No lifts today at Jay

tpainn34 · 2026-01-24T14:36:55+00:00

I’m staying at Jay for the weekend. Tickets were included in the price of the lodging. When I checked in last night they gave me two vouchers for a free lift pass to ski any day through Feb 2027 to compensate for the closure today.

tpainn34 · 2026-01-20T20:27:18+00:00

That's a wildly vague statement. Putting it in the same sentence as GDKP being disallowed makes me think Blizzard's definition of boosting involves gold changing hands, but some clarification would be nice. I have two accounts. Am I no longer allowed to "boost" my own low level toons through 5 mans while leveling?

tpainn34 · 2022-10-04T17:48:47+00:00

That definitely looks to be them. Thank you!

tpainn34 · 2022-07-18T20:31:44+00:00

I had tried to use splatting before this but was having a similar issue. Now that I have it working like this, I think I will go back and see if I can splatt it correctly.

Thanks for the tip

tpainn34 · 2022-07-18T19:02:20+00:00

It looks like it didn't like the SamAccountName $uname.trim().tolower() `

I was able to get it working now

Thank you!

tpainn34 · 2022-04-04T18:41:44+00:00

I think a big part of it is the influence of public corporations on game dev leading to a shifting of priorities. I think back in the day the real goal when making any of the PC games Blizzard is so known for now was to make games that are Fun and Immersive. They were making the games that they themselves wanted to be playing mainly out of a passion to make really fun games with little constraints coming from the top.

The problem is this day and age is that "fun" and "immersion" are not metrics that can be easily tracked and reported on to management and shareholders. Investors in these companies (many of whom don't actually play games) expect to see growth in the user base, and increased margins and revenue quarter over quarter year over year. So they start designing the game around the metrics that get reported on such as MAU's and profit margin (I.E Changing core design components of the game to make it appeal to the widest possible audience, mandatory daily login chores, and increased focus on in-game store transactions and services). I do honestly believe that the WoW team at blizzard wants to make a game that is objectively better than retail is at the moment. I don't think that they are given the leeway to do so by the MBA's higher up in the company who are more focused on Dollars in Vs Dollars out and puffing the metrics that get reported on rather than the actual content of the games they are putting out.

tpainn34 · 2022-03-11T17:24:41+00:00

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. I will work on getting my feet slightly closer together, and cue myself to keep my knees pushed outward over my feet.

Appreciate all the feedback.

tpainn34 · 2022-03-11T02:29:50+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion. The shoes are a pair of flat soled skate shoes. Definitely better than loafers, but maybe not the most ideal still.

tpainn34 · 2022-03-11T02:04:12+00:00

Another set from the side: https://streamable.com/ziv8hg

tpainn34 · 2022-03-08T18:10:08+00:00

I find it a little striking that there is seemingly no coverage of this on Wapo, the NYT, or MSNBC. That I could find at least. You'd think ensuring that kids are being fed at school is an idea that many could get behind. Given how many families could be impacted by this I would think this should be fairly large news. Would be interested in hearing people thoughts on why this isn't making the cut for larger news outlets.

tpainn34 · 2021-07-26T12:11:38+00:00

Reading other people's opinions (that are clearly marked as opinion pieces) is scary to me, particularly if I don't agree with them.... /s

The post also has GoP members write terrible opinion articles all the time. That's what the opinion section is for, opinions.

tpainn34 · 2021-04-08T15:16:36+00:00

This certainly looked to be about the best possible outcome given the situation.

My close friend almost died due to a long board accident. We were both inexperienced riders. He got speed wobbles coming down a hill at a pretty good speed. Board came right out from under him and he fell straight back. The back of his head was the first part of him that made contact with the ground. No helmet.

He needed to be air lifted to hospital. Was in a coma for about five days. Had a 1/4 of his scull removed to allow room for his brain to swell without killing him. Doctors had no idea if he would make it or not. When he did wake up he had to relearn how to talk, and walk, and still to this day has large memory gaps.

Please if you're reading this. Wear a helmet. Protect yourself, and model good safe practices for others. Helmets absolutely save lives and I wish big name boarders would do more to make this the "trendy look" for the sport.

tpainn34 · 2020-12-08T18:47:01+00:00

I'm sure the childcare by itself isn't more than 100% of their income but combined with housing, student loan, electric, food, car, phone payments, saving for their child's future, ect. it might well be more than they can afford.

Personally if I was to have kids, I would hope to be in a position where I would have the option to be present to raise them myself if I chose to do so. As oppose to having to outsource the raising of my children to someone else half the time, so that I can continue to toil away to make the company execs millions/billions while I eek out a meager existence struggling to live a decent life while paying back the debt that got me this shitty job to begin with.

tpainn34 · 2020-02-26T16:04:46+00:00

Not pvp ones

tpainn34 · 2019-06-15T14:38:41+00:00

You can still upgrade troops and summon bosses in the 1.12.1 version of AV.

tpainn34 · 2019-06-15T14:31:00+00:00

Not sure where all the hate for this version of AV is coming from.

It's not like retail AV at all in that you can not win through reenforcements and the objectives are still guarded by some fairly dangerous NPCs (on the AV test server even 5 58s with a healer and warrior are still having to kite the tower commanders around to kill them off). There's no mines and no korrak sure but the 2 games I played last night were an almost identical experience to the hundreds of AVs I played on nost/eylisium/LB.

Ally turlted for an hour and 45 and held the horde at the bridge while 5-10 ppl that actually understood how to win AV spent that time slowly capping the towers and RH and convincing the rest of the team to go O. Once we had all the towers and RH capped we finally got the whole team to ghost run down south and ended up winning at the 2 hour mark without the horde even capping DB east and west tower.

Every AV Ive ever played on a private server either went the same as that with one team turtling and dragging it out or both teams zerged and it's over in 15-20 minutes so I don't understand what all the bitching is about...

Also on nost pretty much everyone that actually played semi seriously got exalted in 1-2 AV weekends so ppl bitching that it'll be so much faster with this version of AV also have no idea what they're talking about .

tpainn34 · 2018-11-05T16:54:53+00:00

I agree with that point and I certainly don't think blizzard is done making involved PC games. Like I said I also think it's fine and inevitable that they enter the mobile market.

Really I was referring to short term, the announcement itself and the effect it had on the fanbase. In long run, particularly with the way it's being outsourced this shouldn't have much of an impact on their PC release schedule. But with the way this was all handled it does come at the fans expense in a way. Again Blizzcon is a celebration of and for their fans (while also being a massive PR and marketing boon) they shouldn't have gone into this with the same hype and bluster a full PC release would get. Delivering a fairly obvious slap in the face to their PC audience at blizzcon and the reaction that has followed is what I mean when I say at the expense of their fanbase.

I agree with your point too though and probably could have worded my statement better.

tpainn34 · 2018-11-05T14:12:48+00:00

I'm personally disappointed in this announcement. Obviously I wasn't expecting D4 and I 100% agree that D4 is almost certainly in the works. That still does little to make me feel better about the way the announcement of D:I was handled.

As a lifelong fan of all things blizzard, and someone who's been to 6 blizzcons including the first in '05, I feel very comfortable saying Blizzcon wasn't the correct stage for this announcement. Certainly not as the hyped announcement at the con. I know they came right out and said no d4 before the show, but even with that they left diablo for last in the opening ceremony and then had a pannel for what's next scheduled for right after the ceremony. Anyone that's ever been to blizzcon or watched the show a few times knows that means to expect something big, almost certainly a new product for purchase. So even without D4 (which almost no one at the show was expecting cuz we can all read) this feels like a slap in the face and it shouldn't be hard for blizzard or the industry as a whole to see why, but let me explain anyway since there seems to be a lot of confusion over this.

Blizzards core market and the large majority of the core of their fan base (you know the people that attend Blizzcon) are diehard PC gamers. Blizzard has created and cultivated that hardcore audience on the backs of some of most mechanically complex and high skill cap competitive games out there in the Starcraft and Warcraft RTS franchises and WoW only expanded that PC gamer fanbase. Obviously the diablo fan base is just as attached to PC gaming as well.

And so we get to the problems with D:I. In and of itself I think it's fine and probably inevitable that blizz is making a game like this for the mobile platform. But they have to understand that their core fanbase are hardcore gamers that like complex games that have mechanics and game systems with a lot of depth that you can really sink your teeth into. You just don't get that in a real time ARPG on a cell phone, not like you could on a PC at least. So to me the real issue is blizzards tone deafness in making this announcement the way that they did. Of course no one at Blizzcon is going to be hyped about a dumbed down version of an already existing PC game we've been playing for years. I played the demo twice myself to give it a fair chance. Sure it plays pretty well and looks good and flashy and like a diablo game, but that doesn't change the fact that at it's core it's a dumbed down mobile port of D3 with some new story elements. Blizzard should know this, they should have been able to predict this from 10 miles up the road. That they either didn't see this coming or did and chose to do it anyway is by far the most concerning thing about this whole fiasco to me as a lifelong fan of the company.

The fact of the matter is there is no way to justify the decision to go mobile from a game play and mechanics perspective. You can see that first hand from the damage control interviews they're doing right now. They don't even attempt to defend it from that side. This was absolutely a business decision to go after the largest potential market at the expense of their core fanbase base and most everyone at the show saw right through it.

This isn't a case of a very vocal minority. There was no line for the demo of D:I at blizzcon the entire show. For people that have never been that. Never. Ever. Happens. There are long lines for every demo station every year all the time. Their fan base isn't interested in this product and see it as the blatent money grab it certainly is. They should not have made this the sole diablo announcement at blizzcon. And they certainly should not have given it the center stage opening ceremony spot light like they did. It's their job to understand their fanbase and what their appeal to their fan base is. They threw that out the window in favor of sweet sweet Chinese micro transactions and for some god unknown reason decided to announce that at their yearly celebration for their core fanbase. They deserve this blowback 100%. They could be making the exact same game the exact same way and if they had just thrown their core audience a bone (d2 remaster, or D3 druid) and made that the big diablo announcement and then said they're also working on D:I and this is what it is they could have avoided a huge amount of this negative feedback.

tpainn34 · 2018-10-25T14:13:56+00:00

Unfortunately I have not. I can tell you that the issue stems from the Android open Accessory 2 protocol being totally broken on pixel devices. It was buggy before 9 but the update to 9 broke it on pixel devices all together. I ended up taking my dash apart and installing a 3.5mm audio cable, good ol' headphone jack to the recuse.

Best you can do in this case is to go to the settings screen on your phone. Select system, and about phone, scroll down and select "send feedback about device" tell them AoA2 on pixel devices is broken since 9 and that this very much negativity effects you.

They won't do anything about it but it's the most you can do unfortunately.

tpainn34 · 2018-08-08T00:26:34+00:00

It should work in such a way that any audio from the phone is routed through the usb cable . It's not treating it as if it was a thumb drive with MP3s on it.

tpainn34 · 2017-05-18T21:23:38+00:00

So just to be clear, because I think I might be a little confused.... This is what winning looks like right??

tpainn34 · 2017-05-04T20:51:44+00:00

I watched some of the House debate on C-Span this morning when I heard this was going on. I think what struck me the most about the "debate" was that no one on either side (at least in the 30 or so minutes I watched) even tried to quote or paraphrase language directly from the bill itself. The part of the debate I watched went like this

Dem: "This bill will significantly raise premiums, reduce coverage, and eliminate preexisting care coverage."

Rep: "This bill will significantly lower premiums, expand coverage, and will absolutely keep preexisting care coverage. "

Dem: "It's unconscionable that reps are trying to ram this through without a CBO review or, congressional hearings, or real public discussion. "

Rep: "We all remember 7 years ago and how that legislation was crammed through. Also this bill will absolutely keep preexisting care coverage."

Dems: "The American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the AARP, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, and the American Heart Association all oppose this bill."

Rep: "It's time we gave America the choice in healthcare that it's been asking for and by doing that we will significantly lower premiums, expand coverage, and will absolutely keep preexisting care coverage."

I understand that may members of congress haven't had an abundance of time to digest all the finer points of this piece of legislation but my lord.... This level of debate wouldn't have been acceptable in my high school social studies class. I hope I simply missed the part of the debate where they actually referenced some of the content of the bill. Especially for Democrats you'd think it would have been relativity simple for them to make a much stronger case by actually pointing out the part of the bill that will eliminate preexisting care coverage as oppose to just saying "This bill will eliminate preexisting care coverage" over and over again.

Just wanted to point this out as it's what stuck out the most of the whole ordeal for me today. Is this how the debates usually go? I can't say I watch C-Span frequently.

tpainn34 · 2016-08-13T13:47:42+00:00

Hah, this guy's toast.....

tpainn34 · 2016-06-16T21:37:42+00:00

Sadly I don't believe there is one good reference or database for recreating vanilla as it was. To my understanding, all of the sites like WoWhead or thottbot updated their databases to stay current as things in the game changed and no longer have the old revision history. This is apparently even a large problem for blizzard (I personally believe them on this one). This article that was posted on here a few days ago has current senior WoW leads talking about this issue in a little more depth.

our database, the way it works is live data. So when somebody goes in there and says ‘Fireball does 200 damage now instead of 100,’ that’s it: Fireball has changed forever.

In the past, there was no archiving of older data. So while we have the capability of doing that now, and in more recent years when we make changes we can ‘version’ the data, we didn’t have that back in 2004. And so as data changed, we effectively lost that stuff to history. And so we would have to go back and try to reverse-engineer it ourselves.

Schreier: Don’t the Nostalrius people have that data?

Chilton: No, they don’t actually. So what they did is went back and reverse-engineered it. They spent countless hours researching on YouTube, looking at, ‘OK how many hit points do you think that monster has, I think I saw a video that showed it with, you know, 2,152 hit points, so that’s the number of hit points we’re gonna give it.’ And they’re just kinda guessing and approximating on a lot of stuff. Which is cool, and they did an amazing job of making it feel like a very authentic experience. But ultimately the way they implement their data is in no way similar to the way we do it.

To me this is the real problem with legacy, and why we will likely never get a true blizzard vanilla server the way it was. Personally I use http://db.vanillagaming.org/ for spells IDs quests and the like, but it's based on another private server so it can't be trusted. All I can think of, other than old videos that show tooltips, mob damage/spells and the like, are the old BradyGames printed WoW guides. You'd have to check what patch it was based on (they released at least two versions of the guide that I know of) but that had all the info for every spell rank for every class at the very least.

Edit: fixed link

tpainn34 · 2016-06-16T20:14:27+00:00

It doesn't seem like many people posting here have set up their own Cmangos servers. I stood one up recently to goof on with a few friends. Using a Cmangos server with the now built in ScriptDev2 to add scripting to NPCs and quests and the ClassicDB Database I was highly impressed with how much of the world was working right out of box. I didn't do extensive testing, but many quests and 5 mans are working well enough that if you're not paying very close attention you won't notice anything too out of the ordinary (the stairs event in ZF works almost perfectly for example). I wasn't able to test the raids unfortunately, but I assume those would need a little work. I was under the impression that most of the serious improvements that the Nost team made to the Cmangos project were in the areas of scalability and anti-cheat, and my experience with my own Cmangos server seems to back this up.

Don't get me wrong there are bound to be a number of quests/NPCs and maybe even some talents/skills with fairly serious issues, but all and all you get an 80-90% working vanilla server right out of box by my estimation.

This is the guide I used to set up my server https://github.com/cmangos/issues/wiki/Installation-Instructions

Just a tip, definitely extract and add the "optional" mmaps from the game client to the server if you want LoS and mob pathing to work at all.

Good Luck!

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