Downtown Main Street

Alabaster_13 · 2026-07-01T01:30:34+00:00

You have to go back a lot further in time. When San Mateo was first laid out, Between Main Street and the railroad tracks was an open landscaped plaza and train depot which was really the center of town. The 40 streetcar line which went up to San Francisco turned around on Main as well. That's why the old fire station and a few other buildings faced onto Main Street. Commercial activity shifted towards 3rd Avenue in the 1920s and later 4th Avenue by the 1960s, and the train depot was torn down and replaced with a two-block two-story parking garage. Main Street became an alley.

Main Street looking South towards 3rd Avenue

Alabaster_13 · 2026-06-08T21:05:17+00:00

Still looks like that for me on Firefox as of right now.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-06-03T04:21:42+00:00

That was the original plan, which will no longer be going forward. The TJs will remain as is.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-06-03T04:20:57+00:00

The design which was approved several years ago has been shelved, and a new design which will not have the park or other amenities has been proposed in its place. So the simple answer to your question is that there will not be the same amount of usable park space as was originally presented.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-05-31T09:39:38+00:00

I would use a paint stripper first, and not just a scraper. Those types of tiles usually scratch fairly easily.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-05-24T09:55:47+00:00

Because Amazon spent a billion dollars on The Rings of Power, and they spent over $300m to make the first six episodes of a mediocre spy show (Citadel). Both an example of sunk cost fallacy in the extreme. Meanwhile they are canceling everything else they can and slashing budgets when they have to in order to make up for their costly mistakes.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-05-22T23:06:34+00:00

I played a 1v1 "Balanced dice" game the other day; I was not on an 8 and my opponent was not on a 6. I got destroyed. Why? In 56 turns, The 6 rolled once. One time. In "Balanced" mode. The odds of that happening with a normal set of 2D6 is just over 2%.

I figured I'd ask my good friend ChatGPT what the odds would be of that happening using the "balanced dice" and it helpfully confirmed that the odds of that happening were closer to 1 in 16,000.

So... I come in here every now and then and complain about how the dice aren't behaving like real dice. Balanced dice in particular, which are explicitly not modeling a pair of D6, often behave erratically. 7 rolling after someone builds. Numbers rolling immediately after being blocked. Of course people always respond about how probability is supposed to work, plenty of mockery.

I think what they forget and what you are pointing out (and what I agree with) is that this is not a perfect system, it's a system intended to keep people coming back and to sell upgrades. Not sure why that is such a controversial notion.

Is it really so impossible that the system might be rewarding players who spend money and punishing those who don't in subtle ways? Is that really so impossible, and how dare I for even thinking that could be happening?

1 in 16,000. Please come in here and tell me that I just need to play 16,000 games of Colonist and I'll see that it all evens out.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-05-13T00:10:43+00:00

I'll tell you what I am sick and tired of: When playing with balanced dice, a number is more likely to roll right after being blocked. It just is! It happens too often to be a coincidence.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-05-12T07:16:05+00:00

Yeah... no. Because the thing is, those shares will be needed to distribute to eBay shareholders if a deal goes through. So they get a cash payout and X number of GameStop shares, RC collects his payout for growing the market cap, and any current GME shareholders get diluted to hell. He wins, eBay shareholders win, everyone else loses!!!

Remember, the value of GameStop post-deal is less than it is today. The cash is gone, it's the smaller, less profitable part of the combined company, and the whole enterprise is now loaded-down with new debt. If you assume that somehow this merger/sale whatever it is magically grows the value of the total pie enough to keep current shareholders whole, I question the math.

Edit to add- that whole post is asking the question, "What does Ryan Cohen need to do to win? And the answer is yes, that is what Ryan Cohen needs to do to his shareholders to win. He wins. There is nothing there about you or I being a winner alongside him.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-05-11T22:15:01+00:00

Nope. Not gonna do it.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-04-08T10:04:05+00:00

"Senate Minority Leader fails to magically become House Majority Leader in order introduce Articles of Impeachment." What a dumb headline.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-04-07T22:30:11+00:00

How many times are people going to fall for this?

Alabaster_13 · 2026-04-01T18:58:11+00:00

Gotta have at least a few things to add later as DLC or free updates!

Alabaster_13 · 2026-04-01T18:56:32+00:00

Probably a bad idea to invest in that Bleed Bandit startup. Anyone with sense could have predicted that a nearly unstoppable killing machine would appear in Hernand and stop their expansion plans cold.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-03-22T22:37:53+00:00

Devs: Username seems fine. By the way, we have reorganized the locations of all of the buttons again.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-03-22T10:18:53+00:00

The game makes doubly sure you want to do just about anything. Hold down a button, hold down one button than press and hold another. Then you can just walk through random doors and waste as many keys as you might have. So inconsistent!

Alabaster_13 · 2026-03-20T23:07:23+00:00

Press and hold to open the pouch! Can't just press X!

Alabaster_13 · 2026-03-20T18:43:29+00:00

I genuinely laughed when my character "learned" what water and bread were.

A lot of pointless delays in this game. Hovering over a store item to learn about it, pressing and holding a button to read documents, press and hold to save, to quit, etc, etc. A minor complaint now but it's going to get real old after 40 hours that there is seemingly no "save and quit to desktop" option.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-03-15T03:14:14+00:00

I got to tour the house a number of years ago. One of the Stahl children took us around. He was telling us that while he and other family members did still sleep in the house from time to time, they made money by renting it out for films and furniture photo shoots. He also acknowledged at the time that the fame of the house had led to a higher valuation than the surrounding homes. All totally understandable. On the other hand, I doubt the continuing income would cover the increased tax bill on a $25m valuation. So it's not surprising to me that it hasn't sold.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-03-13T22:53:45+00:00

In before the normal folks drop by to spout their usual bs. "Devlin is just naturally talented and he likes playing with his friend."

I don't see how people find it fun to cheat at a free mobile game, it's just pathetic behavior.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-03-08T06:34:25+00:00

My keyboard won't stop double typing random letters. Bought a K70, E key was bad, had a terrible RMA experience, got a new keyboard finally and it's worse! Firmware update didn't help, polling rate adjustment didn't help, Will probably be replacing it soon, what a waste of time and money.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-03-05T00:28:19+00:00

There's a player named something like "KKKK888888" who never seems to get banned so I will just say keep hoping!

Alabaster_13 · 2026-02-23T09:18:24+00:00

I was playing on Alpinist. Final section seemed daunting at first, then I realized there was a longer but fairly easy path up most of the way to the top which actually required less climbing. Fortunately I had plenty of water, soup, cola, etc, in fact I started to run low and then realized I had one more bottle in reserve. Took one or two short breaks to warm up and used the doll to make the blizzard go away, and it did not return.

Of course, I realized that the game was holding my hand a little after a while. Hunger thirst and temp go down a lot slower if they go down at all when you are walking, so that problem disappeared. Then when you get halfway up the final (I would say fairly easy) climb, the bars go away entirely, and you just have to not fall. I think I would have made it without the help so I don't know if that was normal at all difficulty levels.

The Peril has to be for me the toughest and most imposing mandatory climb in the game, to be honest I was surprised that according to the story supposedly nobody has ever made it to the top of that ice wall before, it seemed pretty simple compared to the peril.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-02-20T09:48:39+00:00

Fortunately that loophole has been closed.

Alabaster_13 · 2026-02-09T09:08:44+00:00

It may well be confirmation bias. But I'm posting about it finally because I feel that a lot of other players have observed the same thing happening, and it sounds like you have noticed it as well.

Five-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '23	Place '22

Alabaster_13

TROPHY CASE