That’s really cool! Gonna try to convince siblings to enter since I can’t.

I was having a similar problem with another game, and I had a similar desire to learn general troubleshooting rather than have someone give me a specific fix. That said, I don’t know if I can help because for me it’s basically butt my head against a wall until I poke something enough that it works - usually I don’t know enough to understand why the thing works.

I was installing my games onto a secondary drive. The problem turned out to be that that drive had been formatted by Windows back when my computer was set up to dual-boot. Some games still ran fine in Linux, but this particular game nothing would happen when I clicked Play. On a whim I tried installing it on the primary drive with the OS, and it worked first time. So there was something about that game that didn’t work with the drive formatting.

(I’ve since reformatted the second hard drive so that everything should now play nice with Linux, now that I no longer have Windows. Game is fine now.)

I think there’s also entrenchment in the history we build up on a site. Yesterday Facebook reminded me that it’s been 12 years since we took in a stray cat our neighbours had been looking after. We have many fond memories of that cat, but it was nice to have something external bring up that initial memory of first bringing him into our house. Today’s “memories” include silly quotes from siblings. There are old discussions to look back on. I’ll miss that sort of thing as well as the people. Fully setting up on a new platform (and leaving Facebook) feels like starting over, and inertia is hard to overcome.

This last month or so, I’ve finally reached a point where I’m ready to move away from Facebook even though it’s my only connection to many people. I hope that when I go, one or two might join me in a different online space… but I’m not deluding myself thinking it’ll be more than that.

I have, however, just shared this article over there as a kind of advance notice. I know I’m not the only one in my circle who is annoyed by the enshittification.

I wasn’t going to plant a veggie garden at home this year. We’re hoping to move soon, so it seemed like wasted effort - I rented a plot at the community garden instead. But finding a new place has been slow, so we’ve just put in some leafy greens in the home garden. We’ll be able to eat from them even if we do manage to move before end of summer. Hopefully the heat will slow down the grass that likes to take over this bed.

The bed at the community garden came with a lot of leeks. They’re very crowded (I suspect mostly self-sown) and we really need to pull some out this week. I’ll keep the roots and re-plant them at home to grow new leeks.

Thanks!

Speed and luck are definitely stats I often overlook. I’ll try to make use of them.

I just picked up my old farm on Switch, now that Switch has the 1.6 update. Always takes me a while to get back into the swing of a farm when I haven’t looked at it for a while.

Need to grit my teeth and dive to the bottom of the Skull Cavern. I’ve never made it in any of my farms. Any tips?

Slice and dehydrated some!

Dehydrated mushies can be kept (long shelf life) to add to meals. Or put them through a food processor to make a powder (takes up much less space, if that’s an issue for you) which is great for extra flavour in soups, sauces, casseroles, etc.

Did mine a couple of years ago after reading an article about the potential for lead in soils in residential areas.

Thankfully my yard is fine, only the drip line of the house shows elevated lead (probably was originally painted with lead paint). So we just won’t put food plants in the beds next to the house.

If you can find an annual plan that fits your needs, and paying for a year at once is possible, that may work out cheaper per month.

It’s been a while since I looked for a new plan, but it seems to me that the direction mobile plans are going is that the only differences are how much data and whether anything international is included. Most plans these days include unlimited calls and texts. As someone who doesn’t do much calling or texting and needs like 2GB/month tops, pretty much everything has more than I need. A few years ago I was service hopping to whoever would give me a $10/month plan, but many of those have increased to $15/month.

The plan I’m currently on is no longer available to new customers, so unfortunately I can’t recommend it to you.

I’ve never had a scarecrow wrecked. Can that actually happen?

Hawaii… rofl

The more of the Cosmere you read, the more things will connect and the clearer the picture will be. Every time I re-read SA, I see new connections I’d missed before. Some of that is familiarity with the magics of other planets, because that changes your read from “character did a weird thing” to “hey! that’s magic from this other planet; why/how has it turned up here?”

In the earlier books, the crossovers between worlds/magics and the underlying “how things work” are more subtle and you’ll miss things on first read. In more recent books, it’s more overt.

Some of that is because of how much the protagonists themselves understand. For example, in the first Mistborn trilogy the characters really don’t understand what’s going on on their own planet, so of course you don’t get a good explanation. In Secret History, the POV character does run into people who know quite a lot about what is going on, so when Secret History revisits the events of the main trilogy you’re able to understand the forces driving those catastrophic events.

The characters in SA started off thinking magic wasn’t real and knowing nothing about realms and worlds beyond their own. They are learning a lot through their spren and Hoid, but there is still a lot that they don’t know. And you as the reader are learning along with them.

The training rod is definitely not a new addition. I used it in my first game a couple of years ago because I found fishing too hard. There was a dialogue where Willy asked me how I was finding the fishing, and one of my options to reply was “it’s too hard”. Then he told me to buy the training rod. I don’t know if it was available before that; I never looked. But try talking to Willy when you see him and maybe it will come up?

The lake outside the mine is a good place to start. You get carp there, and sometimes they never leave the position your bar starts in, so you don’t even have to do anything to catch them - free XP!

Prequel to Wall-E.

You can boil them to extend shelf life. Once a food is cooked, you have another week (approximately) to use it before it goes off - maybe a little longer for eggs still in unbroken shells. Boil them, store them in the fridge, and add them to meals over the next week.

I just finished Dragonsteel Prime. I read Way of Kings Prime when it was released (so: not recently). Dragonsteel (canon) hasn’t been written yet, so I’m not sure what you want to compare DP to?

Brandon has commented that Dragonsteel (Prime) never got published because the story didn’t really work. Some elements of it eventually turned up in Stormlight, of course.

I enjoyed both Prime books as a look at early versions of characters, settings, and magics. Reading WoKP after several Stormlight books, it was a little jarring to have a character die in Prime who is very much alive (as of SA4). DP didn’t do that to me; and as much as Brandon says there’s an early version of Shallan in that book, it felt like a wholly different character. I quite enjoyed getting to know Frost a little bit, and seeing early Hoid.

My first smartphone was a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact. I’m a woman with all the small pockets that entails, and that phone was a great size. Sony was one of the last manufacturers making a smaller version of their flagship phone without sacrificing performance quality. I would have stuck with this line of phones if it hadn’t been discontinued. Alas.

My current phone is a OnePlus 6, a gift rather than something I chose. It’s not huge, but it is the biggest phone I have owned. And had I been choosing, I likely would not have considered this model because one of my criteria is that the phone fits comfortably in my pockets.

It was a happy surprise that the current phone actually does fit well enough (mostly). And this has shown me that I can be more flexible than I thought when it comes to phone size.

Not sure what direction I’m looking when it comes time to replace this phone. Truthfully, I’d still probably prefer something a little smaller. But in a limited market, you take what you can get.

If you already have the cheese on hand, do an experiment. Cut off a piece and freeze it overnight. Next day, defrost it and see how it is. Because the issue you’re concerned about is change to texture or taste after freezing and thawing, you only need to leave it long enough to be fully frozen through - not as long as you normally would for storage.

(You wouldn’t want to buy a bulk size piece of meat/cheese just to experiment, but if you already have some on hand it’s worth trying for yourself to find out if you’ll find the result satisfactory.)

Shipping costs for the set bundles are listed on the campaign page. If you want add-ons, that will be extra and calculated later.

It does say somewhere that Dragonsteel will cover import duties for all international backers.

So really, the only unknown is shipping for add-ons. If shipping cost is a stress, maybe stick to the bundles with fixed shipping costs?