Snow, snow, snow, snowy snow snow.
Big heavy snow, and I’m working from home today.
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Need this…
Patent that, and you’ll make a fortune.
I’m still working on the ability to punch someone in the face over TCP/IP. I’ll make billions.
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I’ve thought about that a lot over the past few years, and I think it would be an excellent premise for a horror-comedy about online trolls, conspiracy loons, and willfully stupid people being murdered/injured while online.
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Isn’t that just an evolution of teledildonics?
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That wouldn’t so much be a punch. Poke maybe. Or smack?
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Different strokes for different folks.
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Ohhhhhh, I didn’t see that coming
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“What Made You Happy Today?”
This thread! Laughing MAO right now
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tl;dr: Several good things happened with my son.
Full version:
A few things that are inter-related.
First a bit of background. My son is notorious for bellowing when he is playing games - he plays online and talks to his friends while doing so. His justification for the bellowing is that the microphone he is using is rubbish and he needs to yell so his friends can hear him. He has a fairly good set of headphones that don’t have a mic, and a really old, almost defunct headset that doesn’t have working earphones, but does have a (barely) working mic. So he ends up with this complicated setup with one headset around his neck with the mic twisted up to his mouth, and another headset over his ears.
I’ve suggested to him many, many times that a decent headset with Mic would be a much better option, but he kept insisting that he wanted to keep his decent earphones and get a desktop microphone instead. This despite the fact that every place we look in doesn’t carry desktop microphones, and I’m extremely dubious whether that setup would actually give a better result anyway.
On my PC (which is right next to the one my son uses) I have a wireless USB headset. I love the wireless part of it, but the headset is the variety which sits on the ears rather than encompassing the ears. This means that when my son is sitting next to me I often can’t hear what’s coming through my speakers because of the aforementioned bellowing.
So anyway, on to the bits that made me happy.
My headset gave up the ghost. I was basically getting lots of crackling with the occasional bit of sound coming through. I think it was probably something loose inside as clamping my hands over them sometimes fixed the issue. That’s not really a practical solution so I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new headset.
I decided to spend a little bit more and get a 7.1 surround sound headset that encompasses the ear. The one I got was the Logitech G430 headset, which is touted as a gaming headset (though a lower end gaming headset).
My reasons for getting this headset were twofold.
Firstly, it would mean a much better chance of hearing things even if my son was bellowing next to me.
Secondly, I could lend it to my son to try and convince him that it was a better setup than his proposed solution.
Both reasons came up trumps 
I could hear everything through my headset even with my son next to me.
Later on after I had him borrowing the new headset I asked him whether it was any good and he very sheepishly said "yeah, the sound quality is really good and the microphone is almost perfect"
Me: "So you want me to get you one too?"
Him: “Yes please”
Hallelujah!
He also said to my wife the day before that he guessed he didn’t have such a bad dad after all (this is after I did a lot of taxi work for him and his friends, and also helped him clean up after his party).
He might actually be maturing a bit 
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ToasterFairy’s planning a new eppysode to The Bitching Hour
OO! Time to invent a new drink. Probably with our Really Horrible Hellfire bitters. And tequila. Possibly some kind of pickled cactus or maybe a blob of blue jello and some pickle juice.
Help needed with an ingredient list for the ACME Mind Scrub.
Sounds like it could be related to the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster!! Add lemons!
After seeing a new vet on Saturday, the cat that was knocking on death’s door back in May probably doesn’t have cancer.
I mean, he probably didn’t have cancer before the visit either, but 6 months after an ultrasound showed something of concern in his intestines, he still has no masses in his abdomen that can be felt by a thorough groping and his weight has remained constant for 3 months. Which means it’s probably an irritable bowel condition.
Previous vet didn’t bother taking the time to explain anything like this the last time he had a full exam (September).
New vet also spent over an hour with me on this initial visit and seemed genuinely interested in understanding both cats’ histories, our concerns, how we take care of them as they reach old age, etc. Instead of just telling me all the things I should be doing that make them money every 6 months.
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I found the Logitech G430 headset on sale at Best Buy today and picked up a set for my nephew as a Christmas gift. Luckily for me, I had a gift card handy that I got when I bought my wife a Keurig machine for her last week. My son has the G633 surround headset and I love the sound they produce. I’m sure my nephew will be thrilled since I cobbled together a cheap gaming PC out of my father’s old PC and a GTX-750 that I took out of my kid’s PC for him earlier this year.
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There’s two plot points in my story that I thought were a little outlandish, and then this week, I got confirmation that truth is stranger than fiction. One was dead-on for what I wrote and the other confirmed the basic premise of the story.
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Merry Christmas!
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Haha
I am turning a five pound bag of sweet rice into mochi for New Year’s. It’s enough for two not quite full batches, and I’m on the second batch now.
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