OT: The Daily Thread

Friday night yall what yall up to eh? I wanna chit chat. Anyone on here?

RL: long day at work, mowed the lawn, wife printed off an assload of photos at walmart for some photo albums got home late, ate some pizza, we chillin. Goin to my parents tomorrow got a full day not looking forward to it tbh.

D2: Playing my windy druid, only level 84 running CS on p3. Windy is so strong it's crazy like you kill things like crazy on p3 just with hurricane. I don't like twister much. It's tough to target things. I've been swapping through characters like crazy, some meph runs on blizz sorc, some cs runs with bowazon. Is there a good bowazon? that can handle things quickly in any comparable fashion to other classes on higher p settings? cause this guy got insane gear and it still blows. fun to play though. Been playing my auradin sometimes. Leveled some new guys trying to speedrun twinked - barb specifically because I watched RyuQuatzacotl speedrun barb twinked to hell in like 4.5 hours and it looked like he made crappy gear choices throughout and I was pretty sure I could do it way faster. But then got bored once I reached NM and dropped my character. I did it a few times, I got through normal to level ~40ish in about an hour, but after that there's like too many choices to make as far as spec and gearing. I hate using tele charges but I'm going to need to sort that out to beat times. Frenzy is awesome for running crazy fast, I just can't quite figure out how it's all going to fit together and where and when I'm going to level but 4 hours seems like way too long for any twinked run. He's using ww but with a ribcracker and not killing much. I feel like properly geared you just smash everything with no issue all the way. He's got good charms though which I don't, but I don't feel like perfect charms are necessary for a faster run, just some tweaks to what he's doing.

OVG None of course. Who has time with RL and D2 for ovg - oh but I've been watching DisguisedToast play Among Us. WIsh I had 4 or 5 more gamer buddies to play with.
 
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RL: More work on the home.

D2: A couple tournament characters

OVG: Was going to be HS: Battlegrounds until they announced a reset in rankings, maybe some D3 with my brother
 
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RL: formal year end starts Thursday. Wee. So much fun. Fun continues when you try to online date people that don’t talk to you....

D2: nope.

OVG: Beat Leon for the first time in sword. Pretty fun. Porygon community day was decent. Now have shield and about to start again there.
 
RL: Last time around, I mentioned that on the same day I was offered to be converted from a temp employee to a full time role with my current company and was also contacted by a former boss letting me know a supervisor position was opened at a new location in my old line of work. Since then: I applied for the new job & interviewed for it last week, and I liked what she had to say. Later in the week, I was sent an offer letter by the current job and had a deadline of accepting it by September 28th. I didn't hear anything about the new job by then, so I filled it all out as a fallback just in case the other opportunity didn't work out. Received an internal company email today informing me of my official start date as a full hire. Logged off of work to find I had an offer letter awaiting me from the new company. So... I accepted a job this week, and I'm going to quit it for another one before I've even started. I'm going to piss off a lot of people very soon. ...And I don't care! I'll gladly vacate a team that has no leadership and accept the challenges of being the leader of a new untested team for a 33% raise over my current hourly wage. So very much to do before I start with them, though. I'm gonna have to write up a check list of things to accomplish for the next couple weeks and jump on it fast. Busy bee I'll be.

D2: Nope.

OVG: Rocket League with John Remedy a couple times a week. A new season has begun so we had to do our placement matches to determine our rank... didn't go great, but after a couple nights I'm back up to about where I think I belong. Played D3 solo a few nights just for sharts and gurgles. Slapped together a Wave of Light monk for the first time since loot 2.0 and the introduction of massive power creep. She can handle Torment XIII okay with basic best in slot gear, but she's kinda squishy and I don't have the leeway to finagle with gear mods to play it as recommended so I'm nowhere near full power or survivability. Doesn't feel as good or frenetic as the Tempest Rush monks I've made in the last year, either (they're so fun). And I'm only playing it as something to occupy my free time, no real fervor to go hard and actually improve. Still letting Idle Expanse run in the background at all times and doing maybe one reset each day; end result is that I'm in a constant battle to stay in the top 10 on the leaderboards. Only have 527/1000 required hours for the grindiest achievement, so I'll be letting that go for a while yet. Considering starting up Monster Hunter World again. Very fun game. ...Until it starts to become agonizingly difficult. I don't deal with failure very well, so once those last half dozen monsters get unlocked and the fights become almost futile I end up losing focus. The journey getting there is top notch, though. Maybe with this new job, I can afford to pick up the content-rich DLC soon? Heck, the last new game I bought was MHW in 2018, so the thought of picking up ANYTHING new is exciting!
 
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RL: Just finished nine days straight to earn a five-day weekend. I plan to spend it watching Japanese pro-wrestling so I can catch up to the big summer tournament that currently ongoing. My back hurts. Morale at work is terrible.

D2: Haven't given it much thought.

OVG: Rocket League is free-to-play now (join our SPF RL clan!) and mine and Trim's preferred game mode (ice hockey) has seen a 500-700% increase in player numbers (depending on the day of the week) for our niche playlist choice. Caves of Qud had a big patch that overhauled all available mutations, including a big nerf to the current psychic meta build. I'm playing after work when I'm most tired, and have suffered some dumb deaths because of it. There was one instance where I slipped on slime and fell into a space-time vortex that sent me thirty levels underground at clvl9. I didn't last long :D Anyway, it's my go-to game to chill after work, I just can't get enough of the lore and emergent storytelling. I'll say that it's nice to not know everything about the game, and have things to discover each playthrough, as opposed to D2 where stat tables and names of unidentified Uniques are ingrained in the membrane.

Have a great weekend SPF, I know I will!
 
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IRL: Looking for jobs. Not sure how long I'll be able to stay home, but it's not going to be indefinite for sure. I've got some leeway with the kids, even though they are schooling at home. Mom has decided she can handle my kids along with my niece, and if all else fails, their mother works a pretty set schedule, and is willing to take them in the afternoons when she gets off.

D2: Hope to finish out Kurast on my random Barb. Currently in the Bazaar. Act IV usually goes pretty quickly, so I might end up part of the way through Act V today.

OVG: Been playing a little bit of Pokemon TCG Online. I like card games, but not spending money. This is a decent compromise :)
 
@logoutzero Central Texas and job hunting, eh? If you're around the greater Austin area, I might be able to show you an opportunity or two at my new company. Granted, I don't know your location, skills, qualifications, availability, aspirations, career goals, desired fields, whether it's any good to work for this company since I've not yet started there myself, or whether it'd be any good to work under ME since I don't have a great outsider's perspective on myself in that role. I'll just throw out that I know of a relatively stress-free position that requires no known physical labor, interaction with customers, or prior experience in the field. I believe I'll be heading up an evening/early morning team but there's a 3rd shift crew in the works, and it pays decently well on the ground level, too. They're spinning up production on a new project that'll be starting soon, and I get the feeling they're in urgent need to fill seats. Could be an easy in if you're looking for a paycheck. If you're a proven strong typist and can stand the boredom of being a professional keyboard jockey (or if you'd rather work in other areas of a call-center style office -- including mail room, trainers, workforce management, IT support), hit me up with a DM and I'll shoot you some details and the company's open jobs page. No expectations, and if I don't hear from you I won't be offended. Just making a friendly offer!

...The above message is the only real reason I posted here so soon after my last Daily update. But when in Brome, do as the Bromans do! :p

RL: The double transition from temp to full time employee at the one job and simultaneously transitioning to completely new hire at another is awkward, but I'm powering through. Final day with the current company is Saturday; new job starts on the following Wednesday. Been working from home for maybe six months now, so it'll be strange to have to go back to an office and interact with people face to face (maybe and preferably with masks between them). Also nervous to step back into a field that I abandoned two years ago and haven't touched since. And further nervous to be in charge of a team and all the random personalities & quirks that come with the job. Nervous but excited to get going. Still have a lot to do before I'm ready to go, but I'm hoping I can tackle the majority of it on my next day off. Otherwise, life is much the same -- working, watching a butt ton of yt & twitch, sleeping poorly, and eating cheap & unhealthy meals. Living the dream, folks.

D2: Nope.

OVG: Don't have the full grasp of what my new schedule will be like, but probability is high that it'll interfere with the current Rocket League / OVG sessions with John Remedy (join clan SPF today for some hot unmitigated disasters with car ice hockey!), so I'm looking forward to the last couple known times we can play together and hang. Whatever hours I end up working, it'll be a priority to find time for one or two sessions per week since it's become a welcome ritual and necessary for maintaining whatever sanity I have left. Idle Expanse still running in the background. I'm not even bothering to touch it any more. Less than two weeks and I should have the last time-gated achievement. Started two more idlers since then: Mr. Mine, a minimally remastered flash game relic from 2012 that recently came to Steam; and Idle Slayer, the true definition of an endless runner because your dude runs and jumps with literally no obstacles to stop a run until you choose to end it. The former is simple and mostly hands-off, a somewhat buggy and an unpolished grind for resources used to either sell for cash or perform upgrades. The latter wants a player to be quite hands-on for maximum effect, but there are enough leanings in the upgrade tree to allow for decent offline grinding once you get a little deep into the loop (none of which I've invested in myself). Neither is blowing me away. But they're occupying my time, enough so that other games are off the table for now. I do hate to think what kind of power & resources are getting eaten up on my computer while running three idlers concurrently...
 
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RL: Can't catch a break. Got hit by a car in my new truck on saturday and find out if it is totaled this week. Everything is not going according to plan in a bad way, and I guess it is what it is.

D2: Need to update some characters as I seem to just die all the time, but I have a non-tournament one I'm still chugging along with.

OVG: More HS: Battlegrounds, would do some SW: Squadrons, but neck hurts from saturday and VR isn't good then. Anyone play Minecraft dungeons?, rather enjoy it, just not solo.
 
RL: Can't catch a break. Got hit by a car in my new truck on saturday and find out if it is totaled this week. Everything is not going according to plan in a bad way, and I guess it is what it is.

D2: Need to update some characters as I seem to just die all the time, but I have a non-tournament one I'm still chugging along with.

OVG: More HS: Battlegrounds, would do some SW: Squadrons, but neck hurts from saturday and VR isn't good then. Anyone play Minecraft dungeons?, rather enjoy it, just not solo.
Sorry to hear about the accident... New truck must have been so pretty and distracting. Like a moth to the flame. *don't look into the light*
I can't speak directly to your string of bad luck, just know that you aren't alone :p

RL: Got a call back on a part time offer. I'll entertain the interview for sure, but I can't say I'm super stoked about the job. Sounds like Saturday to Monday inclusive (maybe some Fridays) so the advantage is that taking the job would impact my ability to help my kids with their virtual schooling minimally.

D2: Random barb in Act 5 normal. It's a slog fest. Single target attackers aren't usually much fun to me, but no access to Howl/Taunt really makes it extra not-fun. I can't recall ever questing a Berserker before, and my endgame Barbs are almost always singers. I can't even recall doing a melee barb post 1.09. We'll see what Nightmare has in store, assuming I can make it through Baal, and Cows *shudder*

OVG: I've been seeing a lot of "Among Us" chatter. Is this Werewolf/Mafia?
 
Man after reading some of these stories I should stop feeling so sorry for myself. Keep on keepin' on, SPFers!

RL: 3.5 years sober this week. Work is getting everyone down, even lazy people. Go figure. It's a guaranteed paycheck and I rock at it, plus the job market here in England's rural peninsula is sketchy at the best of times, and it's flexible around my home life and playing games with some random guy in Texas I've never met ;-) Back pain has increased to a higher baseline the last week or so, haven't been able to shake it with rest and sleep as I usually do. Watching Japanese wrestling with a co-worker is keeping me going. There's a big summer tournament to determine the number one contender for the heavyweight championship which has had some killer matches so far, but we're two weeks behind. Staying off social media and Reddit to avoid spoilers has been a big plus. Had to get a flu jab because people in my house are shielding from COVID and also had them. First time I've had one. It was in a local village hall because they don't want that many people in the doctor's clinics I guess. All this talk of a second lockdown and no second furlough scheme worth a damn has me worried. I try to keep up to date with US politics but it genuinely makes me sad and I don't have the time to rewatch The West Wing to feel better.

D2: Have considered, but not indulged in a while. Lite Sorc is parked at L97.4 if I remember correctly.

OVG: Rocket League is still the go-to to wind down after work. Minimal success in Caves of Qud after a big new patch (currently weekly patches on Steam Early Access), all due to user input errors and poor decision-making, as is the roguelike hallmark. I've been playing Postknight and Grim Quest on my tablet in bed, both FTP games on the Android marketplace.
 
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RL: Actively looking for alternatives and oportunities to move and go to live in Germany. Next year I'm finishing my Bachelors in Music. I haven't had much luck looking for Masters and different post-graduate oportunities to continue my studies there, and as far as I understand, stable jobs for musicians are: teacher, teacher, teacher. To be a teacher in Germany means I'd have to do my primary and high-school again, which doesn't sound very appealing tbh. I'm really torn appart now. I really wasn't thinking "I want to live abroad" when I chose my career, otherwise I'd have done ingeneering, computer science, or something like that. I feel really dumb for not realizing my country was falling appart when I took the desicion to study music at age 17. Since I have an italian citizenship, and I don't need a VISA to stay there, I was thinking maybe starting again and doing an Ausbildung on some random craft that will let me work there after finishing it would be an alternative worth considering. My german is also pretty bad. I guess I can scratch an A2 lvl... maybe.

D2: Almost nothing. A little bit of 1.07 here and there.

OVG: None.
 
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@Kinkara: Well, depending on whether you play any instruments teaching in Germany can be teaching instruments, too. For that, there are lots of private music schools where you usually only need to prove you can play the your instruments...my former piano teacher is from Brazil and couldn't speak German too well 30 years or so back, but he still managed to found a meanwhile formidable private school for music in my child neighbourhood.

But elsqe...working as a music graduate at an university usually doesn't earn you much in Germany...if anything at all. What direction did you want to take? A rather theoretical approach? Historical? Practical? In Regensburg, where I live, there is a Master for "Historische Musikwissenschaft", but it is completely in German :p

If you are more into the practical aspects of music and like classical music, conducting and such, there are also "Hochschulen für Kirchenmusik". As far as I know, courses are all in German though.

RL: As I mentioned in the EMB, it was my "taxi dad" day. Fetched my daughter and her friends from school, drove home, gave them cake and hot chocolate, drove them to the choir, went to a playdate with my younger daughter in the meantime, picked up my older daughter again from choir, drove home again. Laundry. Now kids are asleep and I am free to do as I ... ... as I ... 😴

D2: Try to finish A1 NM with my Ability Sept Scroll Barb, concluding Act I for all 7 characters. Only level 2 and 3 of the Catacombs to go, so I should be good.
 
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@Grisu Regensburg looks like a nice city. I'm a pianist and my training has been mostly practical. At the moment I'm looking at every option I have to see what would be better to start my life there. So far the most promissing things I've found are some Masters in Music Pedagogy or the idea of doing something completely different like learning a craft or something. Definitely teaching in a private music school can be a viable alternative if it isn't as regulated as traditional teaching. My main focus now is "How do I get out of here and into there?". I've been told by someone from here who is living there now that it was a lot easier to move to Germany 30 years ago and that now things are so regulated that it's a completely different thing than when he moved there. I should just make one of those "learn german in a week" language courses. Seven days studying german in a bunker without sleep and food XD I just really have to get the hang of this language.

I really like everything that has to do with cognition and the way we perceive music, but I haven't found anything like that. Maybe something along those lines would be available for psychologists instead of musicians... I don't know.
 
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RL: nope.

D2: not in a long time, but starting to get a tiny itch.

OVG: Threw myself back into NCAA football. Also crown tundra comes out this weekend for sword and shield, so pretty nice setup.
 
RL: First day at the new part-time job went exceedingly well. I felt well received by all the staff, got several compliments to my work ethic (even managed to make a sale today without any direction, not really that impressive to me, but they seemed to really like that) and I just have a generally good feeling about it. Depending on how things go with the virus, and schools, and all that mess, I could see potential for it to grow into something more, but for now, I am quite happy with part time, especially because they offer benefits to part time employees, not only healthcare, but discounted stock purchase and 401(k) investing. The company matches 100% up to 3% of your salary, than another 50% for the next 3%. I've seen better, but it's not the worst I've seen either!

D2: Maybe some Random Amazon action later this evening. I might spend some time setting up GoMule and RWM. Maybe.

OVG: Probably not.

Book: A few months ago, a woman I was mildly interested in suggested Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare to me. I bought the book in the hopes that we could have our own little private book club, or at least have something to discuss, but nothing ever came of it. Anyway, I found the book stashed away in a box I hadn't opened since moving, and I thought "You bought the thing, may as well finish reading it." I had only read about the first 3 or 4 chapters, I may as well restart it.
 
Be warned, big rant coming in!

RL: still some mild flu-like symptoms, but without fever. A covid rapid test was negative though (96% sensitivity IIRC). plus work is crashing down on me. For those who don't know: I have been reducing weekly workload from 33 to 20 hours. Well, in theory. I still have almost the same amount of patients to take care of (around 270 instead of 300) and although I had 4 weeks of vacation the last 4 months, I have accumulated 100 extra hours. Plus lots of nerve wracking patients' parents plus incompetence at the front desk (clearing appointments where no clearing was required with no way to tell which appointments were cleared!). I feel angry, exhausted, and would very much like to demolish something if it wasn't for my muscle ache from the virus infection... I hope tomorrow will be better, but I seriously consider to take all those recent job offers more seriously...
Phew, at least kids were awesome today (well, most of the time... I bribed them with TV/PC/chocolate croissants and their favourite pasta (cinnamon thuna, for those who care :)

And the PET-scans from my father in law showed no signs of tumor, so he is still in remission 🙂

D2: not in the mood for it the last 3 weeks or so. But I killed NM Radament with my ability scroll sept Skellimancer (hired a Might merc ASAP, of course!)

OVG: MTGA, but in my current frame of mind (mindframe? State of mind?) I get way too frustrated way too quickly by RNG bad luck...

Book: that is where my salvation (and inner peace) lies 😊 finished the first 3 books from Payne's "youth in revolt" series. It offers some astounding insight in America's nowadays political system and social problems, even though it was written 25 years ago. Well, as far as I can tell if I compare it to nowadays with reports from the "German Lügenpresse" 😉 just kidding of course, I am no such fan of conspiracy theories. Started to re-read "A Map of Days" (peculiar children 4) to catch up on what happened before I start book 5. And I discovered that I already bought "Rivers of London" two years ago for my kindle, which I wanted to buy today after discovering that I seems to be like the Dresden Files in British... Well, seems like I already discovered that 2 years ago 😂

Speaking of Dresden Files: finished Peace Talks and Battle Ground some weeks ago. There were some bad critics about them, but I rather enjoyed them. Maybe it is because no matter how beaten up I am, I will never be as beaten up as Harry Dresden? 🤔
 
Thank you, @Kinkara!

Well, things have taken a surprising turn. Got a phone call from work 1 hour ago. One patient of mine, who had a 90 mins appointment with me last Friday, is covid positive... Guess what our local health apartment had to say? Since we were both wearing masks and held our distance she wouldn't consider me first grade contact person, thus no quarantine although I have mild symptoms... Quote after I asked if she was being serious: "well, I can't very well tell you to close down your practice, can I?" after some discussion I now should (not must, should) do a PCR test and until results are here I should treat via telemedicine if possible...

So here I am, cancelling all my kids appointments and time with their grandparents from being afraid to possibly spread the virus while I should go to work nonetheless. Strange world we live in. Well, time is up, have to get to my covid test appointment!
 
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