Celtore

In southern Ontario, rainy, windy, chilly. Some could argue you could sum it up as "miserable." I don't mind it one bit though; you can actually do something about the cold and dampness (more layers.) You can't really adapt as easily to overwhelming heat.

I remember enjoying the pizza lunchable, though it's been like 12-14 years ago. It was alright in moderation as a rare treat, I remember usually saving some of the sauce and mixing it in the remains of the cheeses. I do have to be frank though, those lunchables were/are nothing compared to the real pizza the school ordered in every 2 weeks.

Pretty much all of Sirena Beach in Super Mario Sunshine.

• The first level had that really annoying manta boss with the "split in half" mechanic.
  • Oh, and you can't skip it. It's mandatory for making the hotel appear which is where the other 7 shine sprites are.
• The hotel layout is so pointlessly labyrinthian that they made navigating it a shine sprite mission. Why is the hotel a maze with secret doors between guest rooms?
• The very weird king boo battle on a roulette table. Or according to the original Japanese game, "Boss Boo."

To be fair, it is a very pretty stage outside and it has the whole ghost-hotel thing going for it. I might just be sore over the manta boss.

5 minutes ago, Longhaul said:

I paint on occasion.  Mostly landscapes, and yes, Bob Ross was a big influence on me (still is).

Some samples:

I just have to say, those are really well done, man. I can certainly see Bob's influence in your style, especially on your mountain scape. Lots of happy little tree friends!

I'd like to see a real life ghost to satisfy my conflicted stance on their existance. And maybe befriend him/her while I'm at it.

I have no problem at all making good acquaintences with people, but I can't seem to make the transition to friend work. Most of the things I like doing for fun don't lend themselves easily to get-togethers, so there's always this certain point relationships always seem to get to, but never cross. If someone else invited me to do something that they enjoyed, I'd probably jump at the opportunity. Well, as long as it wasn't something completely incompatible with how I function.

33 degrees Celsius, feeling like 37 with humidity. We need a big thunder storm really, really badly. Come back winter, I'm sorry I complained about you!

I'm feeling pretty satisfied with myself. I've finally done something about light pouring into my bedroom early in the morning.

After work, I went to Canadian tire and bought some velcro stips; I used them to attach my blinds to the frame of the window. Light no longer bleeds in through the gap in the blinds and it is glorious. I've already enjoyed a nap in there. It was a bit of an issue because my bed happens to be at just the right angle to get a face-full of sun at 5 AM.

It really doesn't matter. Regardless if everything is prewritten or not, our lives are driven by a series of interconnected decisions and choices. It's in the choosing where things get interesting, because you have the ability to make decisions which go against what you would normally do. Initiative is interesting in that way, kind of like a misfiring of the branch predictor in a CPU.

Regardless of whether that unpredictability is fate or not, good decision making is something you need to hold yourself to. And above all else, never use fate or destiny as an excuse from making difficult and life-changing choices; your choices could potentially be predetermined, but you won't reach a desired outcome without showing the initiative to start down the right path. You can't lose weight without diet and exercise or earn a diploma without going to college, you need to chase after these things. So use initiative to either make good decisions for yourself, or to hack fate into making you choose good decisions, to achieve your goals.

1. What grade did you learn to type in? And have you ever used an ordinary typewriter, whether it was electric or manual?

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure. I grew up with a computer before grade 1 and I didn't really learn how to type. I guess over time, I slowly developed my own touch-typing patterns.It's a little more freestyle than the standard four fingers + spacebar, plus I never use my pinkies for anything other than holding down the shift key.

I also used a regular typewriter once. It was a manual one, it was a bit of a pain to use honestly, which is likely why I never really ended up using the thing.

2. What was your first home video game system and what year did you get it?

The first system I ever used was the SNES in the early 90's. It was my parents' console; they liked playing super mario world on it. When I was in first grade, I was given a gameboy colour for christmas. I suppose technically that was my first game system.

3. What is the oldest car, make and model year, you can remember your family owning?

I can't remember what the name, make and model of it is, but I remember this old classic car my grandfather used to own. It was green and kind of shaped like an old-fashioned volkswagen beetle.

4. Did you ever have first generation My Little Ponies or Transformers? If so, when did you get them?

Nope!

5. Who was the earliest president, prime minister, governor, head honcho, etc. of your country that you have a first hand memory of?

Prime Minister Jean Cretien. Which makes sense as he was in office for pretty much an entire decade.

6. Do you recall smoking being allowed in workplaces where you live? US members under 20 will generally say no but answers from other countries may vary.

Not really confident enough to say yes. If it was, it was when I was really young.

7. Did you ever use old-style roller skates instead of roller blades?

Oh god yes... So there was this one field trip we took in school to a roller rink. I had never roller scated before, but I wanted to give it a shot. I could not figure out how to use those bloody things. I probably would have been better with roller blades because I can ice skate fairly competently, but I could not pick up speed without tripping over myself. And braking with that lump of rubber on the front? Hahaha, impossible. I just ran into walls to stop myself. Fortunately I brought a helmet; it was very much needed that day.

8. Did you ever use a pre-Windows PC?

Not back then, our family computer was a windows 95 machine for the longest time. Now, I'm using Linux as my primary OS, which I guess technically counts.

9. Remember “Be kind, please rewind”?

Yeppers!

10. Name the first big blockbuster movie you recall watching in a theater that wasn't a re-release.

Pokemon the First Movie on the November 10th early showing.

Now, supposedly I saw Toy Story earlier than that, but I only remember seeing it later on VHS when I was told I saw it before despite the movie being completely fresh to me. Must have been lost to childhood amnesia.

It's a fairly common occurrence on the way to work and back home. Likely because it's one of the only places I know where I'm truly alone.

I think it was either "Rainy Day People" or "If You Could Read my Mind" by Gordon Lightfoot.

I try to eat bland when my stomach is upset; bread, rice, oatmeal, apples and nuts are usually my staple foods. A nice cup of peppermint tea is also really nice, but I drink that with or without nausia

Also, if you're in the need for a sweet soothing snack, popsicles are really easy on the stomach.

"NO, GOD DAMN IT, NO! You injured morons go sit quietly in the corner and let the others take care of it!!"

"this series is going to shit..."

I think we're lucky that we need to sleep. It's a nice, sane limiter on productivity; we physically can't be productive at all hours of the day even if we wanted to. You can try, but you're not going to be firing on all cylinders.

Sleep is really nice. I love just wrapping up in blankets, hugging a stuffed animal and just letting my mind wander before falling into a deep slumber. I don't let my mind wander when I'm stressed out or depressed though for fairly obvious reasons; that's a good way to give yourself fairly ugly nightmares.

Could it be The Dark Knight? Specifically, Joker's "Why so Serious" speech.

"Not to fifty!!"

I eventually did watch the show, but it was the community's passion which attracted me to the fandom to begin with. I loved how prevalent and talented the fandom was, seeing them leaving their imprint in all kinds of media. I don't really watch it anymore though; I kind of fell behind midway through season 4 and I feel that it's a bit late now to try to get back on the wagon.

I don't think it's strange at all to be in that position. I got into the Ace Attorney series the same way; animations on newgrounds.

Mustard. I hate the bloody stuff with a passion; the smell, the taste, how it corrupts anything it touches... In my McDonald employee days, the mustard packets used to really suck to open too. If you were unlucky, it exploded on you and the smell of mustard stuck to you for the next 6-7 hours of your shift.

Is there such a thing as food indoctrination? I remember them advertising on kids channels very commonly with their happy meals and mascots, but I havent seen a McDonald's commercial in years. I wonder if it's that childhood familiarity that keeps the restaurant going or some similar subtle psychological strategery at play...

But at any rate, balance is key. The menu is pretty unhealthy, so you shouldn't base your diet on it; not even their breakfast sandwiches. By the same token, it's alright as a rare occurrence. Try to have a mostly balanced diet, exercise and it shouldn't be a big issue.

Not good. I just went into a spiraling pit of dispair and self-loathing for the past 40 minutes because of a stupid, stupid mistake I can't do anything at this point on my own to fix. It's nothing really overly-terrible looking at it subjectively, but still... unsolvable yet avoidable issues really upset me.

Absolute crap. It's spring and yet there's snow on the ground and it's spitting freezing rain. I was looking forward to post-winter to do some astronomy without the frigid temperatures, but nope! Now instead of sub-zero temperatures, there's just garbage visibility.

"This is the best beard trimmer I've ever owned!"

Seriously, the thing just ran out of charge now after being used twice a week for the past 6 months. Did Phillips sell their soul to the devil to get that kind of energy efficiency? All my previous trimmers had a battery life of like 2-3 weeks.

Baked spaghetti. It's like lasagna, but with spaghetti noodles; it's incredibly tasty.

What's your favourite species of wild animal?

Dark chocolate. Trying to lose a few pounds and I've kind of grown to like the taste of it.

Ketchup or Mayo?

At its core, I feel this problem is caused by crap game design and what should be legislated is the loot box. The skin gambling issue arises from the fact that these items are obtained by random chance from a store, and naturally, some are more desirable than others. If these items can be traded between players, it creates a small supply and demand market tied with actual currency that's fairly easy to jump in on.

If every item was outright purchasable, you couldn't have a gambling economy because everyone would just buy what they wanted. You might have small-scale gambling between players with in-game items and people who bought the items from the store, but nobody will be making any money from these sorts of bets besides the publishers upon the initial purchase. We shouldn't be legislating a symptom of bad game design, we should be taking it out at its dirty roots.

Another easy solution to get away from this would be to make the items from loot boxes untradable. Now, all money flows to the publisher as players desperately try to get that one cosmetic item they want with maybe a 2-10% success rate. Problem solved.

The world of Detective Pikachu. Interesting. On the plus side, pokemon are real! On the downside, the evil in this universe specifically is a bit more realistic and dastardly than the standard games. I guess I'd help out the protagonists for plot armour.