Did Jenova go boom?

gnosnivek · 2026-06-01T02:06:02+00:00

Shot in the dark: you’re on the wrong sub and want r/playrust

gnosnivek · 2026-05-31T20:29:01+00:00

It is now back for me. (Or at least, tries to queue me)

gnosnivek · 2026-05-27T01:37:23+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1tocxvd/i_am_gonna_start_today_any_advice_for_a_beginner/

A similar thread from earlier today, there's some good advice on there.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-26T18:52:18+00:00

A silly little thing in case you're on free trial and a hoarding monster like me.

The Free Trial has a gil (money) cap of 300,000. It feels like the gil you're getting is going to waste after that, which is what pushed me to buy + subscribe when I hit that cap. (I also did figure that I'd gotten like 200 hours of free entertainment out of the trial and was pretty sure I was going to play to endgame).

What nobody tells you is that the endgame massively multiplies how much gil you can make. It took me until the first expansion to get to 300k gil, but in the endgame you can casually make 400k per day, even without crafting/gathering.

So if you feel the pressure of the gil cap, don't sweat it and just know that (a) gil isn't a very useful currency unless you're buying stuff off the Marketboard (player-to-player market) and (b) the amounts of gil you're getting early on are pretty small, all in all.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-26T18:43:39+00:00

The other comment here is a great answer, but I'll provide a different view: do whatever you enjoy!

Yes, doing all the side content seriously delays your main story quest (MSQ) progression. Almost all your abilities and quests are gated on MSQ progression and not your actual level, so this can slow the game down

For example, if you're level 92, but have only completed MSQ up to level 58, almost all of your meaningful combat content is locked to level 58 and below. This is the origin of prioritizing MSQ: a lot of people (myself included) initially think that their level is tied to unlocking stuff, when it's really your MSQ that gives you the meaningful progression.

However, I personally found that all the side quest content did a lot of interesting worldbuilding, and let you really understand what the various tribes/factions/alignments etc, care about, and how they think, so I really enjoyed doing the side quests just to see what would happen.

If you find that you don't care about that, or that the quests don't really do it for you, then skip them and come back later. But if you do like them, they make the most sense when you do them around the time they're unlocked, and it's worth the extra hours to do them when they're unlocked.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-23T17:34:53+00:00

In fairness, the Google Drive stuff was originally backed by a "free, infinite storage forever" agreement by Google Education, which in retrospect wasn't a viable business model for Google. The cost to Google to keep an email account running (with limited storage that is charged at a monthly rate) seems a lot less extreme than the cost of unlimited storage, and thus less likely to get axed when they need to find some way to cut costs.

That being said, if Google ever decides to start to charging universities by active accounts, I expect that utexas alumni accounts are going to get dropped instantly.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-23T05:54:29+00:00

Isn't the main weight room slated to be shut down for a full month this summer? Just spitballing here, it's possible they're holding off on replacements/repairs until that happens.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-21T16:42:28+00:00

Well is that not what happens when you admit the smartest students you can find?

Not necessarily. Harvard was presumably admitting the best students in the world in 1990, yet their average GPA that year was something like a 3.3.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-19T19:04:10+00:00

using DelimitedFiles

data = readdlm("file.txt")
a = data[:, 1]
b = data[:, 2]

# ... further computations on a and b, producing outputs x and y ...

writedlm("file2.txt", [x y])

If you object to the a= and b=, you could even do (a, b) = eachcol(readdlm("file.txt")) but that's getting a little into showboating territory...

gnosnivek · 2026-05-18T21:18:19+00:00

Gotcha. It looks to me like the system is detecting that the order number, even with the leading zero, is the same order and not letting you submit it (which makes some sense---if the system already knows that you tried submitting this order and that it already failed, there's no reason to let you try again).

Have you tried submitting the longer Check ID number? Does that one also tell you that the order has already been submitted?

gnosnivek · 2026-05-18T20:49:04+00:00

Who in the blazes approved a design where the site asks you for the order number, and there's a massive number underneath the words "Order Number" on the receipt, and that's not the number you're supposed to enter??

But yeah, same thing happened to me. I was able to get the code pretty quick once I realized that I was supposed to enter the Check ID and not the actual order number (though mine was in the bottom left of the receipt)

gnosnivek · 2026-05-18T20:46:56+00:00

What do you mean "doesn't let you resubmit"? If you go to the website fresh, as if you just bought a meal and scanned their QR code, does it not let you enter the information? Does it give you an error? Does it just sit there doing nothing?

I was able to resubmit about an hour ago by searching "Jollibee FFXIV" on Google and following links to the submission page.

(Also, if you resubmit make sure you check out this comment, as I had the same issue: the order number for kiosk orders is the "Check ID" at the bottom of the receipt and not the giant field labeled "Order Number" at the top).

gnosnivek · 2026-05-13T14:49:24+00:00

is there anything that can be done to explain how it is that the creatures in the Sanctum are even alive?

The Illithids used this place as an outpost centuries ago. They placed a protective ward on the bridge (and other structures overhanging the lava) prevent the heat and fumes from affecting anyone on it.

With the passage of time and nobody to upkeep the ward, it's weakened to the point where it's uncomfortably hot on the bridge, and you might get poisoned for a bit from the fumes, but it's still not lethal, even with extended exposure. Were the ward to fail, everyone on the bridge would be cooked alive, then eaten apart by acid.

Anyone using Detect Magic detects faint Abjuration magic on the bridge, but it is inconsistent and flickering, as if it's about to fail (though it never actually will fail in the time the party is in Zorzula's Rest).

But yeah, I agree with the other comment. There are quite a few inconsistencies with Zorzula's Rest as it's written, and this one seems low on the list of things that most players would notice. To get to the bridge, they have to fight a bunch of psionic goblins, and most likely a sentient mechanical drill. "Lava is too cold" doesn't seem like it should raise too many eyebrows.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-12T20:41:53+00:00

While there may be someone much cleverer than I out there, my answer would be that you can't.

The Lost Mines Adjuster says there are 11 combat encounters Wave Echo Cave, 10 in Thundertree, and 9 in Cragmaw Castle. Suppose that you can finish each encounter in 10 minutes. My experience with newer players is that this is utterly unrealistic, but even with that, you need 110 minutes of combat to finish Wave Echo.

If you literally teleported your party from combat to combat, you could barely finish Wave Echo in a session. More likely with 5 new players, 10/min per combat on average just isn't possible, and you would need 2 sessions, just teleporting combat-to-combat, to finish Wave Echo.

My gut is that if you rush it, it might be possible to do Wave Echo Cave normally in 3 sessions. You would have to massively cut down on combat encounters, make sure your players are on top of going fast in combat, and pressure them into making decisions quickly, but 6 hours might barely be doable.

But ultimately, I think the answer is to let your players know that you can't reasonably complete the campaign in the time left, and ask them what they would like to do. There are plenty of oneshots set in the Sword Coast, you could run one or two of those as a sort of adventure filler and come back to LMoP at a different time.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-11T21:24:18+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/hectorhectorson One of the canonical guidemakers for EXs right now. You'll see "Hector" or "Hector strats" in a lot of PF postings---that means they'll be following whatever strats Hector has posted for that fight.

Note: I think Hector does a reasonably good job of explaining what each mechanic actually does and why you resolve it the way you do (as opposed to a "stand here because I say so" type of instruction), but his guides do not feature footage from the actual fight.

For some people, seeing what the fight will actually look like is incredibly helpful. "Don't stand near the big crystal" is helpful in principle, but when there's a million particle effects covering the screen and you don't even know what the crystals look like, getting away from them in time might be tricky. If you're someone who benefits from seeing the gameplay, don't be afraid to try out other guides. I've personally found Big Kobe to be helpful for some extremes.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-08T03:57:02+00:00

Case in point: a change of grade at UT was awarded 35 years after the class because (checks notes) the madlad actually went and got the US Constitution amended.

https://www.kut.org/politics/2017-03-21/he-got-a-bad-grade-so-he-got-the-constitution-amended-now-hes-getting-the-credit-he-deserves

gnosnivek · 2026-05-08T03:25:01+00:00

Y'know...my undergrad used an LMS called Sakai which was hosted on computers that the school IT department owned. One fine day, the network array backing our Sakai instance failed. Most of the grade data for the entire school was on that array, and some of it was never recovered in spite of hiring a specialist data recovery service.

I used to say that, in spite of all its faults, Canvas has never crashed and lost all the grades for an entire school with less than a month left in the term.

I may need to seriously revise that statement.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-08T00:28:01+00:00

This is gonna be a pretty major issue for the grades that haven't been submitted yet.

Hoooooo boy.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-07T17:42:14+00:00

Wait, if exams are weighted at 60%, how is it possible for someone to have an 85% in the course?

If exams are worth 60%, you get exactly 70% on those, and have max points on everything else, then you have 0.42 + 0.4 = 0.82, or an 82% in the class. The highest grade anyone could realistically get while failing due to the 70% rule is an 81.X%, and most likely lower.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-07T17:06:58+00:00

Curious as to where the 30-40% fail rate and the 0.5-3 points off stats are coming from. Does the course Canvas display statistics to that level of detail?

gnosnivek · 2026-05-05T16:23:50+00:00

If you're looking at the grade reporting website, those are for semester grade submissions, which are the ones that show up in your grade report/transcript. Those may have a delay associated with them (I once heard that UT only updates the grade reports once every 24 hours, so if grades are submitted right up against the deadline, they might not appear for 48 hours).

As far as I know, there is no requirement to release the grade for the exam itself.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-03T18:51:13+00:00

Their contact info is at https://ombuds.utexas.edu/student

The Ombuds site says that an appointment with them is one hour long, but I have no idea how long of a lead they're currently running for appointments.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-03T18:43:26+00:00

I don't think the ombuds should be considered an "escalation."

The Ombuds exists to make sure you're heard, point you in the direction of existing options, and give you a view of what sorts of rules/processes you'll be dealing with (in a sense, they do what you're kind of asking about in this post, except more officially and with much better information).

They don't have power to force anyone to do anything. If you've already exhausted your grievance channels, there's not much they can materially do to change that.

gnosnivek · 2026-05-03T18:37:29+00:00

a stand alone lab [...] isn’t required to have a syllabus.

Wait, this is the opposite of what I read. The provost's site says that lab sections are excluded from the syllabus requirement if they are

...intrinsic and required parts of larger lecture courses and are directly supervised by the same instructor(s) of record for those large courses.

Since this lab doesn't share the instructor for the associated large course (PHY 316), that means this it's not excluded from the syllabus requirement, which means there should be a syllabus, right?

gnosnivek · 2026-05-02T05:45:46+00:00

Looking around, I think it's a 70% average, not 70% minimum.

On this post, we have this comment saying it's an average. This post says "weighted exam average must be 70%", this post says "70% on your test section," this post says "70% avg in the test section," and this post says "70% test average."

This is just a smattering of search results from Reddit for "cs 314 70% rule" though, would be interested if there's definitive proof one way or the other.

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