Techwright

While most of us here probably don't consider Avatar: The Last Airbender old, as of February it will be 19 years since it premiered. By comparison, the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, famous for it's theme song, was 19 years old my sophomore college year. At the end of that school year, we had the very popular animated G.I. Joe: The Movie come out, meaning Avatar premiered 18 years after it (just a year shy of 19), aaaand...now I feel incredibly old.

Now I'm wanting a mash-up of Zemo dancing to the Agatha All Along song.

Was unaware that Tom Servo was still alive.

Hot-swappable batteries is one of the things I absolutely love about the ruggedized Panasonic CF series of laptops. I wish everyone went that route. I've not discussed it yet, but I share your opinion about HP, and @Greycat's opinion about Dell. Sadly, from what I see, these are the two prominent computers in the American workplace, though I'm happy to see the occasional Lenovo workshop. Those friends that ask for buying advice, I don't say "don't buy" on these two, I just ask them to consider the two after considering other brands, then I follow up by telling all the war stories I've gone through with the brands. They usually make a good informed choice after that. I was previously unaware of Blackview. It's now on my radar. Thank you! Good advice on the safety stuff.

Depends. Do I get to work from home?

There's room for both in this game, so long as the rules are followed. If I were recommending to a new player, I'd say build a few unique characters to begin with, and work on a homage down the road when one is more skilled in the character designer and has had time to think about it in context of the rules. Not harping on the rules so much as trying to keep the next sap from the frustration and sorrow of having his/her creation genericized. Been there, done that early in the OG. Besides, good homages can be a blast. Surely there's a trio of players at some point out there running around in cardinal red attire (maybe one with an aviator's hat), dropping in on people and declaring "Nobody expects the..."

Don't forget "Iknownuthing!" What? That isn't German? But Shultz said it a lot. "Sadistic" doesn't cover it? Granted, the word has broadened in use over the years. As I don't speak it, mind clarifying "formalized system"? I had a late friend, a German teacher, once tell me German can push words together in a chain to create one long word. Is that what you're describing?

I'm not surprised, just start by looking at the written alphabets. Modern Mandarin has around 3,500 essential alphabetical character (and can go thousands higher), and modern Japanese has 3 different alphabets with a minimum of 46 characters each (with Kanji having heaps more). For English writers using a 26-character alphabet, German words formed by the alphabet of the same 26 characters and 4 special characters, would seem far easier to learn. Of course, I say that a language using mostly the same characters as my native language is easier, but then I see Icelandic. Despite it using mostly the same alphabet, I'm still trying to figure out the name of that volcano that interrupted international travel back in 2010, and that is but a single word.

Out of my stash of YouTube links, this one spoke to me, possibly because of Snarky's recent discussion on language.

I'm not familiar with that model, but we had a problem with HP batteries in work laptops swelling several years back. Of course, back then, manufacturers courteously let users have a pop-off cover with which to easily swap the battery. Most nowadays seal the back and you need someone with A+ certification to change it so as not to void warranty.

Personal opinion: I'd not be down for rebranding the police scanner. It just means another group of characters (police) needing a repurposing. What I would be down for is a second level of scanner missions: random missions that automatically come in as tougher assignments or assignments with a higher percentage of crazy stuff happening (timers, bombs, nests of evil Kheldians, etc.) I'd been thinking along those lines as well. Hero Corp to me seems like something straddling everything from Pinkerton Security to Private Military Contractor. You'll have some that are 9-to-5, like white hat tech security, some investigative and undercover ops that definitely aren't 9-to-5, and mercenary security ops at the other end of the spectrum. Considering a lot of very interesting Private Military Contractor stories I've seen in the news these last two decades, everything from Blackwater to Wagner, I'd say there are plenty of crazy story opportunities for a Hero Corp update.

Your story is more common than you think. People often mash bits and pieces of languages together for communication, especially in melting pot pocket cultures. A dear, 81-year-old friend of mine grew up in a West Virginia coal-mining valley, and the immigrant, semi-isolated culture there communicated in a mishmash of Baltic languages and English. The result was almost it's own language. American English speakers had trouble understanding him. He came to my state for college, and had 4 full years of remedial English. Ironically, he went into a profession that required constant public speaking, and became well known in his circles for short, pithy, clearly-pronounced (almost clipped) speeches, which insiders know come from intense practice to keep his Baltics-English fusion from resurfacing.

I've learned several basic German words for survival needs over the decades such as: bratwurst, wiener schnitzel, spätzle. Bitte und danke. I've even greater linguistical survival skills in Spanish countries. I'm hoping to figure out Canadian some day. (Oh, my sis-in-law is going to kill me...)

Magic 8 Ball says:

So it's a tower defense game? 😉

Tough choice. I have only a few but love them all. I suppose I'll note 1 hero and 1 villain: Hero: Rainforest Revenant, homage to The Phantom. He's a Dual Pistols/Ninjitsu Sentinel. I've changed his costume's dominant color to forest green (makes more sense in the jungle) and have given him goggles instead of the iconic mask . I couldn't do everything I wanted with the costume, but that's probably for the best. Don't want to get too close to the OG. I've also bought the PW2 wolf to follow him around. If you know, you know. He's posted here in the costume thread of the art forum. Villain: The Eggsterminator: homage to Egghead, Vincent Price's character on the 1960s Batman TV show. Thugs/Forcefield Mastermind. I've chosen two different face looks for the character: one like a solid white egg, one like a cracked-shell egg. By necessity to the game he is more violent than the campy Egghead, but I tend to ham it up with the character, trying to use the "egg-" substitute for the "ex-" when typing, just like Price did. I also consider the force field powerset a tie-in to character obsession with everything eggs, since they look a bit ovoid, and I've colored them pale egg colors. I just wish we had thugs with turtleneck sweaters and sewn-on name badges. Eggy's various looks can be found here in the costume thread.

It's the 2023 holiday buying season (at least in the USA), and as a desktop tech, I'm getting asked again as to which brands of laptops and desktop PCs to consider or avoid purchasing. I'm also being asked for details to consider when weighing options. I have my thoughts on this, and have doled them out to some already, but I know a lot of folks in the forums are techs or power users, and I'd like to ask for feedback from you. Maybe you've seen or considered something I have not, and I can both learn something new and add that to recommendations for shopping friends. Also, I know little of non-iPad tablet PCs, they just don't come up in my work, so those with advice in that field are invited to contribute. One last note, those that ask me are usually not seeking a gaming computer, so if you could clarify gaming choices vs. standard use choices, that'd be great!

Why is it that the first thing beneficent, advanced alien races do when contacting lesser races is...

As the MCU did for Agatha Harkness as well. Ya gotta go through young to reach elderly, so I'm willing to see what's involved.

New Mutants, as I recall, got a very, very late start, with numerous delays, even after it was shot, and then was almost pushed out as a "hey, gotta get this old stuff off the shelf" thing. The flaw with it, did not lie with it, but with the logistics people who were supposed to promote and push it out better. (Well, that and Covid screwing everything up at the theaters.)

That's all more about the woes of the actor than the character, isn't it?

I speculate that using lesser known characters is more about increasing their profile and market-ability over just making a blockbuster of a relatively unknown. Yes, GotG is the ultimate version of this rags-to-riches story, but there are other potentials. Sony has one big Marvel property to work with: Spider-Man, and all associated character. By making a Madame Web movie, if it even comes it moderately successful, it will grow their franchise possibilities, having raised recognition of Mme Web from only diehard comic book readers to a more casual, global audience. As to the Ant-Man movie, I'm still baffled...