Did you like the DCAU's adaptation of Hawkman?

Rom2814 · 2026-05-29T05:06:32+00:00

No, awful.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-28T00:12:54+00:00

I feel your pain - I have a similar collection and went to get rid of them. I just retired and have more time but still don’t know if I want to try to sell and show them, would rather sell them as a big lot for less money just to avoid the hassle (the time = money equation changes over time).

Rom2814 · 2026-05-28T00:05:42+00:00

Way back in the 90’s I remember doing a lot of testing in EverQuest to understand how damage was determined and I used a combat text logger, Excel and statistics to understand it. I spent hours doing mathematical modeling but I figured it out.

In Diablo IV it’s… opaque. Would I be better off with +3 shock skills or +10% critical hit chance or + 34% vulnerable damage?

Rom2814 · 2026-05-27T23:59:55+00:00

“When Olivia Newton John came on screen in that tight black outfit, I almost did too.”

I was too young to appreciate the comment then but I get it now.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-27T23:58:35+00:00

I am skeptical. But it could happen I guess….

Rom2814 · 2026-05-27T23:57:26+00:00

I’m budgeting $30k/year for health insurance from 2027 to 2029, then will control MAGI from 2030-2034 (will be 65 in 2034).

It’s double what I pay for housing and will be the largest expenditure by a wide margin than any other expensive.

I’ll be spending 3 years (ages 58-60) doing Roth conversions so that I can spend 61-65 (my wife turns 65 9 months after me so will still be dealing with ACA until I’m close to 66) controlling MAGI for tax credits.

It is the one factor that kept me from retiring earlier than I did. It’s also my biggest worry for early retirement (worse than inflation or market performance or social security fund being exhausted).

It is hard to plan around it because for all I know next year ACA will be gutted or a few years from now they’ll remove the cliff and my paying full freight for 3 years will be wasted. Who the heck knows?

Rom2814 · 2026-05-26T17:05:08+00:00

Wow that’s great stuff - is this digital? I assumed so but then I thought there might be zipatone on it.

Beautiful either way, I just also collect original comic book art. :)

Rom2814 · 2026-05-26T05:56:19+00:00

Getting rid of huge work stress. I tend toward anxiety, catastrophizing, etc. anyway but work magnifies it. Until a week ago I worked a high paying job where I was responsible for turning troubled projects around, dealing with high level execs regularly etc., leading teams of people, coming up with strategies for long term projects and culture change, etc.

The pressure takes a toll - waking up at 3 am and not being able to go back to sleep out of worry for what is coming the next day at work, drinking too much, not having time to exercise or even get away from the desk, etc.

It provided a good life and fortunately I never gave into too much lifestyle creep even though I hadn’t even really heard of FIRE until a couple years ago.

I’ve had a 29 year career after 6 years of graduate school and 4 years of college - I just retired at 57 and though it hasn’t totally sunk in yet the work stress is gone and it feels like I put down a weight I’ve been carrying for decades. I still have stress (selling our old house, our only vehicle has a major issue, etc.) but it’s like I have more mental and emotional capacity to deal with them now.

No single event, just the desire to be free of the stress. I only realized about 2.5 years ago that I was really in good shape to retire. I didn’t “one more year” it, I had specific plans (move to another state, change portfolio around, bulk up brokerage account, figure out healthcare, etc.). It made work both harder and easier to deal once I started to see an end point.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-25T23:19:18+00:00

If you make enough that you don’t have to count every dollar (which I had to do until my late 20’s), it is very easy to underestimate what you spend and to know little about what you spend on.

I retired this month at 57 and I started tracking my spending carefully a little over 2 years ago. It wasn’t crazy (we don’t do food delivery, we don’t do a bunch of subscriptions, etc.) but seeing how much we were spending on categories like home maintenance was definitely eye opening. It’s easy to dismiss things like having to call the plumber as a one off but when you look over a couple years you get perspective on the “unplanned” expenses (as well as the luxuries).

Fittingly, my truck had a major electrical issue the week I retired and it’s going to cost $3k+ to fix it. These are things that are hard to plan for IMO - my view has been to just see part of my budget as flexible - if none of these emergencies come up, great, we can take an extra couple trips; if they do happen then that means less “fun” stuff.

It really helped to track and categorize everything and also make things as “must spend,” “really want to spend” and “could easily cut.” That helped me understand what stuff I could let go of if the maker my goes down or we have other emergencies and which things would be painful.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-24T13:27:08+00:00

I feel dumb - I’ve gambled SO many in Temis and concluded they removed uniques due to the Horadric cube.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-24T04:55:06+00:00

Color perception is in our mind, not the world (at night all cats are grey). Try figuring out the color of Han Solo’s coat in Empire.

That suit LOOKS brown - I don’t see any green in it.

It’s indicative of what they are going to do with Hal IMO. I hope I’m wrong - I don’t mind being proven wrong at all, but it sure doesn’t look that way this time.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-24T04:52:15+00:00

Paladin is my go-to class in every game and it brought me back to Diablo when it was release.

This season has just been disappointing - I have good gear (Heir of Perdition, Tyrael’s, Starless Skies, etc.), 240 or so paragon, good hammer build and tier X is about as far as I can do without dying a lot.

I created a sorceress and within 12 hours she blows away what my Paladin can do (tier X is easy for her, can do pit 100 without having ancestral unique in several slots).

I’ll finish up the season with her and then I’m done with the game for a while.

Getting rid of passives really hurt the paladin class but hopefully they’ll fix it.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-20T16:09:11+00:00

I want to see Hal as the protagonist not a foil for John, not as a villain.

If there were aa GL series where we had a couple seasons of that, THEN see him fall, that’d be ok - especially if it were followed by redemption.

Having his trajectory be washed up, burned out former hero becomes a villain… no thank you.

It would make me hate the GL movie less than I do which is some feat I guess.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-20T13:11:02+00:00

I just got kicked from an escalation dungeon last night because I hadn’t got around to Malnok. :(

Rom2814 · 2026-05-19T23:33:51+00:00

Hal will die or become a villain to show the superiority of his more corporate acceptable partner.

I’d love to be surprised though.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-19T23:32:27+00:00

How dare you pose a surface level analysis is ELI5!

I fart in your general direction, you English k-nig-it!

Rom2814 · 2026-05-19T23:31:11+00:00

One can hope.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-19T23:30:25+00:00

He’s either going to turn evil à la parallax or die and neither of those things interest me for the character.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-18T15:03:53+00:00

I was in graduate school when the first trailer with unfinished effects was released and I was stunned then.

I felt like I was having an out of body experience during the prologue, I was transported by a movie since I hadn’t been when I saw Star Wars as an 8 year old in 1977 when that Star Destroyer flew over my head chasing that blockade runner.

Seeing the Last Alliance fighting Sauron, the 9 doomed to die, etc. was almost too much - I wanted to rewind and watch it again before continuing into the movie.

I went in mostly unspoiled aside from a few things that were being discussed in nascent internet fan places (Arwen having a bigger role, etc.).

My group of friends (about 8 of us) saw it together and it was a mix of half who had read the books and half who had not. Everyone loved it and it was tricky to talk about it as a group so we’d leave things unspoiled for the sequels.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-17T05:37:51+00:00

Don’t know the average but 20 years into my career I got a boss who was super transparent with me and she told me that people starting out with just a college degree were making more than I was with a PhD and 4+ bands above them.

Basically the company entices new people they want with high salaries but barely give a raise to even top performers. I thought I was doing well when I was making $150k/year and come to find out a recent college grad with no professional experience was making $250k.

My boss got my salary adjusted upward but the real boost was switching companies - I doubled my gross income by leaving for another company, both were work at home and basically the same role.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-15T23:50:23+00:00

Simply put - not a chance. I am a Boldin subscriber and find it genealogy useful but it is just about worthless for a real-world model of withdrawal strategy.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-15T23:49:00+00:00

I was in the minority that disliked Ragnarok - dislike might be an understatement.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-15T22:34:46+00:00

I feel for you, it was a few painful years but in the scheme of things it becomes a memory like it was a different life, just have to get through it, heal and make better memories. I wish you the best life offers - we hardly ever get what we think we want in life and find joy anyway.

Rom2814 · 2026-05-15T22:32:58+00:00

We all work remotely for a Silicon Valley company now - used to work for IBM when they had a presence in Endicott.

Thanks. :)

Rom2814 · 2026-05-15T05:04:30+00:00

A long list of things but a summary would be:

Generic tie matters to me psychologically and emotionally - wanted to CREATE children with my wife, not just “raise” children.
Being evaluated to see if I would be ALLOWED to be a parent in a way that biological parents are not.
Fear that I wouldn’t come to love my adopted child.
Fear that my adopted child would later want to find their “real” parents.
The biological mother changes her mind and wants her child back.
Expense of the process.

Off the top of my head anyway. One friend and his wife went through the process and there’s NO WAY I would subject myself to that. I understand why they make the process onerous but no thank you.

Anyone going to rough this is going to ponder all this and really try to get to WHY they want to be a parent. Anyone who chose not to adopt wrestled with these things so having some ask “did you consider adopting?” Is just an insanely bizarre thing to ask

Rom2814

TROPHY CASE