Random fun fact, the dude dunking the Dude in the toilet bowl is Mark Pellegrino. He also played Lucifer in Supernatural.

If you want something right now, you can swap that CPU out with a ryzen 7 5600x. It lolls like Amazon has it listed for $220. According to User Benchmarks you could see a 30-40% performance increase over what you have. Unfortunately with the smaller board you can’t really add more ram. Any upgrade to DDR5 is going to be way too expensive.

You could save and wait for things to cool down but who knows when that will be. Once it does happen you should swap the processor, board, and ram. You can also keep an eye on the secondhand market to see if something pops up at a decent price.

Ya the first season reminded me a lot of Berserk. You’re following along with a character whose sole purpose is to kill and survive.

But you see his father in the first few episodes, a man who moved his family far away from the Danes, a man who runs a village and is beloved, a man who despite being a master with a sword is shown trying to lean new skills and grow. He was a man who couldve led the Vikings and lived in luxury but wanted his kids to grow up away from the battlefield. The story is the unfortunate journey of Thorfinn having to realize what his father was trying to teach him but the hard way. Even though the first season is a lot of fighting, there is very little in the second.

Vinland Saga

“I have no enemies.” It’s an anime with two seasons so far. The manga is getting close to complete. Takes place around 1000 ad with the wars between the Vikings and the English. Basically the first season is about revenge while the second pivots hard to redemption. It’s ultimately a story about pacifism.

After seeing the keynotes at CES this year I am convinced every tech CEO desperately sees themselves as the next Steve Jobs on this one. “Hype” of the iPhone But with none of the innovation. The iPhone was something tangible and useful to people. It actually enhanced something we all used. So many things that were talked about this year were met with crickets from the audience. AI in GPUs you can’t afford and frame generation, AI in CPUs, AI in your coffee maker. The audience was skeptical and uninterested because the technology hasn’t proven itself yet. But here we are going all-in.

I literally just had a conversation with a coworker where he said we need more AI to auto generate and populate forms and save us the hassle. He gave a bunch of examples and I said, never touching copilot, “It sounds like you should just be able to ask it to do these extremely basic tasks and it would complete them.” And he replied that he tried a number of ways but it could never get them right. It’s a half baked technology at best.

All that is happening is geared towards data centers and the tech companies themselves. All we get to do is ask a fancy search engine things and it spits out things that may or my not be true or plagiarized. Its not an original thought but just a smashed together search. We can ask it to complete tasks with a 30% success rate. They want to feed it so much information it will destroy your basic privacy as well as the ecosystem. Oh but we get the privilege of renting comupting power to play games on their servers. Don’t worry about the hastle of a home PC anymore.

Nothing tangible, nothing better than what we already have.

Could be fun. I just desperately want an animated adaptation of the Stormlight Archives. Mistborn would be a killer three season animated show too.

I just beat Outer Wilds a few months ago and the DLC last week. It’s easily one of my favorite games but once you know the secrets there’s no going back. I’m so glad I never had anything spoiled and went in on a random recommendation.

Even though I loved the base game the DLC doesn’t have quite the same feel. I got legitimately frustrated at certain parts too. But it’s also more outer wilds and is nearly it’s own game so can’t really complain.

This sounds almost like the build I’m upgrading from now. I have an i5-4690 4 core 3.5ghz with 16GB DDR3, and an MSI GTX 970. I picked up a radeon 5600xt and it’s been able to handle a number of newer games with lower settings. That got me to pull the trigger on a full upgrade this week. But I was playing BG3 on medium settings and even Expedition 33. It’s not great but it runs fine.

Your CPU is better than that and I’d see if you can get more ram in there, you can probably find DDR3 for a decent price. I’d also check for used equipment. I got that gpu for ~$100 from someone who just upgraded to something newer.

As someone that’s a big CR fan and watched all the campaigns, the Mighty Nein is my favorite. So I was really excited to see it animated.

Unfortunately, while I still enjoyed it quite a bit, the pacing seemed off and a lot of the later game reveals/secrets are being pit out there early. Honestly C2 has a slow start with the whole circus and devil toad arc. They also threw in session zero story to help establish the characters to the audience but that took like 2 episodes of the 8 total for the season.

Then, they made a lot of changes to the overall story that don’t break the continuity but I think alters the emotional journey. In comparison, Vox Machina was quick at first to establish the characters but didn’t deviant too far from the overall story until later seasons.

I also thought they needed a few more episodes. It’s the first season so there’s a lot of intro work to do but a few more episodes to tackle “not high level stuff with low level characters” would have been nice.

As far as the characters go for me:

Fjord is always kind of a mid character. He has some shining moments in the campaign but he gets outshined by everyone around him.

Molly was written literally as a blank slate. The player had a short outline for who Molly was that he pitched to the GM and said the backstory is a total mystery. But Molly is a fan favorite for multiple reasons and is a well meaning heathen. He has some really good moments but I’m afraid they cut a lot of his best bits from the show.

Everybody loves Jester. She’s sweet, cute, crude, and positive. Lots of dick jokes. She has some of the best moments in the campaign.

Nott, amazing character. She got a lot of screen time and it’s deserved. Great representation.

Beau, another good character and a 180 in attitude from Keyleth. She’s a what you see is what you get kind of person.

Caleb was one of my favorites but the focus on the academy and his friends happens way later in the game and I think that really messed with the pacing. They moved the whole academy to Zadash just for the show. If they left brief flashbacks and minimal hints about his past I think it would’ve given them time to focus on other things.

Like Yasha. It was criminal that they just had a few, albeit great, scenes with her. Granted that Ashley Johnson was sin and out of the game the first two campaigns due to work. But they wrote Pike into a lot of Vox Machina she wasn’t in originally. She has some good story ahead though.

Essek was another odd addition. It’s good that they showed the Kryn Dynasty to show what it’s like but it’s another time suck from the main cast. And another very early twist reveal makes me wonder how things will play out in the future. He’s a good character but the focus really should’ve been on the main cast for the first season.

Overall I liked it and I know things need to change for TV but some of the choices they made robbed the audience of big reveals and mysteries later on. I’ll have to rewatch it again now that they are all out. If you enjoyed this season I’d highly recommended starting campaign 2 on YouTube. It’s like the book vs the movie debate, it’s the same characters you love/hate but much more fleshed out. Plus you get all the banter and dice rolling.

Booooo!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI

I randomly remembered the Will it Blend? videos the other day. Such a simple premise. Also “Don’t breathe this.”

Rhythmbox for me. I was using Spotify for a long time but I’ve been dialing that usage back a lot this year. Another factor was that I have an older PC and when I play games it uses more resources than I’d like. I took the time and setup my playlists in Rhythmbox and I’ve been happy. It’s not winning any design awards but it does the job.

I have one A2 and Two A1s. The A2 dries out quickly if not used frequently or with wet enough ink. The A2s are great though and I usually have one of the group always inked up since they are so convenient to write with.

I also have a VP with a medium nib. It’s a bit broad for my everyday writing bit I ink it up anyway since it’s so nice. I’d like to get a grind on it someday. I say that first, its a pilot nib. They are soft and as smooth as butter. And two, the action is smoother and the way the nib unit fits ends up seating a lot better. I also don’t worry about dry out nearly as much. If you like these, you’ll love a VP.

Clones can get a bad reputation but sometimes they hit the right mix of cheap, quality, and functionality: moonman A1/A2, jinhao 82, Junlai 630. They may not be what they imitate but for ~$20-40 they are still solid pens.

Seriously, my wife was hooked on this game when it came out and has done so many different playthroughs. Each with different classes, with different chat options, and EVERY play through finds something new. The replay value on this game is crazy!

Just last night we finished a co-op campaign and being the chaotic person I am, I attacked someone during the epilogue just to see what would happen. She was upset that Withers banished us but I just sat there laughing. But she never saw that cinematic because she never made that choice.

We read The Room by Jonas Karlsson for my works book club. I’m so glad it was only a 3-hour audiobook. I was done after the first hour. It was labeled as “magical realism” and a " dark comedy" but it was just some guy with mental issues trying to adjust and fail in an office setting. The main character is just an asshole so it makes it hard to relate to them, because of that you can’t take their side when people start to question his Room. It just ends with a whole lot of nothing and I thought it was a total waste of time.

You were always my favorite.

I’m glad you’re making progress at least! Hopefully you find one that works. I don’t need anymore pocket pens but still want to pickup an M2 every time I see it.

Youre’re probably right about a generic converter too. They probably designed one to work for multiple pens. I just meant they might not make the converters in-house but sub it out to a company that specializes in injection molding which could have led to a mistake. It’s usually a cost saving measure for companies. Higher quantity, lower cost.

I will also mention that it’s generally the conventional wisdom not to eyedropper metal pens. From what I’ve heard, the water and/or chemicals in the ink can react with the metals to contaminate the ink and/or accelerate rusting or corrosion in the pen.

Interesting, I’d never heard that one before. I’m familiar with the pens but not the converters. Unfortunately, the converters were probably chosen just for the dimensions and aren’t actually made by Hongdian. It would probably take some trial and error to find one that works better than the one you have. From a quick search they look like a few I have for some other Chinese brands.

My 2 cents is that either a) that small amount of empty space isn’t really going to make a difference in the long run. Fill it, write with it, have fun, enjoy the pen.

Or b) if it does bother you, a blunt-tipped syringe could be used to fill the converter instead. In some cases I will just fill the converter directly from the bottle/sample then plug it into the pen. It’s a lot cleaner but you’ll have to wait for the ink to flow to the tip. But there is potentially more ink in the flooded feed than the small amount lost by the odd converter fit. So to get a truly “full fill”, you’d need to fill as usual then take the converter off the rest. But that sounds messier than its really worth in my opinion.

If you’re feeling handy and it really bother’s you, c) It might be an assembly error. You might be able to disassemble the converter and setup the piston so it doesn’t press on the feed. On some converters you can uncrew the upper silver collar and pull the whole piston out. This would be a last resort since it could mess up the converter completely. For context of a similar situation, I was cleaning my TWSBI 580 and removed the piston to really clean out the barrel. When I put it all back together the piston wouldn’t go back all the way. The piston needed to be set at the proper length before tightening it all down. I have a feeling it was something similar from the factory. Unfortunately, quality control is the first to go on these cheaper pens.

I’ll add The Well Appointed Desk to your radar.

Also someone already mentioned the Pen Addict but I’ll add that they do have a list of other resources under “Pen Friends” all the way at the bottom.

https://www.penaddict.com/pen-friends

I’m pretty sure it’s a type of bearing/gear puller. You’d slide the jaws around the bearing and use the screw to press against the shaft to pull the bearing off.