Season 1 Green Arrow…

I would say, it because the lyrics aren’t something Spotify made. No one’s picking up Spotify because only Spotify has lyrics. Spotify isn’t writing the songs. Regardless of what someone might think of Spotify or Spotify free, it’s withholding something that they have that they didn’t make from people that perhaps need it. It’d be like if broadcast TV or any on demand video service (YouTube, Disney, Netflix, etc.), said hey you didn’t pay no more closed captions for you (where a free version is applicable, of course).

If Spotify wants to put stuff behind a paywall it can be features of the platform.

My personal opinion is Spotify sucks, full stop. The CEO is a real piece of work. This just goes on the pile of reason Spotify sucks.

I didn’t even know they did that, Glad I don’t have an account with them. I’m partially deaf, most music I can’t understand what someone singing. Those fun things people do of like “most common misheard lyrics” is basically my life. On the plus side I enjoy music from around the world because unintelligible music is unintelligible no matter where it’s from. They’re very few artists I feel like I can understand, and realistically I’m probably wrong.

In real life, I read lips to help augment my terrible hearing. Fun fact during the mask man dates during COVID, was probably the worst time for me. A lot of people I could hear talking as I could hear noise but I could not make out what it was. Leading to a lot of awkward conversations.

Anyhoo, that’s all to say that for music that I do like I do have to see the lyrics. It’s what converts the noise into words.

So, fuck you Spotify, My life’s difficult enough already, I’m not paying your shitty service so you can charge me for my impairment.

I didn’t understand this connection

It’s not like it was a mutually exclusive option. I have an S9 and I swamp between wireless and wired audio all the time depending on the setting. These newer phones have only one option. Bluetooth does not work well everywhere. Frankly forcing more things into the same radio frequency just makes it worse.

If their web can catch a fly, it can catch my shit. Extra strength TP!

Sophia Urista doing her part…

Then there was R. Kelly…

You probably meant motorcycle helmets My mind immediately went to Avengers Endgame. Everyone removing their helmet everytime they had anything to say… Was an awful direction

Now there’s a bit of software I haven’t thought about in a long time

Many of my family is in this. They keep getting bigger vehicles because they get the sense of safety. They cannot grasp how bad that mentality is and how wrong they are. And with bigger vehicles, it means that much less room for error too. And most people suck at driving. Not all the time, but that one time you make a mistake (as we all do) could be a big one in an oversized vehicle.

There’s a “modern” version of the Atkins diet, the keto diet. Same rules as far as I can tell, just rebranded. I went nuts. I couldn’t stop thinking about bread. Sound of it, smell of it, taste of it… It haunted me day and night. I’d often find myself looking up bread maker reviews, comparing different bread makers on Amazon… Don’t remember what I had when I finally gave up, wasn’t nearly as awesome what you did. But I can tell you I did not buy a bread maker afterwards.

I collect ever explosive I find along the way. At this point it’s more about “How much can the game engine and my PC handle…”. Even got a bunch of hirelings and used the vendor reset on level up to really milk some of the vendors. (This is also a great way to get some of those nastier fights in honor mode completed too…)

Just to see what would happen, in one of my evil runs, Arabella dies and for some extra spicy evil, I brought her dead body to her parents and dropped it in front of them. To my surprise… they react.

One play through I went minion master. ALL THE MINIONS. Terrible idea… each turn takes 5 years and things get clogged up real quick.

I have not found a way yet to play EA again. I’ve legit e-mailed Larian asking for it too.

I can only guess as to why there was such a drastic change. Because one day (in EA) I’m playing the last EA patched version and the following day on release… a bunch of stuff blinked out of existence. My guess, is they ran out of time. Various zones (like Upper Baldur’s Gate) are just removed (said zone is just a stage now). Various story lines are incomplete. There’s story threads that stop cold (there’s supposed to be more Hags if the various letters/notes/and NPC conversations are to be believed). The whole end sequence were the capture dragon shows up… how they got that dragon is never shown… etc. So, that’s my guess, they had more ambition than time.

Oh another idea that wasn’t completed. Karlach (the last character added/worked on) is the only origin character you play that you can hear the inner thoughts/monolog. Everyone else is silent.

tl;dr, the story and motivation for everything was far more fleshed out

Here’s just some of the things. Not even going into mechanics that are removed (like Wyll’s eye). Or my personal opinion some of their starting looks were a bit more interesting/better (you get a bit of an idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MeutkQFliM or from the CohhCarnage videos I link later)

There used to be way more dialog options for one. Your class/subclass/god/etc actually got reflected in more options. There was a great video of a cleric giving some unhinged prayer to the tiefling that opens the gate. It’s not major, but it adds to a lot to the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KameRUsFv8Y (with all the BG3 videos now, it’s harder to find some of the classics). Also, Shadowheart had a much more interesting conversation if you were also a cleric if you were a Cleric of Shar too.

The camp was way more interesting. There’s a ton of story ripped out of the game from the camps. This, was the thing that hooked me in EA. Daisy (the in-game code name for what would be replaced by your dream visitor) would entice you with power, encourage you to use the illithid powers. And when you finally do, and the narrator says “you’ve lost something you can never get back” probably makes more sense now. Once you did that, you got a class specific illithid power. There was no weird illithid skill tree, it was based around how often you used the powers. But going back to the camp, the companions would comment more about each other. Shadowheart and Lae’Zel’s hatred for each other was shown way better, even commenting if you talked to one or the other first. Here’s a couple of examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYRe2jHhBRc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw5q6u_iMN0 but overall, the camp at the end of the day was 1000x more interesting and really fleshed out the characters more and I’d say in important ways.

I’d even say the starting area (Nautiloid) was better. The current one is sufficient I guess. But the original showed you more about the fight the Illithids have with the Gith, you got to see more of the ship, what the Illithid did to people, what it meant to become a thrall (to really sell it that this is a terrifying process). But it showed you a few more mechanics too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC-GWA_Yj2c starts at EP2, but you’ll want to go to EP 3 as well. But you can see the differences.

Tav used to talk.

For me, the story around “Daisy” was way more compelling. The song “Down by the river” is in reference to these encounters. Here’s a video on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTw_9vM5LgA

… So these are just some of the things, lol. There’s more like when you got down to the Underdark and some serious changes that happened there. And I haven’t even touched on the stuff that never made it in (like the extra companion that was to be a werewolf… or the original Nightsong) (you can see some of it cataloged here https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Cut_and_unimplemented_content ) and I’m fairly certain all the companions were originally supposed to show up in Act 1 instead of 1, 2, and 3. There’s a lot of dialog from characters for places they’re not “supposed to be” like the eagles (can’t find video, but its out there). But none of that is EA stuff, just cut stuff… but if the game had baked longer… I’m just saying… it might not have been cut sutff.

I always wanted children. Damn near every major life choice has been fueled by that. Took a job I knew I wouldn’t be happy at, but could be successful at to provide a better life. Yhe cars I’ve bought the safety rating for kids was to priority followed by reliability. The house I bought is within walking distance of every grade school, and the basement could easily be setup for a hangout spot for the teen years, oh and a good sized backyard for playing. One of the reasons I stayed at this job is I’m at max PTO and they actually offer paternity leave! I always make mental notes of fun places for kids so I could take them. When they were younger, and I was still considered cool, my niece and nephew wanted to move in with me 😆.

Just never met the right lady.

I don’t really want to get into it, but, we have campaigns that actively target people who smoke and/or drink. Two other things that people can indulge in that can and will eventually lead to negative health effects and kill you, much like overeating will.

That’s really the only thing holding EV’s back. If we can get away from lithium batteries and get something like graphene batteries (one can dream), range, recharge, etc. everything immediately get’s better.
But electric engines are far superior.

I’m having a hard time processing that’s not from The Onion…

My job I’m classified as remote. And I like it that way. Recently they have decided that a bunch of people even if remote will now have to come on site at least hybrid. For “collaboration”. I even noted that in my employment contract I had in there that I was to work from home, to which HR said that they really don’t care.

My last year-end review was stellar. Top marks, praises from multiple departments, even got a promotion.

But I happen to live to close to a location, so there’s ‘simply nothing that can be done’. So I’ve already started looking for different work.