More true than you know. Valve won’t allow you to transfer accounts to other people, so your account is legally dead when you are.

Nice! Glad to know I’m not the only person sinking ridiculous money into my gaming habits. 😅

According to SteamDB, $18,181 over 18.6 years. I’m sure that number will be much higher when the Steam sale is over, since it pulls data from current game prices.

I can’t vote because of my VPN… but I’ll wait for a sale before purchasing Grand Theft Auto VI. I don’t agree with spending $70+ for a game that I might enjoy for a handful of hours. No game is worth that price to me. I firmly believe in voting with my money, so I won’t support the industry that keeps inflating game prices.

Plus, I never buy games at release anyway. No game seems to be perfectly polished at release now (unless it’s been in early access for over 5 years) and I’d rather wait and let others find all the game-breaking bugs and get them patched first.

I remember a time when games were strictly offline. A new game released and whatever flaws it had were just part of the experience forever. Game studios were especially careful to ensure their games were as close to perfect as they could get.

Now with everything connected to the Internet, game studios just release a messy pile of code and drop day-one patches to make it semi-playable, with the expectation that gamers will find and complain about other problems that the studio can patch out later. There’s no more pride in making a quality game anymore, it’s just pushing garbage as fast as possible and fixing it in post.

I’ll wait maybe a year or so until Grand Theft Auto VI drops to $20-30 during a Steam sale and then buy it. I have plenty of other games to play in the meantime; I’m in no rush to experience it.

Alt + 0151 (on the num pad)

Or just press Ctrl + Alt + -

Yes, Cypher was watching porn.

Don’t forget the blue silicone wedding ring. They pushed those at the BX/PX as a way to show your marital status without taking your valuable ring to a deployed site.

I’ve been playing this game. It’s enjoyable, but it took way too long to get started. I was already several hours in before I was able to build my first base/ship and get moving to new islands. I wasn’t really sure what to do, so I spent a lot of time just wandering and exploring. I still feel that way, several hours into the gameplay.

And even then, it just feels very slow paced. Like it takes forever to do anything in the game. On that note, flying between islands is also very slow. I don’t know if it’ll pick up with later advancements to ship engines or something, but it’s kind of mind-numbingly slow where I’m currently at. It could use some fast-travel options so I’m not just leaving to make a sandwich while my ship flies to the next island over.

I tried to get my friends into it so we could all base-build together, but none of them had the patience to get a character started. So I’ve been playing it solo and hoping it’ll get better in the later game.

the devs are continuing to put significant work into the game, and it’s in a good state now

It’s actually been a while since I played it. I should probably pick it up again and see if the game has improved.

I have an app from the F-Droid store called URLCheck. I set it as my default “web browser” and then it intercepts every URL I click with a pop-up menu.

The menu lets me see the URL and breaks it down into various parts, which I can selectively remove if I desire. I primarily use it to remove all tracking tags from links people share. But at the bottom of the menu, there’s a drop-down list with all the detected web browsers on your device. You can select a specific web browser before opening the link.

Sure, you may have to manually select the browser every time, but you can guarantee that every Tumblr link opens in Waterfox instead of a default browser. And it gives you a chance to review your URLs before opening them.

Most people have no idea what kind of parameters are attached to links nowadays. I basically just remove the entire “parameters” section of the URL so it takes me straight to the webpage. No tracking, no data collection on where I clicked from, no custom attributes to load on the page. Just take me straight to the link with no extra BS.

Oh, I just noticed it’s on the Google Play store now. That’s good; with Google threatening to lock down Android to only install from their store later this year, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to update URLCheck anymore.

Around 2014 or so, I used to go to McDonald’s for two McDoubles and a small soda. The McDouble was on the dollar menu, and all drinks, regardless of size, were $1. I could eat a filling meal for $3.

Today, a McDouble is $2.79 in my area and drinks are $1.59, $1.79, or $1.89 depending on size. I’m looking at a minimum of $7.17 for the same meal I used to eat a decade ago, not counting tax.

I used to go out to nice restaurants and spend around $20-30 to feed myself and my wife. Now I spend around that much just feeding the two of us at McDonald’s. Going out to a nice restaurant with my wife is easily gonna cost me $50-$100 today, plus tip.

And I always tip a minimum of $20 regardless of the cost of the meal. Much more if it goes over $70. I don’t agree with tipping, but I’m not gonna screw over waitstaff when their income is heavily based on tips.

[…] have you tried McDonalds overseas?

I lived abroad for nearly a decade, thanks to military service, and I always loved trying McDonald’s in every country I visited, just so I could compare with the US as my baseline.

[…] what item do you wish was available at US McDonalds but only remains in that country?

My favorite foreign item, which I miss dearly, was the teriyaki burger in Japan. It’s the best McDonald’s burger I’ve ever had. Japanese food in general is my favorite of all the foreign foods I’ve eaten and I’m definitely planning a trip back to Japan once day just to gorge on their local foods again. But I will definitely be making time for a McDonald’s teriyaki burger the next time I’m in the country.

Is McDonalds in other countries better or worse?

That’s kind of a complicated question, because it depends on the country and whether you’re looking for “healthier” or “tastier.”

In Europe, food regulations prevent American fast food joints from loading their food with tons of sugar, so they end up being (relatively) healthier than their American counterparts. And depending on the country and where they source their ingredients, it might be tastier too. Although it’s hard to beat a fattening greasy American burger on flavor.

But I remember being in Germany around 2011 or so when they introduced a “1955 Burger,” which they claimed was the burger McDonald’s used to sell in Germany in 1955. It was exceptionally good! I came back many times while the promotion was going on.

When I was back in America, I caught another promotional for the “1955 Burger,” but it was gross! And nothing like the German variant. Apparently, Germany made the burger differently than we did in the US back in the day, and I much prefer the German version.

*Naked Snake enters the chat*

Spoiler, but yes.

Granted, my answer was kind of spoilery too.

And what?! I have never played mgs

Liquid Snake is a character in Metal Gear Solid. He’s Solid Snake’s twin brother and one of the antagonists in the series.

I’d be careful looking for jobs while at work, especially on a work computer. That’s a great way to get let go if they notice you doing it.

A friend of mine clicked a link to Twitch on his work laptop once. He immediately got pinged by his HR team, saying he was accessing unauthorized streaming sites and might be fired if they catch him live streaming. He has a strict clause in his contract that claims he’s not allowed to live stream at all while employed with the company, for fear of him spilling company secrets in a public forum.

As a former IT guy myself, I can confirm it’s super easy to monitor employees’ activity on their work computers. Don’t do anything but work on your work computer. Save all the job hunting or personal browsing for your personal phone/laptop/home computer. Don’t let your job build a profile on your browsing habits, because they will absolutely use it against you in a termination.

The new Star Wars movie, The Mandalorian and Grogu, is all about the other Hutts. Twins took over the Hutt empire after Jabba died, and they recruit the Mandalorian to track down and rescue their cousin who was kidnapped as a child. It got mixed reviews, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

At least in the movies, there’s only one Hutt empire, with a bit of a power struggle within the Hutt family. Sounds like the twins were eager to take over in the power vacuum when Jabba died. Even the Resistance has to work with them occasionally because of the powerful connections their family has.

That sounds very similar to my wife’s situation. Except the few times she’s feeling good, she’ll just bail on social plans as we’re trying to leave the door. I end up attending social events by myself a lot.

Wait, why would you move back to a town everyone left? If i retired at 38 I’d be traveling and not living anywhere near my home town.

I spent 20 years traveling the world and living abroad with the US military. I’ve explored most of Europe, Asia, a little of Africa, and a brief visit to the Middle East (that last one was not fun travel), and as much as I enjoyed it, I realized I was starting to miss my hometown.

My hometown is nearby to a massive US city, so most people here just move to the city. Or get their college education there and then move on to another large metropolitan area in the US. My hometown is a beautiful place to settle down, but most people my age aren’t ready for that yet. Hence why all of my friends have left town.

My wife and I still have plans to travel, but we’re waiting for our elderly dog to finally pass away. He gets stressed with us just being gone for a day, so leaving him in a kennel while we go on vacation might kill him.

We paid for an expensive kennel where he got his own “suite” with a soft bed, tons of toys, TV playing doggy films all day, and multiple one-on-one play sessions with employees outdoors, and he still lost 5 lbs from stress in a week! And it’s a place he’s familiar with; we used to send him and our other dog there before she passed away. Since losing his partner, he just can’t handle being away from my wife and I for extended stretches of time. He’s extremely needy and anxious.

So one day we’ll get back out and revisit some of the wonderful places we lived abroad again. But for now, we’re just enjoying the quiet life back home.

The military was stressful for us, always having to be somewhere, accomplishing something, and adhering to a strict schedule. Our personal lives were always secondary to our jobs and you couldn’t just quit. You were locked into a multi-year contract that could only be broken by doing something illegal and going to jail. So having the freedom to plan my own schedule and do whatever I want with my life is kind of nice.

Your wife sounds like my wife and I. Mine has medical issues though so has a bit of an excuse.

Same here, we’re both 100% disabled according to the VA. Doesn’t mean we’re immobile, but our mobility is a bit restricted at times and my wife uses that as an excuse to avoid doing things. The less she moves, the less likely she’s going to be in pain that day.

I personally just fight through the pain to be productive, and if I need to take a rest day to recover, oh well. It’s not like I have to be anywhere.

The image itself is an AI enhanced version of a scene from the 2006 movie Monster House. The TV and other peripherals in the background weren’t there in the original scene.

The original film was made back when CG characters had a creepy uncanny valley look to them, with plastic-looking skin and dead eyes. The faces have been improved in this version to look a bit more… human. Skin texture and realistic eyes are the biggest improvements.

EDIT: And actual hair texture! Hair in the old movie looked like plastic caps on the characters’ heads.

I retired young, at 38 years old, and moved back to my old hometown. All my childhood friends have since moved away from this place, so I had no local friends when I came home.

I’m now 42. In those past 4 years, I’ve made exactly 3 friends. None of which live close to me. None of which I visit more than once or twice a year.

My wife has made no friends in that time. She’s a bigger introvert than me, choosing to stay in bed 60-70% of the day and going weeks without ever leaving the house. She laments not having any friends, but then won’t make the effort to get to know anyone.

Trying to make friends later in life without kids is hard. Especially as an introvert. And it’s not like I just sit around the house all day like my wife. I’m actively going into town and doing stuff. But it’s hard to strike up conversations with strangers and find common interests.