The Gaming Den

Koumei wrote:So from a logical perspective, being angry about it makes no fucking sense.

Totally disagree. One of the common emotional responses to helplessness/feeling like you have no control is anger. It's how we're wired. You're just processing things in a way that you need to. So don't beat yourself up about how you feel. But do spend some time with your feelings, it can help.

Also, my deepest condolences.

Since neither me nor anyone I know has a computer beefy enough to run Diablo 3, me and several of my friends and family are going on a Diablo 2 kick.

Just killed diablo with my brother. Being a summoner necro, I had no problems clearing Hell even setting players to 8, but Diablo would eat my skellies for breakfast. My brother's werebear druid hits like a frigg'n truck, but tends to deal very poorly with being swarmed. He could beat Diablo but not get to him, I could get to him but not beat him.

Yeah, that's talking about a game a decade old, I know. I just thought that was cool the way it worked out.

I've been wrestling with the college class registration system for my school during much of today, and I finally managed to set up something likely to meet my requirements. I feel much less stressed out, and in retrospect it's a little surprising how much having something like that partially but not completely done can affect your enjoyment of stuff during the rest of the day. I no longer feel guilt taking time off to read or write during my 3-day weekend.

I switched from cable to DSL.

More awesomely, I turned my brownie recipe into cookies.

Ted the Flayer wrote:Since neither me nor anyone I know has a computer beefy enough to run Diablo 3, me and several of my friends and family are going on a Diablo 2 kick.

Just killed diablo with my brother. Being a summoner necro, I had no problems clearing Hell even setting players to 8, but Diablo would eat my skellies for breakfast. My brother's werebear druid hits like a frigg'n truck, but tends to deal very poorly with being swarmed. He could beat Diablo but not get to him, I could get to him but not beat him.

Yeah, that's talking about a game a decade old, I know. I just thought that was cool the way it worked out.

With a clay golem + decrep curse, diablo should be slowed a lot.
And if you have some trouble, you can also revive some of the 'ogre type' monsters (those big ones with clubs) those have crushing blows and are great against bosses.

That is a thought, I do in fact have a stat reset available. However, since I am now at chapter 5 I might as well push on through to Nightmare for the better lewtz.

Hopefully, I can get some better runes. I am trying to make an Enigma and a Bone item.

Don't get me wrong, you only need 1 point in decrep / clay golem / golem mastery / revives and such, the rest should come from your gear.

High level runes are really rare so the chance you'll be able to make an enigma without hacking is pretty much 0.

Make sure you pick up corpse explosion too btw, it is awesome for clearing groups.
It also does ½ physical damage so nice to use with amplify damage curse.

I had a non- hacked enigma last playthrough, it just took a long time of cubing low end runes. Bone seems to be harder to get. It seems that I keep saying Enigma when I mean Lore. That's.. completely different, my apologies.

The issue with revive is I've forgot to put ANY points in it, and my gear is not that good. I have a wand that gives +1 to summoning skills and a head that gives +2 to skeleton mastery and +1 to Clay golem, Stealth splint mail and the rest is unremarkable. Not enough to keep my minions alive long enough to even SEE diablo before he nukes me offscreen.

Odd thing is, My skellies have nearly 200HP and 30 something resist, and the same attack that wipes them out doesnt dent my 120Hp and 20 resists...

Yeah I believe diablo does 7x the dm against minions. That is why decrep and clay golem + cold attacks are so nice against him.

Well, we got the call this morning. Dad died in his sleep last night. He can finally get the rest he deserves.

I still stand by my decision to resume gaming next week. I did my mourning before his passing, and I could do with a distraction from the grief.

I hate it for you, Koumei. I went through something similar recently where...yeah. We all knew it was coming.

And it sucks anyway.

Take care Koumei.

Koumei: I've just recently started understanding this mentality of grieving before death. My 93-year-old grandfather suffers with dementia and seems to have almost given up hope on life. Unresponsive to any sort of encouragement, all I can hope for now is that he has a peaceful death. Hoping for someone's death seems grotesque and morbid but for a man who has been through a struggle for independence, a struggle for life, and having lived a strong life until the last five years where he deteriorated at an exponential level, I feel this isn't too bad an option.

I wanted to make a droll post when I came into this topic about how my hair should only be pulled children and also in the bedroom by my wife. But dealing with a 93-year old child pulling your hair in defiance of you putting a diaper on him is both amusing and painful.

But this droll post seems to have suddenly become sinister when I think of darker present and future trials with the man. All I can say is that it's time for the man to head on to become dust and scatter to the winds. My grieving has been going on for the last two years and I think I'll be done with it the moment he passes on. Then I'll drink to his memory for a night and then go on with life.

But I think it'll still be hard. Koumei, I hope I can keep to the standard that you seem to have set. But, you bring me confidence and something of a new mettle about how to deal with this in my own life. Thank you.

My mom has dealt with more loss than just about anyone I know, and when I asked her how she was able to cope with the death of her soulmate (for lack of a better term), she said something that has helped me a lot...

No matter what you believe about where they come from or where they're going, the people in our lives are given to us for just a short time and then it's time for them to go. The important part is the time you got to have with them while they were here.

In my grandmother's case, she suffered so much that I was grateful that she died. No one should have to live like that.

So <hugs> for you, Koumei. And I'll shut up now.

Maj wrote:The important part is the time you got to have with them while they were here.

Very much this. I spent a lot of yesterday thinking about the good times, and all the funny things. His various ideas*, his jokes, the time (in the '80s) someone offered to sell him a full set of encyclopaedias but he replied "I don't need them, I already know everything. Go on, test me.", the way he and Ruthie constantly trolled each other, how ecstatic he was when I showed him Ranma 1/2 ("IT HAS TITS! A CARTOON WITH TITS IN IT! RUTHIE COME SEE THIS, THE GIRL IN THIS CARTOON JUST GOT HER TITS OUT"), introducing us to a lot of English comedy (not Little Britain, that can fuck right off), and so on.

I do feel lucky to have had such a good father - and to still have a wonderful mother.

*His theory that darkness is matter, and lights absorb darkness - when a bulb blows, that means it's full of darkness so you need a new empty one. Or his idea for a bag that looks like wrapping paper and has a ribbon for the drawstring, for easy "wrapping" of awkward gifts. And wouldn't you know it, 5 years later we see that done in shops.

It's been barely a day since my last post in this topic talking about how Koumei's attitude was going to influence mine.

At 6:35, my grandfather finally passed away. He descended into his madness over the last 6 years after his wife died. He went to sleep last night and stayed asleep all night and all day into the evening. His breathing was labored and he died around 6:40 in the evening.

I'm okay so far. Let's see if I can move on because I've been through my grief already. I at least think I've been through my grief.

Good luck with that, Cynic. I hope it goes well for you.

<hugs> for both of you.

Passed my restricted firearms course today, as expected. Got 98% on my written portion of the exam and 94% on the practical. Fucking Glock. Instructor is going to book a gun range he's part of for an entire day in may for all us students from the last year. On that day we get to shoot a large variety of guns for free. Fuck yeah.

So, my area going something in excess of 15 inches of rain in somewhat more than 24 hours.

I found the list of roads closed due to being undermined/flooded/etc. Plotted them out on google maps, and found out what I'd suspected.

The A marker is the road I live on.

I'm not getting out of here for a day or two. It's faintly possible I could get to work by taking the backroads and going around my elbow to get to my ass, but I don't want to trust that, considering they have the "Road Closed" signs chained together, and then chained to the bridges or whatever they're proclaiming.

I'm not -too- heartbroken over it. I don't miss work unless I absolutely have to, and I do that just in case of shit like this that can't be helped. But it is annoying.

And I'm really pretty lucky. Got power, phones, internet...Not likely to flood, although everything's reaching "Sog" stage.

So I've just moved to Malaysia for a couple of months. I'm seeing what its like with the idea of possibly moving there for a longer period.

And I'm thinking that if you get a group of Malays then they will always take the most stupid option.

Take highways for example. Lets say you have a six lane highway, with three lanes going each direction. What is the most stupid way to turn around and go the other way? You could add a complicated junction, a huge roundabout, a side road going to a bridge ...

No. Those would all make too much sense and be too safe.

What you do instead is have a U-turn. As in you move over to the fastest lane, travelling as fast as you can even in slow cars or motorbikes. Then, you slow down dramatically, make a U-turn then speed up over about 150m to move into the fast lane going the other way. Who thought that was a good idea?

Then you get stupid road decisions like splitting 4 lanes into 8 toll booths, then merging them back into 3 lanes. At that point you join that road into another 3 lane road, and merge both into just 3 lanes for about half a mile. That's just asking for traffic jams.

There's various other examples, but it does seem like the worst choice is the one that is made most of the time.

---

I'm finding it interesting over here and enjoying myself, although that could be because I'm not working too hard in the heat. However, when guide books say that most people speak some English they are lying.

Its the little differences that are really weird. Like there are no carpeted floors, just hard floors with rugs. And of course theres the squatting toilets with no toilet paper in public places like shopping centres. And the fact that everything is so spread out from rapid development that you need a car to get anywhere. The fact that there are lots of skinny cats everywhere, the towns spread out along main roads, the huge number of small stalls by the side of the road...

Oh, and then the fact that it rivals Australia in danger. Malaria ridden mosquitos at midnight, dengue fever ridden mosquitos at sunrise and sunset, poisonous centipedes and other poisonous insects, if you travel to the Kampungs you are likely to find cobras, 10 foot boa constrictors, black hornets biting you and other such animals. Let alone the insane population, or the random kidnappings of children that take place pretty regularly, or the regular exodus from the cities back to the villages during celebrations, during which time immigrant workers run riot in the cities supposedly raping and beating people...

I mean, at one point a company was selling a fish delicacy, but couldn't get any since it was the rainy season. So they bought some fish from Thailand. Which was fresh because it had been soaked in formaldehyde. Actual formaldehyde, the stuff they preserve dead bodies in because nothing will go near it. Do you have to check that food which is sold in restaurants and shops isn't preserved with poisons in Australia? Its not a case of travellers having to boil water since their stomachs won't have the necessary bacteria, the native population boils water because its not safe to drink for anyone.

So yeah, come to Malaysia. It's safe, sane and consensual. Or is that something else I'm thinking of...

Maxus wrote:So, my area going something in excess of 15 inches of rain in somewhat more than 24 hours.

I found the list of roads closed due to being undermined/flooded/etc. Plotted them out on google maps, and found out what I'd suspected.

The A marker is the road I live on.

I'm not getting out of here for a day or two. It's faintly possible I could get to work by taking the backroads and going around my elbow to get to my ass, but I don't want to trust that, considering they have the "Road Closed" signs chained together, and then chained to the bridges or whatever they're proclaiming.

I'm not -too- heartbroken over it. I don't miss work unless I absolutely have to, and I do that just in case of shit like this that can't be helped. But it is annoying.

And I'm really pretty lucky. Got power, phones, internet...Not likely to flood, although everything's reaching "Sog" stage.

Do you have, or can you get, sandbags? Sounds like a bit of property damage is all you really need to worry about, so that's good. Guess you're just hanging out till the roads are clear?

It's drained off. Believe me, if my neck of the woods floods, everyone else is in deep shit--the hills around here aren't huge, but they're broad and so are the spaces between them.

They've reopened some roads over the course of the day, as they stopped being underwater and been inspected. So yeah, I can actually get to work and places now. Some roads are actually damaged.

One of the main routes out of here is in need of extensive repair--collapsed asphault, damaged bridge. So we're going around the long way for a while.

Still feeling vaguely lucky over it. I mean, a ten-year-old kid was struck by lightning (survived), there was a fatal car accident, someone drowned because they didn't pay attention to the riptide flags at the beach, and some people lost power and there was some flood damage to some places, but it really was light damage for over a foot of rain in that period of times.

So, being demoted from my old position hasn't stopped one of the manager's from trying to force me to do my old job with reduced pay. She was not pleased when I refused.

Although I accidentally used a bronyism when talking to her. I said "I'm going to have to put my hoof down on this matter, I'm not doing my old job for less pay".

*Brohoof's Ted*

One of my friends used to be the unofficial IT guy for a family business. He finally got tired of it since he actually was a welder and they did not offer him enough to be doing their IT. He let them know he was looking for another job. Apparently to his detriment he jokingly told his boss later that his other job prospects didn't come through so she was stuck with him, as the next day she fired him because he wasn't doing their IT work and she felt he wasn't respectful enough (I suspect she is a bit insecure about being the new boss).

It gets messier because the boss is the sister of one of our mutual friends (i.e. our friend's late father hired him almost 9 years ago and now friend's sister runs the biz). By all accounts the firing was rather douchey, and it is touchy since she hasn't said anything about it to her brother. At least she isn't contesting his unemployment since there was no just cause.

So, out of my local group of peers, many of whom are highschool friends, only two out of nine are employed right now. A few of them are either monied individuals, have a well-employed husband, or banked substantial savings before becoming unemployed, so none of us are in dire straits as of yet. One of my friends is a flight attendant and he stumbled into that field out of being a dissatisfied IT worker and likes it. I may join him except I dunno if I could take that much travel away from my family.