Today I had my first employee development talk (not because I’ve only been here for two years but because the company didn’t have that concept until half a year ago) and it was very productive I would say. I mean it was scheduled 13:00 to 14:30 and we finished up at 16:45 lol

Neat, what kind of car did you get? I feel your relief at having finally sold the old car. When I had to get rid of mine, I was so happy when someone actually wanted to take it for around 400€ despite the fact that I openly stated it needs non-trivial repairs and needs its audit stamp refreshed.

I don’t think “Y’all” would be problematic. But I also offer “You peeps”, I enjoy that one more in day to day conversation.

I just looked them up. They look very precious and I do hope with this breakthrough, they’ll be able to grow the population quicker and with fewer issues.

It’s crazy to think that they were down to presumed extinction twice.

Watched this video earlier today and I definitely hope German city planners in my area don’t embrace this required car-centric approach to infrastructure more than they did for cities like Munich .

I haven’t played it yet, but if you have a VR headset then Minesweeper Peak VR seems to be exactly what you’re looking for.

There’s also Mine3D which plays in your browser and is a rotatable cube of mines.

That sounds like a solid plan! By the looks of it, you already checked the requirements to actually get into the Netherlands and live there for more than just a couple of months.

I can’t imagine how bad it must be for you to basically have to uproot your entire life, but I wish you the best of luck (wherever you actually have to rely on luck, like processing times for documents). It’s great to know that you do already have a couple of people in Europe at least adjacent to where you plan to go.

And sure! I do live in Bavaria, so it’s not the closest distance, but I’m certain we could eventually organise a meetup at some point.

Hey there, Millie, if your path crosses (or ends in) Germany, I’d be happy to give you a warm welcome. While I can’t just drive across the country, I can try my best to help you with the language, bureaucratical processes and any culture shock you may or may not get.

Of course, this offer also stands for anyone else in a similar boat!

We sure hope it’ll be interesting, ya! We’re going for a fantasy/medieval vibe with a little tournament to win a wish from the queen. And it’s obvious what my wish will be, when I win that thing lol

Okay, so the most recent skill that I learned - or am still learning - would be making chainmail armour (or just “maille” for the pedantic). In theory, I now have the knowledge how to start from an iron ingot, turn that into a wire and that into the little rings for the armor. But because I want to be done in less than a year (will be part of my wedding outfit), I started with pre-made riveted rings, which I simply bend open, connect to solid rings and then bend closed and press in the rivet.

But since I never get to talk about it in other threads, I also learned how to make super primitive candles. Just yesterday I made candles from pork fat chunks that I ground up in my mortar and pestle. You don’t even need the little fabric to catch fire, you can just literally start lighting up the fat itself if you hold it long enough to a lighter

And before that, about one year ago now, I started learning to play the Herdy Gurdy, which is a lovely instrument, with a very lovely tone. And I even built one myself from a little do-it-yourself model kit, so to speak, which is called the Nerdy Gurdy. I started learning that because I was playing Sea of Thieves and I really enjoyed the sound of the instrument in-game. And then I also thought “hey, what if I not only learn to play it, but also learn to play it for my wedding in 2025?”

Edit because I feel this has been just a year of learning so much stuff for me: ASL. I started learning ASL about a month after I played VRChat for the first time and been practicing ever since. The chance of me getting good use out of ASL anywhere that is not online is pretty much zero, though, because I live in Germany lol

Learned? Funnily enough, yesterday. But I first saw it probably late kindergarden or at the latest in early primary school, in the second half of the 90s.

Pretty much as soon as a stable release happens for software on my phone. On my PC it mostly depends (for not-games) how annoyingly the update popup is placed. If it tells me on startup “Now (including a restart of the program) or we’ll remind you on next startup” I usually pick later because I want to work on that, e.g. PDF, immediately. By the time I did the work, I either forgot about updating (repeat cycle next time I use it) or the manual update option is somewhere too obscurely placed and I’m too lazy to find out where.

One of my programs - I think it’s Foxit PDF reader - offers an option to run the update when I close it. That’s so lovely, because it allows me to do my work now and when I’m done, I can let it update in peace while I start something different.

Edit: Because I read Win10 in the comments: For OS updates, I carefully vet the major releases. I stayed on my XP until Win 7 released and was actually an improvement. Then I only upgraded to Win 10 when I acknowledged it as good and because Sea of Thieves wouldn’t run on Win 7. Currently I’m trying to stay as far away from Win 11 as I can. We use it at work and I wouldn’t want to bring this peril into my home.

Not sure about the modern equivalents to this, but in Rome (please correct if wrong) it used to be like that. Firefighters would only put out fires of houses that paid them and otherwise just stood there, watching.

At least that’s what I read in one of those “did you know this about the ancient cultures?” articles and those aren’t always reliable either.

Yep, learned about this just yesterday from the YouTube channel BoyBoy who covered the situation quite well and had a lovely interview with Steven (as lovely as such a depressing topic can be)

You see, I at least buy food from my lunch stipend, although it’s usually my grocery trip and not necessarily my lunch of the day. And I only get about 7€ lunch stipend per day, not >40€.

That’s a fair gripe with the list. I guess “Top 100 Games” is just more catchy than “100 Great Games In Random Order”

… Although at this point I’ve seen so many “Top x y” lists that “x Great y In Random Order” would, ironically, catch my attention more.

I fully understand someone thinking x game deserves to be there instead of y but I think this is a great list that spans most genres and serves as a wonderful stepping stone for exploration within gaming.

If I give this list to someone who doesn’t know yet, what kind of games they like, this list will show them great games from all major “eras” and all kinds of dev studio sizes/budgets. And once they have played, say, KotoR 2 (since it’s in the same list that recommends new and good games like Baldur’s Gate 3, they are more likely to check out other old but great games like Gothic 1 and 2 (and, of course, KotoR 1).

I would count Sifu as being pretty linear and very good. Probably the best martial arts fantasy-ish game out there that’s single-player (for that but multiplayer take Absolver, the same devs’ first game)

Square Home.

I know the Windows Phone experiment failed but it was my first smartphone that I bought and not just inherited my dad’s work-iPhone when it became deprecated. I really love the “live tile” type home screen and Square Home improves on it as well, instead of just carbon copying it.

Other than that, the FUTO keyboard / voice input and Grayjay, although these three technically offer a lifelong free testing period, similar to WinRAR, but even less obnoxious because they don’t even remind you that they want you to pay for them.

After 10 or so minutes of inactivity my monitor shuts down (well, screen black, not actually pushing the power button on the monitor).

When I know I’ll leave for half an hour or more (and I’m not downloading something big), I hit the physical sleep button on my keyboard. Iunno, not needing to go through a couple clicks on the start menu and instead just pressing two buttons makes me more likely to use it.

Lastly, when I’ll be gone for multiple hours (sleeping, working, etc.) and I don’t have a huge or particularly slow download, I shut it off. But I never turn off my multi plug rectangle, unless we got a heavy thunderstorm.