Techwright

For me, it was Tuesday.

It's a raised rock ledge, probably near water. "Bank" makes perfect sense.

Some badges give minor boosts or temporary tools/powers, usually after some effort expended getting said badges. Speculate, if you will, what rewards might be added to badges currently without anything to make them more attractive in the mini-game that is badge hunting. For example, an oft-overlooked badge group are those badges hidden in safeguard missions. People generally depart once the archvillain is dealt with. Perhaps a six-hour in-game-time boost to health/energy/power might encourage a hunt?

Simply to make a fortune off all the beachfront property that used to be the desert land they bought next to the fault, I'm sure. 😉

Funny you should mention that. I'd seen a couple of interviews way back (I think one was in relation to the TV Dune) where Hurt was questioned about the thoughts and feelings of his characters and he started giving very curt answers to the interviewers. It was clear he was very irritated to the point of angry with them for bringing this up. His highly annoyed, barely-in-check responses amounted to "It's a role. I just play a role. I don't care what the characters feel or think." Which I found surprising at the time both for his rudeness, and for his seeming lack of empathy towards the role he played. How does one become a great actor and portray well a character if they cannot at least picture how the character thinks and feels?

Khallisti Wharf The Holiday skating pond zone Talos Island (central island only) west side of Independence Port Pretty much anywhere that Vahz, CoT, Banished Pantheon, or anyone else trying to use you as fodder for their projects might be hanging out. The Family, Tsoo, Outcasts, Warriors, etc. might be bullies, but you can pay them "protection" money to leave you alone...sometimes. Those others see your body as currency. The funny thing is, I think Boomtown might just qualify. Not a lot of potable water, but the rent's cheap, and if you hole up somewhere near the reconstruction site, it's close to Steel Canyon for jobs.

RL interruption? Maternal uncle's death. We had to take a week off to drive my elderly mom across country for the memorial service. On the plus side, I got a bit of time to cross off a visit to the Cahokia Mounds (UNESCO World Heritage Site) from my bucket list, and it was the first time in 20 years that all surviving members of my maternal family were in one place simultaneously.

I've played the Star Wars III and Batman 2 games. Really enjoyed the ground combat sequences in SWIII.

So it is the Hudsucker Proxy for sports?

I'm picturing Bill in an early 1980's TV show squaring off against a Roller Derby team.

Now I so want a scene of Daleks facing the front of an elevator, the eye stalks slowly bobbing and weaving to The Girl from Ipanema.

Elon Musk is pretty good with pronouncing hard names. Why not ask him?

The Fresh Viz of Westview? I never really considered a season 2 as a possibility. WV was really about setting the stage for multiple tales to come, The Multiverse of Madness being first. Clearly the "Vision Mk II" story will be explored at some point, but if there's a dedicated Vison-Wanda storyline, it will probably be titled and pitched differently. The TV version has proudly concluded its broadcast day.

First off, nice catch on our fumble. Second, AoS is essentially what He Who Remains was explaining in Loki: they're a timeline that dovetails into everything the MCU does right up until the snap (blip). It's right at that point that there's a variance that shoots their universe into another branch on the timeline. Because no one blips out, I still maintain Thor went for the head, but I'll accept the argument that it was a combination of the changes to the big bad fight for the AoS as well as something the Avengers & Waukanda did differently. Perhaps Quill listened to reason on Titan... Naaah.

A good list. Peter McNicholl shows up once or twice as well, and... Adrian Pasdar, who is no stranger to the comic book format, has a meaty guest role over a couple of seasons. Patton Oswalt, too. I can't believe he was only in 9 episodes. It feels like...I don't know, maybe four times as many. Joel Stoffer, who has been in Stranger Things drew quite a following in his quirky guest role over a few seasons. Mark Dacascos, who hosted Iron Chef America and played arch villain Wo Fat on Hawaii Five-O also appeared. And then there are the guest appearances of characters from other Marvel TV and movie properties, the season 7 guest being my personal favorite.

Well that just floored me. "Square-jawed" is not what I think of when I consider Matt Lewis. "Chubby cheeked" came to mind. Fast forward to 32, and my not-so-square jaw hitting the floor. There's a couple pics out there on Google search that make me think he certainly looks the part for the next James Bond.

Hmm, I don't know gang...should I mention what part Gabriel Luna played? It might put Luminara over the edge. Yes, O'Mara has an interesting role in season 4. Man, I'm going to have to rewatch Agents of SHIELD for the third time now. Listen, if you do watch the series, just hang in there the first season. It was getting its legs. Season 1 Episode 17 (or 18?) is when they poured gas on their little fire.

There's a reason original ideas don't end up being the final product. A coworker reminded me that I've been carrying around a headcanon idea of the Borg in Star Trek for some time. This may be entirely destroyed by the currently playing Picard season 2, which I've not seen. I'd always wondered, back to when the Borg's first appearance, if the show creators had sat down and thought about the origins of their creation. In my thinking, the Borg might have been shown to be a creation to save a race or federation of races at some past point, something that backfired. In that concept, a war would have precipitated the creation of a new superweapon, a nanite infection that converted the enemy, one by one, into a growing army against the side they'd fought. To give governance to this monstrosity, one of the designer's people voluntarily became the first queen, with a conscious liberty the drones lacked. The hive was also given a mandate to learn anything new, especially technology, so that it might grow and adapt to any future threat. It proved wildly effective, but like some other superweapons, the creation was double-edged and turned on its creators, before reaching out into the greater Delta Quadrant.

Mentioning Evil Fitz is akin to the hyenas saying "Mufasa": fantastic chills run down your spine. Calculating, cold, lacking empathy but not passion, Dr. Fitz is a cross between Joseph Mengele and Palpatine, just minus the force powers. Iain showed some serious acting chops during the full course of Agents of SHIELD, and season 4, where Evil Fitz shows up, is usually a fan favorite. The season is also fueled by the astonishing acting of guest star Mallory Janson (of whom Hollywood should really take note), and solid performances by guest stars Jason O'Mara, John Hanna, and Gabriel Luna.

It is my understanding that she will join Capt. Marvel in the upcoming movie. As will Photon. I've never read the comics with Ms Marvel in them. My only knowledge of the character comes from her several animated appearances, including in the Avengers video game. Within that limitation, I've never been a fan of the character. She falls within what I term the "Yakky Duck character". That is, a character deliberately added by the creators to run their mouth incessantly, usually with unnecessary dialog, to the point of being obnoxious. ("Yakky Duck" being a reference to "Yakky Doodle" the Hanna-Barbera poster-child example of the character type.) To be fair, a bit of this got ironed out in the Avengers video game, where I found it a tad more palatable. Still not a fan. That said, I watched the trailer and was confused out by the addition of a mcguffin of power and a radically different power sent. It came across like they don't trust their character as it stood to be interesting and had to dump a lot of bling in to fancy her up. If, however, as the story advance, the mcguffin of power proves to be something in a broader storyline sense, like the Tesseract proving to be actually a Power Stone, something that Kamala will eventually set aside or lose, and focus on her own ability, then I'd just label the trailer as confusing, and not degrading to the character. As to her similarity to Mr. Fantastic, I've always felt how she was presented had a fundamental difference. Ms Marvel's "embiggen" power not only stretches, there's a mass alteration. So she's just not reaching out to punch a villain, she's stretching out with a fist like a wrecking ball to smash him. Last I knew, and its been years since I read Fantastic Four comics, Reed Richards could stretch, and apparently had some off-the-scale tensile strength, but not a mass shifting nature. If the MCU can support several super soldiers, similar-but-slightly-different Ant-Man and Wasp, and two Hawkeyes, I see no reason to change Ms Marvel just because Reed Richards is similar.

I expect a notable uptick in fresh hobo players...sorry, transient rail aficionados....any day now. Frankly, I'd love to post invites on social media, but my Facebook friends are mostly the types who raise eyebrows at gamers. Our mutual interests lie elsewhere. My only other social media LinkedIn, likewise would not make such a great soapbox podium for promoting the game. I have been promoting it among my coworkers at the two companies where I've worked since returning to the game, but other than water cooler chat interest, including from those who played the game previously, they're far more interested in hot new games.

Would reading only grim children's books and only washing dark clothing count as potential regrets? Wait a sec..."going about his day?" 😕

Oscar-winning actor William Hurt passed away March 13 of cancer. In a body of significant work, I'd point out two that qualify for this forum: Heroic Duke Leto Atreides in the the cable TV version of Dune. Manipulative rogue General (Later Secretary of State) Thaddeus Ross in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With Dune, despite it looking like a limited budget work, Hurt managed to breath life and humanity in Duke Leto in a way his predecessor in the Dune movie of the 1980s was not able to (or didn't have the minutes to do so). I knew Leto would have a limited roll in the work, but I found myself wishing Hurt had more to do. Thaddeus Ross is always a pain in the neck regardless of the medium, and Hurt captured that well, first as General Ross in the Hulk movie that belatedly was accepted into the MCU, and later as the promoted Secretary of State that was such a snake, manipulating the story to guilt the Avengers into signing the Accords and force them under his patronizing command. I'd heard through the rumor mill a while back that the MCU planners were looking forward to a third conversion of Ross, turning him into the Red Hulk. I wondered about that at the time, knowing Hurt was approaching his 70's. I thought it an uncomfortable risk to plan distantly for a character whose actor might not be able to perform the role when they were ready for it, and might not even be alive. I wasn't aware that he was also battling cancer. I don't know if Red Hulk (and Hurt?) will show up in She-Hulk. I wonder if the MCU will recast the role to gain the Red Hulk, and possibly continue the emotional button pushing of Ross, or like Black Panther, will they retire the role? Hurt was very good in the role, but like I said regarding the decision about Black Panther: the character should survive the actor. https://variety.com/2022/film/news/william-hurt-dead-kiss-of-the-spider-woman-1235203576/

Is that an actual thing or just a colorful descriptive? If it is, how high does the chart go and how are the ranks defined? Southern boy asking. I spent 3 winters in Indianapolis back in the late 90s, but don't recall any meterings other than "20 inches" for the blizzard of Dec 31, 1998.

Oh, I also forgot Kenobi's great fall during Order 66. As much as I loathed Episode VIII, I have to say I was not put out to see that moment on screen. I was genuinely puzzled by others' negative reactions. Force wielders can literally do anything. The question has never been "can they do it", it has been "have they figured out how to do it, and have they prepared properly". Oh, and apparently, "do they have the midichlorian count to do it?" She's a Skywalker. She does...or did. 😕