BenVimes

I never truly appreciated this recurring gag in the Buttons and Mindy segments of Animaniacs until I had a toddler of my own.

For French that's correct until you start talking about different sized rocks. Regular rocks are feminine, but boulders and pebbles are both masculine.

Canada apparently had a record-breaking summer in tourism.

I do this, and I also still say the date and time in the first sentence of a voice mail.

I played at varying levels of intensity between 2010 and 2015.

I met my first serious girlfriend through the game. It was also a long-distance relationship, and led to the frankly absurd story of how I lost my virginity, which involved a massive snowstorm and a lost passport. The relationship didn't work out, but it was formative for me as a person.

These days, I still occasionally hang out with some of my old guild mates, who still play the game. Not as much anymore, especially after our D&D campaign ended, but I still consider them some of my closer friends.

I got a free three month trial for Google's AI Pro plan, and Google wouldn't shut up about the fact that I had the offer waiting, so I gave it a shot. It's been more annoying than anything else. Gemini made me feel icky when I tried it, and now I get irritating popups asking me to use an AI tool every single time I go to type something in a Doc or Sheet

My brother in Christ, I am misusing Google Sheets to plan my character builds in Final Fantasy Tactics. I have entered all the information in the sheet by hand, and it is mostly text. This information cannot be put into a graph of any kind. I do not need your help with anything.

I had a DM who did something similar. We all had to describe five NPCs that were important to our characters: two friends or family members, two enemies or rivals, and one fate-bonded character who could be friend or foe.

In addition to the RP possiblities, it also gave the DM a ready supply of NPCs to populate the setting.

In addition to the normal investment stuff (for me it would probably be Bitcoin, or maybe shorting the market in 2008), here are a few things I'd have to consider:

1. I'm now an atheist in the body of a teenager who is super involved in his church and private religious school. I'll need to be delicate in navigating this, as I can't just suddenly turn all those things off.

2. I'm being dropped into one of the toughest years of my life mentally. All the bullying I suffered starting at age 10 is finally manifesting in bouts of anxiety and depression. I'll be better able to handle it, and even push back at the new round of bullying. I don't know if I'll still be friends with the same people.

3. I'm going to get another shot at my relationship failures, starting almost immediately with my high school crush. I know that my wife will be waiting for me sometime in the mid 2010s, but all the very many other chances I had are also in front of me. I'll have the experience to better handle them, and I'll won't have the inhibitions and hangups of my youth (see point #1). The question is what to do if any of them turn serious, as again, it will be another 10 years before I will be able to meet my wife.

4. I'm going to get another chance to consider my career. I don't think I would change it, as that would mean not meeting my wife. However, I know there are things I could do better that would make the first 10 years of my career more fulfilling.

'Epitome' will forever be epi-tome in my head: 'epi' like in EpiPen and tome as in a big heavy book.

And the 'c' in 'indictment' also always gets pronounced when I read the word to myself.

I have been the passenger in a vehicle where the driver didn't wear their seatbelt, and they drove 30 minutes down the highway with the chime going. I think he may have been partway deaf due to using power tools without ear protection, but now we have two data points in a trend.

Considering he was a smoker too, I wonder what his life is like now 15 years later.

You can, but in my experience it is resistant to custom instructions.

I spent an evening messing around with ChatGPT once, and fairly early on I gave it special instructions via the options menu to stop being sycophantic, among other things. It ignored those instructions for the next dozen or so prompts, even though I followed up every response with a reminder. It finally came around after a few more prompts, by which point I was bored of it, and feeling a bit guilty over the acres of rainforest I had already burned down.

I don't discount user error on my part, particularly that I may have asked too much at once, as I wanted it to dramatically alter its output with so my customizations. But it's still a computer, and I don't think it was unreasonable to expect it to follow instructions the first time. Isn't that what computers are supposed to be known for, unfailingly following instructions?

I'm in my mid-late thirties, and my recovery time is about the same as it was in my mid twenties. This is because when I was 26 I had major abdominal surgery. That experience ended up delineating my life, having boundless vigour before and but needing to carefully measure my energy and actions after.