Serpent Eye

I prefer grizzly bears.

:thumbup: Great book.

So... for anyone who doesn't know, I'm a manager at my local movie theatre. On top of my regular day-to-day duties, I'm in charge of our Theatre Technology department - basically, the upkeep of anything electronic at the theatre: cash registers, ticket kiosks, printers, scanners, office computers and printers, digital menu signage, ADA equipment (for hearing impaired guests), etc. etc. The biggest responsibility is that I'm also in charge of all of our digital projection equipment - so, making sure the new movies are ready, maintenance and upkeep of our servers, and maintenance of the projectors themselves. Today I had to change out the bulb on one of hour projectors, as it was exceeding its run time (they can only run for so many hours before they start to blacken, go dim, etc., and compromise the quality of the movies.) The bulb is installed in what's called a "lamp house," and then the entire lamp house is installed in the projector. The lamp house is essentially a large metal box that contains the bulb, and what is called a reflector. The reflector is a giant, cone-like mirror that goes around the bulb, in order to focus the light through the lens. Well... I had removed the lamp house from the projector and carried it over to a work table. I was in the middle of loosing the nuts and screws when the bulb EXPLODED! Yay! \D:/ I was having a hard time loosing one of the bolts, so I was bent low and my face was maybe 6 inches away from the lamp house. I'm not sure if the bulb hit something, or what exactly, but I just heard this large BOOM! and suddenly glass was flying everywhere. If you've never seen a digital projector bulb blow up (I'm sure you could YouTube it), it's quite something. They are literally like miniature bombs. They come wrapped in protective plastic, then that is placed in a thick plastic case, that goes in a cardboard box, and then that is wrapped in about 5 inches of foam. The outside of the boxes are labeled with all sorts of Warning labels. (Just to give an idea of how powerful they are, we were disposing an old one one night and tossed the box onto the ground a few feet away from us. It exploded through the plastic wrap, through the thick plastic casing, and the glass drilled through the cardboard box and exploded out of that.) At any rate, I was scared shitless, and I couldn't really hear anything for a good 30 seconds. Thankfully I only got a minor cut on the backside of my wrist from where my skin was exposed. (We have to wear a thick welder's-type mask, gloves and a leather "bomb suit.") The best part is, when the bulb exploded, the force of it also exploded the reflector within the lamp house. Of course...... a reflector costs about $8,000 - $10,000 USD, so that's a lovely bit of equipment to have destroyed. Thankfully if the bulb was still under warranty, the bulb manufacturer will pay to replace the bulb, as well as replacing the reflector (yay free $10,000 dollar items!) [hide=Shiny Photos] [/hide] In my 6 years of working at the theatre (all 6 of which I have worked with projection equipment) I have never had a bulb explode that close to me before, let alone within the lamp house still. And I'd prefer to not experience it ever again! A very hairy scary day. We lost a couple of managers (one quit, one got fired) so we're all having to work extra days... I'm going on 10 days in a row without a day off, and I'm exhausted all the time, I'm tired of customers whining about stupid shit all the time ("I SAID EXTRA BUTTER ON MY POPCORN!!!!") and I just want to sleep in until 1:00 P.M. one day! Is that too much to ask?

Didn't get grounded a single time growing up. If my brother and I got in trouble, our mom would go up to the computer and rip a random cord out and take it in the car with her when she went out shopping, etc. It usually ended up being the speaker power cord, so we would sit there, wait till she drove away, and then just use the computer without sound... One time she picked the living room TV up, hauled it outside, and threw it down the hill in our front yard. Other than that... no grounding. :-)

First job: movie theatre. Current job: same movie theatre. Dat six years later.

I know it's up to the publisher to set the price, but I'm sure Rowling/Rowling's agent also have some say in the negotiation process. :-P Frankly I was just surprised by the price. I knew it would be somewhat expensive, especially given that it's a hardback, but I didn't think it would be as expensive as a Potter book. On the one hand, I'm sure they set a higher price given Rowling's popularity as an author... but on the other hand, it isn't a Potter book and not everyone is going to be so willing to spend so much on a book just because she wrote it. I didn't even look at the prices of the Potter books when I bought them, I would have thrown any amount of money in to get them... can't say the same for this book. I'll wait another paycheck for it. :-P The price isn't outrageous, a lot of the books I own cost me $25 or more... I just have rent to pay in the next few days. :-P I went to the bookstore planning on buying it, but sadly had to walk away empty-handed once I saw it was $35!

Wow. The Casual Vacancy is $35.00? Deathly Hallows was $34.99. :< Y u make ur new book so expensive, Jo?? Edit: And woops, didn't realize no one else had posted yet. :<

<3: Hi.

:thumbup: I judge a book by its cover in the sense that, if I see a book with an interesting looking cover I'm more prone to pick it up and read what the book is about... but I would never not buy a book because of its cover. The only exception I have to this rule is when new editions of a book are released because it's being made into a movie, and they slap a stupid "NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE" label on the cover, or put a picture of the actors on the cover. In that case, I always go up to Customer Service and order in an older edition sans movie sticker. :P

I'm sorry.... but just where the hell did your beard go?

To be honest, I haven't even been following when it was being released, so I didn't even know it came out tomorrow. :P But I'll definitely be buying it! I finally finished two of the books I was reading, and have started reading Seed by Rob Ziegler. I'm only on page 20 (just started tonight) but I have a feeling I'm really going to like it - it's proving to be a great read! Gotta love post-apocalyptic settings.

Ahh, reading through this topic makes me glad I'm done with school. Although work is more or less like homework for me now, so fu life ;_;

I bought it yesterday anyway. Can't say I'll read it any time soon though, I have a million other books piled up to read. :?

Awesome! :D I might buy it now, hehe.

Congrats, Spoof!! :thumbsup:

Well, I should clarify that you can't grow ALL of the plant-based ingredients. Including Nirnroot, Jazbay grapes, etc.

Well, I went ahead and bought Hearthfire anyway. :P It's really awesome so far! More or less it's like Construction on RuneScape. :P Running around finding various building materials to expand your house and make decorations. [hide]My favorite part so far is the garden... 11 "Soil" spots that you can Activate. Once you Activate a spot, it will bring up a list of any *plant only* Alchemy ingredients you are carrying (Blue mountain flower, Whitecap, etc.) You then use the "Give" option, and you plant that ingredient in the plot. A few days later (I'm at 3 days, and there are little shoots sprouted up!!!) and things start to grow. :D Very very cool - you can more or less have a constant flow of Alchemy ingredients? If you don't mind waiting for them to grow. My garden looks a bit odd at the moment with a bunch of Glow mushrooms growing everywhere. :P The only thing I'm not sure about is how many ingredients you get back when you harvest? Getting only 1 back wouldn't really make sense since you use up an ingredient to plant it in the first place.... maybe you get 2-3 back when you harvest? Edit: It seems to vary depending on the plant. I got 5 Deathbell back, 3 Creeper cluster, 2 White cap, etc. The plants stay grown after harvest as well, so you just have to wait another 4 days for them to replenish.[/hide]

Has anyone DL'd Hearthfire yet? It's only $4.99, but I'm not sure if it's even worth it. :P It sounds cool though! Just hoping someone on TIF can provide an opinion..?

Lemme know how it is plox :thumbsup:

I can't quote prices or anything like that, but I'm sure there are one or two herbs you could do without juju potions and still profit somewhat; however, the potions are absolutely worth leveling Hunter for. When I was getting 99 Farming, I was a bit skeptical about needing them ("Herb farming was profitable before juju, it will be fine without them!") but now I couldn't even imagine Farming without them. What's more, there are some herbs (Torstol, etc.) that you shouldn't even bother doing without juju. Picking and replanting all five patches isn't an issue unless you get random'd during your run. Before you get juju, why not time yourself on one of your herb runs to get a ballpark figure of how long it takes you? If you don't have the Livid Farm Trollheim teleport spell unlocked, always start your runs at the My Arm patch - that way you don't have to waste any of your juju time by running there. The rest of your route after that shouldn't really matter.

It seems like not too recently, a similar announcement was made and they listed some of the names of the accounts they had banned. I wonder why they didn't this time?

I guess now that I think about it, I can see how there's a niche out there for the NA genre. I suppose if we can have something like Steampunk that's already technically Sci-Fi/Fantasy, we can have NA that's already technically Adult Fiction. :P I read from such a wide variety of genres -- I really don't stray from reading anything -- that I've never really struggled to find a book to suit my needs or interests. I've read and indeed own many books that one could describe as New Adult, but I've never really felt a pressing urge like, I really just wish there were more books about people my age. I love reading books from YA (it's SOMETIMES a little embarrassing thinking how strange it looks for a 6'-tall dude with a grisly beard to be browsing in the kids section), and I love reading books from Adult Fiction with 30+ year old characters, as well as a mix of every age in between. If I had more issues with finding books about people my age, I guess I could relate more to the need to add a new genre. I also don't always yearn to read something that specific - more often than not, I get the desire in my head like, "I really want to read a great new fantasy book," and the age of the characters will be whatever they may be! :P But I do get how it's probably difficult to find a specific book like that in today's Adult Fiction section, where a lot of the authors are in their... late years, and so most of their characters follow suit. :P

I keep meaning to buy it... D: I think there's three or four books now in that series. It sounds really good, I just have been lazy getting it. Already have a huge backlog of unread books to get through... >.>

Today (well, yesterday) I found out that my pregnant sister is expecting a boy! I already have a nephew and niece that I spoil, so I'm excited to have another nephew to buy dinosaur and robot toys for.... :3

<3: [hide][/hide]