I’m getting “Wallace Shawn we have at home”…

You know, I don’t actually know. Have been conditioned to avoid using them that I don’t even think about them.

Oh, I acknowledge that.

However, there are two things I get hung up on. One, can’t pay by check—Costco doesn’t accept checks. And, two, the traditional no-limits cards are generally Amex, which they don’t accept—only Visa.

So, yes, while nothing else you said was wrong per se, I’m still left to ponder just how the transaction would go down.

I know everyone’s general focus is on the cost of the thing and how ridiculous it seems, completely ignoring that it’s a Scotch that was aged longer than the overwhelming majority of us—me included—have been alive, and that there are some people for whom that taste is very much worth it.

Me, I’ve wrangled with exactly how you’re meant to pay for the thing and walk out the door with it. Am I bringing $27K—plus tax—worth of cash—three straps of hundos?—to Costco and having the cashier count it? Do I get pulled into the manager’s office instead? Or, do I put this on my Costco Citi Visa? Will they decline it, even if I have the credit limit? Can I sub in another Visa, since that’s all they take? Do I get walked out the door, or do I get a receipt for the checker to sharpie a line through?

The first time I encountered this, it scared the shit out of me. Only by rationally eliminating possibilities was I able to calmly dig in, learn about the Epley Maneuver, and get some relief.

It still pops up on occasion, but a couple of rounds of the Maneuver and I’m usually back to normal.

For what it’s worth, they’ve had a “Neuro Fuzzy” rice cooker (https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/nszcc) for years—ours is at least 10 years old at this point. And, I would bet this is a trivial extension of that—using some decision tables supplemented with heat feedback—with only the addition of a user feedback mechanism, rather than any, true “AI”.

My first temptation was to say that it might be an age thing, but then I know many people my age who still don’t care about plants.

For me, it’s like a switch flipped one day. When I was younger, I just didn’t really care, and the few times I was given a plant, it did not end well. Figured that I just had a brown thumb.

But, maybe 10-some-odd years ago, I got a peace lily, and, by then, something had changed. I wanted to see this plant thrive, and it brought me just a little bit of satisfaction to see it doing well. It doesn’t hurt that peace lilies will tell you when they need watered, and, as such are pretty easy to keep.

I’m still not the best plant dad, but I’d since gone on to buy about a dozen more and appreciate the bit of greenery around the house.

I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I’m 25 years into my career and I’ve only just started to put this into practice. (I say “slightly” because, hey, I’ve been doing this without any advice or mentorship, and, maybe, one can be forgiven for not finding this stuff self-obvious…)

Took a new position and got tired of people scheduling my lunch four out of five days a week. In addition to the meetings before and after, it often meant most of my day in meetings without a break.

So, I threw a tentative meeting for that time slot and the number of lunchtime meetings cratered. Somehow, folks were able to figure out another time or solve it without a meeting. Only twice in four months have I been asked if that “meeting” could be moved.

Needless to say, I’m a convert and would wholeheartedly recommend the practice—of scheduling a self-meeting, for any purpose, be it lunch or even just productive time—to folks well before they hit 25 years.

Hard agree. I played through the opening twice in my first sitting. Died both times. Put it down for a year and a half.

Finally decided to try again and picked it back up. Passed the opening sequence and got into the game proper. And, I can say that I had a pretty good time—excepting a key, bullshit timed mission that I barely passed.

They really did not need to gatekeep the game behind the poor design of the opening.

For me, that, but with “Now Procreate!”

Nier: Automata.

Tried to get into it earlier this year after I got it on sale. Was not in the right mindset then to have to replay the whole intro just because I died to the first boss.

Retried again this past weekend and have since been enjoying a pretty decent action RPG.

Nearly 24 minutes of instruction, and not a word on when to drop a thrown chair, or how to mark a knuckle sandwich for a customer.

Oh my goodness… Is this my first !communitiesifellfor@lemmy.ml? Aw…

Carpal Tunnel Inducer 40K

…

Wait, that’s a right answer. Sorry guys, I’m new at this.

I want to play a game like Fallout, with perhaps a light plot, but a much heavier settlement building mechanic.

Like, you found a settlement, and it’s filled with trash, debris, and burnt-out structures. As you scavenge and collect things, and attract people to your cause, the place slowly becomes cleaner and more structured. You can have settlers scavenge for themselves and fix up structures, farm for food, treat wounded, lead small armies against mutants and generally secure an area of a map, and really be able to treat the settlement as a home base.

Playing Fallout 4, I was bothered by how I could build out all these settlements, place structures and whatnot, help these people, and still no one had the sense to pick up a broom and sweep up the pile of trash in the street.

The same kind of people who don’t wash their ass because they think it would make them gay.

Potions that you’ll never be able to use because you keep getting nearly KO’d every other round, so only elixirs will do…

Being acquaintances for a while with someone with OCD was enough to tell me that the vast majority of people with “OCD” do not have OCD.

“Hi, we need to talk…”

My place of business has this dysfunction with meetings—Zoom being the biggest offender—where people just keep talking through the end of a meeting. 30-minute meetings become 35-40. 60-minute meetings becomes 65-70. And, with meetings frequently being back-to-back-to-back, invariably one or another person is late to the next one.

I think it’s because scheduling a meeting with all necessary parties is so difficult that if you don’t finish the thought, the next chance is at least a week away.

To top it off, we had a company-wide survey that spawned a working group to tackle the problem of meetings, whose suggestion was to update Outlook settings to automatically shorten meetings by X minutes—to allow people transit time, bathroom breaks, etc. Almost no one set that setting.