Eoae

I guess Sami lives under a rock. Getting people canceled for not agreeing with your opinions is the new American hobby.

That's the way I took it too. But, if the CDC and Fauci and the like are telling states the vaccinated don't need to wear masks, shouldn't states start winding down mask mandates? Most states are around 60% and rising steadily, so the majority of eligible adults are probably vaccinated. This does have some issues - the ones pointed out above. Our governor is taking a "split the baby" approach. Lol, probably should have expected this from a guy that got elected as a democrat, them promptly switched parties (though the real question is why the state Democratic Party believed he was one of them in the first place and funded his campaign). Vaccinated can stop wearing masks, unvaccinated wear masks for a few more weeks. Yeah.... I have no idea how that's supposed to work. I've been vaccinated for quite a while, but, if I weren't, I'd probably just lie if a store clerk asked. Lol, I may lie anyway just for the heck of it. I'm guessing businesses and whatnot will be slow to lift mask rules. Though a lot of them may not want to turn away business at this point. Hopefully it doesn't take too long to return to some semblance of normal. Fauci predicted it would take about a year, which seems reasonable-ish.

Lol, I'd probably end up buying once of each color for my wife and letting her choose. FWIW, I'm a big fan of both Hollow Knight and Ori (though Will of the Wisps is probably the better of the two Ori games. I recommend them both though).

Be happy your wife was satisfied with the Switch Lite. Mine has cycled through a couple different ones. 2017 Switch (used, first one I bought) -> Switch Lite (meh) -> Animal Crossing LE (too girly) -> Current model with the better battery. Of course, just as I finished buying/selling her discarded Switches, the Mario LE came out and I replaced mine. She plays other "cutesey" games once in a while, but mostly just plays AC. Also, I know where my cartridge port is, but I've never used it. I only buy physical editions anymore if the digital edition gets delisted. 3D All-Stars is my one and only retail Switch game, but it's still shrink-wrapped. I'll only use it if something happens to my Switch and I can't re-download the game.

True, but what's the rationale for ignoring the CDC? For that matter, mask mandates and shutdowns were originally put in place out of fear the healthcare system would be overwhelmed and collapse. We seem to be well past that point. My state has approx. 200 people hospitalized with Covid in the entire state (they could all fit on one floor of our hometown University hospital, basically). I'm guessing it will take some time, but things will slowly go back to almost normal and masks will all but disappear by... the end of the year, maybe?

Finished up Assassin's Creed II on my Xbox Series X (playing the Xbox One Remaster, with the FPS boosted to 60 fps) and it's outstanding. You can tell it was originally a 360 game, but it looks phenomenal for what it is and AC at a stable 60 fps is buttery smooth. It's pretty much everything you could ask for from the title. I don't understand how people can't find anything to play. I've got too much to play right now. Lot of back compat titles I want to play or replay. A lot of my favorite titles are back in the backlog pile because they have an optimization patch. Starting Nier Replicant tonight. Want to play RE Village, but..... like I said, already backed up. Kinda hoping to squeeze in Mass Effect 1 after Replicant, but.... Biomutant. Really hyped for Biomutant. I kinda want to hold off a bit until they work out the bugs, but.... I'm more enthusiastic than I usually get.

PS4 version featured an updated control scheme. You could change back to the original layout via a menu option, irrc. Really like both Shadow and Ico. Shadow may be my favorite game ever.

Is it a money thing? I mean, he probably needs the money, but it also seems exactly the sort of low-rent thing an aging minor celebrity who doesn't want to give up the spotlight would sign on for. I think I joked last time this came up that, if there's ever a sequel to the Wrestler, Randy the Ram should try to land a CarShield gig. I like Ric as a performer, but I think I know too much about him. I try not to be judgmental about how other people live, but... kids. If you want to be the Nature Boy 24/7 and live and die that way, fine, but maybe not have kids and a wife if you're not intending to be home to spend time with them. Whenever Ric's 30 for 30 documentary comes up, I flash back to Ric bragging that he slept with 100,000 women and wonder what Charlotte and David thought when they saw that bit. Of course, they lived it, so it presumably wasn't news to them. I mean, unless I want to hurt my kids, I can't imagine why I would ever admit to something lie that, much less brag about it on tv.

FWIW, I thought Darby's bump was much dumber than Jericho's. Although Alvarez says AEW just padded the set by shoving cardboard boxes under the spot, not an actual crash pad. Okayyyyyyyy.

I know someone who got through 2020 lockdowns that way. I'm mildly curious about how much rates for that sort of thing went up during the pandemic.

I was joking. No worries. I've been called far worse.

Nick Gage will probably live forever. Even the Grim Reaper's afraid of him.

Lol, what do you think I am? Some sort of luddite? Actually, I read about those features before I got the console, but promptly forgot about them. I did a little reading a few minutes ago and I'll check out those features over the weekend. Thanks. I feel like the sensible thing to do would be keep whatever I can on the space I have (internal storage + expansion card) and re-download games and saves from the cloud and MS store as necessary, but I kinda like having everything I bought at hand. Same reason I don't sign up for Gamepass or PS+. Feels too much like renting to me. It's an illusion, of course. Digital games won't last forever. Sooner or later, something will happen to cut off access - maybe even something as simple as an XBL outage. But it makes me feel better, lol. Less validation and more a desire to see what I'm overlooking. I'm well aware I am a bit of a luddite and don't always have a good grasp of some of these issues. I know enough to know I don't know enough, if that makes any sense. And I was right in this case. I would probably have been reminded that I can compress files or remove unused components (multiplayer) from some games. but maybe not. So I appreciate you pointing that out. Thanks. You made some good points I'll need to think about.

What's the best way strategy for storage. I'm already finding that I'm running out of space on my Xbox. At the moment, I have the Seagare 1 TB storage expansion card installed + a 2 tb Seagate Game Drive (usb). USB is already fairly full with backwards compatible X360 games + a fair number of X One games. At the moment, my basic strategy is b/c Xbox and 360 game go on usb drive, enhanced Xbox One and Series X games go to SSD expansion card. I'm going to buy another device before I get too far along and moving games to a new drive becomes a more mammoth task than it already is. My options are a larger USB drive (prob. a larger Game Gear drive, since I prefer to use official/licensed products) or an external SSD drive. Seagate Game Drives go up to 6 or 8 tb. Seagate also makes an external SSD drive for the Series X, but the largest size is 2 TB and the cost is $380. Space is going to be a huge issue for me no matter what. At the moment, I'm thinking a large USB drive makes the most sense. For both Xbox and PS5, I've been using USB drives to store PS4 and Xbox One and older games, then moving them to the console's internal storage when I'm ready to play a particular game. Not too fussed about time spent swapping games between USB drives and internal storage, but I do want to play even older games off the SSD so I get max benefits from loading times and such. One thing I'm wondering about but can't find the answer: can you use more than one USB drive at a time? Console has multiple USB ports but I don't have a spare USB drive to plug in (all of mine are in use and I'm not wanting to reformat any of them just to test a theory). Thoughts or suggestions? Thanks.

Eh, I played TLOU remaster a few months ago and still thought it was great. Regarding the ending:

Maybe? I mean, it's not out of the question. Maybe he felt bad and realized he didn't have the trust of his team going forward. Or maybe he remembered that he directed Witcher 3 and can probably find another job in the industry and realized he mostly wanted his team to go to Hell. Or maybe he is guilty and his "resignation" is damage control (this is probably how my firm would handle it). I dunno. I've got practically no information to go on here, so it's kind of hard for me to pretend I have an informed opinion.

On the one hand, I don't believe for a second Bryan is going to sign anywhere except the WWE. On the other hand, I can't imagine Vince would voluntarily risk Bryan becoming a free agent even for 24 hours. So presumably Bryan is the party not willing to agree to a new contract? Maybe he's just holding out for more money or the right to work elsewhere part-time, or maybe he really is ready to go elsewhere and finish out his career. I'll believe it when I see it, but I'm legit curious to see how this plays out.

He was cleared by an investigation, but apologized to employees and quit anyway. I dunno. I don't think it is necessarily good news (though, since I wasn't there and no very little of what actually transpired, I don't feel I have enough information to have an opinion either way).

Microsoft's FPS boost is probably going to turn me into a framerate snob. Really anticipating seeing it patched into games like Bayonetta, Sekiro, DMC: Devil May Cry, etc.

The past few weeks, I've only watched the last 5-10 minutes of the show. This may be the idea way to watch WWE. Last week had the insane finishing stretch, which saw the heels legally triple-team the babyfaces (why do more stables not do this?), only for Kushida to heroically struggle back into the ring after eating a nasty powerbomb outside - at which point Escobar smushed him again and Kushida's spirit decided it was time to hit the bar and left his body. This week had a nuts street fight which - gasp - the heels actually won. Fairly, even. I have no idea how tiny LeRae walked away from some of those spots. Flipped by one other time earlier in the night and Karrion Kross and Orange "Cool" Cassidy Kyle O'Reilly were talking. Which really isn't the strong suit of either. That was enough to keep me channel flipping.

Footage of Arn with hair is only slightly less rare than Bigfoot on film. .

I can relate. Microsoft forced me to go to Best Buy today and pick up a 4K tv that can handle 120 frames per second. My life is hard. So very, very hard. If the wife asks about the credit card charge, I'm planning to fake cry and tearfully confess that I have a monkey on my back and his name is Phil Spencer.

I didn’t think she was, but didn’t bother to look it up. Shrug. That’s the actual quote from Dave when he and Alvarez were discussing her last NXT match. Maybe he meant the company should have signed her sooner and put her on the main roster immediately? Dave’s opinion is that WWE is wasting Storm’s prime years and he doesn’t understand what Vince is waiting for.

I won't be surprised if it triggers Meltzer and Alvarez. They went on a tangent last week about the logjam of talented women in NXT. Dave thinks Toni Storm, in particular, should have been on the main roster four years ago. Was Eva Marie that much over during her previous run? i didn't think she was, but <shrug> I could be wrong. Being honest, there are probably 8-10 women in NXT I'd prefer to get called up in Eva Marie's place. But... there's a fair chance a lot of the NXT women are going to get marginalized on the main roster if/when they get called up. We'll see. I guess commentary referenced Lana's "ballet training in Russia" last night? Lol, haven't they admitted on TV that Lana is American? That seemed out of place.