Randox
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Posts posted by Randox
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So, having a little fun on Wikipedia, and I started looking at the T-V distinction that english used to have (your definition of fun may vary). Basically, ye and [/you] were the formal words for the nominative and objective case, respectively, and thee and [/though] would be informal. Thee and thou eventually became pejoratives and fell out of use, and then we stopped using ye at all and just started you. So aside from making plurals horrendously unclear because english is quite literally missing a word (hence colloquialisms: youse, y'all, you all, etc.), that's all fine.
First observation. 'You' is normally used in the singular, so the word we are (sort of) missing is the plural second person pronoun...which used to be 'you'. That is, 'you' and 'ye' were once upon a time the plural forms of 'thou' and 'thee', which then came to also have that T-V distinction of formal and familial you find in many languages. So, some nice irony there.
Also, for people who aren't grammar buffs, I'll clarify nominative and objective with the words he and [/i]him[/i]. He is the nominative case, while him is the objective.
So take the sentence: James will talk to Mark.
You could in conversation with a third party say 'he will talk to Mark', or 'James will talk to him', rather than saying 'James will talk to Mark'. The transition of using 'you' for both 'you' and 'ye' would be the equivalent of dropping the word 'he' entirely, and only using the word 'him'. So now you could say "him will talk to Mark" or "James will talk to him" and both would become grammatically correct.
I couldn't do it as a career, but I do think there is some fun and interest to be had in the history of a language. This also sort of screwballs our grammar, since one word is being used in place of what should be four words, though in fairness I think the plural/singular distinction probably went out the window when we started using them as formal and informal. I don't speak another language like French, so I don't really know how they handle that sort of double duty meaning.
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Woke up around 8:00 am. Went to take out my chihuahua... and heard running water. There shouldn't have been any running water. I checked throughout the house, nope, no running water. Checked the outside water faucets, nope, no running water.
Then I checked the carport utility closet. Water pumping out of the top of the water heater. Bullshit. There were some construction dudes down the street and one of them helped turn off the water to the house (valve was stuck, didn't have the strength or tools).
Called the local water company before then, though. Let slip the account holder (my mom) was deceased, so it's more important the account switches from my mom to me. They'll require a deposit, too, I bet, stupid corporate spastics, despite the bill being paid on time on my part (since she's been deceased over a year now). Oh, and they'll try and have someone turn off the water in the mean time. Lucky for construction workers!
Landlord is going to be out here shortly, I hope. Probably wasted upwards of ~500 gallons overnight. Ugh.
Good catch. At least it's not in your main basement (depending on what your drainage is like down there), and lucky about the construction workers. I have to applaud how dedicated your water company seems to be to not caring too. That's pretty classy.
It seems to be a thing water heaters do from time to time. My basement got turned into a full on sauna last year after the pressure safety valve decided to phone it in (fail).
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It's been a long time. I used to host a game between me and a few friends, but our interest fizzled out, plus my PC was host so I always had to be available. I've tried some of the other mods, but often bit off more than I could chew and got bored. Besides, what I really want are intelligent(ish) zombies that will assail my base. Of course, I have 7 days to die for that now.
I will admit that I've not looked at the mods in a while. My mind is still in the days of Tekkit (classic) and perhaps a year after that (think Yogscast Jaffa Cake factory through Yogscast going to space). I did have fun learning FORTH so that I could use the redpower computer though.
EDIT: I did find this. It's a year out of date, but if Thaumcraft looks like this now, I might have to take another stab at that mod, as long as I can have redpower and thaumcraft in the same game. I don't want to go back to the vanilla way of creating a bunch of small vaults under my stuff to house the logic gates and whatnot.
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One of my players goes out of his way to insert his character into the backstory of one of the major NPCs, to the point of retconning his own character's background to make him even more artificially important to what he thinks the plot is about.
He then proceeds to explode at some of the other players for wanting to follow up on the plot hooks they've been presented with, arguing that his character could easily kill the character who's most invested in the current plot if they don't go his way. He gives up when he finds out that the others are (justifiably) not okay with this, instead of... you know, explaining anything. Shortly after he starts ranting privately to me about how them caring about the plot is ruining the game for him, and they're stupid for caring about the story over the gameplay... The story that he *knows* I'm super invested in, after having invested a fair portion of my free time in the last few months on it. Meanwhile, the gameplay was basically thrown together at the last minute.
It's like... does he really think I would agree with him? I love that they're going out and doing these crazy unexpected things, and he's basically spent the whole time belittling them for it.
With concession made that each person has their own idea of what is important to this type of game, my gut reaction is to say your friend is doing it wrong :P
The group I play with is all about the story, to the point that we rotate as DM so that we can all participate in each other's stories, and also craft our own (we set our game in space, so there is lots of room for us to set up our own stories without them clashing with each other).
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Only a matter of time before this gets split off into a new topic that promptly dies.
It's not my fault no one consistently pays attention to any other thread :P Also, I think people get tired of brick walls arguing with each other.
As for the arguments, things would probably be more productive/interesting if all sides could try approaching a subject with the mindset of "other cultures have different customs and values, and this is an opportunity to learn how another culture works and why, and what problems they see with their own system" for a change. Also, wow, I'm one of those people I hated so much when I was a child :lol:
Don't worry, just having a bit of a flower power moment.
I'm sure the comedic world has covered the topic ad nauseum, suffice it to say that today I have renewed my hatred of Christmas tree lights. Don't get me wrong, I very much appreciate the result, but trying to work with a string of lights you didn't buy yesterday is just an exercise in frustration.
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Debating getting another slightly less useless bachelor's degree
Have you considered college instead? Seems like getting another bachelors degree won't help you much unless you know what sort of job it would help you get.
college/university is where you get a bachelors degree
Sporks is from Canada, and they are different things up north.
In Canada, a University is where you go to get an actual degree, starting with a 4 year bachelor program. Colleges in Canada are where you go for trades programs, which are typically two years.
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Spear phishing. I made a mistake when I picked something I didn't care about, lemme tell you.
I didn't know that phishing could get so aggressive that spears get involved :P
I always try to let people pass when they want to go faster, particularly on the highway. I'm happy to let speed demons carry on/clear out any speed traps for me. It's also a bit of a pay it forward thing, for the people who paused their own overtaking so that I could get by.
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I've gotten back into Kerbal Space Program, which I haven't much since release. On the upside, the one time I did play after release, I knocked out a few really solid designs that still work, and am happily using them as the backbone of my new fleet. I did have to learn how to fly in the new aero model for a second time though, since when I started playing again, I immediately tried to fly like it was 0.90 (a flying style which normally causes rockets to flip over a few km into the air).
Last night I ran a crew retrieval mission. I've decided to just launch extra fuel into orbit (if I even need to) to speed up my interplanetary missions, and save the mining for long range refuelling where possible. It's nice to see that I am still really good at getting intercepts for docking (my docking is kinda sketchy though, partly because I forgot to remap the RCS thruster controls to my liking), and I think this is the largest gathering in terms of mass and number of Kerbals I've ever done outside Kerbin orbit. Pictured are 6 kerbals, and 3 ships, weighing 30 (left), 50 (center/station), and 60 (bottom) tonnes.
With some minor revisions, I think the crew return ship on the left will be my new base interplanetary design. The RCS system needs to be retooled for balance and fuel economy, and the re-entry design needs to be redone, but the ship has fantastic range and good performance in all other respects.
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Do you have breakers? You could turn one off and move the stuff you need to other outlets?
There's a breaker box in my apartment but it's bolted shut. I could remove and replace the outlet myself but I can't do that with the electricity still on.
I feel like there is a building code not being met here...
My life is turning into Winter Tires: The Epic Sega[/i]
Episode 1: The False Start: (last week) I went to get the new winter tires mounted and put on the car, but the tires hadn't arrived yet despite being ordered two weeks prior. But it didn't matter, because I didn't have the winter rims with me with the old tires, which is super important because the winter rims are 15", while the summer rims are 16", and wouldn't that have been really embarrassing when they went to mount them (it's not my car, so it's not my fault I didn't remember about the winter rims).
Episode 2: Unforeseen Problems: (today) I discovered that lock nuts are garbage and apparently I put them on too tight last time I had the tires off (by hand), and they broke not only my locknut key, but the dealers lock nut key as well when I went over to them to see about getting a replacement. On the upside, the new winter tires are mounted on their rims. They're just being super useful, riding around in the trunk for now.
Episode 3: Wallets Solve All Issues: So, episode 3 will be finally getting the wheels off. The solution is to weld a nut onto the lock nuts, which my Dad could do if he weren't indisposed by recently having his hip replaced, so for the lovely anticipated price of $100 per wheel, I get to take the car to an autobody shop so they can remove the lock nuts, because I don't know how to weld, and I'm pretty sure the rims cost more than that, so now wouldn't be a good time to learn. On the upside, one of the lock nuts was able to be removed, so I'll only have to pay for 3 wheels.
And for anyone thinking this would really suck if I got a flat, it actually matters a lot less than you'd think. Mini's don't have room for spare tires anyway, so not being able to get 75% of the wheels off doesn't make a huge amount of different. Of course, it would be a big tease if it happened right now, since I actually do have spare tires (four of them) riding around in the back.
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Posting from FreeBSD! I ended up having the Nvidia drivers load after boot via rc.conf. Running Mate as the desktop environment. Prior to that I have a small login manager called Slim, rather than the default terminal login prompt. Installed Firefox and set it up with uMatrix, Adblock Plus, and switched the search engine to DuckDuckGo. I made the Firefox profile from scratch due to legacy cruft from my other computers, so I set up all the passwords and set up a nice, organized bunch of bookmarks.
Going to install some coding stuff, like Sublime Text and Rust compilers. May also doodle around with Wine and test out some games and Windows software to see how well that works. Once I get settled I'm going to begin customizing all the things... I want to be able to render OpenGL stuff to the desktop so I can have spiffy animated backgrounds and customize the theme (icons and windows and all that) to fit.
All together, pretty sweet! FreeBSD is awesome.
Sounds like someone is having fun :)
From my perspective, the biggest problem people seem to run into with online identities is that different profiles start pointing at each other across different communities. As an obvious example, I use the same name here as I do in RuneScape, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out we're the same person.
What always amuses me is the number of people I've run into who live in the same city as I do. It's not something I go out of my way to conceal, but I don't advertise it either, so the pool of people where I've actually had opportunity to confirm that we live close to each other is actually pretty small. It's kind of nice actually., and perhaps easier because a number of Canadians will go out of their way to differentiate themselves from the often American majority if they can.
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I'm going to inadvertently start an argument but I'm looking to move to another country. I'm unsure between Canada and denmark.
Denmark has a more promising economy but it makes it just about impossible to ever see my friends and family again on any sort of regular basis. And Europe is far more prone to war related activity. Canada has more expensive alcohol, but is reasonably close to the USA and Healthcare is neat.
Any other fun tidbits I should know? I've spent years in Massachusetts so weather isn't a huge factor.
Have you considered how you would become eligible for residency in either Denmark or Canada? This is probably where you want to start for Canada. As I understand it, you first need to Immigrate, and then once you have been a permanent resident long enough, you can apply for citizenship. This Questionnaire under Immigration will help you find out if you are eligible. Also of interest is this calulator for the points system Canada uses to determine eligibility under the skilled worker program.
Basically, unless you have family here (I expect that's quite helpful), the Canadian Government (and I think all Governments really), only want people who bring skills/assets that the country needs.
Also note the list of disqualifications. Basically, criminals, poor people, and people with health issues need not apply. Also, you cannot have any family who are inadmissible to Canada. For clarity, an indictable offence is basically a felony, and summary offence would be a misdemeanor.
If this comes across as discouraging, this isn't my intent, but I think a lot people aren't prepared for just how strict most countries are on this issue, so I do want to make sure you are informed about what you are getting into if you actually decide to pursue this. Ideally, I think you want to either spend some time in the country you want to immigrate to either staying with a friend who lives there, or on a temporary work permit (I think the latter would be better). Basically, you want to get into the culture and see if you actually want to live there.
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ADMIN POST:If the whole ISIS/refugee discussion is going to keep going/start again, I'd prefer it happen in another thread, if someone wants to make one.
If not, I'll probably make the thread myself rather than move posts (none of the recent posts stood out to me as a good OP), and just move any posts made after that point into the new thread.-
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Since I've decided, at least for now, not to get Fallout 4 (it's too limited as a role playing game. The game is trying to tell me a story, rather than letting me tell/discover my own, and that's not what I'm looking for right now), I got the LSPDFR mod working for GTA 5 again on my computer (allows you to play as the police).
I'm glad to see that the whole thing where peds don't know that you're a cop until you interact with them is still not failing to result in hilarity/awesomeness. I don't have the screenshots because my game freaked out and went to windowed mode, but one of my top moments would be a routine traffic stop (suspected drunk driver) turning into a massive shootout. Best guess is I might have pulled over a gang member inside their territory (or was otherwise just inside gang territory). Really nice to be getting back into this mod. I miss some of the features from the GTA 4 version, but GTA 5 is stable enough to get in more than one or two calls (it's usually able to run at least a couple hours), and that's just soooo nice.
Anyone who has GTA 5 should check the mod out. It's a lot of fun, and there are a lot of companion mods that add extra features, or more calls. It's not polished yet, the main mod is still very much being worked on, but it's getting to a really enjoyable state where there is a good feature set, and a lot of the really good mods are all on the same version of rage hook (which allows lspdfr and the other mods to run). Just DO NOT enter multiplayer with mods installed. You will be banned.
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I'm really glad my phone new expensive phone is so eager to share my thoughts and opinions. Repeatedly.
Fixed that for you :P
Watching the release of Fallout 4 with some interest, though I suppose it will be a few days yet until the feedback gets paired down to something more coherent and useful.
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Use the Nexus for modding Oblivion I think, same as Skyrim (it's mandatory for some people on Skyrim now. The workshop has been partially or totally broken for Skyrim since Steam went through that whole paid mods thing).
Almost forgot, but I picked up Age of Kings HD while it was on sale, so I'll be enjoying that later. Anyone else who was looking at that, it's 80% off for the next 8 hours still. I do hope the game is half as fantastic as I remember. Age of Kings and Star Trek Armada, those are the RTS games I really like. Wonder if I could get Armada working actually. The Star Trek vs Star Wars mod deserves to be played again...
Anyway, will be enjoying Age of Kings later.
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I'm suddenly reminded of one of my more entertaining lifeguarding days, where a couple of the kids from the summer camp got "married". It kept everyone entertained (lifeguards included, they had the "ceremony" on the beach). They got a divorce later that day :lol:
All the kids involved would have been 10 years old, give or take a couple years. I am happy to say that it was the kids ideas (mostly the brides). I can't remember the point, I just remember that everyone who passed as an adult went along with it because it was kind of cute, and you don't get in the way of entertainment that makes time go by faster.
As to the point at hand, no influence would be nice, but even if we could somehow block out all the influences while they grow up, that all still breaks down as soon as one of their peers is old enough to follow nature's course. Peer groups will always put pressure on each other, and attempt to define and enforce social norms. That is one of the realities of being a social species, for better or worse. I'd also argue that there are positive aspects to our 'sharing of views' or whatever, such as (hopefully) teaching that rape is wrong, that STD's are a thing and how to avoid them, stuff like that.
What does bother me is social regression on this front. I'm not the best person to talk on the subject, because history has never been my thing (but I do enjoy the pleasure of having friends who study this sort of thing, so yay), but if you go back, you'll find civilizations like the Vikings who are far more progressive on many fronts that we are today, or were until recently (for the Vikings, women's rights would be a highlight). Knowing that our species was able to regress so radically between then and now puts a damper on my hopes that society will continue to progress, and one day not treat at least one segment of society in a terrible way. Of course, you can see it trying to happen in real time, with groups like ISIS.
Err, that started going to dark places. But yeah, as terrible as our influences on the young can be, I think there is hope that as the...more progressive people become more numerous, that will be passed on to more and more people, and you will eventually have a social shift for the better (or if you're socially conservative, a shift towards social deviancy and ruin :D), and that ultimately, this will probably lead to better places than letting everyone come to their own conclusions about what is, and is not, okay.
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I finally got Life is Strange (wanted to wait until all of the game was released, and then forgot about it). Really enjoying it so far. I've never played a game like this before.
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An idea pitched was to add more Nurse Practitioners to the ER room since they're cheaper to hire than doctors and most injuries only require a Nurse Practitioner to look at them anyway. Should cut wait times by quite a bit.
NP's are fantastic. My local GI department uses a bunch of them. They have I think 3 GI doctors, and each of them has 2 NP's. When you have an appointment, or an issue, you deal with your NP instead of the doctor, and then the NP consults with the doctor (and the Doctor will see you in person as needed). It allows the hospital to do way more with fewer doctors, because the NP's can deal with most issues themselves (prescriptions, and some of the treatment options, ordering tests, all that good stuff). The only problem is that Nurse Practitioners are super rare here. We have way more doctors than NP's, so there aren't close to enough of them for all departments to do this.
One thing we did cotton onto at least as far as the ER goes is staffing the triage department with Paramedics instead of Nurses. They're better at assessing people with unknown issues.
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On the one hand, the waiting times in countries like Canada are crippling. On the other hand, at least you will eventually get care, and you still have the option to go the private route if you have the money or feel like remortgaging your house, so nothing lost in that regard I suppose. I know they do make efforts to see critical cases in a more timely manner. Fortunately, I've only had to deal with more immediate care issues so far in my life. Also, I think the trick is to see all the specialists you'll ever need to see while still in the children's system (children's hospitals are much faster about scans and specialists; you can't put that stuff off with people who are still growing), and then you'll never need referrals because you file will be handed off when you become an adult ;)
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I can sympathise with the walking situation. For the past few years, I've not often had access to one (I've never owned a car, but sometimes my parents can loan me one when I'm not in school), and yeah, not being able to buy anything heavy or big because you can't carry it or take it on a bus is a drag. The only way around it, if I can't get a car, is using a taxi, which is a nice way to make things more expensive and feel like you might die in a fiery car accident.
I'm actually pretty lucky right now. I've had a car for months because my Mom doesn't drive anymore, so my parents don't really need two cars. However, my Dad is having hip surgery soon, so he won't be able to drive until like June, so my Mom is starting to drive again, though she isn't excited about learning to drive the SUV (Dad won't be able to get in/out of the car, it's too small and low). The only cost to me is that I don't think Mom will drive in the city ever again, certainly not in the SUV, so I'll be playing chauffeur for the next few months whenever Dad needs to come into town. All things considered, it's not a bad trade.
I mostly enjoy having the car for grocery shopping though. I also pretty much need it to get to an appointment every couple of weeks for Chiro. 25 minute drive vs 80 minute bus ride through sketchy town (on a bus that comes every 30 minutes at best).
As a more novel use, I've been doing up the background music for my sister in laws baby shower for my parents (animal songs), so I had to figure out how to burn audio CD's properly (I tried it once before and it didn't work, and I kind of gave up on the idea). The part of my stereo that plays CDs' doesn't work any more apparently, so I ended up using the car as a very expensive CD player to make sure everything worked properly.
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Probably one of the best professors I've ever had, had us do exactly one project that was graded all semester, plus a bunch of smaller tests. He also had us do most of the teaching. Basically, each chapter of our textbook was broken up into 3 or 4 presentations, each to be done by a student. It seemed to work quite well. The presentation I think was half our grade, so you were motivated do a good job, and the professor would ask questions on thing you missed, or elaborate himself, and correct any mistakes, so the presentations tended to be very solid. In addition to reading each chapter yourself, you could easily do well on the tests. You also learned your presentation extremely well, because you had to be enough of an expert on your subject to perform a 20-30 minute lecture, plus field questions. If your subject came up as a test question, you were going to ace that question like a boss, plus, at least for me, I still remember the section I did in pretty good detail.
As an added bonus, while that presentation was itself a lot of work, it lasted a week tops, and aside from that all you ever had were readings. Granted, the reading was time consuming (I'd say 3-4 hours a chapter, one chapter per week), but it wasn't difficult, so you could just get it done between classes when there wasn't enough time to do any real work.
Obviously this is really only going to work on reading oriented subjects, but it was a neat approach. Also, it was a 3 hours class once a week that normally wrapped up 40-80 minutes early, which is always nice.
I'm pretty sure if you go to an interview, and the interviewer misses it, you win the interview. At least, that's how it should work if you ask me.
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I'd have to go with Ring World. Overly long exams suck, no two ways about it. Been there, done that. But more often than not, as annoying and perhaps frustrating as a long exam can be, it's the short ones that scare me. It is my experience that short tests and exams have a tendency to target holes in your knowledge with laser like precision.
That said, those super long multiple question tests...I didn't know anything could make me stop liking multiple choice.
The last of my grandparents passed away last night. Unlike the last one, this was entirely expected. In truth, he was gone weeks ago. The man outlived all his friends, and then outlived his new friends. Then he lost his foot and his mobility and self sufficiency, and ultimately his will to live. He had his moments, but I think he's wanted to die for a while, so that he could join his wife. When I say he was already gone, the painkillers he's been on for the last few weeks have had him hallucinating pretty badly, and made him paranoid, and sometimes angry and frustrated. I've not gone to see him since September. Me and my family had a really good visit with him then, and that was just before the painkillers, and as long as he was so out of his mind that he didn't feel like he had been forgotten, as long as he didn't remember I existed, I wanted that to be my last memory of him.
So I guess in a way I'm relieved. This has been really hard on my dad, who has been visiting him a lot. I think this will bring an end to a lot of pain for dad, and for my grandfather (he stopped eating a week ago. I guess even with the drugs he finally lost the last of his will to live). I never had a particularly close relationship with the man, which is what it is, I don't really feel bad about that. I don't know, the whole situation is kind of weird for me. I've never known someone who I knew was going to pass away, and who had lived a full life and then some and was ready to move on. I am sad, I am going to miss him, but I'm also happy, because I know this is what he wanted.
Sorry for the, I suppose depressing post. I'm not a very open person face to face, so I'm using you guys as a platform to work through what I am feeling, so thanks :)
On a much happier note, I got my hands on the newest Two Steps From Hell albums, and am listening to some of the songs for the first time. Fantastic. If I could make music like this for a living (as in be part of the orchestra. I have no interest in writing music), I think I would be a very happy person. Orchestral was never my thing, but a lot of this stuff sounds as fun to play as the Big Band I used to play, and damn was that ever fun. Specifically I'm on Battlecry, and it's good. Perhaps even better than Skyworld (of course it's all new, and I've not had new music from them in a couple years, so there might be some bias until I get used to the new songs).
I think this would have to be my top pick so far. I think it has the best finale of any of their songs I've heard (the buildup starts at about 2 minutes):
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Election night in Canada. Interesting enough so far. Global News is already declaring a Liberal Government, which seems a bit premature (most ridings have returned less than 10% of their votes. British Columbia is still voting), but not unexpected since it looks like the Liberal Government has taken every riding in the Atlantic Region. As annoying as the long election season has been, it's been relatively interesting for Canadian politics I think. If anything, the length seems to have come back to haunt the Conservatives, who only started losing the lead to the Liberals in the last week or so.
Anywho, I look forward to staying up too late to see if I can at least see a confirmation on who will lead the new government, and maybe see if there is a solid guess on majority or minority government. Ah, good times.
Today...
in Off-Topic
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Going to see it pretty soon. The whole "does it feel like Star Wars" thing is something I have been nervous about because of the Director. This is the problem I have with his Star Trek movies. I've not bothered to even watch the second one, but the first was a good sci fi movie, it just wasn't a Star Trek movie, and for that, I hate it.
I am optimistic though, since my definition of Star Wars is much broader than my definition of Star Trek. I'm also a bigger Star Wars fan than Trekkie, so I probably have some awesome mental blinders to get me through any rough patches :D
I can't find my Boba Fett baseball hat though, and that's made me a little mad. There are so few chances where it's totally appropriate to actually wear that thing. I'm hoping I left it in the car.