Valdair

The match to the mat is really nice!

I am surprised the age would be so young. My dad retired at 67 but went right back to work a year later, still working now (71). Health insurance do be expensive. I wonder how this statistic would capture someone like him. My mother was working until she died at 60, but would have likely been in a similar situation, trying to keep working as long as possible, certainly was not looking at retirement within a year or two.

My wife's parents are younger (late 50s) but in the same boat, there is no path to retirement for them and they plan to just keep working. The only people I know who managed to retire by any conventional definition are or were Silent Generation.

Also if a quick Google result is anything to go on, Apple sells hundreds of millions of iPhones a year. 3% of that is still a fuckload of people and IMO proves there is a market for it. Just maybe not a market that needs yearly attention. You also have to remember that's split between tons of SKUs, so you would expect all of them to hover in the single digits to low teens.

I got my wife a 12 Mini - she loves it. The battery life is absolutely the worst thing about it, but it sounds like the 13 Mini was a huge upgrade in that regard and I had hopes it would continue to get better with future versions.

Something else that may not be taken in to account - the kinds of people buying the Mini are I would wager on a longer upgrade period than the kinds of people who buy e.g. a base iPhone or Pro model. The kind of person buying a Mini I would bet is closer to the kind of buyer that has historically bought the SE - they probably only upgrade every 3 or 4 years rather than the more stereotypical 2. Pro numbers are also skewed by the hyper fans who upgrade yearly and therefore show up in the stats a lot more, even though they're both a firm Apple customer.

There is also this interesting note at the end of the article:

"Other reports ... overwhelmingly presented the same picture of low ‌iPhone 14‌ Plus sales, to the extent that Apple was forced to slash production, suggesting that the low sales of the ‌iPhone 12 mini‌ and ‌iPhone 13‌ mini may not have been caused by the device's size after all."

I think the Mini should become the new SE. Keep it on 2+ year old CPU, keep it 60Hz, at least the form factor and design language will match the rest of the lineup unlike now where the SE has a design from 2016. That would be perfect for people like my wife, who want the smallest cheapest phone that's technically an iPhone, and are only going to upgrade every few years.

Act 2 - Too many weird issues to count with Halsin in act 2. Thankfully I was able to talk to him at camp, get him to go meet me at the Inn and then do the Defend The Portal thing. Then he disappeared for a while, had nothing to talk about at my camp, and the "Show on map" button for his quest didn't go anywhere. Thankfully it did resolve itself later at the end of the act, I think it might have been caused because I did the hide & seek with the cursed tiefling boy "too early" in act 2?

Early act 3 - The booby-trapped toys quest, after getting the Fist officials to realize the toys are trapped, you get a quest update to go confront the toymaker. Weirdly the only options are kill him or let him leave, not turn him in? I let him leave, he vanished and the quest never updated so I still have it.

Late act 3 - All quests related to Kithrak Voss and the Orphic hammer - I spoke to Voss at the start of act 3, then to Raphael, then Voss again. Many hours later, stole the hammer, went to meet up with Voss in the sewers. He would talk to me, but he just said "Follow me to the tap room", and then he never left the spot. Tried talking to him on all characters, going to camp, reloading, etc. etc. I think this one might have broken him because I normally have at least one summon out (celestial or elemental from Shadowheart, Wyll or Gale) and NPCs go insane if you have a summon they interpret as hostile. I was able to progress the quest but maybe this interrupted him somehow. Anyhow it would have cost me so many hours to go back to a save before that by the time I troubleshot everything that I just gave up. You can still break Orpheus free at the end and get Voss's help, but you never get the greatsword (which is a shame because Baldur's Giantslayer literally does not fucking work on the ONLY two mobs in the game that qualify for its bonus damage after the point where you receive it).

I think she is just kinda the default if you have no imagination - softspoken human female that isn't totally obnoxious.

In terms of female romance options Lae'zel is the only one who it seemed to make sense would be forward enough to try and jump your bones after just 2 or 3 days. Karlach wasn't even an option for me, she had no romance adjacent dialogue at the tiefling party. I wonder if part of that was just how late she joined up in act 1, I did get her engine "fixed" for the first time but it was one of the last things I did and I can't remember if it was before or after clearing the goblin camp.

I did really enjoy Shadowheart's arc though, especially since I generally adopted a policy to not suggest or try to interfere with the companions' quests. Just left them to their own decisions without trying to sway them, and the fact that Shadowheart chooses to reject Shar and Lae'zel chooses to reject Vlaakith (or at least hear Voss out) made for two of the most powerful moments in act 2 IMO. There is lots to like about all three of them throughout their arcs and that's part of what makes them so great.

I'm curious about how dielectric grease on the wires is different to 205g0. I've always just brushed 205g0 in a thick layer on to the wires and call it good but never tried anything else, and I don't even really know what to look or listen for to know if I should be doing something different.

I've also seen you should use a syringe to inject extra grease in from the top after a few months, but never done that either and curious how important people feel it is.

Diamine Autumn Oak, Montblanc Corn Poppy Red, Montblanc Golden Yellow. I'm not sure which if any of these are still being made though, probably not the yellow.

I was pretty light on gold for most of the game because I played a sniper ranger so was spending money on arrows CONSTANTLY. Arrow of Many Targets and the one with smokepowder bomb on the end are especially strong but so expensive. I had to raid the bank to be able to afford the Persistence Armor from Dammon for Shadowheart, even after maxing out his attitude... which it was super weird it took 5k in donations considering you know, I saved his bacon twice and I'm trying to save the world.

What I think could have worked was one or two other major late game items could have also been ported to the House of Hope, and you have to part with one knowing you won't get it back. Like as a signal that you are basically at the end of the game now, you need to pick your final party config and get them as set up as possible and start letting other things go. I went in to the final section with a lot of gear on other people I really wish I'd transferred to my core team.

I just left it on, I don't really understand it though. I still fail even trivial skill checks repeatedly with anyone other than Astarion so I'm not actually convinced it does anything at all.

I know there is a kind of philosophy in random dice roll design for software where you slightly skew the distribution of subsequent rolls based on previous ones because it feels more random (rather than getting e.g. 1, 2, 1, 2, which could be 'truly random' but feels like ass), but I don't think that's what karmic dice is doing. I do play really high AC, with Laezel and Shadowheart in full endgame plate plus a buff here or there I think they run 24~27. It is very hard for enemies to hit us and it feels about right. I would be very surprised to learn that karmic dice is benefiting enemies too, because that seems unintended and not in the spirit of how the tooltip is written.

That's hilarious, considering she wants 10000 gold the first time you ask and you can haggle her down to 5000. I'll probably just give them back to her and then buy them so the quest completes - I don't have much need for money after bribing Dammon down and purchasing his full plate set.

The IRS has been saying for years they in many cases don't actually have the funding to dedicate to fighting multimillionaires who can afford protracted legal battles to avoid taxes. The IRS was granted a lot more funding as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a direct result of the current administration. The government is big and slow though, things take time.