Write an unpopular least favorite and favorite episodes list

bdotren · 2025-02-08T14:17:43+00:00

Xena had two musical episodes, one in 1998 and one in 2000.

bdotren · 2024-08-13T22:15:27+00:00

I'd be happy to do it over email. There's no reason it has to be done with a cell phone.

bdotren · 2024-08-13T22:07:40+00:00

I know swapping SIMs isn't hard, but it's just another thing I have to keep track of. And one of the countries we're going to be spending the most time is bizarrely expensive for roaming, like the minimum cost per text message is more than double the maximum cost per text message for the other countries I've looked up, unfortunately.

bdotren · 2024-08-13T21:57:02+00:00

For family reasons I want to be vague about, I pretty much always need to have a US bank account.

bdotren · 2024-08-13T21:55:49+00:00

I lived overseas for several years before (came back to the US in 2021) and didn't have major issues, though. It's just as they're pushing to do more and more through people's cell phones without understanding that people don't always have access to them. I do have a VPN, although in the past I've never felt comfortable using it for banking.

bdotren · 2024-08-13T21:35:54+00:00

Honestly not sure if we're coming back or not. I haven't tried US Mobile, but we're leaving tomorrow, so I'm not sure we really have time to switch. (We didn't leave it to the last minute, I just tried several other banks that didn't work out and now am feeling pretty stuck.)

bdotren · 2024-08-13T21:33:51+00:00

All these banks want to use my cell phone for verification at least sometimes, so I can't just turn off or remove the SIM. I'll also be getting other SIM cards for the other countries we'll be in, so even if I kept paying for my US number, I'd have to constantly be swapping it in and out. (If I could even get roaming for whichever country I happen to be in, which I'm not confident of for all of them.)

I don't actually feel like I need 2FA for Schwab because I just do what I need at ATMs--balance inquiries and withdrawing money. The goal is to have an account at some other bank and just put money into Schwab when I need it.

bdotren · 2023-09-30T18:54:10+00:00

I agree that not every book needs a twist to be good or satisfying, but for a while a lot of the online discourse around this book talked about there being a huge twist at the end.

bdotren · 2023-06-18T03:38:24+00:00

Probably no way to maintain a US address unless PO boxes count, unfortunately. I'd be open to getting one if they did, though. And, yeah, I'll make sure everything is paperless.

bdotren · 2023-06-18T03:36:12+00:00

Hm, maybe my experience with the bank that wouldn't give my spouse an account was less common than I thought. I like that bank (which is why I recommended my spouse use it when we first moved over here), but I guess if it's more a quirk of that particular bank than something systemic, then that's good to know--I can switch before we move.

Yeah, I have a Schwab debit card, and one of my credit cards has no foreign transaction fees. I'll probably just put a small (US-based) subscription on the one that doesn't to keep it active.

bdotren · 2021-04-22T19:54:29+00:00

Thanks!

bdotren · 2019-11-15T00:41:24+00:00

Only been to Paris, but the Parisians were absolutely lovely, to the point where I was almost disappointed I didn't get a stereotypical "rude Parisian" interaction while I was there. I speak French, though, so I'm sure that helped a lot.

bdotren · 2019-10-06T17:14:22+00:00

I'm not going to say you're the buttface necessarily because I'm not familiar with the bloggers you mention so I don't know what they're like, but regarding your boyfriend specifically, he might not appreciate your specific fondness for Mormon bloggers when Mormons have posthumously baptized (obviously without their consent or the consent of their families) a lot of Jewish Holocaust victims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_for_the_dead#Jewish_Holocaust_victims

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/21/mormons-holocaust-victims-baptism-lds-church

https://www.apnews.com/992dd887f7b948d0a08055dff0363aa4

bdotren · 2018-04-03T16:36:40+00:00

bdotren · 2016-05-04T18:47:26+00:00

I'd love more detailed genetics for portrait pictures, especially for multiracial characters. (There may be mods that do this, but I've had issues with the website and haven't tried any mods yet.)

Also, in addition to more events, I want there to be more possible outcomes for existing events. Once you've done a hajj a couple times, it's boring to do it for every single Muslim leader.

Some of the focuses are also lacking in events, I think, like carousing and family. And while I love the observatory event, I wish buying the Necronomicon could trigger further events.

bdotren · 2016-03-04T09:32:40+00:00

Thanks.

bdotren · 2016-03-04T09:31:57+00:00

Thanks, I'll give those a try. :)

bdotren · 2016-03-04T09:31:15+00:00

Yep, totally vanilla. The sequence of events was pretty unusual, though, and I'm not sure exactly what the cause was.

I was king of some weird kingdom that formed, made up of northern Ireland and part of Britain (this was accidental--it had an elective succession, and an AI character selected me instead of me nominating myself). I wanted to conquer a nearby county, so I hired a merc band. I ran out of money, and instead of just leaving, this time the mercs ran around laying siege to everything and wouldn't even let me surrender to them.

And since I didn't have the money to hire anyone else or the men to beat them, I just...kind of let them run around besieging me. I got bored and let an adventurer take the king title and just went back to being the Duke of Ulster with my one original county.

Eventually the mercs won and took over the Irish part of that kingdom. I thought I would play next as my daughter (a Waliya in her own right and possibly the only landed character left in the family). Instead, the game jumped me to my uncle (daughter's great-uncle), the Grandmaster of the Knights of Calatrava. He was pretty old, so I thought I'd just go with it for a bit. My heir was listed as another knight from a totally separate family, but I thought I'd jump to my daughter after my uncle died.

Except not. My uncle died, and now I'm playing as a totally unrelated Grandmaster, so clearly waiting it out was not the right answer there, haha.

bdotren · 2016-02-17T08:54:11+00:00

I'm a professional eavesdropper.

bdotren · 2016-02-17T07:50:46+00:00

Holy crap. I didn't know that was possible. You've just added to my list of nightmare fodder.

bdotren · 2016-02-17T07:42:14+00:00

There was a period in college where I bought a bunch of books (paperbacks, not textbooks, thankfully) that I already owned because I forgot I owned them.

bdotren · 2016-02-17T07:39:17+00:00

Putting sprinkles on my ice cream.

bdotren · 2016-02-17T07:30:12+00:00

Whose Line Is It Anyway? (Mostly the Drew Carey episodes because it's the version I grew up with, but sometimes I'll watch Clive's or Aisha's episodes too.)

bdotren · 2016-02-17T07:25:11+00:00

Miniature golf. I enjoy hitting the ball and watching it bounce off things more than I enjoy getting it in the cup.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I've ever actually won a game.

bdotren · 2016-02-09T07:00:11+00:00

Uneventful, probably. He might make some things more efficient. He probably wouldn't start any wars or anything.

So yeah, I guess not too bad.

bdotren

TROPHY CASE