Sledgstone

Thats pretty normal for me. I'm use to seeing one at least every week or so.

Holy crap, I did have 2 bad sticks of RAM. After I pulled that one out last thursday my PC hasn't crashed once. And I found out my games crashing was because of a virtual memory setting I manually changed to give the system stability months ago was no longer valid, or auto changed to a lower amount. I switched that back to windows auto managed and even my games aren't crashing anymore.  *knocks on wood* I'll still replace this remaining memory soon just to be on the safe side in case all the RAM is going bad.

I thought they were going to use Hulu as their platform since they own it. But after looking it up, it seems they'll leave Hulu for the more mature content of 21st Century Fox. It will be curious what will happen with all the Netflix original series deals with the mid tier marvel characters.

From what I read a while back I think Netflix will be retaining those series. Although I doubt Marvel would let any of their characters get locked down with another company again. Whatever streaming service Disney makes it'll highly compete with netflix considering the massive amount of content it'll have by default that will never have to leave because of a license expiring. Every fox, disney, marvel, abc, etc. properties. It'll be massive and probably have as much if not more content than netflix on day one of it's launch. In hindsight it makes sense now why netflix has been so aggressively making it's own branded content. Every network has it's own streaming service now. I miss the old days of netflix having everything. I'd love to rewatch Chuck, Farscape, Psych and a bunch of other series that all used to be on netflix. As it is now Netflix hasn't had any of those shows in almost a year.

Maybe being away from all those sick coughing people at your old office has made your immune system weak? j/k j/k. Everyone is so sick around here. Now that I've returned to a management type roll I'm back to telling people they aren't coming in with the sickness or sending them home. It's always baffled me how someone can't come in because they have a headache, but they say they can't afford to miss any work when they got full blown H1N1 wtf.

 wow

lmao, I looked like that guy at the beginning of the second video earlier this year.  The people never cleaned out the gutters. One of the gutters was so bad, it was literally a 3 inch downspout, not cut to length, just jammed straight up into a 5 inch funnel piece. It would never work. Instead leaf and debris built up on the edge of it, and I saw a little plant growing out of the gutter in the spring.  

What I want one of these days is to pay a company to do brand new seamless gutters for me. Looks a hell of a lot nicer and its a permanent fix since there would be no joints to repair. Most of the companies will do a leafguard combo with it too.

My friend had this done for the back of his house. Its really nice looking seeing one long 90+ foot gutter.

Facebook is now showing me gutter ads for looking up those videos.

rotflmao!   me too.

I don't know if some people can be immune to it or they can build up a resistance to it. All I know is I never had an issue before. Maybe my entire life I've just been lucky that the rash causing oils that touched me were low potency or something. But I'm taking this way more serious now. I had gloves on and a loose fitting long sleeve shirt on when I was doing yard work that day. I'm guessing the loose shirt sleeve rubbed up against the glove that touched the plant and when I pulled my sleeves up at some point to wash my hands it helped spreed the oil on my forearm. I'm glad I had gloves on or it'd have screwed me for work. Its been 6 days now and my right arm is still swelled up and looking nasty. I only have one bump on my left arm but its still swelled like I got stung by a giant wasp. And those spots are starting to get scaly looking. Its like I got that greyscale disease from game of thrones.  I see why adults warn their kids about never touching poison ivy/oak/sumac. Now that I've experienced this I'll warn everyone the rest of my life too. x_x

There are so many myths about poison ivy that I looked into over the last week. As long as the affected area has been washed it to remove the plant oils the rash cannot spread from person to person, any puss blisters does not spread the rash. Any clothes that did touch the oils can still spread a new rash on whoever touches it until those clothes are washed. And sometimes the rash looks like its spreading, but its just a delayed reaction of the skin where the plant oil already touched but had a delayed rash response.

I did most my growing up in Virginia, and I remember how I was told hundreds of times about poison ivy, It was made out to be as dangerous as a snake basically even though I knew I couldn't die.. I guess it was more like getting skunked. There was some nursery rhyme about its 3 leaf appearance... something like 123 don't touch me!. They also made it out like as soon as you touched it, you instantly broke out in disgusting hives like something out of a horror movie. I mean it was overly dramatic but hey, it worked.

Lmao. now there is giant hog weed that is even worse, will burn your skin on contact with sunlight and can cause blindness. I wonder what nursery rhyme it will get.

https://www.today.com/health/giant-hogweed-toxic-plant-sap-causes-burns-blindness-appears-virginia-t131355

Here's my poison ivy rash if you dare to look. Lol.

And now to top it all off I got bit by a tick in my sleep. Went to the dr today because it already looks infected and I'm on antibiotics for 21 days. Wtf. I f*cking hate ticks. 

I might end up moving this summer so most of my weekend free time for the past month and a half has been eaten up by constant spring cleaning of my basement and sheds and then putting in 2+ hours of work on the weekends to make up for some appointments during the week. 1 or 2 more weekends and I should be done. x_x

Speaking of that jp, I left my warrior there and when I do my daily login I've been opening that chest every day since you ported him there.

I love my mesmer too much to keep her dormant. I wish I would have done it with my engineer.

Went back to the tire place. Turns out one of the back plates got loose and was hitting a rotor causing noise. The other part of the noise was one of my caliper pins/sides in the front left seized up and caused uneven wear on my rotor which warped it. I needed new brakes and got that done today. Spent $350 on it.   It needed the brakes tho and I'm surprised it passed yearly inspection with them in that condition considering to fully stop the car I'd have to push the brake pedal down past the gas pedal and almost touch the floor. This car runs like new now that I dropped $1400 on it over this past month. My gas mileage is even much better. I was averaging 26 mpg, and now its getting 36 mpg.

Omg what a horrible string of bad luck.  I hope everything starts going better for you soon. You didn't get those busted water pipes back in February did you? That would have been horrible to replace the carpeting and then have water damage. I'd get that filling fixed. It should be free since you already paid for it and they should rush you in to since they screwed up. There is also a temp filling package you can buy at pharmacies to fill in the hole in the tooth until you see the dentist again.

https://www.cvs.com/shop/cvs-health-temporary-lost-filling-loose-cap-repair-prodid-695108

These over the counter temp fillings don't always have the best reviews tho.

i did feel he was kinda rushing it that day bc it was well over closing time by the time it was finished. but hes a good dentist, hes the one who did my old crown 20 years ago..and it was kinda my fault too bc he specifically told me not to pull it upward when taking a floss out. i did that multiple times (everytime i ate something) with a lot of force when it got stuck between my teeth and it popped out.  but i did manage to get another appointment this friday and got it redone without paying. he seemed embarrassed about it and didnt question me how it fell off. he got into work right away, talking to me about what he was doing, making jokes and taking his time to make sure its secure etc. his wife who works there as his assistant apolgized to me so im not even upset or anything ill just be careful when flossing from now on.

fortunately there was no water pipe damage and the carpet was replaced with wooden floor. i heard all the plumbing companies were booked for two months in houston. X_x the hardest part was removing old books, cds, clothes, and furniture etc from the house before the construction started. took me 3 full weeks to get rid of all of them, even sneaking in the morning dumping trashes near local stores’ dumpsters bc i didnt want to piss off garbage men that visit twice a week lol. i didnt consider myself a hoarder but man there were lot of junks that i didnt touch for 20 something years. 0_o 

(ps idk why my texts are showing small sorry about that)

I'm glad you got your crown fixed! lol @ the hoarder comment. It was like that for me too. When we bought the house and moved, the 15 years of stuff we accumulated ended up being a huge amount of stuff. We weren't hoarders, but damn its amazing how easily so much stuff can build up that we haven't used or touched in over 10 years. And I threw out alot of stuff over the year leading up to us buying a house and moving too. Its crazy how stuff just starts to blend into the background or in a basement.

We went a bit overboard with those garage repairs.. But its all good for me since we'll be buying it.

90 degree weather with 90-100% humidity is every day here from mid May til October if we're lucky. That shit sucks, mostly because of the suffocating humidity... especially when you get into the car after its been sitting out in that all day. Some people think I'm crazy loving cold weather, but you can always put more clothes on... there is only so much you can take off. I haven't washed my car since April, and I probably wont again until next month when it manages to get down into the 70s again. I can't imagine spending all day out in that shit. I use to as a kid no problem... but unloading trucks at work for 30 min makes my whole shirt soaked in sweat since our loading dock is open. My previous job it was closed in.

My arms are wrecked but it'll be worth it. Lol.. I wish there was some money in these rocks but it's all just rocks. at least I'll never have to buy rocks for edging flower beds. I even have my own quarry on a chunk of my property. I weed whacked a path to it a couple weeks ago.

I have so many rocks in there.. that's only the surface and it's at least 5 foot deep from different spots I could see thru.

Thats some big ass rocks. I use to love rocks when I was a kid. I'd probably be trying to pick up that mini boulder if I was still 10.

That mini boulder is at least 200 pounds. I can't even budge it. it was sitting up higher and was upright.. but lady removed a massive amount of rocks from below it and she was able to push it over. It fell straight down to where it is now and hasn't moved since.

I finished the season. It was good but season 1 was still the best. If they make a season 3 I hope focus on some major enemy for her to fight. This season seemed a bit slow at parts and felt a bit to much like any origin story for a character that has already been established. 

No. But I noticed it in the star wars topic. I'm glad I already saw it. Instead of a drop down spoiler box, it encased the spoiler in a box that was completely visible.

I was going to say something when I noticed it this morning but I figured you already knew. XD, well everyone who hasn't seen the new Star Wars definitely got spoiled by our discussion.

lol. Those spoilers were all over the place. I should edit the topic to indicate spoilers in the title now that I'm thinking about it.

IPB thinks its a host issue. Now I have a ticket open with them. eh.

Embedding is working again. I'm really liking this webhost.

PSN is working for me, just MP is down. It's amazing how these fuckers are going to ruin every major launch just because they can. I hope they all get a terminal disease and die a slow horrible death. They deserve that much for being so petty and childish. 

I'm glad the MP came back online so I could get some rounds in. Damn operations is fun.

I'm looking forward to more. I wonder if the free dlc will have a new one with just 1 map or perhaps it can jut into an old map. Either way premium is worth it to me for Operations. That last one we played was almost on the verge of going to Amiens. 

Your luck with free time is the absolute worst ever. I've never seen anything like it.

Thanks for the warning about the silmarillion. After reading the hobbit I was interested in getting more of his books but after reading the first 20 pages of notes, etc. that is the prologue of fellowship and then the first 80 pages of the book, Tolkien has almost burned me out in 100 pages. X_x All the hobbit lore in that prologue was all pointless details to me that add nothing to the plot. It completely lines up with what you said tho. It's all world building. This guy is more detail oriented in his writing than Peter Straub. However there is one part of the notes that really intrigued me. Tolkien, in response to critics saying his books was a metaphor for his experience in the war, gave an example of an alternate version of LoTR if it was. In the alternate version Sauron would have gotten the ring back and Saruman would have created his own ring of power and their two armies would have raged war against each other for control of middle earth. That would have been cool. Lol.

Meh, that was mostly there for those who hadn't read The Hobbit before getting into LOTR (I know I hadn't read The Hobbit before I read LOTR, was a nice little intro into what happened before the events currently taking place).

Don't get me wrong some of Tolkien's best work is in The Silmarillion (in fact it is my favorite book out of everything he's written) but like I said its a pain to read through all of it. I actually like that Tolkien took the time to actually set up his world and give us the details, it made it feel more alive). Too many books these days don't take the time to do that and just throw you into the fray without even a "Hey, this is whats kinda going on just so you know". Shit just wait until you get to the appendices in The Return of the King (if your copy has it, mine did). There is so much information on who's who, the elven language (which is actually a language, Tolkien was a Linguist), another few pages of story not mentioned in the book proper (like the Grey Havens scene from the movie, what happened after Sam and Frodo got back to the Shire, what Pippin and Merry were up to after everything, etc), and so much more (The Silmarillion has something similar but its not as bad).

Reading Tolkien is a huge commitment and is something I learned the hard way back when I first started reading his work. If you can put up with the amount of information he throws at you the reward is well worth the boredom.

Thanks. I'll keep that in mind as a slug through these boring bits.

Good luck with your car Strider. I used to do all my own car maintenance, but this toyota has been so damn good the last 7 years I've only had to get the front brakes done once.

Normally I'd agree that the dealerships are rip offs, most of the time they are. But this toyota dealership I go to has been very reliable. The only thing that really seems marked up is the labor. I used to do all my own brake jobs, I'd buy high quality pads for $30+ and rotors for $30 a piece. So for about $100 I'd do my own front brakes, but I'd have to do them at least once every 2 1/2 years because of the amount of driving I was doing at the time. But after putting on a crap load of miles on my corolla and having the front brakes last roughly 4 years, I decided to pay the extra cash for the OEM brake pads and rotors since they last twice as long as the aftermarket ones. The price for those in parts was a bit over double, $230. I was having some health issues and since it was winter (I have no garage), I had the dealership do the work. Ended up charging me $160 in labor. $500 for a brake job seems pretty steep to me compared to getting it done somewhere else for $200, but the parts are double the life span (at least they are for toyota, never seemed to be the case with any GM vehicle I ever owned). This ECU unit is going to cost me $600 for the part. I could save $500 buying a used one, but I'm hesitant because it could have some issue as well. But for the full $1k they quoted me, that also includes replacing the thermostat ($75 part). Roughly $325 in labor total for both parts. I could probably get the bill knocked down to $500 going to another mechanic and getting a used ECU, but I'm also planning on making multiple 18 hour round trips to ohio over the next couple years. x_x If I was just driving around locally I'd probably go with the cheaper option, but it feels like I'd be better off with the more expensive route for the peace of mind.

After getting screwed around with for the last 2 weeks with the dealership not getting the part in, my car has finally been fixed. They did have to replace the ECU and the thermostat. I need to do some more test driving to make sure the car truely isn't overheating anymore. So far so good tho. The car is running smoother, quieter and idles better at least. I called up a couple places to get quotes last week. 2 places wouldn't do the ECU and told me I'd have to go to the dealership but Firestone would. They quoted me $860 before tax for the entire job. x_x Not much savings over the dealership. In the end it costed me $1100 with tax for the ECU, thermostat, oil change and labor at the dealership. I went with them in the end since it comes with a full 1 year parts and labor warranty. If I have anymore issues with these 2 parts they'll replace them again free of charge for the first year. They also gave me a free rental car for the last 3 days while they waited on the ECU to get delivered to them. This crap was costly as hell, but at least I wont have another car payment. I hope thats the end of my car issues for a while. *crosses fingers*

2 days after my last post about this issue my car's check engine light came back on. Long story short, I bitched to the dealership and my car has been there for the last week. Probably because of the cost of the repair work and the fact that they don't want negative reviews online I have had a free rental car for the last 8 days while they trouble shooted the problem with my car. Turns out they put the wrong thermostat in my car because for some reason there are 3 different versions for my vehicle type depending on where the car was manufactured or some crap. They apparently didn't get the right thermostat shipped to them even tho they re-ordered the same one they previously replaced 8 months ago. Then that thermostat also failed which caused them to realize the coolant temp sensor was also malfunctioning by being off by over 15 degrees. They then replaced the temp sensor and the thermostat again and now the car is running fine. I picked it up today. Finally. x_x They didn't charge me for the rental, or the temp sensor or the extra thermostats. They even gave me a $50 credit because the thermostat replacement should have been covered by their warranty to begin with. The ECU was failing and did need to be replaced since it wasn't sending the signal to the radiator fan to begin with either. After picking up my car and driving it home today, it feels like I'm driving a new car again. It idles alot smoother now at stop signs and while parked. Hopefully this is completely fixed now. *knocks on wood*

The guy at the dealership jokingly said if I end up having to call him back because of this issue again he'll quit his job. He also said the head mechanic never wants to see my car again if at all possible.

Turns out it was a combo of things. I tested all hardware again. Ran a 5 hour scan on the hard drive, 5 hour scan again on the memory, all good. I learned a valuable lesson yesterday. Don't trust hardware tests. The second memory stick was bad. After pulling it the PC didn't crash the rest of the day. A solid 14 hours with no crash. It was the first day I worked a solid shift without a crash in just over a month. Wtf.

Since its actually working I've noticed that doing a windows reset has actually improved performance quite a bit. Some crashes may have been initially a windows 10 issue with an bad update seeing as the crashes started right after a windows update a month ago. The reset option keeps all personal files, but wipes all programs including browsers and bookmarks. I had to reinstall nvidia geforce experience, avast, etc. One thing I thought was causing the crash before I pulled the memory was avast. After the reset and the crashing still happening I focused on avast thinking programs I was installing was causing conflicts. If I disabled all shields the PC wouldn't crash immediately. So I uninstalled it and installed panda antivirus. That didn't fix the crash obviously since it was the memory, but I left panda on there and I noticed it has less strain on my PC. I'll leave it installed for now because it's kind of nice not getting popups from avast. I reinstalled gw2 and I'll get on the this weekend. My parents are visiting from out of state so i might not have much time to do much with it over the next couple days.

SSDs have gone down alot in price. I'll be watching black Friday sales. If I see a 1 tb for a real good price I'll upgrade my PC to it and take the existing 1 tb in it and buy an external enclosure for it and have a new external for backups. Upgrading to SSD is easy since I learned what to do when I upgraded my laptop years ago. All I needed was 1 usb3 hard drive cable and free cloning software on download.com. I need to check what software I used to see if it's still free. Cloning the hard drive took less time than the windows reset I did the other day. But if you only have usb2 it'll take a lot longer depending on the size of the hard drive. The only catch to cloning a hard drive is the new SSD has to be at least the same size of the existing hard drive or bigger.

I wouldn't mind upgrading my ps4 to SSD like my older brother did. Only problem with that is it's impossible to clone a ps4 hard drive because it's encrypted. Just put the hard drive in, turn it on and the ps4 will have to format and install OS from a usb drive if I remember right.

I'm pretty excited to see what PS5 games will look like a year or two after launch. I was reading yesterday how developers are excited for SSD consoles because they can program with less repetitive coding that was necessary for optimal texture loading and what not. Hopefully that means not only less repetitive environments, but way less reskinned enemies that are harder but just red instead of blue with a few more horns and eyes.

I watched a youtube video about that last night. I had no idea that was a thing.  

and my PC is heart attacking again. Maybe that one stick of ram I removed was a fluke because its crashing again.  I'm trying a different memory stick again. wtf.

Wowzers, thoughts and prayers.

this year sucks  

Just when you can't think this year could get any worse. Here's to hoping he can kick it in the ass