Random randomness

[Daehawk]

Hawaiian Punch is ruined for me. They have started adding sSucralose to it near the end of the ingredients. YUCK..plus fake sugars make me physically sick at my stomach. Yet another product ruined for me. Why put both HFCS and fake shit in stuff. Ugh.

Yes Im guessing its to boost sweetness...all it does for me is make me sick.

[dbt1949]

I'm not having congestive heart failure at this time I'll contact the VA about it.

[Daehawk]

Hope not old bro. You're too ornery to lose. Get that fluid off ya legs though. my FiL had that shit.

[Zarathud]

Get thee to a lymphedema clinic. They’ll squeeze the fluid out of your legs if you let them.

[Holman]

Mouse number six has been yeeted into the undergrowth. I'd say it's been a productive ~48 hours in terms of mouse removal.

Throwing them into the undergrowth or even taking them a couple of blocks away just means you'll see them tomorrow.

I'm not sure how far mice are willing to travel, but small mammals are very good at finding their way back to an attractive location. We had someone trapping squirrels that got into our attic, and he would drive them three miles away before releasing them into the woods.

[Isgrimnur]

Future captures are going to get a Sharpie marking. If I see a repeat customer, we're going to go with the water bucket method.

[Daehawk]

When I raised Porthos the rat I had planned on putting him out to be wild. So About half grown I took him out back to the out building about 20 feet away from the main home and sat him in his box with food and water and a tree branch in it so he could climb out when he was ready.

That night I awoke to a rat kissing my nose. It was Porthos. He had left his box and somehow found his way back to me inside the house in the other end away from the outbuilding lol.

He was so happy and excited. He would run all over me around my shoulders and down the quilt then he'd stop and move slower but shake and dance like an 80s pop lock break dancer then do it all again.

And yes waking up to a rat in your face is scary for the 1/2 a sec that it takes to realize its your hand raised one. Man I miss that little guy.

[dbt1949]

Nice story. He's cute.

[Daehawk]

Thnx.


Hmmmm pizza or a can of tuna today"?? Decisions decisions.

[em2nought]

Thnx.


Hmmmm pizza or a can of tuna today"?? Decisions decisions.

I went with pizza, but I have a can of tuna on standby that I'm thinking to mix with tzatziki later this week.

[Daehawk]

Hmmm..Pizza is my likely choice as well. But the only thing I have to mix the tuna with is a bowl of teriyaki ramen...dont think that will mesh well.

[Max Peck]

And yet...

Tuna Ramen Dinner (Great for College Kids!)

"I came up with this mash-up of ingredients while studying abroad. Ramen and canned tuna were some of the cheapest foods I could get my hands on (especially because they could be mailed!). Everyone I've had try this has enjoyed it, and it definitely hits the spot!"

Ingredients

• 1 (6 ounce) can tuna in vegetable oil
• 1 (3 ounce) packet ramen noodles, any flavor
• 1⁄2 cup frozen mixed vegetables

Directions

1. Heat a nonstick frying pan to about medium heat, and fry the tuna until hot and slightly crispy. You can use tuna in water, but it sticks less if you use tuna in oil.
2. At the same time, cook the ramen on the stove top and add the veggies to the pot as well.
3. Drain the ramen and veggies and add them to the frying pan with the tuna and continue to cook until the noodles become slightly sticky.
4. Pour the seasoning packet over the whole thing and mix.
5. Enjoy!

[Isgrimnur]

Something for Smoove:

[Max Peck]

Today I learned that, allegedly, we have Robin Williams (yes, that Robin Williams) to thank for all those game titles that begin with Sid Meier's.

A few years later, as the company continued to grow—”It took three years to get to $3 million,” said Stealey—someone suggested that they make a game about pirates. Meier liked the idea, and he recalls one particularly important conversation with Stealey:

“Bill said, ‘When’s my next flight simulator coming out?’ And I said, ‘I’m not doing a flight simulator; I’m doing a pirates game.’ He said, ‘Well that’s crazy, ‘cause people want your next flight simulator... Wait a minute. Put your name on it. Maybe if they liked your flight simulator games, they’ll recognize the name and buy this crazy pirates thing.’”

Stealey has a different take: “We were at dinner at a Software Publishers Association meeting, and [actor] Robin Williams was there. And he kept us in stitches for two hours. And he turns to me and says ‘Bill, you should put Sid's name on a couple of these boxes, and promote him as the star.’ And that's how Sid's name got on Pirates, and Civilization.”

Wherever it came from, the idea stuck. In 1987, MicroProse released Sid Meier’s Pirates!, an open-world exploration game in which players took on the role of glamorous swashbucklers who scour the world for treasure, stave off mutinous crews, and try to earn as much money as possible.

[Isgrimnur]

Go home, Pandora, you're drunk.

[Rumpy]

Today I learned that, allegedly, we have Robin Williams (yes, that Robin Williams) to thank for all those game titles that begin with Sid Meier's.

A few years later, as the company continued to grow—”It took three years to get to $3 million,” said Stealey—someone suggested that they make a game about pirates. Meier liked the idea, and he recalls one particularly important conversation with Stealey:

“Bill said, ‘When’s my next flight simulator coming out?’ And I said, ‘I’m not doing a flight simulator; I’m doing a pirates game.’ He said, ‘Well that’s crazy, ‘cause people want your next flight simulator... Wait a minute. Put your name on it. Maybe if they liked your flight simulator games, they’ll recognize the name and buy this crazy pirates thing.’”

Stealey has a different take: “We were at dinner at a Software Publishers Association meeting, and [actor] Robin Williams was there. And he kept us in stitches for two hours. And he turns to me and says ‘Bill, you should put Sid's name on a couple of these boxes, and promote him as the star.’ And that's how Sid's name got on Pirates, and Civilization.”

Wherever it came from, the idea stuck. In 1987, MicroProse released Sid Meier’s Pirates!, an open-world exploration game in which players took on the role of glamorous swashbucklers who scour the world for treasure, stave off mutinous crews, and try to earn as much money as possible.

The ironic thing is that I think more about Sid Meir in relation to the Pirates and Civilization games more than anything else, not the flight sims.

[Isgrimnur]

Now THIS, I want a reboot for.

[Zarathud]

Today I learned that, allegedly, we have Robin Williams (yes, that Robin Williams) to thank for all those game titles that begin with Sid Meier's.

A few years later, as the company continued to grow—”It took three years to get to $3 million,” said Stealey—someone suggested that they make a game about pirates. Meier liked the idea, and he recalls one particularly important conversation with Stealey:

“Bill said, ‘When’s my next flight simulator coming out?’ And I said, ‘I’m not doing a flight simulator; I’m doing a pirates game.’ He said, ‘Well that’s crazy, ‘cause people want your next flight simulator... Wait a minute. Put your name on it. Maybe if they liked your flight simulator games, they’ll recognize the name and buy this crazy pirates thing.’”

Stealey has a different take: “We were at dinner at a Software Publishers Association meeting, and [actor] Robin Williams was there. And he kept us in stitches for two hours. And he turns to me and says ‘Bill, you should put Sid's name on a couple of these boxes, and promote him as the star.’ And that's how Sid's name got on Pirates, and Civilization.”

Wherever it came from, the idea stuck. In 1987, MicroProse released Sid Meier’s Pirates!, an open-world exploration game in which players took on the role of glamorous swashbucklers who scour the world for treasure, stave off mutinous crews, and try to earn as much money as possible.

Robin Williams told early gaming companies like EA that they needed to treat themselves like entertainers -- put the discs in album covers, rather than in plastic bags. I remember saving up to buy EA games on my Commodore 64 for the art and little extras, and wish I had kept them.

[Fardaza]

Now THIS, I want a reboot for.

Indeed!

[Holman]

I definitely remember Electronic Arts publishing Apple IIe games with disc sleeves that looked like music album covers (but smaller). I recall a back cover picture of programmers all in black t-shirts like they were a rock band.

This would have been in the middle 1980s.

[Smoove_B]

Something for Smoove

Oooh - someone should make that into a board game!

that you can acquire more than once a decade

[Anonymous Bosch]

I definitely remember Electronic Arts publishing Apple IIe games with disc sleeves that looked like music album covers (but smaller). I recall a back cover picture of programmers all in black t-shirts like they were a rock band.

This would have been in the middle 1980s.

The Digital Antiquarian's feature on “Trip” Hawkins, the original founder of Electronic Arts, details how that came about:

Seeing Farther


Trip Hawkins at the new Electronic Arts offices, 1983

…

All of Hawkins’s design goals seemed great in the abstract, but of course to realize them he’d need to find actual designers capable of crafting that elusive combination of simple and deep gameplay. Not wanting to take any chances, he decided to go with several proven hands along with newcomers for EA’s first titles. He therefore made a list of those whose work had impressed him and started making calls, asking them to publish their next game through EA. To entice them, he offered exactly what you might expect, advances (a first for the industry) and generous royalty rates. That, however, was only the beginning of the pitch. Hawkins promised to do everything possible to let his developers and designers just do what they did best: create. To do so he would borrow liberally from the model of other forms of entertainment. Each development team would be assigned an in-house producer who would be their point of contact with EA and who would make sure all the boring stuff got done: arranging testing, arranging ports to other machines, adding copy protection, getting the manual written, keeping contracts up to date, coordinating with advertising and packaging designers. (EA’s early star in this role would be Joe Ybarra, who shepherded a string of classic titles through development.) In the long term, Hawkins also promised them access to a suite of in-house development tools, including workstation computers, tools to develop video and audio content and even in-house artists to help them use them, a cross-platform FORTH compiler. Such tools would not always be used as widely or as soon as Hawkins had hoped, but they were, like so much else about EA, a preview of how game development would work in the future. But the most enticing thing that Hawkins offered his developers, and by far the most remembered today, was an appeal aimed straight at their egos: he promised to make them rock stars.

Hawkins had decided, logically enough, that if computer games were art then those who created them had to be considered artists. In fact, he decided to build EA’s June 1983 launch around this premise of “software artists.” Each EA game box bore a carefully crafted mission statement that made the company sound more like an artistic enclave than a for-profit corporation:

We’re an association of electronic artists who share a common goal. We want to fulfill the potential of personal computing. That’s a tall order. But with enough imagination and enthusiasm we believe there’s a good chance for success. Our products, like this game, are evidence of our intent. If you’d like to get involved, please write to us at…

Said boxes themselves were a slim-line design deliberately evocative of record albums, with big gate-fold insides featuring pictures and profiles of the artists behind the work. Hawkins imagined that, just as you always bought the new album from your favorite band, you would rush to buy the next game from Bill Budge or Dan Bunten; that every hip household would eventually have a shelf full of EA games waiting to be pulled down and played in lieu of an evening of television.

Indeed, EA’s first big advertising blitz was designed to demonstrate just what a hip and important new artistic medium the computer was. Hawkins had his stable of developers photographed in brooding rock-star poses lifted straight from an Annie Leibowitz shoot for Rolling Stone — which was appropriate, because EA largely bypassed the traditional computer press to run them in just that sort of glossy mainstream magazine.



The advertising headlines argued for software as the next great art form: “We See Farther”; “Can a Computer Make You Cry?” (The answer to the latter was essentially “We’re working on it.”) Nobody had ever promoted computer games quite like this. It was, if nothing else, audacious as all hell.

[LordMortis]

I definitely remember Electronic Arts publishing Apple IIe games with disc sleeves that looked like music album covers (but smaller). I recall a back cover picture of programmers all in black t-shirts like they were a rock band.

This would have been in the middle 1980s.

I had MOM, 7 Cities, and Age of Adventure Heracles/Ali Baba in small album cover for the Atari 8 bit.

[Kraken]

I definitely remember Electronic Arts publishing Apple IIe games with disc sleeves that looked like music album covers (but smaller). I recall a back cover picture of programmers all in black t-shirts like they were a rock band.

This would have been in the middle 1980s.

I had MOM, 7 Cities, and Age of Adventure Heracles/Ali Baba in small album cover for the Atari 8 bit.

Starflight! with its big colorful galaxy map.

[Jaymann]

Mouse number six has been yeeted into the undergrowth. I'd say it's been a productive ~48 hours in terms of mouse removal.

Throwing them into the undergrowth or even taking them a couple of blocks away just means you'll see them tomorrow.

I'm not sure how far mice are willing to travel, but small mammals are very good at finding their way back to an attractive location. We had someone trapping squirrels that got into our attic, and he would drive them three miles away before releasing them into the woods.

Many years ago there was a feral cat that kept having litters in our back yard. We would have to capture the kittens at just the right age and give them away. That was a hassle, so one day we used the old food under a box trap like Wiley Coyote to catch her. But before we could take her somewhere else she chewed her way out of a metal cage.

Now she was wise to the box trick, so we changed to putting food in the garage and closing the door with a rope. We put on oven mitts and a wild chase ensued in the garage. This time we took her to a park about 5 miles away and across several freeways. It worked.

[hitbyambulance]

Mouse number six has been yeeted into the undergrowth. I'd say it's been a productive ~48 hours in terms of mouse removal.

Throwing them into the undergrowth or even taking them a couple of blocks away just means you'll see them tomorrow.

I'm not sure how far mice are willing to travel, but small mammals are very good at finding their way back to an attractive location. We had someone trapping squirrels that got into our attic, and he would drive them three miles away before releasing them into the woods.

Many years ago there was a feral cat that kept having litters in our back yard. We would have to capture the kittens at just the right age and give them away. That was a hassle, so one day we used the old food under a box trap like Wiley Coyote to catch her. But before we could take her somewhere else she chewed her way out of a metal cage.

Now she was wise to the box trick, so we changed to putting food in the garage and closing the door with a rope. We put on oven mitts and a wild chase ensued in the garage. This time we took her to a park about 5 miles away and across several freeways. It worked.

did you check local non-profit trap and rescue organizations to see if they could get that feral cat fixed?

i'm a huge fan of cats, but i am not at all a fan of feral cat colonies - they're a wildly destructive invasive species. tbh this cat would have been a good euthanization prospect...

[Jaymann]

Mouse number six has been yeeted into the undergrowth. I'd say it's been a productive ~48 hours in terms of mouse removal.

Throwing them into the undergrowth or even taking them a couple of blocks away just means you'll see them tomorrow.

I'm not sure how far mice are willing to travel, but small mammals are very good at finding their way back to an attractive location. We had someone trapping squirrels that got into our attic, and he would drive them three miles away before releasing them into the woods.

Many years ago there was a feral cat that kept having litters in our back yard. We would have to capture the kittens at just the right age and give them away. That was a hassle, so one day we used the old food under a box trap like Wiley Coyote to catch her. But before we could take her somewhere else she chewed her way out of a metal cage.

Now she was wise to the box trick, so we changed to putting food in the garage and closing the door with a rope. We put on oven mitts and a wild chase ensued in the garage. This time we took her to a park about 5 miles away and across several freeways. It worked.

did you check local non-profit trap and rescue organizations to see if they could get that feral cat fixed?

i'm a huge fan of cats, but i am not at all a fan of feral cat colonies - they're a wildly destructive invasive species. tbh this cat would have been a good euthanization prospect...

This was in the '70's so if any such programs existed I wasn't aware of them.

[dbt1949]

In my younger days I was less passionate about feral cats and dogs. I am much better now. Except for that incident with the cottage cheese.

[Isgrimnur]

Two mice ended up on the glue traps. One freed itself, the other managed to flop itself and the trap onto the floor. The cocker spaniel is passionate about making small furry animals stop moving and stop making noises.

A third was luckier and still on the counter when I got to it, so it got relocated to the local woodsy area.

[Holman]

Our exterminator is a weird hybrid of killer and rescuer.

For the mice, they leave poison traps. We recover a dead mouse from behind the refrigerator a couple of times a year. (Before allowing this, we had already confirmed that the dog has no interest in mice whether dead or alive.)

For larger animals like squirrels and raccoons, they use cage traps and relocation. At least, that's what they say they do.

[Jaymann]

Our exterminator is a weird hybrid of killer and rescuer.

For the mice, they leave poison traps. We recover a dead mouse from behind the refrigerator a couple of times a year. (Before allowing this, we had already confirmed that the dog has no interest in mice whether dead or alive.)

For larger animals like squirrels and raccoons, they use cage traps and relocation. At least, that's what they say they do.

Well they didn't say where they were relocating to.

[Daehawk]

The kettle in the kitchen?

[hepcat]

Went to my father’s 90th birthday party today. The guy is still going strong. Lives on his own. Refuses to even contemplate moving to a retirement home, or consider moving in with my brother or I. I figure he’s lived long enough to decide how he spends his remaining years, so I stopped pushing a while ago.

[LordMortis]

I figure he’s lived long enough to decide how he spends his remaining years, so I stopped pushing a while ago.

I'm still trying to come to grips with that figuring. I keep telling myself that's what I figure, but discover that I'm trying pushing them like you push try to push tweens. Though my parents have recently gone from still going strong to still going independently with help from each other.

[hepcat]

I think I understood most of that reply.

I used to push. But someone pointed out to me that when I’m his age, would I want to have my independence taken from me just so I might live a few more years?

[Blackhawk]

Hear, hear.

[Fardaza]

I think I understood most of that reply.

I used to push. But someone pointed out to me that when I’m his age, would I want to have my independence taken from me just so I might live a few more years?

While I understand the sentiment, the actual decision is more complex than that. What happens if he falls or gets hurt somehow? Falling is the main contributor to a downhill slide. He might keep his independence for a while longer but could end up being totally dependent on others for many years to follow. Is that worth the risk? For him it probably is if he feels he can still manage.

I'm not telling you to push, but my father had been wanting us to help him transition to an assisted living apartment for several years before we actually discussed it with him. However, it does look like you're having the discussions. Not easy to have those.

[dbt1949]

I'm 75 and I hate to admit it but I need somebody around to watch over me. I don't fall down a lot but there have been times when I needed 911 to get me back on my feet or a healthy strong person. I wouldn't be able to take care of the yard and I don't make enough money to call somebody to do it or make repairs on my appliances. It is tough to get olde on both the body and the mind.

[hepcat]

I think I understood most of that reply.

I used to push. But someone pointed out to me that when I’m his age, would I want to have my independence taken from me just so I might live a few more years?

While I understand the sentiment, the actual decision is more complex than that.

For some, like my father, it's really not.

But in any case, I've had the discussions with him. I've asked if he wants to come live with me, and my brother has offered the same. Both times he's said no. If I bring up assisted living communities (i.e. nursing homes) he changes the subject immediately. I've thought of looking into independent retirement communities (or whatever they're called) where it's a house within a neighborhood of other retirees, but there aren't many in the area of Ohio where he lives. And getting him to leave that area he's called home for the better part of a century is a non starter with him.

I live 400 miles away. My brother lives about 150. He visits every month for a day or a two. I've been horrible and only really visiting at Christmas for a week or two, but I'm going to try to change that going forward to every 3 months at least. I do call every few days, so I keep in touch. Still, I feel horrible writing that I only visit at Christmas.

However, he does have two families that consider him part of theirs. Both are families that we've known for most of my life. They even call him "Papa Bill". They fuss over him and drag him to every family function as they live nearby. And he has his group of friends he's known since childhood that still meet up with him every few days for breakfast at the local restaurants...even if that group is slowly dwindling thanks to the inevitability of mortality.

I think I'll look into having a caregiver visit him regularly.

[Madmarcus]

My dad (87) had a fall a couple of months ago that scared him. He had been living with my sister but he's decided to move into assisted living. He doesn't need the assistance at this point but he wants to know that there is always someone there. It's a smart move on his part really but we (the three children) are having varying degrees of worry about whether he will have any social interaction at all or whether he will only ever leave his apartment to go eat.