Coming up on my yearly check-in. What did I miss?

[Kelly]

Anything important? Hope everyone is well. Glad to see all the usual suspects still posting.

But let's skip the small talk and go straight to the serious: Did Nameless get a computer?

Edit: just saw that Dave died. Man that sucks. I'm legit bummed about that. He sent me a camera once that I needed to recover some video off a tape. Truly a class guy. Ugh, this may be my last yearly check in. I don't want to watch the community get continually chipped away and eroded.

[EvilGrins]

Other than having named 1 of my bots after you, putting it in a cowboy model, and giving it a Yosimite Sam voicepack... not much.

[a nameless entity]

Anything important? Hope everyone is well. Glad to see all the usual suspects still posting.

But let's skip the small talk and go straight to the serious: Did Nameless get a computer?

Edit: just saw that Dave died. Man that sucks. I'm legit bummed about that. He sent me a camera once that I needed to recover some video off a tape. Truly a class guy. Ugh, this may be my last yearly check in. I don't want to watch the community get continually chipped away and eroded.

No not yet. I was just on the phone today ordering a part for my 40 year old electric range, and the guy I was talking to said he was "jealous" of me for not being online, and wished that he could go offline too.
Btw, he's not the first person by any means to have said such a thing to me in the last 5.5 years since I gave it up.

I've only seen one PC that I really, really wanted in the last 2 years. It was available at Staples, but the store was closed for Covid, and then for a complete redecorate. I missed the reopening and some people scooped the the 2 they had. Not having a car means other locations are a long bus ride away, and not worth the hassle.
As I've admitted before, the motivation to go back online is low. But all this waiting has meant that "Bell Pure Fibe" is now or soon will be available to me.
It will be blazing fast. We'll see how it goes. When it's right, I'll do it.

Umm, which Dave did we lose? And why wasn't it announced in here?

[Kelly]

Nameless if you really are serious I have this: https://www.amazon.com/CYBERPOWERPC-GXI ... B07B6H4GNY sitting in my closet not doing squat. You are welcome to it. I ended up buying two of them and gave one to my son. I used the one I still have for a while but bought a much beefier system to use with my VR headset. Now the old tower is collecting dust.

If you are interested PM me and we can discuss the logistics involved.

[EvilGrins]

Oh, also you may recall those Xvehicles FeraliDragon made which unfortunately couldn't be used online? Well, a guy named Buggie fixed that and now they can be, and some folks are cranking out maps for them now.

[Hermskii]

Hello Kelly!

I pop in here every once in a while too in order to make sure no bots have taken over. Mt family has completely taken over my life. In just half a year, I'll have a Senior and and freshman in high school. I'm more active than ever at my church too. I have two jobs that I love but I still need more money. If I and my wife can together make about another $25K per year and keep that up until we retire, I think we can manage through the rest of our kids going through expensive schools. I'm the big 54 and almost 55 now. I'm weighing in at about 270 pounds so I'll need to do something about that. I got my dream bike a couple times over being a 2007 Honda XR650R. This brings my total to 4 bikes right now being a CRF100, a CRF230 and two XR650R motorcycles that I love and have made both of them street legal!

Who is the Dave that died? I hadn't heard anything about you in so long I was worried that you might have moved along yourself. I'm glad your OK and would love to hear about your current work, health, gaming and family stuff. Old HOOK is old too and still doing all of his UT stuff. I'm still stuck and have hardly made any UT modifications since about 2007. I killed my UT2K4 Chaos server this last year. It error'd and I didn't feel like fixing it since nobody every played it so I just turned it off. No harm, no foul. The other 4 servers are all still active enough to keep them running but as they break down, I may just walk away.

My biggest concern about all of the House of Hermskii stuff is this forum. Plenty of people have put plenty into the pages here and so I feel the need to make sure it continues long after I'm gone. EG is certainly the most active now and I'm grateful to him for that. I still haven't been back to Beyond Unreal Forum ever since those loosers told you they hoped you would die of cancer because they disagreed with you about something. Damn, that still makes me mad thinking about it. I suspect that many of them grew up and became republicans but I'm sure that many of them remained exactly as they were when I swore off that forum. To be clear, I'm speaking about that open forum section where we all fought over politics all of the time. The gamers there were fine I'm sure.

That's enough for now. Take care Kelly! Stay alive eh and come by more often.

[Kelly]

Not a lot to report really. Wife and I are getting used to being empty nesters now that the last kid has moved out. That part is very cool. We've started doing a bit of traveling as the opportunities come up. Oregon has incredible diversity in climate, topology, etc. Where I live is considered temperate rain forest but if you drive east you'll cross the Cascade mountains and start out into the desert fairly quickly. We are planning to do some rock hounding and fossil hunting this summer out near the Idaho border. I keep trying to work out meeting up with Heston from the House of Fools clan as he lives near Portland but it's just so hard to get schedules to work out. I'm gonna message him and get that deal done this summer.

My health is doing OK-ish. Having real trouble swallowing so I generally eat a liquid (mulched) diet. Another year or two and I'll just go to the meal replacement shakes full time. It's not a big deal as most of my sense of taste never came back. Both the wife and I got very lucky and never got Covid even though we both have very public facing jobs. What else....Oh I don't game much any more. My reflexes have slowed down and I'm just not competitive any longer. Been thinking about installing UT and Unreal again though just to see what everyone has done in the last few years. I might drop by a few servers, see the sights, then wander off again into the night. I do play a ton of VR stuff though. Love the headset and the immersion it gives.

I wouldn't worry about the forum. Just run a backup every couple/three weeks and save your database. Worst case scenario is you end up reviving it on another host down the line. There's no reason for anything to ever get lost. These phpBB forums are almost bulletproof.

Also, I'm not your conscious but for sure lose weight. Look around at the 60ish crowd. There are very, very few guys that make it there that run in the neighborhood of 300. And I'm not talking down to you either. At my heaviest I was 370 so I'm familiar with the struggle. It sucks. It sucks BAD but you just have to get that fixed. If not you'll pay for it and you want to be there for your kids. You're a good dude Herm and I want good things for you so I hope this goes up your list of priorities.

Dave was the Dave that posted all over UT forums. He posted here I'm sure. I saw over on one of the other forums that he had died. That one sucked, I really liked him and he always had positive things to say. I guess I'm just sensitive to it. When Loathe died I took that way rougher than I expected. Not really interested in doing it again with someone else. I think I'd just rather sign off and go live my life oblivious to the passings.

Ok, that's enough. I'm boring and I always said too much.

[EvilGrins]

Thought about coming back for this as I had actual real life and not UT news.

Went to visit Mom for Easter Weekend, which I wound up spending a large chunk of in the emergency room. Not dying, though it felt like it, as I got a kidney stone. Ever had one? Don't recommend it.

Took awhile getting the pain meds sorted out, waiting until it passed and scheduling a urologist just in case.

Spent all week with Mom, so far, dealing with epic pain, moderate pain, and none. Supposedly when it passes all pain goes away... I'm in a sort of limbo at the moment so either it passed or the meds are working unusually well.

[Hermskii]

Kelly,

Thank you for the update. Glad you sound pretty ok and seem happy over all which I too want for you.

EG, My best friend gets them all of the time. I never have THANK GOD! I hear they are the worst! My buddy just drinks a lot of water and keeps his ac really cold as he clenches and grunts through the agony. Then at some point while he pisses, he says he hears a "plink" and then he knows everything is about to get better. He said the meds never helped.

I'll talk to both of you again soon enough. In a hurry now. I really do appreciate these talks even if they just happen every long once in a while. I hold both of you in high regard.

[a nameless entity]

RE the kidney stones:

I had this problem once in 2010. For some reason my doctor didn't believe me. Once I passed the stone I was okay. I did not hear a "plink" in the toilet on that occasion, but I had heard it 2 or 3 times in the years before I had a stone that hurt me. All has been well since 2010 in that regard. I have been drinking lots of water and 2 pots of weak tea a day for over 20 years, I suppose that it has been helping.
I sure would not want an evening and over-night of that kind of pain ever again!