pumaloafing

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These are taken from the top highest grossing media franchises on Wikipedia.

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No real meaning behind this poll, just curious what people think.

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When I get drinks from fast food places, ideally I like to get a little ice, but not too much. So I used to order 'light ice'.

The problem is that the order is a little vague, and sometimes I'm not even sure if the employee actually followed the order.

So even though I prefer light ice, I started ordering no ice instead. I still prefer no ice over a regular amount of ice, and that way I know for sure if the employee did what I asked.

[pumaloafing]

I decided to calculate the value of the panda express app rewards, or at least some of them.

Upgrade to a plate/bigger plate: $0.60 per point Small Appetizer: $0.67 per point Medium Drink: $0.65 per point Medium A La Carte Side: $0.70 per point Small A La Care Entree: $0.72 per point Bowl: $0.68 per point Plate: $0.67 per point Bigger Plate: $0.65 per point

Overall the difference is, at greatest, 20%. I was hoping that the bigger rewards would have better value, thus making saving up more worthwhile, but it seems not. That said... the 'value' of the a la carte bonuses are somewhat inflated by the fact that buying things 'a la carte' is not a good deal to begin with.

A plate, with two main dishes and a side dish, is $10. Buying them individually would be $15.40. Combos are cheaper after all.

On a related note, a medium drink is also bad value since a large is $0.20 more.

Overall I think I'll probably just use the points on appetizers. I like their egg rolls and spring rolls, and the point value is decent as well.

Ps. If you don't have a preference over spring rolls or egg rolls from panda express, I weighed my order of both today, for $2 I got an egg roll weighing 83g, and also for $2 I got two spring rolls weighing a combined 97g.

[pumaloafing]

When I started up Suikoden 1 on hard mode I was apprehensive about how difficult it might be, especially since you couldn't lower the difficulty if it got too hard.

Turns out, I needn't have worried. The only time I even came close to dying was against the zombie dragon, even bosses I remember being difficult like Neclord were a breeze. I didn't even do any level grinding, though to be fair I did do a lot of gambling so I always had the best gear available, but I felt like that should be expected on hard mode?

I do remember Suikoden 2 being more difficult though, and I plan on beating that one on hard mode too.

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As I'm filling out My Anime List (well, I'm using to track my manga, actually) I'm starting with all the manga I've completed first.

As I tag title after title I realize I don't remember a thing about most of these.

If I had infinite time I would re-read all of these as I list them off as completed, but instead I tend to spend my time on reading things I haven't completed yet.

Though to be fair there's not a huge difference between a story you've never read and a story you have no memories of.

[pumaloafing]

Our scores are quite close

I'm curious

So i took this test

Is this a good result?

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I'm wanting to switch to a new manga site because mangadex is having... issues.

I've found another manga site that allows you to import your list from myanimelist, so I figured 'Why not just fill out myanimelist, then import it?'.

Well, aside from this taking a long time (I've checked out over 1000 titles on mangadex), myanimelist doesn't have a lot of one-shots I've read, I'm also concerned about manhwa and manhua, mangadex has a lot of them but I'm worried myanimelist might not have all the ones I've read.

On a related note, I did try to find a mass exporter for mangadex, but all the ones I found were out of date or didn't work.

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Just tried out Wine for the first time, not a full test though, just some tentative testing.

I downloaded a game that's not on steam, then launched it via wine.

It launched perfectly, and everything seemed to be running smoothly. Then just to test it, I started up the game and immediately saved, then quit the game. Then I relaunched to see if the save data was still there, it was.

So once I actually feel like playing it I'm ready to give it a go.

[pumaloafing]

Sometimes, when I think of something, but can't do it right away I'll type out a little note for myself because I will 100% forget it if I don't.

In this case I wrote down 'crit poll' and I can't remember what exactly about critical hits I wanted to make a poll about...

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I was watching youtube and the guy I was watching was sponsored by Rocket Money, which, best I can tell, is just a subscription service to track your subscription services...

Maybe it's just me but do people really have trouble doing that? Like, I can understand if you sign up for Netflix for one show and forget to cancel, but wouldn't you just immediately cancel it as soon as you noticed it charged again?

Or maybe I'm weird for tracking all of my purchases.

[pumaloafing]

One thing that mildly annoys me in some games is 'money for nothing' at the end of the game...

In Lunar money was never an issue, aside from the first time you get to Vane and the accessories are expensive, but they quickly become affordable well before the endgame, the only real expensive thing is the rememberizer and even that isn't that expensive.

In Lunar 2 you struggle for money for most of the game, but after a point there's nothing to buy but consumables.

I just like it if there's something expensive in the end-game that, if you have the spare cash, you can buy, even though you don't need it. I think in Xenogears you can buy permanent stat-ups, for example, but they're so expensive that stat maxxing would take ages, it's just there so you have something to spend money on, not that you even do the final dungeon on foot.

On the flip side I'm currently playing Suikoden and by god there is not enough money to go around.

Upgrading a weapon from 12 to 15 costs 153,000 currency (15 isn't even max btw) and at minimum you'll want to max out the weapons for at least 4-6 characters, that's not including the cost of armor, upgrading weapons to 12 in the first place. I have capped money twice, only to spend all of my money, then cap it again.

Of course normally you're expected to level your weapons more gradually, but since I am playing hard mode I always max my gear as soon as new gear or blacksmiths are available... though to be honest I think I might be overpreparing as the game hasn't actually been difficult yet.

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Next game I've started up is Suikoden (also the remastered version)...

Suikoden is the kind of game where, if I'm going to play it, I'm going to 100% it. Normally this would be a simple matter of following a 108 stars of destiny guide, but the remaster added achievements.. and a difficulty option... Normally I play games on normal mode, but for once I decided to try hard mode, because I want to try for all achievements and maybe challenge myself a little.

Apparently, if you pre-ordered, you get a free fortune and prosperity rune... unfortunately I did not, so I had to do the annoying trek to get one early on, being on hard mode did not help. Fortunately the encounter rate is quite low, and the flee rate is quite high.

I spent a stupid amount of time gambling at the second town, I went until I had 100,000 potch, which took a bit of saving and loading. Speaking of saving, I was spoiled by Lunar's ability to save anywhere... I really wish the remaster had at least added in suspend saves. They added in an auto-save, but all it does is save automatically when you get to a save point, making it mostly pointless.

Speaking of being spoiled by Lunar, it sucks to go back to a game with no auto-revive after battle. Especially on hard mode, I'll need to be careful. Also, Suikoden's inventory system is... not great. At least you can fit multiple consumables in a single slot, but still...

As far as it being a remaster well, the portraits look great.

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Finally beat Lunar 2, and as a result finished the Lunar Remastered Collection.

Like Lunar 1, I had played Lunar 2 before, but unlike Lunar 1 I had almost no memory of Lunar 2, I remembered so little that I sometimes wondered if I really beat it, but the save data on my memory card is proof.

That said, I am like 99% sure I did not play the epilogue of Lunar 2 before, I probably got to the end credits and just stopped. I might not have even realized there was a true ending in the post-game.

Speaking of the post-game, it was very annoying. First off, why do you need to re-acquire all the locations before teleporting to them? Second off, how the heck are you supposed to know where to find Leo? Or the rememberizer? Or half the post-game dungeons?

If was using a guide just to make sure I didn't miss any... well.. missables, and I think if I hadn't been using a guide to begin with I would have definitely looked one up for the post-game.

To compare Lunar 2 to Lunar 1, the second game is more complex, and much more difficult, and in many ways I definitely preferred Lunar 2, though I've had several gripes I've mentioned in the past.

Overall it was a fun game though, and I enjoyed my time with it.

[pumaloafing]

I don't really like the design of the epic games store, I don't really like Epic themselves much (though to be fair, I don't really dislike them either).

For the most part, when I want a game online, I just buy it on Steam, and have amassed quite a library of games (855 according to my profile page).. plus things like humble bundles and third party keys tend to be for steam as well.

All that being said... I still log on to EGS once a week to get whatever free game they're offering. A lot of them are old, or indie, or bad, but not all of them, I have over 200 games on EGS and I've only ever bought one.

Some games I got for free include Alien: Isolation, Darkest Dungeon, Dishonored, Metro 2033, and The Outer Worlds, all fun games.

Right now Limbo is free, a very fun indie platformer, also Tiny Tina's Wonderland, which iirc has good word of mouth. At the least I recommend Limbo if you've never played it.

It takes less than 5 minutes to, once a week, log into EGS and add the free game(s) to your account. Worst case scenario you don't like the game, but you can't beat the price.

PS. Normally when a game is EGS exclusive I am patient enough to wait for it to come to steam, however, there was one EGS exclusive that was co-op, and my friend had already bought it, so even if I waited for it to come to Steam it might not have crossplay, so I bought it on EGS to play with him.

[pumaloafing]

I bought a little indie game called Splintered which is heavily inspired by Dragon Quest, particularly Dragon Quest 1.

The first chapter took me about 5 hours to beat, but only because the DQ1 vibes made me feel like grinding a lot, I maxed out all equipment, including the charm.

I thought chapter 2 would be a continuation, but it seems to be a randomizer of some sort (which is odd as I thought you needed to beat chapter 2 to unlock the randomizer?)

In theory I like that the game gives you lots of different playstyle options, but ultimately I feel like you should just pick Strength/Dex and grog it, just use your MP for healing, there is no magic power stat so a mage and a fighter heal just as well.

That's not to say attack magic is necessarily ineffective, with the right equipment it can be quite powerful, but not only will you need to spend your MP on the attack spells, you'll need to spend more on healing than a fighter would because if you're using mage gear you lose access to HP Regen, HP on victory, higher defense items, a free heal every 3 turns, a free stun at the beginning of every battle; also you'll have lower defense.

Mage gear does compensate a bit for this, one robe refunds full MP for any spell that finishes off an enemy, another robe gives minor MP regen and a whopping +50% MP.

I think the main issue with magic is that there is a set of 'ultimate gear' and it is not for mages.

Unusually for me I am going to beat Chapter 2 even though I don't generally like randomizers, though since the game is in early access chapter 3 is not out yet (nor do I know how reliable the developer is) ... that said, it's $5, and I enjoyed Chapter 1 enough for the game to be worth that much.

If nothing else, there is a demo, I'd highly recommend it to anyone who likes old fashioned JRPGs.

[pumaloafing]

Something I've noticed after being on linux for a little bit... cloudflare, and similar ddosguards, hate you.

When I was on windows and a site was protected by some sort of ddosguard the thing would load for a a second or two then let me through, though very rarely it might make me click a button or do a captcha.

On linux it almost never processes without me at least clicking it, and in general I find myself being forced to do more captchas than I used to. It's not a big deal though, just something I've noticed.