Aw yis a topic near and dear to my heart.

Ever since I found Copilot in Notepad, that was it. 2025 was the year of Windows going from “passable” to “steaming manure”. All the adware and telemetry and forced AI and bunged-up local search reminded me too much of using Internet Explorer 5 instead of an actual operating system.

In July I got a new SSD for my boot drive and was able to set up Linux Mint (Ubuntu for cowards like me, if you believe the internet!) for dual-boot. I say “dual-boot”, but I haven’t booted into Windows ever since I got the Linux distro up and running. I genuinely haven’t needed to.

The worst issue I’ve had on Linux is one that actually ate up a few hours last night, where my wifi card decided after a kernel update (which didn’t resolve on rollback, itself a super-easy process) that it would make one connection total, and if you tried to swap SSIDs it’d just kark it and NetworkManager would crash. That led into a deep dive that taught me a lot more about how NetworkManager works, the joys of wpa_supplicant, and why my excellent crash-hot infinitely-tweaked tri-band router configuration was more of a hindrance than a help. Fixing that, and accidentally making the household wifi a lot better, I feel like I learned something.

Had that been Windows, I never would have known it was a problem, and it would have been “wait for a patch”.

When it comes to gaming, praise be to Gaben our lord and saviour for Proton. The only game I’ve found that was more than plug-and-play was Bannerlord once you start installing mods, because those need a few Windows dependencies which are easy enough to install with Protontricks once you do some research. When it comes to Anticheat, I’ve found most of the stuff I’ve played worked great out of the box. The only exception is, to no surprise, EA, which is actively preventing Linux machines from playing their games because “omg piracy lol”.

A lot of this pontificating on my part is because Linux works for me. My day job is DevOps so I’m always writing BASH and spinning up containers and virtual machines etc. I will absolutely dig into an OS to get it running to my specifications and I will constantly prune things that I don’t need. For the average user who may well use the AI more than my blistering hatred permits, who doesn’t care about the telemetry, who isn’t fussed about localhost suddenly being inaccessible, yeah Windows is fine. I wouldn’t tell my wife to stop using it. But for myself, I really like how this stuff isn’t being (re)installed now with every update.

If you’re looking for a change, willing to get into the weeds, and bothered by what Microsoft is doing, I recommend at least investigating swapping the OS. If you’re a daily user, then to be honest you don’t lose much if anything by staying on Windows.

@labsunlimited The second someone spins up a World of Mild Discomfort set in Minot I am there.

I’ve never seen a game set in North Dakota.

I was about to say I’ve never seen a game set in Australia either but an old memory is tickling my brain on that one.

@Aria Small update here, the angel cat I’ve been speaking about got into a territorial dispute on my driveway at 2AM today that woke my wife and I up. With it being so early in the morning and noting the pattern of activity, I can now solidly argue that the cat has been abandoned. I’m going to be looking into trapping her for her own good.

@mietze First off, thank you for responding like this. I appreciate a differing opinion because I have a hard time assessing a situation from beyond my own viewpoint.

These are the friends where we’ve gone against our gut, given it another five goes, and been optimistic about the future. This, however, is the first time we’ve spent an extended period with them and their kids and it has been very telling.

There were a lot of things I didn’t get into in the last post, it would have been too much and it would have been a wall of text that’s just whinging. There will be some more details below.

@mietze said in Real Life Struggles/Support/Vent:

But yeah, there are a handful of folks where I have been, “You know, I enjoy doing X Y, or Z with you but I think we should do it without the kids,” too.

This is perhaps the core of the whole thing. Sometimes it is better to do things without the kids, but when the kids are there, it is unfair/dangerous to act like they are not. Approximately 90% of the holiday, the mother of those children was interrogating my wife about something or other while the father was on TikTok watching memes. This happened at the holiday house, at kid-friendly events, when we were out to eat, etc etc. It was happening while their baby was hanging out of a high chair held in only by their neck. It was happening in a car park while their oldest kid was walking into traffic. These are the aforementioned “saved from serious harm” incidents that I remember.

Part of my issue is that I consider parenting a 24/7 task, so I cannot turn off my instincts. It doesn’t help my own wellbeing much, but it does mean I’m aware of what the kids are up to even if I’m not actively watching them. To have children around who are visibly not having their emotional, physical, or safety needs met triggers extreme caution in me.

The number of times I turned and found myself next to their infant with them nowhere nearby was approaching double digits. One of those times, they were fifteen metres away arguing over a frozen drink they were going to buy for themselves.

Finally, I will never forgive a parent that scoffs and walks away when their child asks for a kiss and cuddle good-night.

I would never consider them aunty or uncle to my children. After this trip I wouldn’t allow them within fifty metres of my children without me being there.

We recently went away on a trip for an extended long weekend with some close family friends of ours.

For four days, myself, my wife, and my kids (!) were used and abused for free daycare and hospitality by these “friends” that were more interested in TikTok and yelling at each other than the basic responsibilities of parenting. They contributed nothing to the holiday whilst actively-if-ignorantly sabotaging any activity we tried to do as a group, even something as simple as making dinner.

They didn’t exchange a word with their eldest son (who’s four) beyond telling him off for misbehaving when he’s clearly acting out for any sort of attention, and happily ignored their youngest (who’s not even one) as he pulled small coffee tables on himself, fell half-way out of his high chair, or climbed half-way up the stairs with no supervision. I was told later by my wife that I’d saved each of their kids from some form of serious injury at least once, something which didn’t occur to me at all during the trip.

One of those four days, and the one that showcased their worst behaviour, was my birthday.

This is… I mean, this is simple shit. Keep an eye on your kids, don’t shut them out or ignore them, maybe think beyond your immediate gratification. I get it! I get that it’s hard! I get that parenting takes everything out of you! I’ve been there, I still am there! But at one point late on my birthday when I was carting their baby down from the stairs for the fourth time that hour I’d had enough and I was one hair away from just saying get off your fucking phone.

There is at least one positive from all this though. It’s completely dismissed all the worries I have of being an inadequate dad. For now. It’ll be back lol.

Suffice it to say there’s agreement between my wife and I that we’re terminating this near-decade of friendship immediately. My heart goes out to their kids, but I’m ashamed to see this from people I once called friends.

@MisterBoring said in Missed Settings:

@Hobbie said in Missed Settings:

“why has no one made a Magic The Gathering MUSH?”

My guess at an answer is: Because everyone on the game would throw a fit if they didn’t have a Planewalker Spark.

You could go two ways with that.

1. Every player character is a Planeswalker.
2. No player character is a Planeswalker, just use the Omenpaths like everyone else.

We can tack my personal loathing of FCs on to #1 and say that “only player characters are Planeswalkers” so NPCs remain as such, aside from the occasional GMPC for plots and the like. Or, you go with #2, and Planeswalkers are these exceedingly rare Unknowable Things that are something like final boss territory. Whilst I prefer #2, for the sake of actually getting players, #1 is better. People like being super speshul.

Then there’s the system. Do you create something new based on abilities within the setting that’s more RP-oriented and using coloured/colourless/no mana? Or, do you go full ham and transpose the actual MtG card game in? My ego right now demands I fully code the card game and I’m having to argue with it that it’s too much work right now lol.

I sat and thought about it for a sec, and wondered “why has no one made a Magic The Gathering MUSH?”

Serenity MUSH.

In my mid/late teens.

I’ll let you all guess how that went.

I love a good Actual Death For Realsies. It contributes to the scene, it raises stakes, it opens the door to the idea that this isn’t a sandpit of make-pretend toys, and it can evoke strong feeling, which is always one of my highest goals as a storyteller. Even an Actual Death For Realsies that is in-universe pointless has an OOC effect.

• I’ve had at least two characters die who could have escaped their fates quickly and easily but they would have had to give up their pride/wrath/ego/etc. The natural end to their character arcs was being unable to overcome their flaws and succumbing to them.
• I’ve had one die to bad rolls in a hellish combat scene. I made a snap decision in the moment to kill him off because I thought “something’s lacking if everyone survives this”. His death wasn’t dignified or heroic, he just met his end the same way a sentence meets a full stop.
• I’ve killed one off because it kicked off combat in a hilarious manner, and no one was sad to see that wanker get eaten lol.

While I do get attached to characters, and there are some I would never kill off no matter how much they deserve it because they’re too fun, it’s sometimes refreshing and electrifying to sacrifice a character you’ve invested in for the sake of the story. Sometimes it’s a snap decision, sometimes it’s calculated and planned as a story beat.

And to be fair if I’m retiring a character to make way for an alt I like to kill them off in a good story for the benefit of others. I say this, knowing that one of those deaths got my next character tangible XP benefits, so perhaps I’m biased!

I do believe a character’s Actual Death For Realsies should be in the hands of the player the vast majority of the time. The times where it isn’t? That’s when we get “Aim for the bushes” from @MisterBoring, with whom I disagree, reading that I thought it was very funny.

After thinking for 5min, you could probably make a short Consent To Actual Death For Realsies checklist:

• Does the player agree to Actual Death For Realsies?
• If not, is the risk of Actual Death For Realsies clear, apparent, conveyed, and as blatantly clear as crystal?

If those two points are not met, then there is no Actual Death For Realsies.

So yes, I love this topic, I love exploring it, and I love seeing it done for many many reasons. I could ramble about this for hours but my RL time to post this has run out lol.

Couple things today.

Firstly, to everyone I RPed with before getting on the ADHD meds (which is everyone I’ve ever RPed with), holy crap I am sorry you had to deal with someone so horrifically erratic and scatterbrained. I’m currently on the fifth and thank god final day of my psychiatrist-advised no-medication break so the meds don’t lose efficacy and it’s absolute torture for me, the wife, the kids, the wife, the dog, and especially me, and definitely the wife. I understand now why the psychologist who did my initial assessment said “if you weren’t a genius, you’d be completely crippled”. I thought he was joking!

Secondly, perhaps more pressing because the above nonsense ends tomorrow, the cat situation.

You know the one.

This is the mother of next door’s litter of cats and has always loved my family. I found her sitting in the regional park across the road from my house. She’s always been very friendly and came hopping over the road when I made a single pspsps. We had lots of head and chin rubs, plenty of belly showing, and we even played with a twig in the grass. She’s a wonderful and affectionate little cat.

Once again:

• Unsure if desexed/registered/microchipped. Gonna assume finally desexed because she’s not pregnant.
• No collar (illegal in my local council).
• Roaming in a national park (extremely fucking illegal in my local council).

This happened at 11:30PM.

11:30PM.

Unfortunately, limited by a keyboard as I am, I can’t unleash my frothing annoyance appropriately at what I’ve dealt with. It’s the middle of the night and this friendly little girl is at the mercy of snakes, spiders, kangaroos, emus, and especially snakes all alone. Next door’s lights were on so maybe they took her back inside later I don’t fucking know!

I cannot stress enough how many dangerous snakes we get here. It’s so bad that last time I played Pokemon GO it kept spawning Ekans and I’m like “this tracks”.

I’m starting to think this is no longer a question of legality. Seeing a roaming cat at 11:30PM with at least two laws broken, I definitely have moral grounds to catch her (and maybe her kids) and maybe I’ve got legal grounds as well. At what point is it animal neglect? I don’t know but emotion keeps winning out over logic and I’m going crazy every time I see this colony-in-the-making.

To be fair, this is the same grid where Poe Dameron got Rey pregnant and it was deemed A-OK. Probably because it was some sweet FC-on-FC action.

@Rucket said in Real life happy:

Since March I have been working on building a High Elf army for Warhammer the Old World and I bought a kit of Battle Sisters for 40k. It’s been a nice and relaxing way of disengaging with the horrors of the outside world. It sparks joy.

I know this isn’t what you meant but it’s kind of hilarious that the horrors of WH40K are lesser than the horrors of real life. Daemons trying to eat your face off are nothing in the face of this ever-worsening cost of living crisis!

@Popes said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

In other news, anyone got an AoA DB dump, I want to make a revenge game.

Do not do this.

Not just for your mental health (some things are best left behind), but because the codebase is an absolute mess at the best of times. What remains of the good Yeti-code is bridged by unneeded hacks, badly implemented FOTM, and a #1 that had the VISUAL flag set for a number of years.

Okay so maybe it is just for your mental health.

@Aria And Vantage Point is Rashomon, but that’s not how I remember it.

Star Wars is The Hidden Fortress from Akira Kurosawa.

@Jennkryst said in Best Games with Roster Characters?:

I thought about something something Battletech, but that way madness lies.

Madness is merely a state of mind, much like performing an alpha strike in a Nova.

I reckon two to three characters is good, even if three is pushing it. Five is right out. Similar reasons to @Juniper but I err on allowing people to have a bit of flexibility with character ideas. I’ve seen games where twenty-five connections were all the same person, and artificial WHO inflation grates on me.

I’m also big on alt transparency, to the point where it’s not only a rule, but it’s code-enforced on games I build (but not run, because none of them ever launch because I have scope creep issues lol). Alts get an entry in everyone’s +finger that cannot be hidden. I’ve seen people attempt to abuse alt obfuscation too many times to think anything other than “this is public for everyone else’s sake”.

EDIT: The above goes for staff as well.

Probably worth forking this discussion into its own thread as well.

@Gashlycrumb This situation is more clear-cut. If I trap these cats I am actively taking someone else’s pet with all the legal issues that come with it. They (apparently) sleep the night inside, they just spend all day outside. On the plus side, I don’t envision them deliberately getting into my backyard again now that one of them has had first-hand experience meeting the doggo.

Also there are gaps between our side fences that cats can easily use to escape their backyard. The neighbours know about them and don’t care.

Alas, even though it won’t formally become My Fault if god forbid something happens to a cat at the hands of my dog because she’s kept in an enclosed yard on our property, it’s definitely going to be made My Problem.

@Pavel I referenced the Inner West Council site to find my info. Out in the far west where I am there’s jack-all in the way of stuff besides “go look at legislation”. Mind you, the inner west thing basically just transposed the legislation so it still applies.

@Pavel I even looked it up. There’s a few rules you have to adhere to in NSW if you want to let your cats roam without copping fines. Roaming cats MUST:

• Be registered with local council.
• Be microchipped.
• Be desexed by four months of age, or have a permit (renewed annually) allowing it.
• Wear a collar with identification when outside the property.
• Be kept away from wildlife protection areas.

I can’t comment on the first two, because who knows, but they’re probably in breach of the third (who buys these permits?!) and definitely in breach of the last two. More than once I’ve spotted the mum jumping the fence into the wildlife reserve to go chase a kangaroo or something.

@Gashlycrumb It’s put me in a pickle because it’s genuinely Not My Problem and I really shouldn’t be adding additional stress to my life. But, but, my brain won’t stop ticking this over.

I would 100% trap the lot of them except I’ve only seen the mum a few times, Minaturized Backyard Invader the once, and a third hiding in my agapanthus when I took the bins out the other day. Never buy agapanthus, they came with the house and they suck.

The other issue is, if I were to leave out traps to catch them, all the neighbour would have to do is look out the window and see them fully visible in my front yard. Even if they weren’t visible, they’re smart enough to put two-and-two together and know it was me because I got all these details about the cats through some pointed questions during the rescue of Minaturized Backyard Invader.

The best way to go forward is probably “Hey, desex your cats and keep them inside or the rangers will notice on their bi-weekly snooping sessions” next time I chat with them.