Karl miller center reserve a room
Broadway
2009.03.05 14:54 jrobelen Broadway
A place to discuss all things Broadway as well as other plays and musicals! Please note, this sub does not allow any bootleg or sales posts/requests. Violating this rule may subject you to a permanent ban with no additional warning.
2013.10.15 21:42 fellybishh Learning Disabilities
This subreddit is a place for people who know of and/or have a learning disability, to talk about experiences and issues; furthermore, ways to get around obstacles with specific learning disabilities, or general learning disabilities.
2019.03.11 18:01 djronnieg The last bastion for Plasma TV aficionados
It was a bit of a surprise to see that there appeared to be no dedicated Plasma TV community on Reddit. Although I do plan to comb the archives within other Home Theater oriented subreddits, this subreddit exists to unify some key info and to share some useful tips.
2023.06.10 06:13 tintin1602 Re-let 1 bed/1 bath in a 4 bed/4 bath at Octave (2023-2024 school year)
Re-letting 1 bed/1 bath in a 4 bed/4 bath unit at Octave Apartments (210 S 4th St) for next school year
Rent: $915/month (utilities included and electricity paid by Octave up to $25)
Info:
submitted by tintin1602 to UIUC [link] [comments]
Rent: $915/month (utilities included and electricity paid by Octave up to $25)
Info:
- Starting 08/19/2023, Ending 07/31/2024
- D2 floor plan: https://liveatoctave.com/floorplan/d2/
- 3 others are male roommates (all engineering majors)
- Great for engineering students (really close to ECEB, Siebel, etc.)
- Many amenities such as the club room (pool table, shuffleboard, etc.), conference and study rooms, fitness center
- < 2 min walk from County Market
2023.06.10 06:13 Zagaroth [No Need For a Core?] - CH 094: Boing!
Cover Art <<Previous Start Next >>
Mordecai was simply giving into temptation with this second boss. He had wanted to save it for later development, but he also wanted to play with this idea now. And he felt that it would be a nice surprise. So for the first time Mordecai turned his attention towards the technically hostile organisms occupying a part of the dungeon.
“Wait, really? You’re going there? Ewww.” Came Kazue’s mental voice when she realized where his focus was shifting. Mordecai smiled at her response, but kept his attention on his search. He was being picky in a way, but he didn’t want to create something completely mindless. His small constructs might have very simple minds, but they did have minds.
Most of the auras he encountered were far too weak to even consider, despite the size of some of the creatures. There was a certain amount of strength developed from the mind; physical vitality alone could create large amounts of spirit but it took a mind and will to focus it and make it strong.
Of the auras that had a little something more to them, most of them tasted of little other than basic hunger. Those were not what he wanted. No, what he wanted was … there. It wasn’t much, not yet, but there was the slightest hint of curiosity, of hunger turned beyond physical satiation. That would do quite nicely. He could make an offer to a creature like that, a promise to help fulfill this new sensation. He didn’t offer safety or food, he offered stimulation and experience.
There was a sense of confusion at first, and Mordecai couldn’t be happier. If it could be confused, it could learn. The primitive proto-mind briefly stilled, then hesitantly reached back towards the connection to accept. Mordecai’s sense of the creature sharpened and solidified as it became one of his inhabitants, and he mentally grasped it to draw it to the boss room where his avatar awaited, and he opened his eyes to examine what was to become his newest boss.
A gelatinous mass of fluorescent colors shimmered in front of him. If the child-sized ooze didn’t glow slightly, he’d have considered it iridescent instead with the way its colors flowed and shifted. The surface of the creature had a texture that was constantly changing between smooth and crinkled, with occasional bits briefly becoming solid. And floating in the very center was a nearly invisible tiny sphere of crystal. “Oh, you are beautiful.” He murmured to it as he walked around and examined it. “You have the best integration of living crystal and slime I’ve seen yet. I would like to see something.” He stepped up close to it and raised his hand over its surface. “Just a quick poke. Relax and let your reflexes happen, I won’t hurt you and you can’t do any real harm to me.”
Once it acknowledged him, Mordecai used his middle finger to jab at it swiftly. The surface gave slightly before rapidly hardening against the impact and it reflexively built pressure behind that point, then as his finger retreated and the surface tension released the pressure behind that part of the surface automatically flung acid-coated shards of crystal at his hand.
Mordecai spun to the side to avoid most of it, but a few flecks still hit him. They did more damage to his sleeve than to his flesh, but a normal person wouldn’t have taken it quite so well. “Oh, I am going to be happy with you little one. I think we need to start with a name however, and then move on to enhancing you. What do you think of Klastoria?” It pulsed with a pleased-looking flash of color, and Mordecai smiled. “Then it is a pleasure to meet you Klastoria. I am Mordecai.”
“And I’m Kazue!” Announced his wife as she manifested her avatar. “Oh goddess, you are too cute Klastoria!” She practically danced in place as she squeed over the slime. “Mordecai, I want to hug her so badly! How did you find something so cute in that place?”
“Heh, I don’t recommend that just yet love, she needs to learn a bit of restraint first.” Wait a moment. “Um? Her?” He’d initially followed the gender identification before he realized what Kazue had said.
“Yep! Someone this shiny and cute has got to be a girl!” The little kitsune said, and Mordecai couldn’t help but shake his head with a smile.
“I think Zushi might have something to say about boys not being allowed to be cute.”
“Nah, he’s fluffy-cute, that’s different. Klastoria is shiny-cute and pretty like a girl.”
Mordecai decided to translate that into ‘I want her to be a girl’ more than being any sort of rule Kazue was truly serious about. He’d attribute it to youthful whim if it weren’t for the fact that he was pretty certain that a hundred years from now she’d be inclined to do the same sort of thing. He had met her mother after all. “Not a good idea just yet love. Your avatar isn’t acid resistant, and your clothes certainly aren’t.”
While they’d been talking, the little bits of crystal and acid that had hit the ground had melted together and flowed back to rejoin Klastoria. “And I have a spell that can help with that, but let me finish getting Klastoria ready first, alright?”
“Fine fine, hurry up, I want to hug her!”
It was hard to not laugh at Kazue’s eagerness as he turned his attention back to their newest boss-to-be. “Alright, looks like Kazue has decided you are going to be a girl. If you ever decide that’s not right for you, let us know. Now, we want to make you stronger and smarter, though the smarter might be a little slower to come.” Klastoria wouldn’t be able to fully understand what they were saying yet, but she would be able to remember.
He mentally grasped the available boss node and began feeding it the concept of the crystal core in the center gradually growing in size and its paths becoming smaller and more intricate. “We are going to want you to become much bigger …” he paused as a new idea came to him. “Oh wait, how dense can your crystal get?” He had already noticed that the fluid had been compressed when it turned into crystal. Oh, that should work.
“But you won’t always have to be that big. No, with a little enhancement, we can help you compact yourself into a completely crystal form. Yes, that’s going to be your focus, complete mastery of your form and the transition between fluid and solid states.” He had been thinking of focusing more on the acid attacks of a slime-type monster, enhanced with ranged attacks and crystal shards, along with Klastoria being better armored than a typical ooze-type, but this would be, hmm, not necessarily ‘better’ from an absolute sense, but more custom and unique.
Mordecai connected the boss node to Klastoria as he continued to feed in his concepts and took several steps back, motioning for Kazue to do the same. It took a moment for anything to change as all the mana began funneling in, but then Klastoria began to grow rapidly. In just a couple of minutes she grew into a sphere about 15 feet in diameter, jiggling excitedly at all the changes happening. Knowledge came as well as power and mass, and as soon as the connection was finalized she began experimenting.
The huge blob suddenly shrank, transforming into a hard, sharp-edged cube of crystal only about 5 feet across. Mordecai blinked as he ran the math, then double-checked what was happening. It took only a second to realize she’d evolved the concept into a limited version of Shape Change, allowing her to displace a portion of her mass the way many other shape-changing creatures could. But not all of it, she was still nine times as dense in this form, which was a rather intense compression. It put her somewhere in between iron and lead.
It also seemed uncomfortable based off of the emotions from Klastoria, who then began moving through a rapid series of other form-changing experiments. Most of them were manipulating her ability to shift between fluid and solid phases at will with nearly unlimited amounts of discreteness, but she was also able to shift and recall any amount of mass she needed to within her ranges.
She could form long limbs able to swing as freely as any tentacle, but could instantly harden her surface and/or interior to act like exo- or endo-skeletons, and her limbs could have any sort of surface she desired, creating almost any shape of blade or point. The hydraulic pressure that powered her limbs and gave her the ability to fire projectiles of crystallized acid also combined with her size-changing abilities to allow her to leap, and even spin or slightly course-correct by altering her density in one or more spots mid-air.
Climbing was easy too. Any sort of tree-like structure could just be grabbed and used to haul her body up, but she could also flow up walls and crawl along the ceiling by letting her body flow into the tiniest imperfections and then harden into crystal to obtain a surface-wide grip. Mordecai even created a smooth glass surface for her to try on, and Klastoria was able to figure out how to flatten her body enough that simply air pressure could hold her onto it, though she was a bit slower this way.
She couldn’t go perfectly flat though, that sphere of crystal that was the seat of her very self could not be altered. But the ability to change her form so freely gave her lots of options that she was going to be experimenting with for days. Mordecai did point out one new thing for her to try later: With her abilities, there is no reason she shouldn’t be able to drop from almost any height. In her larger form she could increase her internal pressure to just high enough to create a collapsing cushion, while if she made herself a dense, sharp cone she could fall straight into the ground or another object and force it to take the shock of her impact, the rigidity and hardness of her body keeping her from being damaged.
Kazue slid up beside him and asked in an ever-so-sweet voice. “Are you two done playing yet?”
Mordecai chuckled, then swept her into his arms to give her a lingering kiss. “Alright love, you can go hug the squishy slime. She’s learned great control now and should be able to be just soft and pliable enough.” Which honestly would be another great exercise for Klastoria, but he made sure not to mention that thought out loud.
“Yes!” Kazue flung herself at Klastoria with reckless abandon and was quick to explore other play options as the slime could also be anything from a soft cushion to sink into, to a bouncy spring to jump high in the air. Mordecai amused himself by sending some images of what Kazue was doing to Moriko, and the half-elf’s envy was tangible across their link. He doubted she would be initially quite as carefree as Kazue about it, but he didn’t doubt she would enjoy herself.
While his wife played, Mordecai set about double-checking the level and inhabitants, making sure everything tied together and worked smoothly. It would take a few days to get everyone into their routines and roles, and weeks of practice to become well-trained for this mix of terrain and style, but it would be well worth the effort.
The final step was to sweep through again and set limiters. The creatures could simply feel his intent and hold back where needed, but all the more trap-like organisms needed to have a second layer of mana woven over them to reign them in. Things were less sticky, hit softer, and were easier to break. But in exchange, he was able to apply a soft layer of vitality absorption that would increase the fatigue of dealing with the various dangers, roughly approximating how they might feel after dealing with the trap’s full strength.
It increased his overall costs for growing them by about 50%, and if he’d been trying to make them more deadly the expenditure would have failed.
Mordecai snorted. Intent indeed. He’d not thought to layer things like this, he’d grown up just knowing what his limits were on how strong he could make something based on where in his dungeon it was. He’d never tried making something strong, and then ‘waste’ mana by placing a restriction on it. A restriction he could release as needed, but his sincere intent was to only do so if he felt it was needed.
Well, that would cost them a few days at least until they had enough to push down and start the sixth floor, but that was okay. He wanted to work over some ideas with Kazue first anyway. The organization of the first five floors was fine, but despite the theming, the layout was a touch repetitive, and they were deep enough already to make brute forcing a ‘second’ entrance infeasible for most.
<<Previous Start Next >>
My Discord if you would like to talk about the book or see what else I am up to.
My Patreon if you want to support me directly.
Also to be found on Royal Road.
$3 Patreon: Early chapters, lore excerpts $5 Patreon: Short Stories $10 Patreon: New stories not published anywhere else (Until after I finish this story at least)
submitted by Zagaroth to redditserials [link] [comments]
“Wait, really? You’re going there? Ewww.” Came Kazue’s mental voice when she realized where his focus was shifting. Mordecai smiled at her response, but kept his attention on his search. He was being picky in a way, but he didn’t want to create something completely mindless. His small constructs might have very simple minds, but they did have minds.
Most of the auras he encountered were far too weak to even consider, despite the size of some of the creatures. There was a certain amount of strength developed from the mind; physical vitality alone could create large amounts of spirit but it took a mind and will to focus it and make it strong.
Of the auras that had a little something more to them, most of them tasted of little other than basic hunger. Those were not what he wanted. No, what he wanted was … there. It wasn’t much, not yet, but there was the slightest hint of curiosity, of hunger turned beyond physical satiation. That would do quite nicely. He could make an offer to a creature like that, a promise to help fulfill this new sensation. He didn’t offer safety or food, he offered stimulation and experience.
There was a sense of confusion at first, and Mordecai couldn’t be happier. If it could be confused, it could learn. The primitive proto-mind briefly stilled, then hesitantly reached back towards the connection to accept. Mordecai’s sense of the creature sharpened and solidified as it became one of his inhabitants, and he mentally grasped it to draw it to the boss room where his avatar awaited, and he opened his eyes to examine what was to become his newest boss.
A gelatinous mass of fluorescent colors shimmered in front of him. If the child-sized ooze didn’t glow slightly, he’d have considered it iridescent instead with the way its colors flowed and shifted. The surface of the creature had a texture that was constantly changing between smooth and crinkled, with occasional bits briefly becoming solid. And floating in the very center was a nearly invisible tiny sphere of crystal. “Oh, you are beautiful.” He murmured to it as he walked around and examined it. “You have the best integration of living crystal and slime I’ve seen yet. I would like to see something.” He stepped up close to it and raised his hand over its surface. “Just a quick poke. Relax and let your reflexes happen, I won’t hurt you and you can’t do any real harm to me.”
Once it acknowledged him, Mordecai used his middle finger to jab at it swiftly. The surface gave slightly before rapidly hardening against the impact and it reflexively built pressure behind that point, then as his finger retreated and the surface tension released the pressure behind that part of the surface automatically flung acid-coated shards of crystal at his hand.
Mordecai spun to the side to avoid most of it, but a few flecks still hit him. They did more damage to his sleeve than to his flesh, but a normal person wouldn’t have taken it quite so well. “Oh, I am going to be happy with you little one. I think we need to start with a name however, and then move on to enhancing you. What do you think of Klastoria?” It pulsed with a pleased-looking flash of color, and Mordecai smiled. “Then it is a pleasure to meet you Klastoria. I am Mordecai.”
“And I’m Kazue!” Announced his wife as she manifested her avatar. “Oh goddess, you are too cute Klastoria!” She practically danced in place as she squeed over the slime. “Mordecai, I want to hug her so badly! How did you find something so cute in that place?”
“Heh, I don’t recommend that just yet love, she needs to learn a bit of restraint first.” Wait a moment. “Um? Her?” He’d initially followed the gender identification before he realized what Kazue had said.
“Yep! Someone this shiny and cute has got to be a girl!” The little kitsune said, and Mordecai couldn’t help but shake his head with a smile.
“I think Zushi might have something to say about boys not being allowed to be cute.”
“Nah, he’s fluffy-cute, that’s different. Klastoria is shiny-cute and pretty like a girl.”
Mordecai decided to translate that into ‘I want her to be a girl’ more than being any sort of rule Kazue was truly serious about. He’d attribute it to youthful whim if it weren’t for the fact that he was pretty certain that a hundred years from now she’d be inclined to do the same sort of thing. He had met her mother after all. “Not a good idea just yet love. Your avatar isn’t acid resistant, and your clothes certainly aren’t.”
While they’d been talking, the little bits of crystal and acid that had hit the ground had melted together and flowed back to rejoin Klastoria. “And I have a spell that can help with that, but let me finish getting Klastoria ready first, alright?”
“Fine fine, hurry up, I want to hug her!”
It was hard to not laugh at Kazue’s eagerness as he turned his attention back to their newest boss-to-be. “Alright, looks like Kazue has decided you are going to be a girl. If you ever decide that’s not right for you, let us know. Now, we want to make you stronger and smarter, though the smarter might be a little slower to come.” Klastoria wouldn’t be able to fully understand what they were saying yet, but she would be able to remember.
He mentally grasped the available boss node and began feeding it the concept of the crystal core in the center gradually growing in size and its paths becoming smaller and more intricate. “We are going to want you to become much bigger …” he paused as a new idea came to him. “Oh wait, how dense can your crystal get?” He had already noticed that the fluid had been compressed when it turned into crystal. Oh, that should work.
“But you won’t always have to be that big. No, with a little enhancement, we can help you compact yourself into a completely crystal form. Yes, that’s going to be your focus, complete mastery of your form and the transition between fluid and solid states.” He had been thinking of focusing more on the acid attacks of a slime-type monster, enhanced with ranged attacks and crystal shards, along with Klastoria being better armored than a typical ooze-type, but this would be, hmm, not necessarily ‘better’ from an absolute sense, but more custom and unique.
Mordecai connected the boss node to Klastoria as he continued to feed in his concepts and took several steps back, motioning for Kazue to do the same. It took a moment for anything to change as all the mana began funneling in, but then Klastoria began to grow rapidly. In just a couple of minutes she grew into a sphere about 15 feet in diameter, jiggling excitedly at all the changes happening. Knowledge came as well as power and mass, and as soon as the connection was finalized she began experimenting.
The huge blob suddenly shrank, transforming into a hard, sharp-edged cube of crystal only about 5 feet across. Mordecai blinked as he ran the math, then double-checked what was happening. It took only a second to realize she’d evolved the concept into a limited version of Shape Change, allowing her to displace a portion of her mass the way many other shape-changing creatures could. But not all of it, she was still nine times as dense in this form, which was a rather intense compression. It put her somewhere in between iron and lead.
It also seemed uncomfortable based off of the emotions from Klastoria, who then began moving through a rapid series of other form-changing experiments. Most of them were manipulating her ability to shift between fluid and solid phases at will with nearly unlimited amounts of discreteness, but she was also able to shift and recall any amount of mass she needed to within her ranges.
She could form long limbs able to swing as freely as any tentacle, but could instantly harden her surface and/or interior to act like exo- or endo-skeletons, and her limbs could have any sort of surface she desired, creating almost any shape of blade or point. The hydraulic pressure that powered her limbs and gave her the ability to fire projectiles of crystallized acid also combined with her size-changing abilities to allow her to leap, and even spin or slightly course-correct by altering her density in one or more spots mid-air.
Climbing was easy too. Any sort of tree-like structure could just be grabbed and used to haul her body up, but she could also flow up walls and crawl along the ceiling by letting her body flow into the tiniest imperfections and then harden into crystal to obtain a surface-wide grip. Mordecai even created a smooth glass surface for her to try on, and Klastoria was able to figure out how to flatten her body enough that simply air pressure could hold her onto it, though she was a bit slower this way.
She couldn’t go perfectly flat though, that sphere of crystal that was the seat of her very self could not be altered. But the ability to change her form so freely gave her lots of options that she was going to be experimenting with for days. Mordecai did point out one new thing for her to try later: With her abilities, there is no reason she shouldn’t be able to drop from almost any height. In her larger form she could increase her internal pressure to just high enough to create a collapsing cushion, while if she made herself a dense, sharp cone she could fall straight into the ground or another object and force it to take the shock of her impact, the rigidity and hardness of her body keeping her from being damaged.
Kazue slid up beside him and asked in an ever-so-sweet voice. “Are you two done playing yet?”
Mordecai chuckled, then swept her into his arms to give her a lingering kiss. “Alright love, you can go hug the squishy slime. She’s learned great control now and should be able to be just soft and pliable enough.” Which honestly would be another great exercise for Klastoria, but he made sure not to mention that thought out loud.
“Yes!” Kazue flung herself at Klastoria with reckless abandon and was quick to explore other play options as the slime could also be anything from a soft cushion to sink into, to a bouncy spring to jump high in the air. Mordecai amused himself by sending some images of what Kazue was doing to Moriko, and the half-elf’s envy was tangible across their link. He doubted she would be initially quite as carefree as Kazue about it, but he didn’t doubt she would enjoy herself.
While his wife played, Mordecai set about double-checking the level and inhabitants, making sure everything tied together and worked smoothly. It would take a few days to get everyone into their routines and roles, and weeks of practice to become well-trained for this mix of terrain and style, but it would be well worth the effort.
The final step was to sweep through again and set limiters. The creatures could simply feel his intent and hold back where needed, but all the more trap-like organisms needed to have a second layer of mana woven over them to reign them in. Things were less sticky, hit softer, and were easier to break. But in exchange, he was able to apply a soft layer of vitality absorption that would increase the fatigue of dealing with the various dangers, roughly approximating how they might feel after dealing with the trap’s full strength.
It increased his overall costs for growing them by about 50%, and if he’d been trying to make them more deadly the expenditure would have failed.
Mordecai snorted. Intent indeed. He’d not thought to layer things like this, he’d grown up just knowing what his limits were on how strong he could make something based on where in his dungeon it was. He’d never tried making something strong, and then ‘waste’ mana by placing a restriction on it. A restriction he could release as needed, but his sincere intent was to only do so if he felt it was needed.
Well, that would cost them a few days at least until they had enough to push down and start the sixth floor, but that was okay. He wanted to work over some ideas with Kazue first anyway. The organization of the first five floors was fine, but despite the theming, the layout was a touch repetitive, and they were deep enough already to make brute forcing a ‘second’ entrance infeasible for most.
My Patreon if you want to support me directly.
Also to be found on Royal Road.
$3 Patreon: Early chapters, lore excerpts $5 Patreon: Short Stories $10 Patreon: New stories not published anywhere else (Until after I finish this story at least)
2023.06.10 06:09 CyberZoneChi Need help deciding between current data center job, service desk position, and cloud data center role
Need help deciding between current data center job, service desk position, and cloud data center role
I'm in a bit of a career dilemma right now and could really use your input. Here's a bit of background about me: I'm 26 years old and currently working as a data center engineer for an airline. I absolutely love the travel benefits that come with the job, but unfortunately, there isn't much room for growth in my current position. Plus, I'm only making around $60k per year.
Recently, I've received two job offers that have me seriously considering a change. However, I wanted to give you a complete picture of my experience so you can better guide me. Before my current role, I worked as a cyber security intern for 8 months. Although I didn't learn a ton during that time, I did get exposure to tasks like application migration, software development lifecycle reviews, and even some Excel work.
Additionally, I have 4 years of experience working at AT&T, where I gained valuable skills in sales and customer service. I genuinely enjoy interacting with people, so dealing with customers is not an issue for me.
Now, let's get to the job offers. The first offer is a service desk position that offers a salary of $65k per year. It seems like a great opportunity to expand my skills beyond the technical aspects of my current role. On the other hand, I've also been offered a role at a big cloud data center with a salary of $75k per year. This role involves managing three data centers and comes with increased responsibilities, but it also presents a higher salary and potential for growth.
Considering my background and aspirations, I'm unsure whether I should stay in my current job and focus on studying, or if one of these new opportunities would be a better move for me. I'd love to hear your thoughts and any advice you might have. Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did you decide which path to take? Are there any certifications I should pursue to boost my career prospects?
Thanks in advance for your help
submitted by CyberZoneChi to ITCareerQuestions [link] [comments]
I'm in a bit of a career dilemma right now and could really use your input. Here's a bit of background about me: I'm 26 years old and currently working as a data center engineer for an airline. I absolutely love the travel benefits that come with the job, but unfortunately, there isn't much room for growth in my current position. Plus, I'm only making around $60k per year.
Recently, I've received two job offers that have me seriously considering a change. However, I wanted to give you a complete picture of my experience so you can better guide me. Before my current role, I worked as a cyber security intern for 8 months. Although I didn't learn a ton during that time, I did get exposure to tasks like application migration, software development lifecycle reviews, and even some Excel work.
Additionally, I have 4 years of experience working at AT&T, where I gained valuable skills in sales and customer service. I genuinely enjoy interacting with people, so dealing with customers is not an issue for me.
Now, let's get to the job offers. The first offer is a service desk position that offers a salary of $65k per year. It seems like a great opportunity to expand my skills beyond the technical aspects of my current role. On the other hand, I've also been offered a role at a big cloud data center with a salary of $75k per year. This role involves managing three data centers and comes with increased responsibilities, but it also presents a higher salary and potential for growth.
Considering my background and aspirations, I'm unsure whether I should stay in my current job and focus on studying, or if one of these new opportunities would be a better move for me. I'd love to hear your thoughts and any advice you might have. Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did you decide which path to take? Are there any certifications I should pursue to boost my career prospects?
Thanks in advance for your help
2023.06.10 05:35 lonelady75 How my coworker singlehandedly destroyed the best job of my life
This is an old story, like, more than 10 years old, but I occasionally find myself thinking and still fuming about this, and I don't have anyone to tell it to.
I had a job working at a Headstart preschool. It didn't pay great, but I loved the work. Like, to the point that I would sometimes go in on my days off because it was fun job. I loved the kids, I felt like I was doing something meaningful - we were a preschool in a very low income area, we had kids from the local homeless shelter, new immigrants, kids who had been kicked out of other preschools for behavior issues... we took them all, and it was great.
It was just a satisfying job that was also, somehow, not too mentally taxing. Like, when I went home from work, i was home. It wasn't like when I taught at an elementary school and would go home and do hours of work to prepare for the next day. It honestly was just a joy to go to work, something I know is incredibly rare and I truly valued it.
I had a coteacher, who I'll call Shelly. Shelly and I got along alright, not amazingly, but alright. Although over the years, she changed in some odd ways. The first and weirdest one was she began to smell. Our preschool was not religious, but it was located in a large, old school Anglican church, with very high ceilings, and there were days that I would walk into the church (not our preschool classrooms) and be able to smell that she was there. That's how bad it was. And it was doubly frustrating because we had very different fashion styles. She tended to dress up ,and I always was in jeans and a t-shirt. So while I don't know for sure, I'm would imagine anyone coming into the room would smell the B.O., look at the two adults in the room, and think "well, that must be coming off the woman in the old t-shirt, can't be from the woman in the little black dress."
But I tolerated it because what else could I do? We were a small preschool, no HR department. And I don't know how to bring that up without being super rude.
But that wasn't the thing that ruined the job.
Our preschool had two separate programs, morning and afternoon, with room for 16 kids in each. Because of the neighborhood we were in, there were a lot of kids who would come and go (like, kids from the shelter who would get housing, and move away, that sort of thing), so our supervisor was always out doing community outreach to make sure we were full. We weren't always full, but that was part of her job.
But our supervisor ended up making a financial error, and got fired (she landed on her feet, I still hear from her occasionally, she's fine). The board of trustees offered me the job, but I know I'm not an administrator, so I refused, and they offered it to my coworker Shelly. And she took it. Which initially I was happy about because it would mean she would not be in the classrooms with me, and I wouldn't have to smell her.
One of the first things Shelly did was align our preschool with a large local Community Health Center (CHC). Which meant we were no longer an independent preschool run by a board of trustees made up of a bunch of old church ladies, we were now a part of a large organization with hundreds of staff. There was a slight increase in benefits, which initially came with a slight decrease in pay, which I remember finding a bit funny, but that was fine.
But almost immediately things got worse at the actual job. Our preschool was maybe a 4 minute walk away from a local library, with no street crossings in between, and we had, for years, taken our kids to the library once a month. We'd usually ask for one parent volunteer for that day, and if we couldn't get one, we'd ask a librarian to come to the preschool and walk with us so the kids would be safe. Suddenly, that was no longer permitted because of safety and liability concerns (the CHC was not willing to take the risk).
For years we had had random "water days" in the summer when it was really hot, where we would set up kiddy pools and sprinklers in our little backyard. I had gone and bought a bunch of kids clothes from local thrift shops using my own money and we would tell parents at the beginning of the summer that if the weather was hot, we would have water play day, and then if they were too wet, we would put them in the thrift store clothing, send them home and ask the parents to return the thrift store clothes. We would get about 80% of the clothing back, but it was fine. The kids loved it, no parents ever complained. But the CHC said that wasn't allowed anymore. We could only have Water Days on preplanned days when the parents could send their own change of clothing. And that effectively ended it because how could we know when the weather was going to be good for it?
We had also done monthly field trips to local museums and parks (again, always with volunteers -- we had 3 volunteers who came on regular days every week, and we would ask for parent volunteers as well). But the CHC thought this was too much of a liability risk and no longer permitted it. So that sucked.
But then something else began to happen. When we would lose children from the program due to them moving or aging out, they were not getting replaced, and our numbers got really low. This had happened before, but only ever for a month or so. This went on for several months. And of course, the CHC was super concerned. Because while we were a non-profit, and the parents didn't pay, we got money from the government to cover the cost of each child, and if there weren't enough children, the preschool would actually lose money.
The CHC started coming down on Shelly after maybe 6 months of this, but it just didn't get better. I arrived one morning to do my morning preparations and I could hear Shelly in the office with someone from the CHC and Shelly was yelling something or other, and then I heard her say "Well, maybe I shouldn't be here then", and that was the last I saw her for almost a year. She quit that day.
We got a new supervisor within a week, who did the proper community outreach, and we were filled within maybe 2 weeks again. So Shelly just hadn't done her job. But the problem was that 6 months of not being full had put us very firmly in the red, so the CHC decided to stop our preschool having 2 programs for the morning and afternoon and reduced us to one full day program. And that's when everything fully went to shit.
When you have a preschool that is open for 6 hours or more, suddenly there are things legally mandated by the government that you have to do. We had to provide breakfast, 2 snacks, and lunch. We had to have a nap time, craft time, and indoor and outdoor playtime (separate times). And this would have been fine except for the fact that the CHC had another preschool and so to save costs, they decided to combine the bus routes, which because of timing and schedules meant that our kids were with us for exactly 6 hours.
All of those government mandated things? They take up exactly six hours. So we had ZERO flexibility. I don't know if you noticed, but there was nothing in that list of things that included activities like reading together, circle time, etc. Basically, there was now no real teaching time going on.
Oh, and naptime was hell. People think it would be relaxing, but trying to get 16 kids to go to sleep at the same time is a nightmare. They are not all tired at the same time. Some of them don't nap anymore. Some of them cry, some of them need to be held to fall asleep, and then others get jealous, it was just... the worst. And it was government mandated to be, I think 2 hours? So it was two hours of trying to get kids to stay on their cots. I hated every second of it. We all did.
I was literally sneaking time during this whole ordeal to read and do educational circle activities with the kids. Like, I'm not exaggerating. My supervisor would be out for the day for something and I would think "OH GOOD! She's gone, I can have storytime today! Maybe we can do a counting game! YAY!" Because I would get in trouble if she was around because it was taking away from the things that we were legally required to do. The job went from being super fun, fulfilling and meaningful to feeling like I was babysitting and just making sure the kids didn't die.
I was the last of the "old" teachers to quit. I stuck it out for maybe 18 months. There had been, I think 5 staff from before the Community Health Center. The rest of them all quit within the first year.
Now, this might seem like just a random consequence of Shelly being bad at her job. But here's where it gets worse. Maybe 2 months before I quit ( and yeah, this definitely had an effect on me and wanting to stay), Shelly came back to visit. She and I were having a friendly chat, and I was telling her about the changes and how we were now a full day program and she looks away and says -- "You know, when I started, it was just half day. Not two half day programs, we were only open in the morning. I really liked it then. And I didn't need any more hours, that was enough for me to live on."
I looked at her a bit confused and said "well, I'm glad it was 2 half day programs by the time I started, I could barely make due with that income, to be honest."
And she shrugged, and then said "I kinda thought that if we couldn't fill the two halves, the Community Center would take it back to just mornings. I guess they went the other way."
And I just stared at her. And I think we spoke for a few more minutes and then she left.
She never said it outright, but I'm certain she deliberately tanked the program to try and cut it back to a halfday program but they went in the opposite direction. And made a wonderful job into a miserable one. And I think that was what took the wind out of my sails. I was out of there (and literally out of the country -- I live in Korea now) within a couple of months.
submitted by lonelady75 to talesfromthejob [link] [comments]
I had a job working at a Headstart preschool. It didn't pay great, but I loved the work. Like, to the point that I would sometimes go in on my days off because it was fun job. I loved the kids, I felt like I was doing something meaningful - we were a preschool in a very low income area, we had kids from the local homeless shelter, new immigrants, kids who had been kicked out of other preschools for behavior issues... we took them all, and it was great.
It was just a satisfying job that was also, somehow, not too mentally taxing. Like, when I went home from work, i was home. It wasn't like when I taught at an elementary school and would go home and do hours of work to prepare for the next day. It honestly was just a joy to go to work, something I know is incredibly rare and I truly valued it.
I had a coteacher, who I'll call Shelly. Shelly and I got along alright, not amazingly, but alright. Although over the years, she changed in some odd ways. The first and weirdest one was she began to smell. Our preschool was not religious, but it was located in a large, old school Anglican church, with very high ceilings, and there were days that I would walk into the church (not our preschool classrooms) and be able to smell that she was there. That's how bad it was. And it was doubly frustrating because we had very different fashion styles. She tended to dress up ,and I always was in jeans and a t-shirt. So while I don't know for sure, I'm would imagine anyone coming into the room would smell the B.O., look at the two adults in the room, and think "well, that must be coming off the woman in the old t-shirt, can't be from the woman in the little black dress."
But I tolerated it because what else could I do? We were a small preschool, no HR department. And I don't know how to bring that up without being super rude.
But that wasn't the thing that ruined the job.
Our preschool had two separate programs, morning and afternoon, with room for 16 kids in each. Because of the neighborhood we were in, there were a lot of kids who would come and go (like, kids from the shelter who would get housing, and move away, that sort of thing), so our supervisor was always out doing community outreach to make sure we were full. We weren't always full, but that was part of her job.
But our supervisor ended up making a financial error, and got fired (she landed on her feet, I still hear from her occasionally, she's fine). The board of trustees offered me the job, but I know I'm not an administrator, so I refused, and they offered it to my coworker Shelly. And she took it. Which initially I was happy about because it would mean she would not be in the classrooms with me, and I wouldn't have to smell her.
One of the first things Shelly did was align our preschool with a large local Community Health Center (CHC). Which meant we were no longer an independent preschool run by a board of trustees made up of a bunch of old church ladies, we were now a part of a large organization with hundreds of staff. There was a slight increase in benefits, which initially came with a slight decrease in pay, which I remember finding a bit funny, but that was fine.
But almost immediately things got worse at the actual job. Our preschool was maybe a 4 minute walk away from a local library, with no street crossings in between, and we had, for years, taken our kids to the library once a month. We'd usually ask for one parent volunteer for that day, and if we couldn't get one, we'd ask a librarian to come to the preschool and walk with us so the kids would be safe. Suddenly, that was no longer permitted because of safety and liability concerns (the CHC was not willing to take the risk).
For years we had had random "water days" in the summer when it was really hot, where we would set up kiddy pools and sprinklers in our little backyard. I had gone and bought a bunch of kids clothes from local thrift shops using my own money and we would tell parents at the beginning of the summer that if the weather was hot, we would have water play day, and then if they were too wet, we would put them in the thrift store clothing, send them home and ask the parents to return the thrift store clothes. We would get about 80% of the clothing back, but it was fine. The kids loved it, no parents ever complained. But the CHC said that wasn't allowed anymore. We could only have Water Days on preplanned days when the parents could send their own change of clothing. And that effectively ended it because how could we know when the weather was going to be good for it?
We had also done monthly field trips to local museums and parks (again, always with volunteers -- we had 3 volunteers who came on regular days every week, and we would ask for parent volunteers as well). But the CHC thought this was too much of a liability risk and no longer permitted it. So that sucked.
But then something else began to happen. When we would lose children from the program due to them moving or aging out, they were not getting replaced, and our numbers got really low. This had happened before, but only ever for a month or so. This went on for several months. And of course, the CHC was super concerned. Because while we were a non-profit, and the parents didn't pay, we got money from the government to cover the cost of each child, and if there weren't enough children, the preschool would actually lose money.
The CHC started coming down on Shelly after maybe 6 months of this, but it just didn't get better. I arrived one morning to do my morning preparations and I could hear Shelly in the office with someone from the CHC and Shelly was yelling something or other, and then I heard her say "Well, maybe I shouldn't be here then", and that was the last I saw her for almost a year. She quit that day.
We got a new supervisor within a week, who did the proper community outreach, and we were filled within maybe 2 weeks again. So Shelly just hadn't done her job. But the problem was that 6 months of not being full had put us very firmly in the red, so the CHC decided to stop our preschool having 2 programs for the morning and afternoon and reduced us to one full day program. And that's when everything fully went to shit.
When you have a preschool that is open for 6 hours or more, suddenly there are things legally mandated by the government that you have to do. We had to provide breakfast, 2 snacks, and lunch. We had to have a nap time, craft time, and indoor and outdoor playtime (separate times). And this would have been fine except for the fact that the CHC had another preschool and so to save costs, they decided to combine the bus routes, which because of timing and schedules meant that our kids were with us for exactly 6 hours.
All of those government mandated things? They take up exactly six hours. So we had ZERO flexibility. I don't know if you noticed, but there was nothing in that list of things that included activities like reading together, circle time, etc. Basically, there was now no real teaching time going on.
Oh, and naptime was hell. People think it would be relaxing, but trying to get 16 kids to go to sleep at the same time is a nightmare. They are not all tired at the same time. Some of them don't nap anymore. Some of them cry, some of them need to be held to fall asleep, and then others get jealous, it was just... the worst. And it was government mandated to be, I think 2 hours? So it was two hours of trying to get kids to stay on their cots. I hated every second of it. We all did.
I was literally sneaking time during this whole ordeal to read and do educational circle activities with the kids. Like, I'm not exaggerating. My supervisor would be out for the day for something and I would think "OH GOOD! She's gone, I can have storytime today! Maybe we can do a counting game! YAY!" Because I would get in trouble if she was around because it was taking away from the things that we were legally required to do. The job went from being super fun, fulfilling and meaningful to feeling like I was babysitting and just making sure the kids didn't die.
I was the last of the "old" teachers to quit. I stuck it out for maybe 18 months. There had been, I think 5 staff from before the Community Health Center. The rest of them all quit within the first year.
Now, this might seem like just a random consequence of Shelly being bad at her job. But here's where it gets worse. Maybe 2 months before I quit ( and yeah, this definitely had an effect on me and wanting to stay), Shelly came back to visit. She and I were having a friendly chat, and I was telling her about the changes and how we were now a full day program and she looks away and says -- "You know, when I started, it was just half day. Not two half day programs, we were only open in the morning. I really liked it then. And I didn't need any more hours, that was enough for me to live on."
I looked at her a bit confused and said "well, I'm glad it was 2 half day programs by the time I started, I could barely make due with that income, to be honest."
And she shrugged, and then said "I kinda thought that if we couldn't fill the two halves, the Community Center would take it back to just mornings. I guess they went the other way."
And I just stared at her. And I think we spoke for a few more minutes and then she left.
She never said it outright, but I'm certain she deliberately tanked the program to try and cut it back to a halfday program but they went in the opposite direction. And made a wonderful job into a miserable one. And I think that was what took the wind out of my sails. I was out of there (and literally out of the country -- I live in Korea now) within a couple of months.
2023.06.10 05:29 i_donthavea_name (WTS) Thinning the herd: Steve Karroll, Grimsmo, Shirogorov, Olamic, Benchmade, Fox, Pena X Series, WingmanEDC, APurvis, SBD, Lacanico, Civivi, Kizer
The purge continues! As stated before, I`m getting ready to retire and travel for several months so I'm drastically thinning the herd of safe queens and uncarried blades (round 4). I don't really have the room in the camper for as many knives as I have now. My downsizing can benefit you!
-Not looking for trades but all prices are OBO, all reasonable offers are considered.
-PP G&S, all prices are including shipping, US sales only, first YOLO/comment/message gets the blade.
-Up for sale this round is: https://imgur.com/gallery/pdi48dX
.
1.) Steve Karroll AEB-L Fixed Blade. AEB-L Blade. Previous owner had Karbadize make some scales for it. Comes with kydex sheath. Sheath was cut down to fit the new scales, the cut isn’t the most even but holds super solid. Small bit of wear from the sheath. OAL is about 7 7/16". Never sharpened. Comes with COA. SV $180
https://imgur.com/gallery/GVQEt1z
.
2.) Grimsmo Norseman #1781. Blue reverse honeycomb pattern anodized titanium handle with gold accents, gold anodized titanium hardware, stonewashed RWL 34 blade, ceramic bearings. Knife is in great condition. It's had a few different owners and it's seen pocket time and some very light cutting tasks. With that being said, there really aren't any stand out signs of use or wear. Blade is in great shape and the edge is factory sharp. Clip side handle shows some light ano wear and maybe a scratch or two here and there, but nothing significant. Lock up is excellent and action is what you'd expect from a Norseman. I really hate to let this go, but I have multiple Norsemen. Comes with Grimsmo hard case, COA, T9 tool, and Nano-Oil. SV $600.
https://imgur.com/gallery/tpuZceK
.
3.) Shirogorov Neon NL. 3.375″ full flat-ground Elmax blade with jimping, 7.5″ overall length, Runs on MRBS (Multi-Row Bearing System), Titanium frame-lock handle scales with contoured edges, Smooth Micarta inlays, Steel lockbar insert doubles as lockbar stabilizer, Polished stand-off, 3D machined tip-up Titanium pocket clip attached with hidden hardware. Action is phenomenal (as usual per Shiros), no play, shaving edge (barely been used on Amazon boxes). Centering is near perfect. I cannot personally find any marks on the handles or the blade. Comes with the box and COA. SV $550.
https://imgur.com/gallery/RYyYRXM
.
4.) Olamic Wayfarer 247. M390 blade with Olamic's acid dark wash finish. This knife has been carried, fiddled with, but never cut anything besides opening some Amazon packages. The only blemish is a small snail trail on the show side of the blade. The centering is dead-on, action is good. Solid lockup. The scales have a deep-sea finish/sculpting that reflects light beautifully and is even better in person. Bronzed hardware and backspacer, the latter of which is also sculpted to match scales and the clip. Comes with the original zippered pouch, the COA, and the pivot tool. S/N T495-H, DOB 10.30.2020. SV $425
https://imgur.com/gallery/Uj62VEo
.
5.) Olamic Swish. Elmax blade with satin finish. Titanium scales in Olamic’s blue seabed contouring. Titanium Clip with nugget backbar anodized bronze. A few very slight marks/scratches on the blade, but not much. Handles look good with no noticeable signs of wear. Detent is very good and the blade fires out nicely with the flipper tab or a Spydie flick. Drop shut and the lock up is solid. Comes with the Olamic case, the COA, and 2 business cards. SV $350
https://imgur.com/gallery/4SPPfO8
.
6.) Benchmade 940-1 Osborne.
S90V steel and carbon fiber scales. The 940-1 is highly regarded as one of the most quintessential EDCs of all time. Designed by Warren Osborne, this knife sports a plain reverse tanto blade with a Carbon Fiber handle. The manual opening mechanism features AXIS® lock technology. Up for grabs is this beauty of BM 940-1. Amazing fidget factor. It has a couple trails/marks on the clip and a small scratch on the blade. Never used or carried by me, but I am not the first owner. Comes with the box with corner wear, sticker, and warranty info. SV $180.
https://imgur.com/gallery/4EBpgSE
.
7.) Fox Knives 40th Anniversary #005. M390 striped blade and carbon fiber scales. You won’t find many of these on the internet. This one has a really cool blade. Appears to be a sharpened blade from the previous owner and general signs of carry. Really cool knife though. Perfect size, great ergos, that blade. My only complaint is the detent is a little soft so the action isn't super snappy. No original box but will come in a zippered pouch. SV $375
https://imgur.com/gallery/YTgzX0Q
.
8.) Pena X Series Rhino. M390 blade and Titanium scales. An awesome Enrique Pena and Jared Van Otterloo design that will make a great addition to any collection. This beautiful knife is built with a satin finished blade with a deep belly and a subtle recurve. The titanium handle comes in a satin finish with blue and bronze ano hardware. The blade rockets open on stainless steel caged bearings and the lock up is solid. A milled titanium pocket clip finishes off the solid design. Has been carried and shows some snail trails: scales and clip; leading edge of show scale has a cosmetic mark. Comes with the box. SV $250.
https://imgur.com/gallery/Zslp1xd
.
9.) SOLDWingmanEDC MDD-K. M390 hand rubbed satin blade with Titanium ceramic bead blast handles. Utilizes Lee Williams’ innovative KickStop flipper mechanism and runs on ceramic bearings. Ceramic bead blasted pivots and hardware with steel lock-bar insert which doubles as lock-bar stabilizer. Lanyard pin. Steel backspacer and 3D machined titanium pocket clip. This does not have the original pivot screw. A previous owner stripped the head put because they didn’t have the proper tool for the proprietary screw. I was able to get the pivot out and replace it with an exact specs pivot screw with a regular hex head. Unfortunately, WingmanEDC does not offer replacement parts. Locks up solid and has an excellent action. I adore the bayonet style blade grind and the Kickstop action. Comes with the box, COA tag, and original paperwork. SV $250. SOLD https://imgur.com/gallery/aFCNUiG
.
10.) APurvis Progeny V1. M390 blade with a satin finish and purple anodized scales. Action is solid and the detent is on point. There are some marks from a previous owner’s sharpening on the choil and a couple of barely visible scratches on the pocket clip. Great knife with good ergos. No box but comes with a pouch. SV $225
https://imgur.com/gallery/6M1x0dr
.
11.) SOLDSharper By Design Micro Exo Typhoon with carbon fiber inlays. M390 blade with carbon fiber inlays. Second owner but the original owner got this one directly from the original drop. Beautiful action, fit, and finish. One of the sharpest factory edges I’ve seen. Comes with the box. SV $300 SOLD
https://imgur.com/gallery/I1SrdIS
.
12.) Ray Laconico & Massdrop Keen. S35VN blade with brushed titanium scales anodized bronze. Gorgeous knife that shows almost no signs of being carried. This thing literally snaps open with early lockup, perfect centering, and no lock stick. Drops shut with the slightest shake. Comes with the box, taco, and R. Laconico cloth. SV $140
https://imgur.com/gallery/w8kACQ4
.
13.) Pena X Series Lanny’s Clip Flipper.
S35VN clip point blade with green G-10 scale inserts. Beautiful two tone satin and stonewashed blade and blue anodized hardware. The fit and finish is amazing and the action is smooth. Small snails on the titanium bolster. Previous owner added the lanyard and bead. Comes with taco only. SV $210.
https://imgur.com/gallery/mzVWxhD
.
14.) Civivi Elementum Damascus flipper.
Damascus blade steel that offers dependable blade strength beauty. Carbon fiber overlay on G-10 scales that complement the lightweight design. Stainless steel clip for secure deep-pocket carry. Caged ball bearing pivot ensures a smooth and reliable action. I am the original owner with very light carry. Small mark on clip and lock side pivot screw wear. Comes with the box, rag, and stickers. SV $80.
https://imgur.com/gallery/8sd4ThE
.
15.) Civivi Elementum Damascus Button Lock.
Damascus blade. Push button lock that rides smoothly and locks the blade in place. Marbled Carbon Fiber handle scales with a simple shape for a sure grip. A stainless steel, reversible clip and caged ball bearing pivot for a smooth and reliable action. I am the original owner and never carried this one, like NIB. Comes with the box, pouch, rag, and stickers. SV $80.
https://imgur.com/gallery/OuVyfVK
.
16.) Kizer Splinter Ti.
S35VN blade with Titanium scales. This is a collaboration with Kizer and Tomcat Knives. Has a contoured and textured titanium handle with an S35VN steel blade. The action is smooth with the ball bearings. Frame lock provides a reliable lock up of the blade with zero blade play. There is a natural stonewash finish on the blade and the handle is equipped with a custom pivot, lanyard hole and a reversible titanium pocket clip. I’m the original owner and have never carried it. LNIB. Come with the box, rag, pouch, and extra screw. SV $65.
https://imgur.com/gallery/t1IitYD
submitted by i_donthavea_name to Knife_Swap [link] [comments]
-Not looking for trades but all prices are OBO, all reasonable offers are considered.
-PP G&S, all prices are including shipping, US sales only, first YOLO/comment/message gets the blade.
-Up for sale this round is: https://imgur.com/gallery/pdi48dX
.
1.) Steve Karroll AEB-L Fixed Blade. AEB-L Blade. Previous owner had Karbadize make some scales for it. Comes with kydex sheath. Sheath was cut down to fit the new scales, the cut isn’t the most even but holds super solid. Small bit of wear from the sheath. OAL is about 7 7/16". Never sharpened. Comes with COA. SV $180
https://imgur.com/gallery/GVQEt1z
.
2.) Grimsmo Norseman #1781. Blue reverse honeycomb pattern anodized titanium handle with gold accents, gold anodized titanium hardware, stonewashed RWL 34 blade, ceramic bearings. Knife is in great condition. It's had a few different owners and it's seen pocket time and some very light cutting tasks. With that being said, there really aren't any stand out signs of use or wear. Blade is in great shape and the edge is factory sharp. Clip side handle shows some light ano wear and maybe a scratch or two here and there, but nothing significant. Lock up is excellent and action is what you'd expect from a Norseman. I really hate to let this go, but I have multiple Norsemen. Comes with Grimsmo hard case, COA, T9 tool, and Nano-Oil. SV $600.
https://imgur.com/gallery/tpuZceK
.
3.) Shirogorov Neon NL. 3.375″ full flat-ground Elmax blade with jimping, 7.5″ overall length, Runs on MRBS (Multi-Row Bearing System), Titanium frame-lock handle scales with contoured edges, Smooth Micarta inlays, Steel lockbar insert doubles as lockbar stabilizer, Polished stand-off, 3D machined tip-up Titanium pocket clip attached with hidden hardware. Action is phenomenal (as usual per Shiros), no play, shaving edge (barely been used on Amazon boxes). Centering is near perfect. I cannot personally find any marks on the handles or the blade. Comes with the box and COA. SV $550.
https://imgur.com/gallery/RYyYRXM
.
4.) Olamic Wayfarer 247. M390 blade with Olamic's acid dark wash finish. This knife has been carried, fiddled with, but never cut anything besides opening some Amazon packages. The only blemish is a small snail trail on the show side of the blade. The centering is dead-on, action is good. Solid lockup. The scales have a deep-sea finish/sculpting that reflects light beautifully and is even better in person. Bronzed hardware and backspacer, the latter of which is also sculpted to match scales and the clip. Comes with the original zippered pouch, the COA, and the pivot tool. S/N T495-H, DOB 10.30.2020. SV $425
https://imgur.com/gallery/Uj62VEo
.
5.) Olamic Swish. Elmax blade with satin finish. Titanium scales in Olamic’s blue seabed contouring. Titanium Clip with nugget backbar anodized bronze. A few very slight marks/scratches on the blade, but not much. Handles look good with no noticeable signs of wear. Detent is very good and the blade fires out nicely with the flipper tab or a Spydie flick. Drop shut and the lock up is solid. Comes with the Olamic case, the COA, and 2 business cards. SV $350
https://imgur.com/gallery/4SPPfO8
.
6.) Benchmade 940-1 Osborne.
S90V steel and carbon fiber scales. The 940-1 is highly regarded as one of the most quintessential EDCs of all time. Designed by Warren Osborne, this knife sports a plain reverse tanto blade with a Carbon Fiber handle. The manual opening mechanism features AXIS® lock technology. Up for grabs is this beauty of BM 940-1. Amazing fidget factor. It has a couple trails/marks on the clip and a small scratch on the blade. Never used or carried by me, but I am not the first owner. Comes with the box with corner wear, sticker, and warranty info. SV $180.
https://imgur.com/gallery/4EBpgSE
.
7.) Fox Knives 40th Anniversary #005. M390 striped blade and carbon fiber scales. You won’t find many of these on the internet. This one has a really cool blade. Appears to be a sharpened blade from the previous owner and general signs of carry. Really cool knife though. Perfect size, great ergos, that blade. My only complaint is the detent is a little soft so the action isn't super snappy. No original box but will come in a zippered pouch. SV $375
https://imgur.com/gallery/YTgzX0Q
.
8.) Pena X Series Rhino. M390 blade and Titanium scales. An awesome Enrique Pena and Jared Van Otterloo design that will make a great addition to any collection. This beautiful knife is built with a satin finished blade with a deep belly and a subtle recurve. The titanium handle comes in a satin finish with blue and bronze ano hardware. The blade rockets open on stainless steel caged bearings and the lock up is solid. A milled titanium pocket clip finishes off the solid design. Has been carried and shows some snail trails: scales and clip; leading edge of show scale has a cosmetic mark. Comes with the box. SV $250.
https://imgur.com/gallery/Zslp1xd
.
9.) SOLD
.
10.) APurvis Progeny V1. M390 blade with a satin finish and purple anodized scales. Action is solid and the detent is on point. There are some marks from a previous owner’s sharpening on the choil and a couple of barely visible scratches on the pocket clip. Great knife with good ergos. No box but comes with a pouch. SV $225
https://imgur.com/gallery/6M1x0dr
.
11.) SOLD
https://imgur.com/gallery/I1SrdIS
.
12.) Ray Laconico & Massdrop Keen. S35VN blade with brushed titanium scales anodized bronze. Gorgeous knife that shows almost no signs of being carried. This thing literally snaps open with early lockup, perfect centering, and no lock stick. Drops shut with the slightest shake. Comes with the box, taco, and R. Laconico cloth. SV $140
https://imgur.com/gallery/w8kACQ4
.
13.) Pena X Series Lanny’s Clip Flipper.
S35VN clip point blade with green G-10 scale inserts. Beautiful two tone satin and stonewashed blade and blue anodized hardware. The fit and finish is amazing and the action is smooth. Small snails on the titanium bolster. Previous owner added the lanyard and bead. Comes with taco only. SV $210.
https://imgur.com/gallery/mzVWxhD
.
14.) Civivi Elementum Damascus flipper.
Damascus blade steel that offers dependable blade strength beauty. Carbon fiber overlay on G-10 scales that complement the lightweight design. Stainless steel clip for secure deep-pocket carry. Caged ball bearing pivot ensures a smooth and reliable action. I am the original owner with very light carry. Small mark on clip and lock side pivot screw wear. Comes with the box, rag, and stickers. SV $80.
https://imgur.com/gallery/8sd4ThE
.
15.) Civivi Elementum Damascus Button Lock.
Damascus blade. Push button lock that rides smoothly and locks the blade in place. Marbled Carbon Fiber handle scales with a simple shape for a sure grip. A stainless steel, reversible clip and caged ball bearing pivot for a smooth and reliable action. I am the original owner and never carried this one, like NIB. Comes with the box, pouch, rag, and stickers. SV $80.
https://imgur.com/gallery/OuVyfVK
.
16.) Kizer Splinter Ti.
S35VN blade with Titanium scales. This is a collaboration with Kizer and Tomcat Knives. Has a contoured and textured titanium handle with an S35VN steel blade. The action is smooth with the ball bearings. Frame lock provides a reliable lock up of the blade with zero blade play. There is a natural stonewash finish on the blade and the handle is equipped with a custom pivot, lanyard hole and a reversible titanium pocket clip. I’m the original owner and have never carried it. LNIB. Come with the box, rag, pouch, and extra screw. SV $65.
https://imgur.com/gallery/t1IitYD
2023.06.10 05:27 Comprehensive-Sea-63 UPDATE: Am I making the right choice hospitalizing my daughter?
Link to original:
https://www.reddit.com/breakingmom/comments/13py35s/am_i_making_the_right_choice_hospitalizing_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
I’ve honestly been scared to update because I’ve been scared of jinxing it.
I’ll cut to the chase. My daughter has been home for a week and a half and she is doing amazing.
For context, we adopted our daughter out of a residential treatment center where she had been staying for a year and a half. When she arrived at hour home, she was heavily medicated. For the past two years we’ve been trying to work with her doctors to find a balance of medications with lower doses and fewer meds because a lot of the meds she was on have pretty serious side effects. Every time we tried to lower a dose or taper her off a med, it backfired.
The end result is that my daughter was severely overmedicated, which is something we’ve been worried about for a long time. We learned that the Prozac has been causing the suicidal and homicidal ideation and paranoia. We also learned that the Prozac has been causing her to hear voices. My husband and I had never picked up that this was happening but in hindsight I realize there were warning signs from the conflicts with her classmates.
The doctors reduced her dose of Prozac from 60mg to 20mg. THEY COMPLETELY TOOK HER OFF HER DAYTIME ADHD MED. They diagnosed her with major depressive disorder with psychotic features and increased her antipsychotic, which is terrifying to me because her bio mom does have schizophrenia. But…
Around day 5 when I talked to my daughter on the phone I could just hear how well she was doing in her voice. We just had a normal conversation as a family. And I realized, we’ve never just talked like this before. As soon as we hung up, my 13yo says “she sounds really good” and my 17yo says “she sounds HAPPY.”
She has been home for a week and a half and she is doing amazing. The first few days were a roller coaster. We worked with her therapist to make sure we were supportive and helped her acclimate back home. I slept in her room or she slept in our room for the first week, and she has graduated to sleeping on the couch just outside our room. She had a lot of nightmares the first few nights and was very high strung because the experience triggered her abandonment trauma. However this week she felt good enough to go to ymca and she has done so well. Not a single behavioral episode. I just just see it in her eyes and demeanor. She is calmer, focusing better, happier, her overall cognitive functioning is better (she can even read better), and she is able to participate in conversations. She’s still her silly goofy self, and she’s still a kid. But her tantrums now seem more like normal little kid tantrums with whining and crying instead of screaming, cussing, and punching. This has been just about the best week of my life seeing her doing so well.
I’m so thankful that the doctors considered that she might be overmedicated and took her off meds instead of piling on even more powerful meds.
This has also triggered a lot of old trauma in me. I have a brother who died by suicide. I’ve been having panic attacks and crying spells and I realized a lot of this was from my own trauma being triggered, so I am back in therapy as well.
Overall it was a horrible experience but I’m so thankful that my daughter is well. I received a lot of peace when I called her regular therapist, and her therapist told us we did the right thing and that she would have advised us to have our daughter admitted if we had spoken to her about it beforehand. To be clear, the people advising me to admit her weren’t other parents of neurotypical kids. It was the child psychiatrist, the social worker, her pediatrician, and the medical staff at the hospital who all advised us to admit her. I’m thankful that my husband was such a rock and that our family held strong and our little girl seems to be so much happier.
submitted by Comprehensive-Sea-63 to breakingmom [link] [comments]
https://www.reddit.com/breakingmom/comments/13py35s/am_i_making_the_right_choice_hospitalizing_my/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=2&utm_term=1
I’ve honestly been scared to update because I’ve been scared of jinxing it.
I’ll cut to the chase. My daughter has been home for a week and a half and she is doing amazing.
For context, we adopted our daughter out of a residential treatment center where she had been staying for a year and a half. When she arrived at hour home, she was heavily medicated. For the past two years we’ve been trying to work with her doctors to find a balance of medications with lower doses and fewer meds because a lot of the meds she was on have pretty serious side effects. Every time we tried to lower a dose or taper her off a med, it backfired.
The end result is that my daughter was severely overmedicated, which is something we’ve been worried about for a long time. We learned that the Prozac has been causing the suicidal and homicidal ideation and paranoia. We also learned that the Prozac has been causing her to hear voices. My husband and I had never picked up that this was happening but in hindsight I realize there were warning signs from the conflicts with her classmates.
The doctors reduced her dose of Prozac from 60mg to 20mg. THEY COMPLETELY TOOK HER OFF HER DAYTIME ADHD MED. They diagnosed her with major depressive disorder with psychotic features and increased her antipsychotic, which is terrifying to me because her bio mom does have schizophrenia. But…
Around day 5 when I talked to my daughter on the phone I could just hear how well she was doing in her voice. We just had a normal conversation as a family. And I realized, we’ve never just talked like this before. As soon as we hung up, my 13yo says “she sounds really good” and my 17yo says “she sounds HAPPY.”
She has been home for a week and a half and she is doing amazing. The first few days were a roller coaster. We worked with her therapist to make sure we were supportive and helped her acclimate back home. I slept in her room or she slept in our room for the first week, and she has graduated to sleeping on the couch just outside our room. She had a lot of nightmares the first few nights and was very high strung because the experience triggered her abandonment trauma. However this week she felt good enough to go to ymca and she has done so well. Not a single behavioral episode. I just just see it in her eyes and demeanor. She is calmer, focusing better, happier, her overall cognitive functioning is better (she can even read better), and she is able to participate in conversations. She’s still her silly goofy self, and she’s still a kid. But her tantrums now seem more like normal little kid tantrums with whining and crying instead of screaming, cussing, and punching. This has been just about the best week of my life seeing her doing so well.
I’m so thankful that the doctors considered that she might be overmedicated and took her off meds instead of piling on even more powerful meds.
This has also triggered a lot of old trauma in me. I have a brother who died by suicide. I’ve been having panic attacks and crying spells and I realized a lot of this was from my own trauma being triggered, so I am back in therapy as well.
Overall it was a horrible experience but I’m so thankful that my daughter is well. I received a lot of peace when I called her regular therapist, and her therapist told us we did the right thing and that she would have advised us to have our daughter admitted if we had spoken to her about it beforehand. To be clear, the people advising me to admit her weren’t other parents of neurotypical kids. It was the child psychiatrist, the social worker, her pediatrician, and the medical staff at the hospital who all advised us to admit her. I’m thankful that my husband was such a rock and that our family held strong and our little girl seems to be so much happier.
2023.06.10 05:23 67589jhu 5 month old with parvo?
I have a 5 month old pup for about 2 weeks now and he has no shots to date. I noticed two days ago that he was not his normal self and kind of lethargic. Yesterday he seemed worse but I could not get into a doctor. I was able to get into one today but they don't have parvo tests on site so I had to get a test done at the emergency center. I'm still waiting for results & exam but I think it might be parvo.
My pup is lethargic and not eating but drinking on his own sometimes. There's no vomiting nor diarrhea present.
What can I do at this time until I can see the vet? I got pedialyte in a squeeze bottle but don't know how much or how often to give him. He's not eating. If I'm not in the room with him, he goes into a secluded area and lays down until I go pick him up.
submitted by 67589jhu to dogs [link] [comments]
My pup is lethargic and not eating but drinking on his own sometimes. There's no vomiting nor diarrhea present.
What can I do at this time until I can see the vet? I got pedialyte in a squeeze bottle but don't know how much or how often to give him. He's not eating. If I'm not in the room with him, he goes into a secluded area and lays down until I go pick him up.
2023.06.10 05:21 TheDarkstarChimaera Thief in the June 27 Balance Patch
Source
I'm Iskarel. I maintain the PvE Thief builds and guides on Snow Crows
With a PvE perspective, I'm going to run through the changes, discuss their impact, and talk about current meta builds and how they're impacted.
Want the build-by-build cliff notes? Skip to the bottom, search for "tl;dr"
I know this is a lot. Think of it as a reference document.
A LOT has changed. The builds aren't unrecognizable but the texture has changed almost across the board.
Ever used a build with Thief runes? Just don't stand directly in front of the target.
What fewer players will know is that there's a small set of skills that actually need you to be ~180-degrees behind your target.
Which way does Sabetha face during her Flame Wall?
I'm not going to answer these questions because the answers don't matter anymore! This skill expression is now gone.
Just backstab from any angle.
Ah but "defiant foes"? What isn't included there?
Can you backstab Primordus in the Harvest Temple strike if your group stays on the left vs right side, when looking from the center towards the dragon?
BTW Drakkar is made up 17 prop pieces, and you can only cast Deadeye's Mark on one of them. Don't play Deadeye here, you're trolling yourself. :D
Yeah this ain't it, chief. This is still a defensive and mobility-oriented traitline.
The damage modifier in Endless Stamina can't compete with Deadly Arts or Critical Strikes, even when combined with the Power in Swinder's Equilibrium.
The other stuff is maybe interesting for solo open world champions but Shadow Arts is already quite capable at that, and Condition Thief has a lot more toys to work with when solo compared to Power.
It's something but this traitline still feels ironically directionless.
The coefficient we have on the wiki, drawn from the Game's API, is 4.10. ANet lists a 1.50 (per hit, so 4.50 total) nerfed to 0.70. So... Uh...
Let's say Throw Magnetic Bomb's damage is nerfed to 50% of its current damage. Or there about.
So next patch, one Throw Magnetic Bomb is close to the damage of one Staff 2, but the damage comes out over time (during our Assassin Signet burst) and the cast animation is faster than Staff 2.
This damage increase is valuable because
This increase the DPS of the first and second part of the chain well beyond the last hit.
The optimal DPS rotation now involves interrupting the chain after the 2nd hit.
That's not easy to do on most professions, which have a limited number of viable interrupts, but we're Thief, baby!
Staff Strike, Staff Bash, Weakening Charge. Repeat. Throw in a Fist Flurry. Save your Palm Strike. Yeah. This sort of thing.
Calculations done by REMagic42 ( training-accident-36 ) show the following
You could just not do this. That's up to you. The build is getting buffed by ~4,000 DPS next patch but it still has all the old problems. Don't know those? Read here
Left, a great player who provides benchmarks for Power and Condition Daredevil, already tested Condition Daredevil with cooldown-traited Impairing Daggers and found them simply worse in group content vs Devourer Venom. You can read more on his benchmark.
So the Impairing Daggers cooldown reduction (CDR) doesn't matter to us.
A cooldown reduction for Channeled Vigor would've been cool!
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the damage of Detonate Plasma will not be worth its cast time purely from a DPS perspective, especially on a Condition Build, but you might still get some boon uptime from Daredevils on fights like Matthias and Twin Largos' Kenut.
You can now permanently sunset your Celestial/Ritualist gear for Boon Thief. Will you use it for Alacrity Specter later? I don't now, I don't know how much Alacrity is given by that trait. We'll talk more later. :)
This is NOT Unstable Artifact BTW. That skill is still worth using for both Power and Condition DPS.
Cursed Artifact is like throw-Plaguelands, and an Ethereal field at that. It's free real estate on the Condition Build.
Time in a Bottle is squad-wide alacrity AND quickness. Take that, Chronomancer! It's only found in Cold War and randomly in EoD strikes. :)
Firstly, this increases the damage dealt by the lower difficulty Be Quick or Be Killed Dagger Deadeye rotation (if you've ever heard someone described Dagger Deadeye as 5111151115111, that's this).
I assume what this means is that if you do NOT have a marked target, you can cast a cantrip to get a new F2. That's cool and rather handy for the new Quickness build.
That problem is now eliminated for Power. You don't need to know the timing, you don't need to know where to throw Shadow Flare. Just Do your backstab, cast Shadow Flare for one damage packet, cast it again, go for another Backstab. No fuss, no skill expression, no frustration, no learning curve.
I don't like this change, I understand why other people like this change. I think it's dumb to change this. If you don't like self-reveal, consider not playing the class that uses Stealth and Revealed for its DPS output.
This is a nice perk. The important thing is that this trait gives us an extra F2 charge every time we use a Stolen Skill...That's for Quickness.
This trait is also valuable to Condition Deadeye builds (particularly since there's a 4/9 chance they get a stolen skill that applies damaging conditions!) and to Power Pistol-Pistol Deadeye. See more of that here.
It's lower cooldown on boonstrip which is neat? Matches No Pain No Gain time in Fractals, I suppose.
Just use a Power Mesmer, they passively breathe boonstrip.
Oops! All cantrips
Well, what if we don't have to generate Might?
Then we have two options:
3 cantrips with no Improvisation
Stealth attacks? Naw, just spam F2s without Malice.
"Filler" initiative skills used to build up to an Initiative reset at max Malice? Nope, don't care, whatever has the best initiative-to-damage ratio is what we're running.
Thief Dagger is about matched with Thief sword for auto attack damage but Dagger is home to the centralizing Cloak & Dagger → Backstab combo. This does huge damage from any direction—flanking is gone!
Sword, by contrast, suffers a DPS loss when using any dual wield skill, Headshot, or Black Powder. The only DPS gain skills are Cloak & Dagger (but the stealth attack for sword is BARELY worth using, you could actually just cast Cloak & Dagger twice in a row and do just as well), and Sword 2...without using the return-to shadowstep. Meaning Sword 2 has a 15-second cooldown. Just to do slightly more than the auto-attack.
Need CC? Pack an off-hand pistol and fill time with auto-attacks, they're very good.
What about Pistol?
Ally-targeting is clunky.
Single-target support is nonviable. We have encounters that apply arena damage to all players, and each player in the squad can take damage from the same AoE and it's the healer's job to keep the whole team up.
A "lesser effect". Reduced duration? Great, what's the point of that? You might as well just make it all the reduced duration.
Does "splashed" Shadow Sap not even grant protection to the other allies? Great, we won't use it.
Hopefully this will just be something like reduced Barrier or Healing, and the Boons are intact, but it's already been confirmed by the new member of the design team, Trig, on a Twitch Stream (Mighty Teapot's?) that Endless Night will not give Quickness to "splashed" allies.
Maybe this skill shouldn't give quickness at all. Why is the design team not skill splitting? What are they afraid of?
This rotation was initially theorycrafted by Left when Specter was first showed off. I did some early proof-of-concept on the build, then Left took it over and improved it to around 51,000 DPS.
That's a lot of damage!
Watch that video briefly, and notice how I swap between the enemy and my allies, applying one skill to the target then the Endless Night beam to my allies.
When Specter applies barrier to an ally, they receive a stack of Rotwallow Venom, which applies a short-duration stack of torment to a single enemy just like normal venoms.
Each cast of Endless Night back then was 21 applications of Rotwallow Venom, with more Torment duration than we have now.
ANet killed that build back during beta by making the beam target a single enemy, nerfing the quickness application, nerfing Rotwallow Venom duration, nerfing Specter's Torment damage modifier, nerfing Consume Shadows to require charging up.... The list goes on.
Why do I bring this up?
Yes.
The auto-attack chain will be twice as strong when targeting allies, vs targeting the enemy.
Endless Night is not worth using against an enemy target, but it might be worth using on allies. This rotation won't have room for auto attacks, so I'm not pinning any hopes to this.
No, the optimal damage rotation will probably be Twilight combo, Siphon, and Shroud skills on the enemy, then filling time with Scepter skills on allies. We will probably spend less time in Shroud because those autos are just so cracked...
Perfect?
We don't know. And now it's DPS is very closely tied to the DPS build because they're doing nearly the exact same thing.
This has never happened to Firebrand, trust me.
Buffed to 40.2 if you do the new degenerate 1a 1b 2 1a 1b 2 rotation that interrupts our auto chain.
Still screwed by all the usual stuff.
Mag Bomb damage normalized. Cool. Still amazing utility on that skill.
No need to flank with Premeditation Rifle is nice. Swapping Impact to an Accuracy sigil (or not doing that, and losing crit chance) was ~1,200 DPS loss, so that's avoided. I don't mind losing flanking here that much because Flanking wasn't make-or-break adrenaline pumping like dagger. It was just a boring loss.
It will play okay, but pretttttttttty similar to utility-spam builds that people hate, with the added bonus of casting TWO skills for every application of quickness.
You can tune this to your liking BUT
One of us. One of us!
This is getting no changes, by the way. It'd be a huge amount of effort from the studio's programmers for one elite spec, for one profession, largely in one game mode (instanced PvE), with a small player base.
Probably just not happening. Not a question of "want to", it's a question of resource management AND doing this right.
Remember stealth-tanking Old Lion's Court? Because they didn't apply Revealed, then they only applied Revealed once and Deadeye just Shadow Melded out of it?
You can still run Consume Shadows for team healing/barrier.
Will it run Consume Shadows? Not for optimal damage anymore.
submitted by TheDarkstarChimaera to Guildwars2 [link] [comments]
I'm Iskarel. I maintain the PvE Thief builds and guides on Snow Crows
With a PvE perspective, I'm going to run through the changes, discuss their impact, and talk about current meta builds and how they're impacted.
Want the build-by-build cliff notes? Skip to the bottom, search for "tl;dr"
I know this is a lot. Think of it as a reference document.
A LOT has changed. The builds aren't unrecognizable but the texture has changed almost across the board.
Flanking is Dead (for most endgame bosse)
To make them more reliable in endgame PvE content, all effects that benefit when the player strikes from the flank or from behind now always apply their benefits when striking defiant foes.Not all players know that "flanking" or "from behind or the sides" just means—don't be in front of the target.
Ever used a build with Thief runes? Just don't stand directly in front of the target.
What fewer players will know is that there's a small set of skills that actually need you to be ~180-degrees behind your target.
- Thief Backstab (deals double damage from behind)
- Thief Sword Stealth Attack (only dazes from behind)
- Ranger Greatsword Hilt (dazes from the front, stuns from behind. This basically doesn't matter in PvE)
- Mesmer Downstate phantasm (deals more damage if the phantasm hits from behind. Hey it's like a Thief!)
Which way does Sabetha face during her Flame Wall?
I'm not going to answer these questions because the answers don't matter anymore! This skill expression is now gone.
Just backstab from any angle.
Ah but "defiant foes"? What isn't included there?
Can you backstab Primordus in the Harvest Temple strike if your group stays on the left vs right side, when looking from the center towards the dragon?
You would have to be on the right side. The left is the dragon's face.Which way does Conjured Amalgamate face?
When approaching CA's platform, it is facing to your right. This also applies to the hands. Stand on the left side of the platform, and "above" the hands (closer to the portal leading away from this encounter).Which way do the hands on Adina face?
2 o'clock (north), 5 o'clock (northwest), 7 o'clock (south), 10 o'clock (southeast)These are non-defiant "prop" type enemies. Also included here is Drakkar, the Octovine, and Tequatl. IIRC.
No, I don't know why.
Just use your rifle and pierce two hands with Spotter's Shot + Death's Judgment! That's better than remembering these facing positions.
BTW Drakkar is made up 17 prop pieces, and you can only cast Deadeye's Mark on one of them. Don't play Deadeye here, you're trolling yourself. :D
Acrobatics Mental Gymnastics
Yeah this ain't it, chief. This is still a defensive and mobility-oriented traitline.The damage modifier in Endless Stamina can't compete with Deadly Arts or Critical Strikes, even when combined with the Power in Swinder's Equilibrium.
The other stuff is maybe interesting for solo open world champions but Shadow Arts is already quite capable at that, and Condition Thief has a lot more toys to work with when solo compared to Power.
It's something but this traitline still feels ironically directionless.
Improvisational Theater of War
Interesting! We can now use this traitline predictably, resetting the cooldown of all or utility skills. On the surface that's good because it means we'll always get value out of the reset...unless our skill uses are staggered. More on that later.Mag Bomb Delenda Est.
Currently this skill's damage-per-cast-time is roughly double that of Daredevil Staff 2, Weakening Charge. Notably, the cast time is short because it pulses damage.The coefficient we have on the wiki, drawn from the Game's API, is 4.10. ANet lists a 1.50 (per hit, so 4.50 total) nerfed to 0.70. So... Uh...
Let's say Throw Magnetic Bomb's damage is nerfed to 50% of its current damage. Or there about.
So next patch, one Throw Magnetic Bomb is close to the damage of one Staff 2, but the damage comes out over time (during our Assassin Signet burst) and the cast animation is faster than Staff 2.
But is it worth losing Executioner?
Probably not. Executioner is approximately 9.52% damage on a fight that spends 50% of its time above 50% target HP and 50% of time below (due to Ferocious Strikes).
That's a lot of damage to be made up by another use of a stolen skill!
Daredevil's Bound to be Good
Bound: Increased power coefficient from 1.75 to 3.5This ratchets up the damage of our dodge so that it beats the damage-per-cast-time of Punishing Strikes (skill 1 part C) and Staff 5, while still losing to Staff Strike and Staff Bash (skill 1 parts A/B), Staff 2, and Fist Flurry/Palm Strike.
This damage increase is valuable because
- (A) it makes dodging better for damage, on top of the damage modifiers provided by Havoc Specialist and Bounding Dodger
- (B) if we get excess endurance from our helpful allies, burning it off to maintain our modifiers hurts our DPS less on the future patch.
Auto chain go brrrr
Staff Strike, Staff Bash: Increased power coefficient.... Uh oh.
This increase the DPS of the first and second part of the chain well beyond the last hit.
The optimal DPS rotation now involves interrupting the chain after the 2nd hit.
That's not easy to do on most professions, which have a limited number of viable interrupts, but we're Thief, baby!
Staff Strike, Staff Bash, Weakening Charge. Repeat. Throw in a Fist Flurry. Save your Palm Strike. Yeah. This sort of thing.
Calculations done by REMagic42 ( training-accident-36 ) show the following
- new auto chain interrupt rotation: 40,252
- old benchmark rotation: 38,593
You could just not do this. That's up to you. The build is getting buffed by ~4,000 DPS next patch but it still has all the old problems. Don't know those? Read here
Let's Get Physical (Lights out, follow the noise)
Various Physical Skill cooldown reductionsThese are neat and strictly a positive.
Left, a great player who provides benchmarks for Power and Condition Daredevil, already tested Condition Daredevil with cooldown-traited Impairing Daggers and found them simply worse in group content vs Devourer Venom. You can read more on his benchmark.
So the Impairing Daggers cooldown reduction (CDR) doesn't matter to us.
A cooldown reduction for Channeled Vigor would've been cool!
This skill basically gives you a get-out-of-jail-free dodge if you're ever scared that burning all your dodges for Havoc Specialist will leave you vulnerable. You can get a dodge with Withdraw on a shorter cooldown but that travels backwards from your facing direction which can be scary.Impact Strike is still worse defiance-bar to cooldown ratio vs Basilisk Venom, but any improvement is nice. This skill is good when you can't guarantee all hits of Basilisk Venom will hit your target, or when you need to CC more frequently than Basilisk's cooldown allows.
This skill is also very useful for maintaining Lotus Training uptime when playing Condition Daredevil. If you can't keep hitting the boss with your auto-attack chain and F1 Steal, you will run out of endurance and lose your condition damage buff. Use Channeled Vigor to maintain buff uptime when you can't hit the boss. (This tip comes from Left!)
Death-onate Plasma and "Boon Thief"
Farewell, Boon Thief. Without Quickness, we can no longer role-compress all those shiny boons in Plasma into a Quickness Build.I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the damage of Detonate Plasma will not be worth its cast time purely from a DPS perspective, especially on a Condition Build, but you might still get some boon uptime from Daredevils on fights like Matthias and Twin Largos' Kenut.
You can now permanently sunset your Celestial/Ritualist gear for Boon Thief. Will you use it for Alacrity Specter later? I don't now, I don't know how much Alacrity is given by that trait. We'll talk more later. :)
Also Icebrood Saga exists
These really don't matter. Unstable Reagent is maybe a DPS increase, I don't have a log with it for cast time.This is NOT Unstable Artifact BTW. That skill is still worth using for both Power and Condition DPS.
Cursed Artifact is like throw-Plaguelands, and an Ethereal field at that. It's free real estate on the Condition Build.
Time in a Bottle is squad-wide alacrity AND quickness. Take that, Chronomancer! It's only found in Cold War and randomly in EoD strikes. :)
Dumbed-down-eye
Deadeye Stolen Skill splash support
Stolen Skills now grant their beneficial effects around the caster.These are mostly "splash" uptimes of boons, but you can also get superspeed and a modest heal. Neat! Deadeye providing a token amount of squad value beyond its DPS and CC output.
Deadeye Malicious Intent buff
Malicious Intent: Increased Malice gain from 1 to 2 in PvE onlyThis is actually big!
Firstly, this increases the damage dealt by the lower difficulty Be Quick or Be Killed Dagger Deadeye rotation (if you've ever heard someone described Dagger Deadeye as 5111151115111, that's this).
1 more Malice pip after each Mark and Stealth attack boost the damage modifier of Malicious Backstab. I don't have a quick estimate for this increase yet.Secondly, this is wonderful for the Dagger-Dagger Maleficent Seven rotation.
All Power Dagger skills (Heartseeker, Dancing Dagger, Cloak & Dagger) are single-damage packet skills (with the exception of Dancing Dagger when bounced from your main target, to another enemy, and back to your main target). This means they have only one chance to score a crit, and thus only one chance to earn 2 Malice instead of 1.
Power Thief derives 15% critical chance from Critical Strikes' Keen Observer trait, which demands the player stay above 75% HP. You won't have 100% uptime of this trait in many raid fights, especially if your healer is slacking. If the current Dagger Deadeye benchmark was performed at 75% player HP, without drastically altering gear to accommodate for the missing critical chance, the benchmark could lose up to 12,000 DPS!, dropping it nearly into support territory.
This Malicious Intent buff gives you a safety cushion for one of those Initiative skills to score a non-crit, making the rotation more robust in endgame encounters. It does NOT reduce the minimum number of Initiative skills needed to reach maximum Malice: that is still 3 with Malicious Intent and 4 without. It does reduce the maximum needed by 1 skill, which is also great!
Quickly Fire For Effect
This trait no longer requires a target to grant boons to allies.Er, it doesn't require one right now. Specifically, if you Mark a target, you can use your F2 and gain boons even if your stolen skill is obstructed by terrain. If you have your enemy targeted while outside 1,500 range you will get an out of range error that stops you from casting F2, but simply untargeting the enemy will let you use the skill to get boons. If you are obstructed or out of range, you don't hit the target.
I assume what this means is that if you do NOT have a marked target, you can cast a cantrip to get a new F2. That's cool and rather handy for the new Quickness build.
Shadow Flare isn't real, it can't hurt you
Shadow Flare: Reduced cooldown from 30 to 20 seconds. This skill only damages once instead of pulsing. Activate the flip-over Shadow Swap to trigger another damage instance from your original location.Deadeye dumbed down. Navigating self-reveal with pulsing damage skills on DPS Deadeye has been a hallmark of modern builds for several years—Shadow Flare for Power, Thousand Needles for Condition.
That problem is now eliminated for Power. You don't need to know the timing, you don't need to know where to throw Shadow Flare. Just Do your backstab, cast Shadow Flare for one damage packet, cast it again, go for another Backstab. No fuss, no skill expression, no frustration, no learning curve.
I don't like this change, I understand why other people like this change. I think it's dumb to change this. If you don't like self-reveal, consider not playing the class that uses Stealth and Revealed for its DPS output.
Fun in the Chamber
One in the Chamber: This trait now also increase the damage of F2 Stolen Skills in addition to its previous effectsIn case anyone is unfamiliar with Deadeye—it doesn't have access to any core Stolen Skills. No Mag Bombs here!
This is a nice perk. The important thing is that this trait gives us an extra F2 charge every time we use a Stolen Skill...That's for Quickness.
This trait is also valuable to Condition Deadeye builds (particularly since there's a 4/9 chance they get a stolen skill that applies damaging conditions!) and to Power Pistol-Pistol Deadeye. See more of that here.
Binding Shadow, my beloved
Binding Shadow - Reduced cooldown from 30 to20 seconds in PvE.Cool! I love—
This skill now immobilizes marked targets instead of knocking them downOh. Uhhh it already immobilized them. I assume it immobilizes them more? That sucks, this was an amazing breakbar skill, particular on Condition Deadeye where it applied several poison stacks (natively, and via Panic Strike with Immobilize) and gave an extra F2 charge from One in the Chamber.
It's lower cooldown on boonstrip which is neat? Matches No Pain No Gain time in Fractals, I suppose.
Just use a Power Mesmer, they passively breathe boonstrip.
Quickness Deadeye builds
Three options!Oops! All cantrips
This option will spam out cantrip like nobody's business to meet the voracious demand of Might uptime.So that's our 24-might upkeep option. It's not pretty, and it's Cantrip spam. ANet said we wouldn't have this in the game anymore.
Fire For Effect grants 8 stacks of Might for 12 seconds. The with-Alacrity cooldown of Cantrips are: 16 (Binding Shadow, Shadow Flare), 20 seconds (Malicious Restoration heal), 25 seconds (Mercy, Shadow Gust). When using Mercy, the cooldown of F1 is effectively the cooldown of Mercy, plus minimally the cast time of the F2, plus the cast time of F1 again.
So some of our Might is locked behind 25+ seconds. Building for 100% Might Duration would be devastating for our DPS output. We could cover 100% Might uptime with a single trio of F2 casts anyway—Binding Shadow, Malicious Restoration, Shadow Flare—but that would not take tactical advantage of the natural Deadeye's Mark cooldown.
Instead, we'll cover Quickness with two sets of F2 casts, staggered across the duration of our Might stacks. Left has an old benchmark demonstrating this technique.
Well, what if we don't have to generate Might?
Then we have two options:
3 cantrips with no Improvisation
This option will maintain a burst of 24 might as we apply quickness, or we can space out the stolen skills to maintain at least 8 stacks indefinitely. Sounds pretty good!Improvisation
We'll probably still be using Shadow Flare because it's just good damage, and Improvisation selects for builds that use active utility skills, not passive signets. We might even be able to use Malicious Intent instead of One in the Chamber for this build, earning us more damage on Malicious Backstab.So we have options.
Quickness Deadeye weapon options (We don't have those! )
Maleficent Seven is the only equalizer at work that allows bad weapons to do somewhat okay, and without that, we're back to shopping with the to the usual harsh restriction of "the best single skill out of all these weapons crushes the validity of all other options".Stealth attacks? Naw, just spam F2s without Malice.
"Filler" initiative skills used to build up to an Initiative reset at max Malice? Nope, don't care, whatever has the best initiative-to-damage ratio is what we're running.
Thief Dagger is about matched with Thief sword for auto attack damage but Dagger is home to the centralizing Cloak & Dagger → Backstab combo. This does huge damage from any direction—flanking is gone!
Sword, by contrast, suffers a DPS loss when using any dual wield skill, Headshot, or Black Powder. The only DPS gain skills are Cloak & Dagger (but the stealth attack for sword is BARELY worth using, you could actually just cast Cloak & Dagger twice in a row and do just as well), and Sword 2...without using the return-to shadowstep. Meaning Sword 2 has a 15-second cooldown. Just to do slightly more than the auto-attack.
Need CC? Pack an off-hand pistol and fill time with auto-attacks, they're very good.
What about Pistol?
It's just weaker.Shortbow?
It sucks really bad against single targets.Rifle? This is the sniper spec!
It sucks if you don't have Maleficent Seven for infinite Initiative and either stealth utility skills or Silent Scope to unlock Death's Judgment.
Specter, rant about single-target/ally-target support
Ally-targeted scepter skills now also grant a lesser effect to additional allies in a radius around the target.I don't know why ANet is so obsessed with single target support for PvE Specter, but they'll learn its untenable eventually. They've been gradually walking back the single target focus ever since release, and we are now about 15 months past Specter's official release and coming up on 2 years since it's beta.
Ally-targeting is clunky.
Single-target support is nonviable. We have encounters that apply arena damage to all players, and each player in the squad can take damage from the same AoE and it's the healer's job to keep the whole team up.
A "lesser effect". Reduced duration? Great, what's the point of that? You might as well just make it all the reduced duration.
Does "splashed" Shadow Sap not even grant protection to the other allies? Great, we won't use it.
Hopefully this will just be something like reduced Barrier or Healing, and the Boons are intact, but it's already been confirmed by the new member of the design team, Trig, on a Twitch Stream (Mighty Teapot's?) that Endless Night will not give Quickness to "splashed" allies.
Maybe this skill shouldn't give quickness at all. Why is the design team not skill splitting? What are they afraid of?
The Dark Side of Scepter Splash
If you paid attention to Specter during its beta testing, you might be aware of a very weird build that used Endless Night (Scepter Pistol dual wield beam skill that granted quickness and 7-packets of Barrier to 3 allies, if you could pierce through the allies).This rotation was initially theorycrafted by Left when Specter was first showed off. I did some early proof-of-concept on the build, then Left took it over and improved it to around 51,000 DPS.
That's a lot of damage!
Watch that video briefly, and notice how I swap between the enemy and my allies, applying one skill to the target then the Endless Night beam to my allies.
When Specter applies barrier to an ally, they receive a stack of Rotwallow Venom, which applies a short-duration stack of torment to a single enemy just like normal venoms.
Each cast of Endless Night back then was 21 applications of Rotwallow Venom, with more Torment duration than we have now.
ANet killed that build back during beta by making the beam target a single enemy, nerfing the quickness application, nerfing Rotwallow Venom duration, nerfing Specter's Torment damage modifier, nerfing Consume Shadows to require charging up.... The list goes on.
Why do I bring this up?
Scepter Autos on Allies
Currently the scepter auto chain applies 54 seconds of Torment (in the form of multiple stacks). If the scepter auto chain can instead apply barrier to 3 allies, then this balloons to 72 seconds without Strength of Shadows, or 108 seconds with Strength of Shadows.Yes.
The auto-attack chain will be twice as strong when targeting allies, vs targeting the enemy.
Endless Night is not worth using against an enemy target, but it might be worth using on allies. This rotation won't have room for auto attacks, so I'm not pinning any hopes to this.
No, the optimal damage rotation will probably be Twilight combo, Siphon, and Shroud skills on the enemy, then filling time with Scepter skills on allies. We will probably spend less time in Shroud because those autos are just so cracked...
Second Opinion, moving away from Consume Shadows
Ever since beta all forms of Specter have run Consume Shadows—Alacrity, DPS, Heal. This is because Consume Shadows can apply barrier to allies, giving them Rotwallow venom. The other adept traits are purely defensive, so they're not used by the DPS and Alacrity builds...and Consume Shadows is an extremely potent healing tool. So potent, it's been nerfed repeatedly!Charged time reduced from instant to 4 seconds, maximum shroud cut by more than 50%, conversion ratio reduced from 100 to 50%Second Opinion will grant bonus Condition Damage, more with a Scepter. This should be, at minimum, +80/+80, which will beat the ~800 DPS provided by perfect Rotwallow Venom application from Consume Shadows.
Perfect?
If your allies are too injured and Consume Shadows only heals them overflowing into Barrier, you won't give them Rotwallow.
Traversing Dusk no longer gives Alacrity
This is just a heal trait now. That's just what it does.Shadestep is the new Alacrity trait
Oh. Uh. I'll keep it quick.- This reduces our gameplay from 2 separate rotations with their own quirks and different Shroud lengths, to 1—the DPS rotation.
How do you give alacrity? Just go into shroud and push buttons.\2. Ever been kicked out of Shroud by incoming damage in a raid/strike/open world meta? No more Alacrity uptime for you. Better refill your Shadow Force quickly—and Larcenous Torment generates Shadow Force FAR more slowly than Traversing Dusk
How do you do DPS? Just go into shroud and push buttons.
Alacrity Specter's Well cooldowns were inaccessible inside Shadow Shroud because we inherited a shroud, not just a kit like Druid's Celestial Avatar or Holosmith's Photon Forge.
Druid Spirits off cooldown while in CA? Don't care, you can push em.
Specter wells off cooldown while in Shadow Shroud? You might be gaining DPS from shroud skills, or healing from Consume Shadows, but you're losing Alacrity uptime. Is that tradeoff worth it?
Doesn't matter anymore. Just do the benchmark DPS rotation.
You're too slow? Then your alacrity uptime will suffer. You need to be on pace with going in and out of shroud, just like the DPS rotation. Difference is, if you're bad at this, it's going to frustrate other people.
This is not the hardest rotation in game to optimize and you of course have the option to make it easier with Ritualist gear (which you should do anyway if you plan to still run Consume Shadows, will be a two-fold personal DPS loss).
How much DPS will ANet allow this build to have?Fun fact: Traversing Dusk's 1% Shadow Force per ally in your shadowstep scales indefinitely, not just up to 5 players. That gives you colossal Shadow Force generation in crowded metas and even raids.Want to use your Siphon on ally? No you don't, that's valuable Shadow Force generation you need to maintain tempo for Alacrity.
Again, you can wear Ritualist gear to soften this loss.
Want to have the utility of Well of Bounty? Well, previously that utility was tied to your Alacrity uptime, your DPS uptime (lingering outside shroud for Well of Bounty was a loss), and your healing output (Traversing Dusk, and maintaining tempo in/out of Shadow Shroud for Consume Shadows).
Now you can take Well of Bounty and have it on demand, at a DPS loss.
Previously you could have just take advantage of the long Stability duration to cast this well early, or delay it slightly to cover the mechanic.
We don't know. And now it's DPS is very closely tied to the DPS build because they're doing nearly the exact same thing.
This has never happened to Firebrand, trust me.
tl;dr It's dangerous to read all that up there! Skip to here!
Condition Daredevil
Unchanged by Impairing Daggers cooldown reductionPower Daredevil
Buffed to ~38.6 if you do the old rotation.Buffed to 40.2 if you do the new degenerate 1a 1b 2 1a 1b 2 rotation that interrupts our auto chain.
Still screwed by all the usual stuff.
Mag Bomb damage normalized. Cool. Still amazing utility on that skill.
Boon Thief
Dead. Deadeye killed it.Power Dagger Deadeye
Much easier to play. Splashes some cute boons onto its subgroup, at random. Have to see if Shadow Flare is still worth using. Hopefully, right?Power Rifle Deadeye
Silent Scope uses Shadow Flare, I hope that's still worth using.No need to flank with Premeditation Rifle is nice. Swapping Impact to an Accuracy sigil (or not doing that, and losing crit chance) was ~1,200 DPS loss, so that's avoided. I don't mind losing flanking here that much because Flanking wasn't make-or-break adrenaline pumping like dagger. It was just a boring loss.
Quickness Deadeye
I hope you like pushing 5 and 1 a whole lot because that's almost all this is. Also pushing cantrips for F2 charges to provide quickness.It will play okay, but pretttttttttty similar to utility-spam builds that people hate, with the added bonus of casting TWO skills for every application of quickness.
You can tune this to your liking BUT
IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MANY WAYS THIS GAME'S ENEMIES CAN APPLY REVEALED TO YOU THEN YOU'RE IN FOR A TREAT WHEN YOU PICK UP QUICKNESS DEADEYE NEXT PATCH :D
It won't really prevent you from applying quickness but it will tank your DPS and fracture your soul.One of us. One of us!
This is getting no changes, by the way. It'd be a huge amount of effort from the studio's programmers for one elite spec, for one profession, largely in one game mode (instanced PvE), with a small player base.
Probably just not happening. Not a question of "want to", it's a question of resource management AND doing this right.
Remember stealth-tanking Old Lion's Court? Because they didn't apply Revealed, then they only applied Revealed once and Deadeye just Shadow Melded out of it?
DPS Specter
Buffed by Second Opinion, dubiously buffed by targeting allies with the auto chain.You can still run Consume Shadows for team healing/barrier.
Alacrity Specter
I don't know. Presumably the shroud skills will allow us to provide at least 50% uptime with a non-degenerate rotation (one that doesn't have us spending all our time in shroud). Said degenerate rotation is naturally policed by the fact our shroud absorbs incoming damage.Will it run Consume Shadows? Not for optimal damage anymore.
Alac Share Specter
Just change your grandmaster from Strength of Shadows to Shadestep and do the normal rotation. Should do at least 50% uptime, unless Alac specter is just nonviable and can't maintain Alacrity.2023.06.10 05:18 ChaotixSux (Selling)Super Mario Bros Movie, Creed 3, Ant Man Quantumania, Knock at the Cabin, 80 For Brady, Justice League X RWBY, Magic Mike Last Dance, Devotion, Plane, MAY AND JUNE Universal Rewards and many more, HD/4K Available
Please let me know if you're interested in bundle deals, willing to work price down for multiples. Cash App/Venmo/Paypal (No FF unfortunately) accepted! Price firm for single codes
Prices and format are listed in the post and can be hard to view if you are viewing from the mobile app, please scroll over to view them
My Universal Rewards movies available at $3 a piece or 2 for $5, please check here for the available movies, this changes monthly.
The following movies are the current Universal Rewards and are $3 each or 2 for $5
May 2023 Rewards 4 LEFT
June 2023 Rewards
submitted by ChaotixSux to DigitalCodeSELL [link] [comments]
Prices and format are listed in the post and can be hard to view if you are viewing from the mobile app, please scroll over to view them
My Universal Rewards movies available at $3 a piece or 2 for $5, please check here for the available movies, this changes monthly.
| Name | Price | Format | Redemption Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3:10 to Yuma | $5 | 4K | Vudu |
| 31 | $3 | HD | |
| The 355 | $4 | HD | MA |
| A24 Horror 5 Film Collection (Hereditary/ X/ The Witch/ Green Room/ It Comes At Night) | $15 | HD | Vudu |
| Addams Family 2 | $3 | HD | iTunes |
| Aladdin (2019) | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Aladdin (1992) | $4 | HD | MA |
| Alien | $3 | HD | MA |
| Aliens | $3 | HD | MA |
| Alien: Covenant | $3 | HD | MA |
| Prometheus (Alien) | $3 | HD | MA |
| Amsterdam | $6 | HD | MA |
| Anchorman 2 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Ant Man Quantumania | $10 | 4K | MA |
| Ant Man Quantumania | $8 | HD | MA |
| Aqua Teen Forever Plantasm | $5 | HD | MA |
| Avengers Age of Ultron | $3 | HD | MA |
| Avengers Infinity War | $3 | HD | MA |
| Avengers Endgame | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Back to the Future Trilogy | $9 | HD | MA |
| Bad Boys | $3 | HD | MA |
| Bad Boys for Life | $3 | HD | MA |
| Bad Grandpa | $3 | HD | |
| Banshees of Inisherin | $6 | HD | MA |
| The Batman | $4 | HD | MA |
| Batman and Superman Battle of the Super Sons | $4 | HD | MA |
| Beast | $5 | HD | MA |
| Belly | $5 | 4K | Vudu |
| Black Adam | $5 | HD | MA |
| Black Panther Wakanda Forever | $7 | 4K | MA |
| Black Panther Wakanda Forever | $5 | HD | MA |
| Blacklight | $5 | HD | |
| Blues Brothers | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Bob's Burgers Movie | $4 | HD | MA |
| Bohemian Rhapsody | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Boss Baby | $3 | HD | MA |
| Boss Baby 2 Pack | $6 | HD | MA |
| Boss Baby Family Business | $5 | 4k | MA |
| Bullet Train | $4 | HD | MA |
| Casablanca | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Call Jane | $4 | HD | MA |
| Captain Marvel | $3 | HD | MA |
| Captain Marvel | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Cars 3 | $5 | 4K | |
| Clerks 3 | $5 | HD | |
| A Clockwork Orange | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Coco | $4 | HD | |
| The Commuter | $4 | HD | |
| Creed 3 | $8 | HD | Vudu |
| Cruella | $5 | 4K | |
| Cruella | $4 | HD | |
| Daddy's Home 2 | $3 | HD | |
| DC League of Superpets | $4 | HD | |
| Deadpool | $3 | HD | |
| Deadpool 2 | $3 | HD | |
| The Dentist (1996) & The Dentist 2 Brace Yourself (1998) | $6 | HD | |
| Despicable Me 2 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Devotion | $5 | HD | MA |
| Die Hard With A Vengeance | $3 | HD | MA |
| A Good Day to Die Hard | $3 | HD | MA |
| Divergent | $3 | HD | |
| Doctor Strange | $3 | HD | MA |
| Doctor Strange Multiverse Of Madness | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Doctor Strange Multiverse Of Madness | $4 | HD | MA |
| Dolittle | $3 | HD | MA |
| Downtown Abbey A New Era | $4 | HD | MA |
| Dreamwork 10 Movie Collection | $20 | HD | MA |
| Dumbo (2019) | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves | $10 | 4K | iTunes/Vudu |
| Dungeons and Dragons Honor Among Thieves | $8 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| 80 for Brady | $7 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Elvis | $4 | HD | MA |
| Empire of Light | $5 | HD | |
| Fast & Furious 8 Film Collection | $15 | HD | MA |
| Fast and the Furious | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Fate of the Furious | $3 | HD | MA |
| Fifty Shades Darker | $3 | HD | MA |
| Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy | $6 | HD | MA |
| Flashdance | $5 | 4K | Vudu |
| The Forever Purge | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Free Guy | $4 | HD | MA |
| Friday the 13th (1980) | $4 | HD | |
| Frozen | $3 | HD | MA |
| Frozen II | $3 | HD | MA |
| Game of Thrones House of the Dragon Season 1 | $6 | HD | Vudu |
| Gentlemen | $3 | HD | iTunes |
| Ghosts Season 1 | $6 | HD | |
| Ghostbusters | $3 | HD | |
| Ghostbusters II | $3 | HD | |
| Ghostbusters Afterlife | $4 | HD | |
| The Good Dinosaur | $4 | HD | |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | $3 | HD | MA |
| Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Halloween (2018) | $4 | HD | MA |
| Halloween Kills | $4 | HD | MA |
| Halloween Ends | $5 | HD | MA |
| Hitman's Bodyguard | $3 | HD | MA |
| Hitman's Wife Bodyguard | $3 | HD | MA |
| Hunger Games 4 Movie Collection | $10 | HD | MA |
| Incredibles 2 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark | $3 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom | $3 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade | $3 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull | $3 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Independence Day Resurgence | $3 | HD | MA |
| Insidious Chapter 2 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Insidious Chapter 3 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Insidious The Last Key | $3 | HD | MA |
| Jesus Revolution | $5 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| John Wick 1 & 2 Combo Pack | $5 | HD | MA |
| John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum | $3 | HD | MA |
| Jumanji 2 Pack (2017/2019) | $6 | HD | MA |
| Jumanji Trilogy (1995-2019) | $4 | SD | MA |
| Jungle Cruise | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom | $4 | 4K | MA |
| Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom | $3 | HD | MA |
| Jurassic World 6 Movie Collection | $12 | HD | MA |
| Justice League x RWBY Super Heroes and Huntsmen Part One | $8 | 4K | MA |
| Justice League x RWBY Super Heroes and Huntsmen Part One | $6 | HD | MA |
| Justice Society World War II | $4 | 4K | MA |
| The Kid (2019) | $4 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Kin | $5 | 4K | |
| Knock at the Cabin | $8 | HD | MA |
| Knives Out | $3 | HD | MA |
| Legion of Super Heroes | $5 | HD | MA |
| Leon the Professional | $3 | HD | MA |
| Lightyear | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Lion King (2019) | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Lion King (2019) | $3 | HD | MA |
| Lion King (1994) | $3 | HD | MA |
| The Little Mermaid | $3 | HD | MA |
| The Lost City | $6 | 4K | |
| Luca | $5 | 4K | |
| Mad Max | $6 | 4K | Vudu |
| Mad Max 2/ Mad Max 3/ Mad Max Fury Road | $15 | 4K | MA |
| Magic Mike Last Dance | $7 | HD | MA |
| Mary Queen of Scots | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Man on the Moon | $4 | HD | |
| Matrix Resurrections | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Memory | $4 | HD | MA |
| Men | $5 | HD | |
| Minions The Rise of Gru | $4 | HD | MA |
| Minions 2 Movie Collection | $6 | HD | MA |
| Miss You Already | $3 | HD | Vudu |
| Morbius | $3 | HD | |
| Mulan | $3 | HD | |
| Mulan 2 | $3 | HD | |
| Mulan (2020) | $5 | 4K | |
| Mummy | $3 | HD | |
| Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor | $3 | HD | |
| News of the World | $3 | HD | MA |
| 007 No Time to Die (iTunes only) | $5 | 4K | iTunes |
| NOPE | $5 | HD | MA |
| The Northman | $4 | HD | |
| The Old Way | $6 | HD | |
| Onward | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Operation Fortune Ruse De Guerre | $8 | 4K | Vudu |
| Pitch Perfect | $3 | HD | MA |
| Pitch Perfect 2 | $3 | HD | MA |
| The Pirate Fairy | $3 | HD | MA |
| Plane | $7 | 4K | Vudu/iTunes |
| Plane | $5 | HD | Vudu/iTunes |
| Dawn for the Planet of the Apes | $3 | HD | MA |
| Rise of the Planet of the Apes | $3 | HD | MA |
| War for the Planet of the Apes | $3 | HD | MA |
| Pocahontas 2 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Predator 4-Pack | $12 | HD | MA |
| Prey for the Devil | $5 | HD | MA |
| Queen and Slim | $4 | HD | MA |
| A Quiet Place | $3 | HD | |
| Rambo 5 Film Collection | $15 | HD | |
| Raya and the Last Dragon | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Raya and the Last Dragon | $4 | HD | MA |
| Reservoir Dogs | $6 | 4K | iTunes/Vudu |
| Rock Dog 3 Battle the Beat | $2 | HD | |
| Rocky 4 Film Collection | $20 | 4K | MA |
| Ron Gone Wrong | $4 | HD | |
| Scream (1996) | $6 | 4K | iTunes/Vudu |
| Scream (1996) | $3 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Scream (2022) | $4 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| The Scorpion King | $3 | HD | MA |
| Secret Headquarters | $4 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Secret Life of Pets | $3 | HD | MA |
| Shazam Fury of the Gods | $8 | HD | MA |
| Shivers | $4 | HD | Vudu |
| Silent Night, Deadly Night Collection | $10 | HD | |
| Smile | $7 | 4K | iTunes/Vudu |
| Sonic the Hedgehog | $4 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Sonic the Hedgehog 2 | $6 | 4K | iTunes/Vudu |
| Sonic the Hedgehog 2 | $4 | HD | iTunes/Vudu |
| Soul | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Snake Eyes GI Joe Origins | $6 | 4K | |
| Snow White & The Huntsman | $4 | 4K | |
| Space Jam A New Legacy | $4 | 4K | MA |
| Spider-Man | $3 | HD | MA |
| Spider-Man 2 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Spider-Man 3 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Amazing Spider-Man | $3 | HD | MA |
| Amazing Spider-Man 2 | $3 | HD | MA |
| Spider-Man Homecoming | $4 | HD | MA |
| Spider-Man Far From Home | $4 | HD | MA |
| Spinning Gold | $8 | HD | MA |
| Spirit Untamed | $4 | HD | MA |
| Spider-Man No Way Home | $4 | HD | MA |
| Star Trek Into Darkness | $3 | HD | |
| Star Trek Beyond | $3 | HD | |
| Star Trek The Motion Picture | $6 | 4K | |
| Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan | $6 | 4K | |
| Star Trek III The Search For Spock | $6 | 4K | |
| Star Trek IV The Voyage Home | $6 | 4K | |
| Star Wars The Last Jedi | $4 | 4K | MA |
| Strange World | $4 | HD | MA |
| The Super Mario Bros Movie | $11 | HD | MA |
| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) | $3 | HD | |
| Thor Ragnarok | $3 | HD | MA |
| Thor Love and Thunder | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Thor Love and Thunder | $4 | HD | MA |
| Ticket To Paradise | $6 | HD | |
| Till (iTunes Only) | $5 | HD | |
| To Kill A Mockingbird | $3 | HD | |
| Top Gun | $3 | HD | |
| Top Gun Maverick | $6 | 4K | |
| Top Gun Maverick | $4 | HD | |
| Toy Story 4 | $6 | 4k | MA |
| Toy Story 4 | $4 | HD | MA |
| Training Day | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Transformers Age of Extinction | $6 | 4K | Vudu/iTunes |
| Transformers Dark of the Moon | $6 | 4K | Vudu/iTunes |
| Transformers The Last Knight | $6 | 4K | Vudu/iTunes |
| Trolls | $3 | HD | MA |
| Trolls 2 Movie Collection | $6 | HD | MA |
| The Turning | $4 | HD | MA |
| Turning Red | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Turning Red | $4 | HD | MA |
| Uncharted | $6 | 4K | MA |
| Underwold Rise of the Lycans | $3 | HD | |
| Venom | $3 | HD | MA |
| Voyagers | $5 | 4K | |
| The Walking Dead Season 11 | $6 | HD | |
| Wayne's World | $6 | 4K | |
| West Side Story (2021) | $3 | HD | MA |
| West Side Story (2021) | $5 | 4K | MA |
| Wolf of Wall Street | $3 | HD | MA |
| The Woman King | $7 | 4K | MA |
| The Woman King | $5 | HD | MA |
| Wreck It Ralph: Ralph Breaks the Internet | $6 | 4K | MA |
| X-Men Apocalypse | $3 | HD | MA |
| X-Men Trilogy (First Class/DOFP/Apocalypse) | $9 | HD | MA |
May 2023 Rewards 4 LEFT
| Assault on Precinct 13 | HD | MA |
|---|---|---|
| Being John Malkovich | HD | MA |
| The Black Dahlia (2006) | HD | MA |
| Fifty Shades of Grey | 4K | MA |
| I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry | HD | MA |
| Larry Crowne | HD | MA |
| Snow White and the Huntsman | 4K | MA |
| This is 40 | HD | MA |
| 12 Monkeys | 4K | MA |
| Welcome to Marwen | 4K | MA |
June 2023 Rewards
| 9 | HD | MA |
|---|---|---|
| About Time | HD | MA |
| American Pie | HD | MA |
| The Boy Next Door | HD | MA |
| Definitely,Maybe | HD | MA |
| Eastern Promises | HD | MA |
| Empire | HD | MA |
| Fifty Shades Darker | 4K | MA |
| The Great Wall | 4K | MA |
| Jarhead 2 | HD | MA |
| Josie and the Pussycats | HD | MA |
| Reservation Road | HD | MA |
2023.06.10 05:14 BrewersBot Postgame Thread: 6/9 Athletics @ Brewers
Line Score - Game Over
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | LOB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OAK | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 6 | 1 | 8 |
| MIL | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
Box Score
| MIL | AB | R | H | RBI | BB | SO | BA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2B | Miller, O | 3 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .314 |
| SS | Adames | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .207 |
| C | Contreras, Wm | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .240 |
| LF | Yelich | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | .254 |
| CF | Wiemer | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | .228 |
| DH | Anderson, B | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .231 |
| RF | Perkins, B | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | .160 |
| PH | Singleton | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .158 |
| 2B | Monasterio | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .296 |
| 1B | Tellez | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .227 |
| 3B | Urías, L | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .059 |
| MIL | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | P-S | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Houser | 4.0 | 6 | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 93-52 | 4.33 |
| Megill | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 27-12 | 4.22 |
| Milner | 2.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 32-20 | 3.47 |
| Wilson, B | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 18-11 | 2.70 |
| Miller, T | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 10-7 | 5.87 |
| OAK | AB | R | H | RBI | BB | SO | BA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CF | Ruiz, E | 5 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .263 |
| 1B | Noda | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | .249 |
| DH | Brown, S | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | .193 |
| RF | Laureano | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | .230 |
| 2B | Peterson | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | .221 |
| 3B | Bride | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | .308 |
| LF | Bleday | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | .216 |
| C | Langeliers | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | .219 |
| SS | Smith, K | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .186 |
| OAK | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | P-S | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Moll | 1.0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 23-16 | 4.37 |
| Medina | 5.0 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 92-51 | 7.53 |
| Erceg | 2.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 29-15 | 3.75 |
| May | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 18-10 | 5.52 |
Scoring Plays
Highlights
| Description | Length | Video |
|---|---|---|
| Bullpen availability for Milwaukee, June 9 vs Athletics | 0:07 | Video |
| Bullpen availability for Oakland, June 9 vs Brewers | 0:07 | Video |
| Fielding alignment for Oakland, June 9 vs Brewers | 0:11 | Video |
| Fielding alignment for Milwaukee, June 9 vs Athletics | 0:11 | Video |
| Starting lineups for Athletics at Brewers - June 9, 2023 | 0:09 | Video |
| Breaking down Adrian Houser's pitches | 0:08 | Video |
| Breaking down Luis Medina's pitches | 0:08 | Video |
| Luis Medina's outing against the Brewers | 0:23 | Video |
| Ramón Laureano triples to left, bringing in two runs | 0:27 | Video |
| Esteury Ruiz steals 30th base and advances to third | 0:43 | Video |
| Jonah Bride slaps an RBI single to left field | 0:22 | Video |
| Ramón Laureano triples in two runs following a review | 0:53 | Video |
| Esteury Ruiz hits a ground ball RBI single to left | 0:18 | Video |
| Blake Perkins hits a fly ball RBI double to left | 0:27 | Video |
| Luis Urías hits an RBI double off the wall in right | 0:27 | Video |
| Luis Urías hits an RBI double following a review | 0:58 | Video |
| Jonah Bride lofts a sacrifice fly to center field | 0:28 | Video |
| Houser picks up his fourth K by striking out Bride | 0:09 | Video |
| Luis Medina strikes out six Brewers over five innings | 0:43 | Video |
Decisions
| Winning Pitcher | Losing Pitcher | Save |
|---|---|---|
| Medina (1-5, 7.53 ERA) | Houser (2-2, 4.33 ERA) | May (2 SV, 5.52 ERA) |
2023.06.10 05:10 Few_You_9030 I Love You
12:00am December 13th it was a cold winter night the boy was sitting in a chair from his back yard. He placed it in front of his pool facing towards the mountains with all the copious amount of houses built across the mountain meant for the wealthy and only the wealthy. To the far left is a house, her house, the one he was never allowed to go into unless her parents weren’t there. He looked in the direction of the house hoping that she was in there safe and sound asleep. All the boy wanted was her to hold him, tell him everything was going to be fine and that she loved him while in her warm and safe embrace as she had before. She was the only escape from his prison that he called home, she knew how to calm him down and knew exactly what to say she was the boys safe place, his home, his strength…his everything. He thought about her, he let out a silent, painful cry not because she left him but because they were eachothers best friends because they knew everything about eachother but they couldnt be together soley because of the future, everyday the boy would blame himself for it, only if he were smarter, had the money to go with her. But he couldnt all he could do was hope, hope that they would meet again in near future. The boy whispered “I love you” hoping for a response back…nothing he said it again this time louder…no response, he stood up, with his throat tight, his eyes full of tears, heart getting smaller and smaller by the second, he closed his eyes and screamed “I LOVE YOU”. All of a sudden in the darkness of his eye lids he heard a soft angelic voice “I love you” he opened his eyes there she was standing in front of him lighter dark brown wavey hair, big beautiful brown eyes almost like meteors and the face the boy knew so well she was in a beautiful white dress. The boy looked down, he was wearing a black suit with a white dress shirt and black tie with a flower pinned to his shirt, he looked down at his left hand there was a ring on one of his fingers, not his index, not his middle, on his digit finger… his ring finger. He looked around they were in the center of a banquet hall, all of her family and his family looking at the two. She took his hand and put one around her waist and the other interlocked with hers, then the song started playing. They proceeded to have their first dance mean while everything was silent but her voice and the song that she wanted to play for this moment. The boy looked into her eyes as she smiled, a smile that could light up a whole room teeth like stars, he started speaking “ I missed you so much” she gazed at him and responded with “i missed you” they continued to dance. The blared “When you're cold and all alone,You can build you a city, And call it home” the boy spoke again with a strained voice “I Love You” the girl responed back “I Love You” she put her head on his chest and closed her eyes the boy kissed her head and put his head on her head and closed his eyes. Then the music started to fade, the feeling of her and her presence fading, he opened his eyes, he was back in his back yard looking at the mountains, he looked down she was no longer there just concrete floor. The boy fell to his knees and started to sob a quiet sob, a hole in the middle of his chest. He looked up at the mountains and looked to the far left, he started to scream with everything he had left in himself …“I Love You”
submitted by Few_You_9030 to u/Few_You_9030 [link] [comments]
2023.06.10 05:08 Helpful_Advance_4277 Perfect cruise to Alaska on Seaborn Odyssey
Just returned from a 7 night cruise from Juneau to Vancouver. Cruised the smooth waters of the inside passage. It is a luxury cruise but well worth the price. 367 passengers. Over 300 crew members. No food or drink packages to worry about. What’s on the ship is yours to eat and drink. Leave wallet in the room. Everything but the excursions is included. Including tips. The elevators are fast and always empty. I can’t name all the items included. But some are a bottle of champagne in our room, a huge bottle of woodford reserve bourbon, a book on Alaska, robe, slippers, a tote bag, amazing all weather signature coats. Chocolates. Anyway, it was perfect. I have no complaints. Alaska was amazing. Highly recommend.
submitted by Helpful_Advance_4277 to Cruise [link] [comments]
2023.06.10 04:58 Motaqueen710 dmt trip report
Sorry if this doesn’t make sense but I’m sure everyone will understand lol. So i sandwiched it and ripped about five hits to clear the bowl. Arms felt heavy so i laid back and closed my eyes i started seeing all kinds of orange and red patterns and shapes thats seemed to start creating like a dome or space around me. Also i was feeling like i was being pulled in from the top of my head and from the bottom of my feet into like almost a point in the center of my chest . It felt like i was in a slingshot pulling back getting ready to be launched.i don’t know how to describe it but the way the room was growing was like making me feel like i was about to get launched and then suddenly it all started to wind down I’m not sure if i took enough seems like i was just short of a break through. What do y’all think has anyone experienced this?
submitted by Motaqueen710 to DMT [link] [comments]
2023.06.10 04:27 MrPoliSciGuy The Roma Rebuild - Vol. 5
Hi all,
It's about that time again! For the fifth year in a row, here is my (unsolicited) overview of Roma's squad, current mercato, potential signings, and loan dealings.
Every year I try to give these a theme - last year, the name of the game was versatility: getting players who could cover multiple roles as we had a severely reduced squad due to FFP rules. We saw exactly how that came to bite us both in the league - where we were LITERALLY playing the kids to give the first teamers a break - and in the EL Final, where forced substitutions left us going into Penalties with no designated penalty takers.
With no expectation of squad reductions this season, the name of the game for this exercise is depth - our first team is good, VERY good even, but the question is "what options do we have on the bench or in rotation that can keep that level of quality?" and the answer this season due to injuries (Wijnaldum, Kumbulla), transfers and personal issues (Zaniolo, Karsdorp), or registration issues (Solbakken) has been categorically no. Simply put, it is not fair to put the weight of expectation on Benjamin Tahirovic (who is too young to purchase Alcohol in the United States) because our midfield of Matic and Cristante cannot play every game. Pair that with the long term injuries to Kumbulla and Abraham - both of whom will not be back until 2024 - and we need bodies, plain and simple.
Our current FFP situation also means that we will likely need to end this mercato in the black - which means relying on free transfers, loans, and spending money VERY judiciously.
Houssam Aouar: Aouar is a gamble in my honest opinion. A few years ago, this man was the Robin to Nabil Fekir’s Batman, and while I don’t think either of those players has had the career they had hoped to have, on his day this man can be unplayable. Emphasis on the “on his day”. On good days, Aouar has Jordan Veretout’s work ethic, and Jeremy Menez’s feet. On bad days, he has Veretout’s feet and Menez’s work ethic.
On the positive though, he can play (like Pellegrini) both in the center midfield as an 8, or more attacking as a 10. This can give us options off the bench to either rotate or change a game as necessary.
Evan Ndicka: Now this one I’m very happy about. Ndicka is left footed, very physical, but very intelligent as well which means he has a good eye for a pass as needed. He reminds me quite a bit of Antonio Rudiger in that he fits a very similar profile and played for a Bundesliga club at a similar level. I have no reservations - I think he will be a hit, but like Aouar will benefit tremendously from a full pre-season.
Goalkeepers
Pietro Boer - Let’s start with the easy one: Boer is a third choice keeper that is home-grown at club. Useful for registration, costs us peanuts, has never complained. Keep.
Rui Patricio - From the easy to the hard one: Rui’s decline this season has been sharp, but consistent. His great saves remind us that, once upon a time, that’s a solid goalkeeper, but that has been paired with just… odd mistakes - not Robin Olsen bad, but pretty bad nonetheless. This is no longer a starting International Goalkeeper (that honor goes to Diogo Costa nowadays). He would still make an excellent second-choice goalkeeper at a top club - which might be a good selling point as he still has admirers in the Premier League. Sell.
Mile Svilar - I really wanted to love Svilar. Football Manager Stans rise up, because ALL of us have signed Svilar at one point or another. Svilar still strikes me as potentially a very good keeper, but he has been unable to dislodge Patricio from that starting berth. I think he will end up staying around, and I hope he can prove himself to everyone in a starting role next season. Keep.
Defenders
Gianluca Mancini - We start with Mancini because as of right now, he is the only defender that looks certain to stay. He is definitely the second coming of Materazzi in temperament… if not in talent just yet. He still as a few years on his contract, Mourinho likes him a lot, and he provides leadership on and off the pitch. Keep.
Chris Smalling - While Smalling has been our best player (not just defender) at quite a few points this season, I am always concerned about long-term performance with him. I think he should be renewed - his play has merited that - but if I said “leader at the back, wins everything in the air, incredibly useful on set pieces” I haven’t just described Smalling… I’m also describing one Federico Fazio. Players like Fazio and Smalling are incredibly reliant on their physical attributes - but that physicality at older ages is one major injury away from disappearing completely. Renew him - but no more than two years. Keep.
Marash Kumbulla - Ah, the anti-Smalling. If Chris Smalling’s play has merited him to receive a contract renewal, Kumbulla’s definitely has not. However, due to his ACL injury, Marash is staying for another season in Rome… even if he probably shouldn’t. Keep.
Roger Ibañez - Now comes the other shoe. Roma needs to raise 30 million euros by the end of June to comply with their FFP agreement with Uefa. Failure to do so will likely hamstring us again in the coming Europa League, especially without Champions League money. With Abraham’s injury, and Ndicka a done deal, the clearest place to monetize in the squad is with Roger Ibañez. Our relationship with Roger has been a love-hate one, where we love his grinta and his ability to score in crucial moments, but his brain-farts have cost us on the pitch… repeatedly. Sell.
Full-Backs
Rick Karsdorp - It’s unclear what Karsdorp’s situation with the manager is. On the one hand, Karsdorp was reintegrated into the squad after his falling out with Mourinho and did continue to play, but how much of that was convenience and a “wait until the summer” mentality rather than anything truly genuine. Karsdorp is also currently recovering from an injury, which he should be fit from before September. He has a contract until 2025 - I’d consider him out the door should we receive a good offer… but I doubt we will. Keep.
Zeki Celik - I think it speaks volumes that Mourinho at times has preferred to play Spinazzola or Zalewski on the wrong side rather that give Celik the start. I don’t know if this has been due to poor form, injuries, or simply needing another season to “gel”. Regardless, I don’t think selling Celik at this point will accomplish anything. Keep.
Matias Viña - Remember him? Bournemouth has not exercised their option, so Viña is returning to home base. Unlike other loan moves, however, his time with the Cherries was fairly solid - including an outrageous goal against Chelsea. Why he’s not being renewed, I’m not sure but the Premier League exposure definitely helped us if we choose to cash in. The question is… should we? We are crying out for depth and Viña is a textbook “depth” option. I think we should approach this like Karsdorp - if we get an offer, consider it, otherwise Keep.
Leonardo Spinazzola - On paper, this is our best fullback. In practice, all of us know that the best ability is availability and Leonardo has just… not been there when needed. He is also - critically - the wrong side of 30, which in this position can cost you that turn of pace that is needed. I think, like Ibañez, this is a player we should cash in on now, especially as he enters his final year of contract. Sell.
Nicola Zalewski - Fortunately, this one is easy: Nicola has the distinction of being both young and home-grown, takes no space in registration, and Mourinho loves him. Keep.
Midfielders
Nemanja Matic - Boy was I wrong about Matic. I expected him to be too slow and lumbering for Mourinho’s game, but instead was exactly the midfield veteran we needed - a tall, Serbian Roy Kent. At his age, there is no-one realistically coming in for him, and his contract was automatically extended. Keep.
Bryan Cristante - The unsung hero of this season, Cristante has been consummate professional we all know he can be. Unless we get outrageous money for him (doubtful), this is a Keep.
Edoardo Bove - Like Zalewski, he has been the cream of the crop of youngsters brought through by Mourinho. The argument here is not - should he stay or should he go, but rather should we keep or should we loan. Bove does need minutes… but in his defense, this season he’s gotten them and earned them on the pitch. Keep.
Benjamin Tahirovic - I feel so bad for Benjamin. He was thrown into the fire and while he didn’t do poorly… he didn’t do well either. Like Bove, he needs minutes… unlike Bove, his play hasn’t warranted giving them to him. If there was ever a player who needed a move to Sassuolo, here he is. Sell (with Buy-Back Clause).
Ebrima Darboe - I feel really bad for Darboe. He had the breakout season of his life only two years ago, but has been heavily hampered by injury for the past year and a half and is only returning to training… now. So what do we do with him? He needs minutes to gain back fitness, not just for us, but him and his sharpness. I doubt Sassuolo will bite, but I think a newly promoted team or an Udinese might. Loan.
Gonzalo Villar - Yep, he’s coming back. Like Viña, Getafe is not exercising their option to buy - he never even put on the jersey! - and like Karsdorp he also rather publicly fell out with Mourinho. In this case, though, the falling out was quite a bit more justified, as Gonzalo has proven himself to be both mentally and physically frail, while being technically gifted. There is value in this player, but no team has really been willing to take a risk on him. He has spoken publicly about a willingness to prove himself to Mourinho - I’d be willing to give him that chance, if anything due to a lack of options. Keep.
Attacking Midfielders/Wingers
Lorenzo Pellegrini - Do I need to discuss this one? Keep.
Paulo Dybala - Recent statements have really put the speculation to rest: Dybala appears to want to stay in Italy and in Rome specifically. Keep.
Stephan El Sharaawy - He has demonstrated a willingness to be a servant for the club, even agreeing to a pay-cut with his renewal package. Keep.
Cristian Volpato - See Tahirovic. He desperately needs the minutes his potential deserves. There has been a lot of chatter of him going off to Sassuolo and I think it makes the most sense. Sell (with Buy-Back Clause).
Ola Solbakken - Had his minutes cut drastically by the registration shenanigans due to Zaniolo transfer, but was solid in the league and has room to grow. Keep.
Justin Kluivert - Once again, Kluivert is returning to home-base. While I would like to see us make use of him, he has made it categorically clear that he doesn’t want to be here. Bournemouth are said to be interested, but I see him potentially doing quite well in France or Spain. There’s a particular club in Spain in particular who I think might bite… but more on them later. Sell.
Carles Perez - Like Kluivert, Perez is also returning from a loan (I’m seeing a pattern here), but unlike Kluivert I don’t see anything worthwhile that Perez might bring to this team. Sell.
Strikers
Tammy Abraham - Up until recently, he was the most likely in the squad to be monetized with West Ham and Aston Villa both interested. His ACL tear scuppered that plan, and is now likely to stay in Rome for one more season. I hope it’s redemption for him after a fairly poor season. Keep.
Andrea Belotti - SPEAKING OF POOR SEASONS! I cannot explain exactly what has happened to Belotti, but I’d guess that his poor form in the league is more due to a poor team form than his own. The service and creativity behind him was simply lacking, and without Abraham’s physicality to win long balls he was kind of left to his own devices, pressing defenders and midfielders as needed… which he did. His automatic contract extension was activated, however, so expect to see Andrea in Roma colors next season. Keep.
Eldor Shomurodov - This is a weird one… although this signing has been odd from the get-go. Shomurodov’s loan is likely not going to be made permanent by Spezia - especially if they get relegated - and this season he has been completely been cut out by N’zola’s heroics in front of goal. That said, Abraham’s injury means that there is a good chance Shomurodov will be playing in Roma colors next season - especially if we cannot get a striker in. Keep.
Goalkeeper
Emil Audero - Audero has been Serie A’s most unsung hero for a few seasons, keeping a mediocre Sampdoria side up when they clearly didn’t deserve to. Sampdoria’s financial woes can be very helpful to us, however, as we could essentially pick him up for a song (ie 6 million or less). There will likely be a bidding war for both Vicario and Carnesecchi this summer, but I’d rather go for solid and less flashy between the sticks.
Dominik Livakovic - This is a PSA: Livakovic still plays for Dinamo Zagreb… somehow. This is a world class, internationally rated goalkeeper that is entering his final year of contract. If we can beat the competition, this would be a great pickup.
Center-Backs
Kostantinos Mavropanos - With Stuttgart facing a relegation playoff, it’s possible that one of Europe’s best young(ish) center backs might be available for a significant discount. With the legacy that Dellas and Manolas have left with this club, having a Greek defender back at the club feels… right!
Diego Llorente - Played on loan with us for six months and impressed when he played. With Leeds just relegated and the player pushing to stay in Rome, it’s possible we get a good discount (there is no way we should spend 18 million on him though).
Fullbacks
Cristiano Biraghi - Biraghi is entering his final year of contract at Fiorentina and has been a solid option everywhere he has played. More defensively minded than Spinazzola or Zalewski, but still willing to run down the left and play a cross - he leads la Viola for progressive carries. Importantly, he is left-footed so he gives us a different play down the left than our two current left-backs.
Kai Wagner - If you don’t rate MLS, feel free to skip but Kai Wagner has been the one of the league’s best left-backs - former Schalke player before moving to Philadelphia and really exploding. Was set to join Leeds but their relegation changes that completely. Their loss is our gain - his contract expires in December, could be an excellent pickup.
Adrien Truffert - Had a breakout season for Rennes last season, who have an excellent eye for talent in recent years. Truffert has been marketed as being available for 15 million this summer - which is perhaps more than we’re willing to spend, but if Spinazzola is sold for a comparable fee, then this might be a solid like-for-like replacement.
Sergio Reguillón - His loan at Atletico has come to an end, and it’s looking like Reguillon is hitting the market once more. Mourinho is supposedly a big fan and they’ve worked well together before. This would likely be a loan, and only after Levy pays up for Ibanez as he’s likely to pull shenanigans. Still - this could be a great, essentially free, pickup.
Wilfried Singo - Last one on this list, Singo’s has had a great few years for Torino but has publicly come out and said he will not sign a new deal. This would be a solid alternative to Karsdorp as they play relatively similarly.
Midfielders
Youri Tielemans - This has been discussed quite a bit - Tielemans is available on a free this summer, and is pure class at deep-lying playmaker. My only concern is that he does not play as defensively as Mourinho might like, but this is still a great player and a great opportunity we should not let slip.
Florian Grillitsch - Like Tielemans, Grillitsch is available for a free this summer. Unlike Tielemans, however, Grillitsch has not had a great season after his move to Ajax this season - mainly due to injury. That said, this is a physical player who can play well with his feet - very much in the mold of a Strootman.
Nikola Moro - Moro has been an unsung, unspoken of, hero of Bologna’s season with Serie A leading stats for progressive passes, carries, and successful through balls. He is currently on loan with an option to buy from Dinamo Moscow and it seems increasingly unlikely that Bologna will use that option. We should absolutely make an offer as Moro has shown himself to be an excellent and reliable midfield option.
Davide Frattesi - Let’s try this again, shall we? This is likely going to happen this summer - with a players plus cash mega deal with Sassuolo. This is not quite the profile I outlined but would provide a dose of dynamism to a rather sluggish midfield.
Strikers
This one is complicated - because the profile I outlined doesn’t exist at our price-range. In an ideal world, we would take advantage of the absurd situation at Chelsea and pickup Kai Havertz on loan as that fits the criteria exactly - Striker and Attacking Midfielder in one (Richarlison also comes to mind). So here’s my best choices although none of them is exactly perfect for what we want.
Sheraldo Becker - One of the lynchpins of the Union Berlin cinderella story, Becker is explosive when he gets going and fits a counterattacking team perfectly. Becker is very publicly available for a cool 20mln this summer, but may be able to be negotiated down as this is last year of contract. The issue is that Becker is more a wingeattacking midfielder than a striker. He has played there in a pinch but it doesn’t play the most to his strengths.
Alfredo Morelos - Morelos has just left the Ibrox at the end of his contract looking for a bigger club, but no-one has bitten yet. He is an out-and-out goal scorer, who played as an 11 in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Here, the problem is the reverse - can he play at second striker as a Raumdeuter-type player?
Mauro Icardi - Here we are again, linked with Mauro Icardi for a price as close to “free” as is possible. Is it worth it to bring the Icardi soap opera to a powder keg like Rome? Honestly… if there’s one thing Icardi does, that Icardi always does, is score goals, something we desperately needed this past season. Again, like Morelos though, can he play alongside a number 9 as a second striker?
Last one, which I’m including purely for the banter of it but…
Mario Balotelli - WAIT stop don’t Alt-F4 this just yet. Hear me out. Mourinho is one of the few coaches to get Balotelli to act like an actual footballer, and he has a great rapport with Stephan El Sharaawy. I think these two things in combination might get one last gasp out of Italy’s last truly great talent, with the added benefit that he can play both the positions I outlined above. Sion has crashed out of the Superleague in Switzerland after losing their playoff, so Balotelli will likely leave on a free. I would go for a gamble on him with an Adriano-esque behavior clause that lets us tear up his contract for behavioral issues.
Also, for what it's worth, he's fairly good at Penalties. Which I bring up... for reasons.
submitted by MrPoliSciGuy to ASRoma [link] [comments]
It's about that time again! For the fifth year in a row, here is my (unsolicited) overview of Roma's squad, current mercato, potential signings, and loan dealings.
Every year I try to give these a theme - last year, the name of the game was versatility: getting players who could cover multiple roles as we had a severely reduced squad due to FFP rules. We saw exactly how that came to bite us both in the league - where we were LITERALLY playing the kids to give the first teamers a break - and in the EL Final, where forced substitutions left us going into Penalties with no designated penalty takers.
With no expectation of squad reductions this season, the name of the game for this exercise is depth - our first team is good, VERY good even, but the question is "what options do we have on the bench or in rotation that can keep that level of quality?" and the answer this season due to injuries (Wijnaldum, Kumbulla), transfers and personal issues (Zaniolo, Karsdorp), or registration issues (Solbakken) has been categorically no. Simply put, it is not fair to put the weight of expectation on Benjamin Tahirovic (who is too young to purchase Alcohol in the United States) because our midfield of Matic and Cristante cannot play every game. Pair that with the long term injuries to Kumbulla and Abraham - both of whom will not be back until 2024 - and we need bodies, plain and simple.
Our current FFP situation also means that we will likely need to end this mercato in the black - which means relying on free transfers, loans, and spending money VERY judiciously.
Transfer Dealings Done
Now to our credit, we have gotten a head start on at least two players:Houssam Aouar: Aouar is a gamble in my honest opinion. A few years ago, this man was the Robin to Nabil Fekir’s Batman, and while I don’t think either of those players has had the career they had hoped to have, on his day this man can be unplayable. Emphasis on the “on his day”. On good days, Aouar has Jordan Veretout’s work ethic, and Jeremy Menez’s feet. On bad days, he has Veretout’s feet and Menez’s work ethic.
On the positive though, he can play (like Pellegrini) both in the center midfield as an 8, or more attacking as a 10. This can give us options off the bench to either rotate or change a game as necessary.
Evan Ndicka: Now this one I’m very happy about. Ndicka is left footed, very physical, but very intelligent as well which means he has a good eye for a pass as needed. He reminds me quite a bit of Antonio Rudiger in that he fits a very similar profile and played for a Bundesliga club at a similar level. I have no reservations - I think he will be a hit, but like Aouar will benefit tremendously from a full pre-season.
Squad Breakdown
NOTE - I am not including loan players who have returned to their respective clubs (Wijnaldum, Camara, Llorente)Goalkeepers
Pietro Boer - Let’s start with the easy one: Boer is a third choice keeper that is home-grown at club. Useful for registration, costs us peanuts, has never complained. Keep.
Rui Patricio - From the easy to the hard one: Rui’s decline this season has been sharp, but consistent. His great saves remind us that, once upon a time, that’s a solid goalkeeper, but that has been paired with just… odd mistakes - not Robin Olsen bad, but pretty bad nonetheless. This is no longer a starting International Goalkeeper (that honor goes to Diogo Costa nowadays). He would still make an excellent second-choice goalkeeper at a top club - which might be a good selling point as he still has admirers in the Premier League. Sell.
Mile Svilar - I really wanted to love Svilar. Football Manager Stans rise up, because ALL of us have signed Svilar at one point or another. Svilar still strikes me as potentially a very good keeper, but he has been unable to dislodge Patricio from that starting berth. I think he will end up staying around, and I hope he can prove himself to everyone in a starting role next season. Keep.
Defenders
Gianluca Mancini - We start with Mancini because as of right now, he is the only defender that looks certain to stay. He is definitely the second coming of Materazzi in temperament… if not in talent just yet. He still as a few years on his contract, Mourinho likes him a lot, and he provides leadership on and off the pitch. Keep.
Chris Smalling - While Smalling has been our best player (not just defender) at quite a few points this season, I am always concerned about long-term performance with him. I think he should be renewed - his play has merited that - but if I said “leader at the back, wins everything in the air, incredibly useful on set pieces” I haven’t just described Smalling… I’m also describing one Federico Fazio. Players like Fazio and Smalling are incredibly reliant on their physical attributes - but that physicality at older ages is one major injury away from disappearing completely. Renew him - but no more than two years. Keep.
Marash Kumbulla - Ah, the anti-Smalling. If Chris Smalling’s play has merited him to receive a contract renewal, Kumbulla’s definitely has not. However, due to his ACL injury, Marash is staying for another season in Rome… even if he probably shouldn’t. Keep.
Roger Ibañez - Now comes the other shoe. Roma needs to raise 30 million euros by the end of June to comply with their FFP agreement with Uefa. Failure to do so will likely hamstring us again in the coming Europa League, especially without Champions League money. With Abraham’s injury, and Ndicka a done deal, the clearest place to monetize in the squad is with Roger Ibañez. Our relationship with Roger has been a love-hate one, where we love his grinta and his ability to score in crucial moments, but his brain-farts have cost us on the pitch… repeatedly. Sell.
Full-Backs
Rick Karsdorp - It’s unclear what Karsdorp’s situation with the manager is. On the one hand, Karsdorp was reintegrated into the squad after his falling out with Mourinho and did continue to play, but how much of that was convenience and a “wait until the summer” mentality rather than anything truly genuine. Karsdorp is also currently recovering from an injury, which he should be fit from before September. He has a contract until 2025 - I’d consider him out the door should we receive a good offer… but I doubt we will. Keep.
Zeki Celik - I think it speaks volumes that Mourinho at times has preferred to play Spinazzola or Zalewski on the wrong side rather that give Celik the start. I don’t know if this has been due to poor form, injuries, or simply needing another season to “gel”. Regardless, I don’t think selling Celik at this point will accomplish anything. Keep.
Matias Viña - Remember him? Bournemouth has not exercised their option, so Viña is returning to home base. Unlike other loan moves, however, his time with the Cherries was fairly solid - including an outrageous goal against Chelsea. Why he’s not being renewed, I’m not sure but the Premier League exposure definitely helped us if we choose to cash in. The question is… should we? We are crying out for depth and Viña is a textbook “depth” option. I think we should approach this like Karsdorp - if we get an offer, consider it, otherwise Keep.
Leonardo Spinazzola - On paper, this is our best fullback. In practice, all of us know that the best ability is availability and Leonardo has just… not been there when needed. He is also - critically - the wrong side of 30, which in this position can cost you that turn of pace that is needed. I think, like Ibañez, this is a player we should cash in on now, especially as he enters his final year of contract. Sell.
Nicola Zalewski - Fortunately, this one is easy: Nicola has the distinction of being both young and home-grown, takes no space in registration, and Mourinho loves him. Keep.
Midfielders
Nemanja Matic - Boy was I wrong about Matic. I expected him to be too slow and lumbering for Mourinho’s game, but instead was exactly the midfield veteran we needed - a tall, Serbian Roy Kent. At his age, there is no-one realistically coming in for him, and his contract was automatically extended. Keep.
Bryan Cristante - The unsung hero of this season, Cristante has been consummate professional we all know he can be. Unless we get outrageous money for him (doubtful), this is a Keep.
Edoardo Bove - Like Zalewski, he has been the cream of the crop of youngsters brought through by Mourinho. The argument here is not - should he stay or should he go, but rather should we keep or should we loan. Bove does need minutes… but in his defense, this season he’s gotten them and earned them on the pitch. Keep.
Benjamin Tahirovic - I feel so bad for Benjamin. He was thrown into the fire and while he didn’t do poorly… he didn’t do well either. Like Bove, he needs minutes… unlike Bove, his play hasn’t warranted giving them to him. If there was ever a player who needed a move to Sassuolo, here he is. Sell (with Buy-Back Clause).
Ebrima Darboe - I feel really bad for Darboe. He had the breakout season of his life only two years ago, but has been heavily hampered by injury for the past year and a half and is only returning to training… now. So what do we do with him? He needs minutes to gain back fitness, not just for us, but him and his sharpness. I doubt Sassuolo will bite, but I think a newly promoted team or an Udinese might. Loan.
Gonzalo Villar - Yep, he’s coming back. Like Viña, Getafe is not exercising their option to buy - he never even put on the jersey! - and like Karsdorp he also rather publicly fell out with Mourinho. In this case, though, the falling out was quite a bit more justified, as Gonzalo has proven himself to be both mentally and physically frail, while being technically gifted. There is value in this player, but no team has really been willing to take a risk on him. He has spoken publicly about a willingness to prove himself to Mourinho - I’d be willing to give him that chance, if anything due to a lack of options. Keep.
Attacking Midfielders/Wingers
Lorenzo Pellegrini - Do I need to discuss this one? Keep.
Paulo Dybala - Recent statements have really put the speculation to rest: Dybala appears to want to stay in Italy and in Rome specifically. Keep.
Stephan El Sharaawy - He has demonstrated a willingness to be a servant for the club, even agreeing to a pay-cut with his renewal package. Keep.
Cristian Volpato - See Tahirovic. He desperately needs the minutes his potential deserves. There has been a lot of chatter of him going off to Sassuolo and I think it makes the most sense. Sell (with Buy-Back Clause).
Ola Solbakken - Had his minutes cut drastically by the registration shenanigans due to Zaniolo transfer, but was solid in the league and has room to grow. Keep.
Justin Kluivert - Once again, Kluivert is returning to home-base. While I would like to see us make use of him, he has made it categorically clear that he doesn’t want to be here. Bournemouth are said to be interested, but I see him potentially doing quite well in France or Spain. There’s a particular club in Spain in particular who I think might bite… but more on them later. Sell.
Carles Perez - Like Kluivert, Perez is also returning from a loan (I’m seeing a pattern here), but unlike Kluivert I don’t see anything worthwhile that Perez might bring to this team. Sell.
Strikers
Tammy Abraham - Up until recently, he was the most likely in the squad to be monetized with West Ham and Aston Villa both interested. His ACL tear scuppered that plan, and is now likely to stay in Rome for one more season. I hope it’s redemption for him after a fairly poor season. Keep.
Andrea Belotti - SPEAKING OF POOR SEASONS! I cannot explain exactly what has happened to Belotti, but I’d guess that his poor form in the league is more due to a poor team form than his own. The service and creativity behind him was simply lacking, and without Abraham’s physicality to win long balls he was kind of left to his own devices, pressing defenders and midfielders as needed… which he did. His automatic contract extension was activated, however, so expect to see Andrea in Roma colors next season. Keep.
Eldor Shomurodov - This is a weird one… although this signing has been odd from the get-go. Shomurodov’s loan is likely not going to be made permanent by Spezia - especially if they get relegated - and this season he has been completely been cut out by N’zola’s heroics in front of goal. That said, Abraham’s injury means that there is a good chance Shomurodov will be playing in Roma colors next season - especially if we cannot get a striker in. Keep.
Squad Needs
To my mind - this is including the Aouar and Ndicka transfers - this team needs at least one more player per role.- A Goalkeeper to replace either Rui Patricio as first-choice keeper, or Svilar as second-choice keeper.
- An additional Left-Back to replace the departing Spinazzola - preferably left-footed to provide a different kind of player to Zalewski.
- An additional fullback as coverage for both wings (either footed).
- A deep-lying playmaker who can give coverage for Cristante, either to rest or when he is needed as an additional defender.
- A rotation defender who can slot in to give coverage for the injured Kumbulla.
- A versatile attacker who can play both at striker, and as a second-striker alongside Dybala for coverage.
Targets
Let’s tackle these in order, shall we?Goalkeeper
Emil Audero - Audero has been Serie A’s most unsung hero for a few seasons, keeping a mediocre Sampdoria side up when they clearly didn’t deserve to. Sampdoria’s financial woes can be very helpful to us, however, as we could essentially pick him up for a song (ie 6 million or less). There will likely be a bidding war for both Vicario and Carnesecchi this summer, but I’d rather go for solid and less flashy between the sticks.
Dominik Livakovic - This is a PSA: Livakovic still plays for Dinamo Zagreb… somehow. This is a world class, internationally rated goalkeeper that is entering his final year of contract. If we can beat the competition, this would be a great pickup.
Center-Backs
Kostantinos Mavropanos - With Stuttgart facing a relegation playoff, it’s possible that one of Europe’s best young(ish) center backs might be available for a significant discount. With the legacy that Dellas and Manolas have left with this club, having a Greek defender back at the club feels… right!
Diego Llorente - Played on loan with us for six months and impressed when he played. With Leeds just relegated and the player pushing to stay in Rome, it’s possible we get a good discount (there is no way we should spend 18 million on him though).
Fullbacks
Cristiano Biraghi - Biraghi is entering his final year of contract at Fiorentina and has been a solid option everywhere he has played. More defensively minded than Spinazzola or Zalewski, but still willing to run down the left and play a cross - he leads la Viola for progressive carries. Importantly, he is left-footed so he gives us a different play down the left than our two current left-backs.
Kai Wagner - If you don’t rate MLS, feel free to skip but Kai Wagner has been the one of the league’s best left-backs - former Schalke player before moving to Philadelphia and really exploding. Was set to join Leeds but their relegation changes that completely. Their loss is our gain - his contract expires in December, could be an excellent pickup.
Adrien Truffert - Had a breakout season for Rennes last season, who have an excellent eye for talent in recent years. Truffert has been marketed as being available for 15 million this summer - which is perhaps more than we’re willing to spend, but if Spinazzola is sold for a comparable fee, then this might be a solid like-for-like replacement.
Sergio Reguillón - His loan at Atletico has come to an end, and it’s looking like Reguillon is hitting the market once more. Mourinho is supposedly a big fan and they’ve worked well together before. This would likely be a loan, and only after Levy pays up for Ibanez as he’s likely to pull shenanigans. Still - this could be a great, essentially free, pickup.
Wilfried Singo - Last one on this list, Singo’s has had a great few years for Torino but has publicly come out and said he will not sign a new deal. This would be a solid alternative to Karsdorp as they play relatively similarly.
Midfielders
Youri Tielemans - This has been discussed quite a bit - Tielemans is available on a free this summer, and is pure class at deep-lying playmaker. My only concern is that he does not play as defensively as Mourinho might like, but this is still a great player and a great opportunity we should not let slip.
Florian Grillitsch - Like Tielemans, Grillitsch is available for a free this summer. Unlike Tielemans, however, Grillitsch has not had a great season after his move to Ajax this season - mainly due to injury. That said, this is a physical player who can play well with his feet - very much in the mold of a Strootman.
Nikola Moro - Moro has been an unsung, unspoken of, hero of Bologna’s season with Serie A leading stats for progressive passes, carries, and successful through balls. He is currently on loan with an option to buy from Dinamo Moscow and it seems increasingly unlikely that Bologna will use that option. We should absolutely make an offer as Moro has shown himself to be an excellent and reliable midfield option.
Davide Frattesi - Let’s try this again, shall we? This is likely going to happen this summer - with a players plus cash mega deal with Sassuolo. This is not quite the profile I outlined but would provide a dose of dynamism to a rather sluggish midfield.
Strikers
This one is complicated - because the profile I outlined doesn’t exist at our price-range. In an ideal world, we would take advantage of the absurd situation at Chelsea and pickup Kai Havertz on loan as that fits the criteria exactly - Striker and Attacking Midfielder in one (Richarlison also comes to mind). So here’s my best choices although none of them is exactly perfect for what we want.
Sheraldo Becker - One of the lynchpins of the Union Berlin cinderella story, Becker is explosive when he gets going and fits a counterattacking team perfectly. Becker is very publicly available for a cool 20mln this summer, but may be able to be negotiated down as this is last year of contract. The issue is that Becker is more a wingeattacking midfielder than a striker. He has played there in a pinch but it doesn’t play the most to his strengths.
Alfredo Morelos - Morelos has just left the Ibrox at the end of his contract looking for a bigger club, but no-one has bitten yet. He is an out-and-out goal scorer, who played as an 11 in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Here, the problem is the reverse - can he play at second striker as a Raumdeuter-type player?
Mauro Icardi - Here we are again, linked with Mauro Icardi for a price as close to “free” as is possible. Is it worth it to bring the Icardi soap opera to a powder keg like Rome? Honestly… if there’s one thing Icardi does, that Icardi always does, is score goals, something we desperately needed this past season. Again, like Morelos though, can he play alongside a number 9 as a second striker?
Last one, which I’m including purely for the banter of it but…
Mario Balotelli - WAIT stop don’t Alt-F4 this just yet. Hear me out. Mourinho is one of the few coaches to get Balotelli to act like an actual footballer, and he has a great rapport with Stephan El Sharaawy. I think these two things in combination might get one last gasp out of Italy’s last truly great talent, with the added benefit that he can play both the positions I outlined above. Sion has crashed out of the Superleague in Switzerland after losing their playoff, so Balotelli will likely leave on a free. I would go for a gamble on him with an Adriano-esque behavior clause that lets us tear up his contract for behavioral issues.
Also, for what it's worth, he's fairly good at Penalties. Which I bring up... for reasons.
Conclusion
Well... that was a long read, kudos for making it to the end. This summer looks to be another summer of transition - but there is a lot to this squad that is salvageable. After the Final, a lot of us were perfectly willing to blow up the team and start over, but that's not my take here. We were let down in that final by our squad depth - when preparing for penalties Mourinho looked at a bench that had Volpato, Tahirovic, Camara, Karsdorp and two goalkeepers - not exactly a stacked bench full of specialists. We can talk dirty play, bad refereeing, and poor penalties all day though, but what killed us at the final hurdle and indeed all season was our lack of depth. Rebuilding the squad is not a way to achieve that. I look forward to your comments and thoughts, and hope to see a good mercato!2023.06.10 04:14 em2tea2 Rule/Requirements for "Joja Co. Member Of The Year" Achievement
Figured I'd ask my questions now because the wiki isn't completely clear and I don't want to have to do this route more than once. xD
When going the Joja route, the wiki suggests completing "easy" community center bundles to get the associated rewards, and other bundles that you want the rewards for, while you stock up some money to buy the Joja Development Form. The wiki also suggests to finish the Vault room because all the rewards are good and the money is 42k versus the 40k if buying the bus from Joja.
I understand that if I complete some bundles in a room, then the Joja form won't have a discount once I eventually buy the membership. But if I complete an entire room (the Vault for example), do I still have to pay the full price to Joja for it? More importantly, will I no longer earn the Joja achievement because I completed one room/improvement the CC way instead of the Joja way?
Thanks in advance!
submitted by em2tea2 to StardewValley [link] [comments]
When going the Joja route, the wiki suggests completing "easy" community center bundles to get the associated rewards, and other bundles that you want the rewards for, while you stock up some money to buy the Joja Development Form. The wiki also suggests to finish the Vault room because all the rewards are good and the money is 42k versus the 40k if buying the bus from Joja.
I understand that if I complete some bundles in a room, then the Joja form won't have a discount once I eventually buy the membership. But if I complete an entire room (the Vault for example), do I still have to pay the full price to Joja for it? More importantly, will I no longer earn the Joja achievement because I completed one room/improvement the CC way instead of the Joja way?
Thanks in advance!
2023.06.10 04:03 DodgerBot Postgame Thread ⚾ Dodgers 4 @ Phillies 5
Line Score - Game Over
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | LOB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAD | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| PHI | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 0 | 6 |
Box Score
| PHI | AB | R | H | RBI | BB | SO | BA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LF | Schwarber | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | .177 |
| RF | Castellanos, N | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .314 |
| DH | Harper | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | .294 |
| SS | Turner | 4 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .241 |
| C | Realmuto | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .245 |
| 2B | Stott | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .280 |
| CF | Marsh | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | .263 |
| 1B | Clemens | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .269 |
| PH | Ellis | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .222 |
| 3B | Sosa, E | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .254 |
| PHI | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | P-S | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suárez, R | 6.0 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 103-64 | 4.70 |
| Strahm | 1.0 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 28-16 | 3.61 |
| Alvarado | 1.0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 22-12 | 0.59 |
| Soto, G | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 14-9 | 5.04 |
| LAD | AB | R | H | RBI | BB | SO | BA | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RF | Betts | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | .258 |
| 1B | Freeman, F | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | .335 |
| C | Smith, W.D. | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | .297 |
| DH | Martinez | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | .275 |
| 3B | Muncy | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .198 |
| LF | Taylor, Ch | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | .205 |
| 2B | Vargas, M | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | .231 |
| CF | Deluca | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .167 |
| SS | Rojas, M | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | .217 |
| LAD | IP | H | R | ER | BB | SO | P-S | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| González, V | 0.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 14-8 | 2.70 |
| Grove | 4.0 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 85-55 | 8.28 |
| Vesia | 1.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 16-11 | 6.46 |
| Miller, S | 2.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 28-20 | 2.57 |
| Ferguson | 0.2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 10-9 | 3.68 |
Scoring Plays
Highlights
| Description | Length | Video |
|---|---|---|
| Bullpen availability for Philadelphia, June 9 vs Dodgers | 0:07 | Video |
| Bullpen availability for Los Angeles, June 9 vs Phillies | 0:07 | Video |
| Fielding alignment for Los Angeles, June 9 vs Phillies | 0:11 | Video |
| Starting lineups for Dodgers at Phillies - June 9, 2023 | 0:09 | Video |
| Breaking down Michael Grove's pitches | 0:08 | Video |
| Mookie Betts: Home Run Statcast Analysis | 0:10 | Video |
| Breaking down Ranger Suárez's pitches | 0:08 | Video |
| Breaking down Freddie Freeman's home run | 0:14 | Video |
| Ranger Suárez's outing against the Dodgers | 0:25 | Video |
| A deep dive into Freddie Freeman's home run | 0:09 | Video |
| Freddie Freeman laces a double to the right-center | 0:16 | Video |
| J.D. Martinez rips an RBI double to left-center field | 0:20 | Video |
| Jonny Deluca gets his first career hit on a single | 0:12 | Video |
| Mookie Betts rips a single to left field in the 3rd | 0:12 | Video |
| Bryce Harper hits an RBI single to right field | 0:17 | Video |
| The Phillies honor the late Dick Allen | 14:58 | Video |
| Nick Castellanos laces an RBI double to left-center | 0:29 | Video |
| Trea Turner rips an RBI single to center field | 0:18 | Video |
| Kyle Schwarber hustles home to score on a wild pitch | 0:06 | Video |
| Kody Clemens leaps to make nice snag in the 6th | 0:27 | Video |
| Mookie Betts mashed a two-run homer to left field | 0:27 | Video |
| Freddie Freeman cranks a solo home run to left-center | 0:29 | Video |
| Bryson Stott lays out to make a great diving catch | 0:12 | Video |
Decisions
| Winning Pitcher | Losing Pitcher | Save |
|---|---|---|
| Soto, G (2-4, 5.04 ERA) | Ferguson (3-2, 3.68 ERA) |
2023.06.10 04:03 PhilsBot The Phillies defeated the Dodgers by a score of 5-4 - Fri, Jun 09 @ 07:05 PM EDT
Dodgers @ Phillies - Fri, Jun 09
Game Status: Final - Score: 5-4 Phillies
Links & Info
| Dodgers Batters | AB | R | H | RBI | BB | K | LOB | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Betts - RF | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .258 | .363 | .538 |
| 2 | Freeman, F - 1B | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | .335 | .407 | .576 |
| 3 | Smith, W.D. - C | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 2 | .297 | .399 | .519 |
| 4 | Martinez - DH | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | .275 | .314 | .624 |
| 5 | Muncy - 3B | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | .198 | .326 | .490 |
| 6 | Taylor, Ch - LF | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1 | .205 | .273 | .466 |
| 7 | Vargas, M - 2B | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 1 | .231 | .336 | .426 |
| 8 | Deluca - CF | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 4 | .167 | .286 | .167 |
| 9 | Rojas, M - SS | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | .217 | .248 | .256 |
| Totals | 34 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 13 | 16 |
| Dodgers |
|---|
| BATTING: 2B: Freeman, F (24, Suárez, R); Martinez 2 (17, Suárez, R, Alvarado). HR: Betts (17, 7th inning off Strahm, 1 on, 2 out); Freeman, F (12, 7th inning off Strahm, 0 on, 2 out). TB: Betts 5; Deluca; Freeman, F 6; Martinez 4. RBI: Betts 2 (39); Freeman, F (42); Martinez (44). 2-out RBI: Freeman, F; Martinez; Betts 2. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Rojas, M; Muncy 2; Deluca. Team RISP: 1-for-9. Team LOB: 7. |
| Phillies Batters | AB | R | H | RBI | BB | K | LOB | AVG | OBP | SLG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Schwarber - LF | 3 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | .177 | .330 | .445 |
| 2 | Castellanos, N - RF | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | .314 | .361 | .494 |
| 3 | Harper - DH | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | .294 | .386 | .445 |
| 4 | Turner - SS | 4 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | .241 | .285 | .391 |
| 5 | Realmuto - C | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | .245 | .293 | .426 |
| 6 | Stott - 2B | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | .280 | .323 | .382 |
| 7 | Marsh - CF | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 | .263 | .354 | .441 |
| 8 | Clemens - 1B | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | .269 | .320 | .441 |
| a-Ellis - PH | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | .222 | .364 | .556 | |
| 9 | Sosa, E - 3B | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | .254 | .273 | .396 |
| Totals | 34 | 5 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 13 |
| Phillies |
|---|
| a-Grounded out for Clemens in the 9th. |
| BATTING: 2B: Castellanos, N (21, Grove). 3B: Schwarber (1, Grove). HR: Schwarber (17, 9th inning off Ferguson, 0 on, 2 out). TB: Castellanos, N 2; Clemens; Harper; Schwarber 7; Sosa, E; Turner 2. RBI: Castellanos, N (36); Harper (11); Schwarber (35); Turner (20). 2-out RBI: Schwarber. Runners left in scoring position, 2 out: Marsh; Realmuto. Team RISP: 3-for-8. Team LOB: 6. |
| Dodgers Pitchers | IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | HR | P-S | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| González, V | 0.2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 14-8 | 2.70 |
| Grove | 4.0 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 85-55 | 8.28 |
| Vesia | 1.1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 16-11 | 6.46 |
| Miller, S | 2.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 28-20 | 2.57 |
| Ferguson (L, 3-2) | 0.2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 10-9 | 3.68 |
| Totals | 8.2 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 8 | 1 |
| Phillies Pitchers | IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | HR | P-S | ERA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Suárez, R | 6.0 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 103-64 | 4.70 |
| Strahm (BS, 2) | 1.0 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 28-16 | 3.61 |
| Alvarado | 1.0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 22-12 | 0.59 |
| Soto, G (W, 2-4) | 1.0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 14-9 | 5.04 |
| Totals | 9.0 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 13 | 2 |
| Game Info |
|---|
| WP: Grove; Suárez, R; Alvarado. |
| HBP: Realmuto (by Miller, S). |
| Pitches-strikes: González, V 14-8; Grove 85-55; Vesia 16-11; Miller, S 28-20; Ferguson 10-9; Suárez, R 103-64; Strahm 28-16; Alvarado 22-12; Soto, G 14-9. |
| Groundouts-flyouts: González, V 2-0; Grove 4-4; Vesia 0-1; Miller, S 2-1; Ferguson 1-1; Suárez, R 6-1; Strahm 1-0; Alvarado 0-0; Soto, G 1-1. |
| Batters faced: González, V 3; Grove 20; Vesia 4; Miller, S 7; Ferguson 3; Suárez, R 24; Strahm 6; Alvarado 5; Soto, G 3. |
| Inherited runners-scored: Grove 1-0; Vesia 1-0. |
| Umpires: HP: Bill Miller. 1B: Roberto Ortiz. 2B: Chad Whitson. 3B: Rob Drake. |
| Weather: 73 degrees, Cloudy. |
| Wind: 11 mph, L To R. |
| First pitch: 7:09 PM. |
| T: 2:52. |
| Att: 42,364. |
| Venue: Citizens Bank Park. |
| June 9, 2023 |
| Inning | Scoring Play | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Top 1 | J.D. Martinez doubles (16) on a fly ball to left fielder Kyle Schwarber. Freddie Freeman scores. | 1-0 LAD |
| Bottom 3 | Bryce Harper singles on a line drive to right fielder Mookie Betts. Kyle Schwarber scores. | 1-1 |
| Bottom 5 | Nick Castellanos doubles (21) on a sharp line drive to center fielder Jonny Deluca. Edmundo Sosa scores. Kyle Schwarber to 3rd. | 2-1 PHI |
| Bottom 5 | Bryce Harper flies out to left fielder Chris Taylor. | 3-1 PHI |
| Bottom 5 | Trea Turner singles on a sharp line drive to left fielder Chris Taylor. Nick Castellanos scores. | 4-1 PHI |
| Top 7 | Mookie Betts homers (17) on a fly ball to left field. Miguel Vargas scores. | 4-3 PHI |
| Top 7 | Freddie Freeman homers (12) on a fly ball to center field. | 4-4 |
| Bottom 9 | Kyle Schwarber homers (17) on a fly ball to right field. | 5-4 PHI |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | LOB | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dodgers | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 7 | 0 | 7 | |
| Phillies | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 8 | 0 | 6 |
Decisions
- Winner: Gregory Soto (2-4, 5.04)
- Loser: Caleb Ferguson (3-2, 3.68)
Division Scoreboard
NYM 7 @ PIT 14 - FinalWSH 2 @ ATL 3 - Final
MIA 1 @ CWS 2 - Final
Next Phillies Game: Sat, Jun 10, 04:05 PM EDT vs. Dodgers
Last Updated: 06/10/2023 12:09:33 AM EDT
2023.06.10 03:57 Dry_Fly3965 [WTS] Software Sale BM DG WK A&E
I'm trying to make some room. Happy to answer any questions. Interested in HOM Almond Leather. Prefer PP, CONUS, $5 shipping.
A&E The City Set- $15. Barrister's Reserve Classic Set $20. Wholly Kaw Scentropy edp $20. DG Son Et Lumiere Trifecta soap, splash, edp $55.
Free with purchase- Wade and Butcher straight blade
Small Palette Knife- I use one for scooping soap and have a few new extras.
https://imgur.com/a/bhV5Gjk
M&M Trinity Set $15. SW Arcane Abyss Set $20.
G-2 Fatboy- tuned and replated by Back Roads Gold- never used(since tune-up)- $90 Withdrawn
J-2 Slim- tuned and replated by Back Roads Gold- never used(since tune-up)- $60
Athena razor- Viking Blade new $15
submitted by Dry_Fly3965 to Shave_Bazaar [link] [comments]
A&E The City Set- $15. Barrister's Reserve Classic Set $20. Wholly Kaw Scentropy edp $20. DG Son Et Lumiere Trifecta soap, splash, edp $55.
Free with purchase- Wade and Butcher straight blade
Small Palette Knife- I use one for scooping soap and have a few new extras.
https://imgur.com/a/bhV5Gjk
2023.06.10 03:49 NA_Karami This Will Fix Construction - Reasonable Building Reparations
Greetings Builders, Devs, Base Destroyers, Planetmans/Womans Of Planetside 2
I will try to keep this as simple and easy to read as possible. To summarize, I have spent an excessive amount of time testing every construction object on live/PTS and have created a list of improvements to a lot of common problems every single builder has encountered during their time building. This is focused primarily on placement arrows on buildings and mention of module slots or lack thereof. Please note, most images talk about either the arrow placements being changed, module slots being added/moved or a combination of the two.
Walls
Rampart Walls + Solid Walls. The new placement arrows are too strict. In this image RampartWall1 the previous system would gladly accept it. Here is a proposed solution in this image RampartWall2 . In this image, SolidWallMeme I have proposed solutions to fix everything regarding the recently added grievances including the new attachment to the back of solid walls. ImpossibleWall + ImpossibleWall2
Bulwark Walls. This image proposes changes to the SmallBulkwarkWall . Here are changes to the large bulwark wall LargeBulkwarkWall
Blast Gates + Blast Wall. The blast gate currently serves no purpose. BlastGate & BlastGate2 will give it a vital reason to be used in the foundation of a base. Much like other walls, the blast wall requires a module slot to be useful BlastWall .
STRUCTURES
Infantry Tunnel. The infantry tunnel is a cool structure, but pointless when added to a base due to the lack of module slots. InfantryTunnel . Module Options: Repair, Durability
Infantry Tower. The dark light feature on it is awesome, however a module slot would make it a go-to object in bases. InfantryTower . Module Options: Repair, Durability
Pillbox: The pillbox lost its reliability in the new update. Adding a second module slot would resolve this allowing a durability module to be installed. Pillbox
Vehicle Bridge. THE COOLEST STRUCTURE TO EVER BE ADDED TO PLANETSIDE. The bridge has so much potential. Unfortunately, it struggles to find it’s place among reliable buildings. A module slot in the center would allow more utility for this gigantic structure as seen in this picture. THEMEGABRIDGE . In terms of the bridge arrows, moving them down slightly would allow more locations to be considered TheBridgeArrows . Module Options: Repair, Durability.
Ammo Tower. The option to install an equipment module would be an extreme convenience for tank drivers nearby to replace consumables.
Vehicle Gates. As I have stated over the many years, this shouldn’t be allowed. FloatingVehicleGate . Adding a second arrow attached to the stairs would resolve any exploitative placements. Consider adding a second one beside it to install both durability and repair to bring back the previous level of reliability. FloatingVehicleGate2 .
The Silo. The silo is, simply put, TOO BIG. It clips with tree branches way below terrain, or rocks that you can't actually see above ground. It is too wide, trying to put it tightly beside a wall doesn't work because the hitbox is actually bigger than the prefab itself.. Silo . I propose cutting the base of the silo by about 35%. I also propose reducing the width of the bottom portion for an easier time making condensed bases.
Command Center. Command Center & A Tiny Rock Why is the collision box on this structure SO, DAMN, BIG! The amount of cool places you COULD put this but you can’t. All due to something as silly as a rock being 5 meters away from the actual building. Now don't let me mention the air pad attached to it. The Air pad Center . This really should not exist. Why does the command center's air pad need to check if there is a collision 50 meters below it. Consider making the air pad collision box a separate entity, detached from the main structure collision box.
Cortium Silo Reserve. It's in a good place. A cool feature that has had some gossip would be allowing the silo to either function independently or expand the range of a current silo. By placing it on the edge of the main silo range, it would extend the range (from the point it is placed at) by adding an additional 25 meter radius of connected silo zone.
Glaive + Flail. Moving them higher above ground is a good call. It leaves more room for a base being assaulted to take down the flail/glaive. However, there needs to be death-immunity while inside a spawn tube when a flail hits the roof of your base. Theoretically, you shouldn’t die at all while in the structure.
MODULE BALANCE
The repair module; 0.5% -> 1% per second. A single tank being able to take down a base from render range is not okay. The previous system would require at least TWO tanks to take a wall down. If I remember correctly, the old repair module repaired at a rate of 350hp per second. (Around 2-2.5% in current system math)
The fortress shield module; 60 Seconds to 75/90 seconds. Cost; 500 -> 1000/2000 respectively.
Increasing the duration of the fortress shield would allow the module runner time to replace broken constructs, repair, participate in a fight or do many other roles left unfilled. 60 seconds basically leaves you running from A -> B -> A every 60 seconds in a hot zone. The exponential increase in cost would be a tradeoff for the player having more time to do other tasks.
Heavy repair module; 60 seconds to 75/90 seconds. Repair Rate; 2% -> 3% per second. Health Added -> 8000 to 10000. Cost 500 -> 1000/2000 respectively
The increased abilities of the heavy repair module would make it a more ‘attractive’ choice than choosing the fortress shield module 9/10 times. In its current form, it is not strong, it is equivalent to the old standard repair module. The exponential increase in cost would be a tradeoff for the player having more time to do other tasks.
The Firewall Module; Let this be installed into vehicle/air terminals and command center. It is called a firewall module and it should act like one. Forcing an infiltrator to hack this module would allow builders who are not at their base a bit more time to react. With the loss of AI and painspires, this would help remedy repeat situations where a player runs to get cortium and by the time they return, there are half a dozen lightnings and sunderers in your base.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I have been playing since 2012. I love this game, specifically construction. The ability to be creative in a FPS is not seen in any other games and the current version of construction really limits what a builder can do. I believe the proposed changes would benefit every, single, builder. It would ease almost all frustrations regarding durability and increase the amount of reliability of player objects, including increasing the amount of usable structures in base foundations.
Thanks for reading,
ToxicToast
submitted by NA_Karami to Planetside [link] [comments]
I will try to keep this as simple and easy to read as possible. To summarize, I have spent an excessive amount of time testing every construction object on live/PTS and have created a list of improvements to a lot of common problems every single builder has encountered during their time building. This is focused primarily on placement arrows on buildings and mention of module slots or lack thereof. Please note, most images talk about either the arrow placements being changed, module slots being added/moved or a combination of the two.
Walls
Rampart Walls + Solid Walls. The new placement arrows are too strict. In this image RampartWall1 the previous system would gladly accept it. Here is a proposed solution in this image RampartWall2 . In this image, SolidWallMeme I have proposed solutions to fix everything regarding the recently added grievances including the new attachment to the back of solid walls. ImpossibleWall + ImpossibleWall2
Bulwark Walls. This image proposes changes to the SmallBulkwarkWall . Here are changes to the large bulwark wall LargeBulkwarkWall
Blast Gates + Blast Wall. The blast gate currently serves no purpose. BlastGate & BlastGate2 will give it a vital reason to be used in the foundation of a base. Much like other walls, the blast wall requires a module slot to be useful BlastWall .
STRUCTURES
Infantry Tunnel. The infantry tunnel is a cool structure, but pointless when added to a base due to the lack of module slots. InfantryTunnel . Module Options: Repair, Durability
Infantry Tower. The dark light feature on it is awesome, however a module slot would make it a go-to object in bases. InfantryTower . Module Options: Repair, Durability
Pillbox: The pillbox lost its reliability in the new update. Adding a second module slot would resolve this allowing a durability module to be installed. Pillbox
Vehicle Bridge. THE COOLEST STRUCTURE TO EVER BE ADDED TO PLANETSIDE. The bridge has so much potential. Unfortunately, it struggles to find it’s place among reliable buildings. A module slot in the center would allow more utility for this gigantic structure as seen in this picture. THEMEGABRIDGE . In terms of the bridge arrows, moving them down slightly would allow more locations to be considered TheBridgeArrows . Module Options: Repair, Durability.
Ammo Tower. The option to install an equipment module would be an extreme convenience for tank drivers nearby to replace consumables.
Vehicle Gates. As I have stated over the many years, this shouldn’t be allowed. FloatingVehicleGate . Adding a second arrow attached to the stairs would resolve any exploitative placements. Consider adding a second one beside it to install both durability and repair to bring back the previous level of reliability. FloatingVehicleGate2 .
The Silo. The silo is, simply put, TOO BIG. It clips with tree branches way below terrain, or rocks that you can't actually see above ground. It is too wide, trying to put it tightly beside a wall doesn't work because the hitbox is actually bigger than the prefab itself.. Silo . I propose cutting the base of the silo by about 35%. I also propose reducing the width of the bottom portion for an easier time making condensed bases.
Command Center. Command Center & A Tiny Rock Why is the collision box on this structure SO, DAMN, BIG! The amount of cool places you COULD put this but you can’t. All due to something as silly as a rock being 5 meters away from the actual building. Now don't let me mention the air pad attached to it. The Air pad Center . This really should not exist. Why does the command center's air pad need to check if there is a collision 50 meters below it. Consider making the air pad collision box a separate entity, detached from the main structure collision box.
Cortium Silo Reserve. It's in a good place. A cool feature that has had some gossip would be allowing the silo to either function independently or expand the range of a current silo. By placing it on the edge of the main silo range, it would extend the range (from the point it is placed at) by adding an additional 25 meter radius of connected silo zone.
Glaive + Flail. Moving them higher above ground is a good call. It leaves more room for a base being assaulted to take down the flail/glaive. However, there needs to be death-immunity while inside a spawn tube when a flail hits the roof of your base. Theoretically, you shouldn’t die at all while in the structure.
MODULE BALANCE
The repair module; 0.5% -> 1% per second. A single tank being able to take down a base from render range is not okay. The previous system would require at least TWO tanks to take a wall down. If I remember correctly, the old repair module repaired at a rate of 350hp per second. (Around 2-2.5% in current system math)
The fortress shield module; 60 Seconds to 75/90 seconds. Cost; 500 -> 1000/2000 respectively.
Increasing the duration of the fortress shield would allow the module runner time to replace broken constructs, repair, participate in a fight or do many other roles left unfilled. 60 seconds basically leaves you running from A -> B -> A every 60 seconds in a hot zone. The exponential increase in cost would be a tradeoff for the player having more time to do other tasks.
Heavy repair module; 60 seconds to 75/90 seconds. Repair Rate; 2% -> 3% per second. Health Added -> 8000 to 10000. Cost 500 -> 1000/2000 respectively
The increased abilities of the heavy repair module would make it a more ‘attractive’ choice than choosing the fortress shield module 9/10 times. In its current form, it is not strong, it is equivalent to the old standard repair module. The exponential increase in cost would be a tradeoff for the player having more time to do other tasks.
The Firewall Module; Let this be installed into vehicle/air terminals and command center. It is called a firewall module and it should act like one. Forcing an infiltrator to hack this module would allow builders who are not at their base a bit more time to react. With the loss of AI and painspires, this would help remedy repeat situations where a player runs to get cortium and by the time they return, there are half a dozen lightnings and sunderers in your base.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I have been playing since 2012. I love this game, specifically construction. The ability to be creative in a FPS is not seen in any other games and the current version of construction really limits what a builder can do. I believe the proposed changes would benefit every, single, builder. It would ease almost all frustrations regarding durability and increase the amount of reliability of player objects, including increasing the amount of usable structures in base foundations.
Thanks for reading,
ToxicToast
2023.06.10 03:47 Hawluchador16 29 [M4F] Latino with a dad bod looking for fwb
Currently in search of a friends with benefits situation, basically someone to hook up with then go see a movie or walk around discovery green and get dinner afterwards
A bit on the shorter side (5' 6") with a dad bod, but I'm working out and trying to slim down. Easy going, friendly, and not too hung up on looks
I live near the medical center and can host, travel to you or get us a nice hotel room on occasion :)
submitted by Hawluchador16 to houstonr4r [link] [comments]
A bit on the shorter side (5' 6") with a dad bod, but I'm working out and trying to slim down. Easy going, friendly, and not too hung up on looks
I live near the medical center and can host, travel to you or get us a nice hotel room on occasion :)
2023.06.10 03:45 stevenellis23 Need some advice/help with amplifier choice and explanation
I have a marantz cinema 40 with a 7.2.4 setup, my system is Martin Logan XTF200 (fronts), XTC100 (center), XTB100 (surrounds), Martin Logan Sistine 4XC (atmos), dual PSA EV1813 18” (subs)
The thing I’m confused on is I see the power ratings and then I ask myself how can an amp that does 150 watts per channel example power any of speakers properly without doing damage? All my speakers are 4ohm with 92 sensitivity.
ML XTF200 - recommend amplifier 20-600 watts
ML XTC100 - recommended amplifier power: 20-300 watts
ML XTB100 - recommended amplifier power: 20-250 watts
ML Sistine 4XC - recommended amplifier power: 20-300 watts
Or are the higher end numbers listed for peak power here? I have been looking at buckeye amps since they’re highly regarded on audio science. A thing that stumps me is if the amp is rated at 100-200 watts per channel, what happens if the speaker peaks at 600 as listed above from my XTF200s?
What amps do you guys recommend and I know I’m probably gonna get Parasound A21+, nad and a few others as a recommendation. My room is 16x14.
submitted by stevenellis23 to hometheater [link] [comments]
The thing I’m confused on is I see the power ratings and then I ask myself how can an amp that does 150 watts per channel example power any of speakers properly without doing damage? All my speakers are 4ohm with 92 sensitivity.
ML XTF200 - recommend amplifier 20-600 watts
ML XTC100 - recommended amplifier power: 20-300 watts
ML XTB100 - recommended amplifier power: 20-250 watts
ML Sistine 4XC - recommended amplifier power: 20-300 watts
Or are the higher end numbers listed for peak power here? I have been looking at buckeye amps since they’re highly regarded on audio science. A thing that stumps me is if the amp is rated at 100-200 watts per channel, what happens if the speaker peaks at 600 as listed above from my XTF200s?
What amps do you guys recommend and I know I’m probably gonna get Parasound A21+, nad and a few others as a recommendation. My room is 16x14.
2023.06.10 03:35 babyxxpigeon17 A Niagara vacation
It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark, when out of the blue, my wife called me at work. "We're going to Niagara Falls for the weekend. I got us an awesome deal!"
We had both been working at our first "full-fledged" jobs for a year and had reached that moment after graduation when you suddenly realize you can't make that impact on the world your student enthusiasm once promised. At first, I just sighed. It was the dead of January, and I had already expended all my energy on a week of inconsequential stress. I just wanted to collapse on the couch for two days. Sarah felt a similar weary exhaustion. I could tell. Her tone was more hopeful than excited, but she had dreaded the routine we were sinking into and was trying her best to pull us free.
I looked to the ceiling and adjusted my telephone headset. At that time I was working at Stats Canada on the tele-query desk. I took a deep breath and, as convincingly as possible, said, "Sounds good." I don't think she bought it, but we went nonetheless.
This was Niagara Falls before the casinos when there was a very distinct off-season. When we got to the hotel, we were given the details of our "lovers' special". One dinner to be used either Friday or Saturday, two breakfasts, a roll of tokens for the arcade, 10% off some "4D" movie ride experience, and a 2-for-1 coupon to Max Tussaud's. I guessed it was Madame's nephew? We also got a bottle of sparkling wine in our room and chocolate treats on our pillows. I was impressed. It sounded good.
When we got into our room and saw the "bottle" of wine - basically an aeroplane-sized glass and half - and the chocolates - "fun wrapped" Oh Henry's left over from Halloween - we both started to laugh. The tone for two wonderful days had been set. We decided to cash in on our dinner coupon right away.
The restaurant off the lobby had hopes of being better. There were huge panoramic windows that promised a view of the gorge. Unfortunately, they had some winter moisture problems that day, and it felt like we were defrosting amid the dripping streaks and foggy patches. The decor was your standard booths and tables though the "romantic" lighting was unique. Dollar store battery-powered tea lights were lodged inside thick tumbler glasses and shed a muted pleasantness in a "what a great idea for a craft" sort of way. I had a feeling they were created by our waitress since she was the one who always seemed to be fussing with them. Only one other couple was in the dining room, so she attended to us immediately.
"Can I get you something to start?"
"Sure." "Thank you, that would be nice." We both responded simultaneously.
"And what would the lady like this evening?"
Sarah smiled at the flattery. "I think I'll have a glass of white wine." She glanced over at me to see my reaction. This was a subtle cue of the mood to follow. Diet Coke was usually the beverage of choice. She didn't normally drink alcohol. One glass numbed her nose and made her giggle far too easily. When she did drink, however, it meant she was comfortable with my company and open to anything to follow. I raised my eyebrows in a debonair way.
"And for the gentleman?"
"Do you have Foster's on tap?"
"Yes we do."
"I'll have a pint please."
Sarah smiled at the happy memories I invoked. At university, Foster's was my signature beer. It was at a time when Crocodile Dundee was a known name, and Australia was inexplicably cool. 15 cent buffalo wings and a pitcher of Foster's was the Tuesday night special at the London Arms pub. There the Classics Club would meet and, as a group, circle the wagons and drink ourselves into extroverts.
As soon as the waitress left, Sarah smiled at me. She reached out and held my hand across the table. With my gaze on hers, she slipped her foot from her shoe and slowly began sliding it up my pant leg.
"I got a pedicure this morning." She announced seductively.
I nodded and pretended I didn't notice her invitation. "What colour?" I asked.
"I'm not telling." She teased. "You'll just have to find out later." Her devious little smile was gorgeous.
"Mmmm. I can't wait."
When the waitress returned with our drinks, we immediately retreated to our personal spaces as if we had been discovered by the chaperone. Sarah opened the menu and began to salivate at the variety.
"Can we add an appetizer to the package dinner?" Her question seemed innocent enough.
"You're on the package?" Our friendly waitress disappeared, and we were no longer a lady or a gentleman. She ripped the menu out of Sarah's hand and took mine before I had even opened it. She then scurried to her podium and brought back a tattered, grease-stained, photocopied page that we had to share. We both burst out laughing.
The waitress was flustered that we were not as bothered as she was. "The drinks are NOT included!"
"What choices do we have?" I asked, expecting the usual chicken or fish. I had been on many packages before with my parents.
"Coffee or tea." The waitress snapped.
Sarah and I looked at each other in amused disbelief.
"I'll have coffee please." I didn't even flinch at the ridiculously limited package. I was eager to get my order in early.
"And I'll have the tea!" Sarah followed my lead. "Can I have some milk with that?"
"Yes." The waitress snarled.
"Fantastic!" I enthused.
"Yes, great! I'm glad we got the package, Honey." Sarah joked.
The waitress stormed off and returned sometime later with our lettuce-only salads drowned in Kraft's Italian dressing and our chewy chicken dinners, which she had thoughtfully allowed to cool. She tossed the plates on the table and left us to peacefully devour our deal. We didn't see her again until we requested the bill. For some reason, we found it amusing to leave a generous tip, which of course, defeated the purpose of the package, but we didn't care. It was fun.
The rest of the holiday was marred with similar off-season products and services. The wax museum was only half open, so we couldn't see the pop stars of the seventies. I didn't think it was a problem, but Sarah pouted playfully. She really wanted to see young Bowie. Meanwhile, the arcade was particularly stingy about spitting out coupons. So much so that Mike, the scraggly-haired repair guy, ended up escorting us from game to game and repairing the devices on demand. In no time, he was acting like an old drinking buddy. He joked and laughed, then, out of the blue, revealed that working at the Niagara Falls Fun Centre wasn't his career choice, that his dream was to be part of a travelling carnival. He desperately wanted to see more of the world, he explained and socialize with a greater variety of "wildlife." Mike winked at Sarah to punctuate his meaning, then began advising her on which games to play.
Sarah was partial to Skee ball and clearly had career potential in the sport, but Mike quickly pointed out that the token-to-coupon payout was not the best. In a furtive whisper, he revealed that The Storm Stopper was your best bet, provided the arcade had left it on its original factory settings. He assured us the ones here were "cool." The game had lights that ran around the outside in opposite directions and you had to hit the button at just the right spot to win. It looked impossible, but Mike was right; if you calculated tokens in versus coupons won, it was the best deal. It only took a little practice to win a minor jackpot every 5 or 6 times.
We would cheer each win as if Toronto had won the Stanley Cup. I would give a quick fist pump and a full lung "Yes!" while Sarah would jump up and down screaming, "WhoooHooo!" Of course, in the end, when we cashed in, "Mike's secret" only bumped us up from a key-chain flashlight to a "deluxe" nail beauty set. Mind you, it did come complete with clippers, scissors, a file AND a cuticle scraper. Not only that, it was all neatly packaged in a paisley-patterned pink and green plastic vinyl case. Mike was so pleased to give us our prize and to be honest, we were thrilled to win it if only to see his broad chicletted smile. It was more of a trophy than a grooming set.
That night, I made reservations for us at a fancy Chinese food restaurant - the Bamboo Garden. When we arrived, we had half-expected renovations of some sort. Instead, the place was immaculate. Gentle pools teeming with goldfish highlighted the epic black and red Ming dynasty decor. Real candles flickered on crisp white tablecloths. Again, the restaurant was virtually ours. The reservations on my part were entirely unnecessary. In fact, as soon as we entered, they knew us by name and guided us directly to our table. A live lounge piano caressed the air, its notes danced vaguely around familiar harmonies until finally, as if prompted by our presence, a song emerged immediately accompanied by the velvet voice of oriental karaoke. It was our song remastered
submitted by babyxxpigeon17 to Tik_tok_stories [link] [comments]
We had both been working at our first "full-fledged" jobs for a year and had reached that moment after graduation when you suddenly realize you can't make that impact on the world your student enthusiasm once promised. At first, I just sighed. It was the dead of January, and I had already expended all my energy on a week of inconsequential stress. I just wanted to collapse on the couch for two days. Sarah felt a similar weary exhaustion. I could tell. Her tone was more hopeful than excited, but she had dreaded the routine we were sinking into and was trying her best to pull us free.
I looked to the ceiling and adjusted my telephone headset. At that time I was working at Stats Canada on the tele-query desk. I took a deep breath and, as convincingly as possible, said, "Sounds good." I don't think she bought it, but we went nonetheless.
This was Niagara Falls before the casinos when there was a very distinct off-season. When we got to the hotel, we were given the details of our "lovers' special". One dinner to be used either Friday or Saturday, two breakfasts, a roll of tokens for the arcade, 10% off some "4D" movie ride experience, and a 2-for-1 coupon to Max Tussaud's. I guessed it was Madame's nephew? We also got a bottle of sparkling wine in our room and chocolate treats on our pillows. I was impressed. It sounded good.
When we got into our room and saw the "bottle" of wine - basically an aeroplane-sized glass and half - and the chocolates - "fun wrapped" Oh Henry's left over from Halloween - we both started to laugh. The tone for two wonderful days had been set. We decided to cash in on our dinner coupon right away.
The restaurant off the lobby had hopes of being better. There were huge panoramic windows that promised a view of the gorge. Unfortunately, they had some winter moisture problems that day, and it felt like we were defrosting amid the dripping streaks and foggy patches. The decor was your standard booths and tables though the "romantic" lighting was unique. Dollar store battery-powered tea lights were lodged inside thick tumbler glasses and shed a muted pleasantness in a "what a great idea for a craft" sort of way. I had a feeling they were created by our waitress since she was the one who always seemed to be fussing with them. Only one other couple was in the dining room, so she attended to us immediately.
"Can I get you something to start?"
"Sure." "Thank you, that would be nice." We both responded simultaneously.
"And what would the lady like this evening?"
Sarah smiled at the flattery. "I think I'll have a glass of white wine." She glanced over at me to see my reaction. This was a subtle cue of the mood to follow. Diet Coke was usually the beverage of choice. She didn't normally drink alcohol. One glass numbed her nose and made her giggle far too easily. When she did drink, however, it meant she was comfortable with my company and open to anything to follow. I raised my eyebrows in a debonair way.
"And for the gentleman?"
"Do you have Foster's on tap?"
"Yes we do."
"I'll have a pint please."
Sarah smiled at the happy memories I invoked. At university, Foster's was my signature beer. It was at a time when Crocodile Dundee was a known name, and Australia was inexplicably cool. 15 cent buffalo wings and a pitcher of Foster's was the Tuesday night special at the London Arms pub. There the Classics Club would meet and, as a group, circle the wagons and drink ourselves into extroverts.
As soon as the waitress left, Sarah smiled at me. She reached out and held my hand across the table. With my gaze on hers, she slipped her foot from her shoe and slowly began sliding it up my pant leg.
"I got a pedicure this morning." She announced seductively.
I nodded and pretended I didn't notice her invitation. "What colour?" I asked.
"I'm not telling." She teased. "You'll just have to find out later." Her devious little smile was gorgeous.
"Mmmm. I can't wait."
When the waitress returned with our drinks, we immediately retreated to our personal spaces as if we had been discovered by the chaperone. Sarah opened the menu and began to salivate at the variety.
"Can we add an appetizer to the package dinner?" Her question seemed innocent enough.
"You're on the package?" Our friendly waitress disappeared, and we were no longer a lady or a gentleman. She ripped the menu out of Sarah's hand and took mine before I had even opened it. She then scurried to her podium and brought back a tattered, grease-stained, photocopied page that we had to share. We both burst out laughing.
The waitress was flustered that we were not as bothered as she was. "The drinks are NOT included!"
"What choices do we have?" I asked, expecting the usual chicken or fish. I had been on many packages before with my parents.
"Coffee or tea." The waitress snapped.
Sarah and I looked at each other in amused disbelief.
"I'll have coffee please." I didn't even flinch at the ridiculously limited package. I was eager to get my order in early.
"And I'll have the tea!" Sarah followed my lead. "Can I have some milk with that?"
"Yes." The waitress snarled.
"Fantastic!" I enthused.
"Yes, great! I'm glad we got the package, Honey." Sarah joked.
The waitress stormed off and returned sometime later with our lettuce-only salads drowned in Kraft's Italian dressing and our chewy chicken dinners, which she had thoughtfully allowed to cool. She tossed the plates on the table and left us to peacefully devour our deal. We didn't see her again until we requested the bill. For some reason, we found it amusing to leave a generous tip, which of course, defeated the purpose of the package, but we didn't care. It was fun.
The rest of the holiday was marred with similar off-season products and services. The wax museum was only half open, so we couldn't see the pop stars of the seventies. I didn't think it was a problem, but Sarah pouted playfully. She really wanted to see young Bowie. Meanwhile, the arcade was particularly stingy about spitting out coupons. So much so that Mike, the scraggly-haired repair guy, ended up escorting us from game to game and repairing the devices on demand. In no time, he was acting like an old drinking buddy. He joked and laughed, then, out of the blue, revealed that working at the Niagara Falls Fun Centre wasn't his career choice, that his dream was to be part of a travelling carnival. He desperately wanted to see more of the world, he explained and socialize with a greater variety of "wildlife." Mike winked at Sarah to punctuate his meaning, then began advising her on which games to play.
Sarah was partial to Skee ball and clearly had career potential in the sport, but Mike quickly pointed out that the token-to-coupon payout was not the best. In a furtive whisper, he revealed that The Storm Stopper was your best bet, provided the arcade had left it on its original factory settings. He assured us the ones here were "cool." The game had lights that ran around the outside in opposite directions and you had to hit the button at just the right spot to win. It looked impossible, but Mike was right; if you calculated tokens in versus coupons won, it was the best deal. It only took a little practice to win a minor jackpot every 5 or 6 times.
We would cheer each win as if Toronto had won the Stanley Cup. I would give a quick fist pump and a full lung "Yes!" while Sarah would jump up and down screaming, "WhoooHooo!" Of course, in the end, when we cashed in, "Mike's secret" only bumped us up from a key-chain flashlight to a "deluxe" nail beauty set. Mind you, it did come complete with clippers, scissors, a file AND a cuticle scraper. Not only that, it was all neatly packaged in a paisley-patterned pink and green plastic vinyl case. Mike was so pleased to give us our prize and to be honest, we were thrilled to win it if only to see his broad chicletted smile. It was more of a trophy than a grooming set.
That night, I made reservations for us at a fancy Chinese food restaurant - the Bamboo Garden. When we arrived, we had half-expected renovations of some sort. Instead, the place was immaculate. Gentle pools teeming with goldfish highlighted the epic black and red Ming dynasty decor. Real candles flickered on crisp white tablecloths. Again, the restaurant was virtually ours. The reservations on my part were entirely unnecessary. In fact, as soon as we entered, they knew us by name and guided us directly to our table. A live lounge piano caressed the air, its notes danced vaguely around familiar harmonies until finally, as if prompted by our presence, a song emerged immediately accompanied by the velvet voice of oriental karaoke. It was our song remastered