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I keep thinking I need to play Stardew Valley, but every time I start I realize it's going to be a gigantic time sink. And then it keeps getting more updates, and I know it's going to be even more of a life leech. But I should probably give it a try, and it seems like one of those games that I would love just going into blind. I've never really played farming sims like that, I was fascinated by Harvest Moon when I was kid, but we only got to rent it twice, so I never played much of it. Never bought it on N64, but the deciding factor on why I bought a GameCube was Animal Crossing, and I miss that little village. And the Misfits shirt I made for myself. But now that you've mentioned it, I'll probably install it again. Other than that, I've been replaying Turok, with the "New Weapons & More 1.9" in the Steam workshop. It's fun enough, it certainly makes the game harder, and I'm enjoying most of the changes made to the game. I've always loved Turok's somewhat floaty combat, the view-bobbing made the game feel like you were just gliding through the levels, and the generous auto-aim facilitated the N64 controller, and you were encouraged to use up your explosive shells and tek-arrows as fast as you found them. The weapons mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2887664195 changes most of that. I'm taking more than an hour on each level because the enemies are kicking my ass, there are far more of them, and ammunition management actually seems to matter. It does breathe some new life into the game, and I would recommend it. Although there are these tiny little Poachers that hide in plants and will absolutely destroy your health if you don't explode them. That needs to be fixed. They take two explosive shells to kill, and you can't see them. But it's still fun, Turok was a really great game.

There's quite a few, but this lyrical beauty from Tom Waits on Heartattack and Vine always hits my idea of a perfect musical line just fine: "Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk"

Just a thought, I wonder if it didn't have something to do with the "X-Men: Ravages of Apocalypse" TC for Quake that saw a retail release in '97. It's quite possible that Fox saw something of a lucrative market in making licensed Quake mods, so they wanted to shut down the Aliens mod because they thought they could make money off the IP. Or they just wanted to shut it down because they're dicks and they didn't want people releasing free products based on their IP's. It's been a long time since I've heard the phrase "FOXED", so that brought back memories. Is the common parlance now "NINTENDO'D"?

I figured this screenshot would come in useful at some point: Still, 18 is really old for a dog, and despite how Kabosu's image may have been misused by humanity, I'm sure she was a very, very good girl.

They're fine to touch and handle, otherwise people wouldn't be able to build their own PC's or replace them, just don't open one up and start messing around inside it. They have no user serviceable parts, and there is a risk of severe electric shock if you start messing around inside them. Just unplug the PSU from the wall and hold the power button down for a few seconds to discharge any electricity that's being stored in the PSU before you start disconnecting internal cables or removing it. Oh, and whatever you do, listen to Murdoch when he tells you things about fixing computers. He kind of knows what he's talking about, he kind of makes money doing it.

I realize some of you may not know what this is, but I think it's kind of neat: Yes I have a duck phone. Which, I did a search about this before posting, and oddly enough I made a post mentioning having a duck phone in this very thread back in 2021, but never took pictures of it. I just think it's hilarious, I saw it in a consignment store almost twenty years ago and decided I had to have it. It was around 10 bucks I think, and while at that time I did still have a landline, I haven't had one in probably fifteen years now. But it was cute, it's eyes lit up red and it quacked when you got a phone call. And I was just looking around recently, and apparently these TeleMania duck phones were something of a hot item way back in the day, and they're selling for a pretty penny nowadays.

No, absolutely not, never happen in a million years... but would it kill kids these days to empty the dishwasher once in a while? And while I'm thinking about it, I love the cover for Leningrad's "Dlya Millionov":

I had all four of mine removed when I was 16, because my dentist, who I and my parents trusted, did X-Rays of my jaw and saw that my jawbone wasn't large enough to support four extra teeth. My teeth had always been fine, they grew in straight, a few cavities here and there, but there just wasn't room for the wisdom teeth to grow in and not completely rearrange my other molars. It took an afternoon, and I remember being nervous, sitting down in the chair, they gave me a sedative, and I was talking to the dental assistant while I was being knocked out. We were talking about the high school I went to, he went to it as well, then I was gone. When I woke up, four of my teeth were gone. I got some really good painkillers, and they healed up quite well, no dry socket. It was easy, and I don't miss them at all. I can still feel slight indents where they should've grown in, but I can tell without a doubt that my jaw had no room for those extra teeth. So yes, if your dentist is telling you that they need to be removed, they do. It's not excruciating pain, it's mild at best, and you get pain killers after. I'm thinking maybe your friend didn't follow their advice for after care, didn't cleanse the area, and went straight back to eating solid foods and it got stuck in the open wound, causing dry socket. Do what the dentist tells you. I've experienced horrible pain in my life, to the point where I had doctors tell me that they didn't understand how I was still able to even walk or speak in a level voice due to the shear amount of pain I must've been experiencing. I would put having my wisdom teeth taken out at a level 2, around the same level as a bad headache. You'll be fine, and listen to your dentist.

Well, your parents apparently have excellent taste in music.

I'm decent at troubleshooting PC's if they're right in front of me. I was having an issue with my current desktop last year, where it wouldn't turn on. Long story short, after checking everything I could possibly think of, I just located the pins on the connector that connect the power button to the motherboard, put a precision screwdriver in there to complete the circuit between the pins, and it turned on. Turned out it was a bad power switch, replaced that and it's been running fine. But what I'm most concerned about is that that you're repeatedly mentioning getting shocks from the case: "I also get a little shock from the casing when trying to unscrew the motherboard. Not sure if the casing comes contact into my old pc or nope." "The CPU casing has shocks when connected. I checked the PSU fan and it is spinning when the PC turned on. The motherboard LED also lit when it connected to a power source" Is this just a language barrier where "shock" means that the components are trying to start when you connect them to an electric receptacle, or are you literally feeling electricity discharge from the case into your body when you touch the case? Because you should never be getting shocked by the case of your PC, and if you are, there's a severe grounding issue, and it should probably be chalked up as a lost cause. It's possible it's an issue with the PSU, possibly a faulty capacitor, but don't dink around inside the PSU. So, have you tried replacing the PSU? Because that's where I would look first based on what you've said, but if it's having noticeable electric discharges just by touching the case, it's probably fried multiple components everywhere, and it's beyond repair. I mean, people are providing suggestions about issues with the CPU, RAM, GPU, BIOS, but if this device is literally discharging enough current just by being plugged in that a person notices being shocked by it, then it doesn't need any further work. The only further discussion should be how to best dispose of it.

Cinnabites I don't have a dedicated movie night, but I did watch Monsters Inc. for the first time a few nights ago. It was pretty decent, it did a good job of transferring John Goodman, Billy Crystal, and Steve Buscemi into monsters.

This thread seemed like deja vu when I saw it, and apparently it was, since this thread from back in December was just bumped: Maybe a thread merge would be in order, this one already has more replies than the old one. And I still stand by my selections in the previous thread.

I would have to agree with this. If Blood had more quality level sets released for it, well I would probably never play anything else. I don't imagine it helps that the Build engine is notoriously abstract and hard to design for, especially compared to something like Doombuilder or Worldcraft/Hammer or Trenchbroom.

I think you misunderstood me, because "most" Build games have really good level design. Duke Nukem and Shadow Warrior have some really, really good level designs. Blood... I love it, and it's my favorite Build game, but it gets really stale at points in Dead Reckoning. It was clear they were rushing through by the end, but Episode 1 and 2 had some amazing levels. What I meant was that Ion Fury really made absolutely fantastic use of the Build engine in the levels, as it should. It was made 20 years after the original Build games, but it's level design really shines as being the best of the Build games. There are exceptions of course in Ion Fury, some of the levels can get kind of boring, but for the most part they're fantastic. They're complicated, they're full of secrets, and it really does a great job of feeling like you're in a living world. Duke Nukem did it pretty damn well back in '96, but there were clear limitations, where you knew you were exploring something that was supposed to be real, but it wasn't quite real. Pretty much every level in Ion Fury felt like I was exploring a place that could actually exist. So yeah, I didn't mean to say that Build games have traditionally had poor level design, quite the opposite, but Ion Fury really went above and beyond. The only thing that I've played that seems close in complexity would be something like Death Wish for Blood. Which is absolutely fantastic as well.