Techwright

To be fair, they probably had trouble recognizing you from any other lemming.

Near me (up to 49 miles): Downtown Greer, South Carolina - used for Leatherheads, the George Clooney, Renée Zellweger movie regarding the early days of American football. Gaffney, SC - formerly home to a never-activated nuclear power plant (now removed). The stacks from this power plant were sculpted inside, filled with an insane amount of water, covered with kids' ball pit balls to darken the water, and turned into the undersea scape of the movie The Abyss. (Ironically about 250 miles from the coast.) The infamous trench fall from the movie was created by repeatedly dropping the actor from top to bottom of the stack. Lake Jocassee, South Carolina - bordered by Devil's Fork State Park, Lake Jocassee is one of my favorite spots on Earth. deep blue, very cold waters, lots of hiking trails and camping...and location to some of the shooting for the legendary Deliverance. No, I've never heard banjo playing, but the gift shop used to sell bumper stickers about it. The river was, in part, the Chattooga River, famous for its white water rafting and fishing, which forms the western-most border of South Carolina against Georgia and North Carolina. As a teen Scout, I used to camp next to it in the Ellicott Rock Wilderness, a primitive camping area. Ellicott Rock being a boulder in the river, the geological point where Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina all meet. (Yes, I've stood on it.) T. L. Hanna High School, Anderson, SC - site of the real life events of the movie Radio, starring Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Ed Harris. The high school also has another famous student: the late Chadwick Boseman, best known as The Black Panther. While the town of Walterboro, SC, closer to the center of the state was used for much of the movie, the hometown of the high school, Anderson, SC was incorporated into some of the movie. I've worked in Anderson on IT contracts before, and drive by T.L. Hanna at least a few times each year still. Brattonsville, SC - (about 85-90 miles) not a current town, but a living museum composed of houses and plantations of the past, Brattonsville was the site of the real life Battle of Huck's Defeat, a small, quickly-over, but important battle in the southern states' fight during the American Revolutionary War. Some of the properties were chosen to be used in Mel Gibson & Heath Ledger's The Patriot, a completely fictional work woven from bits and pieces of the real life patriots of the vicious guerrilla-style fighting in South Carolina during the Revolution. I've been to Brattonsville and toured the spots used in the movie. The next several locations were all in areas badly damaged by Hurricane Helene last September. I've been up that way once since then, and some large sections are still closed to all traffic. Dillsboro, North Carolina and Cheoah Dam - this is a bit more regional: 100 miles away traveling mountain roads, or about 60 miles as the crow flies. These are the sites of two of the biggest moments in the Harrison Ford/Tom Lee Jones blockbuster The Fugitive. A portion of the Great Smoky Mountains Railway near Dillsboro was utilized to film the movie's terrifying train/bus crash and Cheoah Dam was, of course, the site of the legendary first clash of the two main characters. Biltmore Mansion, Asheville, North Carolina. Another regional one, roughly an hour's drive from me. I've been there many, many times thanks to a few yearly passes I once held. I'm actually not sure how many films have been made at the mansion and its surrounding estate, but here's a list of 13 of them. My personal favorite is The Private Eyes with Tim Conway and Don Knotts. Lake Lure, North Carolina- (about 50 miles north, but maybe more these days, depending on route due to wiped out roads) filming location for the iconic 1980s film Dirty Dancing. Unfortunately, Lake Lure has had it rough this last decade, first with forest fires ravaging its shores in the autumn of 2016, then with the absolutely devastating impact of Hurricane Helene, which pushed tons of rubble and debris through swollen rivers and into the lake. It may be decades before Lake Lure might be considered "normal" again. As if that were not enough, the buildings used in the movie burned several years back. The photo highlighting the link I included shows what it was before the area was decimated. Dupont State Recreational Forest, Lake James State Park, Chimney Rock Park, Nolichucky River in Pisgah National Forest...pretty much shoot a cannon ball in any direction out of Asheville, NC and you'll be pointed towards some filming spot for The Last of the Mohicans, with Daniel Day Lewis. Many of these locations were brutally scarred, even wiped from the map by Hurricane Helene last September. Chimney Rock Park for example, had the whole road and town below it taken all the way back to nature. Hardly a board or asphalt piece remained, though the park remains. They're in the process of building a new road, and in time, a new town. The Nolichucky River, likewise flooded and carved a new landscape. Incidentally, the Nolichucky's edge was the birthplace of American legend Davy Crockett. (He was not "born on the mountaintop" as the song goes.) I had a chance to visit the birthplace site back in July 2019. Not sure if anything of it remains now, but a state park had grown up around it. Also a side note: at the time of filming, I was working with the Humane Societies of western South Carolina as a courier. The regional head, as one of her duties, had to observe Hollywood films in the region to make certain the animals on set were being humanly treated. She took a firestorm of flack for The Last of the Mohicans. One rube royally berated her for the scene in which the hero and his adopted Mohican family hunted and killed an elk. After this yahoo finally lost some steam, she very pointedly noted that no elk was on set. It was a robot designed to look like an elk. She noted some other films she had observed on behalf of the Humane Society, like Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. That, apparently was filmed down at Myrtle Beach, SC about 250 miles away. **I'm now told that some of The Hunger Games was filmed in Dupon State Recreational Forest. Cold Mountain, North Carolina - I read part of the book upon which the movie Cold Mountain with Jude Law, Renee Zellweger, and Nicole Kidman, was based, and learned it was a real mountain about 45 miles north of me, though a lot longer due to the mountain roads needed to reach it. So in early spring of 2003, I drove up to it. The route I took, State 276, I would NOT recommend to anyone with a fear of heights. Narrow lanes, dense fog, long drop-offs. I admit I was terrified someone would come around a hairpin turn so far from civilization and hit me over the side of the mountains. That said, the area around the mountain itself is flat and beautiful. Just approach it from a different direction. I suppose if there was a filming location I'd want to visit, perhaps the studios in Atlanta, about 150 miles south, where the Marvel Cinematic Universe is largely created.

Thank you for the clarification.

Interesting. So it is more than just Marchand or Mr. G. ? From your list it looks like all of First Ward should be end game material unlocked upon completing the first 3 Incarnate trials.

We Americans do love a good gram. Especially with a bit of chocolate bar and toasted marshmallow. 😋 j/k - Most US packaging has both imperial and metric on it these days, as do measuring cups.

Are you referring to the Panasonic Toughbook line? Assuming you're referring to the Panasonics as well, I can sympathize. We maintained a fleet of them for the hospital system I worked for this last decade, especially for the ambulance teams. The CF-C1 was a steaming heap o' garbage: blurry screens, cheap plastic unworthy of the name "toughbook", and a component easily prone to overheat under the user's left palm, causing cracking and carbonization of the cheap plastic. The only thing I liked about those was the easy-swap technology for batteries and hard drives. I was therefore loath to work with the CF-C2 model when it showed up, however, I was pleasantly surprised at the better, more rugged quality and performance. I've not worked with other models, but its possible Panasonics vary wildly between models if these two set the example.

I'd thought that I had done the Provost Marchand (Primal Earth) contact arc some time in the past, but now that I'm in the middle of it with a new character in its mid-30s, I can see I never did the arc. I'm enjoying the arc but it has created a couple of questions for me: 1. Why is the character available at this level? Some of the dialog seems to indicate that certain Incarnate Trials have concluded. To my thinking that would put the character as a level 50 content giver, possibly unlocked by completion of those trials. 2. Quite a bit of the dialog has massive advancements in the Praetorian storyline. However, Marchand was not a referral, rather he was just dropped into my potential contacts list and I picked him more or less at random. Is there a list somewhere of an order to follow (for a Prime universe character) of contacts and maybe specialized missions like Task Forces, that organically develops the story to the point Marchand should theoretically take the reigns?

Just learned there was a Dr. Strange TV movie from 1978. Has anyone ever seen it? I'm sure it would have to be viewed in the context of its day and era. I find it odd that I never heard of it, because I'd watched both The Incredible Hulk and the live-action Spider-Man TV show from around that era. (Side note: I'm perpetually disappointed that the movie Spider-Man: No Way Home didn't include a cameo from Nicholas Hammond, the TV show Spider-Man, which would have then included every English-speaking actor to play live-action Peter Parker.) IMDB listing

"Good" is a matter of opinion, in this case. While there may be a better way out there, the only two methods I know involve removing/adding components to the SSD. That's more than a bit involved. This video discusses the two in regards to a specific SSD type: Not knocking what you've done, but in my experience as a lowly desktop support tech, I've learned to distrust SSDs. SSD failure is not as much of a problem at places of work, where corporate practice requires employees to never save anything to a local drive, but on the home front, I've gone to using SSD for the operating system only, and magnetic drives for anything involving hard to replace data. While each style of drive has a breaking point, there's a chance with magnetic disks of getting them to run one more time to pull data. I'm also a big proponent of another external drive used as a backup drive, unplugging it from the computer when not in specific backup/restoration use.

In addition to all the explanatory comments, I'd note that our most recent server, Victory, was merged in, having been its own identity for a while. Part of that process was respecting those who already played on Victory before the merger. Besides, the low-population servers serve an important role: they're the only hope I have of getting my characters through the content in the PvP zones without getting thoroughly and repeatedly thrashed. 😅

...stuffed crust?

I hope he's got a hand masseur as part of his contract. The actor who performed Thing in the first Rual Julia The Addams Family movie was in agony at times while filming. He made it a contract stipulation that a hand masseur was on set to keep his hand from cramping in the second movie.

I've not seen the series. I've not subscribed to D+ in general for several months, merely from a budget need, but when I read this below, the first thought that I had was "Of course it will have a lower viewership. The extreme violence will be a turn off to many." I don't understand why that is not even considered. Families that together watched Loki, the show with which the article makes a comparison, might be reluctant to expose children in the household to the level of violence in Daredevil shows. There are also those adults who don't really like watching extreme violence. It's not a problem. I respect that, but it will be an influence on the viewership levels. Why is that not taken into account? https://www.superherohype.com/tv/602495-daredevil-born-again-season-1-absent-nielsen-streaming-charts

Pretty sure that would negate our arrangement with NCSoft, though admittedly a lot of the arrangement is not known to the general players. That leaves us with word-of-mouth, and getting gaming magazines to discuss us. Signage from a biplane might work, too, if you own the biplane. Welcome Home, @Rheckawrecka! The first thing I normally point out to returning players is that many sluggish points of the past have been streamlined. For example, the store-bought enhancements have been streamlined, and more powerful enhancements are available earlier, if you have the INF (money) for them. This streamlining also includes travel options. Make a point to find 10 exploration badges as quickly as you can, and the game will unlock the Long-Range Teleporter, which will give you a timed-reset option to teleport to any zone where you've already tagged an exploration badge. The Oroboros portal access has been reduced from level 14 minimum, to level 1. Ask someone near Ms Liberty to drop an O-portal for you to access and claim a copy for yourself. Also, the devs have kindly created the Fast Travel feature (dark green "button") which acts like a menu. Keeping it in your tray means that you don't have to clog the tray with any travel power that can be accessed through its menu. You also may find a lot of useful shared info in this thread WuTang started last year:

The current open beta... Agreed. Had we truly need for more low-level content, farm runs to 50 would not be a thing, nor would repeated trips through XP-gushing Death From Below and the lower-level Task/Strike Forces, and places like The Hollows and Perez Park would be maxing out on player population. Perhaps what we need on low level content is refinements to what is already there to make it more challenging/satisfying for modern players to work through, rather than rushing to 50.

Don't bother. It's not the stuff you used to know. Not really, no. It is the nature of an MMO to not remain stagnant. Even the 2012 version of CoX was not the 2011 version (when I headed out to work with beta on Firefall), and certainly not the 2005 version when I joined during the first Winter Lord event. Some things change that I wished had not, somethings changed that I agreed needed to change. One just rolls with the punches. A comment like the OP is a glib straw man fallacy because there exists no one version of this game. Only stepping stones between patches. I can only guess what their thoughts would have been on WoW, for example, which has significantly rewritten the power sets, zones, indeed most of everything many, many times over. Even their WoW Classic (I think it is called) was not, at release, the same WoW that premiered in 2004. The developers even said so. Instead it was something very similar, but with a lot of tweaks to improve on original faults and to make the game compatible with modern technology.

@Grasshopper and I have a little SG (literally) we play occasionally called The Flea Circus. It's a carry-over from the original game. Here are some of the characters: side view for Ringmaster detail: Grasshopper's "Circus Hercules" has a single-shoulder half-length cape. I didn't get that very well in the shot.

If I may, I've entered the beta, and was completely confused when statements acting as past-tense, that is, as if I should have long known about it, started playing out about the KW branch of the PPD being corrupt. I've spent some time now in the new KW, and I still feel someone whacked me with a 2x4 with that news. It wasn't an organic step, came out of nowhere, and I didn't find any development of it...at least so far. There needs to be something in the game, possibly earlier released than this page that clues the players in that the KW PPD was found out and removed. SUGGESTION: I'd like to suggest that it be the newsboys that have been hawking newspapers for years on the street. If they suddenly started yelling out an Extra! that the KW PPD was being investigated and/or removed, that is a simple way to set the stage and get player curiosity ready for what happens next. I don't play redside enough to know if there's an equivalent to the newsboys there, but at least the dominantly-played side could receive the info. Likewise, suddenly seeing Emil Christie's name everywhere was jarring. Again, something like the newboys announcing some social news about Emil or maybe some financial or political news of Emil would better set the stage. In this case, even the guy walking the streets, the one that occasionally talks about a hero he/she is passing, might do well to pass along the information about Emil and his connection to KW. After all, the public likes to talk about the billionaires and what they do, be it charitable acts, power plays, or scandals.

Just an observation: The last mission of the Ziegler arc contains a ton of text and very interesting lore advancement, but I'm saying that as one who soloed the arc and had the time to read it. As it takes a lot of time to cover the text, is this really going to work for a full team, when the other 7 cannot read the text? Might there be a way for them to at least see what the team lead is reading? Otherwise, they're standing around for a while, which usually doesn't do well for maintaining team cohesiveness, when team members want to move on to the next arc to punch things.

Opening text for Chapter Four: Liquified Assets has orange-colored text reading: Ziegler hands you a photo. But I was calling this in from a great distance. It's a minor quirk, but weird. The game is set sometime after 2012. Might I suggest the text read something like: Ziegler transfers a photo to your smartphone. This would cover the discrepancy of handing a photo when your character is actually not in proximity.

I'm going to hope it is on the mid to higher side. He's bring an ensemble in, with several character either little known or unknown to the audience. They're going to need a bit of time to develop properly.

Says the Magic 8-Ball.

The Doorbuster Badge: Destroy 100 Force Field Doors, Magical Barriers or Reinforced doors. I do a lot of TFs having the required doors, and since 2019 I've never seen anyone interested in working towards this badge. How come? I realize a great many players are not "badgers" but I'd have thought I'd see someone ask the team to take out a few doors in the Yin TF police station, or the Council jail doors in Moonfire TF. Something like that.

Where is this? Somewhere red side?