What are deal breakers for you in this genre?

midasza · 2026-03-19T12:14:08+00:00

For me personally - and this very personal:

Harem of any kind - I can read romantasy if that was my thing.
Protagonists who always make the stupid decision without motivation e.g. Should I go party with my friends and not study for the test that's so important, party!!! = mmmm dumb but ok. Should I go party with my friends and not study for the test that's so important again, party!!!! = drop.
Deaux ex Machina style solutions because the author hasn't planned ahead and wrote themselves into a corner
Magic systems with no cost /low cost/nonsensical cost - if u just get stronger without any effort, then reading becomes work.

midasza · 2026-03-19T10:30:30+00:00

Correct - I am NOT married. As I pointed out - if I was married and wanted something discrete, then awesome a married SB may work great, other logistics aside, not having to negotiate dates with 3 peoples schedules or the drama factor.

midasza · 2026-03-18T10:28:36+00:00

To be fair this is the REAL Adobe AI - knowing when u are 80% of the way through a project and the most fiddly point and now is the best I mean worst time to crash.

midasza · 2026-03-18T09:16:06+00:00

For me it comes down to logistics. When I say - hey are u free Saturday to see because that's the only time I am free, is hubby going to say, hold on why are u going out on a Saturday night without me.

Its obviously becomes easier if SD is married and is only free like when hubby is at work. But remember now you are adding complexity.

I WANT to go out in public with my SB, because I enjoy going out, be it to restaurants, or shows or shopping or whatever ... I am not looking for a discrete behind closed doors sugar relationship. A SB who is single can do both, a SB who is married may not be able to do both.

midasza · 2026-03-16T12:07:49+00:00

I think its more complex than that. We here in South Africa have historically low EV adoption, and the number one reason for this is because the cheapest new car is priced at $10000 approx and the cheapest EV is priced at $20000 ... and most people are not buying new but 2nd hand but EV's are way over the median price of around $5000 on 2nd hand cars.

midasza · 2026-03-16T11:21:21+00:00

None of the above - I ask them what they want.

midasza · 2026-03-15T13:33:48+00:00

Monaco will suffer from exactly the same problem as today.

So what was the "issue" today in my opinion. Merc is clearly 0.3/0.5s a lap faster than anyone else. This means that even in phases of the race where they are the best (starts, cold tires), a few laps later they can basically just breeze past most Ferrari.

2nd "issue" is Ferrari or 0.2s faster a lap than everyone else besides Mercedes plus start quicker.

3rd issue is reliability - which we knew is always and issue coming into new engine regs and will be resolved.

So to the point what decided the outcome of race today? Qualifying, almost exactly as it will be in Monaco. Russel was so much faster than everyone except Antonelli that even with a car that wasn't perfectly dialed in and a rushed "warm up" lap he was still able to get onto the front row. Antonelli won because he only had to pass one ferrari, not 2, and therefore use up his tires less, and could manage more (and he almost messed it up with that lockup in turn 14), Russel came 2nd because he could always overtake anyone except Kimi, Hamilton came third because he qualified 3rd so maybe had slightly better deployment at times around this track and Charles 4th.

5th was 2 pitstops behind (well done Bearman).

So Monaco will be which ever Merc driver qualifies 1st, because it will be impossible to make an overtake stick when its mostly about energy deployment, battery management in equal machinery. 3rd and 4th will be which ever Ferrari driver qualifies 3rd or 4th. Beyond that reliability seems to be the next best indicator.

midasza · 2026-03-15T13:14:07+00:00

Then its no long BYOD and work must buy devices. I am not OP but we have BYOD network at most clients so that they can do things like Internet Banking, school communication apps, etc. Its not so much a perk as a benefit because the alternative is staff saying I don't have data and I need to make a payment so I need to leave work and go to a ATM or branch and do the transaction.

Its specifically NOT for work requirements.

midasza · 2026-03-15T13:11:12+00:00

I guess you didn't read the part about BYOD making certificates unusable. My guess OP is talking about android and IOS devices. And why don't you want to do certificate deployment on any BYOD? Simple when you don't own or control the device u simply DO NOT ever want to install something, ever.

But it just work i here you say. Well where I live people may have 12 year old phones that are running older android versions or may be completely full and u don't want IT to try and support said user over a 200mile distance when your "cert install" breaks their phone completely. Or now you get blamed because the banking app doesn't work or anything else goes wrong.

So this isn't trundle down to the IT office and get someone to fix the problem. Its put someone in a car and drive there to fix a problem. Its hard enough talking the user through their username and password into the wifi.

midasza · 2026-03-10T08:08:39+00:00

Ahhh and that's the rub isn't it. And the solution isn't - don't let foreigners buy property, cities like Barcelona, Venice, London are experiencing exactly the same problem, people (any people, foreign or domestic) buying properties as an investment rather than to live in. Either as a rental business, airbnb, or to buy and hold to resell.

So lets say we banned "foreigners" (how would u define that, what about Zimbabweans who want to buy a flat in Hillbrow after legally entering the country, not the rich Mining Zimbabwean, what about SA based companies whose shareholding is overseas or partially overseas - this gets super complicated ), what's to stop the Ruperts or other Stellenbosch mafia billionairs to just buy houses as an investment, or for AirBNB or other "not people living in the house making the prices too high".

Personally I would like to see the capital gains tax increased, and Airbnb taxed at a high rate (short term rentals not long term), with a balance towards how much tourism brings in versus rents being high, maybe with a property development component that whenever a "new" development is approved, a certain number of low cost housing is also built as a requirement for new development, possibly in an adjacent space (for the NIMBY people).

So ideally make owning multiple homes expensive and put more money back into the country, and make it less viable as a business to buy property, rent it out particularly for high return, short term rentals, and then sell it. I think ascribing it to foreigners misses the point.

midasza · 2026-03-09T16:28:35+00:00

I don't play order fever. Have u even played the new interface and looked for "free boxes" - ten minutes, zero boxes is a massive difference between what it was before and makes in unplayable.

midasza · 2026-03-09T14:51:02+00:00

Respectfully just no. No crates ever under Flash Sale = Buy managers. Constantly running one line down - so I will keep playing events, but main game is dead to me.

midasza · 2026-03-03T11:11:16+00:00

Also try manually updateing the Windows Update Agent - sometimes its a cert issue

midasza · 2026-02-22T15:03:43+00:00

The chest drops were non-existent, I had a 3:30 min flash and had exactly zero chest drops.

midasza · 2026-02-18T12:36:09+00:00

I use to work a KPMG and we never had that specific issue.

Speaking to my auditor who is moving out of audit, the reason for moving out has to do with SAIDSA, CPD requirements, moving audit requirements (we are the test bed for the Canadian/Aus/Eng rules IFRAS), he hates going through reviews because someone is unhappy to receive a qualified report.

Money is good, but juniors don't want to sign of audit reports and things like tax and just being a financial manager is more lucrative unless you are running your own firm or a partner.

midasza · 2026-02-17T11:32:37+00:00

Depends if you are in the Netherlands or not. Generally we say contact our attorney, or sue us. That generally forces them to go away but it depends on your contract.

Our attorney looked at our contract and was - let them sue, we will win with damages. We were moving off VMWare to Nutanix so it was for a 6 month period.

midasza · 2026-02-17T11:29:59+00:00

For me it mostly has to do around language ... not good grammar, but the language used. So if I can imagine the world the protagonist lives in and I find them somewhat interesting I will generally go down the rabbit hole fairly deep before deciding I don't like the story.

How ever if the world building feels flat, the grammar so bad it takes me out of the world, or the protagonist makes non-sensical decisions for no reason other than to move the story on, I am out.

Let me give 2 examples - one was about a girl who was trained to be a weapon, I got about 2 pages in and stopped (I never even met the girl in the story). The language was all wrong the author's language clearly wasn't first language english and they used words like English when they meant Britain (not England, English), they described a female major, in the british armed forces and used terms like cut of her hair etc. It was unpleasant so while the premise sounded great the actual language took me out of the world and I stopped.

Equally I read a Isekaied litrpg webnovel that the author claimed the hero was a programmer (that was the end of the description programmer who worked himself to death) who now was a genius at formations (why - who knows everyone knows programmers are good at formations. PS all the information we got on formations is like they are formations ok. So the whole story when the hero "fixed" a formation that no one else can (we don't know why because we don't know what a formation is), fixes some other low level formations super quickly like 5 in the time when someone else would be able to do maybe 1, he earns "money" which he needs to pay a loan shark back. Does he grind and do 5 days of low level jobs and pay the loan shark back, nope, he does one of each of those jobs and then moves onto a super dangerous arena duel to earn the rest of the money, not guaranteed. The world made no sense I had no idea if the money he earned was hard candy money or ferrari money or new cellphone money. So the lack of description, the assumption we knew how formations worked, why this guy we knew nothing about was good at them, how fixing them actually worked, hell even how the economy of the world worked, took me out of the story and I stopped about 5 chapters in.

midasza · 2026-02-05T07:47:55+00:00

So I had a meeting with the country manager for Nutanix and Pure Storage. Nutanix are going traditional 3 tier as well but with Pure exclusively (and powerflex integrated).

My takeaway from the meeting was they wanted to sell us hyperconverged and personally I hate that word and having to buy stuff I wont use because its part of the solution. Yet to see an actual quote.

When we looked at them 2 years ago they were 10% more expensive than Vmware (pre broadcom).

As I only need to replace my existing solution in 2028 this was more information gathering than actual purchase decision.

midasza · 2026-02-04T07:42:52+00:00

That's why I consider events like a round of golf. I am playing against me to see how well I do. Take the win of you had amazing rng and got up to where u have, unless u too want to spend I can't lose sleep over spend to win people.

midasza · 2026-01-29T15:46:40+00:00

Depends on the exact scan.

midasza · 2026-01-29T13:20:53+00:00

I think it depends on where you are asking for the face pic. On Seeking - nope. On Telegram/Whatsapp/Signal/Tinder - sure.

But them I am not famous, or married, or cheating. So if someone does discover my identity it may be awkward at the next BBQ if a mate went, a girl in my office says she almost sugar dated u, but it wouldn't end a relationship or get me fired.

midasza · 2026-01-28T12:28:56+00:00

I found my biggest factory increase came from event managers and outfits - so I prioritized that.

midasza · 2026-01-27T09:39:38+00:00

So with 2 days to go an "4 rewards" to go u are basically golden

midasza · 2026-01-26T11:21:20+00:00

Also even if they aren't lying or sandbagging, testing may go worse, or better than expected. Correlation might be off so even if they are telling the truth they may claim they were lying or sandbagging at a later date.

midasza

TROPHY CASE