Ben_H

In the past I wouldn't expect it, but given how both the PS4 and Xbox One are much closer to PCs in terms of architecture than past consoles, I would certainly think that it would be easier to do next time it happens. It's not like in the past where everyone had their own proprietary components that had to be developed for separately.

I haven't stopped buying from Steam, but I have stopped buying stuff during sales unless it is something I was already considering. I used to buy a lot of games just because they were cheap and then end up only playing them for 20 minutes.

I do find their interface increasingly tough to use. There's simply too much stuff now that hides things I might actually want. The tab on the front page that shows games on special is basically useless now because there are thousands of junk games that are perpetually on sale.

I hope so. Even Hamilton seemed pretty unhappy about Ocon's situation in the post-qualifying press conference and talked about how stupid it's getting with pay drivers getting better seats than actual good drivers.

They accidentally taped Vettel talking to Ocon about it right after qualifying and they said this (from Motorsport):

Vettel: Next year? Still nothing?

Ocon: No.

Vettel: Will you be here [at Force India]? No?

Ocon: No, no. The seat is taken.

Vettel: Oh yeah? Who?

Ocon: Have a guess! The one who bought it!

Vettel: Yes, but the other one...?

Ocon: Well, the other one [Sergio Perez] brings money.

He definitely sounds like he's getting frustrated. But who can blame him? He's been consistently one of the better drivers outside the top 3 teams since the start of 2017 and now he gets to deal with this.

edit: RaceFans has an article claiming he's going to McLaren and there's going to be a bunch of driver swapping that will ultimately end with Ericsson losing his seat. I'll believe it when I see it. They've been posting a lot of kind of sensationalist articles of this type that sound too convoluted and fishy to be true. Like the one claiming Leclerc and Kimi were swapping seats for Belgium.

The new rumour is that Stroll will be at Force India by next weekend at Monza, replacing Ocon, who will be without a drive for the rest of the year. This entire move already feels disgusting, but given that Ocon just qualified 3rd and has been consistently doing well against Perez all year, it feels even dirtier than it already did. Ocon has been one of the better younger drivers since coming into F1. Stroll has been 99% horrible. He had one podium he lucked into and one good qualifying result he lucked into but other than that he's been on the level of a 1990s pay driver at best.

It's been a kinda disappointing year so far for me, music wise. Nothing new has been catching on with me so I've been mostly delving deeper into 70s/early 80s funk, RnB, and disco. I will happily geek out over Bernard Edwards, Louis Johnson, and Nate Watts basslines all day so this is fine with me.

The new Chromeo album was pretty disappointing. It's a watered down version of their last album, and I was hoping for more given how long it has been since they have released an album. I got the feeling while listening to the album that they've sacrificed a lot of their funkiness in a play for more mainstream appeal and it has ended up making the album dull. Their song "Play The Fool" off their previous album is funkier than the entirety of their new album, not to mention "Come Alive" and "Jealous", two other insanely good songs off that album. There are maybe two songs off the new album I would want to listen to again.

I mentioned The Fearless Flyers before, and they have since put out more songs. All of it is pretty good!

Kalmah put out a new album that is definitely a Kalmah album. It's not anything groundbreaking but it's okay.

That's a big struggle I'm having right now. My old job was the opposite of what your old job sounds like it was. It was low stress and fun, but was very physical and I was starting to have signs of it getting to me (my back and shoulders were constantly in pain and I was getting nerve issues in my hands). An older guy I worked with there who had done it for many years had warned me that it would get to me if I didn't stop sooner rather than later. He had to go on medical leave and have two separate major shoulder surgeries about a year ago and that was one of the cues to me that I needed to do something else. With everything else that happened I knew it was time for change.

Now I have to decide if I want some kind of office job that could potentially be stressful but pay better and be less physical, or something else more hands-on that's perhaps a little less tough on the back.

This thread is great! It's really inspiring for me. It's making me think a lot about moving to a different city. I've never felt like I fit in where I currently live, and last year we did a trip somewhere that I immediately loved and felt at home at. This is definitely something to think about.

For me, saving up enough money to quit working for a few months so I can focus on myself has been quite helpful. I had a very tough last three years with one of my parents being terminally ill and slowly dying (they passed in February) and I never had a chance to recharge the whole time because something was always happening with appointments and I was spending a good part of my day caring for them. When they passed, I didn't give myself any time to recover and tried to keep busy before I finally burned out in April.

So I quit my job, and have taken the whole summer off. In that time I have learned how to record and mix music, learned video editing (which resulted in me making this monstrosity as a first project), became a much better musician, got back into fitness, learned to cook many new things and refined other recipes I already knew, refreshed my knowledge in programming and learned a whole bunch of new things (I'll be trying to find work doing this), and a whole bunch more.

My next focuses will be finding new work (I have no interest in going back to my old job), getting my own place, and who knows what else.

Alonso has announced he is leaving F1 (note the press release did not say retiring which leaves the option of him coming back in a year or two should he want to) to pursue other racing opportunities. Big news obviously and it will have a massive impact on what driver goes where.

He had a video on his Twitter announcing it, and honestly at first I thought it was an elaborate joke because he likes doing that kind of stuff, but then I realized it was real.

I think I lasted 4 games of Dota 2 with random players as teammates before I quit. I had only played with someone I knew from work and her friends for a fair number of games so going from that to random horrid people made me quit the game.

I didn't even bother buying Overwatch after hearing how bad it was. I was going to buy it but I have heard nothing good about the community.

Starcraft 2, since going free-to-play, has had a lot of new players, but sadly also a ton of troll accounts. I faced one person who I found in their history would throw 10-20 games in a row to drop their MMR then do troll strategies while being fairly rude. They were one of the few people I've reported in SC2. I never saw that type of behaviour back in the day. There'd be the odd person being an idiot playing unranked but never people being actively malicious like that.

Battlefield 2 had an amazing community back in the day. You could go into almost any server, squad up and at least have co-operative teammates who would do their best to help you. People were rarely rude from what I remember. But that was a different time compared to how multiplayer PC games are now.

The Ricciardo news is huge. Given that Renault supposedly has a fairly big budget and has been improving a lot the last year, it might be a good long term move for him, especially if Honda keeps making questionable engines. Honda seems to be getting a bit more power now but is still insanely unreliable. It seems like Hartley has a new engine every other weekend at this point.

In other news I now no longer can wear my Redbull Racing shirt. I absolutely abhor Verstappen. He's the anti-Leclerc. He's cocky, hot-headed and doesn't own up for his mistakes. Leclerc apologizes for things that aren't even his fault and seems genuinely thankful and appreciative of everyone. There was a recent interview with him in the Washington Post that made be like him even more than I already did. He basically spent the whole thing talking about how thankful he was for the help of other people throughout his career, especially his late father, Jules Bianchi, and Jules' dad.

The F1 Facebook page had a video showing confirmed drivers and so far it looks like only basically 6 are confirmed, the Mercedes drivers, the Renault drivers, Vettel, and Verstappen. Everyone else is still up in the air.