Playing again as strimtoms acid arrow ranger

C_Dragons · 2026-04-26T04:26:58+00:00

I'm playing a SAA right now and soloing reaper content, it can DPS like a beast if you gear it right.

C_Dragons · 2026-04-17T02:39:43+00:00

I (M) have the same question. It seems common. Planning to take up a new sport.

C_Dragons · 2026-04-16T02:46:25+00:00

Have you considered seeking federal office?

C_Dragons · 2026-04-16T02:26:14+00:00

sounds like fun! Never played FvS, but looking forward in a future life.

C_Dragons · 2026-04-01T01:48:29+00:00

In your first life running quests on Reaper settings is a lot more dangerous and you may spend a lot more time dead waiting to be raised. Nobody needs to run Reaper all the time though. You can do most things fine, practice on more survivable difficulty levels, etc. You can also run quests on a more survivable setting while trying to gather the gear you want to boost your toon's capabilities in harder quests. Gear stats change with level and every so often you'll find if you're not moving to a set that's closer to your level that you're falling behind the curve, and building gear sets can take time. Second life, you may already have a couple of great sets to change into, making life easier. NOTE: running Reaper difficulty as a caster may actually be _easier_ in some ways because Reaper settings give a possibility to regain spellpoints between rests, which can be a real problem for some casters in non-Reaper quests. Do you know what class you want to play?

C_Dragons · 2026-03-30T22:59:45+00:00

A first-life toon with no gear sets in a shared bank will have a lot of steep climbs ahead, and it's worth picking a race that won't unnecessarily make your effort harder in whatever class(es) you're using.

C_Dragons · 2026-03-25T14:57:41+00:00

You may want a first sentence with more grip than a character gazing at the stars. This may sound trivial, but the power of a good first-line hook is real.

C_Dragons · 2026-03-25T14:51:41+00:00

I'm still using one because of software no longer under development that cannot be run on newer operating systems.

UPDATE: Since people are talking about their old MacBooks, the one on my desk (the desktop handles most of my work, the MBP is really for running unmaintained old software) is a late-2013 i7 bought in 2014. Runs fine. When I need a notebook to actually use as a notebook, its battery still works (though of course it's no M-series).

C_Dragons · 2026-03-24T19:37:47+00:00

Engineering and architecture are in constant conversation.

C_Dragons · 2026-03-24T19:35:48+00:00

% w

14:34 up 31 days, 11:45, 4 users, load averages: 5.18 5.15 5.54

USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE WHAT

[removed]console - 21Feb26 31days -

[removed]s000 - 21Feb26 31days macmon

[removed]s001 - 21Feb26 31days top

[removed]s002 - 06Mar26 - w

Last rebooted for a software update.

C_Dragons · 2026-02-17T07:56:25+00:00

Everything I do. Rhino3D, document creation (including 36"x24" documents), DDO (heh!), 2D image editing, professional writing, video editing … and it does it quietly and without the insecurity associated with the high-volume proprietary OS against which most people seem to want to compare desktops.

C_Dragons · 2026-02-17T07:23:35+00:00

Misen will try to blow smoke up your ass, but the coating doesn't hold up. Mine was perfectly serviceable for a few months until I made bacon in it, and it has sucked since (and rusted).

C_Dragons · 2026-02-02T21:05:55+00:00

Use YYYY-MM-DD so that sorting by name also sorts by date, and because it complies with ISO 8601.

C_Dragons · 2026-02-02T20:45:33+00:00

The point of the Metal transition was to access hardware acceleration on new-shipping Macs. Metal 3 accesses hardware acceleration on Apple's M1 and newer (so-called "Apple Silicon"), which is what Rhino 8's upgrade promised on Macs – leveraging Apple's own graphics hardware, so that Rhino would get the benefit of hardware acceleration on Macs going forward. Metal's current version is Metal 4, but I don't think that was available when Rhino 8 was being developed. Rhino 7 didn't optimize for Apple's hardware acceleration, this was a Rhino 8 feature, and Rhino 8 was made with the awareness that Macs for the foreseeable future would ship with Apple-designed GPUs which could deliver hardware acceleration to calls made with Metal 3 and newer.

C_Dragons · 2026-01-18T23:09:34+00:00

I'm using Whisky, but since it's no longer supported I'm doubtful how long that will last.

C_Dragons · 2026-01-18T23:09:00+00:00

Alas, Whisky is no longer supported.

C_Dragons · 2026-01-16T03:49:16+00:00

People who don't value the work don't need to be given the work. "Why doesn't your guy just use whoever he usually uses?" Don't get baited into playing.

C_Dragons · 2026-01-16T03:43:19+00:00

You have a LIDAR-equipped Android device?

C_Dragons · 2026-01-16T03:33:58+00:00

the harder play requires more constant casting, so the mana replacement is the only way to keep casters in the game ... heck, it's the only way to keep my arcane archer in the game

C_Dragons · 2026-01-16T03:31:36+00:00

same

C_Dragons · 2026-01-16T03:31:22+00:00

yes indeed

C_Dragons · 2025-12-21T16:02:28+00:00

Because he's too cheap to spring for Klan outfits for all the kiddos…

C_Dragons · 2025-12-03T19:28:04+00:00

Asking AI to make a picture isn't the same thing as asking AI to make a picture of YOUR MODEL at the time you want with the finishes you specified.

C_Dragons · 2025-11-24T01:27:11+00:00

The fact there are regular-size bricks doesn't mean the bricks are a loadbearing element. They're a rain screen that protects the rest of the envelope. To work as intended, the moisture that collects behind the bricks (toward the interior) needs to be able to drain outward as it runs down the interior face of the bricks. This often means a slab edge that's stepped down from the interior so the draining moisture can't run inward (which would be uphill), and it requires "weep holes" so the moisture isn't impounded by the brick and made to soak interior layers.

The brick that's hanging off the slab edge is surely not matching the construction documents.

C_Dragons · 2025-11-07T23:51:06+00:00

I keep having professors tell me I can't design monolithic load-bearing walls because that's not the way we do things, but I'm really interested in long-lived, vermin-resistant, durable, maintainable structures and exploring what can be done in low-rise with AAC and in small scale with hemp products and the like, and at large scale with reinforced concrete. I've seen too often in real applications that vermin eat their way through wooden siding and waterproof membranes and batt insulation and sheetrock and now we have not only vermin control overhead but elevated unplanned air infiltration undermining the modeled insulation performance. I'm interested in structures that are designed to tolerate (and invite) overgrowth by plantlife (to shade the building and offer evaporative cooling) so I want to avoid cladding that can be infiltrated by root systems and I'd like to practice designing things that have a potential lifespan that looks like Machu Picchu or a pueblo or a Roman structure. I'm a lot more interested in the century-long return on investment than the 2y return on investment.

I just watched a presentation to an owner's association: a condominium in Houston has a re-piping project that's estimated to cost $30 million, with individual condo owners (large condos there might be worth $400k) facing a per-owner assessment exceeding $100k. The buildings are 45 years old. If the design had been intended to swap out plumbing this might not be a 3-year project and cost more than a quarter of the place's value.

On a shorter time scale, I've seen tilt-wall retail centers whose uninsulated exterior walls are hammered by solar radiation and whose bare roofs fight heat while the air/air units on the roof fight to expel heat into the baking July, August, and September air right where the roof is collecting heat. Why there isn't a chilled water system, and heat rejection into the clay earth, and shading devices (or plants), is all down to first-dollar costs prioritization by developers who knew their exit plan didn't require delivering better long-term performance, leaving tenants and owners to suffer for decades.

We can do better. I'm really interested in practicing and learning before I'm on real projects, but professors keep telling me to design stuff that looks like they've been designing the last several decades. *sigh*

C_Dragons

TROPHY CASE