia and Canada this time of year...
 
I've been sick the end of this week, just serious stomach problems Thursday and let over fallout Friday, but I was sick before that too. Different reasons though. I'm kinda frustrated with the weather out here it won't stay nice or stay cold, and the yo-yo effect makes me ill. Usually, it would be a game night, but with holidays I don't know what's going on yet for sure. (We normally don't actually start till nine-ish as we get together at six and eat and chill a bit, sometimes we start earlier, but often involves a lot of just friends hanging out.

A bit tired of D&D honestly. I don't want to rush my Wednesday campaign though. I loved the looks on my player's faces when they found out that yes Evil powerful Bog Mummy-Troll King, is the enemy of the city that enslaves trolls, the main crime boss, "The Underking" of the city/and continent (and main slaver.) So at least I had that. Said Underking is also the murderer of one of the PC's (and tormentor for longer that reveal will be monumental!)

The party split into those trying to take down the slaver (since the troll-king while evil, had no reason to kill them personally) and those who decided to try and get the poor non-slave owning town dwellers out of the city (the terrible thing is being the largest city of the world, they'll barely make a dent.) But the trolls aren't targeting anyone not a slaveowner for the most part.

Though I did challenge the paladin's motivation when one troll was going to murder a small family for killing his enslaved son. He asked either for the man's eyes or the man's son. Paladin handed over the son. Which the troll left with (and will raise as a proper troll.) More moral challenges, and unveilings to come. Those are always fun. I'm not big in this campaign on making "all X or Y" evil, in fact, most the peoples are just trying to get by in a horribly vile and corrupted world.

Other than that just trying to feel better consistently. Keep my dogs happy. Run games. Write stuff.
 
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Somehow they fit three beers into one normal-sized bottle...

I'm totally unprepared for Christmas. I spent the last week sick and I haven't bought any presents for my loved ones. But I function best when I'm under pressure and beered-up, so optimism is running high.
 
I'm quite pleased with my travel laptop - a fairly ordinary T430 thinkpad with a 1600x900 display, i5 CPU of some description, 240GB SSD and onboard graphics. It cost the princely sum of £250 and runs Adobe Illustrator pretty well.

One nice thing about Adobe Illustrator is that the UI started out life on much, much older mac hardware so it's gloriously frugal with screen real estate. The 1600x900 display is plenty of room to do some fairly complex mapping work.
 
We get two days off for Xmas (december 25 and 26) and my wife usually prepares something nice to eat, but that's it. No decorating, no family dinners, no presents: no obligations. Love it.

This year though, we've been invited by a colleague of hers on the first day of xmas. She's originally from Cambodia so I'm secretly hoping for some interesting food. :wink:

I was also invited to attend a 'celebration of the birth of King Jesus' on Xmas Eve by a well-meaning but naively evangelical colleague. I think it's better for everybody's sake that I'll pass. It's a Pentecostal communion... :sweat:
 
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According to the news here, there's going to be a solar eclipse over Indonesia tomorrow. Haven't seen one of those in quite a few years (weather permitting - we're in the middle of the rainy season at the moment and it's overcast most of the time).
 
Found Doc Sammy Doc Sammy's Reddit account ...


Reminds me of a house for sale that I went to view once. It was the mother and her son living there, and she was doing the tour while he was stood out the back smoking. So she showed us around the ground floor, fine, then upstairs to see the bedroom. "This is my son's room", she said... and he had a walk-in wardrobe, with stacks of porn mags and DVD's, that he'd just casually left open.
 
I made some Fun Goals for the new year:

  • Read 1,000 comic books. I own far more than 1,000 comic books, so this should not be difficult.
  • Play 365 different board games. This will be somewhat challenging. Note: if I play a stand-alone expansion as a stand-alone game, then it counts as a different game from the base game.
  • Watch 100 movies. Not too hard if I cut back on watching TV shows, and I'm nearly done with several of the TV shows I've been watching.
  • Read 10 novels. Not hard as long as I consciously make time for it.
  • Read 5 nonfiction books, and RPG rulebooks do not count! That stipulation is the part that will make it challenging.
  • Play 5 video games.

And the not-necessarily fun, but definitely necessary goals:
  • Make a budget and stick to it, which should allow me to cut way back on frivolous, impulsive spending and dig myself out of the relatively minor, but still frustrating credit card debt that I put myself in this year. (I had no credit card debt for ten years! It was glorious! Really disappointed that I let myself get in this hole).
  • Get rid of enough stuff that moving to a place with one fewer bedroom would be feasible. Not actually hard, since, although I own a lot of stuff, I'm very unsentimental about most of it. It's just that getting rid of stuff takes time and effort.
  • Continue to improve my physical health, via better eating habits and more exercise, with some specific goals of
    • Fitting into medium t-shirts like I used to
    • Running the Minneapolis-to-St. Paul 10-mile this October.
Merry 2nd day of Christmas, Happy 5th (?) day of Hannukah, Happy belated Solstice, Happy Boxing Day, Happy St. Stephen's Day, Happy National Candy Cane Day, Happy Thursday!
 
I made some Fun Goals for the new year:

  • Read 1,000 comic books. I own far more than 1,000 comic books, so this should not be difficult.
  • Play 365 different board games. This will be somewhat challenging. Note: if I play a stand-alone expansion as a stand-alone game, then it counts as a different game from the base game.
  • Watch 100 movies. Not too hard if I cut back on watching TV shows, and I'm nearly done with several of the TV shows I've been watching.
  • Read 10 novels. Not hard as long as I consciously make time for it.
  • Read 5 nonfiction books, and RPG rulebooks do not count! That stipulation is the part that will make it challenging.
  • Play 5 video games.
For me the second one would be the real killer. I want to read more fiction this year, I've been heavily biased toward nonfiction for the last decade and I'd like to recover how much fiction I would read when I was younger.

Today is Lá an Dreoilín or Wren's day where people dress up as Wickermen and hunt a toy wren. Some towns make a big parade out of it, but it's usually just for kids.

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Seen on the wall of an indie coffee shop in Surakarta - Kiss my artisanal coffee.

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I may have to track down the artist and see if he's up for taking a commission to illustrate a role playing game.
 
Personal log, December 27th. The year is 2019. It is day seven of the in-laws holiday visit. The winter is cold and gray and never ends. . . .


:tongue:
 
Since I've been doing a lot of cleaning and decluttering of my physical space lately, I decided to do some mental decluttering as well. Cut my board game want-list down from ~300 games to ~50 and I'll probably cut it some more. Also cut my DriveThruRPG wishlist down from ~150 items to 7 items.
 
I don't mind at all. I warn you - talking about coffee with me is like talking about gaming. I'll keep going and you'll have to tell me to STFU.

WARNING: Coffee Nerdery Ahead

Short answer: $570 - and that's fantastically good price for the features. And that's about the price you'll be looking at if you want real espresso at home that's good and consistent.

Longer answer: Okay there problem with "espresso" machines is that unless you're dropping several hundred dollars, you're NOT going to get real espresso. That requires a machine that can pump enough pressure (9-Bars minimum) of proper temperature water, and on its face that kind of equipment costs money. The VAST majority of the cheap "espresso" machines out there - Delonghi 's lower tier models, Keurigs, Krups, etc. aren't making real espresso, they're just pumping hot water through coffee and the pressure is making it look filmy... but in actual composition it's nothing like espresso. There ARE cheap models that can do 9-bar Espresso... but they *will* fall apart, because the corners these models cut in construction invariably will cause the machine to fail. And you'll sacrifice a LOT of other options like customization to "dial in" your brew.

And *before* you even buy a good "prosumer" machine you ***need*** to make sure you have a good grinder. Grinders are more important than the espresso machine because if you don't have a grinder that can grind your beans fine enough, you won't get espresso. Good grinders that can do espresso-grinds can be a little pricey. The good thing is once you buy one, you'll basically have it forever. So it's worth the investment if you're going to Chase the Brown Serpent. If you want to talk about Grinders let me know. There are options.

So that said - good starter prosumer espresso machines:

Breville - nearly anything from Breville is *awesome*. Stainless steel construction, top-notch parts, *very* good customer support.

The model I have is the Breville 870BSXL Barista Express. They have other models including one that's a little cheaper, but it has a LOT less features. Namely - the built in grinder. The grinder is adjustable and you can just grind for whatever else you might want: pour over, drip, French press etc - but I have other grinders for that. It has a pressure gauge so you can see exactly how much pressure you're getting which will inform you how well you're tamping your coffee into the brew-head. It comes with several portafilters (single and double walled - single and double-shots). Nice tank of water. I want to say there might be an option for line-in but I'm not sure. The frother works AMAZINGLY well, if you want to get into latte/cappuccino stuff (which I most certainly do). It's EASY to clean and operate. Seriously this bad boy practically does it all for you if you want. It's easy to clean and service too.

Alternatives - If you don't need the grinder built in - you can get the Breville BE840XL Infuser.

I'd recommend these too

Breville BES500 BambinoPlus - This is Breville's newest creation to get people into the good stuff. No-nonsense, stripped down, but has nice features. It's rock-bottom entry model for good espresso. I've heard very good things about it. But imo - if you're gonna buy this, just toss in the extra money for the Barista Express. WAY more value for the buck.

Rancilio Silva Espresso - Pricier, and an older design, but it's a damn workhorse. Lots of people start with these. Solid construction.

Now these are *starting* espresso machines. But you can use these for the rest of your life. But in my experience they are the doorway to the Madness of Cult of the Brown Serpent. I warn you... it only gets crazier from here.Soon you'll be looking at Breville Oracles, and Rocket Espresso machines, and and and... then you'll be bargaining with yourself in the dark... shaking with caffeine infused power... telling yourself "Yes! I'll get a Rancilio Classe 9 Commercial Espresso machine!" for you and your friends when they are over. But in reality - you've long scared off anyone that would remotely call you a friend... you'll only have fellow cultists.

But you'll be happy.


So revisiting coffee...

My son has started taking classes at the local community college, and knowing one particular day was going to be struggle as being a teenager he hasn't developed a proper sleeping schedule he was interested in making coffee. I showed him how to use my preferred French press and thought, that is it, I've done my duty as a parent... Well he managed to break it, my precious, my birthday present... er.. Where was I, yes, so I had a spare which I have been using, but unlike the other which I didn't know at the time was actually quite good, the one I have now is a mainstream manufacture, the kind of thing you can get in Target or Walmart and to be honest it kind of sucks. As the song says, you only appreciate what you had when it is gone.

So now while I look around for another good French press, I have been contemplating an Aeropress. Wondering for those who use them what options you prefer. I see they make a mesh screen making the paper filters unnecessary. Reading the reason these are supposed to be so great, the paper filter plays a part, so the mesh screen seems to get rid of the major selling point, of no grounds getting past and absorbing some of the bitterness.

So for those of you who have used one, sell me or steer me away from giving the Aeropress a try.
 
Since I've been doing a lot of cleaning and decluttering of my physical space lately, I decided to do some mental decluttering as well. Cut my board game want-list down from ~300 games to ~50 and I'll probably cut it some more. Also cut my DriveThruRPG wishlist down from ~150 items to 7 items.
I've decided not to buy (or back on Kickstarter) any more boardgames until we've actually played all the ones we already have or haven't been delivered yet. :sweat:
 
So, last night I took a motorbike ride to a night fish market to get some fish for today's New Year''s do. Still haven't got hold of a helmet big enough to fit on my head. I keep telling myself that the locals do this all the time without getting themselves killed . . . much.

#2 spawn just dropped a plate on the floor, scaring #1 spawn and generating a minor tantrum.
 
I've decided not to buy (or back on Kickstarter) any more boardgames until we've actually played all the ones we already have or haven't been delivered yet. :sweat:
Ha! Good luck with that one! I appreciate the sentiment but I got money riding on February.....
 
Even with two coffee bags per cup the coffee is too weak.

In unrelated news, I have a soft spot for rambutans - sort of like hairy lychees and probably related.

Durians should be regulated as weapons of mass destruction, though. My wife claims she's gotten used to the smell of my farts but still can't stand the smell of durians.

I think I shall make it a minor side quest to find some durian-flavoured sweets or biscuits and take them home for my cow-orkers.

I may also try to take some Bika Ambon home, which is more likely to be to people's tastes. It's quite perishable, though.
 
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When we moved a while ago we dumped a number of cheap and decrepit bookshelves but then realized that left us with far too many boxes of books we want access to or to read. So I finally picked up some new shelves yesterday, can’t wait to set them up and get the books out of their boxes.

Since I’m back into RPGs I have enough books that one shelf will be my hardcopy RPG collection, decades after I sold off the vast majority of my D&D collection (thankfully I kept my beloved 5e CoC rulebook!).
 
When we moved a while ago we dumped a number of cheap and decrepit bookshelves but then realized that left us with far too many boxes of books we want access to or to read. So I finally picked up some new shelves yesterday, can’t wait to set them up and get the books out of their boxes.

Since I’m back into RPGs I have enough books that one shelf will be my hardcopy RPG collection, decades after I sold off the vast majority of my D&D collection (thankfully I kept my beloved 5e CoC rulebook!).
You cannot go wrong with solid book shelves. :smile: Even if it is boards and cinder blocks.
 
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