Randox
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Posts posted by Randox
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First time I ever had Benadryl was intravenously in prep for another drug (that has a reasonably high risk of causing allergic reactions). Next thing I knew I was waking up and really confused about why it was so dark. Didn't fall asleep so much as I passed out for several hours, and it took almost a minute to sort out what had happened (I had 'fallen asleep' and it was now 2am, hence the darkness).
Reminds me of something from my childhood. I remember about 3 times when I fell asleep and woke up with no memory of falling asleep, having any dreams, or even of really waking up (I woke up totally alert). To my perspective, it seemed that I had simply laid down in bed, blinked my eyes, and it was suddenly morning. Sadly it's not happened even once in the last decade or so. Best sleep I ever had that was.
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It's generally the pharmacy that is supposed to catch prescription errors. I mean, in a perfect world the Doctor won't prescribe medications that don't play nicely, but drug interactions are really the domain of Pharmacists. It's also generally a good idea to fill all your prescriptions in the same place to make sure the pharmacist is aware of all the drugs you take if you have more than one doctor.
Since it was the same doctor prescribing both, is the antidepressent for pain? Just wondering because when I had shingles I was prescribed a tricyclic antidepressant. As an antidepressant they're not used anymore because the clinical and LD50 dosses are too close to each other, but that class of drug has found a second life in the treatment of nerve pain when used at lower doses. Sadly (or luckily?), the nerve pain dose is far too low to have any mental effects; at least in my experience (a mood boost wouldn't have been entirely unwelcome given what a roaring good time shingles is, but it was not to be).
At the end of the day, if you can get away with not taking the opioids that's probably best. Nice to have if you need them, but being stuck on them long term often doesn't lead to the end of a rainbow (to be fair, plenty of drugs don't lead to sunshine; not just opioids).
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I used a welding mask. Only got to about 50% coverage here, but still, a crescent sun is a neat thing to see. Tried to grab a picture but the mask wasn't quite dark enough for my camera to make out the shape. I believe that to have an impressive show in the full eclipse region you are supposed to take the eclipse glasses off for the ~2 minutes of complete coverage so that you can see the corona.
It did get noticeably darker, like it was overcast, but the wrong colour (I guess you get used to the normal colour change from clouds).
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I think AR has a better potential than VR, at least for things like shooters. The downside is that AR would become like Paintball or Lasertag. You'll either need a warehouse or semi-cleared forest for hosting levels. You could even do stuff like mario kart AR on a go-kart track.
I suppose alternate reality (AR = augmented reality; for clarity) that could also mean stuff like second life. I suppose great for some people, but well beyond my time constraints.
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I went to the store late last night, around 1am-ish because i was craving some ice cream. The store up the road, a little convenience store, is the same one i've been going to since we moved here. So nearly 10 years. Been run by the same people all this time. Generally i go to the store at least 3 or 4 times a week, but yesterday was the first time in about 2 months i went to that specific store. Usually i only go there to buy cigarettes, and since i bought a lot of cigarettes on the airport with my last visit to Greece, i had no real reason to go there. Anyway, so last night i went to buy some ice-cream and ended up having like a 30 minute conversation with two of the owners. They just asked where i've been since they haven't seem me around in so long. And i realised something i hadn't really thought of before, and it's something i guess i always somewhat took for granted, but they're always treated me really well. I always get preferential treatment when i go there. And there have been so many times i would go to the store in the middle of the night to buy cigarettes but not have my wallet with me and they'll just tell me to pay them back next time. Small things like that.
Also realised that, apart from my parents, they're really the only other people in this country that have "watched me grow". They're the only other people that saw me go through my different phases and stages of life. I don't know why but it gave me a strange warmth.
I've not had any bond (for lack of a better term) with a store quite like that, but there have been a couple places I frequented enough to become familiar with the staff. One summer I ate just way too much fast food, and would usually have the same person ring me through, and they actually went out of their way to get me a discount. So, on the upside the fast food cost me a less ludicrous pile of money; on the other hand, that was a pretty big sign I was eating there way too often :D
There was also a corner store like two doors away from where I used to live. When I first moved in, the owner and I sort of bonded over our hated of the crazy person who lived in the house between us (the nonexistent noise we were making was keeping her dead husband awake crazy). The crazy person eventually moved out, and the store owner moved back to Ontario a few years later to be closer to the rest of his family.
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Virtual Reality?
Too expensive for too little offering. I mean, it's more than I can afford right now regardless, but the number of games that support it and benefit from it still seems to be in the novelty phase. Like, it seems like a huge boon in racing games where depth perception would both enhance the experience and actually help with driving. The idea of Fallout 4 in VR has an appeal too, though in a faster paced game I think you'd just get motion sickness.
The silly thing is, many of us own a device that for relatively little money could serve to demo the technology, but wont perform well enough to discourage people from buying full sets if able; smart phones. You'd think one of these companies would create a proper interface for smart phones to use something cheap like google glass to turn phones into a cheap version of a proper VR set. From the efforts of people to hack together something like this, it seems like the technical capability is there, there just isn't a proper interface to bring all the features together. Since one of the huge challenges for VR is convincing people to buy it, you'd think they'd be all about a solution like this that can provide an experience good enough to draw people in, but not good enough to keep them from buying a full rig.
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That's fair, but the only people I ever play Diablo 3 with are my World of Tanks clan, and none of us are super into the game (so far as I can tell), so I don't feel too bad for not doing my research or getting my hands on the proper gear (I play with what I find myself, or what my clan mates give me while we play together). Our clan has many talented gamers, but little discipline, so it's a good fit for me.
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Not really my scene to be honest. Shooters in general just aren't my thing anymore. Think the only thing shooting related i still find fun is The Division, and it's more for the RPG/Loot-farming aspects of it. Actually been thinking of getting back into Diablo 3 a bit. Probably won't buy the Necro expansion since i have no interest in anything but the Crusader, but it's been a while since i played it.
One of my tests for shooters is jumping. If jumping around like a jackass is a viable strategy in the shooter, then I want no part of it. The only exception I've made so far is for Heroes and Generals, which is a marginal case. People do jump around, but not many of them, and it's not very effective.
In all honesty, Ghost Recon Phantoms is far and above the best multiplayer shooter I've ever played, but the game is utterly eclipsed by pay to win money grabbing nonsense. New over powered weapons released every month, each better than the last round. I've not looked in a while but I'd be dissapointed if things haven't escalated to gattling laser sniper rifles by now. Basically, tactical cover based shooters are my jam. Ultimately, I like World of Tanks. I'm good at it, which is a bonus (not great, but decidedly better than average), and it has a slower pace to it that I like (my specialty is slow tanks. Fast tanks enable stupidity), and dying in one shot is usually not a big concern. I want to like World of Warships, but I'm a questionable shot, and poor tactician. I've always been a poor tactician though. I can't anticipate enemy moves, so the only thing I usually manage with initiative is to trip over it and impale myself; hence slow vehicles that hand initiative to the enemy. I think fast on my feet when it hits the fan, and I'm a nearly endless supply of plans and strategies so long as I'm on the defensive (not all of them are good plans, but I think there is something to be said for always having an idea).
Today I went to see the RCMP Musical Ride for the first time in my life. Note to self for next time, it's probably more impressive looking down on it from a hill. Still pretty cool, but being level with the show certainly robs it of something, so I'll have to see it again sometime from a better spot.
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I make a concerted effort to ignore the Diablo meta game. "Builds" don't interest me; not in any game. One of the things I enjoyed immensely about Diablo 3 is that I can actually go pretty far with my 'whatever pleases me' attitude towards skill selection, pretty much right up until the torment levels (and since I don't item farm, that's not an issue. I don't need to run through the game more times than that on a single character). That said, if the summoning from the Necromancer is weak, then I'm not interested. In my considered opinion, the Diablo 2 Necromancer was garbage in terms of end game. The minions were a waste of time (in that using them literally wasted your time. A Barbarian with a half decent weapon and whirlwind could do the same work as your entire minion army in a fraction of the time), and the direct damage magic spells simply didn't have enough damage to be any better than the damn skeletons. The Barbarian ended up being my class of choice for D2 sadly; I just never found the Necromancer to be fun even in Nightmare.
I still haven't had much of a look, but I don't think I have the money for the DLC, so it doesn't really matter. What I have done is grabbed ProMods for ETS 2 (huge map expansion) and it's like playing the game for the first time again. The polish certainly isn't up to the same standard as the developer, but it's not far off, and the actual map design rivals the DLC content. They've also taken the time to go back over a lot of the base game content it seems, and bring it up to that same standard which is amazing. I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of polish if it means bringing the entire world up to DLC design standards any day.
I'm also doing it on a new profile, which is interesting. My first run into the expanded map took me through Finland and up the western edge of Russia, and there are jobs there that I simply cannot do in a base vehicle. I need a bigger engine, and I need a 6x4 chassis for more grip, and to switch over to my much older controller with a throttle slider (which I used to summit a snowy mountain sans trailer). I avoided the mod for a long time because I didn't think it would be good enough, and because of bugs. I think the current version was a good time to make the jump though. I was very wrong about the quality, and they're quashed a lot of bugs that were introduced by game changes in the current version, so it's making a strong first impression. And I now have a screenshot of my Canadian painted truck in a plausibly Canadian locale (it's actually Finland, but whatever. It's a snowy mountain and it looks right).
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So you don't have a cable or something on hand to plug your car to her car and start it...? I thought that was relatively easy.
Can also blow up a battery if you do it wrong. Wouldn't be surprised if Noxx didn't have a set of jumper cables though, not an overly common thing that people carry around/have surprisingly.
I've never loved jumping cars. My brother did it wrong many years back and made a nice light show out of it. I think he clamped the terminals in the wrong order. He was fine (as was the car), but it's still stuck with me. Still, it's a good thing to have. If you ever need a jump, not everyone carries them, so it can be the difference between getting a quick hand and calling a tow truck.
The trick to not exploding is to connect the positive (red) terminals first to reduce the chance of sparks, and making the last connection to the chassis (unpainted metal) of the jumping vehicle rather than the battery to avoid the possibility of igniting any hydrogen gas the battery might be giving off. The clamp on the chassis is removed first for the same reason.
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I'm not sure how important it is, but the general recommendation seems to be to get RAM that matches as well as possible, ideally from the same manufacturing run (all from the same package set, unless you want to spend an afternoon reading serial numbers).
That said, at the very least any additional RAM should have the same speed and latency. You can use totally unmatched sticks if you want, but all your RAM will match the pace of the slowest link, so adding slow RAM to fast RAM is mostly just wasting money (and can make performance worse). To match the RAM you already have, your best bet is to figure out exactly what you have by reading the sticker on the stick (you might need to pull it out). At the very least you want a manufacturer and model, but it might have latency timings written on it too. Try to find something with the same numbers, or throw in the towel and buy all new RAM :P
Also, it's a good idea where possible to run dual channel memory. Most motherboards have 4 RAM slots, divided into two pairs (channels). 2x4GB with one stick in each channel will be faster than 1x8GB because each channel is accessed independently, allowing concurrent read/write requests. You'll want to get a manual for your motherboard when installing a second chip to make sure you place it in the correct slot as well (you don't want them both in the same channel, and you have a 2 in 3 chance of getting it wrong if you guess).
I thought my Xbox (original) died yesterday. It powers on and immediately shuts off. But then I got it to stay on with the eject button, and now I think it's a fault in the power switch, so I guess it's finally time to open it up, and see if I can tinker it back to life. If not, it's had a pretty good run :D
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Bought the Rise of the Necromancer pack for Diablo III. I have yet to play the Necromancer though, so I might do so this weekend...
Hmm...if Diablo 3 has a Necromancer now I might have to take a look. Diablo 2 made them my favourite type of magic user ( me at 'raises skeletons', because apparently I'm weird like that), and I was not happy about them not being included in D3. Just...don't think I have the time or money for it right now, which might be just as well. Still, I do need to investigate.
Got into Fallout 4 again, especially the settlement building. I'm a few hours into building a Vault, and while I have a deep desire to slap some of the developers and play testers, it's a lot of fun. My biggest gripes are that a couple of the item sets have really awful snapping (unlike every other part, these sets can't snap between two objects, so if you take something out of the middle you have to remove one side right to the end and rebuild), and there are some glaringly obvious pieces missing (mostly corners with a window for me). It's basically designed to build a cookie cutter vault, and it punishes you for trying to be creative. It's alright though; I'm winning :)
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Finished season 3 of iZombie. I wasn't sure I liked the direction the show was taking, but it really turned around for me at the end and got me good and hooked again, so now I get to wait for Season 4. Blah. Caught up on House of Cards too, but I'm starting to feel like the writers are winging it a bit. Still entertaining though.
Also starting to give some consideration to not having my computer in the loft where all the heat collects for the summer, but boy does it feel good when you come down. Could be 28C and it would still feel cool :D
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I've added Chillin Skillers, RS Addicts and removed Warlords of Rune
I've not added: Eternal Guardians, Sapphire Knights, Descent, or KL NL BE since their info points to dead links or otherwise seems to be clearly inactive.
Apologies for not keeping this up to date. Has clearly not been on my radar in a while. Please PM me when requesting an update or posting a new clan to make sure I actually see this.
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I mean we're all friends here, why did a download link need to be censored out?
To be clear, my objection is specifically to direct download links. Please describe what is being downloaded, and link to the download/landing page, not directly to the file.
Started building a boat house for my Aunt today. Joint effort between a few members of the extended family, and a fair bit of fun too.
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Went to see the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo yesterday. I've not been to it in several years, but it's still a fantastic show. I looked it up afterwards, and I think it's the only (consistent) Tattoo in in Canada, and apparently is rather unique for the inclusion of of civilians and a focus on theatrics. Aside from the dancing, gymnastics, and motorcycles, you also get stuff like this (from 2010. The Land Force Atlantic Area Band, RCMP Ceremonial Troop, and Ceremonial Guard Band).
The fog cleared just enough during the show to see the Mighty Ike carrier afterwards as well. They've got her moored out near the mouth of the harbour. None of our military piers are made for a ship quite that large :?
'Twas a good Canada Day!
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Damn, if that's a once in a lifetime experience, then I feel bad for you. About a monthly occurrence here. Saw 3 separate herds of elk just last week when driving to Stockholm. Does and foxes are so numerous that counting encounters would be pointless...
We also have freerunning lemmings and wolverines and everything.
No no, I've seen Deer before, and I'm sure I'll see them again (they're getting more and more common). I've just never had one run at me before.
It was a good three days actually. The day before I spotted a trio of bunnies that seemed to be playing tag in the street. When the game was up one of them came up the driveway and apparently didn't see me until he was like 6 ft away. Think he heard me move my foot while turing to watch him go by, and boy did he jump (dashed a metre, then decided it would be better to stay still). A day or two after the deer I was running alongside some bushes and almost ran over either ducklings or pheasantlings. The all started chirping in alarm and some of them nearly wandered into my path. Luckily, whichever type of bird they were momma must not have been nearby. I don't particularly relish the thought of an angry duck in my face, let alone a pheasant.
The only wildlife my dog cares about though are the squirrels. I caught one several mornings in a row eating on his kennel fence. I think it finally got the point, but several mornings in a row it would be there, the dog would spot it, then run over to it and start barking, then the squirrel would sequel and flee into the trees and spend 2 minutes chattering angrily at us. It's been a great summer for wildlife spotting. That said, I'm glad we didn't have pheasants when I was growing up. I think back to all hours spent crashing through the woods as a child, and if you did that here and now you'd probably have a heart attack at some point (where I grew up, there was a lot between me and my friend that while still forested, had been cleared of undergrowth, so it was easy to move around in. Doing that also meant no pheasants, since they would have had precious few places for cover.
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Had a cool nature encounter while walking the dog. Heard some rustling in the bushes ahead, and then caught a pair of eyes with my light. At first I thought I was looking at someones unreasonably large dog running down the road towards me, so that's fun. Suddenly, it gets a whole lot taller and I realised it was a doe (I think; could have been a young deer) that had been standing in the ditch.
It ran down the road towards me a short ways before cutting across the road and scrambling through the ditch and into the trees away from me. Not sure if it was me who startled it, or if a coyote wandered into the area. Anyway, I've never had an encounter like that, and likely never will again.
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We have a mix of mostly german and dutch trains, a few diesels, electric and steam loco's, we have mostly H0, but also some N, 1 and Z scale. we actually just got a Marklin BR 24 in! lovely little machine
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That's enough, I high fived my laptop and you can have a virtual cookie :)
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Bought some more rolling stock for my model railway woo
I got a chuckle out of the timing on this one ^.^
Seriously though, I love trains, so :thumbsup:
I have to ask though. Are they model diesels or steam engines? There is no wrong answer but if you say steam engines you get virtual cookies and I high five my monitor.
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You really don't want to be getting your first mortgage with little or no credit history. The route I followed was to get a credit card while I was in University. Two things. First, it's way easier to get a card as a student because the bank assumes that your're parents will bail you out (probably works best if they have decent credit). My first card had a $2,000 limit while I had no income. Obviously far more than I would have wanted to use at the time, but I used it as a debit card and just continually paid it off to build credit. The other bonus was that the student card had no annual fee. Frankly, I almost wish I still had it.
If you try to buy a 5 figure car in actual cash, you should expect the police to show up :P You'll need a cashier's cheque or a wire transfer.
Conversely, if you buy a five figure car in actual cash and the police don't show up, then the seller is even shadier than you and the car is probably stolen |^_^|
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To add to this: The prime minister is (in theory) just another member of parliament. But because they're the leader of the party, they have a huge amount of power (enforced by the party whip). On paper they have less power than the president of the US. In practice (in some areas) they have more. This does vary a bit over the different flavours of westminster democracy. Australia is less like this because they have frequent leadership reviews, so it's easier for the caucus to turf a leader they don't like. Canada never has these, so basically the only way a leader gets removed is if they resign (or lose multiple elections so a leadership convention is called for). From what little I know of the UK it's somewhat in between.
Good points. It also strikes me that a key point of confusion for Americans might be our seeming lack of an executive branch of Government.
Using Canada as my example, our Head of State is the British Monarch, who is represented in the Federal Government by the Governor General (an equivalent exists for each of the provinces, called the Lieutenant Governor). Much like the United States, our Judicial functions are managed by the courts, headed by the Supreme Court of Canada. The legislative functions are carried out by the House of Commons and the Senate, and since only the House of Commons may draft new laws, the legislative branch is effectively headed by the Prime Minister.
So far as I know, executive power is formally retained by the crown, the Governor General and Lieutenant Generals. Without going into the fine details, the convention is that the Governor General and Queen exercise executive power only at the direction of Cabinet (the Prime Minister, and appointed Cabinet Ministers; our equivalent to Secretaries). Since Cabinet in turn takes their marching orders from the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister has in practice near absolute control of our executive functions, on top of being the head of the legislative branch, making them very powerful relative to a US President.
Bills passed by the legislature must be 'signed into law'; they must be granted Royal Assent, usually by the Governor General. If Royal Assent is withheld, the Queen may at any point in the next two years formally annul the law. I can't think of any examples of this happening at the Federal level, but I think it happened at least once nearly a century ago in one of the Provinces.
So imagine if the President of the United States, and the Senate Majority Leader took their orders from the Speaker of the House, and you'd have some idea of what at least a Canadian or British Prime Minister is, and I think all the Commonwealth nations are fairly similar.
Oh, and declarations of war are part of the Royal Prerogative. Budget notwithstanding, that means that a declarion of war doesn't require any consultation of the legislature; it is a purely executive power.
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A Prime Minister is more akin to a President (Speaker of the House is a separate position). By and large, the Prime Minister, and their Cabinet Ministers, call the shots, and party members are expected to support party legislation (so a President who doesn't have to battle their own party to get laws passed). The details and customs vary by country, but that's the basic idea.
The British Conservatives haven't struck me as nationalistic, but I don't live there (I just listen to the BBC while playing Euro Truck). Much of the Conservative Party, including PM May, were against Brexit. I also figure that as soon as Labour ditches Corbyn their party will win in a landslide. Britis are currently caught between a rock and a crazy place.
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Today...
in Off-Topic
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I'm not entirely sure I see the point, but I also don't really see the problem.
Really though, I think the best approach would be to make gender and sex two distinct entries. That seems to be the general direction we're heading in, and I think it would actually help broader acceptance to start taking steps to distinctly separate the concepts like that. I am however not someone who struggles with my gender identity, so I appreciate that my perspective may not be the most important one on subjects like this. I do think though that the 'not everyone is a boy or girl' pill is a lot easier to swallow if you separate the subject from what people can plainly see with their own eyes.