Sledgstone

I currently have

Youtube TV

MBO Max

Netflix

Disney+

Paramount+

Discovery+ (just got this one, haven't tried it yet)

I'm on my parents plan for a few of these with sharing so it makes everything alot cheaper. But I can't share the price of my Youtube TV with anyone because nobody is close enough to me to combo it with to cut the costs down that wants Youtube TV. I tried doing it with my brother but hes in another state. Turns out youtubue tv needs everyone to be in the same general area or it considers the non primary account to be on vacation and will disable it's access after 2 weeks unless it logs back in at the region location of the primary account, like central ohio or wherever. Oh well. Youtube tv is still way cheaper than what Spectrum has to offer. I am tempted to pay for premium youtube to remove the ads because I've been using regular youtube as much as all my other streaming services.

Honestly its probably just coincidence with her medical stuff. I say that because 66% of all americans are on medications for some illness. Overall we're a really sickly unhealthy country.

Quote

More than 131 million people — 66 percent of all adults in the United States — use prescription drugs. Utilization is particularly high for older people and those with chronic conditions. Prescription drugs are costly.

https://hpi.georgetown.edu/rxdrugs/#:~:text=More than 131 million people,Prescription drugs are costly.

And 2/3rds of the US is overweight or obese which puts them in the unhealthy category and prone to medical issues and complications.. So its really easy for there to be a coincidence with anything health related with anything in the US when literally the majority of everyone is sick or unhealthy with something to begin with. 2/3rd of the the population is at increased risk for heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. at any given moment. So once somebody does something like get a vaccine and their next doctor appointment they'll get diagnosed with diabetes, they'll blame the vaccine and not the 5 boxes of twinkies they eat every week. x_x

https://www.healthline.com/health/obesity-facts#1.-More-than-one-third-of-adults-in-the-United-States-are-obese.

14 hours ago, slippers said:

and one of customers tested positive for covid like a week after getting a vaccine. he was sick for two weeks..all the ppl he worked with got it, but he still worked and he still came into the store to buy stuff and his face was red and sweating like crazy. i had many customers who were like that showing similar symptoms, some didnt even wore a mask and telling me his or her family members are too young to shop so has no choice.

Wow. Did he get the j&j shot? That one is only 66% effective. He'd definitely still get sick from covid, but at least it would prevent hospitalizations. But even that 66% defense doesn't kick in until 2 weeks after getting the shot. Its the same with the other vaccines. Like 1 shot of moderna or pfizer is 35% effective I think after 2 weeks, but 2 weeks after the second shot it'll be 95% effective. Theres still that 5% of being able to get covid still, but it'll keep everyone out of the hospital. But this is also how the covid variants keep happening. The more the virus spreads from one person to the next it'll keep evolving through mutations to become more efficient and more deadly. If someone is sick they should definitely be wearing a mask since it'd help contain it to themselves. People that are sick and don't are being offensive since they don't care that you might get sick from them. Reminds me of how cigarette smokers will smoke their asses off and the majority of them don't give a damn about where their smoke goes in the wind when around other people. Meanwhile I have asthma and that triggers me into having to use an inhaler after a few minutes. I take that as offensive. The smoker doesn't think anything about it because they smell like an ashtray all day and don't even notice. Same with people with extreme BO or people that work on farms. They smell like shit all day and then walk into a store with actual shit all over their boots. Nasty.

Anyway, alot of people don't think covid is serious still and probably never will, unless it mutates into a new variant and starts killing everyone off. Ever play Pandemic 2? Its an old flash game. It looks like someone adapted it so people can still play it online since flash was removed from all PCs: 

https://www.addictinggames.com/strategy/pandemic-2

Its interesting because you can play as the virus and the goal is to kill everyone on the planet. It starts off as a regular cold until it can mutate into more powerful strains. The effectiveness of shutting down airports is actually useful to the humans so you want to get your virus into their borders before they become aware of the lethality.

My mom got her second shot of moderna last thursday, she had a bit of a rough night feeling a bit sick that night and the next day she was very tired. By the day after she was completely back to normal and feeling great. My facebook feed has been getting more people with covid. The one person is a friend of my moms.. she got covid last week, her kids and husband got covid 2 weeks before and they went out to eat for mothers day. None of them ever got a vaccine and they're helping spread it. 🤦‍♂️ And the comments were like, "I hope you get well soon." Nobody says, wtf where you doing at a restaurant while sick with covid?

That J & J vaccine getting stopped seemed like a pointless scare tactic by the media. It was 6 people out of 6.8 million that got blood clots that might or might not have been related to it. Thats a 0.0000147% chance of getting a blood clot. In comparison, peloton treadmills caused 70 injuries and 1 death out of 125,000 units sold. Thats a 0.06 injury rate. Theres almost a 5,000 times greater risk of getting injured or killed by a peloton treadmill than getting a blood clot from a vaccine. But the moment someone gets a vaccine and something happens to them, its the vaccine's fault according to everyone. The media jumps on that story too because its a way to make people scared. All the "news" channels aren't happy unless they can make their audience afraid of something or angry at something because its good for their ratings. 

15 hours ago, slippers said:

and the US has issued a travel ban on India but thats just pointless if vaccines suppose to work as it advertises.

My understanding is that the travel ban is in effect because over 1/3 of the US population refuses to get the vaccine.  The vaccine won't work when people don't get it.  If you hold out long enough eventually enough people will get the vaccine so herd immunity should be good. Assuming enough people eventually get it. If not I guess we'll all just wear masks the rest of our lives. x_x Honestly its your choice about getting a vaccine. After the second dose I was groggy the next day, but I've been fine since. Hell, I'm going to have some bbqs this summer. Most of the people I know around here have all been vaccinated. My neighbors across the street got the moderna, lady's mom got the J&J just over a month ago and she didn't even get a sore arm or any side effects. My parents both got moderna and everyone at my dentist got pfizer. I know more people that got the vaccine than I do for people who got covid. I will say tho, my one friend got covid a few months ago and he crapped constant diarrhea for 2 weeks and lost his sense of taste for 2 months, even drinking water made him crap. That convinced me to get the vaccine.

Me and lady both got our second doses of Pfizer last Friday. We both got some side effects the next day. Arm soreness, light overall body fatigue and tiredness. I still got all my regular Saturday stuff done like mowing, etc. But I was feeling a bit groggy. By Sunday morning we were both back to normal.

I thought it was a fun movie.  The acting was bad and the plot wasn't good, but the fights and cg were great. The main character was pretty dull and his fight scenes weren't the best. I was expecting a syfy quality B-movie plot with triple A special effects budget and I wasn't really disappointed because my expectations were so low.  But I'll have to say my biggest gripe is that it is a movie about Mortal Kombat, which is a tournament... and in the movie they never did the tournament. wtf.  I read they'll make at least 1 or 2 more sequels and that was planned. But even so they could have done a second tournament in a second movie. And Liu Kang's character seems like a wasted opportunity because he had no real substance. Also, for the characters to have abilities because of a mortal kombat mark on their bodies seemed like lazy writing, but I did like that they all had their powers from the games as it made for good special effects. My favorite character was Kano.  

Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition is currently free for PS4 until May 14 at 11:00 pm EST. PS+ is not required to add the game to your library for free.

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/04/19/play-at-home-update-horizon-zero-dawn-complete-edition-free-starting-today/

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/horizon-zero-dawn/

I loved this game. Combat was great and the story was an epic sci-fi adventure. For anyone new to this game, do not underestimate the usefulness of the Ropecaster. It does no damage, but it is amazing for enemy management to keep some in check when getting overwhelmed, because alot of enemies in this game will charge like all hell and do not let up.

I got Days Gone with the free PS5 game pack.. I tried to like it... It plays very similar to Last of Us, but the entire motorcycle aspect and never ending zombies annoyed the hell out of me way too much. I cleared out an area, went to grab some loot, next thing I know I'm being attacked again. The zombies were just spawning somewhere off in the distance and they'd just keep coming. I swear there was no way I could just explore without being harassed by something. Combo that with driving a loud motorcycle around that draws there attention and it got even more annoying. Theres hardly any roads but there is plenty of paths for the motorcycle. And I sucked at driving it. So I'd clip the damn thing on rocks or in a small river or graze a tree, well then the motorcycle takes damage and I have to repair it, or it would be in a spot where my guy couldn't get it back up right so then I'd have to respawn the motorcycle so I could get back on it, and thats when the game decides to spawn it a half mile from me. On my way to getting the bike I got attacked by 20 zombies. I couldn't just rush to it because these things run.. and the bike was damaged so I needed to clear some out to repair it first. Screw all that. I'm glad the game was free. Oddworld looks interesting.

https://blog.playstation.com/2021/04/13/ps5-april-update-brings-new-storage-options-and-social-features/

Quote

Store PS5 Games on Compatible External USB Drives.* With this feature, you can now transfer your PS5 games to USB extended storage from your console’s internal storage. It’s a great way to extend the storage capabilities of your PS5 console, and you can seamlessly copy your PS5 games back to the console’s internal storage when you’re ready to play. It is faster to reinstall PS5 games from USB extended storage than to re-download or copy them from a disc.

Because PS5 games are designed to take advantage of the console’s ultra high-speed SSD, PS5 titles can’t be played from USB extended storage. PS5 titles also cannot be directly downloaded to USB extended storage. However, games that you transfer or copy back to internal storage will automatically update when applicable. In addition, you can select which game modes you want to install (such as campaign or multiplayer) for select titles that support the option.

At least the PS5 can cold store the games on an external now instead of having to redownload or install all the time when swapping between multiple games. Still can't play off an external but at least its progress towards the space limitations of the small SSD the system comes with.

Looks like it'll be another season of Clone Wars but starring the bad batch. I'm cool with that.

There was no huge extra cameo in the last episode, but damn this was a satisfying series in the end with an epic finale. Get past the first 3 episodes and its a completely solid amazing show.

The only way we'll get any significant change is if we can get term limits and maximum age limits put in place for all political positions. The two political parties are all back and forth with their extremist views and they'll never agree with each other. Aside from the presidents that get swapped out, everyone in the highest positions of power are almost all the same old people that have been in power since I was a kid. They'll never agree on anything so they should all go. Instead they'll all keep hold of their power until the day they die. China could screw our country hard in a single day by selling its US debt holdings. China and Japan both hold over $1 trillion each of US debt and they can call in that debt whenever they want By selling their treasury bond holdings. As well as all our goods being imported from China our nation is completely dependant on China to continue functioning. They basically have us by the balls. They will be the main super power in the future surpassing the constantly divided seesaw USA.

Neither Trump nor Biden should have ever been president. These old dicks don't represent the actual real average American in the slightest.

https://politics.theonion.com/stress-of-presidency-already-ages-biden-10-years-1845565660

 I laugh at this, but at the same time this is what he is now. I will be honestly surprised if he actually lives through all 4 years of his presidency.

Back to the latest covid stimulus people on SSI will get their $1400 stimulus this upcoming Wednesday April 7th:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stimulus-check-social-security-recipients-payment-irs-april-7-deposit/

Regardless if it came from a lab or from some wet market it originated from China. I'm really surprised there isn't alot more news of countries raging against China's government and it's policies for causing all this. Instead we have asians around the world getting attacked with race crimes which is pointless as they're regular people like everyone else that don't deserve that shit and they have nothing to do with the Chinese government's failures. 

A year later and covid is still screwing over the country. The debt of the country is astronomical now and I'm guessing that's the same for alot of other countries. Thanks Chinese government for dropping the ball on everything and screwing the planet.

NY decided to keep covid vaccines limited to the elderly only or front line workers for like 3 or 4 months. So of course because the majority of the people getting the vaccines were already old and unhealthy, whenever anyone got sick or died after they got a vaccine they blamed the vaccines. And of course all those cases spread like wild fire over the internet making everyone think the vaccine will kill them when most of the time it was other underlying conditions. NY's governor Cuomo finally decided to let younger people finally have access to the vaccine as of earlier this week. Me and lady got our first dose of the Pfizer vaccine yesterday. Aside from some arm soreness there's been no side effects for us. We get the second dose in 3 weeks.

What we need at this point is a "herd immunity goal". We need states to issue a solid number goal to reach the removal of mask mandates. If they can say "once NY hits 80% immunity we'll remove the mask mandate". If we can get a statement like that it'll motivate more people to get vaccinated and we can check the progress daily to see how close we're getting to going back to normal. It'll be a great motivational boost for people to see an actual end goal in sight.

That movie was amazing.   

There are currently 9 free PS4 games available to add to your PSN account. Only available from March 25 8pm PDT to April 22 8pm PDT. No playstation plus required. Just log into PSN and add to your library:

https://store.playstation.com/en-us/category/9779f12f-50c8-4c07-8d20-47e21293b6c6

Ratchet & Clank is also still available for free until March 31 08:00PM PDT. Same as above, login to PSN and add to your library:

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/ratchet-and-clank/

Horizon Zero Dawn complete edition will be free from April 19 until May 14:

https://www.playstation.com/en-us/play-at-home/

Sony is going to lose the "digital library wars". If we can't transfer over digital purchases from PS3 to PS4 to PS5 and they expect us to keep buying the same titles over and over if we want to replay them, then they will lose a good chunk of their customer base over time. I prefer my steam account over anything digital Sony is doing. And I agree with Yong about emulation. I'm glad it exists. I like buying games and giving developers their money for their work, but once I have I don't want to have to keep buying it over and over for another digital license because whatever provider I'm using decides to close its shop. I may be wrong but I think Nintendo has been doing it like this for years with the Wii and Wii U shop closures too.

Wow. I haven't read Edens Zero in over a year. I need to get caught back up. Everything in the trailer covers the entirety of what I've read already and it should be really good.

My youtube recommendations vary over the years, I'll watch some creators and then drop them for a while as I check out other stuff. These are the current channels I've watched the most of over the last 6 months.

Gaming:

YongYea (Game news, but I haven't been watching him as much lately)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6iAerLNE-0J1S_E97UAuQ

GameSack (great reviews of retro games)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6LaAC9VckZYJUzutUW3PQ

Slope's Game Room (I've been watching the retro game documentaries)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC455p7ts9lh8IWi5zuf_8tQ

Cinemassacre (Angry Video game nerd, they haven't been as good as the old episodes)
https://www.youtube.com/user/JamesNintendoNerd

Gaming Historian (More great video game documentaries)
https://www.youtube.com/user/mcfrosticles

Comics:

Comics Explained (basically comic book story documentaries explaining entire story arcs)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKxQmKgrkUv4S7P5w0pLayw

Movie & tv series reviews, breakdowns for easter eggs:

New Rockstars
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7yRILFFJ2QZCykymr8LPwA

Everything Always:
https://www.youtube.com/user/clearlyhereagain

Comedy:

ExplosmEntertainment (Cyanide & Happiness)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWXCrItCF6ZgXrdozUS-Idw

BBQ:

Ballistic BBQ
https://www.youtube.com/user/sd4547

HotToBBQRight
https://www.youtube.com/user/howtobbqright

Guga Foods:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfE5Cz44GlZVyoaYTHJbuZw

Science & Education:

PBS Space Time (Amazing series)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7_gcs09iThXybpVgjHZ_7g

Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell (One of the best animated science channels ever)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q

Brew
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVQGtUcRjHTQLTTu-5s9_4Q

BRIGHT SIDE
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4rlAVgAK0SGk-yTfe48Qpw

Handyman and home improvement videos:

Home RenoVision DIY (This guy's videos are amazing)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnorhjQR4zJkT7AVNhu395Q

Vancouver Carpenter
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbZdXox6mKHdcT2QdVT-goQ

Exercise: (I mostly watch videos for no weights exercises)

ATHLEAN-X™
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe0TLA0EsQbE-MjuHXevj2A

Jeremy Ethier
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCERm5yFZ1SptUEU4wZ2vJvw

BarbarianBody
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCduSVNApvBELfswY_ElMkOw

I also like to do women's Pilates exercises but I haven't narrowed down specific youtubers for those yet. I mostly watch old dvd videos we owned that I transferred to digital format and stream off my plex. lol.

Edit (I forgot to add my plant and lawn care category, lol. I might re-edit this later).

That looks like some old school fun.  the last TMNT game I played was on ps4. I can't remember what it was called but it was open world 3d action based. But it was incredibly repetitive and I was completely bored with it after 3-4 hours. I blame the open world concept of it. I finally got to a bebop boss fight and then it had a timer and he disappeared. I felt like I was just wasting time and not accomplishing anything. But the old school arcade game that this new one is based off. I could play the hell out of that. Even though the old arcade game and console games based off it was repetitive at least it kept progressing and throwing new enemy types and bosses at you with new scenery.

I forgot to update this.. The last half of Discovery season 3 really fell apart.. hard. 2 episodes were dedicated to another spin off show and those 2 episodes really hit the pace of Discovery hard and slowed the entire series down. Then they finally reveal the cause of the burn and it was the dumbest damn thing they could have done to explain it.  Maybe if they didn't dedicate two episodes to another spin off they could have had those 2 eps to dedicate to a proper good explanation for the burn and made it a hell of a lot more impressive. Instead the final couple episodes felt rushed as all hell. Also, the last half the season they threw out more TNG canon by not referencing that the Romulans didn't even use dilithium and all their ships shouldn't have been affected by the burn.. and there was no reference to the Borg who should have recovered fine from the burn or other large species. I'd like to see more Star Trek shows, but if they continue making Discovery, they really need to hire some better writers.

Ok, so we're 1 episode away from the finale. That will be released tomorrow. The first two episodes were basically Dick van dyke and I dream of Jeanie episodes. Very boring and made no sense. Third episode and the "tv reality" becomes colorized and things start to progress. Fourth episode gets better and 5th episodes and on the show is solid and extremely interesting and is true Marvel movie quality. By the 8th ep all the tv show stuff at the beginning of the series makes complete sense and the series is awesome. I'm expecting some huge battle for this finale and probably some giant reveal for the Doctor Strange 2 movie. Maybe we'll see some huge actor like Keanu Reeves show up as Mephisto or something like how we got that hint of Thanos at the end of the Avengers movie.

Its probably just my account, Sony hates me like Facebook hates me. lol. Facebook screws everything up on my account with them too. My feed will show stuff from 3 days before with a sprinkling of posts that actually happened that day. But for the PSN store, I could see why my Firefox wouldn't load it correctly because I have ublock origin and add block installed.. but the site does the same issues to me with google chrome and I don't have any plugins/addons installed on it. Even the PSN app on my phone screws up half the time and I cannot get any free games through it on the Tuesday the games become available. If I use the app to add my games to my account I can only do it about 2-3 days later, then it'll work for some reason.

7 hours ago, Myk JL said:

I'm having a problem where my PS+ Membership shouldn't be expired until months from now yet the website says I have no subscriptions.

I have to use Microsoft edge browser when adding my ps+ games. Firefox and Chrome both let me log in but says all games are full price and doesn't recognize my ps+ membership. Sony's PSN website is complete garbage now imo.

Heres an odd thing... When logged into my PSN account, I don't even have the option to buy the PS5 version and it has no information about a downloadable PS5 version for existing PS4 digital version owners or any info about buying the new DLC separate.

I'm guessing they'll add the standalone game and separate DLC as two different purchase options soon and it'll update my account showing that I own the PS5 version and how to buy the DLC. They probably have this "Not available for purchase" as a prevention so they don't have to issue a bunch of refunds for purchasing a game twice at full price.

I finished playing Final Fantasy XIII a couple days ago. I put in just under 100 hours on it and honestly had a lot of fun with it. The plot was a bit overly complex and it played out the first part of the story in a series of flashbacks that was very popular 10 years ago like Lost and other shows and movies. It was done ok and the datalog had all the reference material in it to keep the story moving along without getting confusing. The game was very linear until you get to Pulse, but then the game slows to a crawl if you do all the Pulse side missions. Pulse is where the game gets more "open world exploration" and to me open world games are becoming more tedious and time consuming. I want a story not endless exploration that doesn't further a plot. I remember when this game came out alot of people hated it but I didn't know why. Lady played through it twice and loved it. Now 10 years later I finally played through it myself and had a good time. I really liked the characters, except for Hope. That guy annoyed me and once I could customize my own party I never used him again.  

The character models looked great, everyone was beautiful and I loved having strong female characters. All the scenery looked amazing too. I need to set up a command chord on my xbox controller so I can take screenshots on my PC. I would have loved some screenshots at a couple different locations. It was also nice that once you could customize your party you weren't limited to having a specific team leader on at all times, you could play as any character. The combat is extremely simple at the beginning of the game. You basically "auto command" and the game basically AI controls everything, attacks, spells, etc. This seems extremely boring and simple at first, but as I progressed through the game you get paradigm shifts that change the complexity significantly. The Auto command basically helps you input the commands fast because the ATB moves so quick, especially with haste, you're much better off using the auto command to get attacks off faster and focus entirely on the paradigm shifting to change the combat roles on the fly for all the clutch moments of healing, inflicting and removing status ailments and buffs, defense, offense, etc. After a good 20 hours into the game the real combat is basically shifting paradigms all the time. What I also found interesting was the AI would auto adjust itself to the most effective means of killing an enemy based on the intel gathered from the enemy and what status effects everyone has. Using the Libra technique to get more info on enemies was vital. Overall combat was actually pretty damn fun once it got to this point. Aside from the party leader death issue.. if the party leader dies its an instant loss even if you have another character with the raise ability. I thought that was dumb, but the game does have a "retry" option for every battle that compensates for that.

There was some aggravating moments though, the mini map and main map not being locked to north was beyond annoying and enemies not dropping gil was the dumbest thing. The only way to make money in the game was to either find it in chests or sell specific premium drops from enemies, but after a while, gil was pointless as I never had to buy a single weapon since they could all be found in chests. Upgrading weapons needed a massive tutorial that was completely absent from the game and I had to find guides online. Upgrading accessories was completely pointless when better quality ones could eventually be found in chests. I really don't understand why they did the money thing in the game at all. Every other FF game lets you kill monsters, get gil... makes no sense. And there were some enemies that I came across that straight up kicked my ass out of no where. I could be owning all kinds of monsters, leveling up stronger and stronger.. hey look at that monster, I'll go kill him. *monster instant wrecks me like I'm a level 1* wtf. Moments like that were extremely aggravating and the game doesn't go out of its way to tell you some of these monsters were meant for later in the game and doubling back to kill when you are stronger. Some other bosses were strong as hell to compared to the monsters leading up to them. And near the end of the game, I pretty much had to grind up to get a bunch of leveling done.. which meant alot of pulse open world missions. Those were fun for a while especially once I got teleportation stones unlocked, that took care of an ass load of back tracking. Thankfully I did a good chunk of all those pulse missions before the last couple chapters of the game.. because once I got to the end of the game the monsters became straight up powerful as hell. I realized if I didn't do those extra 20 hours of missions and leveled up, I'd have probably rage quit at the end because of these monsters. lol. Like every monster fight of regular enemies in the last area of the game was the equivalent of mini bosses.

The ending could have been a bit better, but overall I highly enjoyed it. I started the sequel yesterday.. and it is already a very very different game. lol.