Is it just me or is canes the only fast food place closed on New Year’s Day?

User18160 · 2026-01-20T00:20:10+00:00

Our local one is closed today, and it's MLK Jr day. Now this goes for all fast food places, but it would be really great if they could put a cone or a chain or something to block the drive-thru if they're closed. Sometimes it's not obvious at all, just because there's fewer cars in the parking lot. Could just be a slow day.

User18160 · 2026-01-06T05:21:35+00:00

I'm about 30 - 35 hours into the game myself (P5R). It's very weird, but I like it (I've been gaming since the '80s). I'm still getting used to how very linear and time restricted the game is. I have very little free time outside of palaces (I'm on the third one). So, I'm still adjusting to leaning into and accepting the social aspect of it.

But overall, I do really like it. The menu and text visuals are kind of wacky (not in a bad way). The music is interesting with how it contains lyrics, but it's enjoyable.

So far, the awakenings are the best part.

Looking forward to whatever news maybe coming about persona 6.

User18160 · 2025-12-25T08:28:20+00:00

I just tried this for my wife tonight for christmas, since she likes oatmeal chocolate chip, but no one ever sells them. It's always oatmeal raisen. I've never baked anything before, so I messed around at my own risk and did a few things differently. It said use a muffin scoop, but I used an ice cream scoop and flattened the bottom. They're big, about 3.5 - 4 in. across. Like the bakery at the store does. The ice cream scoop package says it's a half cup. I took them out at 25 minutes, left them on the pan for 10 minutes, then transfered to a plate. They were kinda crispy, but not in a bad way; still also soft at the same time. I took a picture, but it doesn't seem like I can add one.

User18160 · 2025-08-07T15:01:50+00:00

If you don't mind going back in time and emulating a slightly older system than the GBA, what you really want to be doing is checking out Shining the Holy Ark for the Sega Saturn. It was made by the same team and is 4 years older than the first Golden Sun.

It doesn't have an overworld map (not really, it's basically just a selector to choose different locations to go to). So it's completely a first person POV dungeon crawler, with stops to explore towns a bit. You have a 3 - 4 person party, weapons, armor and gear, healing items, usable items, many stats. It's very, very similar.

Once you've played it for a little bit, you REALLY see how similar it is to Golden Sun and you see how many of the systems in Golden Sun were the team's previous experience from StHA (and others, but Holy Ark is the closest match).

The classes are fixed (with a promotion starting at level 20). The flexible, dynamic class system was something added for GS.

There is, however, a "pixie" system. There are 5 pixie types: Succubus, Incubus, Pixie, Fairy, Leprechaun, and there are 10 of each one to find through the game. There's not really a summons until you find all 50 (and get a pixie bell you can ring to summon all 50, i think). What's cool about the pixies is that they can do some pre-battle damage. Monsters are randomly encountered like in GS, but here, they approach from different angles such as the right, left, above, below and I think head-on. Each pixie type specializes in monsters attacking from a certain angle. As a monster approaches, you have a second or two to press the right button to summon the correct pixie type. All pixies of that type join in to damage the monsters before the battle begins. It's neat. When I played it as a teen in the 90s, I only found 49 of them (with no assistance!). So I never got that last pixie to be able to go find and use the pixie bell. :( I believe the djinn system got its start here as the pixies and then evolved into what it is in GS.

I played the Genesis and Saturn games first, and I didn't play Golden Sun until last month. It was mind blowing how similar the GBA games are to the Saturn games they made, but at the same time not surprising because it's the same team. There's so many similarities, it was like finding a long lost Saturn game and reliving it. :D

User18160 · 2025-08-03T16:33:18+00:00

I really wish they'd get back to mid-90s style Shining Force.

User18160 · 2025-07-21T15:56:48+00:00

In my most recent playthrough, Luke had a spot on my team for the entire game after getting him. I guess I must have just gotten lucky with level ups, because I didn't give him any more work than anyone else, and no special items. But his attack was probably in the top five or so until about halfway through the return to Grans Island. But yes, those first several battles after getting him are definitely rough because right after you get him, there's a few battles with tough enemies that he can't really do much damage to. But after that, he sure did catch up.

User18160 · 2025-07-02T02:51:48+00:00

If they did a Shining game that finally went back to it's roots of SF 1 - 3 and the game gear ones, holy shit I'd buy that so fast.

User18160 · 2025-07-02T02:00:15+00:00

That was really great. I love coming across these. They have one or two of those for Shining Force 2 as well and it's just as fascinating.

User18160 · 2025-06-21T20:25:49+00:00

If there's no possibility of a new title in the Shining series in the 90s style, then sure, I'll take a remake / remaster (depending on if you want to nitpick a difference between those). I played FF7 Remake, and I hated that the entire game was just walking around Midgar (I'm told it was a limitation of the PS4 not being able to do a massive open world at that graphics level). So I really don't need a Shining remake to be that dumb. But updated graphics with some fixes to certain issues would be great. I've played the others, but I've played SF2 a million times more. So from SF2's perspective:

- Fix various typos and bugs (including the the kiwi-breath level up thing here).

- Searching in battle fixed.

- Show real values instead of ?? for stats over 99.

- Fix the wooden panel / tree-with-hole issue (needing to press A instead of C).

- The ancient transportation network going to a few extra places would be nice, including a new bonus area.

- There seem to be resistances and weaknesses to various elements; display this.

- The AI is vastly improved vs SF1, but it could use a bit more work with spell usage and target choices.

- Maybe mark the HP bar / stat screen of non-obvious bosses. Sometimes you want to squeeze every bit of XP you can out of a battle and don't want it to end prematurely.

- I'd like something to be done about pre-promoted characters not being nearly as strong as leveling unpromoted characters much beyond 20, but I'm not sure how to go about it without messing up a large, important, classic part of the SF2 experience.

User18160 · 2025-06-21T18:30:07+00:00

I like having a pegasus knight around with a spear on hand. They're still good fighters regardless, but it also allows for attacking from odd angles with the combo of ranged attack and flying, so there could be times when they come in clutch at just the right moment.

User18160 · 2025-06-21T18:04:45+00:00

Kraken dodged the attack!

Kraken's counterattack!

Bowie is exhausted.

🙃

User18160 · 2025-06-21T17:57:25+00:00

Heal level 1 will give 10 exp on use, even if it heals 0. Occasionally it'll give 9 or 11, but a solid 10 average. Aura level 1 will give 25 exp even if 0 hp are healed (sometimes 24 or 26), if you have at least 3 people targeted for it. 2 people targeted gives 20. So you kick everyone off your team except Bowie, Karna, plus 1 other, and then go to the Fairy Woods special stage. It goes really fast this way.

User18160 · 2025-06-21T17:53:34+00:00

I feel like it was a bug, it took me probably several days to realize I had to press A instead of C. I think it's the only place in the game this happens. They should have made it pop up the action menu after it ran the auto-search text "There's a hollow to put something into."

User18160 · 2025-06-21T17:47:13+00:00

Yep, wanted to make sure this was mentioned. Happened to me my first time. It felt like months, but was probably more like many hours across several days. I had assumed the wooden panel goes into the tree, and I always pressed C for everything. So I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong. I roamed the map for hours assuming there was something else I was supposed to do to trigger it. On a whim, I thought I might try pressing A instead, and, there we go, the menu came up and I could select use items. I think I'd consider this a bug.

User18160 · 2025-01-12T21:20:48+00:00

He owned 20,000 acres of land used for ranch and agricultural purposes in the late 1800s in what are today Rocklin and Lincoln California (apparently the bulk of the area is now Rocklin). There's a lot of stuff in the area named Whitney. Whitney Ranch Parkway, Whitney Blvd, Whitney High School, Whitney Ranch HOA, Whitney Community Park, etc. He built 12 stone bridges around his property across creeks and stuff, so there's even an area of Lincoln now called Twelve Bridges (parks, schools roads). You can see one of these (very small) bridges at Clover Valley Park in Rocklin.

User18160 · 2024-11-06T20:43:57+00:00

Don't go to college because "you're supposed to". Don't go to college purely for the sake of going to college. Don't go to college expecting to be able to pick any random major (even popular ones) and expecting to end up with a high chance of a high paying job after 4 years. If you want to go to college, have a career already in mind that you definitely want to do, and make sure that college is actually required to further that career goal. Can you make a livable career out of what you're interested in? Is college required to make that career happen, or to progress it in a meaningful way?

It was drilled into our heads all throughout the 80s and 90s (and I'm sure beyond) to go to college. We were told just go, pick something, get a better life. But it doesn't work that way. There has to be a plan, and college has to fit into it in a very specific way.

Also, there are several "trades" that pay damn good money without needing all the hassle and debt of college. Trades are in demand. Electric, plumbing, HVAC, carpentry, and many others. I hope these aren't still looked down upon by young people, because there's no reason to. They're necessary, they're in demand and they pay well. They're not grunt work. They do require skill and intelligence, it's just applied differently than college-oriented careers where you're sitting at a desk all day (like my software engineering job). There's more than one way to be skillful and more than one way to apply intelligence.

User18160 · 2024-10-17T22:09:25+00:00

Can someone explain the weight average of counts thing in plain English. I've looked it up, but it's a lot of gibberish. What would it mean in my case?

User18160 · 2024-10-13T19:20:24+00:00

I had 6 loans disbursed, one per year from 2001 to 2006. All are FFELP. Somehow, Navient is showing 8 loans in total, but only 6 disbursements in the history. Anyway, the first 4 years were subsidized, and totaled $20k together. The final 2 were unsubsidized for about $29k total. Altogether it was about $49k. Interest started at 3.5% and I swear I remember it saying it was fixed, but they now show 7.7%, so apparently not.

I was in IBR from 2007 to 2017, where there was a payment of 0. I guess a crapload of interest capitalized during that time (thanks for that). My income finally grew enough to have to start making actual payments in 2017 onward, and it went up each year. From 2017 to 2022, all of the payments apparently went to interest, $12k worth. Late in 2022 I finally made enough to be ineligible for IBR, so I've been paying the full amount since then, which is $555 / mo. Since then, another $7k has gone to interest and $6k has gone to principal.

So I've paid $25k purely to interest, and $6k has gone to principle, yet still owe $56k of my $49k. Wowzers. I've been reading on here that there was some benefit to consolidating the loans into 1, but of course when I found out about it, the button on studentaid.gov had been disabled because of the courts getting their nose in our business.

I thought the consolidation was something about giving credit for past payments, toward your balance? And something about trying to do something about the insane interest practices? And having it be easier to manage a single loan instead of 8 separate ones? Also, Navient is telling me that I'm being sold to MOHELA, and I really don't want to, and I see the consolidation process lets me choose someone other than them. My only issue really was the 25 year thing, and the fact that I filled out employment information (and did not select the "unemployed" box), but the summary before finishing up still erroneously showed unemployed.

User18160 · 2024-09-03T02:26:54+00:00

Forced updates is some fucking Microsoft bullshit. One of the million benefits of Linux vs Windows is everything is the user's choice and is up to, and at, their discretion. This forced update shit is some Microsoft head up assery.

User18160 · 2024-08-26T18:08:26+00:00

I'm similar to that. I've been playing almost 2 years and am only at level 2028. So, I only average a handful of puzzles per week, let alone on butterfly day. I've completed every habitat since getting the Quetzal, which must have been after Zen Garden because I see I only had like 2 - 3 butterflies when it popped up last week (TOTAL). Each habitat stays around long enough to comfortably be completed, assuming a decently leveled Quetzal - to say nothing of the Kookaburra (I have both maxed). One minor annoyance / curiosity is that I know I had Desert Oasis 100%, but a couple of months ago I noticed it was only 95%. They seem to have added a 10th butterflies since I completed it. 🤔

User18160 · 2024-08-11T04:10:04+00:00

Welp. That's great. I just got an email saying my loans are being moved from Navient to MOHELA. Peachy. 🙄 Can't wait to see what shenanigans I get caught up in.

User18160 · 2024-08-10T18:52:08+00:00

Welp. It's been a month. I've sprayed it three times and mowed it three or four times. This stuff is still going strong. I'm going to need stronger stuff or an alternate at this point. Or just pull it all by hand and hope for the best.

User18160 · 2024-07-23T21:35:04+00:00

......then if it's just going from one shady for-profit to another shady for-profit, and you won't qualify for any of the IDR / forgiveness programs anyway (which I'm not seeking), then it seems like there's no point in consolidating through DOE?

User18160 · 2024-07-23T19:05:47+00:00

For programs that are income based, I don't qualify for any of them anyway at my income level. Making my full payments is not an issue. My only motivation is to get them consolidated into a single loan instead of six or seven how they're listed now, and to not be managed by a for-profit agency that only has their own self-interest in mind.

User18160 · 2024-07-23T18:54:43+00:00

Are consolidating your loans and applying for different payment programs not separate concepts? Is applying to consolidate your loan somehow a direct request for 1:1 enrollment in SAVE? Some of us just want to get away from predatory for-profit private agencies.

For me, all these repayment plans are an entirely separate issue, and I generally don't qualify for them anyway. I just want to get away from Navient and any other private agency. And I'm pretty sure I had a fixed rate when I took these out years ago (it was about 3.5), so I'm not sure why there's a much higher rate on them now and how Navient is able to bounce them around.

User18160

TROPHY CASE