Claincy

I don't have any food allergies which is nice I recently found out that I do have a fairly severe dust mite allergy. Which is probably not helping my sinus issues. On a related note it's now been 2 weeks since I started taking the new nasal spray the doctor thought would help and it has made no noticeable impact on the headaches, just the same as any other medication we've tried *sigh*. I wasn't expecting it to do anything, but it's still disappointing. :'(

Sorry for the unnecessary quote twi, mobile editor won't let me delete it. *sigh* ... Anyway, I feel like Penny's song is pretty appropriate for this thread

@TwiLyghtSansSparkles You'll do ok You're intelligent, compassionate, hard working and on the lookout for potential problems. (Yeah, I know anxiety leveling obsessing over them is unhelpful, but at least you're not caught completely off-guard :/ .) The following couple of things may help, (or may not, I don't really know): -Sometimes thinking about something I'm anxious about in greater detail, working out what the consequences would be if it did happen and how I'd deal with it helps. I mean, whatever it is would still suck if it happens but it doesn't feel as much like the end of the world/impossible to deal with if I know what I'd do after. -Try to be like Bruce some of the time When spending time playing with him or walking him just try to shut off and enjoy the moment like he is, dogs are a great model for how to relax and enjoy life. Obviously we can't be like that all, or even most, of the time. But now and then can still be helpful. I find walking our pup to be some of the most relaxing & stress relieving parts of my day

Bother, I was aiming for weird Not at all actually, it moves to there quite easily (It does hurt if I push it further though.)

You may like "Shadow Rituals" by Michael Markowski. I played it in a band a couple of years back. Getting the timing down took some work I see your right angle thumb and raise you one behind the hand

@Oversleep Well, I'm not an expert and I've definitely forgotten some of the things I learned, but here's a few factoids There are signs placed throughout rural Victoria that display the fire danger for the day and there are various restrictions on what kind of fires/stoves/BBQs you can use depending on the fire danger. There is also advise on what precautions to take depending on the fire danger. You can't outrun a bushfire on foot, especially if the wind is behind it. If the wind is blowing against it you might have a chance, not sure. If you're in a car that can (potentially) be a different story. In general if you're caught out in the open with a bush fire headed your way you need to seek cover. Don't hide in a water tower thinking the water would keep you cool. The bushfire will boil the water and you with it. You aren't in much danger of being killed by the actual fire from a bush fire, the heat wave that precedes it will kill you before the fire ever gets to you *yay*? It is possible to defend your house from a bush fire that is coming through but only if you really know what you are doing and you are well prepared for it. If that isn't the case and there's a fire nearish your area, grab what you can and get out, a home can be rebuilt. If memory serves a large portion of the casualties from bushfires have come from people who incorrectly thought they would be able to defend their homes. There are a number of precautions you should always take when making a campfire in the bush. You should always make certain you have a 3m clearance of anything that could catch fire, this includes tree branches above your fire. Remove any leaf litter, twigs, etc from the area before starting the fire. A small burning twig can turn into an unmanageably large fire fast if it isn't dealt with. You also need to be wary of roots running under your campfire, they can catch and burn underground and a little while later you might find that the tree they were part of has started burning You should use an existing fireplace where possible, or dig a small trench to build the fire in. You should create a border of rocks around the firepit. But do not put rocks from a river in or near a fire, they may explode. You should always have a large bucket of water handy. Do not leave the fire unattended, at all, ever, and don't leave it burning overnight. Use dead wood, don't strip it from living plants, aside from damaging the environment the smoke is really nasty When you put the fire out, use large amounts of water and spread the ashes out across the fire pit (though not outside it obviously). If you bury the embers they will stay hot a lot longer and continue to be a fire hazard long after you are gone. Similar safety precautions and legal restrictions apply to camp stoves and the like One of the most famous koalas in Australia: This photo was actually taken during some bushfire work in the week before the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. Fair warning: do not approach a wild koala under normal circumstances, they're dangerous. (But with them being an Australian animal you probably already assumed that :P) Going to an area of bush that was hit by a bushfire a couple of years before can look pretty amazing. The area is filled with the blackened remains of burnt trees but there is new greenery springing up everywhere. It's beautiful These are the best images I found of it from a quick search: I hope some of that was interesting

That is true I think it's a fairly effective precaution.

Heh, fair point. We tend to get a small number of really dry, windy, 40+ degree celsius (just over 100 fahrenheit) days each Summer. Once a fire gets going on a day like that it's extremely difficult to control. The thing is, bushfires are a natural part of the Australian bush ecosystem, some plants only spread seeds after a fire goes through, or their seeds spread but don't start growing till after a fire goes through. From what I remember the small fires happen less often because of human influence/control, but as a result when fires do happen there is a lot more to burn and so they can be a lot bigger. I like the Australian bush, but we stay in the suburbs during the hotter parts of Summer, just in case

It's interesting the different natural disasters that different places have to deal with. Australia's very safe when it comes to volcanoes, earthquakes happen but only rarely and they extremely rarely do any significant damage. Cyclones do sometimes occur in the Northern states and we do get the occasional severe(ish) storm down here. That aside there's sometimes flooding, again more up in QLD, it happens far more rarely in VIC and is usually significantly less dangerous and damaging. Probably the biggest, most common, natural disasters we get are bush fires. There's major bush fires every year, they don't effect the suburbs much but they can be quite serious further out. To the point where certain days are remembered as things like "Black Saturday", "Ash Wednesday" and "Black Friday". So yeah, to us Black Friday doesn't mean shopping sales, it means the third most deadly bushfires to happen in Australia in the past century.

I feel it's important to specify that I am currently an Allomantic pewter/Feruchemical iron twinborn

Congrats!

Huh. I'm pretty sure the negative list was accurate when I wrote it (we've been down this road of downvotes before, a couple of times). I think it must've changed since then. To the best of my knowledge the positive list is still accurate, though there may be some additional higher rep ranks that were added later that no one has reached yet. Edit: Ok yeah, negative ranks have definitely changed (Had a quick look through the members with lowest rep.) Edit 2: I've updated the list with the details I could gather from the member list and I checked the first dozen or so positive ranks, which are still the same

Yeah, I figured that's what you meant I don't go into the city centre very often, too crowded for me.

There is a free tram route that goes around central Melbourne. Aside from that (and very occasional free days) students have to pay like everyone else. The transport network is rather extensive though which is very convenient

Australia's a bit like America in that regard, it takes a long time to travel from one end to the other. With that said, Melbourne by itself is notably multi-cultural So that helps.

Story time! In Melbourne there is a game store called Milsims. For years it was the best board game/war game store in Melbourne though there was definitely less competition at the time. It's prices were really good and it's customer service etc were similarly great But the global financial crisis hit them hard and they never really recovered. At some point ownership of the store changed hands and the new owners just weren't up to the standards of the old ones. I don't know if they simply didn't really care about the store/industry, if they weren't especially good at managing businesses or whatever else might have had an effect, but the store settled into a slow death spiral. Finally sometime last year the store entered liquidation But wait! This is the good news thread! Early this year the Milsims brand and remaining stock was bought by a small business "Joe Dodgy's dice and games". Said business has been operating for around 5 years out of their garage and they have great prices and excellent customer relations They decided they wanted to expand into a full retail business and remake Milsims into a great store again. For better or worse their new retail store is right near the university I work at Anyway, they decided to hold a warehouse sale over the weekend (something that Milsims used to do back in it's heyday) with heavy discounts to sell off the old stock that they didn't plan to continue to put on the shelves. I was able to grab a rather nice selection of D&D Attack Wing minis (including some nice dragons) for less than half what it would usually cost For some reason my purchase of a number of large dragons scared my players...can't imagine why

Your account is active now Not having read the adventure is ideal and you won't need the book.

D&D tonight was good. Climax of the current arc, intense boss battle, all homebrew creatures, dwarven forge.....it was good. Everyone had a good time, and they won I put a lot of prep time into that session and it payed off.

Personally I find chatting through forums/steam chat/facebook chat/skype (text) or the like makes for a happy middle ground. Far less immediacy/pressure and you can really take the conversation at your own pace, but you are still interacting with others. Another option I find can work is playing an MMO or a multiplayer game with friends, but without any voice chat. Still being around/interacting with people in a way, but without the need for so much talking. If you know someone else who is happy to just sit and read quietly in eachother's company that might work too. That's pretty dependent on who's around of course.

@Jondesu That sucks It probably won't help at all, but I know how you feel. It's been 3+ years since the last time my head didn't hurt, though fortunately I don't think my pain is generally as bad as yours.

If I had to guess I'd say you had pretty bad GPS reception in the court so your GPS's horizontal accuracy might have been all over the place. I've seen my phone think I was 40-50 or so metres away when inside some buildings.

If my understanding of how it works is right, that won't do anything. From what I've heard Pokemon GO only checks your distance once a minute and calculates how far you are from where you were last time it checked. If that amount is beyond a certain distance it assumes you are in a car and doesn't record it, otherwise it adds the distance to your eggs. In other words something that moves a lot but stays in roughly the same location won't help eggs hatch and walking in a circle is similarly ineffective. If you tied it to a fan you might find that it would *gradually* hatch your eggs, but you'd get the same result by leaving it sitting on your bench. Phone GPS's aren't perfectly accurate so it may change where it thinks you are by the time it updates again, resulting in a small amount of distance being added

Heh, sorry! All Australians are, of course, super humans. We're just super humans with good water

Weeeeeell, actually. Melbourne water is some of the best in the world Really it's just the animals out to kill you here

Just a word of warning to players who are still in the low levels: The odds of a pokemon escaping a pokeball increase from level 8 onwards. This isn't just a matter of facing higher cp pokemon. A level 20+ trainer will have considerably more difficulty catching a cp 10 pidgey than a lower level player. In other words the higher level you get the more frustrating and arbitrary the basic act of catching pokemon becomes Some values to do with catching were adjusted in the recent patch so it is possible that they've gone back on that particular design "feature" but from what I've heard so far it may have gotten worse, too early to be certain though. A couple of other notes that may be important to people: Apparently some people are experiencing account issues after dling the most recent update. If the game has brought you back to the starting screen/is getting you to pick your starter again the advise I've seen is to close the app and to file a report with the Niantic Helpdesk. The footprints have been disabled and there is no word on when or if the tracking feature will ever be re-implemented. Websites like Pokevision that you could use to effectively replace that functionality have been shut down. I don't have any inside info but my best guess is that they turned off tracking because it was too taxing on the servers and they decided to dump it in favour of server stability. --- My personal opinion on the game: The concept is great An AR game about walking around and catching pokemon is perfect and there are some really great ideas in there: The way pokemon spawns are effected by terrain etc (though the specifics could definitely do with some serious adjustment) How the same pokemon is available to everyone so interacting with others is encouraged Lure modules Eggs hatching based on distance traveled Pokestops Some of that could do with significant tweaking, but fundamentally it's great stuff. Unfortunately most of the rest is (in my opinion) a confusing mess of conflicting & half-baked: mechanics, UI & UX that's propping up a boring grind-fest. Most of the pieces could work but they need adjusting and far too many of them conflict with each other. The game is absolutely worth trying out and I happily recommend playing up to level 10 or so. But beyond that all of the various problems start to really compound on each other. The current state of the game is basically what I'd expect from a late Alpha build, released long before it was ready. The lack of any decent communication from the developer or interest in engaging with their community only makes things worse. I can go into detail about the design problems if anyone's interested but otherwise I'll leave it at that. With that said, if you're still having fun with the game, Great!