Tag: english

Using people

April 25, 2015
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I might’ve just read too many crime novels, or maybe it’s just that it was stated loud and clear in Hyouka, but when someone tells me that they are counting on me, or that they trust me, I can’t not feel that they’re (just) trying to manipulate me.

I can’t really put my finger on what feels so off about it. Especially since it’s usually people I know and have worked with for a long time telling me so, it could as well be a totally innocent, honest expression of their trust. Yet, it feels so wrong.

Why?

Movies

April 23, 2015
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Today at work the topic of flashbombs came up. Now the only thing I know about flashbombs is that Inara uses one in Serenity when Mal fights the Alliance agent at the training house. I suggested that I’ll bring the movie to use as a reference, so when I got home I ended up rewatching it. Again.

There aren’t many movies that I saw more than one time. There are plenty that were memorable (like Cloverfield for example), but I can only think of two from “recent years” that I watched more than once: Serenity and the 2009 Star Trek movie.

Of course there is a good bunch of movies that I grew up on, watching them over and over again, such as Mary Poppins, Home Alone 3, Beauty and the Beast, Die Hard or Little Nemo (the Slumberland one, not the fish)… However, I watched these before I’d consciously start to look for and watch movies.

Tank

April 6, 2015
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What it means to play a tank is quite apparently not all so self-evident to certain players. (Obviously I’m talking about the wonderful bronzies I’m stuck with for the time being.) A tank is not defined by its item set. You can have all the armor in the world, but if you don’t act like a tank you’ll be just an useless XP hog on your team.

It’s actually quite similar to the job of the support. You must make sure that the enemy team doesn’t kill your carries. Roughly put, the support’s job is that the enemy team can’t kill the carries, while the tank’s job is that they won’t.

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Good days, bad days

March 4, 2015
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Everyone, even Garfield hates Mondays, and I’m no exception from that. The way it violates the (hopefully) progress of a weekend and plunges you back back into the dull, mechanical days of work.

Now I’ve got one more reason to hate Mondays. Yesterday, while on an errand in vain (the stuff I was supposed to pick up hadn’t arrived yet), a dutiful cop spotted me checking my phone while stopped in a traffic jam, and I guess you can figure out the rest. It’s “reassuring” to know that policemen are the enemy of people everywhere.

On the other hand, today was pretty nice. While on the rerun of aforementioned errand, I sent in a request to a local radio and they actually played the song I asked for. That felt really nice, and the fact that for the first time in a month I was home from work before midnight felt even nicer.

Malta

December 26, 2014
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However, my first destination wasn’t Hungary, but Malta. One of my brothers moved there with his family this summer, and we went to spend a few days there with them before Christmas (my sister, my parents and I).

Malta doesn’t know winter. It can get a bit chilly in the night, and the wind is as expected on a small island in the middle of the sea, but it’s still just sweater weather. You ever swam in the sea in the middle of winter without having to fear freezing to death? Well, neither have I (walking in knee-deep was enough for me).

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Castles

December 17, 2014
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Last Friday KanColle was down for maintenance, and I was bored as hell (since the project at work is in the very last stages, there’s hardly anything left to do), I tried out ShiroPro. Formally it’s called 御城プロジェクト (oshiro project, castle project), although it started out as ShiroColle. I guess it’s better to set the game apart from KC, though it’s still compared to it all the time. After all it’s a “collecting” game again, just instead of WW2 warships, this time it’s Japanese castles.

Iwabitsu

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Silver

December 13, 2014
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It’s not news in any sense, but I managed to get out of bronze (again) a few weeks back. I ended up there in season 4 – I don’t know if I just screwed up my placements or I decayed down from silver not playing for half a year at all, but I had to work my way out again. It didn’t take as long as I feared it could (I have horrendous luck and always end up with terrible teams when I’m in series).

On a related note, I still had a few people on my friends list who (I guess) I added while I was fighting my way out of bronze in season 3. I’m well aware that I’m not a good player, but when I see people stuck in bronze 5 for years, that lack of any progress is amazing even in my eyes.

Black-bottom banana cake

December 1, 2014
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Last week I wanted to make something banana. I had nothing particular in mind, so I looked into all kinds of stuff from cheesecakes and meringue pies to pound cakes. I ended up with black-bottom banana bars. I don’t think it turned out all so well.

Black bottom banana bars

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Bipolar

November 27, 2014
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Today had two elements worthy of mention: sleeping for hours at work as there was nothing to do and playing Rumble once again. As for the former, I quite literally had nothing to do all day until like 8pm – because of course my superiors just love to suddenly remember that there was this really urgent thing that had to be done immediately, and of course they always recall such tasks when I’d rather be at home already drinking a hot cocoa than at work doing… whatever.

Playing Rumble is still fun, especially since my opponents have quite obviously never seen a Rumble in game. Rumble is the typical champion that I enjoy playing a lot, but am bad at. (Although this latter tends to apply to every champion.) My lag still isn’t improving either. Some games I get good solid under-200ms pings, then the next game I start spiking above 500 with the average climbing above 300. At that point things get really difficult as avoiding skillshots is pretty much out of question.

I’d definitely love to change ISPs, but the way my connection is bundled with my phone contract would make switching a lot more trouble than I’m immediately willing to go through.

Peanut butter choco chunk bars

November 25, 2014
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I don’t remember anymore just how exactly I found this recipe, but I ended up making chocolate chunk peanut butter cookie bars. I definitely baked it much more than the recipe says, but it turned out to be just according to my taste nonetheless. The top layer is crunchy, baked well, while the bottom is soft (but not raw). I consider it really dangerous, because I could eat tons of it.

Peanut butter chocolate chunk cookie bars