I like to burn movies and shows to play on my CRT. It feels a bit more authentic than streaming.
Kit
Right on! I've had a similar gaming experience, except with VR. Can't seem to get my headset working with Bazzite. I've heard that there's some workarounds but I need to sit down and poke at it.
I hadn't seen a single ad until a few months ago. I had snagged a copy of Windows 10 Pro (and Windows 7 Pro before that) from my workplace so I imagine it was debloated to an extent.
I'm doing my part! Switched to Linux earlier this year because Microsoft started showing ads in the start menu. I tried Nobara but ran into some glitches that I didn't want to troubleshoot so I switched to Bazzite. So far so good.
Serial Experiments Lain. I managed to acquire a bootleg Japanese VHS of the show (sans subtitles) in '99 or '00 and fell in love. I bought the English dub as soon as I could find it. I was totally obsessed, even going as far as carrying a messenger bag like Lain had, and making a custom Windows XP theme based on Navi. I even bought a Palm Pocket to mimic the smartphones shown in the show.
Lain shaped my passion for IT, and I feel it changed my life in profound ways.
I'm confused by the sudden popularity. It went under the radar for so long. Now all of the merch goes for insane amounts of money.
Having played other MMOs does not make you qualified to have an opinion on a game you've never played. FFXI does have a grind, but it is unlike any other MMO out there. The intensity of trying to time your weapon skills and magic to land at exactly the right time, the dance-like coordination with your teammates, the variety of enemy strengths and weaknesses, learning a basic programming language to write macros and having them work flawlessly in a pinch - everything about it is exciting and you have to be at the top of your game to succeed. Every single mob fight feels like a boss battle and every kill is a win. Top that with some of the best writing of any Final Fantasy game and it's a winning combination and technical marval that I cannot believe was achieved in 2003.
You may as well be saying that Dark Souls is nothing but a grind, but you're missing that the grind is the fun part.
You clearly have not played FFXI.
Hop on HorizonXI! It's a very populated classic server.
Final Fantasy XI. It's been online for over 20 years and still has a devoted player base. The game's scale is so epic that many people still haven't beaten the expansions.
When it came out it was so far beyond what we had seen in an MMO before - The only competitors were UO and Everquest, but the graphics, music, complexity, and storyline were miles beyond those games.
It's a game with unimaginable depth of play that takes years to master - not like the hand-holdy easy games we get nowadays. Truly a gem the likes of which we will never see again.
I met Moot at Otakon 2007 and he was kind of a dick. But here's a fun bit of 4chan lore - When asked why he named it 4chan, he said that he wanted an English version of 2chan, and 4chan sounded cool because it was pronounced like "fortune". Thus the logo is a 4 leaf clover, for good fortune.
I've never seen this mentioned anywhere online, so I wonder if he was just making a joke.
When I was living in a car I'd wardrive nightly to find Wifi. This was before Wifi was commonly available in public spaces, and household routers often used a default password or no password at all. I'd use it to pirate games and movies to keep myself entertained.
Later I moved into a 4 plex apartment and convinced the neighbors to share one Internet connection. We ran ethernet through walls and across the roof and split the bill.
Any company culture that expects you to be friends with your coworkers is a dumpster fire. Run quickly.
I've worked in my current office for two years and don't know the first thing about any of my coworkers beyond their name and specialization. No clue if they're married or have kids, or what they do on the weekend. We never chit-chat. I am infinitely happier here than anywhere I've worked in the past.