Real Life and What's Happening...

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On a road trip with the primary purposes to drop off my niece for college and to go see some national park stuff.

  1. Crushed iPad under my seat. iPad is my essential tool. Well, that was expensive. It was old so it lived a good life and I got a new one, but unexpected and expensive
  2. Smoke smoke everywhere until we got to southern Utah. Prettier than I remember and my son was floored by just driving by bryce, Zion, and grand staircase-escalante
The last one is that dropping off my niece was more emotional than I expected. I had joked that it would be rough but it was actually pretty rough and I was fighting back the tears a bit. Genuinely worried for her because the people she’s with are relatives, and haven’t always been the best people for her.

I can’t stop her, and it’s her choice, but I very much want to clear the road before her so she doesn’t have a pile of shit. I’m concerned about her being manipulated, about not being able to focus on school and work and get herself in a clear and clean position. the people are making an effort (alcoholism, meetings, etc) and there was visible evidence of some change (I did not, ahem, audit), so I am trying to be positive.

But I’m also just experiencing some pseudo empty nester - not really, we have our son - but she became part of the family very quickly for barely leaving her room outside of work, being made of coffee and sarcasm, about being mad at me for weeks because I recovered half of the coffee cups in the house from her room without asking first. I drove her to or home from work most every time she went, and we have some shared experiences that are traumatic and shaping, and we got to share them a bit.

we are dropping off some hiking poles that were forgotten this morning. Need to tell her a couple things in that time - namely to stay safe and stay focused and that we believe in her. She already knows she’s welcome back it’s a very bitter sweet moment.
 
Raleel said:
I can’t stop her, and it’s her choice, but I very much want to clear the road before her so she doesn’t have a pile of shit. I’m concerned about her being manipulated, about not being able to focus on school and work and get herself in a clear and clean position. the people are making an effort (alcoholism, meetings, etc) and there was visible evidence of some change (I did not, ahem, audit), so I am trying to be positive.
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That's the same thing we're going through now with my daughter, and it's emotionally taxing- especially because she's starting to see us in ways that she never saw us when she was here. It's like overnight we became the enemy, and she attributes things to us that we know are not true, and has faulty memories of events from the past. And we verify with her brother (and sometimes she does also) and he doesn't see things the same way she does.

This weekend she went to the emergency room- and the symptoms looked a lot like what my wife went through a while ago. As she's not gone to the doctor since she's been there unless she's had to, we suggested that she could arrange appointments here with her old doctors and a neurologist and get them during the same time span and we'd foot the bill to fly her here so she could go to the doctor and get it taken care of. It's fine if caught early, but can be life-threatening if not.

She blew up, said we were trying to control her and treat her like she was a kid, and isn't going to do anything about it because she's 'fine'. I tried to jog her memory about my wife going through the same symptoms when we were on a trip and how scary it was- and she said she doesn't remember, though she remembers the trip. My son remembered all the details.

It's just disheartening.
 
Raleel said:
  1. Smoke smoke everywhere until we got to southern Utah. Prettier than I remember and my son was floored by just driving by bryce, Zion, and grand staircase-escalante
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One of the most beautiful [places on earth right there. I've been trying to find time to visit Zion again so I can hike up to Angels Landing.
 
Today I just explained how to drink coffee through a Tim Tam to a random stranger on the internet.
 
And in related news I just built a PC for someone for the first time in quite a few years.

A couple of provinces in China have just banned crypto mining, which pushed a flood of RTX 3060 cards onto the market, apparently depressing local street prices by 40-50% What that means on the world stage remains to be seen but prices of RTX3060s have started softening a bit on Ebay.

I put a big (850W) PSU in it so it could support a high-end video card. What we're really hoping is that softening demand for 30 series cards from crypto miners will put downward pressure on GTX1080s and hopefully bring them down significantly from their current market price of £4-500 sometime in the next 6-12 months. Not all computers have power supplies with enough poke to run a 1080 so I think demand might slacken a bit. That's the theory anyway, so we decided it was worth taking the punt and spending an extra few quid to put a high-spec power supply in the machine.
 
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TristramEvans said:
lol, what's a Tim Tam, and why would you want to drink through one?
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It's a two layer chocolate biscuit with a filling in the middle and a chocolate coating on the outside and is viewed in much the same regard as Vegemite by its fans

en.wikipedia.org

Tim Tam - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

If you bite a small amount off opposite corners, you can drink coffee through it like a straw. Once you do this it starts to lose its structural integrity pretty quickly but will last long enough to then pop the whole thing into your mouth for a bite of intense, gluggy chocolatey goodness. It's an .. experience. See also: Toffee Pops.

Tim Tams pop up in UK supermarkets on a semi-regular basis but I've never actually found an Australian cow-orker who was game to try this at work.

Speaking of things from down under, I haven't seen much of Baulderstone Baulderstone in a while. What's he up to?
Protip: I would pay good money to see footage of Margot Robbie drinking coffee through a Tim Tam.
 
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Nobby-W said:
It's a two layer chocolate biscuit with a filling in the middle and a chocolate coating on the outside and is viewed in much the same regard as Vegemite by its fans

en.wikipedia.org

Tim Tam - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

If you bite a small amount off opposite corners, you can drink coffee through it like a straw. Once you do this it starts to lose its structural integrity pretty quickly but will last long enough to then pop the whole thing into your mouth for a bite of intense, gluggy chocolatey goodness. It's an .. experience. See also: Toffee Pops.

Tim Tams pop up in UK supermarkets on a semi-regular basis but I've never actually found an Australian cow-orker who was game to try this at work.

Speaking of things from down under, I haven't seen much of Baulderstone Baulderstone in a while. What's he up to?
Protip: I would pay good money to see footage of Margot Robbie drinking coffee through a Tim Tam.
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I'm still lurking. As Tristram says, I've been extremely busy between the real-estate boom, hosting visiting relatives, running WFRP for my nephews, and making a gaming-heavy trip up to Boston to visit friends like BedrockBrendan BedrockBrendan. I'm going to be in California for the first two weeks of August, so I am currently scrambling to get everything in order before I go.

I expect that my schedule will return to a more normal level by the end of August. Thanks for asking about me. I haven't forgotten the Pub, and I'll be displaying my new Pub T-shirt on my vacation.

As for Tim Tams, we were able to get those at the local Shop Rite here in New Jersey recently, but they seem to have disappeared. I mostly rely on my cousin Penny for things like that. She usually shows up in the US a few times a year with a suitcase full of antipodean delicacies, but needless to say, it's been a long time since her last visit.
 
Giganotosaurus said:
One of the most beautiful [places on earth right there. I've been trying to find time to visit Zion again so I can hike up to Angels Landing.
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I've not been through Bryce or Zion since the late 70's. Beautiful area, or at least I hope it still is. Every time I read up on the parks I see that they're very crowded these days and often they have to shut the gates to visitors and quite early I might add for the day. :sad: Before the pandemic hit I had been planning a cross country trip out to the west coast and then up the coast line. After a few days in Washington I was pondering heading east instead of southeast and going through some of those parks including Yellowstone which I've not seen since 76'.

Pandemic and my prostate rebelling against my brand new BMW R1250 RT squashed that. Fixed the inflamed prostate issue by taking a serious loss on trading in the new BMW for a new HD Road Glide, basically returning to the previous touring bike since my prostates veto power over sports touring overruled me. Now I'm just waiting for our country to grow an overall sense of common sense and getting the vaccine out before we have even more mutations of the virus that could further degrade the current usefulness of the vaccines.

I hope I can do this next spring. I just honestly don't know how much longer I'll be up for long touring road trips that go upwards of 5,000 miles/8,000km solo or with someone else. This winter I'll have to do more research if things improve in regards to the parks to learn what's required and if I'll get unlucky and have to do a turn around because the parks restricting further visitors for "x" amount of time. When you're hot and tired on a motorcycle going back the way you just came sucks ass.
 
Had a kind of odd, but not bad, day on Sunday. My buddy occasionally sets up as a dealer at the smaller comic book shows. His helper for a show in the suburbs of Milwaukee backed out at the last minute, so I ended up filling in. My buddy had paid for two dealer tables, but talked his way into getting a third table for free because there was a dealer who didn't show up. So once we had the third table, he set me up there with a few long boxes of $1 comics, while he had the expensive CGC-graded books on his table. It was a five hour show. I sold eight comics :blah:.

There was pretty consistent foot traffic in the show, but it was mostly the same people making multiple loops, and typically if they weren't interested in $1 comics on their first go-round, they still weren't interested later. My buddy did sell a few of his graded books, but once expenses were covered, there was no profit. So we didn't actually make any money, but it was still kind of fun. My buddy said the next time they do this particular show, he'll come back as a fan, but not as a dealer.
 
Nobby-W said:
A couple of provinces in China have just banned crypto mining, which pushed a flood of RTX 3060 cards onto the market, apparently depressing local street prices by 40-50% What that means on the world stage remains to be seen but prices of RTX3060s have started softening a bit on Ebay.
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They're still way out of what I'd be willing to pay.
 
chuckdee said:
They're still way out of what I'd be willing to pay.
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I have a 2070 Super, which is still good enough to run any game out there. Yeah, some games are going to look a little bit prettier if I get one of the new GPUs, but it won't make enough difference to pay a premium for. I'm content with what I have.
 
Baulderstone said:
I have a 2070 Super, which is still good enough to run any game out there. Yeah, some games are going to look a little bit prettier if I get one of the new GPUs, but it won't make enough difference to pay a premium for. I'm content with what I have.
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Bunch said:
Still rocking a GTX1060. So far no compelling reason to upgrade for me.
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The machine has a Strix GTX 960 of 2015 vintage that we salvaged from his old machine. It's getting a bit long in the tooth but should be ok for the short term. Then we'll look and see what we can get in the £200 to maybe 300 range. I suspect we'll see prices for 10 series cards softening quite significantly as shortages of 30 series cards ease. Prices of midrange 30 series cards will eventually come down to sane levels but NVIdia maintains that it will remain tight until next year.

I've got the Quadro M4000 my computer came with, which is the same chip as a GTX 960 but the only 3D game I play in quantity is Kerbal Space Program, and it works fine for that.
 
Just got my second Pfizer shot a few hours ago!

80741ae9c2a80fbda2b120846f76d4ab.gif
 
Semi-feral cats hang out near the building where I work; someone who lives nearby puts out food for them. Two silver tiger-striped cats often are seen near the front entrance to the place. One, who usually hangs out on the west side of the entrance-way, is very wary of people and watches you intently when you come into the building. I call him/her 'alert cat':

Alert Cat- Crop.jpg

The other could not care less if you walk by or not; I call her/him 'disinterested cat':

Disinterested Cat - Crop.jpg
 
Baulderstone said:
As for Tim Tams, we were able to get those at the local Shop Rite here in New Jersey recently, but they seem to have disappeared. I mostly rely on my cousin Penny for things like that. She usually shows up in the US a few times a year with a suitcase full of antipodean delicacies, but needless to say, it's been a long time since her last visit.
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The wife and I found Tim Tams at the World Market. I've never heard of using them as a straw for coffee though. Sounds wonderful. I bought a bottle of Lowensenf Extra Hot Mustard on our last trip. Use it for sandwiches in my lunch. Found out my little local owned supermarket carries Colmans mustard. Going to try that out when the Lowensenf runs out. I hear good things about the Colmans. I really like mustard, and like trying new ones. (regular or spicy, not a fan of sweet/honey)
 
My FLGS has an auction that, in normal times, they do twice a year. You can put the gaming stuff you don't want anymore in it, and then if it sells, you get store credit in the amount that it sold for.

They've been unable to do it for about 1.5 years now, but in August it's on again. So I've spent the past few days getting a bunch of stuff, mostly old D&D books that, realistically, I'm never going to use, ready to sell. The minimum bid you can set is $2, so I just set all my stuff at $2 each. Priced to move because, honestly, I mostly just want to get the stuff out of the house. Getting store credit would just be a nice bonus.
 
Ronin said:
The wife and I found Tim Tams at the World Market. I've never heard of using them as a straw for coffee though. Sounds wonderful. I bought a bottle of Lowensenf Extra Hot Mustard on our last trip. Use it for sandwiches in my lunch. Found out my little local owned supermarket carries Colmans mustard. Going to try that out when the Lowensenf runs out. I hear good things about the Colmans. I really like mustard, and like trying new ones. (regular or spicy, not a fan of sweet/honey)
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Colman's mustard powder is an essential staple in my house.
 
Fucking great. The epic daughter-failure continues- it seems that she took what we were saying about the illness to heart, and in order to get insured through the military is going ahead and marrying her fiancee on Friday. THAT IS NOT WHAT WE MEANT! Then she'll be married to him, and it will make it impossible to get her out of that situation. The worst part is that she didn't even tell me... she told my wife and just assumed she would tell me. I mean, she will, but news like that, you tell the people important rather than it just getting relayed. I guess it's better than his parents- he told them through a text message.
 
Ronin said:
I bought a bottle of Lowensenf Extra Hot Mustard on our last trip. Use it for sandwiches in my lunch. Found out my little local owned supermarket carries Colmans mustard. Going to try that out when the Lowensenf runs out. I hear good things about the Colmans. I really like mustard, and like trying new ones. (regular or spicy, not a fan of sweet/honey)
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I was never a fan of honey mustards until a few years back, when I had to limit sodium intake. Quite a few mustards are fairy high in salt, but good honey mustards have almost none. I've become quite fond of that style of mustard with ham.
 
Well I'm back after having a few days off social media and all that, after my brother-in-law's death from COVID :sad:
(Not that I'm over it, but I'm not gonna drop it into every conversation now; no need to bring this place down)
Glad to see that we are discussing topics important to my nation's heart, such as Tim Tams, for example :thumbsup:
 
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And just when I think it can't go downhill anymore, it does. Talking to the daughter yesterday, and it came up about her fiancee telling his parents by text, and she said it's because his mom is terrible and gaslights him. I said, I don't think that means what you think it means. We carry on with the conversation and while I was on the phone, her partner interrupted for a totally ridiculous reason. I said, marriage and all relationships are based on respect- I hope he respects you better in other areas, in order to get her thinking.

She gets in a blow up with my wife about the fact that I hurt his feelings with that statement. So I text her saying if you have a problem with me, bring it to me. The whole conversation, she subtly shifts every interaction in a different direction, and I continually call her on it, and she shifts the conversation. At the end, I say I love you, but I'm not going through contortions to prove that. I'm going to call a spade a spade- you were using gaslighting as a term earlier? Look at this conversation and your reactions- that's an example of you trying to gaslight. Shifting things just a shade in order to fit your narrative and make me think what happened is not what happened.

Who is this woman and what did she do with my daughter?
 
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