Commenter Archive

I agree. My comment mentioned that they can track how many times a show is watched. My question is how they figure out how that equates to revenue.

If I subscribe to Netflix and watch Stranger Things 100 times or 0 times, they do not make any more or less money. They make my monthly subscription fee, regardless. In fact, they are losing money every time I watch something because they have to pay to deliver it.

One question I have had about the whole setup is how the streamers determine the revenue brought in by a particularly show. With TV, they measure ratings which determines ad rates, which makes it easy to see what shows make money. With the streaming shows, there is no real direct way to see the effect. They can track how many times a show is watched, but without a way to atrribute a number of new/retained subscribers, I am not sure how the economics work.

They are just going to other states to be exploited.

No, and not for a while. I am playing Veteran World Tier (difficulty), which does not drop uniques. I have to complete a capstone dungeon to unlock Nightmare, which is where uniques can drop. I suspect I have to finish the game to get to the dungeon, but I am not certain.

I decided to buy the Deluxe Edition of Diablo 4 and get in on Early Access.
Overall, it feels a lot like Diablo 3. The skill system is closer to 2, where you get to spend points to unlock stuff, but it is still quite different. There are a lot of passive skills and you can respec for gold.
You do not have to do the main story in order. Right now, I have access to 3 or 4 main story objectives. There are also a lot of side quests.
There are random dungeons. I think the dungeon are made by combining several objectives from a pool of objectives to create some variety. I am not sure how much real variety it will be in the long run, though.

I am playing a Barbarian, which is different from my usual class choices in the Diablo games. I am only level 17. I probably got around 6 hours in over the weekend, so it's still an early opinion.

It is kind of weird seeing other random players running around, but it's not as populated as an MMO open world (at least, not yet).

My last few weekends were pretty shot. 3 weeks ago I was recovering from a back injury. 2 weeks ago I was travelling for work. Last week I was recovering from travel and trying to get the yard in shape after 3 weeks of neglect.

This week should be a little more relaxing. I have a board games tomorrow. I just got a copy of Unfathomable, the reimplementation of Fantasy Flight's Battlestar Galactica with a Lovecraftian theme. Hopefully I can get it to the table.

Beyond that and the normal chores, I will just do whatever tickles my fancy.

I played through Dredge over the weekend. It is a Lovecraftian fishing game. You are a fisherman wth amnesia who washes up on the shore of a village. You are given a boat and sent out to catch fish (but not at night when the sinister fog comes in). Eventually you catch a fish that is a grotesque horror, and you are approached by The Collector who sends you out to explore shipwrecks for relics and who uses a book to grant you mysterious powers.
As you play, you uncover the secrets of the area. You find messages in bottles that give hints of the background. You improve your boat and catch a wide variety of normal and not-so-normal fish.
Overall, it was a fun little diversion, but given the short length it might be better to wait for a sale.

After finishing that, I got set up to play The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD on my Steam Deck. I have started the game a few times in the past, but playing on a console and tying up the TV limited the amount of time I could play, so I never really got into it. Being able to play it handheld should let me finish this time.

Normally this would be a board game meetup weekend, but I hurt my back last Saturday and I didn't get anything done. That means this week will be spent doing everything I should have done last weekend instead. The back yard needs to get mowed. I got most of the yard done the week before I hurt my back, but I ran out of gas before I finished the back yard. Some of the grass is around waist high. I also need to tend to the flower beds and pull some weeds.
The kitchen is a mess, because I have not been up to keeping up with it either.

On top of getting chores caught up, I hope to get in a few hunts in Monster Hunter World: The Board Game with my wife, some miniature painting (trying to get back into the hobby and improve my skillset), and WWE Backlash is tomorrow night.

I started H:ZD a while back, but I didn't really stick with it. It sits there as a game I should get back to. I think I even installed it on my Steam Deck when I got it, but I haven't touched it. Someday. Maybe.

I did started Divinity: Original Sin. I tried it a few years back, but I didn't really have a lot of time or a good setup to get involved in a game like that. I have only played for about an hour or so, but hopefully I will stick with it.

I also decided to really give Total War Shogun 2 a good try. Many times I have sat down to play a Total War game, but I haven't stuck with them. I have been listening to the audiobook of James Clavell's Shogun, and I decided it was time to really do this.

I don't think Trump listens to his lawyers, so better would not help much.

My wife and I have been playing a lot of Wild Hearts. I think I have mostly adapted to the ways that is different from Monster Hunter. In addition, a few of the weapon types were locked until Chapter 2, and I was able to change from my slow, great-sword-like weapons to the claw blade which is a lot of fun. It is faster and more mobile. As you attack, you build up a gauge. When the gauge builds up, you can hook into the large monster and swing around on it making attacks. Do enough damage while hooked, you get to do a big diving attack. It has been a lot of fun.

I also got the new WWE 2k23. I heard this year's was a significant improvement over the the previous few, and it is Steam Deck compatible. I have been making my way through My Rise, which lets you make a character and tells the story starting from his debut. There are a few matches where you have very specific objectives, and those tend to be less fun that the matches that you simply have to win. After I get through this, I will probably start doing random matches with regular superstars. There is also a Showcase mode featuring John Cena. I haven't played yet, but if I understand correctly, they are big matches where he loses. I think the last WWE game I played was 2013, so it's been nice to see what's changed.

Both of my exes thought marriage and romance should be like something out of a RomCom. It was not. I expected my spouses to be faithful. They were not. That being said, I initiated both of my divorces. I was absolutely miserable by the time we reached that point. I think the second wife really married me for financial stability and because she cannot stand being alone.

I had no intention of getting married again, though I wasn't necessarily opposed. I just was not looking. I managed to find somebody with who I am really compatible. It is a night and day difference compared to the previous marriages. With the two of us, it just works. People say "marriage should be work," but sometimes I think people use that statement to justify staying in bad relationships. I know I did in the past. I cannot say my wife and I have never had any issues, but I cannot say it has ever really felt like work. I think we are both better off together than we would be apart.

$70 seems to be the standard new game cost. It seems like a lot at first, but a Nintendo game was $50 in the 90s, not adjusting for inflation. When you consider what you get in a modern game compared to a Nintendo game, it's a steal.

I spent my $70 on Wild Hearts this weekend, and another $70 for a copy for my wife so we can play together. It's very similar to the Monster Hunter franchise, with the added ability to make devices (cubes, springs, torches) in combat. These can also be fused into other devices (enough cubes make a bulwark which stops a charing enemy, three torches makes a firework that knocks a hovering enemy out of the sky). It's a unique gimmick, and it has been fun so far.

It plays faster than MH, especially the older ones (Rise is pretty fast). It feels like a different game, but similar enough to scratch the same itch. The controls are different enough that my muscle memory screws me up at times. Monster Hunter monsters are pretty fantastic, but in Wild Hearts they are mostly large animals powered up by nature. The first is a large rat that is overgrown with vines. Later on there is a gorilla that is fueled by lava. The aesthetic is very ancient Japanese, and unlike MH, the female armor does not try to look sexy.

Overall, good first impressions. I look forward to playing it more. There is talk on the web about people having major performance issues, but I have not seen any other than lengthy load times on my PC(which I hope to remedy with a new SSD). Maybe that will be more of an issue on later maps.

I prefer to recommend people do the best they can with their available time, energy, skills, and ingredients to make something they enjoy without being too much of a purist about it instead of implying people are doing it WRONG if they have limitations.

I have yet to try anchovies on pizza, but I have enjoyed them in some other dishes. I got a recipe for sourdough pizza crust (and finally got a new starter after I lost my previous starter), so maybe I will give it a try soon.

Get a new pack every week, and you never have to wash them.

My wife and I tend to do a mixture of curbside pickup from our regional grocer and delivery from Wal-Mart. She has issues with large crowds, so shopping is unpleasant for her. We also get a lot of stuff from our local Asian market, which we have to get in person. On the other hand, it is usually not as crowded as the other two stores.

I guess we are fortunate, because I have heard lots of horror stories about how bad Amazon delivery has gotten, but we have not had that issue here. Stuff typically gets here in 2 days, sometimes next day. There is not much we get through Subscribe & Save, just because it is hard to get the timing right.

I masked religiously with K95 masks. I got my vaccines and boosters as soon as possible. I got COVID anyway and said "screw it, it's not worth it," and ended up giving up on masks. I still got my fourth vaccine dose. I was going to get it the end of last year, but I caught COVID, so I waited a few months. Came down with COVID the third time when I got the vaccine (unfortunate timing). I initially thought it was just my reaction to the vaccine, but it kept getting worse.

That being said, every time I have gotten COVID, it was milder than the previous time. I have not had any long-term effects (to the best of my knowledge).

The game sounds interesting, but I have a huge backlog of games, so I don't think I will add this one at the moment. How is the actual gameplay, aside from the joy of exploring Magical Britain?

Most of my focus lately has been on replaying Monster Hunter: Rise (largely with my wife), after purchasing it on the Steam Deck, and playing through Monster Hunter 3U on the 2DS. Fire Emblem Engage has been getting ignored, though I will probably get back to it when I get done with MH3U (or decide to take a break). I have also dabbled a bit in Rim World, Factorio, Space Chem, and Grounded. I'm not very good at spreading my focus around, though, so I haven't done much with any of them.

Tomorrow is board games. I missed the last few meetups for various reasons, so it will be nice to get back. Tonight I will probably pick out some games to take along. I got the Transformers Deck Building game and a few expansions a couple weeks back, so they will probably come along for the ride. Not sure what else yet. I will see what mood strikes me.

Other than that, just normal weekend things, I think.

I don't think you could follow the Sami Zayn moment with anything else.

I thought the Pitch Black match was going to be the worst part of the show. Then Hardy sang. I never had to mute a music performance before.

@jaybird Are you planning to watch Royal Rumble live? If so, it is Saturday night, not Sunday. If you are just going to watch it on-demand, it doesn't matter obviously.

My wife has a haircut tomorrow. I usually go with her and wander around the nearby Barnes and Noble, then we go get lunch.
Watching Royal Rumble tomorrow night.
Nothing else scheduled, really. Maybe some solo board gaming, probably some video games. My ZZ Gundam Model has been waiting for decals for a few weeks now, but I might go ahead and display it so I can put together a different one and finish the decals later.

I finished up the post game of Super Robot Wars 30, which was a bit of a slog. Just a lot of enemies with inflated health pools that took forever to kill. Still a fun game overall, even though it petered out at the end. Really, the game is more about playing in a robot toy box, mixing and matching mecha from various sources, and it does that well.

I recently got Monster Hunter 3U on the 2DS. It's the one with underwater combat, and I wanted to try it and form my own opinon. I haven't done too much underwater combat yet, but I think it would benefit from a controller with a right joystick instead of using the touch screen control pad for the camera. Other than that, it's what I expect from a Monster Hunter game.

The other new game is Fire Emblem: Engage. Depending on what folks like about Fire Emblem: Three Houses, this is either a step forward or a step backward. Engage is more combat focused and less social focused than Three Houses was. I thought all the school stuff was a time-consuming chore, but it was necessary to improve your characters. There are still some of the chores in Engage (and they existed before Three Houses), but there is not as much, and you can move onto the next battle more quickly. Engage also brings back the classic weapon triangle (swords beat axes, axes beat spears, spears beat swords). I am only starting chapter 6, but I really like it so far. I also decided to do my first playthrough on hard and classic (permadeath) mode which really forces me to think a lot about what everybody is doing.
I also bought Factorio before the price goes up in a week or so and dabbled a little bit in that. I need to really sit down and dive into it.

I think there is a certain element of natural immunity in some people, or maybe they just remain asymptomatic. There seems to be a lot of variability in how it affects people.
That being said, this was much less severe than the previous times, though I think I will still have lingering bronchitis and fatigue for the next week or two.

My wife and I are both recovering from COVID. Third time. We hardly leave the house. My wife works from home most days. I work with just a few people. It's pretty frustrating. What's ironic is that we got it three months ago, and we went on Saturday to get our boosters, because that's about the time our immunity would be wearing off. We started coming down with symptoms that day, but assumed it was just a reaction to the vaccine, but they did not clear up.
Weekend plans involve trying to catch up on some of the chores that we didn't get to during the week due to lack of energy, though I doubt we will get around to everything. Also, the new Fire Emblem comes out today, so there will probably be a lot of laying on the couch and playing that.