OT: HFPens Community Lounge: Party like its 1999

[Zirakzigil]

Happy New Year everyone!

Except that one person, f*** you.

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Happy New Year, nubs. Hope everyone is celebrating and having fun with friends and loved ones.

新年快樂 for those in Asia already! Šťastný nový rok všem přeju!

We're having a few people over tonight. I just got done smoking 4 racks of ribs and now they're in the oven finishing cooking. All that's left to do is make the mashed potatoes and re-bake the homemade mac and cheese.

We had hot pot with a bunch of people from the Taiwanese embassy and now we are having non-alcoholic mulled wine (my glass mysteriously keeps getting bourbon added to it).

How many times do I have to tell you that doesn't work, Nubs? Plus that HAS to be bad for your lungs.

I mentioned a bit ago I was in the process of moving to DC and I've settled in pretty well. I really love the Maryland DC suburbs but I'm going to bail on living in these kind of large complexes really quickly. Living in a 50 unit a floor complex means you have to deal with the 49 other units living on your floor, which includes any of their psycho dogs that go apeshit and attack their doors anytime you try to take your dog out

But regardless, living in the DC metro area is super nice. I went on a date at the Asian Art museum and it was super nice to be able to take the metro down from Rockville to go there, plus the museum was great was well. I'll end up moving out of this complex as soon as my lease is done (probably to buy down here) but I think I'll be staying in the DC area for a long time. Or at least I hope

It's a bit of an adjustment after moving, but I think this area will have everything I want going forward. DC has a lot of museums, the area is pretty bikeable (especially if you're near a trail), the metro service is great and it's not that far off from going home or going to a couple of vacation spots. You can definitely argue it's expensive but it's a lot cheaper than Seattle was.

DC metro area is super underrated, glad you’re enjoying it Emp!

I think it's just "rated". It's great if you're single or wanting to go out and do shit all the time. The older and more tied down you get, it's just expensive with lots of traffic.

And either way, you have to deal with Caps fans ...

Honestly I haven't noticed a ton of traffic issues, at least in the Maryland part. I know it gets really bad closer to the city and in Virginia, but the Maryland area doesn't seem as bad.

I'm also right off of the red line that can take me directly into downtown DC, so I'd be planning on using the Metro anytime I need to get down there.

After one of my harder years, 2025 is shaping up to make up for it.

No travel in 2024 is opening up to what looks like 4 cruises this year, for now at least. I've only done one before (repositioning from Vancouver to Yokohama in 2019). I'm taking my dad on his first cruise (Mexican Riviera) in a couple weeks, am doing a bit of a reversal of my first one (repositioning from Yokohama to Los Angeles) in May, likely taking my Finnish friend on the f***ing Catalina Wine Mixer (well, the Royal Caribbean equivalent), and then ending with what will likely be one of my most interesting travel experiences - a Virgin Voyages southern Caribbean one in a closet-sized solo cabin before Christmas.

For an introverted autoimmune solo traveler who hates crowds, most people, the sun, & water; cruising just seems like a natural fit.

I can feel the panic attack coming from 11.5 months away

Click to read more...

 

[LOGiK]

@Randy Butternubs For years and years I've considered watching Attack on Titan but haven't. Maybe I will after DDD.

Its good but the addiction style way they release plot is maddening.
I enjoyed it but man... after awhile I lost patience and just wanted to see the ending.

@HandshakeLine Tokyo Godfathers is definitely great.

Went on a ghibli and anime film kick for a good long while and haven't checked out whats new within the past 2 or so years... usually we watch a certified preem film from years back that isn't a gamble... so its time to check whats new-ish from semi-recent.


add:
Just got Slay the Princess-The pristine cut... looks pretty solid.

add add:
Watching through King of the Hill.... definitely not my taste on its initial run but sure is now. What a classic....
Peggy gets me every time.

add add add:
hah! I'll never get out of here at this point....
ALSO... finished another discworld piece, 5 down, 39 or so to go.
Also started on 'the idiot'. I sure do love me some Dostoyevsky and it hits hard after a discworld =P

 

[HandshakeLine]

KotH has aged amazingly well. Also the new Beavis and Butthead series is excellent.

 

[Ogrezilla]

ALSO... finished another discworld piece, 5 down, 39 or so to go.
Also started on 'the idiot'. I sure do love me some Dostoyevsky and it hits hard after a discworld =P

Wow that’s so much discworld. I had no idea there was that many of them. Is it one big series with the same characters? or just a bunch of stories in the same universe?

I’m in book 3 of throne of Glass by Sarah j Maas right now on audiobook. It’s my wife’s favorite series and I’m liking it so far. Trying to add some non-audio reading this year too, so I’m also about halfway through Artemis by Andy Weir. It’s similar vibes to the Martian, lighter sci fi.

You can keep your Dostoyevsky, I’ll double up on fun books

 

[Ogrezilla]

KotH has aged amazingly well. Also the new Beavis and Butthead series is excellent.

I have seen very little king of the hill and I bet I’d love it, but man there is just entirely too much media out there and tv is the one I have the hardest time justifying making time for. If nothing else my bad snacking habits are much worse watching tv vs video games or reading, I think purely because my hands are free and I am weak

 

[Deport Ogie]

I’m in book 3 of throne of Glass by Sarah j Maas right now on audiobook. It’s my wife’s favorite series and I’m liking it so far. Trying to add some non-audio reading this year too, so I’m also about halfway through Artemis by Andy Weir. It’s similar vibes to the Martian, lighter sci fi.

Okay man, level with us. How trashy is it? I've seen it referred to as anywhere between an enjoyable fantastical story to just this side of booktok style chick smut.

I just started a(nother) reread of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Highly recommend for the uninitiated. It's long and it has a pretty slow beginning but if you can stick with it until Simon gets out of the castle then it truly shows as one of the most important fantasy series of all time. Some may take this as a negative but GRRM cites MST as one of the main inspirations behind ASOIAF. Acronyms!

 

[Ogrezilla]

Okay man, level with us. How trashy is it? I've seen it referred to as anywhere between an enjoyable fantastical story to just this side of booktok style chick smut.

I just started a(nother) reread of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Highly recommend for the uninitiated. It's long and it has a pretty slow beginning but if you can stick with it until Simon gets out of the castle then it truly shows as one of the most important fantasy series of all time. Some may take this as a negative but GRRM cites MST as one of the main inspirations behind ASOIAF. Acronyms!

It's not at all smut at least through book 3 (plus a prequel that I read between 2 and 3). Wife says that's more of ACOTAR, not so much ToG. I can keep you posted, still 3.5 more books to go. So far it has had some relationship drama for sure but no smut and maybe three or four scenes that I would even call romance at all and they certainly didn't feel out of place or anything. ASOIAF and First Law both had way more than this has so far at least.

 

[Deport Ogie]

It's not at all smut at least through book 3 (plus a prequel that I read between 2 and 3). Wife says that's more of ACOTAR, not so much ToG. I can keep you posted, still 3.5 more books to go. So far it has had some relationship drama for sure but no smut and maybe three or four scenes that I would even call romance at all and they certainly didn't feel out of place or anything. ASOIAF and First Law both had way more than this has so far at least.

Ah I see, so I mixed up her series, my bad. It definitely feels like it was ACOTAR I was referring to.

 

[HandshakeLine]

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn

So good.

 

[Ogrezilla]

Ah I see, so I mixed up her series, my bad. It definitely feels like it was ACOTAR I was referring to.

Yeah this is the series she wrote before that.

I’ll need to look into the ones you mentioned, I’m always open to recommendations. And I’m trying to keep adding to the list.

 

[HandshakeLine]

Okay man, level with us. How trashy is it? I've seen it referred to as anywhere between an enjoyable fantastical story to just this side of booktok style chick smut.

I just started a(nother) reread of Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. Highly recommend for the uninitiated. It's long and it has a pretty slow beginning but if you can stick with it until Simon gets out of the castle then it truly shows as one of the most important fantasy series of all time. Some may take this as a negative but GRRM cites MST as one of the main inspirations behind ASOIAF. Acronyms!

Relevant:

 

[LOGiK]

Wow that’s so much discworld. I had no idea there was that many of them. Is it one big series with the same characters? or just a bunch of stories in the same universe?

I’m in book 3 of throne of Glass by Sarah j Maas right now on audiobook. It’s my wife’s favorite series and I’m liking it so far. Trying to add some non-audio reading this year too, so I’m also about halfway through Artemis by Andy Weir. It’s similar vibes to the Martian, lighter sci fi.

You can keep your Dostoyevsky, I’ll double up on fun books

I was just lurking and saw the post so i had to log in, im lazy =P

oh yes... very very long. Some are short books / graphic novels (not many... less than five I think)
Well, its weird to explain. There is say, five focal points:

so I personally read them by choice. Not chronologically. Since TCOM and TLF were the first two and continue into the Rincewind wizzard (yes he spells wizzard with two z's =P) series I just went with that, plus I love Rincewind from the PSone discworld game where I was first introduced into the discworld.
After Rincewind/Wizard novel branch I have been waiting so long to read the death series - Mort, onwards.
So I am not sure what or which way would be best for everyone, but that is what im going with.

Easy reading too though... can knock a book out in a few hours. 10-20 by estimation. I recommend because it is so lite and easy... yet it builds and is rewarding enough with some pretty good humor and creativity.

F.Dostoyevsky is a world apart from discworld/ Terry Pratchett... but reading FD makes me feel alive =] especially in the idiot (im reading now (also not chronologically read)) where he writes (through a character) his personal experience of his execution sentence (by firing squad) how he was pardoned at the last seconds.... how that feels and what it does to a wo/man knowing you are about to die in a few seconds and then to not die... I love philosophy.

 

[LOGiK]

Also, 2 months after the 9800x3d was released it is still near impossible to buy (from shelves, not scalpers).
And today is CES or whatever,whenever... the Nvidia 50 series gets officially announced today.
And the AMD series of gpu's as well?

Not personally fond of this move to upscale everything and pure raster horsepower is not the focus (for nvidia at least, not sure about amd/intel gpu's)

 

[HandshakeLine]

Dostoevsky is good. Not as good as Bulgakov, but very good. I’m rereading Kafka now and man I forgot how funny the Trial is.

 

[HandshakeLine]

Gearing up for a 13 hour plane ride tomorrow so time to plow through all the reading I wanted to do last year but couldn't because of professional obligations.

 

[Empoleon8771]

@Randy Butternubs For years and years I've considered watching Attack on Titan but haven't. Maybe I will after DDD.

Its good but the addiction style way they release plot is maddening.
I enjoyed it but man... after awhile I lost patience and just wanted to see the ending.

So as someone who has both read the manga and watched the anime, AoT is absolutely incredible. That said, the ending is pretty unsatisfying IMO even as someone who doesn't fully hate it. A lot of animes really struggle with their endings though, I think FMA:B is the only anime I've watched where everyone feels the ending was great. AoT was an anime that I think any ending either way would have made a group of fans mad.

It's not an anime, but even in ATLA, a lot of people hated the spirit bending ending where Aang just took away Ozai's firebending to be able to beat him without killing him.

 

[Randy Butternubs]

So as someone who has both read the manga and watched the anime, AoT is absolutely incredible. That said, the ending is pretty unsatisfying IMO even as someone who doesn't fully hate it. A lot of animes really struggle with their endings though, I think FMA:B is the only anime I've watched where everyone feels the ending was great. AoT was an anime that I think any ending either way would have made a group of fans mad.

It's not an anime, but even in ATLA, a lot of people hated the spirit bending ending where Aang just took away Ozai's firebending to be able to beat him without killing him.

It looks like the finale of AOT is rated pretty high on IMDB. And isn't there going to be a movie?

You watch DanDaDan?

 

[Empoleon8771]

It looks like the finale of AOT is rated pretty high on IMDB. And isn't there going to be a movie?

You watch DanDaDan?

Oh the episodes were terrific, I mean the plot for the ending wasn't great. The anime did it great but the ending of the series itself was really unsatisfying and left a ton of open questions. There were people who hated it and said it was terrible, which I think is too far for it.

And no, I haven't seen DanDaDan. My next anime I'm going to watch is Demon Slayer tbh

 

[Ogrezilla]

Just finished reading Artemis. 1 book down on Jan 7th, off to a good start to physical reading this year.

Good book. Similar vibe to the martian but I'd say it's lighter tone. Or at least less parts that stray from the light tone.

 

[Deport Ogie]

It looks like the finale of AOT is rated pretty high on IMDB. And isn't there going to be a movie?

You watch DanDaDan?

DanDaDan was a goddamn fever dream. I think I love it. I can see where some folks might think some bits of it are problematic but that doesn't bother me at all.

It's obviously only 1 season in and 2 is already confirmed for July but even so, it seemed to end on a completely arbitrary point.